Well this pilot for one, is firmly on the love side, even while being jammed.
Let's first clear up some things about ECM that non jamming folks might not consider while they spew their hate and discontent over a subject they don't fully understand. I'll mostly be talking about the Force Recon ships. IE: Falcon, Arazu, Pilgrim, and the Rapier. Also the reported ranges are taking into account the same character with all level 5 skills to make for an even comparison of the ships, and the primary roll of the ship will be compared.
1) Tank or lack there of: The best of the best ECM ships are of caldari origin. This means that they are shield tankers and must use mid slots for their tank. Unlike any other recon ship in the game, caldari pilots must choose either better tank or more effective ECM. The other races don't have this choice as their tanking is done with their low slots, leaving the mids open for perfectly effective EWAR of whatever race bonus they get. The overall effect is that the caldari pilot is flying in a multimillion isk paper bag that T1 drones can decimate in little to no time at all. More on this a bit later though.
2) A thing called range: Now the gripe I hear most often when it comes to ECM haters is the range that the ECMers are effective from. The hatred was much worse before the recent patches, and while I agree the ECM ships needed to be closer to the battle, I feel that CCP may have over done it a bit. Now unlike all the other recon ships the ECM effect is done on a die roll while still in optimal range. This means that while the target painter, sensor damp, or tracking disruptor all just work while inside of optimal, the jammer does not. Their are rigs/mods that will increase the chance to get a jam, but at the end of the day it still comes down to a dice roll.
It complicates matters a bit more once you start to get into falloff. As most of us know, once into about half of your falloff range its about at 50% chance whatever is operating at that range is going to hit. This same principle applies to ECM, however its effects are much worse. Once a jammer is at half of its falloff range that 50% rule comes into play, but their is one slight issue with that. Since ECM is in and of it self a percent change, or dice roll, you are now making two chance rolls. The first is if the ECM will even fire at all, and the second is if that fire will be a success or not. So effectively, if your jammer had a 50% chance to get a jam on a target, it would now be reduced to 25%, while the other non-ECM EWAR folks still have a 50% chance of success.
As such, it becomes inefficient for an ECM operator to function outside of their optimal range, while other EWAR functions at the same efficiency as ECM half way into falloff. It is with this comparison that I argue that the falcon in fact has the least effective range of all the recon ships. The table below will show the fittings used in each comparison.
The fits were designed for pure range so a side by side comparison could accurately be conducted. The ranges where 50% of the time EWAR would be successfull are as follows:
- Falcon = 74km racial, 50km multispec (both optimal)
- Arazu = 108km (63km optimal + 45km falloff for 50% die roll)
- Pilgrim = 119km (101km optimal + 18km falloff for 50% die roll)
- Rapier = 108km (63km optimal + 45km falloff for 50% die roll)
3) Where art thou countermeasures: Interestingly enough, I think most people forget about ECCM, and the really interesting bit is that only ECM has a counter to it. Their is no such mod you can place on your ship to help it from being painted, damped or tracking disrupted. That is not the case with ECCM. Just load up your races variant ECCM, activate the mod, and you have just made an EMCers life much harder, since you have just reduced his or her chance to get a successful jam cycle on you. The best part is, that if your any race but caldari, chances are you have a free mid slot anyway. Sorry caldari guys, it sucks having to tank with the mid slots.
The other item of contest I hear a lot of is that once your jammed you are combat ineffective. While this is true in the majority of the cases, it is not always the case. You always have the option of F0F missiles if your ship has launchers, and then there is the great equalizer...Drones.
Drones will chew through a recon ship in seconds flat (refer to point #1) and they completely ignore if their 'master' is jammed. If a Falcon pilot is w/in drone control range (refer to point #2) and jams a ship that has drones out, those drones will happily remove said pilot of his ship, all the while the drones owner is 'helpless'. I have seen this happen on many occasions, and its a real delight...so long as its the other guys ECM going down. Also, the best way to counter act an enemies ECM is with...wait for it...ECM of your own. Most of the time they are focused on jamming you, giving you time to sneak your ECM ships in and jam them. I know this sort of lends it self to the old adage of if you cant beat them join them, but it works all the same.
Now these were just a few of the points that I could come up with for why the nerf bat should stay very far way from ECM. I didn't even touch on the fact that the other races ship get a dual roll bonus (IE: Neut/Nos, Web, Scram) while the ECM only get that single ability.
But alas, such is the life of the poor ECM pilot. Misunderstood by many, hated by many many more.
