Had to get this one down before I forgot it and it's a suggestion for 3.0 or whenever empires' golden age comes. This Radar Jamming suggestion is for a infantry portable communications disruption device. What this device would do is block all the alert messages incoming from headquarters about barracks, radar, refinery, vf and any other buildings that are taking damage. It would also stop the commander from transmitting any commands to the unit (i.e. target marking, guard/movement commands). It would not stop the commander from placing buildings near the unit nor from the commander seeing the unit, the unit would simply not receive any communications alerts from the commander and base, as if it were being ignored and/or left to it's own devices (text and voice chat are not effected in this suggestion). This device should be similar to the camera in both size and area jammed and should probably not require building by an engineer (probably better to give it to the scout or maybe even rifleman). It could probably be disguised as a small crate or ammo-shaped box and would disrupt both vehicles and infantry in its zone.
Sounds like a frustrataton. Don't get me wrong, it's well thought out and all, but probably more frustrating that it's worth.
Yeah, if players didn't know it was jammed, they would just think the game was broken or something. It would be pretty difficult to implement this in a satisfactory way.
I like the idea of a jamming device or skill. Not sure if your implementation would be the best way to do it but in general its a very nice idea imo. In a recent discussion on underpowered class specific skills, the radar stealth skill came up, what I basicly suggested was 2 things, any attacks made by a scout with that skill (granted hes in a tank, as its a tank skill) will not sound any warnings, so if he attacked a refinery there would be no blinking minimap icon or "refinery under attack" warnings for the opposing team. The second suggestion I made, which was more an idea to change the skill all together, was to turn radar stealth skill into a jamming skill. Basicly if the enemy would be inrange of a scout with this skill, all their radar abilities would be scrambled, their camera diamonds would either show friendlies (to make the diamond act like a human, as in it would be hard to figure out its scrambled unless you find out its a friendly), along with minimap and what not being scrambled aswell. I personally don't like the idea of waypoints not working, they are just an extra tool to aid the commander, they don't have any hardcoded advantage, you can still communicate over mic and text. It would be pointless to not have these work and more of an annoyance than anything else, seeing such a jamming device will be in every round.
You may be right, that sounds pretty good actually. Waypoints may not need jamming thats true, but i'm sure it'd be an aid if a scout could be in a battle aiding his teammates by denying the enemy comm the ability to target mark them. That actually sounds like a skill all on it's own :confused:
I'd quite like any sort of strong jamming field to be generated only by something thats a bit of a liability - say something that gets bought that can either be a crate like thing carried by infantry (but no gun while holding it) or a heavy attachment for a tank/jeep (meaning fewer guns/armour) or a towable thing for jeeps/tanks/whatnot. If its a separate object like 1 or 3, then it should be fairly easy to kill. That said, my preferences would mainly work against something ranged like a bigger radar (although the infantry one could be carried to a ref etc, the ref destroyed with no messages and then picked up again). Actually it could fit with DIzzy's jamming skill he wanted to give to scouts - how about just having a blank area of mini-map with nothing other than yourself (as an enemy of the jamming thing) showing up within the area of effect, no friendlies no anything other than terrain and yourself. Will radar ranges go up a lot with later versions and huge maps with blimps etc?
I'll bump this one rather than making a whole new topic for another scout-related suggestion. Thermal imaging on binoculars :confused: (you wouldn't be able to spot troops via thermal imaging, but a scout in the field could see them).
I think its better if you make a new thread on it, its easier to find with search, when someone decides to refer to the suggestion and discussion on it. Having different suggestions in the same thread can also be very confusing where people will start to reply to different suggestions in the same thread.
i really do like making radar stealth not give attack messages, it turns into into both a weak hide (as it is now) and weak vehicle silencer.
I like this idea, I think it would be interesting if it also caused chat message disruption, like random character replacement with the garbled effect you get when the chat fades out. Not really heavy, but just so that there's a chance that it might take a bit longer to interpret orders.
Now there's an idea. I'd say mix that chat garbling along with a slight 'static' effect across the screen as a visual aid to tell the player that they're being jammer.
