37 replies to this topic

[Byrin]

Excellent roam. Glad to have the med. ECM support from the Blackbirds. I was glad to make it out of the RnK hotdrops unscathed, as another corpmate went up in a fiery blaze of glory on the BASICS roam from their hot-dropped smart-bombing battleship fleet.

[Alistone Malikite]

re: Quiet ECM

I think the problem with the 'quiet ecm' fight was more the 'nobody calling primary'. If every ECM pilot (with 5 jammers each) is going to call every jam, comms are going to descend into chaos and students (the new guys) will be confused about what they're supposed to be shooting at. We need to sort out ahead of time who's jamming what (based on racials (preferably each boat focusing on 1 as I suggested before the roam,) alphabetical, and FC input) and then do our best to achieve that. ECM is already OP enough, we're not Elite PVPers and we're never going to achieve perfect distribution, no redundancy, instant perfect communication. If FC needs to know whether particular high-value targets are jammed, great, but me calling 'jam on ridonkulous in the rifter' is not comms bandwidth well spent.

^^ This.

When ecm started calling jams was when the field had been mostly cleared and there were only a few ships left => hence it was feasible to start calling jams to let everyone know the remaining ships were dead in the water.

In large fleet ops with a scorpion at range and 7 (or 8) jammers I usually spread my jams across as many ships (logistics, ECM, then DPS ships) as possible only doubling up on the unjammed ships if there are fewer than 7.

It is just too much micromanagement to try to communicate with 6 other ECM pilots about who is jammed and who isn't. If there are only 2 or 3 you could co-ordinate, but usually you communicate ahead of time about who has what jammers and who will primary what ships.

The other easy rule is if someone is targeting you then obviously they aren't jammed so move one or more of your jammers to try to jam them.

The last rule is if someone is powering toward you and you can reliably jam them then just switch some of your jammers onto them and ignore them while continuing to use the remainder of your ECM against their fleet. If you get counter-jammed though GTFO quickly. You'll still usually have that close in ship jammed for teh remainder of your jammer's cycle time giving you enough time to warp before they can tackle you.

[Sarek Minyatar]

Excellent roam. Glad to have the med. ECM support from the Blackbirds.

I was glad to make it out of the RnK hotdrops unscathed, as another corpmate went up in a fiery blaze of glory on the BASICS roam from their hot-dropped smart-bombing battleship fleet.

Well this time we bat-phoned them so they didn't smartbomb us. There was a bit of friendly fire though. Not sure all of you realized that, but the Carrier/BS group we attacked together with RnK was the "other" smartbombing-BS-Titan-hotdrop alliance (they wiped out a Basic class once and then failed pretty hard at a second attempt where we killed a Proteus and got out of the hotdrop with minor losses). So it was sweet revenge
Too bad we only got one of the carriers.

[AkJon Ferguson]

Caldak's associates

As for having our own TS channel I would not want that if it meant not being in channel with FC. Maybe we can use EVE voice in the Agony ECM channel and use a different PTT key there than we use for TS (or just be muted in TS if people find separate PTT keys too challenging.) I didn't get much (any?) practical use out of the Agony ECM channel tbh and I prefer to minimize visual distractions.

[AkJon Ferguson]

Not sure all of you realized that, but the Carrier/BS group we attacked together with RnK was the "other" smartbombing-BS-Titan-hotdrop alliance (they wiped out a Basic class once and then failed pretty hard at a second attempt where we killed a Proteus and got out of the hotdrop with minor losses). So it was sweet revenge
Too bad we only got one of the carriers.

Well, we got their other carriers and their rorqual in Covryn just a couple of weeks ago. (And I'm pretty sure the Proteus you're referring to wasn't with them, but I could be wrong.)

[Sarek Minyatar]

They use bait alts all the time, so I think he was, but he could have been just a random guy acting baity. anyway it was a fail hotdrop.

[AkJon Ferguson]

They use bait alts all the time, so I think he was, but he could have been just a random guy acting baity. anyway it was a fail hotdrop.

I WAS wrong. Of all the lame commonly witnessed behaviors in the game, people km whoring their own fleetmates has to be right up there with the lamest imo.

[Othran]

They use bait alts all the time, so I think he was, but he could have been just a random guy acting baity. anyway it was a fail hotdrop.

I WAS wrong. Of all the lame commonly witnessed behaviors in the game, people km whoring their own fleetmates has to be right up there with the lamest imo.

It appears that way but when you're in a durka group then the occasional SB is going to hit your own guys. That's what happened in the Covryn fight - a good few of them got their durka BS blown up and then re-shipped, making it look like they'd KM whored on their own guys. Normally it makes no odds to these guys as they don't lose the durka ships so no KM...

[sundarbolt]

And finally, to add feedback on this thread. Isn't it just great to see everyone trying to use every ounce of experience and knowledge they have gained to refine their abilities even further, after the class?

Caldak's associates

Damned proud to see my name on that list, and not only because of Caldak. Privilege to fly with you folk

[Greygal]

Caldak's associates

Oh my... I've flown with Caldak more than I've flown with my own corp... people are going to start to talk...

[Marvin]

As mentioned in the course as well I think it's been mentioned beforehand. The wiki is somewhat confussing with regards to skill and dessie requirement. From the main wiki page it lists Minni as the required (and bolded) but other places it mentions the other races' dessies. Besides that, great class. Shame I couldn't partake in the roam on the second evening in full, had some RL commitments that cut me short. Looking forward to the next ones.

[John McGuirk]

Ummm, if you're the one arguing it's not, then why would you be the one in the ECM boat? And sure, you can win a 1v1 against an ECM boat if you're willing to massively nerf your tank/dps/ewar against every other fleet you're likely to encounter. Looking through my killmails, damn few (5%, if that) had any ECCM fitted because it's not worth gimping tank/gank.

I like the playstyle and I have put the skillpoints into it. I didn't pick it because I thought it was a win button, I picked it because I like playing support, particularly the kind that is annoys and demoralizes the enemy. I never played the other MMO you talked about, but I'm sure I'd have played the snaring/rooting/slowing sack of crap you were mentioning.
My point wasn't "fit for ECCM," but that the way the jam strengths and sensor strengths work out, combined with the fact that you need an ECM module for each race means that unless you can know your opponent's race and can permajam them, an ECM boat is going to at best be able to get away, and at worst die in a fire (and I think B is far more likely).

Thanks for the info!

Not a problem.

I'm grateful to tofu for the TAMs and since many of us are new to ECM I think relying on an Agony member for warp-ins is okay as a temporary measure, but I think it also risks killing self-reliance.

This is another thing that appeals to me about ECM, is that it rewards preparation through TACs, or support through a TAM artist. In the specific situation of Agony roams, I think the TAM artist is only reasonable. People that want to employ ECM in a non-inept way and be self-reliant are free to TAC up the universe. In my opinion, it isn't realistic to say "Come fly ECM on an Agony roam (please show up with tacs)."

I think the problem with the 'quiet ecm' fight was more the 'nobody calling primary'. If every ECM pilot (with 5 jammers each) is going to call every jam, comms are going to descend into chaos and students (the new guys) will be confused about what they're supposed to be shooting at. We need to sort out ahead of time who's jamming what (based on racials (preferably each boat focusing on 1 as I suggested before the roam,) alphabetical, and FC input) and then do our best to achieve that. ECM is already OP enough, we're not Elite PVPers and we're never going to achieve perfect distribution, no redundancy, instant perfect communication. If FC needs to know whether particular high-value targets are jammed, great, but me calling 'jam on ridonkulous in the rifter' is not comms bandwidth well spent.

The feedback was really based on hearing Caldak saying "where's my jams" or something.
We're not elite PvPers, but that doesn't mean it can't be done better. Why not work on a set of best practices to optimize distribution, minimze redundancy, etc?
You may be right about each ECM boat fielding one race of jammers, but I think the cost there is that you don't get a graceful degradation of ECM capability if one or more ships are driven off the field. Maybe.

Just talking out loud, I clearly don't have experienced or maybe even well-thought-out opinions on the matter. But this is why I keep shooting my mouth off, so people that know more than me can correct me and we can try again with something better next time.
I agree with you on the bandwidth, which is why I'm thinking a separate channel may be useful. There are challenges to overcome here, I haven't quite figured it out yet. This may change with roam type/size too. It's one thing to have 3 Griffins (9 jammers) on a Basic roam vs. 6 Blackbirds (30 jammers) on that last Wolfpacks roam.

As for having our own TS channel I would not want that if it meant not being in channel with FC. Maybe we can use EVE voice in the Agony ECM channel and use a different PTT key there than we use for TS (or just be muted in TS if people find separate PTT keys too challenging.) I didn't get much (any?) practical use out of the Agony ECM channel tbh and I prefer to minimize visual distractions.

I don't envision ECM being not in-channel with the FC, but primarily as a quick means to divvy up targets between us without having the rest of the fleet hear us. I guess what I'm thinking is that with a proper EWO, the FC won't be calling jams, tracks, and damps, but only damage targets.
Maybe the EWO thing is really only applicable to bigger fleets. Maybe it's just going to take some time to iterate towards something useful. Not sure, but in my mind it's worth trying out. If it winds up sucking we can always go back to what we had.
Sorry the Agony ECM channel didn't help you, maybe I just need to keep it in mind not to make it mandatory.

Isn't it just great to see everyone trying to use every ounce of experience and knowledge they have gained to refine their abilities even further, after the class?

Absolutely. The whole ECM squad in its current incarnation is literally 2 roams old now, and as such, there's a lot of improvement and feedback to be had.
Speaking of which, thanks AkJon and Alistone for the discussion, it's all good feedback that gets me thinking of the improvements we can make next time.

[Sander]

Excellent class and roam. Learned at lot, too bad we had a hard time getting some fights. One thing I personally would like to see in this or the basic class, is how to effectively fly and operate all the mods. The most challenging thing I find in combat, especially smaller ships, is keeping pace with the fight. Shoot the right ships, stay in range, apply ewar to right ship, resort overview, etc. Knowing what to do is one thing, but doing it in combat is something else.