To quote Wikipedia:
“An electronic countermeasure ( ECM ) is an electrical or electronic device designed to trick or deceive radar, sonar or other detection systems, like infrared (IR) or lasers. It may be used both offensively and defensively to deny targeting information to an enemy.”
ECMs don’t do the job of an electronic countermeasure unit, or where they do they do so by accident.
White Noise Jammer is, ironically, the only offensive module we have that is actually an ECM module. It knocks out a ship’s targetting systems. Flares are a defensive ECM, but everyone can have them.
What might make ECM more interesting is if it were an “anti-Recon”. Consider what the Recon does:
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Paints Targets - Spy Drones remove any and all possibility of a stealthy approach by a tagged ship.
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Steals Shield - Parasitic Remodulator can spell death to an enemy who is caught short by it, either by the Recon landing the kill or making it vulnerable to supporting ships.
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Area Denial - Their beacon (forget the name) prevents all ships in the area using cloaks, giving the Recon and its allies greater situational awareness.
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Battlefield Presence - Recons are insanely fast due to Microwarp and can briefly cloak. These attributes mean that they can be anywhere on the field and can exploit a vulnerability as and when it appears.
So… what would an anti-Recon do? Well, by and large the Recon’s abilities are about forcing defensive play from the enemy due to threat of failure. If you attack while Spy Droned, you can’t heal. If you attack with a Recon buzzing you he’ll steal your shield. If you attack without proper co-ordination you’ll leave the rear vulnerable to a warp-in. Enemy Recons essentially force you to fly conservative, so allied ECMs should encourage you to fly reckless, or at least more aggressively. So, how can we do this?
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White Noise - They can knock an enemy ship’s targeting systems out temporarily to give allies a window of opportunity. Particularly in higher tiers, modules matter. A Recon that can’t lock-on can’t plant spy drones. A tackler that can’t lock-on can’t debuff. Hitting small or agile targets, especially with slow guns becomes a nightmare.
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Radar Countermeasures - Give the ECM the ability to conceal itself and others from enemy sensors. Not a total cloak like the CovOps, but something that reduces enemy sensor range. It could even work as a “Jammer Drone” affair, launched like the Recon Spy Drone. When hit, your sensor range plummets by 25% - 50%. That makes it a lot harder for Jammed ships to spot attacks coming.
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Misdirection - Give the ECM a “holodrone” that creates a false ship. The drone looks real (it appears to be one of the ECM’s allied players) and acts real (it attempts to capture beacons, shoot enemy ships, etc) but it does no damage and only has a small amount of health and shields. Tagging it with a Spy Drone might reveal it for the fake it is, which would be a cool element of counter-play between the classes. Imagine how scary it would be to approach a beacon and see an ECM and a Guard Frigate loitering there with no way of knowing if that Guard was real or not… or if all else fails, just seeing two ECMs and not knowing which one was the real one.
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Damage Control - The Recon, as said, can exploit a hole in the line and play merry hell on your back line. The ECM, therefore, should offer some way to retake the initiative. One idea; the Firewall Drone. Drop this and all enemy ships in the area of effect have their beacon capture, bomb capture and bomb placement speeds reduced. This could buy your team the precious seconds they need to turn around and chase the enemy Recon off their Beacon.
Now for a new idea on the Special Module. I wanted to call it “Target Painter” but… it’s taken.
Target Designator:
Use this when locked onto an enemy ship and they get a bright red “locked” emblem above them. For every ship locked on to that ship (including the ECM) their Resistances drop by 10.
This produces a pretty damn scary ability - not only can an ECM knock out enemy systems and generally mess up plans, but they can focus-fire the team. You spot an enemy with the red crosshair next to their name you know to lock-on to that ship now and kill it dead, because it’s vulnerable as hell.
This ability also has a lot of very nice synergy. an ECM-Recon tag-team could, with the suggestions made, make a nightmarish wolfpack. Consider:
- ECM Target-Designates, deploys Jammer-Drones and pops the White Noise Generator. Target is now more vulnerable to fire, has to get closer to lock, and temporarily has no means to lock-on.
- Recon pops Spy Drone and Parasitic Remodulator. Target ship is now lit up and cannot break the Target Designator even if it escapes the ambush. ECM can maintain the lock until an ally achieves the kill.
Really, I feel like the CovOps has totally messed up how people view Interceptors. CovOps is a solo-pilot’s wet dream, and it seems to generate the idea that all Interceptors, if not all ships period should be able to kick-xxxx flying solo. Indeed, a lone ECM is more than capable of ruining people’s day even if they don’t get a kill - their abilities cause a huge amount of disruption and harassment. The issue lies in it not being fun to play against it.
Now, on that note, let’s just go through and see where the fun lies in my suggestion.
- White Noise. Not much fun on paper, right? Well, what if we make it so the White Noise Generator requires line of sight? Now we have tactical options - it punishes players for being out in the open and alone. Counter-play comes from staying with the group (who will protect you during the WNG duration) or braking LoS and getting your systems back online.
- Sensor Jamming. This is a bit of a mind game, and here is where the fun comes from. When flying in a group this ‘debuff’ can be totally ignored - you have other ships to spot for you. But imagine if you’re flying an LR at the back, or a Recon / CovOps roving ahead. Suddenly, that blindness matters. Now you have to make a choice - do you run to the safety of the group or press on? Were you tagged for a reason? Is an enemy push going to come your way? Imagine tagging a Guard or LR guarding a beacon, causing him to become convinced a push is coming his way and recalling his squadmates only for that push to never come, or to come somewhere else. ECMs selectively blinding segments of the enemy map could cause their opponents to totally misread what’s going on. This leads us nicely too…
- Misdirection. Come on guys, you know this would be epic! Imagine an enemy CovOps flying toward your Captain only to see four Guards waiting for him. He takes a Pulsar hit and panics, dropping his nuke, plasma-arcing and suiciding. His efforts succeed in flattening a trio of fake ships and causing minor inconvenience to the only real Guard in the formation.
Or how about being a Recon pilot, warping to a Beacon you thought was unguarded and seeing an enemy Engineer or Tackler there. Do you press on? You don’t see an ECM around, but that’s no guarantee he didn’t fly-by and drop a fake. You could pop a Spy Drone, but if it’s fake you’ve wasted that ability and enemies might be closing fast on your position. That moment of uncertainty, of second-guessing yourself and your mission could be the difference between success and failure. Without ever firing a shot, the ECM has unsettled you. And if it is fake, and turns out to be fake a few times, you might get complacent and charge headlong into a “fake” enemy that turns out to be real this time…
- Damage Control. This is all about meta and mindgames. Does the ECM pilot drop the drone on a guarded beacon or an unguarded one? If one ship can’t get the job done with a drone present, can two? Or even three? If you can destroy the drone will that help? Will focus-firing the drone cost you because the ECM was still there, waiting to ambush whoever attacked his static area-denial system? Recons, again, have some potentially epic stunts they could pull here; attack a beacon, draw the ECM in, make him pop his modules and then just Microwarp to another Beacon and attack it safe in the knowledge the enemy ECM can’t stop you because he’s out of position and spent his abilities!
I don’t know about you, but this kind of ECM sounds a lot more fun than the current “turn invincible, capture the beacon, unplug everyone’s keyboards and fly away.” type we currently have.