Copying what I wrote in the other thread:
There are a few benefits to having 60 ECM if the enemy has 80 ECM: The capture points will bring the penalty from -20% to -10%, instead of doing nothing, and after killing a few enemy ships their bonus starts to drop instead of staying high the whole fight (either popping enemy ships with missile barrages or hunting down their isolated frigates with interceptor carriers works well). Its not ideal to get out-ECM'd after investing resources, but there is still a point.
The problem i think is ecms all or nothing nature. If the enemy has 80 ecm it doesnt matter if you have 0 or 40 or 60 ecm, its all the same.
Changing what ECM does is one option, but I'd still want this to be addressed, too. Building a fleet for ECM should have value even when your opponent has more. Taking a map node should have value, too. If I control both of the map's sensor arrays, but have zero base ECM, that should still matter even if the enemy fleet has 40 or 60 or 80.
...I don't have a good mathematical suggestion of how to do this, mind you, I just think it should be done.
Numbers here could use tweaking but something to the effect of: 15*[(higher fleet ECM)/(lower fleet ECM)-1]%
Could be interesting. It would still be possible to be overwhelmed by enemy ECM, but instead of them needing 20% more, they would need double to get the full bonus. If the player has 60 ECM, it would take an enemy with 120 ECM to get the full 15% bonus, while an enemy with 80 would have 5% bonus.
However, theres an issue if the player has very low ECM because of 1/x behaviors, where even a small enemy ECM would give them the full bonus. So giving both some padding like:
Range malus = 15*[(higher fleet ECM + 10)/(lower fleet ECM + 10) - 1]%
Would smooth out some of the 1/x behavior. Something like 24:12 ECM early game fight goes from the full bonus to an 8% bonus.
The cons are that its a more complicated formula, but I think there are some pros to using a ratio instead of a subtraction.