It's still not Checkers 2.0

CCP Devs have reconsidered at least one facet of the proposed ECM nerf, agreeing that the Falcon's role is that of long range jamming platform.

The nerf methodology of flipping the optimal/falloff stats of jammers will bring me closer to the fight and increase the danger of a missed jam.

However, it in no way affects the probability of me obtaining that jam. In other words, if you were bitching about getting 'permajammed' under the existing rules, you will see absolutely no difference. None. Nada. Zero. Your interceptor is still going to get taken out of the fight every time.

The stealth part of the nerf is the removal of the cap useage bonus. I haven't been able to model that quite yet to determine how severe the hit will be, but it will cause more missed cycles because of dry cap.

Here's my reply in the EO thread:

- With the revised Falcon changes
- With the flip of base optimal and falloff ranges
- With no change in either SDA, PDA or PDP stats
- With fit of 3 SDA + 2 PDP (so max jammer)
- With max related skills

Yields:
Optimal 46% reduction from 227 to 122.
Optimal + Falloff 25 % reduction from 267 to 202
No change in jamming strength which remains at 14.4

The results:

- No change in the probabilities of a jam. If you were on the wrong end of the jam strength vs sensor strength math before, you still are. Repeat, you still are.

- Increased danger related to a missed jam because you are inside engagement range of more OPFOR.

Easy Predictions:

- More Falcons on the field to cover the missed jams.
- Snipers will be the next nerf target, because with engagement ranges > any other ship on the field, the whines will start all over again.

Sorry CCP, but these changes won't obtain the result you seem to be after.

Once the checker players realize that their short range, one dimensional, total WTFOMGPWNZR mobiles are going to get jammed just as often, you'll see the expressed satisfaction with this proposed nerf drop like a rock.

Chess vs Checkers

Checkers is an easy game, really. There’s a bit of strategy involved, but no one writes books about it. You don’t see checkers columns in the newspapers and the World Checker Champion isn’t though of as being particularly brilliant.

Take a checker player & put him on a chess board and things just don’t seem fair to him. The rules are different and the way to win is no longer straight forward. Confronted with this situation, most folks either learn to play chess (appreciating it for what it is) or return to checkers (playing what they enjoy). Few resort to calling for changes in the rules of chess to make it into Checkers 2.0.

These days, in Eve Online, it seems the Devs are listening to the checker players.

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1032703

Yes, I’m a dedicated, maxed out Falcon pilot with months of invested training time, get that out of the way from the beginning.

However, the implication that Falcons are so overpowered that they need to be drastically changed is simply wrong. And wrong on several levels.

The role of the Falcon is that of force multiplier. It’s weapons are stealth and denying the enemy the ability to inflict damage. It has no tank and laughable DPS. The Falcon rewards pilots, FC’s and corps that understand tactics, that have the patience to prepare the battlefield and have the situational awareness to know when it’s time to move. Falcon’s are for chessmasters, not checker players.

Falcons are extremely vulnerable on their own. With no tank, minimal DPS and no drone bay, there are many ways to get a Falcon pilot to leave the battlefield, denying his force multiplier effect to your OPFOR. Bring your own Falcon or have a cruiser with combat probes ready to drop 1 short range probe, establish a warp in and insta-pop the Falcon or send an interceptor with a flight of Warrior II’s assigned out to the Falcon or warp your own set of anti-Falcon snipers into the fight after the Falcon is revealed or fit an ECCM module. Being ready to counter Falcons requires preparation and planning, but it is not impossible. It’s for chessmasters, not checker players.

And even if the foregoing wasn’t true, the proposed changes will not have the desired result.

To balance things out, Falcons will lose the range advantage, but will get more jam strength, more tank, more agility and more DPS.

And the checker players _like_ this?

Instead of reducing the number of Falcon pilots flying in small gangs, this will actually increase their proportionate representation. If you increase my jam strength 25%, then the number of jammers I need to be ready to apply to a representative battleship target to have a 94% probability of a successful jam drops from 3 modules to 2. So, 94% of the time my 6 jammer set up can service 3 battleship targets now, instead of just 2. What about cruisers and HAC’s? 1 jammer need now for 93% probability of success instead of 2.

Does this sound like a nerf to you?

For those that think that Falcons are overpowered in their effectiveness, I’d suggest you support a combination of the following easy changes:

1. Shorten the jam cycle
2. Reduce the base strength of all jammer modules by 10%
3. Reduce the optimal range bonuses by 5KM per level
4. Introduce scripts to Signal Distortion Amplifiers, 1 for optimal, 1 for strength

The results would bring Falcons closer to the fight and with a lowered probability of success. That is what you want, right?

PK-4

Flying a Falcon: the 3 F's

Everything you need to know about flying a Falcon can be summarized by remembering the 3 F’s: Fit, Forethought, and Finesse.

Fit

Hi slots: Cov Ops Cloak. Everything else is optional. Probe launcher? Sure, but no ship bonuses, so your scans will take time. Heavy launchers? Ok, but if you are actually putting DPS on someone, you are either in very small gang flight against 1 guy or things have gone horribly bad. Remote armor reppers will earn you some ‘after the battle’ love, but are of no use during the engagement. Salvager, meh. Whatever. The cloak is the reason for the ship. Training Recons to 4 helps a great deal, but I didn’t even consider a probe launcher until I got to Recon 5.

Mid slots: 1X MicroWarpDrive, 1X Sensor Booster II, 4x Racial Jammers. 1X ECCM _or_ 5th racial jammer. The idea is to carry as many jammers as possible. MWD is a given. Sensor booster for quick lock on any other jammers on the field. ECCM if OPFOR is known to fly their own Falcons. Racial jammers in every remaining slot. Double up on known OPFOR favorite ship type.

Low slots: 2x Signal Distortion Amplifiers, 1X Tank (DCU II or 1600 plate) _or_ 3rd SDA.

Rigs: 1X Particle Disruption Projector (jam range) plus either 1x Particle Dispersion Augmentor (jam strength) if you fit tank in lows or 1X additional Particle Disruption Projector (jam range).

The goal is to obtain an engagement envelope in excess of 150-175km and then to maximize your jam strength at that range. Jamming is purely chance based and calculated by looking at the ratio of jam strength to target ship sensor strength. For example, my max jam strength for Gallente in my preferred fit is 14.52. Kaye’s Vexor has sensor strength of 14. 14.52 / 14 > 1, so I would perma jam Kaye’s Vexor. Kaye’s base Onerios has sensor strength of 20. 14.52/20 = 72% probability of a jam. Add an ECCM module to that Onerios and things get ugly (sensor strength goes to 36, probability falls to 40%). Add 3 and sensor strength goes to 89, with probability of 16%.

Megathron’s base sensor strength of 21 gives me about a 70% chance of a jam.

Key concept is that this probability is independent (ie the results of one ‘roll’ have no impact on the next) and is determined separately for each jammer. Quick and dirty method to approximate your total chance of jamming a given target with N number of jammers is to multiply all of the chances of a ‘miss’ and subtract from 1.

So, using our plain Mega or Onerios and 3 Gallente jammers we get:
Jammer 1 - 30% independent - 30% Cum Miss
Jammer 2 - 30% independent - 09% Cum Miss
Jammer 3 - 30% independent - 03% Cum Miss

If you think about it, this also hints toward why I never fly multispecs.

Forethought

If you have an established base, then you should have tons of bookmarks at your preferred jamming range. For stations, that’s usually measured from the undock point. You want book marks in all directions from that spot and, you want them to all be warpable from each spot. Six is a good minimum number to work toward. High, low, left, right, back, front. Have an offgrid spot or two and you are set.

Secondly, spend time on the OPFOR’s killboard if you can. Figure out what ships their main pilots fly and if there is an overall favorite race. If so, that tells you how to weight your jammers.

Finesse

Get in the mindset of the young Muhammad Ali. Long range jabs of power. Nimble. Moving about the battlespace, out of range of the other guy, frustrating his ability to hurt you (or your fleet mates). Don’t uncloak too soon. Always be moving. Co-ordinate jams with other Falcon pilots. Be alert for ‘ceptors! When they start heading your way, prepare to warp to the other side of the battlespace (using one of those handy bookmarks!) or to bounce off your offgrid & come back.

Prioritize your jamming. Put your racial matches where they will do the most good first, then follow up by putting anything left back on the target that you wish to have jammed the most.

Don’t initially jam targets that are sitting on the undock point or a gate. You want them to aggress so that they have a timer.

Don’t spam all the jammers you have allocated to a target at once. Hit one, wait 5 or 10 secs and then hit the next one. You want to minimize the amount of time between ‘rolls’.

Hope you find something useful here!

End of War One

Seppuku Warriors has concluded our first campaign and the results were satisfying.

58 kills / 2 losses.

There was a little bit of everything, too. We flew battleship fleets, 'ceptor gangs & pretty much everything in between. Practical instruction on tactical bookmarking, station humping, remote repping and the use of OOC reppers, POS takedowns and the appropriate use of GF in local.

Personally, I flew almost everything in my hangar at some point, grabbing kills in some of my favorites (Can't Stop The Rokh!), protecting my mates from the shadows or savoring the 'new ship smell' of the latest addition to my HAC fleet ("He can't hit me from way out there with miss[BLAMMM]...").

Having finished off Recon V during the war, I'm beginning the process of cross-training some Minnie ships. Since all of my gunnery support skills work for projectiles as well as rails, getting to T2 fitted Minnie 'ceptors and assault frigates is just a few days training.

Too Long Gone...

The past few weeks have been filed past the brim, overflowing with activities, issues and time sinks, both in RL & in EVE. I hope that things get back to something approaching normal soon. We shall see.

Seppuku Warriors is off to a rousing start. We are currently involved in a series of war decs with a Caldari Faction Warfare corp, applying the ancient axioms of warfare with internet spaceship interpretations...

This week's lessons:

"The highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans"
and
“He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.” ... Sun Tzu

OPFOR's research division operated a high-sec medium POS, which fit well into our desire to discuss hi-sec POS tactics. OPFOR enlisted FW militia OOC repper support for the POS attack that they anticipated we would field as soon as the dec went active.

So, we made a big show of forming up a few jumps out, docking & undocking various big ships, testing RR capabilties, showing (almost!) our full hand to their alts.

And we sat there. And we waited.

After a few minutes, OPFOR decided abandon their defensive stance (including the protection of the POS shields/guns) and to come calling with 5X Ravens, a Rokh, a Scorp, a Blackbird and at least an equal number of OOC reppers and support ships. They warped to the station where our battleship section was docked and (curiously) began to activate their RR chains (which flagged most of the OOC reppers to us before the battle was joined!).

Our battleships undocked and OPFOR aggressed at the undock point. Our support fleet warped in with points & webs. Our EW broke the OOC repper chains. We lost a Scorp that got tangled up in the furball at the undock and a Falcon who jammed one of the OOC guys who wasn't flagged. In exchange, all of the OPFOR's ships went pop in less than 5 minutes, along with a few of the OOC reppers who stuck around too long and served as dessert after we had finished with the main course.

Then we followed them home and put the POS in reinforced, adding the POS, a cruiser, a battlecruiser, a logistics ship and two more battleships to the bag by the time the tower fell the next day.

Yeah, we had fun! :)

Having a blast!

Our first set of students starts tomorrow and we have been having some great fun in the 'soft opening' phase! Lots of explosions! Some ours, some theirs, but lots of fun and everyone involved (including yours truly!) is learning about how much different 0.0 combat is from Empire.

The other really fun thing is to see how many talented artists that we have. I'm including a few samples of what great sigs our guys have built for our internal forums. m0rd0 was kind enough to give me permission to steal the base image of his sig as a new banner for this site. Hope you enjoy these as much as I do:

Incoming! BLU-82D The Drama Bomb!

Mynxee proposes Topic 2 in her ongoing discussion round table:

The Corp Drama Bomb

So I ask you, dear readers, to ponder the corp drama bomb. What IS the most common cause? Are drama bombs inevitable due to the nature of life in New Eden? Are there early warning signs? Are some corps more prone to drama bombs than others, and if so, why? Can corps avoid the drama bomb and if so, how? How can a corp best recover from a drama bomb? Have you experienced a drama bomb that blew up your corp and if so, what did you learn from that experience?

OK--the floor's open. Share your own thoughts, opinions, experiences, and ideas

Ah, yes! The dreaded, despised, demoralizing, but inevitable, drama bomb. Sustenance to forum trolls and laxative to the tightest 4th points of contact in the Universe! Nothing compares to the deliciousness of the well played drama bomb.

Having experienced my share of drama bombs during my tenure of leadership at Eve University, I'll share a few observations about leadership responses.

First of all, recognize that, just as in real life, interpersonal conflict is inevitable. No matter how tight your group, no matter how long you've know each other or how much you care for one another, at some point there will arise an issue that upsets the apple cart. Knowing that such conflict is coming, how are you planning on dealing with it? Having any kind of plan forces you to think ahead of time, rather than just reacting. Planning also lets you examine alternatives without the time crunch of crisis.

Secondly, unlike real life for most of us, EVE puts you in an environment where many of the people that you interact with don't share your same native language, idioms, culture and values. Slang terms for innocuous items in your culture (say a British slang term for cigarettes) may be inflammatory to someone from another country who hears or reads a comment out of context. Not to mention the inherent communication problems that arise when a native German speaker tries to translate his thoughts on the fly to English and pass them to a native Spanish speaker who is mentally going from English to Spanish. The EVE universe has so many built in opportunities to mis-communicate, it's crazy! You must communicate simply, clearly and as often as possible in order to defuse the drama bomb.

Thirdly, just as in real live, recognize that everyone's position, feelings, outlook and attitudes contains a kernel of truth. Trying to find as many of those kernels from the same species as possible in any contentious situation helps everyone to see things from the other persons point of view.

Finally, again mirroring real life, decisions made in anger and haste rarely turn out well for anyone involved. Particularly when dealing with forum posts, I invoke the One Hour Rule. I compose my response and save the draft. I come back to it an hour later and if it still seems reasonable, I post it. Sometimes, just taking a breath can turn a drama bomb into a drama hand grenade. Still unpleasant, to be sure, but less likely to take out the whole group.

tldr version:

- Have a plan
- Communicate
- Shut up & listen
- Anger & the 'enter' key rarely work well together