New Issues

Patch notes for Apocrypha 1.02 include the following, thankfully:

• Updated the capital ship collision mechanic to lessen bumping issues currently being experienced by some players.

Hopefully this means an actual fix, and not just a lessening effect (80km instead of 100km is still broken.)

There's also this post by CCP Chronotis dealing with ECM. It's awful.

The proposed changes are:

Summary Falcon changes

• ECM Strength Bonus increased from 20 to 25% per level
• ECM Optimal Range Bonus removed (52km optimal / 81km falloff w/ 2*SDA IIs)
• Increase in general manoeuvrability (might give agility bonus to it to replace the ECM optimal range bonus)

Summary Rook Changes

• ECM strength bonus decreased to 15% per level
• ECM Optimal Range bonus decreased to 15% per level (92km optimal / 81km falloff)
• 5% Heavy/Heavy Assault missile velocity per recon ship level added (105km range with heavy missiles at max skills)
• 25m3 drone bay / 25 mbit bandwidth added

Summary Scorpion Changes

• Removed the ECM optimal range bonus
• Increased the ECM strength bonus to 20% per level
• Added a 5% RoF bonus to cruise & siege missile launchers per level.

Cutting the (unrigged) optimal for the Falcon and Scorpion to 50km will mean they simply will not be used outside of small gangs, and even there you will probably see them being dropped for Rooks. Chronotis also proposes that the Falcon changes will make it "similar to the pilgrim in its role as a ECM brawler at shorter ranges." which ignores the fact that the Falcon does atrociously bad DPS, as compared to the Pilgrim which gets a drone damage bonus and have the unique ability to completely shut down any type of active tank. There's also the fact that Pilgrims are very seldom used now precisely because they need to get so close to their targets.

I do understand the rationale behind the change, as it brings the range on the Falcon/Rook more into line with the E-War bonused ranges of the other Recon ships, but as I said in my first posting outlining my platform, a hefty nerf to ECM is not the way to go about balancing E-War.

In all honesty I don't think that this change would horribly cripple the game, but I feel like it's another case of CCP going too far on a nerf, and not even considering buffing related options instead. They seem to be overlooking the fact that ECM is so prevalent because the other forms of E-War are so useless, as well as the fact that Caldari are the only race who get a T1 ship with E-War bonuses (Target Painting doesn't count because seriously, Target Painting.)

I'm not even going to really touch the Stealth Bomber "buff" laid out in this thread because nobody flies them and this change won't make any difference in that. In fact, I could see it being final nail in the Stealth Bomber's coffin.