Stealth vs Jamming

[Iszh]

Just had an idea since this topic is also on for a longer time now how to improve jamming. Stealth has the problem that you can attack units and enemy units will keep attack order while beeing under stealth. But if this is fixed that might be even imba. That could make cybran army with bigger range invulnerable if you lost air sup. But stealth has at least an effect compared to jamming. Scu jamming is bullshit and all other jamming are just there but without any use. Jamming would be more useful if there would be some kind of reset which makes units in radar range but not omin range unknown after some time again. Means that jamming would not be stealth but from time to time reset the jamming mirror pictures to appear again if enemy does not scout and the units which are seen will be unknown again.

I dont know how long stealth needs to be active that enemy loses the targets again but one way for jamming would be that jamming includes a pulsed stealth for example. For example uef t1 friagte has jamming and every 10s it has a pulse of stealth for 0,5s so the units in radar range will for minimal time disappear and also mirror pictures reset. That uef will not start permanent stealth with frigates you could add higher e cost and switch it off by default. So jamming would be some kind of mild stealth. And for scu for example you can do different steps of jamming. So maybe scu jamming would have much lower reset time or maybe even 1s stealth time pulsed.

That could be btw an option for UEF Acu. instead of nano which is no matter how you balance it will be a bullshit compared to t2 engi maybe remove this ability and add jamming there. Uef needs an not op early game option there. So uef can have gun and instead of t2 engi a cheap jamming suit alike cybran stealth and gun. Jamming like normal units since in late game there is no way arround engi suit. Maybe somebody can use this idea to invent even something better alike

[IceDreamer]

Just had an idea since this topic is also on for a longer time now how to improve jamming. Stealth has the problem that you can attack units and enemy units will keep attack order while beeing under stealth. But if this is fixed that might be even imba.

Quite possibly. Working stealth will be STRONG, but with the community run the way it now is, we can find ways to counteract that scale-tipping power, and end up in a better place by the end.

That could make cybran army with bigger range invulnerable if you lost air sup.

This is why Scout planes provide intel right until they crash. It's pretty much impossible to completely deny visual intel from somewhere if a player is determined to get it. The point is well-made, however, and I see the community considering wider use of Omni to counteract it.

But stealth has at least an effect compared to jamming. Scu jamming is bullshit and all other jamming are just there but without any use. Jamming would be more useful if there would be some kind of reset which makes units in radar range but not omin range unknown after some time again. Means that jamming would not be stealth but from time to time reset the jamming mirror pictures to appear again if enemy does not scout and the units which are seen will be unknown again.

I dont know how long stealth needs to be active that enemy loses the targets again but one way for jamming would be that jamming includes a pulsed stealth for example. For example uef t1 friagte has jamming and every 10s it has a pulse of stealth for 0,5s so the units in radar range will for minimal time disappear and also mirror pictures reset. That uef will not start permanent stealth with frigates you could add higher e cost and switch it off by default. So jamming would be some kind of mild stealth. And for scu for example you can do different steps of jamming. So maybe scu jamming would have much lower reset time or maybe even 1s stealth time pulsed.

That could be btw an option for UEF Acu. instead of nano which is no matter how you balance it will be a bullshit compared to t2 engi maybe remove this ability and add jamming there. Uef needs an not op early game option there. So uef can have gun and instead of t2 engi a cheap jamming suit alike cybran stealth and gun. Jamming like normal units since in late game there is no way arround engi suit. Maybe somebody can use this idea to invent even something better alike

Interesting idea, but I have what I think to be a better one in mind, which I think I have voiced on these forums in the past. It would require a complete rewrite of the jamming code, but given how useless what we have is, that's no bad thing. See, Stealth in real life, when perfected, hides a unit completely from radar detection. Jamming goes further; rather than simply hiding the signature, it attempts to *throw* the signature, to fool the radar into thinking the plane is elsewhere. This is what I'd like to do to SupCom's jamming.

We change Jamming so that it is always a field ability. For itself and the surrounding units, it acts first as a full stealth field, hiding the signatures from view completely. The clever bit will be that it takes the signatures the enemy would have seen on the radar, in the same orientation and whatever, and moves them a randomly determined distance and direction.

This would be much stronger, but still weaker than full Stealth. With the latter, you simply wouldn't know an army is coming at all. SURPRISE!!!!LASER!!!!FACEBOOM!!!!... You know the drill With Jamming, you would see an army is coming, and the true size of it, so you'd have some warning, but you wouldn't know exactly where it was... Depending on how much we throw the signal, the strength of the ability would vary. Crucially IMO, this would require some skill and guile to use properly

[Iszh]

Yes i remember Zep was making also some kind of experiments with jamming, there have been lots of units like ghosts moving arround. I didnt like this
Stealth of cybran i wonder if it will be ever fixed this topic is really for a long time ongoing already.
My idea would make jamming something like a partly stealth, sometimes units disappear for short time and then all unknown units included jamming targets will appear again. that would at least increase the use of jamming. No matter if units in stealth can be still hit or not.

But just to remove the nano from uef acu and add a cheap jamming would be just consequent and could be done already now. There will never be a place for nano until it would be stronger than a t3 engi suite means like 10k life and 200 life per second for 6000 mass upgrade cost (just completely random values to show how much stronger it should be to beat a t3 engi suite). 100 mass -50e normal jamming like a sparky has it. Maybe could start to be a problem if you have 2 upgrades which consume e, have no idea if this will work.

[yeager]

I really like that idea ice dreamer

[zeroAPM]

Problem with jamming is that the radar blip distribution is "off" when compared to a real army

The unit turn? All the blips turn in a circle centered around the emitter, unless that sea unit suddenly got the speed of a ASF, managed to go on land and the player has the "5up3r 1337 m1cr0" to make a perfect circle arc with multiple units then it's obvious that the signature is fake and the one in the center is the true one.

Also they are too far apart, armies in supcom end up being blobs, not neatly spread out squads

[Zock]

Icedreamers idea is nice, i like it.

[quark036]

For IceDreamer's idea, the owner of the units needs some way to tell where the signature was being thrown, else it would be difficult to use it with guile (so you don't drive the radar images off a cliff or into a lake)

Or, you could always throw it in one direction, or something relative to the player's starting position, or let the player decide where to throw it

Letting the player decide might be interesting, because you could take half the army and put the image in one direction, and the other half in the other direction, so when your opponent thinks you have two armies spread out a bit, you really have one army in the center.

[yeager]

You could just show them as false radar blips, but in your color, so you know its yours

[quark036]

I don't know if that would work, both because you would probably have visibility over at least some of the area in question, and because it would get confusing to tell which is your real stuff and which is fake, especially if you are zoomed out.

[Wakke]

I like the idea of Icedreamer, plus I'd like to add that stealth is impacted quite badly by the intel-bug/wonky implementation where your units always have full intel on ghost images of buildings, even if they are out of radar range or stealthed. I think it's damn hard to fix though.