ECM’s main counter is its utter lack of damage. It cannot kill you at all if you’re an engineering/guard frigate, and it needs to burn through a lot of missiles to hurt a fighter/sniper. It is basically doing a work of the tackler, “interceptor killer”, where it can kill interceptors in stasis. And if you’re really annoyed by ECM, you can always grab proton wall and implant, reducing CC by around 50%.
And frigate balls are as frustratingly overpowered as ever. Just played a few games in a squad, lost a beacon hunt against full random team because they had a frigate ball, played like crap and still could push us off the beacons whenever they wanted. Then won a 3 beacon map against ESB squad because we had a frigate ball and could push them off beacons at will even though we all played like crap while they organized grouped strikes on beacons that were very deadly. I actually got killed twice in the middle of our team because I’d get stunned and literally no one would give a damn, even squaddies kept shooting at solo enemy frigate sitting on another beacon, which really underscores just how badly we were playing. And we still won with relative ease. So that is my biggest problem with frig balls right now - doesn’t matter how good the opposition is and how lousy frig ball itself is, frig ball wins.
I know we’re slightly veering off course a bit… but I just feel the need to xxxxx the living hell out of the ECM. It gets my award for the “Least fun piece of crap I have to put up with”.
The short answer to why is “There Is No Counter.”
No let me explain what I mean.
How do you counter a Gunship, or an Empire LR Frigate, or a Pulsar? You get out of sight, or out of range. How do you counter the Engineer and its dreaded super-healing? You debuff it with a Spy Drone, blow off its repair drones and render that healing null and void with a mass barrage of lasers, plasma, rail-shot, missiles, rockets, plasma arcs or whatever else you want to fire.
But how do you counter ECM? You don’t. If the ECM wants to shut you down, you’re shut down. If the ECM wants to steal your power, it will steal your power. If the ECM wants to be able to cap your beacon for six seconds with no way whatsoever to stop it, it can use Tachyon Shield.
Nothing counters the ECM, and it is frustrating as hell. I’d say the same thing about the Spy Drone, but realistically that doesn’t stop me from doing anything; it just makes things harder. I still have the option to fall back and heal up next to an Engineer, or keep trying to capture a Beacon or kill a Captain, but it won’t be so easy now that I’m tagged. In short, the “counter” to the Spy Drone is to perform a double-take and decide whether the lack of stealth and/or slower healing is going to screw you over. In that sense, its no different than, say, having to decide if flying past a Gunship is going to get you killed.
As a player, I don’t like having the proverbial controller snatched out of my hands. ECM is a class built around that concept - it is designed from the ground up to stop people playing the game for five-to-ten seconds. That annoys the hell out of me. ECM should not be a blanket “xxxx you” class, and its modules should have a counter.
Oh, I can vouch ECM gets countered a LOT. Mostly by Tacklers and decently fitted Guards (decent fits, doesn’t have to be Mk3 gear). Yes, ECMs are relatively broken because they can still kill damn near everything else solo, but they are easily killed, as well.
I have flown only my EVR Kris-AE for the past month and its job is to secure kills, hunt interceptors, and stop Engineer healing. I think of the disabling duration as equal in aspect to a death. That is the power of the ECM, to remove a ship from a fight and disrupt the flow of the battle.
NonDairyCreamer’s Empire ECM: 16,000 EHP (more than my Command)
Be careful, there are not only ECM can control someone.
In fact any vessel with a slot medium can.
More control please
In fact, any vessel can disable you.
The worst thing that can happen is a command like the Katana S-type ion with warhead. (Especially if it uses premium Missiles! Ions Warheads 14)
Besides talking about the commands! What is these games with 4-5 commands?
And it is super hard to kill these things!
I feel like driving a baby guard when I fly with my command.
This is a support vessel or a fusion between guard and engineer who have made a mutant baby?
About the problem of frigate
A good use of a completely forget missile can do the cleaning.
I know it’s super hard to use correctly. I still train with but I not even imagine the carnage of “Covert Ops / LRF” combo well controlled.
I love to launch one from my “Assault Guard” when I reach on a beacon overload: D
Effects guaranteed!
those exp. items o.O
I haven’t even seen a single T3 exp, item yet o.O
Btw, can you guys implement a confirm button on the 30% loot option? yesterday I lost 137 gold(weird number for a single loot try…not to mention the item was worth 40k in debris…) because I clicked too fast and the gold option was right on the spot…I think that things like that shouldn’t be able to happen…
Btw, you can go over the 600m/s speed cap. Not sure if you can do it alone with the ship, or if you need a command ship near, but it’s very much possible.
