all possible uses of software? not gonna happen. you can't predict how software will interact with other software, or to viral attacks, power surges, etcetera.

at any rate, there are enough other problems with SR4 jamming that i'm not going to quibble about this one. if the jamming radius thing ever gets fixed, then it might be worth looking into lesser issues.

and again i call that its not the jammer thats broken, but the signal rating of all the other gear (alltho broken maybe be to strong a word). they have a fixed strength at a fixed range, while the jammer have a "natural" drop in the strength over distance.

quick fix, use the drop of rules on the comlink, or remove the drop of from the jammer

so lets see what advanced rules that unwired will bring to the table, hmm?

btw, SR4 list the signal rating as being hardware related.

but it isn't natural at all. in order to jam frequencies, you have to pump out a lot of noise. in that near-far link you provided, remember, it doesn't talk about someone standing next to the reciever and whispering to drown you out, it talks about someone standing next to the reciever and shouting to drown you out. if you're pumping out a lot of noise, your noise is going to be audible for a very long distance. much longer than the 45 meters that a rating 9 jammer can manage.

ok, so the scale is a bit of, but the basic dropoff is in there.

two options, they didnt want to put citywide jamming equipment into the main book as it would make the basic wireless matrix useless, or there is some interesting property in the way the matrix protcols work where the jamming (alteast in a man-portable package) isnt effective beyond a short distance.

hmm, most military scale jammers (atleast those that aim to jam radars) are vehicle sized, yes? like that intruder carrier-based aircraft...

yes, the fact that signal strength degrades over distance is referenced--probably by accident--in the jammer rules. i mean, if that level of realism satisfies you, that's okay. if i were going to make demands about what other people do with their games, i'd probably start by making 'em play SR3 instead, y'know?

but if you want realism, the problem with SR4 jammers isn't the drop over distance. that's the part they sorta got right. the part that most concerns me is the part where SR4 jammers basically whisper--they transmit at so low power that their jamming has no effect at a distance greater than 45 meters, and that's using one of the strongest jammers available. they whisper, and somehow all radio communication in the area of effect just stops. the effect, the range, the availability... this is seriously some Buck Rogers tech, right here.

We all know that the WiMatrix is a series of magic tubes, and jamming those tubes would merely require you to fill all those tubes, preventing the things you put in them to reach their destination.


A bit more serious though, in regards to the OP, if your drone was using it's signal to jam everything around it, you would never be able to get it to do anything else... not wireless at least...


If this comes up during our games, i'll just create a jamming program, and allow the drone to load and execute it, basically turning it into a jammer equal to (Signal Rating + Jamming Program)/2 round down.

you know, i got a Wireless Matrix yesterday, and it was sent to me on Friday.

ugh, it all would be so much simpler if not a single number was made to define both range and effectiveness.