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Jakub's Guide to Not Dying to ANS Jamming

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2024-09-23 10:13:46

Introduction To Jamming

Jamming, if done properly, completely and utterly blinds the enemy, and leaves them defenseless. In the current state of the game, ANS can bring much, much more jamming than the average OSPN fleet, and can thus overwhelm OSPN ships really easily, by making it impossible for them to hit anything.

If you are reading this guide, you have probably had it happen to you. It sucks. Here is how to ensure it never happens again.

Jamming, What It Is, And How It Kills You.

Jamming, is the act of using EWAR jammers like the hangup and blanket to cause chaos on the enemy's tracking capability, Overwhelming their radars, and stopping your ships from finding good tracks. For OSPN, a faction heavily dependent on track quality to win, this is rather rough. In regards to ANS, they have two different methods of jamming which can hurt you badly.

Blanket Jammer

The blanket jammer targets radars, stopping your ship from finding tracks through passive searching, which means you can't find the enemy to shoot at.

Hangup Jammer

The hangup jammer targets your communication devices, and stops your ships from communicating any tracks they find. This is dangerous, as most OSPN fleets have dedicated targeting ships, and most common designs are vulnerable to these.

Countering Blanket Jamming

This section is dedicated to countering Blanket Jamming, as it is the most common, and therefore the most pressing to counter.

When being jammed, it is important to ensure that your counter capabilities are capable of establishing a fire-able track through the jamming, otherwise it is all for naught. Now, how to do it. The answer? Well it depends on your fleet type. I will go over a few basic configurations for a few different styles of fleets, namely brawlers, range, and mid-standoff.

Brawling fleets ought to bring one ship outfitted with a bulwark huntress and pinpoint target radar. The huntress allows burn-through, which is an order that allows the ship to make a rough ping of a ship's position, even if jamming. From there, the pinpoint can lock up the target, which will stop it from disappearing when the burn-through ends. This setup can counter most jamming, but suffers from lack of range. It is also vulnerable to comm jamming.

Equipment: Bulwark Huntress + Pinpoint Radar

Doctrine: Burn-through + target lock, repeat as necessary

For long range fleets, a well built bloodhound and early warning radar setup is critical. It also requires more pointage, but is considerably less vulnerable, and benefits the whole team greatly. I would recommend a cargo hauler for the bloodhound, as it is cheaper though less mobile to build out than a tug pair, and is more effective in terms of quality. Mount on your cargo hauler a bloodhound and/or early warning radar. In your modules, mount 1/2 adaptive radar receivers, and 2-3 track correlators. Sweep with the early warning radar, and you will passively pick up just about anything. From there, guide the bloodhound onto target, and voila, your whole team has a jam proof track. This build can work very far away, though it is vulnerable to both forms of jamming. It counters this somewhat by being faraway enough to not guarantee being spotted and hit with those

Equipment: Cargo hauler/Tug, Early Warning Radar + Bloodhound, 1-2 adaptive radar receivers, 2-3 track correlators.

Doctrine: Sweep with the early warning radar until you have a target. Use the bloodhound to make the track fire able.

For mid range/ all rounders, The Ocello is your best bet. Though I shall cover that in the next section, as it is relevant for comm jamming.

Countering Comms Jamming

Comms jamming is significantly less common, but a dire threat for OSPN. As such, counter measures for this are mandatory.

Comms jamming unfortunately has few counters. The most useful, is to simply bring an Ocello. The CR75 relay on an Ocello near completely resists comm jamming efforts unless the other player brings an awful lot of comm jammers. The Ocellos can also mount the parallax radar, and the bullseye, allowing you to mimic the doctrine with the pinpoint and huntress, just on a much longer range.

Equipment: Ocello, Bullseye tracker, Parralax Radar, or Bulwark Huntress.

Doctrine: Burn-through sweep, and lock

The other option is the supplementary radio amplifier. On a non-CR75 ship, one radio amplifier in theory counters the effects of one hangup jammer, though they seem rather fickle. Putting one of these on your targeting ship of choice allows you a track that is hard to stop, meaning the rest of your ships can keep merrily plinking away.

Equipment: Supplementary Radio Amplifier

Doctrine: Mount on your targeting ship, have targeting ship function as normal.

Conclusion

Jamming cannot just be ignored. You must have at least some counters, or you will be rolled. The builds above are not an exhaustive list of counters, but they are the most effective. I know some people suggest you offset, but that only goes so far on the many claustrophobic battlefields this game offers.

A final option I haven't mentioned is counter jamming. Simply put, point your jammers at theirs. This is not a guaranteed method to ensure you stop the enemy, but it can reset their jammers if they were TRACK fired, allowing you to quickly get a lock in before their jammers re-target.

Go forth OSPN players, and make ANS cry that their EWAR just ain't as good as yours :)

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3187636858

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