Jammers make the game hostile to newbies

[Banned]

I have a theory that jammers make the game hostile to new players. A newbie will always have fewer amps to start with, and won't know that they need to build many amps to get through on people with even a few jammers. Without access to good scanners this means their attacking options are limited and they must spend more time (which is time they're more likely to get disgruntled with the game) searching for targets.

This is the problem. One idea I've had that might help alleviate this problem:

Make high dist planets scannable, but at a cost. Perhaps the cost could be normal scan cost * (dists / amps) (yes, this makes people with 100 distorters very expensive for people with 1 amp to scan, but still possible). A warning should be displayer before performing unreasonably expensive scans (perhaps 2x normal cost and higher?)

[Troll]

The larger the gap between jammer and amp should also make the scan more unreliable. So a larger vaible between the correct fleet and the fleet the scan shows.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Troll

The larger the gap between jammer and amp should also make the scan more unreliable. So a larger vaible between the correct fleet and the fleet the scan shows.

That sounds like a good idea.

Edit: Someone asked me on IRC if I meant that people should be able to perform Fleet Analysis scans against planets with more jammers than they have amps (effectively ruining any possibility of faking), and I think they probably shouldn't.

[pig]

Im a distorter whore, not as much as the real distorter whores, but to be honest I cant stand distorters, I dont like the idea in pax, where there is so much reliance on scanners. Its annoying that scans arent more freely available and the whole need for distorters/amps arent needed. There will always be someone who is unscannable and I dont like that idea...

[Heartless]

Since they are called "Distorters" - what about making the scan "error" which is currently 20% changing to something calculated by a ratio of (distorters / amps), for instance?

[Cannon_Fodder]

I don't like the idea as it increases the trend towards recall/land on nothing scenario. Information is one of the most important weapons in war, giving it all away takes away some of the involvement and fun. Just a few amps and you can scan most of the universe, especially the lower end.

[Kal]

in the real world a jammer works by in essence putting out a lot of noise in the direction of the scanning system (e.g. radar) - for a poor quality scanning system this would make it impossible to scan anyone - but with an advanced system with adaptive nulls you can effectivly ignore the jammer (though you would still be blind in the precise direction of the jammer.

Therefore it might be interesting to completely change the way scanning works e.g.

you have scaners and jammers as constructions AND actions

so player 1 can scan anyone IF he has more scanning power than jamming power aimed at him. If he has advanced scanning technology then he scan scan anyone who is not activly jamming him regardless of his scan power.

This would produce an interesting scenario where alliance scanners are useless as they will be constant targets of active jamming - this means that the game will evolve to make scanning a much more strategic game - for example as players are likely to need to do their own scans meaning people will focus their jamming attacks on the top planets.

This means that small planets ar elikely to be able to scan pretty much frelly making it easier to climb the score ladder.

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Kal

in the real world a jammer works by in essence putting out a lot of noise in the direction of the scanning system (e.g. radar) - for a poor quality scanning system this would make it impossible to scan anyone - but with an advanced system with adaptive nulls you can effectivly ignore the jammer (though you would still be blind in the precise direction of the jammer.

Therefore it might be interesting to completely change the way scanning works e.g.

you have scaners and jammers as constructions AND actions

so player 1 can scan anyone IF he has more scanning power than jamming power aimed at him. If he has advanced scanning technology then he scan scan anyone who is not activly jamming him regardless of his scan power.

This would produce an interesting scenario where alliance scanners are useless as they will be constant targets of active jamming - this means that the game will evolve to make scanning a much more strategic game - for example as players are likely to need to do their own scans meaning people will focus their jamming attacks on the top planets.

This means that small planets ar elikely to be able to scan pretty much frelly making it easier to climb the score ladder.

The best application of this idea that I can see is allowing a top-end 5-10 agent covert op to block someone from scanning for x ticks, (say 3 * number_of_agents/5) tbh. Otherwise it'll get too complicated.

Edit:
With regards to the initial problem, when working out the best use for free players of their limited constructions I usually suggested distorters, as while it won't keep off the alliances that you can't do so much about, it'll keep off a few of the random incomings.

Distorters are generally used to block Fleet, Unit and Jumpgate probe scans. I can't see how you can distort construction, research or news scans in a big way, and planet scans aren't that much better.
Unit scan randomness I believe someone managed to eventually reverse engineer, so two scans could give a 100% accurate scan, so if there's a formula for changing randomness for unit scans that's publicised I have no doubt that could be reverse engineered too.

If scans are going to get through and just be distorted , I'd prefer the old way where it was chance-based as opposed to now.

[Banned]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

The best application of this idea that I can see is allowing a top-end 5-10 agent covert op to block someone from scanning for x ticks, (say 3 * number_of_agents/5) tbh. Otherwise it'll get too complicated

That's shit.

[Seth Mace]

I agree that this may frustrate some new players who didnt realise the importance of making at least some amps. A simple way to overcome this is to just make the importance of scanning clearer ingame.

There is a recommended starting research, maybe the construction screen should just be a bit more helpful in explaining the bigger picture.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

Otherwise it'll get too complicated.

I dunno. Following from Kal's idea, why not just have a box under your Distorters and have a tick box which says "Jammers set to active" then a spot to type in co-ords which in Kal's idea would be alliance jammers or top players (or that annoying XP wh0re who keeps attacking you) etc?

Otherwise, without that tick on, the Jammers could be in "Passive" mode an act exactly the way they are now - jam anyone who has your jammers - 1 of amps or less.

Edit: the only thing that would be hard to gauge with Kal's idea is the relative strength of targeted jammers against an individual planet ie, if you have 172 jammers turned active against you, do you need more than 172 amps in order to perform a scan? if so, then you wont be doing any scanning. Or would the strength be determined by range - ie universal jamming is at 40% (ie it would take 2.5 Jammers set to active to block 1 amp) or in cluster it could be 60%. I dont think you should be able to jam in-gal.

Also, another question would be whether you jammers would act in a passive way (ie how it is now) if it was transmitting on active (ie, can you jam some faraway planet and still shield yourself from anyone trying to scan you?).

Another interesting idea is setting up a jamming "bubble" - your jammers have 100% power at protecting yourself, but adds some number (lets say 10%) to the jammers of all your galaxymates. So for every 10 jammers you build, you give your galaxymates 1 jammer. Just a spur of the moment thought as a method of helping your galaxymates and making more room for in-gal co-operation. Potential for unscannable galaxies though, which at the beginning of a round would be quite interesting.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by idimmu

the rules need to be condensed and rewritten, they are far too waffly

also upoin initial login, whenever you go to a page, be it missions/fleet/whatever if its your first time at that page, that round, the rules page should pop up with a button at the bottom that they have to press to continue

Wouldnt a new thread as a new suggestion be a better place for that?

[Makhil]

Kals idea sounds really interesting. How many planets could you actively jam at the same time ?
If 1 planet = 100% of distorters jaming it
If 2 planets 50% of distorters for each
and so on... ?

[x-dANGEr]

BUt wouldn't that just make anyone scan you? If no the scanner, the HC/DC or BC, and if not the XP wh0re, maybe his friend?

[frostbeule]

what about making disorters less effective?
ie with 80 amps you can scan someone with 100 disorters.

[Troll]

What makes the most sense is to have jammers not block any scan ever. However they should disrupt the accuracy of the scan. You get 100% accuracy on a scan if u have twice the amps than the target has jammers. If you have the same number of amps as the target has jammers then there should be a 50% variable. The problem I see is how does this variable come into play with JGS? This is clearly one of the most important scans. Do we allow phantom fleets to appear in these scans or do we make the numbers of ships vary? This is where it gets complicated in my opinion because although I don’t want people to know my exact fleet composition if I am a zik player it’s more important for the rest of the universe when they build jammers to stop the jump gate scan.

So until someone can come up with a solution for how u can nerf jammers with out making them usless in blocking jump gate scans then the choice is more in the area of remove jammers and amps from the game or keep them as is. Nerfed jammers will lead to no one using them so I suppose it would be the same as removing them.

[Kargool]

Erm.. So building distorters as a tactic is not okay, but going xpwhore is. I guess someone doesnt like that they arent being able to scan people.. You can teach new players to roid for XP but you cant teach them to build distorters?

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Troll

What makes the most sense is to have jammers not block any scan ever. However they should disrupt the accuracy of the scan. You get 100% accuracy on a scan if u have twice the amps than the target has jammers. If you have the same number of amps as the target has jammers then there should be a 50% variable. The problem I see is how does this variable come into play with JGS? This is clearly one of the most important scans. Do we allow phantom fleets to appear in these scans or do we make the numbers of ships vary? This is where it gets complicated in my opinion because although I don’t want people to know my exact fleet composition if I am a zik player it’s more important for the rest of the universe when they build jammers to stop the jump gate scan.

So until someone can come up with a solution for how u can nerf jammers with out making them usless in blocking jump gate scans then the choice is more in the area of remove jammers and amps from the game or keep them as is. Nerfed jammers will lead to no one using them so I suppose it would be the same as removing them.

Thanks for describing what I wanted to hint people on earlier

I don't see any particular problem for jumpate probes with this scheme, we could simply vary the amount of ships per fleet, and maybe even remove one or two defense fleets, depending upon the amount of ships and the distorter/amp ratio.

[furball]

Frankly I think that changing the accuracy of scans is a terrible idea, especially when it comes to jgps. You're screwing with intel relations as well as individual players - and most newbies will be low on amps and more affected. Big alliance scanners will still have a role to play.

Jester's original idea is better than the rest of the crap in this thread.

Originally Posted by Banned

Make high dist planets scannable, but at a cost. Perhaps the cost could be normal scan cost * (dists / amps) (yes, this makes people with 100 distorters very expensive for people with 1 amp to scan, but still possible). A warning should be displayer before performing unreasonably expensive scans (perhaps 2x normal cost and higher?)

Distorters would be absolutly fine with this change made. The rest of you who fagged up this thread totally ignored reality in a pointless attempt to make the game 'more realistic'. Sod off.


[/irritablefurball]

[aNgRyDuCk]

in line with the distorter effecting the accuracy of the scan, could make jamming an engineering priority along with security etc (forgive me if it's already been suggested)

[Nadar]

Originally Posted by Kargool

Erm.. So building distorters as a tactic is not okay, but going xpwhore is. I guess someone doesnt like that they arent being able to scan people.. You can teach new players to roid for XP but you cant teach them to build distorters?

You got it.

Onto the discussion: It IS annoying with planets (especially Terrans) that is only building distorters. If they're quick from start they'll never be scannable. So yes, it should be possible to scan them at a VERY high cost.

[Ultimate Newbie]

Originally Posted by furball

Distorters would be absolutly fine with this change made.

I'm not so sure. Becoming a "Distorter Wh0re" with 100 distorters take alot of time (at least 400 ticks with Terran with Con P1, obviously significantly more ~900 ticks for most others) and a hell of alot of resources (approx 15 million resources).

Quite frankly, players who devote that much time and resources to become immune - more or less - to scans is i think legitimate. Thus, being able to buy your way out isnt exactly "fair" on them, as it would be far cheaper to scan you than it cost to make the jammers. For example, a Unit scan (12000 resources) on a 100 Jammer planet (~900 ticks, 15mil res) by a planet with 20 amps (which is roughly how many quite a few players end up with), costing 570k and 180 ticks of construction time, would cost (accorting to Jesterina's Formula) a mere 60000 resources (20k of each).

To me, it just doesnt seem viable to go nuts with jammers - if that is the point, then its unfortunate as scanners and jammer wh0res are a large aspect of the game and strongly benefit some races (Terrans, Ziks) in their attacking fleets.

[MrLobster]

Cost is the only way to balance it out.

However, would this work the other way, decrease the cost of a scan if there are more amps than dists? This is only because you have put your resources into Amps already.

*EDIT BELOW HERE*

Also the "cost * (Dist / Amps)" also leads to the next stage and adds a random chance.

e.g.

Variables:
Amp = 100
Dist = 200
JGP = 6000 of each resource = 18000

Cost
Cost = 18000 * (200/100) = 36000 for each scan

Chance of Scan
100 / 200 = 0.50 = 50% chance of getting through to the planet.

Expected cost of scan = 72000 (x2 because of the 50/50 chance of bypass)

(the formula is obviously a quick one, and would need tuning)

So pairing these up means,
1) Dist Whores - Dists are useful, but not impossible to bypass.
2) Scanners and the rest of the universe - Will be able to bypass dists, but it might cost a lot and even then may not get a scan.

[furball]

Ultimate Newbie: just make it very expensive - e.g. 500k of each resource to scan someone with 100 more distorters than you have amps.

[Gate]

How does increasing the cost of scans make it more newbie friendly? All it does is favour huge players who can afford 500k of each resource if they're possibly going to cap 1k roids for instance.

Scanning is probably one of the biggest challenges to those entering PA and I think removes a lot of the user-friendliness of it. Either remove distorters entirely and perhaps reduce research time for scans in order to make the gamer better for newer players, or keep it as it is in order to keep the current 'rewards' for distorter whores etc. The first suggestion would need a change to fleet scanning though, as removing faking as a tactic would suck.

IMO.

[x-dANGEr]

I don't think that anything should be done to the distorters now. It all depends on the community, when you find a new player, it might not be bad bad to give him a few hints about scans.