[TMA] Dealing with ECM

[Shiodome]

I've been getting a battleship itch recently, and every time i settle down and fiddle on eft one of my primary issues is 'meh, with low mobility if any ecm turns up i'm fucked regardless' and i get put off again. there's stuff you can do when nano (not least of which is just leave if they're being faggots), but how does one cope otherwise?

I realise that there's only so much you can do, sometimes you're just gonna be permajammed and you have to suck it up. But is there anything you can do to give yourself the best chance of some kind of decent fight? (both preventing the jam, what to do during a jam cycle, what to do to stop currently ongoing jamming etc)

i'm really thinking:

solo armour fit vs 2+ opponents,
solo nano fit vs 2+ opponents,
small gang armour fit (it does happen) vs bigger gang.
small gang nano fit vs significantly bigger gang.

[Sponk]

sensor strength implants help. Low grades are cheap.

[Mr Marram]

armour or nano pest with smartbombs, since 'most' lowsec groups are not bad enough to bring dedicated ECM along besides everyone using EC-300s.

[Sudden]

sensor strength implants help. Low grades are cheap.

[prometheus]

5-mid ships can field ECCM in the mids, which at the battleship level is pretty decent especially when combine with low-grade eccm implants.
For the smaller scale; Sacrilege, Ishtar, & Myrmidon are awesome.

Marauders are actually pretty decent as well if you can get past the price (hear me out).
If you're running solo or small gang, an ECM boat is going to fuck you up either way. Marauder or not.
The difference in a Marauder (say Kronos or Paladin) is that you've got yourself a couple large smartbombs to dispense with the ecm drone swarm.

[Naoru]

Dominix with sentry drones is pretty nice if you can get a lock on the Falcon.

[Ophichius]

I tend to rely on cussing a lot and overheating my tank, hoping the falcon will get bored and go away before I die.

  Spoiler:

It never seems to work

More seriously, if you get a break in the jamming, sic something fast on the falcon. They're usually armor tanked with minimal resists. Valks and Warriors will start chewing them up. Sentries are good if you're carrying them.

Other than that +1 ing smartbombs vs EC-300s and ECCM/backup arrays vs any ECM when it won't kill your fit too much.

Also, this is personal preference, but active tanks give you more time to find a solution to the problem, generally. If you get blobbed and ECMed you're done, buffer or active. If it's just a close fight and someone decides to try and seal it with a falcon, you can try for whatever will mitigate incoming damage best (pull range or max out transversal), heat your tank if it isn't already, and focus on getting the fucking falcon to go away.

Also, it's really stupid, but if nothing else works, try fighting fire with fire. Throw EC-300s at the falcon.

-O

[Mfume]

I haven't had much luck with them except in one case, but FoFs might work for you.

[shoki]

I haven't had much luck with them except in one case, but FoFs might work for you.

after losing countless solo drakes to falconfags, i facepalmed myself one morning and remembered FoFs
since than i've actually managed to scare one fag off the field, but that worked only because i was nano so i could reposition: FoFs will attack nearest target, and falconfags usually stay in the back...

[Jaa-Ko_Arakal]

get a falcon alt

[Sponk]

two falcon alts

[Liptonez]

Agreed on the implant sets, they're awesome. They give you some 6-9 or so extra strength, which basically drops falcon chance on cruisers/BCs from almost 100% to maybe 70%. For 70ish mil they're worth every penny.

I used them for a while, unfortunately got never jammed in that time (welp). Other than that I don't use them because they use slot 6 and my +4 learning implant slots.

[Smuggo]

Get a proteus alt rocking an info-link and mindlink for epic sensor strength.

[Varcaus]

Get a proteus alt rocking an info-link and mindlink for epic sensor strength.

+lg eccm implants makes you really hard to jam. Can get crazy BS sensor strength with Prot implants and eccm

[Celedris]

Fly Gallente with Spurs & an overheated ECCM.

No ECM pilot stacks Gal jammers unless they are specifically re-fitting for it. You typically only have to worry about one Gal jammer and a bunch of off-specs, or often zero Gal jammers altogether. Gal also have second-highest base sensor strength, extra mids for ECCM, and drones to drive off Falcons even when you do get jammed.

In particular, an overheated ECCM on an active armor Domi with lg Spurs is cheap and works very nicely solo. A single Falcon simply won't be able to jam you consistently, and you don't need to maintain a constant lock to apply dps. 2x ECCM and you'll almost never be jammed. Most ECM pilots are terrible and will engage inside your bouncer range.


I'll put it this way:
1x ECCM Scimitars with no Jackals: I can typically jam out three of these for most of a fight while also jamming one or two other ships.
2x ECCM Oneiros with hg Spurs: CANNOT JAM A SINGLE ONE AT ALL FUCK

[Pascal Almaric]

FWIW... The two things that bothered me most as a Blackbird pilot were range damps and sentry drones. Drakes/FoFs I could range tank, most pulse Apocs too, and sniper HACs seem rare these days.

Damps are a lot less use against Falcons because they have more locking range and they come closer. But Bouncer IIs are a bastard.

<Ignorant Musing> Domis have pretty high sensor strength as battleships go, and can spare a slot for ECCM more than most, and have drone bonuses, and had a certain reputation as solo boats in times of yore, and hybrids got buffed lately... </Ignorance>

[Ophichius]

Now if only they weren't ugly, formless blobs of a ship.

-O