ECCM

[TheWall]

Been a while since I posted thanks to a fantastic work firewall thing. Anyway I have been having a lot of trouble with jammers. For example I recently lost my abbadon to a small gang because they had a jamming battleship. If I had fit one ECCM module would that have been enough to keep a fully fit jamming ship from keeping jammed the entire fight? Or is jamming just the end all be all and I should just pray there isn't one around when I fly solo?

[TheDreamr]

Adding a single ECCM module will naturally make you harder to jam, bonused ECM ships will probably be able to mess with you at the cost of expending more resources to get it done - if you were in a gang at the time that's a pretty good trade-off as every jammer on you is a jammer that's not potentially taking a gang-mate out of the fight.

However if you're planning to piss off dedicated ECM pilots, might want to think about going with dual-ECCM to maximise the amount of time you've got to work with while remaining unjammed.

ps. Going off memory here as it's been a few months since I've done any serious testing on this front.

[Sir T]

An eccm will basically drop the chance you will be jammed by 2/3s. It wont make you immune but by god you will be jammed less. When I was running around in a Dominix in small gang fights I had an eccm as standard equipment, and the amount of times it saved my ass... You have no idea how people will panic when the guy they are ganking can actually fight back when they are used to risk free kills.

Now granted a domi has a very high sensor strength and 5 mids so that may not apply to every other BS, but if you are worried about a flavor of the month attack, fit the counter.

[TheWall]

How about if you are in a ship with lower sensor strength? If I was flying my thorax would I have been able to break the perma-lock a scorpion had on me at least long enough to melt the tackler?

[Kovacs]

If it's ECM and it's a scorpion a Thorax doesn't have a chance I'm afraid.  The calculation is pretty straight forward.  ECM Str./Sensor Str. * 100 will give you your 'to hit' %.  Thorax with a str. of 8 and Named Racial jam str. (without skills) is 4'ish (3.96) on a scorp. gives a base 49% chance to jam.  The 'to hit' chance per jamer is independent not additive. That is, 2 jammers gives you a .49 chance twice not a .98 chance.  The good news is that there's no magic number of jammers to add to reach 100+%.  The bad news is once you are jammed you stay jammed for 30 secs. and the ECM pilot can rotate the jammers that 'missed' to other ships. 

ECCM and sensor back up arrays increase sensor str (the denominator) by about 80% and 45% respectively.   Both worth it if you have the slot free and the ECCM much more so if you have the cap.  Depending on # of targets, primaries etc. etc. Backups prob. buy you roughly one cycle and ECCM's 2 cycles before you get enough on you to get jammed.  On the other hand the scorp. prob has 6 jammers and possibly 8.  Not great news for the Thorax.   As an example, I probably the Worst jammer skills of any Caldari in the hisotry of, well history and my racial jammers hit 8.2 str. and my scorp fit puts me at about 136km optimal.   Lots of can't run can't hide there.

[TheWall]

Do people use ECM drones much? If I got at least one lock on the guy tackling me then maybe an ECM drone or two could bust the web/scram on me long enough to MWD out of the scorps jamming falloff. Realistic or unlikely?

[TheDreamr]

Will a single ECCM be enough to stop you from getting jammed at all while you try to melt a tackler?  Yes, but only if you can get it over with quickly - the longer you spend fighting the more chance you'll get jammed for a cycle, lose your lock on the tackler, need to reacquire and then make him do something stupid.

Also worth noting that jam strength is pretty consistent on bonused ships, i.e. griffin jams almost as well as a scorpion but can't bring anywhere as much ECM to the fight.

[TheDreamr]

Do people use ECM drones much? If I got at least one lock on the guy tackling me then maybe an ECM drone or two could bust the web/scram on me long enough to MWD out of the scorps jamming falloff. Realistic or unlikely?

ECM drones aren't a bad choice if you're dictating the terms of a fight - 5 medium ECM drones can pull off the occasional jam and lower the effective incoming DPS you need to deal with, but they're pretty low-powered individually (5 drones approx = 1 ecm mod) and a good interceptor pilot might be able to stay outside their range while keeping you tackled (can certainly do it with normal drones).

[TheWall]

I usually pick my targets well. But jammers change the entire game for me. I almost exclusively fly solo which means no one is coming to help me. I'm trying to keep my setup flexible enough to either get the kill or get away if  a jammer warps in to help my target.

[Jayce]

Some people use ECM drones as an "oh shit" device to break a tackler's lock and get out.  Neuts will also do the job and probably more reliably if they work with your fit.  Obviously if you are flying a battleship or bonused neut boat then they make the most sense.

[Amarr HM]

Here's me testing them out pre-Falcon-nerf the result would be a whole lot better nowadays. One problem is though you fly Amarr ships so tackling moving fast and using ECCM is gonna be tricky as they have a lack of mids.