Also, while you got me yapping about weapons, I think Particle Beams (and especially Lances) not fitting into Spinal mounts is a crime. A Spinal Lance is such a widespread sci-fi trope, it honestly feels weird not having access to them. Not to mention how this would fit the Lances' implementation (tremendous penetrative damage, agonizingly long reload) absolutely perfectly.

• v2.5.1: 80% x (1 - 0.2 - 0.2) = 48%
• v2.6: 80% * (75%^2) = 45%

The industrial-age NPR addition got me thinking again about warfare among races with a large tech disparity. I'm not saying conventional races should stand any chance of defeating a trans-Newtonic, interstellar empire, but as things stand, it might be impossible for any low-tech race to fight back at all due to how ECM penalty works, with any difference of 5 or above resulting in 0 chance to hit.

Conventional races are an extreme example, but I've generated Swarm races in my game that had ECM advantage of 3 or 4 over me, which forced me to turtle back and tech up until I could engage them, despite otherwise having access to tools that could allow me to fight significantly more advanced enemies (beam fighter swarms, massed missile fire, lance ships with incredibly overbuilt engines and shields would all be effective if not for their miniscule hit chance due to the ECM penalty). If the AI wasn't so meek, passive and easily deterred from assaulting jump points, there's no way I would've won that war. On the other hand, I've encountered a fair share of NPRs who were generated on small, subpar worlds, possessed very low technology and offered marginally more resistance than a Precursor ruin (also vastly outmatched in late-game), requiring no tactical finesse to conquer and presenting no danger, resulting in rather unexciting, tedious campaigns.

Honestly it kinda bugs _(haha) me how once the tech disparity is large enough, it becomes mathematically impossible for the lesser race to fight back, so I was wondering if you're willing to consider a different approach to the ECM penalty where the hit chance reduction is not additive, but multiplicative, as follows:



I think the 0.25 option would still penalize low-ECCM races enough (and make small penalties a little more meaningful while avoiding a twofold DPS reduction with ECM Penalty 3->4) but also give the underdog a semblance of a fighting chance. All of this pertains to the Missile/Fire Control Jammers, as far as I could see Sensor Jammers operate with a 0.1 additive penalty and while this makes them rather inconsequental, they're not breaking anything either. Using a larger multplicative penalty for them could be interesting as well though.