Looking for dretails on the Electronic Warfare section.

[Fulano]

What exactly does the Electronic Warfare section do?

I've been putting it on my support dreadnoughts to get the sensor range and detect bonus, and I suppose something goes on with jamming, but I don't understand the jamming game mechanic yet.

Still, my support DNs never see battle, so I've yet to discover what exactly the section does.

What about the Wild Weasel aspect? Usually I build a few PD heavy wild weasels and let them pick off all the missiles, but it seems a little counter productive to have the missiles drawn to a dreadnought, doesn't it?

And what are these "nasty surprises" they speak of in the section description?

Thanks ahead of time! You guys rock!

[sir_schwick]

I too have never had an EW in battle. However I have heard rumors(on the internets) that missiles and torpedoes will sometimes turn back on their firers.

Jamming creates a black spot on the sensor display. More specifically they prevent ships from being targeted through sensors, meaning they must be in visual range to target. This mostly effects missiles, torpedoes, and Lancer+. This also provides immunity from planet missiles up past a certain distance from planet.

[Fulano]

Is that why some battles the black sensor circle doesn't appear? Sometimes it takes some 10 seconds for it to appear at the start of battle... I was assuming it was a bug.

[BlueTemplar]

Nah, that's a bug.

EW is probably just a combination of (DE-sized?) jammer, (DE-sized?) wild weasel and (CR-sized) deep scan.

You might want to draw the missiles to a DN if you have other ships in the fleet that are less likely to survive combat...

As for the jammer mechanics, we've been exploring them in our current Succession Game :
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=56542

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Well, here's the stats on the wiki:

http://wiki.swordofthestars.com/sots1/Sensors


Not listed there is that DN EW sections are supposed to be able to detect cloaked ships if you have that upgrade. I'm honestly not 100% sure that it actually works though.

That stretegic sensor range information is also at least partially incorrect. I know for a fact that researching deep scan tech improves the strategic sensor range of colonies, and that's not refelected on that table.

IIRC, strategically, jammers reduce the enemy's detection range by half. I don't know if DN EW jamming is more effective than DE jamming though. Maybe?

I don't know if DN EW sections actually act as wild weasels though. I don't think I've ever actually deployed one tactically. On paper, it seems to be a waste of a DN to me, and I would generally rather filll those sorts of roles with auxillary ships.

On the other hand, if DN EW sections *do* act as willd weasels, it could maybe be nice to outfit your CNC ship with one of those. That would force the enemy torpedoes and missiles to target a ship that's not getting pounded as much as the frontline combat DNs. Then again, you could achieve the same thing with a destroyer and have a tougher CNC DN.

[Fulano]

I guess it's also pretty easy to spam a lot of anti-missile weapons on a dreadnought, so it could handle all those incoming missiles.

[BlueTemplar]

IIRC, researching deep scan gives a 50% bonus to ALL strategic sensor ranges (including deep scan sections).

[WuTaNiSt]

DN EW sections definitely DO work as wild weasels & also DO reveal cloaked ships, at least on the battlemap.

Once I have them researched I usually stick one on all of my CnC dreads. The CnCs are usually done up as huge missile batteries & PD support ships with only a couple of direct fire weapons, which stay in between & slightly behind the main combat dreads. As long as my ships stay reasonably close, the command ship will attract maybe half to 2/3rds of the enemy tracking weapons which then get dragged through the overlapping PD on the broadsides of my combat dreads & then the command ship itself.

It leave the command ship somewhat lacking in direct attack power itself, but that's not its job - its job is to deal with distractions while providing missile support fire & letting the combat dreads get on with killing.

[Fulano]

So, I finally got around to testing it...

I have an electronic warfare section on my C & C dreadnought. The missiles seem to turn towards it, but before they get in range of the PD phasers the planet missiles seem to just explode.

EDIT:
I think the game just wasn't drawing the phasers, and their range was much greater than I thought... so I think the phasers were the ones destroying the missiles.

EDIT2:
No, now while watching the ships bomb the planet there are definitely planet missiles exploding out of phaser range... It only seems to catch about 1/3 of them and only seems to affect planet missiles.

I got it paused showing a missile exploding at about the range the EW section kicks in but I can't take a screenshot of the game... I think Windows 10 is messing with it, It only shows the desktop when I press PrtScn

EDIT3:
Had to resort to the o'le camera...
{LINK REMOVED}https://www.mediafire.com/convkey/cdfc/grmu8bo5c3luden6g.jpg
(Does steam not embed images anymore?)

You can see the phasors firing upward, and the missile mysteriously exploding down at the bottom at about 150% the range of the phasers.

The game does seem to animate the PD Phasers really weird but I think the EW section is destroying some of the missiles.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

It's hard to tell from a static screenshot, but it seems to me that it's the same way planetary missiles loose lock on ships in an asteroid shadow.

Oh, if you're playing the steam version, you should be able to use steam to take a screenshot. I don't remember what the defaullt key to do it is though. To find out the key you need, open steam, go to the steam menu on the top left corner, settings, In-Game. Ensure that "Enable the steam overlay while in-game" is checked and set the Screenshot shortcut key.

[Roarak]

Electronic Warfare is a combination of Deep Scan (Increased Sensor Range and stealth detection), Jammer (Hides composition and size of fleets on strategic screen, decreases sensory range of enemies in combat) and Wild Weasel (Draws in any missile weapons within range towards the ship). EW sections can only be built if you have Tunneling Sensors, Jamming and Wild Weasel researched, so if you miss Jamming your SOL.

As for PD Phasers they work as a sweeping beam that locks onto every target within range and sweeps over it destroying it as it passes onto the next target (PD Phasers are overpowered, they render Missiles, Drones and the Locust entirely powerless).

[Fulano]

Originally posted by Colonel Sanders Lite:

It's hard to tell from a static screenshot, but it seems to me that it's the same way planetary missiles loose lock on ships in an asteroid shadow.

Oh, if you're playing the steam version, you should be able to use steam to take a screenshot. I don't remember what the defaullt key to do it is though. To find out the key you need, open steam, go to the steam menu on the top left corner, settings, In-Game. Ensure that "Enable the steam overlay while in-game" is checked and set the Screenshot shortcut key.

Ya, I've got the GOG version, but this seems to be about the most active forum for the game these days so I hang out here.