Incoming ECM Nerf??

[Mangala]

Say it aint so right ater I start flying falcons!!!!

We have been looking again at ECM ships focusing on their roles and whether these ships can be improved overall to better define their roles a little more. With that in mind, we want to share some of our thoughts and gather constructive feedback and suggestions of your own.

In the days ahead, we will put some changes on sisi to see how they pan out and continue to change or tweak as feedback and playtesting continues.

ECM Range


Generally the ECM optimal range is a little too long with massive optimal ranges possible which would place the ECM specialised ships so far out of the fight to be almost completely safe but suffer no effective hit quality decrease. To bring them closer to the fight we are looking at swapping the base optimal and falloff ranges so at the longer ranges jammers would be operating more in falloff and hence have a lower chance of 'hitting' with their jammers at the extreme ranges.

Signal Distortion Amplifiers


The SDAs are something of a conundrum. They are really only worth fitting on the ECM specialised ships and are the only EWAR enhancing module we have besides the rigs. Currently they increase your ECM strength and we were looking at swapping this to an ECM range bonus and altering either the base strength of the jammers or the ECM strength bonus of the ships so they become less required in every setup and the low slots could be used for tanking for example.

Ship Changes


We have been looking at all the ECM ships (Griffin, Kitsune, Blackbird, Falcon, Rook and Scorpion). We wanted to ensure each ship had a more focused role which was not just bigger, longer range and better than the others so only one wins outright. The two main themes we were looking at was short range brawler and long range sniper. The brawler would focus on ECM strength at shorter range and the sniper would be longer range but weaker with niches in these areas for each of the ships.

Falcon & Rook


The falcon has been changed to be similar to the pilgrim in its role as a ECM brawler at shorter ranges. It has a bigger ECM strength bonus whilst losing its ECM optimal range bonus. In addition its agility and base velocity and have been increased to allow it to be more manoeuvrable at shorter ranges.

Summary Falcon changes

- ECM Strength Bonus increased from 20 to 25% per level
- ECM Optimal Range Bonus removed (52km optimal / 81km falloff w/ 2*SDA IIs)
- Increase in general manoeuvrability (might give agility bonus to it to replace the ECM optimal range bonus)

The rook operates at longer ranges, able to attack at distance and whilst having a weaker ECM strength but longer ECM range than the falcon can lay some real damage on its target gaining a heavy/heavy assault and standard missile velocity bonus in addition to a small drone bay for additional utility.

Summary Rook Changes

- ECM strength bonus decreased to 15% per level
- ECM Optimal Range bonus decreased to 15% per level (92km optimal / 81km falloff)
- 5% Heavy/Heavy Assault missile velocity per recon ship level added (105km range with heavy missiles at max skills)
- 25m3 drone bay / 25 mbit bandwidth added

The Scorpion


We are looking at putting the scorpion into the short range brawler role. To that end we are looking at removing its ECM Optimal range bonus, increasing the ECM strength bonus a little and adding a cruise/siege launcher rate of fire bonus so it can get close and personal.

Summary Scorpion Changes

- removed the ECM optimal range bonus
- increased the ECM strength bonus to 20% per level
- added a 5% RoF bonus to cruise & siege missile launchers per level.

Summary

Please provide constructive feedback on the ideas and changes. These changes are not yet on sisi and we will announce when they are. As always, everything is subject to change!

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1032703

[peo]

No clue really but since there seems to have been a very strong opinion that ECM (falcons in particular) have been to strong it would seem like a good idea to rebalance it all.

[Rubino]

The switch about they're thinking of implementing sounds grim - the force recon being close range and the combat recon being long range :s

[vacuum]

It's a terrible idea that as usual by CCP has actually made an overpowered ship into a useless ship.
Without the optimal bonus, the falcon now becomes only viable at 70K-120K, which is not only interceptable distance but with no real way of tanking, makes it less than useless.
Watch as everyone ditches ECM for the new next best thing  (watch this space).

Oh ... and I'm back (sort of)