Scanner-Jammer Interactions

[Treefolk]

Story time! I'm playing on a PvP server and I keep having issues with unjamming my opponents. This puts me at a slight disadvantage but I'm clearly missing something and I'm hoping someone can explain what I'm missing.

As an example, I have a 1900 block scanner docked. The last few fights I've been in, that has been insufficient to dejam my opponent (the last fight, we were almost touching hulls when I pinged the scanner and nothing). This is something that is difficult to test by myself (and no one has been willing to help insofar).

How does this work?
Is it just a game of numbers?
Is there some sort of mechanic I'm missing?

 

[MacThule]

Maybe your opponent has 2K jammers?

 

[Batavium]

There has been a change in how radar jamming and cloaking works. I do not know how many versions it has been like this. But it used to be that you could only have one radar jammer and one cloak computer per ship"core".

How ever right now you can add an unlimited number of computers to a ship. They do not draw extra power and all act as if they are just a single computer.

So to unjam a ship with 1000 radar jam computers you need a scanner with at least 1000 scan modules.

For cloak it is even more complex.

To uncloak a ship the scanner needs to be balanced or +1. The size of the uncloak scanner is based on your ships size. The bigger your ship the bigger the scanner needs to be to uncloak another ship. In the weapons tab under the scan computer you can find the total amount of modules needed. This will uncloak a ship with ONE cloak computer.

For a ship with more cloak computers you need a balanced scanner plus a matching or more numbers of antennas to of set the number of cloak computers on the other ship.

We really need to go back to maximal one of each computer per ship.

 

[Treefolk]

There has been a change in how radar jamming and cloaking works. I do not know how many versions it has been like this. But it used to be that you could only have one radar jammer and one cloak computer per ship"core".

How ever right now you can add an unlimited number of computers to a ship. They do not draw extra power and all act as if they are just a single computer.

So to unjam a ship with 1000 radar jam computers you need a scanner with at least 1000 scan modules.

For cloak it is even more complex.

To uncloak a ship the scanner needs to be balanced or +1. The size of the uncloak scanner is based on your ships size. The bigger your ship the bigger the scanner needs to be to uncloak another ship. In the weapons tab under the scan computer you can find the total amount of modules needed. This will uncloak a ship with ONE cloak computer.

For a ship with more cloak computers you need a balanced scanner plus a matching or more numbers of antennas to of set the number of cloak computers on the other ship.

We really need to go back to maximal one of each computer per ship.

Very informative, thank you!

The short answer seems to be: Add more scanner modules.

 

[JinM]

I personally like the idea how scanning and jamming are different now. Cloaking still isn't fun to use imo.

But I don't know if that is intentional, sounds like it gets fixed soon?

 

[Vvolodymyr]

My overall impression from using these systems:
- From all 3 - jamming is the easiest :more jammer blocks, which weigh half the regular system block, but same power usage which is not significant (as for me)
- Adding more cloaking units is about as difficult as designing a perma-cloaker to begin with - so average difficulty (subjectively again)
- Scanning is the loosing one of the three.

So hiding is easier than discovery.

I did a tester ship which has loads of all three and doesn't decloak/dejam while scanning (spurred by a revelation, provided here on the community forum) - it works well. (Lost it at the enemy territory by a stupid mistake - so now at least someone has many lessons to learn from it if managed to recover )

It's just with the ability to command cloaking/jamming on fleets and scanning system disadvantage versus jammers (more so) and cloakers - has me wondering if the balance has been disturbed.

 

[Treefolk]

My overall impression from using these systems:
- From all 3 - jamming is the easiest :more jammer blocks, which weigh half the regular system block, but same power usage which is not significant (as for me)
- Adding more cloaking units is about as difficult as designing a perma-cloaker to begin with - so average difficulty (subjectively again)
- Scanning is the loosing one of the three.

So hiding is easier than discovery.

I did a tester ship which has loads of all three and doesn't decloak/dejam while scanning (spurred by a revelation, provided here on the community forum) - it works well. (Lost it at the enemy territory by a stupid mistake - so now at least someone has many lessons to learn from it if managed to recover )

It's just with the ability to command cloaking/jamming on fleets and scanning system disadvantage versus jammers (more so) and cloakers - has me wondering if the balance has been disturbed.

Is this ability to stay jammed/cloaked a clever logic loop or something else?

 

[Vvolodymyr]

Is this ability to stay jammed/cloaked a clever logic loop or something else?

Oh no-no. It's been pointed out to me on the forum like a week or so ago, that
having more cloakers / jammers than scanners will mean that you can scan and not decloak/dejam yourself.
Of course, the scanners have to be at least balanced (see in ship>structure>scanner system OR weapons menu>Scanner>details for details) in order to be useful against opponents.

 

[Treefolk]

Oh no-no. It's been pointed out to me on the forum like a week or so ago, that
having more cloakers / jammers than scanners will mean that you can scan and not decloak/dejam yourself.
Of course, the scanners have to be at least balanced (see in ship>structure>scanner system OR weapons menu>Scanner>details for details) in order to be useful against opponents.

Thanks for pointing that out! I had never considered that such a ship was possible (even though all the pieces were right there).

I was unaware that there was a "balance" factor to be considered, I'll have to look into that when I'm back in front a computer.

 

[Vvolodymyr]

No problem. I never even considered adding more than 1 cloaker & 1 jammer before I found this out on forum.
Batavium pretty much covers the whole thing in his post.