Logs for ShadowRN and Associated Mailing Lists

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	Jammers and other electronics
Date:	Sun, 21 Mar 2004 19:02:17 +0100

Message no. 1 I've got a small problem with jammers and other similar electronics in SR:
they're a bit too powerful. Think about what'll happen when you switch on
a rating 6 jammer (typical shadowrunner equipment, if you ask me) in a
city... Every typical radio within a radius of about _25_km_ will have
static come out of the speakers!

So, after only 5 1/2 years of using SR3 with this nagging at me every time
somebody in my group actvated a jammer, tonight I suddenly realized
there's a simple solution: let the character using the jammer decide how
to split the device's rating between its actual function, and its Flux.
This way, you could have your rating 6 jammer work poorly over a wide
area, or very well in a small area, or anything in between. (These same
rules can be used for any device whose rating determines both how well it
works, and how far it can broadcast -- I would assume anything of this
nature is fully adjustable in the 2060s.)

What do you think?

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Those who ignore history are doomed to keep liking crappy dance
covers of great songs.
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	graht1@*******.com (David Buehrer)
Subject:	Jammers and other electronics
Date:	Sun, 21 Mar 2004 11:55:51 -0700

Message no. 2 >From: Gurth <gurth@******.nl>
>
>I've got a small problem with jammers and other similar electronics in SR:
>they're a bit too powerful. Think about what'll happen when you switch on
>a rating 6 jammer (typical shadowrunner equipment, if you ask me) in a
>city... Every typical radio within a radius of about _25_km_ will have
>static come out of the speakers!

Which is why Runners shouldn't use them, especially in high security rating
areas. It won't take long for the police to home in on the jammer, and the
runners. IMHO a jammer is something to be used when either A) You don't
care if the opposition knows you're coming, B) As a distraction (look at
this jammer over here while I'm over there), or C) You're screwed and
lighting up the jammer couldn't make it any worse.

-Graht

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From:	shane@**************.freeserve.co.uk (Shane Mclean)
Subject:	Jammers and other electronics
Date:	Sun, 21 Mar 2004 20:26:28 -0000

Message no. 3 From: "Gurth"
> This way, you could have your rating 6 jammer work poorly over a
> wide area, or very well in a small area, or anything in between.

The problem is that the range is alla bout power, and if the power is low it
will be less effective asa jammer, so I dunno if this makle sense. From an
army point of view, when we're jamming it is ALL about power, and power
gives range.

You could, however, argue that the rating is more baout the sophistication
of the jamming tech (frequency hopping, active frequency tracking and
neutralisation, etc) and that the flux canbe lowered to make the range
shorter, but in that case there would eb a slight degrading in rating too
(say 1 for every 2 points of flux decrease).

Shane

From:	loneeagle@********.co.uk (Lone Eagle)
Subject:	Jammers and other electronics
Date:	Sun, 21 Mar 2004 20:46:15 +0000

Message no. 4 At 06:55 PM 3/21/2004, Graht wrote:
>>city... Every typical radio within a radius of about _25_km_ will have
>>static come out of the speakers!
>
>Which is why Runners shouldn't use them, especially in high security
>rating areas. It won't take long for the police to home in on the jammer,
>and the runners. IMHO a jammer is something to be used when either A) You
>don't care if the opposition knows you're coming, B) As a distraction
>(look at this jammer over here while I'm over there), or C) You're screwed
>and lighting up the jammer couldn't make it any worse.

IMO A jammer can be set up to operate on a specific frequency (which
requires that you know the frequency you're trying to jam) or broad spectrum.
But in general it's use is limited to where everyone expects it or as a get
out of jail free card... The opposition knows you're there already, your
only hope is to go balls out to the wind and try to stop them getting
organised in the process.

--
Lone Eagle
"Hold up lads, I got an idea."

www.wyrmtalk.co.uk - Please be patient, this site is under construction

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GCC0.2: y75>?.uk[NN] G87 S@:@@[SR] B+++ f+ RM(RR) rm++ rr++ l++(--) m- w
s+(+++) GM+++(-) A GS+(-) h++ LA+++ CG--- F c+

From:	shane@**************.freeserve.co.uk (Shane Mclean)
Subject:	Jammers and other electronics
Date:	Sun, 21 Mar 2004 20:54:17 -0000

Message no. 5 <snip my last post>

I know replying to your own post is unusual to say the least, but I felt I
had to apologise for my terrible spelling - need sleep, and to press "F7"
more...

:-)

Shane

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	Jammers and other electronics
Date:	Mon, 22 Mar 2004 11:05:59 +0100

Message no. 6 According to Shane Mclean, on Sunday 21 March 2004 21:26 the word on the
street was...

> You could, however, argue that the rating is more baout the
> sophistication of the jamming tech (frequency hopping, active frequency
> tracking and neutralisation, etc) and that the flux canbe lowered to
> make the range shorter, but in that case there would eb a slight
> degrading in rating too (say 1 for every 2 points of flux decrease).

True, but AFAIK about this subject (which, admittedly, isn't all that much)
if you want to broadcast on more than one frequency, you'll need to split
your available power between them all, resulting in less range than if you
would put all your power into a single frequency. I would therefore argue
that a high-rating jammer does something similar: putting more energy into
the rating means it'll operate on a wider frequency band, or something,
which means less range.

In any case it feels right to me from a game rules perspective :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Those who ignore history are doomed to keep liking crappy dance
covers of great songs.
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	Jammers and other electronics
Date:	Mon, 22 Mar 2004 11:09:12 +0100

Message no. 7 According to David Buehrer, on Sunday 21 March 2004 19:55 the word on the
street was...

> Which is why Runners shouldn't use them, especially in high security
> rating areas. It won't take long for the police to home in on the
> jammer, and the runners. IMHO a jammer is something to be used when
> either A) You don't care if the opposition knows you're coming, B) As a
> distraction (look at this jammer over here while I'm over there), or C)
> You're screwed and lighting up the jammer couldn't make it any worse.

Very true, but that is not what I'm trying to correct :) It just feels
wrong to me that many electronic devices in SR (I used the jammer as an
example because it's most obvious there, IMHO) use their rating to
indicate both their sophistication, and their overall power. This was
probably done for simplicity, so that devices wouldn't need to be assigned
to separate ratings to confuse the players with, but it doesn't feel right
to me.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Those who ignore history are doomed to keep liking crappy dance
covers of great songs.
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	shane@**************.freeserve.co.uk (Shane Mclean)
Subject:	Jammers and other electronics
Date:	Mon, 22 Mar 2004 18:32:23 -0000

Message no. 8 > In any case it feels right to me from a game rules perspective :)

Well then, sold!

If it works.... Good point about the splitting between frequencies, also.

Shane

From:	ShadowRN@********.demon.co.uk (Paul J. Adam)
Subject:	Jammers and other electronics
Date:	Sat, 27 Mar 2004 09:48:00 +0000

Message no. 9 In article <200403221105.59747.gurth@******.nl>, Gurth <gurth@******.nl>
writes
>True, but AFAIK about this subject (which, admittedly, isn't all that much)
>if you want to broadcast on more than one frequency, you'll need to split
>your available power between them all, resulting in less range than if you
>would put all your power into a single frequency.

Of course this is only true for barrage noise jamming. There are many,
many more ways to play around with the EM spectrum.

For comms jammers, you're relatively limited: but merely blasting the
target spectrum with white noise is a crude approach. For a network,
and/or a frequency-agile system, one approach is to attack the timing
signal that the system needs to know *when* to change frequencies...
this is usually a much softer target than the messaging itself.

Similarly, the more encryption and protection you put on your network,
the more vulnerable to jamming it becomes (you can take a lot more
corruption in plain voice and still extract the meaning, than you can a
digitally-encrypted message) provided you can get the jamming into the
right bins.

For sensor jammers... plain noise is not just obsolete but downright
dangerous, unless it's an expendable offboard jammer. "Home On Jam" is a
pretty standard reversion for many guided weapons: and the sort of
active-array sensors in use by then would be able to beamform around
noise sources.

Assuming that mechanically scanned aerials are thoroughly obsolete by
the 2060s and the aerials of the day have basically eliminated
sidelobes, you're left with *proper* jamming that attacks the rangegate
or velocity gate; cross-polarisation attacks; crosseye repeaters; and so
forth. (And don't forget the role of active and passive decoys in
co-operation with jamming)

>I would therefore argue
>that a high-rating jammer does something similar: putting more energy into
>the rating means it'll operate on a wider frequency band, or something,
>which means less range.
>
>In any case it feels right to me from a game rules perspective :)

I'd say rather that a high-rating jammer was more precisely attacking
its target: narrower jamming beams, and much more specific to that
target. So, more effect on that threat: less disruption elsewhere (and
less chance of detecting the jamming, a key point: you want the enemy
cursing because their BattleTac won't synchronise for reasons unknown,
not immediately realising it's being jammed)

--
Paul J. Adam

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	Jammers and other electronics
Date:	Sat, 27 Mar 2004 11:54:32 +0100

Message no. 10 According to Paul J. Adam, on Saturday 27 March 2004 10:48 the word on the
street was...

> For comms jammers, you're relatively limited: but merely blasting the
> target spectrum with white noise is a crude approach. For a network,
> and/or a frequency-agile system, one approach is to attack the timing
> signal that the system needs to know *when* to change frequencies...
> this is usually a much softer target than the messaging itself.

SR's jammers seem to take the club-wid-a-nail-in-it approach, though: going
by the rules, they work at full rating throughout their range, meaning
they will jam everything and anything in a wide area.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Those who ignore history are doomed to keep liking crappy dance
covers of great songs.
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

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