116 replies to this topic

[Bobzilla]

So i've read that the sensor range and advance sensor range modules are to be the counter for ECM. As far as missles are concerned, both together add an extra 50m to the window for a total of 90m. I'm not wondering if people think this is enough of a balance or not, just if its fair to have something balanced with something that costs a different currency.
I want to know if people think its a fair balance to charge xp, gxp and cbills for an item that costs cbills, tons and crits?

Edited by Bobzilla, 31 January 2013 - 11:33 AM.

[DocBach]

12,000,000 c-bills and days worth of GXP (or real money) for a 70 meter buffer against ECM? Seven tons, three criticals of weapon that has an insane heat curve for a five second disable of ECM? Sounds like they finally figured out all the nuances of game balance and all is now well.

[Wolfways]

As long as ECM stops missile locks it's not fair. And 50m is nothing.

[EitherWay]

DocBach, on 31 January 2013 - 11:46 AM, said:

12,000,000 c-bills and days worth of GXP (or real money) for a 70 meter buffer against ECM? Seven tons, three criticals of weapon that has an insane heat curve for a five second disable of ECM? Sounds like they finally figured out all the nuances of game balance and all is now well.

Sorry, just wondering where this 12,000,000 c-bills came from. Is this some sort of special mech? The module only costs 2,000,000

Edited by EitherWay, 31 January 2013 - 11:50 AM.

[DocBach]

I was using the average cost of the other modules to presume how much the new modules would cost, and the fact we need two of them for maximized effect, I doubled them. Average module cost now is 6,000,000 c-bills x 2 = 12,000,000.

My mistake, if your numbers are correct we only need 10x the cost of the original ECM unit to balance against it with our new, frugally cheap 4,000,000 c-bill investment for the highest tier of the modules, which gives us a whole 50 meter buffer zone!

[jshill78]

Wait... in the same post you call ECM overpowered and call the counter to it unfair.

Cake and eat it too?

Sheesh. ECM doesn't affect a single build that I run. I could care less about it. Is it nice that a weapon I use is going to have reduced heat and a secondary effect? Yes it is.

****.

[DocBach]

jshill78, on 31 January 2013 - 11:53 AM, said:

Wait... in the same post you call ECM overpowered and call the counter to it unfair.

Cake and eat it too?

Sheesh. ECM doesn't affect a single build that I run. I could care less about it. Is it nice that a weapon I use is going to have reduced heat and a secondary effect? Yes it is.

****.

Buffing the PPC should be looked at as a buff for a single weapon system, not as a balance fix for ECM. ECM is still not balanced, especially if you look at all the costs of counters to the cost of the ECM.

[Titan Osis]

Wolfways, on 31 January 2013 - 11:46 AM, said:

As long as ECM stops missile locks it's not fair. And 50m is nothing.

Then just being able to lock missiles all the time is fine? Do you remember when ravens first came out and jenners would just run circles around them and there was no point? With the netcode fix light mechs are no longer as big of a threat as they used to be. I killed 3 of them in about a minute with my AC20 cat the other day.

ECM preventing missile locks keeps people from running massive LRM boats and 6 streak cat builds unless you have a team that is running proper counters for ECM (Tag/Narc). I have run a strict LRM boat with team mates running TAGs in light mechs and painting ECM'd targets and demolishing them.

If ECM were not in the game we would just hear more and more QQ about how LRMS are overpowered. The game has a bunch of setups and if you can't expand your thinking and understanding of how the equipment and weapons work then you're going to be stuck in a low skill level when ELO does come out.

The proposed changes are more than enough counter for ECM as it is. My guess is they are doing it simply to give everyone that is complaining more options without making it pointless to take because everyone whined to much. ECM is fine, LRMs are fine, SSRM,s are fine, stop complaining.

Edited by PrestonCDawg, 31 January 2013 - 11:58 AM.

[Fate 6]

Bobzilla, on 31 January 2013 - 11:32 AM, said:

So i've read that the sensor range and advance sensor range modules are to be the counter for ECM. As far as missles are concerned, both together add an extra 50m to the window for a total of 90m. I'm not wondering if people think this is enough of a balance or not, just if its fair to have something balanced with something that costs a different currency.
I want to know if people think its a fair balance to charge xp, gxp and cbills for an item that costs cbills, tons and crits?

This is a good point to bring up. The real problem is that ECM is stupidly OP, so while the counter to ECM is uncounterable, I don't have a problem with it right now.

The other issue is that PGI keeps drastically changing how modules interact with ECM, to the point where I just haven't unlocked any because I'm too afraid of wasting GXP.

[DocBach]

PrestonCDawg, on 31 January 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

ECM is fine, LRMs are fine, SSRM,s are fine, stop complaining.

ECM isn't fine - ECM has destroyed several tenants of the vaulted information and role warfare before we even received them. There are several ways ECM could help protect against missiles without flat out negating them, such as ghost target generation which is discussed in the Tactical Operations book on pages 99-100. Essentially ECM has a third mode which was left out which spams a targeting computer with false targets he has to sift through to shoot at a real 'Mech. Beagle Active Probe is suppose to have the ability to discriminate through the false targets.

There are plenty of ways to fix this game, and fix balance, but PGI stubbornly resists them and continues to introduce "fixes" which introduce more series of problems, like the original ECM introduction as an anti-missile system in the first place.

[Fate 6]

PrestonCDawg, on 31 January 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

Then just being able to lock missiles all the time is fine? Do you remember when ravens first came out and jenners would just run circles around them and there was no point? With the netcode fix light mechs are no longer as big of a threat as they used to be. I killed 3 of them in about a minute with my AC20 cat the other day.

ECM preventing missile locks keeps people from running massive LRM boats and 6 streak cat builds unless you have a team that is running proper counters for ECM (Tag/Narc). I have run a strict LRM boat with team mates running TAGs in light mechs and painting ECM'd targets and demolishing them.

If ECM were not in the game we would just hear more and more QQ about how LRMS are overpowered. The game has a bunch of setups and if you can't expand your thinking and understanding of how the equipment and weapons work then you're going to be stuck in a low skill level when ELO does come out.

The proposed changes are more than enough counter for ECM as it is. My guess is they are doing it simply to give everyone that is complaining more options without making it pointless to take because everyone whined to much. ECM is fine, LRMs are fine, SSRM,s are fine, stop complaining.

Yes, being able to lock missiles all the time is how the game is SUPPOSED TO WORK. No other discussion to be had regarding that point.

[malibu43]

I marked "undecided", but there should really be a "not enough information" option. The recent changes to heat and PPC may not be all of the counters coming for ECM. Assuming they are "the proposed counters to ECM" is... well.. an assumption.

[Eric darkstar Marr]

It seems like a good step but I will wait and see. And I run PPCs and LRMs it could solve a lot of personal problems. Tag helps me a lot already and I demolish D-DC atlai from 500+ meters my pain is if they are in range of me.

[Lefty Lucy]

Fate 6, on 31 January 2013 - 12:02 PM, said:

Yes, being able to lock missiles all the time is how the game is SUPPOSED TO WORK. No other discussion to be had regarding that point.

If you're referring to TT, LRMs don't even lock, and streaks have to re-acquire lock every time they fire. MWO differs enough from TT that we can't really refer to the TT as how things are "supposed to work."

[8RoundsRapid]

Fair? I don't know about fair. Is this game supposed to be 'fair'? I mean it's a war game and the winner is usually the one that can shift the 'fairness' factor in their favor. Balanced, to me, is different than fair.

But the proposed changes for modules/ppc's/etc to counter ECM seem silly to me and not well thought out. The whole ECM fiasco seems so absurdly easy to fix, I just can't wrap my head around these 'counters' they keep implementing. Seems like they are adding alot of extraneous work to fix something that was simply implemented incorrectly and could be corrected with a relatively straight forward change to the basic functionality of ECM.

[Rakashan]

Still trying to judge how this is going to work out.

From range we have TAG to make LRMs more effective.

In brawling the changes mentioned will fix it.

I don't expect the PPC changes to have much impact since it seems to me that we'll be seeing pairs of ECM mechs in the future like we usually see them now. Shutting down one will not has as large an impact (although shutting one down while jamming the other will be more viable).

My biggest concern is that ECM is still the best mod out there and it influences which chassis you see driven. BAP doesn't counter it. TAG counters but is harder to use (ECM is just on and then drive, TAG requires targetting and hitting and staying on target every second and, and, and)... NARC doesn't counter ECM at all. AMS is not as effective as ECM...

For the weight and slots, ECM is *way* too effective. AMS is comparable weight and space and is 10% as effective if that? BAP and NARC have less impact. TAG is effective but it requires giving up a hardpoint...

Sensors and PPCs are at least things that server other purposes as well so using them to counter ECM makes more diverse builds viable which is a good thing. My only concern is whether it is *enough* of a good thing.

[Tennex]

I think 5 seconds is a big long.

i just hope they arn't using this soft counter in place of a nerf. cuz what ECM really needs is a nerf.

[Team Leader]

It's really not fair. The PPC EMP should effect ALL electronics, not just ECM. The fact that it doesn't cancel tag, narc, or BAP just kinda shows that they are trying to make it a counter to ECM. It's stupid.

[Rakashan]

Team Leader, on 31 January 2013 - 01:07 PM, said:

It's really not fair. The PPC EMP should effect ALL electronics, not just ECM. The fact that it doesn't cancel tag, narc, or BAP just kinda shows that they are trying to make it a counter to ECM. It's stupid.

Problem is that ECM is the thing that *needs* to be countered. If you have TAG, I can counter it by making you move or dodge. If you want to keep that TAG laser on target for the 5-10 seconds that missiles are in flight I can make you pay for it. BAP is countered by ECM. NARC is countered by ECM. ECM counters ECM... What is wrong with this picture? Oh, right... I want ECM because it counters everything and nothing counters it.

By adding PPCs and modules into the mix they are providing a counter to ECM and it's a counter that you either carried anyway or can add for a price but without losing weight or crit spaces. My concern is that it is not enough. A not-uncommon 8-man drop of 4 D-DCs and 2 RVN-3Ls will mean you have a lot of mechs to hit with PPCs at the same time in order to open up an ECM bubble to missiles.

As for the 5-second time... If you hit an isolated mech using ECM with a single PPC shot you then have to target and lock with missiles and have time for the missiles to get there. Flight time at 500m is 5 seconds so you don't have time to lock... Recycle time on the PPCs is 3 seconds so you have 2 seconds left to get in the second shot accurately in order to let missiles hit. And that assumes that the LRM boats are looking for the mech you are "stunning". If they have to turn, notice, target and then lock you may need more than the 8-10 seconds that two accurate shots gets you. Combine that with hitting a moving mech (probably moving a lot all of a sudden) and managing your heat and you're still talking about a limited window.

[Haligonian]

I think the ECM was OP to start with. In game terms I think the basic idea of the ECM was to bling sensors to information, not act as a group Romulan cloaking device. I think for the weight of the ECM it should be limited to a paper doll jammer.
Just remove the information about your team's status. Just fighting a mech not knowing it's variant, loadout and damaged areas could really cause a lot of confusion... without absolutely rendering millions of C-Bills and tens of tons of weapons useless.
And to be honest, even if could be countered by any comparable piece of equiptment (ie; BAP or NARC) perhaps it would add the element of lights waging a smaller war of information by trying to out maneuver each others counter measures instead of just acting as a blanket, team cloaking device.