So Arsenal p105 refers you to Arsenal p135 and BBB p225 and 320.

Arsenal p135 refers you to Arsenal p105 and BBB p320.

Which leaves us with BBB p225 or p320.

The first states that an Area Jammer has a footprint defined by it's Signal, presumably derived from it's rating.

The second states that an Area Jammer works like a Grenade, losing 1 point of rating per 5m from the device.

So which is it?

NO ERRATA OR FAQ ENTRY!

Searching Dumpshock appears to reveal no answers other than an implied assumption by WMS and others that the first case is correct.

Although a more recent poster implied the opposite and was not contradicted by anyone including Aaron.

Searching Dumpshock also reveals that Dumpshock has a dumb-ass search.

I would use a combo of both. The footprint would be the effective area (ie outside the footprint area the signal is just to weak to be effective), but for each 5m the effectiveness within the footprint is decreased by 1.

This is how it works in real life so that is how I would play it.

Ummm....

A Rating 6 Area Jammer should have a footprint of 10km if it goes of Signal.

I think maybe you missed my original point.

I would go with the signal degradation then.

p225 refers to p320 (check the first sentence in the Jammers section), and the rules on 320 are much more specific than the rules on 225. I'd say the phrase "based on their Signal attribute" is an artifact referring to jury-rigging any wireless-enabled device as a jammer (check the official rules in Unwired, p105). Grats on discovering a future errata!

Which would of course make ECM absolutely worthless for vehicles.

If the opposition is within 50m of you then you've got bigger worries than their sensors...

What I was hoping to get is some sort of official ruling that I've missed.

Vehicle jammers are more of a defensive mechanism. Somebody trying to lock on a weapon system has to beat your full-strength jammer with their distance-degraded Signal. Most sensors are around rating 4 or so. Jammers go up to 10, plus your rigger's EW skill.

I know that real life jammers have a range in the kms. It all depends on how much power they are kicking out. How easy would it be if you took the Signal chart (pg 212 SR4) and took the signal rating of your jammer and the distance of the point affected and figured out what range you are from the edge of the jamming footprint.

Example:

A military Jamming station is using a rating 9 jammer and you are 375km from the jammer. The jamming signal would have a strength of 6 (400 - 375 = 25km wich is a rating strength of 6).

I've looked around a little and a "RL" handheld Jammer has a range of 3-20m and a military vehicle (EA-6B Prowler) has the range at service ceiling (37,600 ft) of a 260 mile radius (horizon to horizon) so there is clearly a difference from handheld unit and a vehicle unit granted this shows the strength of military grade items. But I do think that the it's rating reduction should be revised to show a difference.

I had been thinking something similar but backwards. The inverse square rule would flip this on it's head. I would count up to the table to the distance you are from the jammer.

Say, using the same example that you are 375 km from a rating 9 Jammer. Count up the table adding the Ranges together until you reach the range that you are at. I'll ignore Signal 0 for this to make things simpler.

Those add up to 155.54km. Between that point and the edge of the footprint at 400km you suffer 1 point of Signal/Sensor degradation. Between 55.54km and 155.54km it's 2 points etc, etc until you get inside the 40 meters at which point it's the full 9.

This has a number of pro's. It greatly localizes the effect while still having a realistic footprint for a vehicle mounted ECM. And it makes a reasonable nod towards real world physics.

The con's are that it doesn't take into account the ease of targetting an EM source that doesn't overwhelm your receiver and I don't like the Sensors thing.

For example, imagine that you are standing on the surface of Mercury. There is a candle directly between you and the sun half way between both.

Can you see the light the candle emits?

Now leave the candle in the same place but move yourself back to the orbit of Pluto.

Can you see the candle any better now?

Jamming should reduce the Sensor rating based on how close the object to be sensed is to the source of the jamming rather than how close the Sensor is to the source.

I would also suggest that any Jammer that does not reduce a Sensor's Rating to zero does not reduce the Sensors Rating for attempts to target the Jammer and in fact adds additional dice to such a test equal to the amount it would be reducing that Sensor's Rating by.

If you don't completely blind a Sensor it has a great deal of difficulty seeing anything but you. You on the other hand it can see you real well.

A caveat to the above before WMS reads it...

This assumes that raw signal strength is all that matters here.

Many sensors rely as much on signal structure as they do on signal strength. If you can introduce noise or misleading structure to the signal then the signal is unusable so long as the introduced elements remain within an order of magnitude of the original signal. This could lead to a situation where Jammer's effectiveness has a discrete range. Beyond that range the Jammer's effects can be identified and filtered out and within it they cannot be.

Thus you could easily have a Radar jammer that had a range of 10km (Rating 6) that would not degrade in effectiveness until you hit that limit and would become useless beyond it.

YMMV IANAEWE.

I can see the argument that if there is jamming in the area and your trying to find a non-jamming signal on the same freq and the jamming is overwhelming it (ie its rating is higher then the signal strength) that the the jamming would work against the sensor as well. If you trying to find the source of the jamming though it would be the same as trying to find any signal (since that is what jamming technically is).

At the risk of sounding glib, I believe that it's a floor wax and a dessert topping.

The problem here is interpretation. The words from page 225 of your hymnal are:


I'd like to point out that the sentence states that the area is based on it's Signal attribute, not equal to its Signal range.¹ A peek at page 320 in the same book will show that the area is based on the jammer's device rating (which is its Signal rating in the absence of specific statistics), and precisely how to calculate the jamming area based on that rating.

It's obfuscated, I'll grant you, but I don't think it's contradictory.


¹I proudly accept the Dumpshock Award for Gratuitous Use of Italicized Words in a Single Sentence on behalf of emphatic writers everywhere.

Signal is a Matrix Attribute. The Rating of that Attribute determines the effective Range of a device as clearly spelled out on p212 of the BBB in the Signal Rating Table.

This is the only thing the term Signal is ever used for. It is the very definition of the concept of Signal in SR4. To assume that in this one instance it suddenly means something else is stretching credulity.

Neither reference to Area Jammers needs to mention Signal to describe their effects. It does describe the AoE as 'large' which is clearly not the case if a Vehicle ECM only has a maximum range of 100m.

Is it too much to ask to have somebody say, yes that's a mistake or needs official clarification, we'll get on that, it'll be inserted in the FAQ or the next errata?

It does, indeed. That's the effective communication range for access to the Matrix. It's jamming range, as defined in the same book quoted, is somewhat smaller.

By the logic of your argument, a mounted motion sensor (Signal 4) can detect motion within a kilometer. Perhaps we also need errata for the cyberware scanner? It's effective range is defined as 15m, but by the argument above it's range should be at least 40m at Rating 1. Without actually looking, I believe that changes would also have to be made for the non-linear junction detector and possibly some other sensors.


This seems to be an argument from personal incredulity. Still, I would agree if the rules didn't constantly make a distinction between Signal rating and Signal range. If there was no difference, the distinction wouldn't be made over and over again. Plus, I couldn't help but notice that "Signal Rating" and "Signal Range" are two different columns of the table in question.


I'd describe the coin tossed at the beginning of the Super Bowl as "large." Ditto my colleague's fifteen-pound newborn.


Nothing is too much to ask, I think. Demand, maybe, or even expect, but not ask. Still, I'm sure some clarification will be forthcoming from official channels, if my analysis is insufficient.

Each package has a sensor range that indicates the limits of the sensor's reach (see the Signal Rating Table, p.212), though some specific sensors have their own maximum ranges.

BBB p325

The above text spells out an explicit exception for certain sensors. It clearly indicates that the default behaviour for any effect defined by Signal is for that effect to have it's range derived from the Signal Rating Table. Even so many Sensors whose range is not defined by the Signal of the package still have a fixed Signal Rating which one is then forced to refer to the Signal Rating Table to apply, Ultra Wideband Radar for example. Sensors that do not have a range that can be derived from the table are not described as having a Signal Rating.

Signal is by definition the range an effect is transmitted over with reference to the Signal Rating Table. It is applied to several things, including Matrix communication and the range of passive sensors.

As an Area Jammer has no Signal Attribute other than the one we could derive from it's Device Rating and does not use the Signal Rating Table to determine Range the text on p225 is erroneous.

IT IS IN EVERY WAY FLAT WRONG! THE RANGE OF AN AREA JAMMER IS NOT DERIVED FROM IT'S SIGNAL RATING. IT IS DERIVED FROM IT'S DEVICE RATING USING A DIFFERENT MECHANIC.

IT NEEDS ERRATA.




Ah, you will dismiss my argument by twisting it to appear to be a rhetorical fallacy. Because such a fallacy exists any argument that contains the word 'credulity' must be false, QED. Fail.




Aaron, I know for a fact that you are a very smart man, so I can only assume that you are deliberately trying to be obtuse here to appear to support your position.



Yes the distinction is made over and over again. And every time it is made reference is made to the Signal Rating Table.




Relative to other coins and newborns.

Compared to a Celebrian Striker? A quick glance at Wikipedia reveals most Corvettes are in the 100m+ range. The Striker only has ECM 5 which isn't even enough to cover half the length of the vessel. Only the bridge would receive the full effect.

How would you suggest dealing with targeting a vehicle that doesn't fit inside it's own ECM?

I certainly wouldn't recommend marketing such a device to the Navy using the word large anywhere.





While I appreciate you taking the time I feel your time would have been better spent doing something else. Desperately twisting the text to appear to be consistent when it plainly isn't is a waste of your talents. Such head in the sand stalling tactics are a waste of everyone's time and beneath you.

I would rule that if a device says that it has a signal of 6 but an effective range of 15m then I would say the range in which you can detect and control the device would be based on its signal rating and the range of the device (in this case a scanner) to scan the real world would be its effective range.

It is kinda like UAVs. The receiver on them have a range exceeding 150km, but their on board scanners can only detect stuff within a few km of the plane. That is because it is important to be able to control the device from a distance but too costly to have the detectors have similar ranges.

In SR the drone's dog-brain and sensor suite have different separate Signal Ratings.

It's true. I also believe that such a maximum range can be imposed on devices other than sensors.


I was under the opinion that each of the Matrix attributes for a particular device equals its Device rating. It's possible I was mistaken; I'll check my hymnal (on or around p. 213, I believe) when I get a chance.


Here we are in agreement, although I suspect for different reasons.