About that warp jammer...

[chemical_art]

Idea: Buff the warp jammer.

Idea 1:
Make the warp jammer work on deeper AI planets. This would aid in exo waves.

Idea 2:
Let the jammer reduce reinforcements on nearby enemy worlds.

Idea 3:
Let the jammer protect nearby planets, allowing jammers to give "clouds" of protection.

[zoutzakje]

great ideas, but probably won't happen unless unit caps goes from 5 to 1 or something

[Commiesalami]

The real effectiveness of the warp jammer is based upon what map type you've got.  Maps like snake, the mazes, vine, conecentric circles etc.  are really not the place to get them.  But I play on realiistic almost all of the time so there is plenty of opprotunities to make the most of the Warp Jammer

Honestly, on a pretty dense galaxy the warp jammer is a awesome investment.  Say you place your warp jammers in places where each can block 3 warp gates.  That means an AI progress reduction of 15 for each one and an effective 75 AIP progress reduction total.

5000k for reducing AI progress by 75+ (in my current game I've got 3 in place effectively reducing AI progress effectively by 60) is a faily good investment IMO.  I thnk its fine the way it is, the Warp Jammer is an option with opprotunity costs (can't place another command station & counteracts 2 resource gatherers) that players consider based upon their own preferences and the game they are in.

[chemical_art]

The real effectiveness of the warp jammer is based upon what map type you've got.  Maps like snake, the mazes, vine, conecentric circles etc.  are really not the place to get them.  But I play on realiistic almost all of the time so there is plenty of opprotunities to make the most of the Warp Jammer

Honestly, on a pretty dense galaxy the warp jammer is a awesome investment.  Say you place your warp jammers in places where each can block 3 warp gates.  That means an AI progress reduction of 15 for each one and an effective 75 AIP progress reduction total.

5000k for reducing AI progress by 75+ (in my current game I've got 3 in place effectively reducing AI progress effectively by 60) is a faily good investment IMO.  I thnk its fine the way it is, the Warp Jammer is an option with opprotunity costs (can't place another command station & counteracts 2 resource gatherers) that players consider based upon their own preferences and the game they are in.

It actually nullifies much more then two harvesters. It nullifies 5 because you have both the actual cost to maintain and the opportunity cost of the positive resource flow. You lose 5 harvesters (2.5 each resource) compared to a military station, and it gets worst from there. And that still doesn't stop the reinforcement points; without defenses the station will still get popped. That was why I suggested idea #2, it would encourage the viability of this tactic. Even if it were free I wouldn't use it as it is...

But if you got a low cap version (2?) for free, and then the option for a more powerful pair, that could get me interested in mixing it with my priorities. But the whammy of the heavy drain on econ makes me very, very skittish.

[Hearteater]

It could probably get at least a zero resource cost given the opportunity cost of other Command Stations.

[Eternaly_Lost]

I personally would like to see the Warp Jammer made into a separate structure that blocks all income on a planet, rather then the way it done now. Maybe even have it do the inverse and draw all waves to a planet, even at the cost of making them 2x or more larger.

The reason I would like to see that, is that in my games, I generally have 3-6 systems that I can't lose, but it 1-4 of those that I can't build it on due to them holding Human Command Stations and the other two are my last point Whipping Boy and my Front Point Whipping Boy. I don't want any waves coming to the Human Command Stations and I would like an inverse warp jammer, one that draws all the AI waves to that planet, on to either of the Whipping boys. Outside of some very nasty waves from Warp Guardposts, the Whipping boys want to get every wave, and every other system is more or less replaceable.

Well losing a Fab is annoying, I normally play Fallen Spire, so those MkV ships are nothing compared to the Spire Fleet I get. Same with the Factory Mk IV, I don't care if I lose that after I get two or three cities up. The Firepower of the MKV units, that can't even be built there, is nothing compared to the Spire fleet that I have flying around and can easily replace and rebuild quickly at one location rather then 1 ship type every 3 or so planets.

[Toranth]

Personally, I agree that the cost is simply too high to use the current Warp Jammer.  5000 K to unlock, replaces the command center which means a significant economic + other benefit opportunity cost, and it fails to do anything about reinforcements or standard border aggression.  This means you still need to neuter all adjacent AI systems, as well as go back regularly to keep them clean.  A lot of effort for something with such high costs.

I like chemical_art's idea #3 - Making the Warp Jammer act on it's own and all adjacent human planets (similar to the AI's Interplanetary Munitions Booster).  This increase in efficiency makes the cost seem much more worthwhile.  Additionally, it becomes a bit more of an awkward tradeoff to use.  If you cover all your planets, you've got the dreaded CPA-warp attacks, which is probably worse than the AIP would have been.

Chemical_art's idea #2 is an interesting alternative.  Even if the only Warp Jammer improvement was to prevent the current system from putting adjacent AI worlds on alert, this could be a major benefit by reducing the amount of boring cleanup tasks that need to be performed.

I also like, REALLY like, the idea of making it a standalone building.  This cuts the opportunity cost of losing the command station, which is a pretty major buff right there.


The concept of the Warp Jammer - an alternative method to allow the player to manipulate the AI's strategic behavior - is lovely.  My favorite scenario would be to have the current Warp Jammer as a standalone building, also have a Signal Jammer that prevents the AI from going on alert due the the human planet, and also have an AI Aggrevator that causes the AI to direct all (or most?) waves at a specific planet (could cause waves to come more often, be more powerful, go up a tech level, or even cause a AIP-over-time increase like the Spire Civilians).
Maybe add them to the Zenith Trader?

[Cyborg]

Idea 2 is probably the least overpowered and most useful. I like it.

[keith.lamothe]

So for #2, for the neighboring planets:

Reduce the chance of the AI picking that planet for reinforcement?

or make it impossible for the AI to pick that planet to reinforce? (probably OP if you jam a homeworld)

or make it so that only the command station gets reinforcements, no guard posts (including wormhole guard posts) ?

My preference would be the last one as I think it would be the least fiddly.  It would basically be "neuter all the planets next to this one".  Might be OP, but might simply be proportionate to the warp jammer's cost, too.

[chemical_art]

Maybe, but neutering is not very hard. Maybe on simple and realistic maps it would be more useful since with so many wormholes there would be more wormhole posts.

I was aiming it not as likely to get a reinforcement tick. Isn't with the current logic that homeworld gets reinforcements per tick regardless, or something? I know they get them on a greater then non-alerted planet average.

Honestly, unless someone showed me evidence of just how much a reduction of reinforcements without the posts were, I still wouldn't use it. If I really was worried I'd get my bombers and blow the posts away, since it takes longer then fortresses but then again the fleet can help and/or protect while my economy recovers, for example.

[Eternaly_Lost]

or make it impossible for the AI to pick that planet to reinforce? (probably OP if you jam a homeworld)

If you are really able to sit next to a homeworld and do that, is the game not already almost over? But there is a very simple fix for that. Make the AI Home Command Station grant system immunity, so that it does not work on the homeworld until you have already cleaned it off. Exo waves still come in though the EXO-gate right? So it not like you can just drop it and ignore that area.

[keith.lamothe]

True, neutering planets is already something you can do.  So perhaps just forcing "non-alert" status, basically, to cut down on reinforcement frequency.

[HellishFiend]

Non alert status! Perfect! That gives us a way to nab desirable things adjacent to core worlds, at a justifiable AIP cost for unlocking the warp jammer station, of course.

Perhaps the alert status effect shouldnt work on homeworlds though, as that has obvious abuse potential.

[TechSY730]

True, neutering planets is already something you can do.  So perhaps just forcing "non-alert" status, basically, to cut down on reinforcement frequency.

Yes, sometimes even the small amount of build up that a single reinforcement point (the home command station itself) can be an issue, especially with high Mk. planets.

And sometimes a planet is so well defended that even neutering or even merely taking out ONE guard post is impractically expensive.

[PokerChen]

Non-alert status is very intriguing, as it simply re-directs reinforncements elsewhere instead of decreasing it (we don't want that, do we" ). Perhaps we could rename it as a subspace jammer?

If we do this, can we then introduce some interactions to counterbalance that? I've been playing map-styles with a couple of planets that are connected to ~10 others. I'm thinking, for example, that alarm posts, Warpgate guardians, and AI trains should grant planet immunity to this jamming (the AI resorts to other means of direct communication instead of wide-band radio)...

Also, how would it work thematically if we then K-raid? Surely we can't fool the AI by too much. This non-alert should be tied just to the human-planet adjacency, and break if we had too many military ships on the planet.