Area Jammers

[jatzi (OP)]

I noticed in the 2.2 changes that the jammers only seem to affect the ship they're on. So if you have two ships and one has jammers and the other doesn't then the ship without jammers won't have any benefit from the ship with jammers. Which is fine but it'd be cool if there were area jammers that were perhaps less effective than their more focused counterparts. The 2.2 changes thread says the jammers have a 20% effect on things per point of ECM penalty. Perhaps the area jammers could have a 10% effect on things.

I'm bringing this up because many people, myself included, like making large flagships or sensor ships that have large sensors for the whole fleet and it'd be cool to make like a sensor and EWAR ship that can act as the eyes and ears of a fleet and protect it fully even if the subordinate ships don't have any EWAR capabilities. And I guess if a ship does have its own EWAR then that takes priority over the area jammers. So if a missile targets a ship with its own EWAR and theres area jammers in play it'd only have the 20% reduction in accuracy and would ignore the 10%.

Thoughts?

[Xkill]

I like the idea. The effects probably should not stack with other area jammers and "area", in this case, might be best represented simply as "whoever is in the same task group". In MOO2 you had precisely this sort of thing. A ship system to be put on a high-value vessel that would increase missile defence for everyone else on the battlespace and could be used alongside a normal jammer.

[nuclearslurpee]

It's an interesting idea (I would love to be able to use dedicated EW specialist warships in my fleets!), but how would it be balanced?

Currently all of the jammers work on a per-ship basis - a ship either has a jammer of a given type, or it does not, so we need to define how this would work in a fleet setting. I can think of a couple of ways this could go and each has its problems:

• As in the OP, make an area jammer component that has less (e.g., 50%) EW effectiveness. The big problem with this is that it will probably be ineffective in most cases, since the enemy would need only half the ECCM level as usual which is easy to research and deploy.
• An area jammer component which is normal effectiveness but larger and more expensive. The problem here is scaling - if, for example, an area jammer is 10x the size and cost, then a fleet of 11 ships or more will gain a net benefit and the area jammer would be strictly superior (unless and until the EW ship is blown up). On the other hand, if we make it some kind of ridiculously expensive system, then smaller fleets don't really benefit. Either way, we have the issue that the mechanic makes a particular kind of fleet more optimal which is not really the kind of game Aurora wants to be.

If we have to choose one I would probably prefer the latter. In principle, favoring larger fleets is not a huge issue since you always want a bigger fleet for a major battle, but in practice we always need small fleets for a variety of tasks such as system defense/garrison roles, so there is a decision to make about how to design these classes - do we build them without jammers, to get the most benefit from the area jammers when our DDs or CLs participate with a larger fleet? If we build our CLs and DDs with jammers, then these would be redundant in a larger fleet but our small patrol groups will be more capable. Or we could have two different classes of each type specialized for each role, which may require more shipyards and complicate fleet compositions but in theory means we get the best of all worlds.

One mechanics note: it is probably better not to make area jammers tied to a specific fleet but rather to just affect all valid targets in range of that jammer. Otherwise we run into a silly case where one fleet performs differently than two fleets at the same location, which should not happen in this case. I would also suggest that the area jammer should increase in size and cost as its capability increases (in addition to the cost increase from higher ECM level, of course), to account for the fact that fleets tend to get bigger as the game goes on and thus to keep the cost benefit of the area jammers reasonable.

[xenoscepter]

  - So perhaps this might be more "balanced"?

 --- Area Jammers are a variant of their base jammer type. So Sensor Jammer for single ship has an Area Jammer version, etc. You get the tech for Area Jammers after you get to the second tier of that Jammer. So Area Jammer (Sensor) would require Sensor Jammer 2. Likewise, Area Jammers would unlock every other Jammer tech, so 2, 4, 6, 8 & 10.

 --- Area Jammers would be 60% larger than their base versions, so 250 Tons (5HS) per module. They would only be 50% as effective though, so an Area Jammer (Sensor) at Jammer tech 2 would be the same as a self Jammer 1.

 --- A separate tech line would dictate the number of ships that you could benefit per Area Jammer Module. Not sure what those would be in terms of specific numbers, but that's something Steve can sus out if/when he ever adds this.

 --- Area Jammers would gain efficiency if used to cover less ships than that ship could support, and lose efficiency if trying to cover more. So an Area Jammer of 2 with 4 ships per module could cover just two ships at 100% efficiency, but if it was covering 6 ships it would only confer 30% while if it covered 8 eight ships it'd be 25%. All fractions for this calculation are rounded down.

 --- Regular single ship jammers stack with the Area Jammers bonus if they are of the same type, so an Area Jammer 1 for sensors would allow ships with a Sensor Jammer of 2 to function like they had Sensor Jammer 3.

 --- Ships without a self jammer would count towards the Area Jammer's efficiency calculations BEFORE ships with a self jammer. So in the case of Area Jammer (Sensor) 1 and Sensor Jammer 3, the real benefit would be that you could double up the number of ships and while the ones with self jamming would still see no benefit, they would allow the ships w/o self jammers to receive the full benefit of the Area Jammer.

NOTE: An Area Jammer 1 would be the first Area Jammer after a Self-Jammer 2, for the sake of simplicity, just having them be half as strong and applying their full bonus is easier than making them display a strength of 2 and making the player remember to half it.

[Snoman314]

It's an interesting idea (I would love to be able to use dedicated EW specialist warships in my fleets!), but how would it be balanced?

How about this: halve the EW bonus, but only after all existing calculations have been made. E.g. if you have Jammer 5, and the opponent ECCM 4, you take the 20% effect and halve that to 10%. If it's ECM 5 vs ECCM 3, then you get 20% instead of 40%.

One mechanics note: it is probably better not to make area jammers tied to a specific fleet but rather to just affect all valid targets in range of that jammer. Otherwise we run into a silly case where one fleet performs differently than two fleets at the same location, which should not happen in this case. I would also suggest that the area jammer should increase in size and cost as its capability increases (in addition to the cost increase from higher ECM level, of course), to account for the fact that fleets tend to get bigger as the game goes on and thus to keep the cost benefit of the area jammers reasonable.

I also like the idea of it being range based, but would be happy to accept it being tied to the fleet the area jammer is in, if that'd make it easier to implement.

[BardicNerd]

One way to do it might be to make jamming something that is targeted at specific enemy ships/missiles, affecting their abilities against all targets.   Maybe also have an area jamming effect with less range as well, or that affects your own sensors as well.

I like the idea of dedicated EW ships that are an important force multiplier, that you would want to identify and target first.