Everyone’s favorite e-war, ECM, gets a healthy whack with the nerf bat, bringing shouts of joy from all corners. While entirely unintuitive that ECM will jam everything except your target, and making ECM entirely worthless for solo and very small gang use, everyone agrees: good riddance.
Wormhole hunters, and NS gate-campers jointly celebrate the end of an era in which prey can semi-randomly escape tackle and escape with their cargo, pride, and MC Hammer (“Can’t Touch This”) attitude intact. The three pilots who fly agile, polarized ships relying upon ECM to escape in the case that “It’s a Trap” resign themselves to 50% more red on their killmails.
Everyone is overjoyed. Well, not everyone…it was perhaps DoubleT who first raised the alarm.
Signal Cartel is space-famous for their credo to “look for a graceful resolution and set an example of dignity and friendship…never initiating aggression…” and, “In suffering losses… respond with good cheer and shed no tears.” (And suffer losses they do. Signal Cartel takes pride in maintaining a killboard with a “Snuggly” rating in the high 90s.)
One manifestation of the Signal Cartel credo is the Hugs fleet, in which Signal Cartel ships, armed only with ECM and fireworks, take on war deccers and other aggressors, with the goal of arriving at a peaceful resolution and good cheer all around.
Image used with permission from http://i.imgur.com/k98GE3F.jpg
Clearly, CCP hates hugs.
Signaleers are heartbroken.
Some, like CEO Mynxee, are left speechless, and can comment only through intermediaries. EVE-Scout Rescue manager Thrice Hapus reports “While grief-stricken CEO of Signal Cartel, Mynxee, could not be reached for comment.”
A Dead Parrot, creator of ALLISON (Artificial Life Limited In Scope to On-board Navigation), the Signal Cartel AI co-pilot, found the strength to express a more rational sorrow and dismay:
“While we are entirely dismayed by the recent nerf to our beloved ECM capabilities, these are not the least of our concerns. We will often expend 5 to 10 ships (at a cost of 50 to 100 million ISK) in order to deliver just one or two hugs (estimated cost of 5 to 10 ISK each), so what we are really concerned about is the recent depreciation in the cost of hugs (snowballs and fireworks) as this is exponentially increasing our hug to loss ratios by a significant margin. Something really needs to be done about this!”
Signaleers expressed concern to A Dead Parrot that ALLISON, famous for snarky quips such as this gem (https://bit.ly/1NbiVPe), might find herself in violation of CCP Terms of Service and the Signal Cartel credo after ALLISON was reportedly overheard asking, “CCP, do you have stairs in your house?”
When approached for a quote, ALLISON seemed to have regained her composure.
Hilarious! I have no doubt my capsuleers will figure out how to make hugs work in this new world order.