2 TuxedoCatfish
I start almost every battle in a single phase ship. Hence at max possible ECM disadvantage the enemy can provide. It doesn't really matter. This is that I call the subjectivity of the opinion. Play styles are different. I myself adapted to the new system without problems. However, other players, like yourself, tend to advice to change the game according to their desired play styles.
Limiting ECM will make it utterly useless. No pronounced effect on the tactic = no reason to spend limited resources on it. But as of right now, winning the ECM game is one of the major option for the "fleet deployer" type of players. In previous version, their success was based on several things (among some cheese spam options):
1) Using only best of the best capitals.
2) Providing optimized loadouts.
3) Hand-picking officers.
It worked because:
1) AI fleet composition was doctrinal based and thus limited to certain ships and fleet compositions resulting in wastage of DP.
2) AI ship loadouts were awful. You can still see them in the sim. It was easy to produce a much more advanced variant without troubles. Typical optimized build was x 2-3 times stronger even without taking officers into account.
3) Low number of the officers and random skill distribution. Resulting in a situation when only about single officer from the AI fleet of some factions was comparable to the player's hand picked ones.
It no longer the case because:
1) Mechanics were reworked so they suit doctrinal based fleet composition. Frigates are no longer a waste of DP.
2) Advanced ai loadouts are much better now than before. You can no longer make a noticeably better variant just by filling up the vent/cap limit. Bizarre ai variants are rare in the end-game fleets. So, in general, you can have some advantage but it requires actual optimization against given target.
3) AI have much more officers and while skill distribution still random where is much higher chances to meet the actual combat worthy ones.
And this is the reason for the critics whose old approaches to the game no longer work. And the ECM is the only thing that currently can mess up the AI really bad.