Sana Rayya
WASTELAND JUNK REMOVAL
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Posted - 2013.09.26 16:29:00 -
[1] - Quote
Oh great, another thread about deployable jammers.
Here's why it's OP and not a valid counter to scanners:
1) Active scanners are active items, meaning they must be constantly carried to be of use. It represents an equipment slot that is used up for the entirety of the game (assuming you want continuous scan data). A deployable jammer, like uplinks, could last throughout the entire game unless destroyed, meaning you have freed up a slot once you deploy it and switch to a different suit.
2) Active scans, being active, require you to put away your primary weapon in order to use the item, and you have to do this every time you want intel. A deployable jammer is "set it and forget it" unless it's destroyed.
3) Active scans have a cool down time. A deployable jammer does not.
4) Active scanners only benefit you and your squad. A deployable jammer would benefit anyone on your team assuming they are within an arbitrary radius. One person giving intel to one full squad =/= one person denying intel to the enemy, and doing so for your entire team (within the radius).
5) A deployable jammer passively nullifies an equipment slot for any enemy carrying a scanner of equal or lesser level (assuming it will function as you want it to). This is a very important point because we do not have anything else in the game that works this way. If the enemy has too many drop uplinks or nanohives, you have to counter them through destruction/fluxing/whatever. You can't push a button or drop equipment that renders them ineffective so long as they are within a certain radius of you.
6) A deployable jammer gives a passive buff to any teammate within its radius with no limit except the radius itself, and thereby replaces modules that must otherwise be used to achieve that buff. Do we have droppables that increase a merc's movement speed or stamina, shield regen/regulation, armor buffer, or hacking speed within a certain radius? There is only one deployable that works this way - the triage nanohive, which replaces armor repair modules. Yet look at its limitations- it has a short spherical range, requires line of sight, and only heals a finite amount of HP before it pops. Your jammer would be the equivalent of a triage hive that had a 50-100m radius (or whatever radius you choose) passively increasing armor rep by say, 5hp/sec, without requiring line of sight, and never running out unless destroyed. Sounds OP, doesn't it?
7) Imagine what the active scanner would be like if it worked like the deployable jammer you are proposing. You just have to drop it on a rooftop or inside a defensible area and any enemy with a sufficiently high scan profile would light up as soon as they entered the radius. You could swap to other suits with different equipment since you don't need to carry a handheld scanner anymore, and you wouldn't have to refresh your scan data either - it's always accurate for anyone not running dampeners. Does this sound OP to you? And yet for jammers to work like this is okay?
I'm sure someone will point out that the active scanner is a piece of equipment that replaces precision enhancers and range amplifiers, and although the scanners are powerful, they are NOT a exact replacement for these modules. Active scanning is interval based and limited by direction; passive scanning is always on. As mentioned, active scanning requires you to put away your weapon, and in instances where you do not have a scanner and someone else scanning, your intel is limited by their scan intervals as well as their scan range in relation to you. Even excluding stealthy mercs, due to its interval nature, active scanning is not 100% accurate while passive scanning is. For instance, if you scan an area right before enemies respawn in that area, they will not show up on your scan until you scan the area again. The problem with using passive scanning to replace active is that no one skills into range amplifiers/precision enhancers because they require you to sacrifice too much for too a very limited benefit.
The jammer that you are proposing, however, would work exactly like a profile dampener without any drawbacks so long as you were within its effective range. It would replace an entire module and relays its effects to the entire team, with no limitation other than radius and no way to stop it other than device destruction. This is absolutely OP.
The only jammers I could support would work exactly like triage hives - with a short radius, line of sight required, and limited dampening effect which would pop after a certain number of cycles were consumed. Alternatively they could work as active equipment like scanners - using it wipes the illumination time or dampens the profile of any merc within a radius of you by a finite dB number (if their new scan profile is under the dB of the enemy scanner, they don't show up), it has a cool down time and must be equipped to use. The effect would only last for a limited interval or would only work for the duration of a single scan. |