Mysterious Mysteries

Even before Eve came out I loved the concept of being an ECM pilot, so ECM is near and dear to my heart. It may not have turned out as awesome as I thought it would, but nothing suits this scarebear (it’s a carebear, with teeth!) better than seeing an enemy’s target lock disappear while your buddies help you space him.

With the Revelations patch, ECM strength across the board was halved, with ECM ships receiving ECM strength bonuses (or getting existing bonuses boosted) and “damage mods” of sorts for ECM being added.

The only problem is that while the Griffin, for instance, lost its useless missile damage bonus in exchange for its 10% ECM strength per level, a pilot with Caldari Frigate 5, Signal Dispersion 4, and a tech one Signal Distortion Amplifier, the strength of his jammer is going to be just barely stronger than an old jammer being used by somebody with no amplifier and no Signal Dispersion. The Scorpion has now lost its 5%/level jamming strength bonus over the Griffin and Blackbird (being stuck at 10%/level just like them), and all ECM specialty ships have lost their ability to gleefully armor tank while jamming away with their mid slots.

Still, at the very least this should finally do away with the annoying setups that randomly throw on an ECM - Multispectral Jammer for the relatively frequent random jams. I’ve always looked for reasons to love the Griffin, and now I see it being a bit more useful in groups now that it has an extra edge over bringing one more combat frigate. But that might just be me hoping, though I think that its cost/benefit ratio against a Blackbird, given the Blackbird’s loss of tanking ability, would benefit the Griffin in being selected as an ECM ship.

Make no mistake: even with the Signal Distortion Amplifiers, ECM strength was nerfed. While using a pair of tech two amplifiers on a Blackbird with Caldari Cruiser 5 gives almost a 6% bonus over the strength of the old Blackbird’s ECM, the Scorpion can never get as strong as it used to be, even with four tech two mods. Nowadays I wouldn’t be able to get away with using multispecs as well as I used to (which is also in part because the Blackbird lost its capacitor bonus). Still, it’s a relatively minor nerf to ECM strength. As I said before though, ECM ships have taken a major blow to their ability to armor tank.

All this is ignoring rigs, however. The tech one and two rigs offer +10% and +15% jamming strength, respectively. At 200 calibration for the tech one, you could fit two of them and leave your third rig slot empty if you wanted maximum jamming strength, or just one (either T1 or T2) and two tanking rigs. Of course, unless salvaging is changed to drop many more components, these rigs are going to be very expensive, so I wouldn’t plan on fitting them to anything short of a Scorpion. Still, they’re worth mentioning, even if I did forget them when I first put this post up.

So what is my advice to the young ECM pilots of the world?

1. Don’t neglect the Griffin. As I said before, it’s a lot cheaper than the now much more fragile Blackbird. Plus, Caldari Frigate 5 isn’t too hard to get, and gives you potential access to all of the Caldari’s elite frigates if you choose to pursue them later.
2. Now more than ever: love your race-specific jammer. Multispecs are great and all because of their versatility, but having the right tool for the right job is even more important now.
3. Platinum insurance: it’s not just a good idea, you’re probably going to need it.

Now get out there and jam somebody. ^_^

Nope, it’s not done yet. However, I am working on it, I think people will finally realize that I can write a good guide for more than just carebearish matters.

Heck, I even started work on the guide because as much as I like researching and manufacturing in Eve, there are tons of players who never show an interest in it. But everybody needs to understand their ships, Caldari is the most common race, and by golly I’m Caldari and know their ships pretty well.

When I finish the guide, not only will I have covered the important lingo (and all the attributes on their ship’s Show Info) and given a suggested starter setup for each ship, but I will have covered the “I’m new, what skills should I get?” question, and covered each of the Caldari’s three main weapon systems (Railguns, Missiles, and ECM) in a decent amount of detail. One thing I’m not covering is T2 ships though, since… well… it’s a newbie’s guide.

One thing I will ask of any of my Eve-playing readers, however, is to go over these various pieces of “lingo” I’m including and seeing if I’m forgetting any other terms that a new player may encounter and be confused by.

PDS (or PDU): Power Diagnostic System.
BCS (or BCU): Ballistic Control System.
MFS (or magstab): Magnetic Field Stabilizer
RCU: Reactor Control Unit.
WCS (or stab): Warp Core Stabilizer.
Nos: Nosferatu.
Webber: Stasis Webifier.
Jammer: One of the ECM modules.
Multispec: ECM - Multispectral Jammer.
Racial Jammer: Any of the other kinds of ECM modules.
SB (or booster): Shield booster (usually has a size clearly indicated).
Repper (or just rep, or rarely AR): Armor Repairer (usually has a size clearly indicated).
Invuln: Invulnerability Field.

Tackling: In PvP, using Warp Scramblers/Disruptors and Stasis Webifiers to prevent a target from escaping.

Tanking: Setting your ship up to be able to absorb large amounts of damage through resistances, pure HP, repairing/boosting capability, or a combination.

Named module: When an item is neither a manufacturable tech one item (a 125mm Railgun I, for instance) or a tech two item (a 125mm Railgun II), but an improved version of the tech one item (a 125mm ‘Scout’ I Accelerator Cannon). Distinguished from normally undesirable “Basic” modules by the inclusion of the “I” somewhere in the name.

I wouldn’t want to miss anything important.

First posts can be so difficult sometimes. I was actually wondering what there was that I could write about as an introduction to my new blog. While hopping around some of the indie RPG blogs, the perfect topic struck me, and I was immediately surprised that I had overlooked it: the merger between CCP and White Wolf.

I say that it is surprising for me to overlook such a seemingly perfect subject because it’s a mixture of the two subjects I expect to dominate this blog: Eve Online and pen-and-paper roleplaying games (my guides for the first and my own plans to design and publish the second).

You can read his full blog entry here, but Matt is basically worrying that this merger will result in the eventual downfall of White Wolf’s pen-and-paper lines due to concentration on the computer game side of things.

I personally find the news of the merger to be exciting; an Eve tabletop RPG and a World of Darkness MMO? Yes, they’re both in the works (see the press release here), and yes I’m loving the idea of both.

Also, though I cannot argue the lack of there being good money in writing for tabletop RPGs (freelancing anyway, which I am told is always a pain) compared to the high volume of cash that MMO players bring in, I do not believe that in this case any brain drain is going to be experienced. CCP and White Wolf do very different things and have members with technical expertise in their fields; I highly doubt that there will be very many computer programmers moving from America to Iceland because of this merger. White Wolf will keep on going as always, but with a line of Eve products. CCP will carry on with both Eve and make a World of Darkness MMO for us all to enjoy (come on, Eve-level player politics + vampires, it’s perfect).

So eat, drink, and be merry my friends, for tomorrow we shall roll up a dice pool to see if our pilots stay awake while gate camping, and get to see our trenchcoat-wearing katana-packing vampires in full 3D. ^_^