I mean, you aren't going to avoid jammers camping objectives or creating overlapping AROs like that, but sometimes you can get through certain ZOCs. Whether it does anything for you depends on particular units and tables though.
And more importantly, whether the Jammer player is competent enough to spot key points where a "universal hacker" can cover to prevent aggression and to get those "universal hackers" there. A Jammer that isn't well positioned tends to be a smaller nuisance than most poorly placed models.
If you have static objectives to watch out for, then yes. Sometimes you want to guard your assets instead (like your link if you need to have one out, like in some zone control scenarios), and on most tables that means extra repositioning and need to cover many possible approaches which you realistically cannot fully do. Which means sometimes opponent will be able to pick a better approach (or another objective, thanks to secondaries/classifed-s, depending on scenario) and sneak over there. But yeah, that's very specific scenario and it's not that common in ITS, seems to me. Otherwise you will want to abuse no-LoF stuff to stack AROs to defend your positions, and you will be able to do so. Or hell, even plop one on some roof near your console or what have you. This is why I think Jammers must count, at very least, as Comm Equipment, and probably be weakened by hacking-specific defensive mods. As much as it can be a noob trap to attack a Jammer with Blackout, sometimes you just don't have more efficient options. Aaand I still think that Engineering away status effects should be way more order-efficient than it is now, but that has to do with more stuff than just Jammers.
I confirm, this is the thing i did the very first time i faced a cutter. I put some stacked mimetic suppressive fire, counting on the mods to make the cutter lose orders (i wasn't expecting to deal damages, just to make it use 2-3 orders per reactive troop). It killed my troops with 1 order each even with -9 to hit :'( (well taking the range band into account, it was hitting on 9- while my troops were hitting at 2- or 3-, so in fact the result was to be expected, i just didn't do the math before)
Any intelligently-designed jammer should be 'talking' to your communications system, so that it isn't jamming whatever frequency you are talking on at the moment, but is jamming whatever frequencies your enemy is trying to talk on.
That kind of Jammer you're talking about doesn't work permanently. The Jammer we have is more likely E/M flood and that can't avoid frequencies.
why IMM-2? we cannot use hacking to freeze a HI and put it in IMM-2 (well, hacking to freeze is a waste of time), so why using your own equipment should? I think maybe instead, they could be isolated too, jamming all comunication, not only the enemy, but their own too
Because the impact of isolating an irregular, impetuous 5 pt model is very different to isolating a regular order generating 25+ point model. Plus, EM flood on all frequencies everywher, and to prevent them from being jammer turrents around the corner. But this is all just spitballing
True, but then it makes them something you'll only use after proper setup, given the crippling impact they can have. Also, adds value to engineers.
Well, make them more like 1 time only use, crippling them more than what they do to the enemy, and make a need of other trooper more important to them than to the enemy to "fix" them is overkilling them, more when there are still ways to deal with jammers (just not so point and click as some would like to). Nobody would spend 2-3 orders in sending an engineer to repair that 5 points dude, and nobody would field the 20-30 ones
*shrug* They should cost according to performance or perform according to cost. Making them Disposable(1) would be inline with a D.E.P. while increasing cost by an additional 4 and 0.5SWC would be in line with an Assault Hacking Device (once you take into account Intuitive Attack, lack of attack effect diversity+specialist and immunity to common hacker vulnerabilities) The extra cost I write here is of course fairly arbitrary, I would personally value a Jammer higher than an Assault Hacking Device, although I usually think an Assault Hacking Device is a bit expensive in a game where people run lists dense with LI/SK/WB. If Jammers is a means to curb the LI/SK/WB spam, then it should be limited in scope accordingly.
We both know that a heckler like that would not be fielded, because an AHD would do the same against those objectives, without the possibility of getting imm-2 (succeding him or not), do missions and can do other things (possess the tag, for example, and all of that when AHD are underperforming), but that one time use heckler would be a waste against almost anything else
That's just par for the course though in infinity. I don't wanna bring up the combi/SMg debacle, or the fact that FAL L2 and such seem to be...simplistically priced.
Requires a WIP roll, and limited camo means he then can't get to hide in marker state from the inevitable enemy KHD. But this will devolve into and endless spiral
Still think Nullifier-style Jammer would be interesting to test. My current grievance with Jammers is how they get super-useful when you stack units on top of them. Isolated is very powerful, however, and the effect would need to be adapted to a persistent AOE instead of using that state directly. Unfortunately, that's not quite how Varuna plays... I agree that any change would need to be reasonable, whether buff or nerf, and having IMM-2 on use would be far too excessive.
My favoured option is placing Targeted on Jammer users. Not awful, but fluffy (it's an E/M flare that can ruin radios, sensors could pick that up as easily as a beacon) and makes it easier to deal with roof-campers using Spec/Guided Fire without making Jammers nearly unusable.
