Because EVE Online is as much a simulator as a MMORPG they have included ECM (Electronic Counter Measures) to help jam your opponents and generally make a nuisance of yourself. In EVE you have 2 types of ECM; ECM and Burst ECM, they are then subdivided by race type and a multi-frequency type that will attempt to jam all sensor systems regardless of type and race. It should be pointed out that ECM will not stop missles already launched at you but will break the lock of any ship that has you targetted or prevent them from locking you in the first place, if you are lucky enough.

First off though I will discuss what race uses which type of Sensor. The Sensor types are RADAR, GRAVIMETRIC, LADAR, MAGNETOMETRIC. Amaar uses RADAR, Caldari uses Gravimetric, Gallente uses MAGNETOMETRIC and Minmatar uses LADAR. so what does this mean? Very little to be honest, there is no ‘Best’ sensor type. They all do the same job in the same way, but how they are jammed is different.

Next is the difference between standard ECM and Burst ECM. The main differences between them is range and number of targets it affects. Burst ECM has an extremely low range (about 5km) with a high energy cost (~300 cap energy) the trade off is that it will attempt to jam every ship inside that 5000m radius. In comparison Standard ECM will only affect one target (whoever you point it at) but has a much longer range (30-60 km not including falloff) and a much lower energy cost (~50-100 cap energy) depending on type. The other difference between Standard ECM and Burst ECM is that Burst ECM only comes in one flavour - multispectral, whilst Standard comes in 5 flavours; the ones listed above and multispectral.

So if you are using Standard ECM which is the best to use. Well plainly if you are going up against a specific race’s design of ship then you should use the specific sort of sensor jammer associated with that race. If on the other hand you don’t know the race design of the ship or you are involved against multiple race ship designs (or even hybrid race ship designs) then you should opt for the multispectrals. Whilst they are not quite as effective as the dedicated ones they are more than a match when trying to find the right one.

So what do all the numbers mean? Well you may have seen that each jammer type has a strength associated with it on the ECM (Burst and Standard).

For example ECM - Multispectral Jammer I has all of the sensor type jamming strengths at 4.

In a ship, you will find a sensor type that has a number associated with it. Taking the Gallente Atron as an example, you will see that the MAGNETOMETRIC sensor strength is 7 points.

To work out your chance of jamming a ship, you simply take the ship’s sensor strength and divide it by the jammer’s stregth of 4.

so 4/7 = 0.6. This means you have a 2 in 3 chance of jamming an Atron with a multispectral.

In comparison if you used the basic Initiated Ion Field ECM I which has a MAGNETOMETRIC jamming strength of 6.3 would gives you a 0.9 chance of shutting down a targetting lock or 9 in 10. Much better I think you’ll agree.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 25th, 2006 at 9:00 am and is filed under Races, Amarr, Ships, Minmatar, Gallente, Caldari, Combat, Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.