Module of the Week: Warp Disruptor

This is part of a series where I look at a module and its variants and discuss it in terms of what is is used for and how the various iterations of the module differ.

This week we have a module that is familiar to all PvPers in EVE, the Warp Disruptor! 

Disrupts the target ship's navigation computer which prevents it from warping.

To be more explicit, every ship has a warp core, which when stable, allows a ship to enter warp and travel faster than light. Think of that as as 1 on a scale where >=1 means warp can be achieved and <1 means that the warp core is destabilized and warp cannot be achieved. A warp disruptor applies a -1 to the value of the warp core. Additionally, if multiple warp disruptors are activated against a target ship, they stack on the -1 values such that if one ship deactivates its warp disruptors due to leaving or running out of capacitor, the target ship will not be able to warp off while its warp core strength is still below 1.

EDIT: The warp disruptor is often referred to as a "point" or a "long point", as opposed to a warp scrambler which has a similar function but is shorter ranged and is referred to as a "point" as well, or more routinely a "scram".

There are modules called Warp Core Stabilizers that provide +1 to the strength of the warp core so that it is possible to warp away even with warp disruptors applied against you as long as the warp core strength is 1 or greater. There are other modules and devices that apply negatives to warp core strength that I will discuss some other time, and there are some ships with special bonuses to the warp core strength to start with such as the Venture which has a +2 warp core strength.

The Warp Disruptor is an active mid slot module that is used by all sizes of ships in PvP and has no functional use in PvE. They have a functional range of 20km for Tech 1 up to 40km for an officer module version, although some ships have bonuses to that range, especially Tech II Gallente electronic warfare vessels.

The module is affected by only one skill, called Propulsion Jamming, which gives a 5% bonus to its activation cost per level trained. For the purposes of module comparison, we will be looking at the base unmodified by skills values.

Module	Meta Level	PG (MW)	CPU (tf)	Activation Cost (GJ)	Range (km)	Source
Warp Disruptor I	0	1	40	25	20	built
Initiated Warp Disruptor I	1	1	38	24	20	Rat Drop
Fleeting Warp Disruptor I	2	1	36	20	20	Rat Drop
J5 Prototype Warp Disruptor I	3	1	34	23	20	Rat Drop
Faint Warp Disruptor I	4	1	32	21	20	Rat Drop
Warp Disruptor II	5	1	44	25	24	built
Process-Interruptive Warp Disruptor	6	1	34	25	22	Storyline
Caldari Navy Warp Disruptor	7	1	40	25	24	LP Store
Dark Blood Warp Disruptor	7	1	40	25	28	LP Store / Rat Drop
Dread Guristas Warp Disruptor	7	1	40	25	24	LP Store / Rat Drop
Khanid Navy Warp Disruptor	7	1	40	25	24	LP Store
Shadow Serpentis Warp Disruptor	7	1	40	25	26	LP Store / Rat Drop
True Sansha Warp Disruptor	7	1	40	25	28	LP Store / Rat Drop
Domination Warp Disruptor	8	1	19	28	30	LP Store / Rat Drop
Republic Fleet Warp Disruptor	8	1	19	28	30	LP Store
Mizuro's Modified Warp Disruptor	11	2500	19	50	25	Rat Drop
Hakim's Modified Warp Disruptor	12	3000	19	60	30	Rat Drop
Gotan's Modified Warp Disruptor	13	3500	19	70	35	Rat Drop
Tobias' Modifed Warp Disruptor	14	4000	19	80	40	Rat Drop

So you are probably scratching your head about the final four entries in that chart, aren't you? Those are the officer's module versions and are built for use on big ships with big power grids. Their advantage over regular faction modules with similar ranges is that their warp disruption strength is 2 instead of just 1.

Other than that wrinkle, you can quickly see why the price of the meta named modules are still fairly high and used frequently, especially on frigates and destroyers, due to their lower CPU usage. As, the high price of the Domination, Dark Blood, and True Sansha warp disruptors is explained due to the longer ranges, while the Caldari Navy, Dread Guristas, and Khanid Navy are much cheaper due to being only slightly better than the tech II version.