The last war I participated in, my corp mates tried ECM drones to little or no effect. They used the range from light to heavy, and even concentrated ECM attacks from several ships's drones.
I am looking for some insight as to why these attempts were useless, and some advice on how best to use ECM drones, and what ships they should and should not be used against.
Matt
[ Editor ]
I love these little things, I often carry a whole flight of them over warrior's even, when in fleets PVP'ing...
Don't bother using them unless you are going to use a whole flight of V, there combined jamming strength isn't worth having one or two.
All 5 however can break lock on most frigates on the first or second attempt, in my experience... Maybe I'm lucky and maybe not.
really useful if you are a baiting ship to keep you alive, or BC's and above.
Basically as mentioned above they are for escaping when things go south, release them and target the ship tackling you, now align to something and spam warp, hopefully they will break lock and you will escape, doesn't always work, but in large fleets it's nice to have insurance. Costs you a few hornets but to be honest I'm considering buying a BPO for them they are so useful.
They can also be used to break up sustained fire, pick the nastiest DPS ship, put them on it, you won't get a jam that often, but jamming that Megathron one time in 10 even can mean the difference on an even score engagement between win and lose, if you can stop their heavy hitter for 10-15 seconds then thats 10-15 seconds DPS your doing they can't.
I've also used them to great success in black ops, both to break locks on ships that point you when you light the covert cyno, and on unsuspecting Falcon pilots who think they are safe if they jam you well actually my friend you may be able to jam me, but my drones set to agressive will jam you too and I don't even need a lock...and a Falcon that can't jam can be scrammed and killed!
Does Signal Dispersion skill affect ECM drones (and I suppose the other EW skills the other EW drones too)? EFT doesn’t think so.
Derek
Ecm drones are a last ditch effort.
They are basically each a multispec jammer in themselves, with bad jamming strength.
They are meant to be a backup when you're going down and you need to get out.
Concentrated ecm attacks don't work as you'd assume, they each are independent rolls and not combined into one.
If your drones jamming strength is 3, and the ships sensor strength is 10, It will take a lucky random number gen. roll to jam that target
Jamming drones work best against ships with low sensor strengths, can't think any off the top of my head but you can find out by viewing info.
Generally, Minmatar ships are susceptible to ECM. e.g. The rifter and vagabond are examples of minnie ships that you may need to jam for a last minute escape, and you’ll have slightly better luck jamming them with drones. slightly better luck.
Real Name
[ Editor ]
ECM drones get no bonuses from spaceship command skills, so don't use them from a dedicated drone boat; launch them from other ships instead, especially those that have 40m3 drone bays, where you can keep a full flight of Warrior IIs and a few ECM drones (or vice versa).
The best ECM drones are medium drones, but light drones are quite good as well. Heavy ECM drones are generally not worth it.
ECM drones are decent vs Matari ships due to slightly lower sensor strength. Marauder ships are also known to be especially weak vs ECM. However in gang fights, they're mostly used on force multiplier ships that need to keep a target lock: logistics ships and ewar ships. Check out the Alliance Tournament and pay attention to which ships were targeted by ECM drones for more insights.
substantia nigra
We love our EC (jammer) drones, and carry them in virtually every ship with a drone-bay in our class 3 w-space system. They’re no use at all against the sleepers, but they’re fantastic little survival / support beasties for much of what we do.
For us they have two main uses.
Keeping our PvP tacklers alive against nasty odds … either tackling and jamming a very mean ship, or tackling the target and jamming their support (etc) … while our DPS deliverers make their leisurely way to the fight. Even our DPS delivery ships carry a set or two of them, to either keep the main target quiet or to keep his buddies as spectators … or ‘next’ if they hang around.
Last resort GTFO support in the event that we are caught with our pants down. When we’re running sleeper anoms/sigs we usually have a flight or three of EC drones … in case some clever visitor manages to sneak-up and tackle us. We do use combat drones against the sleepers, but with great care and with EC drones always there for runaway backup. When we’re mining or gas harvesting all our exhumers have their bays full of EC drones, as do our gas-harvester hurricanes.
ganre sorc
I have used ECM drones ever since i started playing(06). They are great little additions, but only in the right ships. a great ship to fly them in is a solo thorax. you probably have enough gun DPS to put the hurt on, and the 5 medium ECMs is usually enough to JAM the same class ship about 70% of the time. So, you kill that rupture's drones, and he is dead one on one(like that ever happens in eve, but meh). One shiptype i see them on is the bait Myrmidon/Dominix. With drone bays large enough to field 3 full sized packs of drones, you can sit in a belt, and pretend to rat(with 2-3 1600mm plates on), as soon as someone shows up and agresses, lock them down, and drop the ECMs on them. This will usually cause them to panic and start calling for their buddies on the other side of the gate to come then you can lock up one or two more and your friends show up and clean up. One important note about ECM drones, if you even suspect someone is running ECCM, don't bother with them.
Red Mage
[ Editor ]
The real story on ECM drones: When to use the, Why the suck sometimes, When they rule.
First off ECM drones have a slightly lower jam strength than MultiSpec jammers, if you have skills.
Use ECM drones for appropriate ship types. Never use a drone smaller than the target ship.
Frig: Light, Med, Large (better have the frig webbed for large) Cruiser/BS: Med, Large (better bla bla bla here too) Battleships: Large.
Also, ECM drones are a strategic fleet decision, not a personal preference. Having your 5 med drones on anything won't help. The more drones, the more dice rolls.
Many 0.0 alliances use fleet setups requesting all BC's load ECM drones. This is because putting enough ECM drones on the logistics will jam it.
Owen Hughes
[ Editor ]
ECM drones are chance based and the random number generator seems a bit "streaky" sometimes (is that a word?) so sometimes you just won't get lucky with them procing.
Other times they'll seem to work all the time (usually when a hostile gang has them on you).
A lot of this is probably just perception (you remember it more when they don't work for a whole fight).
There are lots of things that affect how likely they are to work (as detailed above) but don't forget that they are random and not guaranteed to work.
They're never going to be as good as a dedicated platform with multiple bonuses.
For what they are though (some "bonus" e-war on boats with no bonuses) they can be great. A lot of players think they're OP rather than underpowered.
Agreed. The general consensus is that they’re overpowered. Personally they don’t need any attention. The other non damage dealing drone types do though.
Jonathan
I find ECM drones work great with my drake as I have crap drone skills as a new pilot and bein caldari.
They are useful for solo pvp as well if you run into a 1v1 fight or need to get a tackler off you.
ECM drones can also tank BS sleepers in C4 anoms (they help for breaking RR'ing lol) ^_^
Breaking RR' in C4 sleeper BS with light ecm drones sounds like an awesome idea. Should try this out some time. Wonder how much sensor strength the sleeper bs’s have; might not land any jams, but fantastic if this works.
I’m not sure how much sensor strength they have but i have noticed it takes 30-45 seconds for them to jam it. but when they do finally land the jam they can usually keep it locked down for more then 1 jam cycle. (ofc its random but its just an observation)