Jamming proposals

@funkoff These are good points, and you understand the game way better than I do!

I can't see FaF really changing jamming to reflect different types of real-world jamming though, it seems like a 'big ask'.

My comment above, about anti-drone lasers, wasn't complete comedy... I was thinking about the UEF 'cooper', and how naval warfare might work if the cooper had a 35-damage, 50-range anti-air beam weapon with a huge 30 second reload (to keep it's DPS down). Namely, how that might tie in to UEF's T2 naval problems (bad destroyer) by allowing their frigate's jamming be less heavily countered by air scouts.
(While still having the cooper 'feel' like a support craft).

Still, it's just a thought as to how jamming could get more interesting without major changes to the game's inner workings.

jamming doesn’t need some giant rework it’s already great when implemented properly (thunderhead) and not utilized as clown gimmick feature (sparky/broadsword)

give uef cheaper spy planes/maybe scouts for jamming by enabling mixing them in your air blob to be viable, it also makes uef scout differently as you could give them lower speed and have uef rely on brute forcing half a dozen scouts to get through

can’t give asf and ints jamming for performance reasons so you need to roundabout it

land needs lobo given jamming or something

@ftxcommando Jamming on navy is made useless once a scout plane goes over tho , since marked units will be prio-targeted. It is however way more effective due to how navy ranges dont usually match the vision radius.
If land needs jamming , i think it'd be interesting if all stationary T3 mobile arties received it as a way to compensate for their lack of mobility against T2 stationary arty.
Could also be applied to heavy T3 land (Percies and Bricks) as a way to make Sniper-bots less of a hard counter.

If you think it’s useless then you just gauge your production on vibes rather than actually looking at what the enemy has.

demolishers having jamming is a joke, probably the worst unit you could give it to at t3 stage in UEF land roster

Jamming on air units is far more difficult to manage now.
It's only useful for bluffing rather than actual combat effectiveness.

ASF vision has always been larger than their weapons range.
Not to mention, that the last balance patch increased most unit's vision.
That vision change affected ASF, and that change also affected Stealth and Jamming directly.
The change made both of these intel abilities less effective, though Jamming more so because of how it interacts with vision and radar vs Stealth.
(For lack of a better word, what I mean by this is that stealth just works better in-game.
It's just how it interacts with the units and target priorities and so on.)

The fake blips disappear before the units get into weapon range.
A little sooner now with the vision increase, which means Jamming will almost never absorb a weapon's attack.
Technically, this does also affect Stealth, but with Stealth, you can still sneak up on a target, unlike Jamming.
This happens because of what I mentioned previously in how Jamming operates in FAF. ^

This does not occur with land and sea units as their weapon range is far greater than their vision hence this makes Jamming far more difficult to use on air units.

~ Stryker

@comradestryker said in Jamming proposals:

What I mean by this - and I was shocked to find out about this (Just ask @Jip) - was that Jamming blips are actually ignored by enemy units UNTIL the main unit, the one with the jammer, moves into weapons or attack range of the opposing target.

Yeah, that's absolutely shocking! (I read this before, but wanted to actually confirm it in a custom game before mentioning it - sorry, I try to double-check things now having made mistakes!)
Is it confirmed not possible to increase the target priority of a jamming 'blip' to be the same as the origin unit?

Honestly, it feels absolutely pointless without those! I admit I've certainly fallen victim to jamming in the past (I'm a noob!), but I remember specifically targeting blips, and now that I know I can just attack-move to nullify it completely, it'll never seriously bother me again unless something changes!

@sylph_ said in Jamming proposals:

Is it confirmed not possible to increase the target priority of a jamming 'blip' to be the same as the origin unit?

I think that's bad, as it just introduces some random micro tax. (at least when the original unit is scouted)
That the blips don't get targeted when the actual unit is not in range is kinda sad, but it's not really an effective in fight tool more just to confuse your opponent, but you'd need more units with jamming for it to be more effective. (not necessarily more unit types, but more units naturally on the field that have jamming)

@nex Of course, that's a good point!

I wanted to know whether it was possible, before venturing into balance discussions....
I could talk balance re: micro and UEF frigates+T2 navy struggles and such, if it's possible, but others are better qualified to do so.)

@spcr said in Jamming proposals:

1. make jammers switch the spotted unit with any of the fake ones
2. make radar identifications be lost once visuals are gone
3. make the jammer blobs move in random directions
4. switch radar ID's around (aka a T3 Air fighter could be switched with a T1 scout) and be kept like this until visuals are obtained or the unit leaves the jamming radius, ideally this should mess with defense targetting priorities .

I believe currently these all require modifications to the engine. Position and movement of jammer blobs (1.,3.) is determined in-engine by static values from Lua. I've attempted to change a strategic icon in game (4.) and met with no success. Changing intel status (2.) likewise is an in-engine thing.

Could do an entire re-implementation of jamming in lua with invisible dummy units ("light weight baby").

Ngl intel weapons sound pretty cool.