Is Radar Jammer useful?

[BillGHero]

I started playing SM in multiplayer again recently. And noticed that while jammers do indeed take you off player radar, they don't seem to make the slightest difference to ai pirates. If my little puddle jumper is within weapons range they shoot at it. Even when the ai is so far away it only shows up in the Nav-dialogue, they will see me. And I swear they're able to target lock-ons too. Though those might have been heat-seekers...

Last time I played jammers were useful for more than pvp, but not now as far as I can tell.

Anybody out there agree or disagree?

 

[terra mining corp.]

is this happening in multiplayer only or is it on single also?(I've been so busy working on my station that I haven't gone out exploring in awhile)

 

[Heillos]

Radar jamming has the subsequent effects:

• Hides the nav diamonds of the jamming ship and all docked entities, both in the HUD and the Navigation menu
• Prevents players from locking onto you with missiles (on account of your nav diamond being gone)
• Decreases AI accuracy with beam and cannon variants (theoretically, at least. Notice that missiles are unaffected, and pulse probably isn't either because of its strange nature)

Radar jamming does not do the following:

• Prevent AI missile-locks (in fact, AI can instantaneously lock-on to a target, for some reason)

It is my opinion that the jammer, in this state, is pretty well-balanced, with the exception of AI missile locks. I'd like to see AI have an actual missile-lock timer in all circumstances, and potentially an increased timer vs jammed ships, to represent the accuracy decrease that the jammer would otherwise cause.

 

[BDLS]

It's a must-have really, for nearly all situations.

 

[godmars]

it's pretty much the only thing that will keep you alive with smaller ships vs AI and their god aim

 

[Rohen]

I can confirm this.
With an active jammer, the AI does not land as much hits on you as without.
Increased range does seem to help also.

And i am certain that some AI ships did not attack me instantly when i was in range only until i flew in front of them they started to attack me.
This only seems to be working if no enemy sees you. If you are in combat with only a single one they all know you are there.
Does not seem to work on stations the do always see me.