CounterIntel

ThomasHiatt

How does this argument not extend to removing stealth and jamming beyond “it’s already there dude” then? If you want to argue stealth is a mechanical sub for shields, then there is still no real argument for why jamming should be on anything beyond the “has always been” card.

The argument does extend to stealth, and I probably wouldn't have stealth in the game if it were my game. I interpret the game design as being pretty close to a perfect information game where you are supposed to be able to zoom out and see everything. Jamming is pretty irrelevant either way. Things are supposed to stay the way they are because that's what FAF is all about, preserving this video game.

FunkOff

Many eons ago, I made a "faction diversity mod". One thing I diversified greatly was general faction themes. As an example, all Cybran units had lower vision range, but all units had radar (even Mantis) or radar better than what other factions had (such as on air scouts). Thus, Cybran stealth was toughest to deal with as Cybran. Aeon, oppositely, had no radar whatsoever, but all units had better vision range. I didnt like the suicide concept of the Mercy, so I changed it to act more like a flare, meaning it could linger near the front line for a couple minutes and provide almost soothsayer vision range.

I thought these ideas made matchups feel more different.

Nex

Wouldn't cloak be the logical fourth faction mechanic as stealth/jamming and cloak/fake units seems like the obvious counterparts for radar to vision counter-intel.

To make it possible to “fight” against the only thing I could think of was that the units wouldn’t show radar signatures if in the fog of war. I wasn’t sure if it was actually possible to have an icon show up in visual range but no gray dot show up in the fog of war, but that would be a great solution and would make you curious if maybe you just missed the units before your scout went over them.

Also having them always show blips when in vision would make them uncounterable, so the blips would need to disappear once you have them on radar.

Dragun101

Marking for comment later:
Seraphim has submergable “ships” for their special intel

Aeon doesn’t get any because hover wss the design discussion from sc vanilla (some pc gamer article discusses this domewhere$

Blade_Walker

If Seraphim were to get 'Doppleganger' style units (or an ability on some of their units a 'la jamming), then Aeon could have some of their units provide a visual range debuff to enemy units in a small aoe from the projectile.

I am thinking the 'bright' projectiles, like those from fervors, direct fire navy, t2 gunships, t3 mobile arty

Mach

for diversity reasons, what if aeon or seraphim had the opposites of radar jamming, for example, units that create a visual illusion of another unit but are broken with radar instead of the other way around, I know radar cover is pretty long range and cheap and wouldn't be as strong, but it would cause a problem for those just sending their units into enemy without intel cover because they don't need it in current situation, especially if it auto reset like toggling jamming does for jamming

veteranashe

You really should read the responses before posting

Brannou

in the faf mission where we protect burke, there is a crystal that create fake air signature
Maybe we can use it.

But adding jamming/stealth to all faction would make them more look alike instead of all having their own way to play

Chenbro101

How about an anti sensor field. Any buildings and units with radar get view range and/or radar reduced by x% when in this field.
Or a scramble field that returns scouted units to just being blips on radar.
By the way, if you wanted to buff jamming, adding this functionality to it could be the way to do it.

arma473

Aeon ACU has a sight range upgrade that gives significant omni coverage. That is a faction-specific intel-related advantage. And it's probably underused. Maybe give Aeon T2 radars some useful (but not OP) amount of omni range. I'm talking about just barely enough range to be worth making on the front line against Cybran stealth. With that, Aeon would be the "anti-stealth" faction.

Give Seraphim ACU a second upgrade to gun range & speed, where shots add a radar jamming effect where they land. As long as the unit/building being shot is alive, it will have visibility that basically counteracts the jamming completely. When the ACU kills things, the jamming would have some meaningful effect.

And for the regen aura upgrades: when the ACU is shooting, it should create a temporary jamming field around the ACU. It only turns on when the ACU is shooting because otherwise that might make it too obvious where the ACU is. Presumably if the ACU is popping off shots, it's location doesn't need to be kept a secret.

archsimkat

Give the UEF T3 Mobile Arty the "shellcam" that the Lobo has.

maudlin27

Sounds like something that would be better suited to a mod and/or as some sort of featured gamemode (e.g. if the 4th matchmaker queue was used each week or month to showcase a particular mod/more unusual game option) than a change to the core FAF game, since it feels like a fundamental departure from the original FA and would make things significantly more complicated for newer players (and non-top-level players) who already will struggle just to scout/get intel.

FtXCommando

Literally jamming and stealth already exist, how is it a fundamental departure from anything. It’s extending a half baked feature to all the factions so that it becomes a new way for them to interact. Factory HQs are a fundamental departure.

The_Janitor

I'll throw a curve ball and say that we have gotten lazy, obtaining information is too easy via scouts, hardly ever you can do anything more tactical at t1 and by the time t2 or t3 rolls out it becomes (in most chases) utterly pointless.

The problem is mostly t1 air scout being too good of a scouting unit and jack of all trades when it comes to it, and it will probably stay that way.

Even if we add all proposed changes by some miracle, i would argue that it is all meaningless since one little scout can reveal the whole map with no setback to the player.

ZLO

remove ability to scout stuff while scout's wreck is falling and then it will already become much harder to scout

The_Janitor

@zlo I wanna be more radical and move t1 scout to t2 and balance the air around that.

But again... that is more radical change.

FtXCommando

How to make facing Cybran on 5x5 an autolose in 1 easy step

The point here is to make active scouting something that warrants use. The type of intel that is abused for lazy decisions is setting up a radar, sending a random scout, finding what blips are, and zooming out 30 seconds after the scout passed by to gauge the situation.

While such a thing should certainly be possible, it should come with the tradeoff of inaccuracy and you should be either setting up scout paths when you have the capacity to idle for a bit and watch the intel actively or you need to sacrifice unit micro/base macro to get that active intel.

The point of these ideas is to create that innate inaccuracy in lazy intel, not make active intel easier or harder. As it is, Cybran is pretty much the only faction that has this in the form of a perpetual air scout tax that stealth requires you to pay if you want to keep being lazy.

Jamming and Stealth both create inaccuracy from not having vision

Mirage units or whatever would create inaccuracy from not having radar, which also induces more play with sniping radars.

Zeldafanboy

@hinthunter

What group of players are you playing with? Where are the kind of teammates that make you go, “Hmm, I don’t know, scouting in this game should be harder, people do it too often!”

maudlin27

@ftxcommando Jamming and stealth isn't a fundamental departure, but you seemed to be talking about cloned/fake units that do no damage but appear visually to exist and require energy to maintain in your OP. That's something which is a completely new concept (there is no existing mechanic like that).

If you were just talking about some changes re stealth and jamming, then I wouldn't have the same issue as those are already concepts people are familiar with from just playing vanilla FA.

Also if anything Aeon's theme is that it counters stealth and jamming via good visual, i.e. that's its 'counterintel' so it doesnt need a new concept. It has the senor upgrade on its ACU which gives massive visual range; it has the Eye of Rihanne which gives visual range of a target location. An 'in-theme' extension of intel for them would be mechanics based around visibility of a location rather than some sort of hologram concept.

The_Janitor

@zeldafanboy i not saying make scouting harder for the sake of making scouting harder, i am saying make scouting harder for the sake of allowing more fluidity in gameplay. Making scouting more important rather then just "giving it away".

But talk is talk, hell if gonna freaze over before that happens lol

Just think about it, entertain the idea a bit.