Unit Suggestion: Radar Jammer

I've been thinking of a useful unit: A radar jammer. Every unit within its radius is invisible to radar. T2 radars can detect units within its radius however.

The search button is real, you know

Maybe it's hidden by a radar jammer?

Anyways, it's been discussed before, but personally I'd like to see something like this in PA, especially since the AI uses radar, unlike other games.

i would much rather have specialized stealth units.

A radar jammer would feel very awkward in the scale of PA.

For this to be balanced i think a jammer would have to cost more than advanced radar, and have less range.

I was thinking that it'd have a high energy consumption to balance it out

I feel that stealth fields fit more into PA's scale than individual stealthed units.

Agreed. Individual stealth units are pretty micro intensive.

Radar jamming is a nice way to hide your base. It'd also be great for setting up surprise proxy bases.

Actually +1 to this, could be a proper counter to long range artillery....

The proxy base thing made me think differently about this.

Yeah that would be pretty interesting, but hiding a proxy base would be very OP unless the jammer costs a LOT of metal/power.

I don't think it'll be OP. I think it'll just mean we can't rely entirely on radar. Which is the whole point. All you need to do is scout regularly and you'd be fine.

You could easily set up a factory to build nothing but Fireflies and area patrol the entire planet with that factory. I've seen people do it before and it's a very powerful strategy. Gives you almost full vision.

In order to keep opness down, the radar jammer cannot have any radar units placed in its effect area. This way you cannot create invisible artillery bases.

The point is, if you scout regularly and should anyway, then radar jamming is not OP. Radar is OP without it IMO.

The more its discussed the more im liking the idea, this way you would needs units giving to give vision for a proper artillery strike rather than being able to just fire at will due to a radar half across the map.

A scrambler could be a nice balance, that is, it would fill an area with a solid block of radar/tons of useless blips.

Yeah. That would be a way to Nerf it bro.

I see that and I'm all like OH THERES AN ENEMY THERE. I guess I'll just attack move my bombers straight to the center of the jamming field annnnd KERBLAM. Jamming destroyed.

Jamming gives you stealth. And proper, real world jamming of a radar is directed at individual radar emmiter/received stations. Thus, jamming would be more of a radar shield type deal then a jam, per set.

this would be a building then, not a unit, right? perhaps there can be a unit version of it, but it should jam your own radar too. that way you need to keep vision on these stations. these stations and units should have very little actual vision of their own though.

A unit version seems silly to me and unbalanced. I think a fixed structure would be better because it allows the "no radar units in range" thing to take effect. I think a scrambler would be useful however, to create a diversion.

Mobile jammers didn't seem silly in TA, nor Supcom.

in supcom the were actually ludicrously efficient at triking your opponent into not attacking you because he thought you had an army as big as his where you actually had nothing.

It's what the entire UEF naval play hinged on:
rush to t3 because t1 you have nothing (complete **** units)
t2 you're pretty well of because you're the only one in sea with shield tech
and t3 you're totally unstoppable and it's amazing! : D

as a result there was only a single jamming unit in he entire game : the t1 UEF frigate that's the only one that could do it.

And because radar actually was a thing, not a gimmik (C.F. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/differenciated-radar-blips.49424/) it worked!