Jammer (Mutation)

Cut content! Everything covered in this article has been removed from HellMOO, and no longer exists in the game.

Jammer was a specialized anti-focus mutation that reduced the power of Focus wielded against or near the Jammer mutant, at the cost of reducing the mutant's own Focus. It was incompatible with Screech and Clairvoyance.

Jammer was made unavailable to players on February 20th, 2011, but a small selection of mobs in-game still have it.

Location

Jammer was located within Star Field, across the Wasteland and through several moderate difficulty climbs.

Effects

This mutation granted:

   Passive: -10 Focus
   Passive: Penalty to all focus mutations used on or near the mutant, based on mutant's XP.
   Passive: Automatic brain damage on Mediums that seek the mutant.
   Passive: Increased difficulty when seeking the mutant.
   Passive: Prevent projections from entering the mutant's tile.
   Passive: Cannot be effectively cleansed by soothe.

Advantages

• Penalties to enemy focus. Focus mutation usage in opponents, like Screech and Spew, was heavily penalized in opponents, making it useful against Focus-dependent enemies.
• Seek resistance. The strongest part of Jammer's kit, this offered a counter to Medium seeking besides sitting in a tinfoiled tile or having higher focus than the seeker. The bonus was sufficiently strong that a high XP Jammer mutant was virtually impossible to seek.

Disadvantages

• -10 Focus. This was a stiff penalty to focus users, but high-XP characters with both Jammer and high focus could still maintain focus in the high 20s after this penalty, which put them in the strong position of being able to use focus on their enemies, without them being able to respond with focus of their own.
• Soothe resistant. Empath mutants could not soothe Jammer mutants without bad things happening.
• Incompatible with Screech and Clairvoyance.

Appearance

Jammer acted like Enigma, and hid all mutations from being displayed when the Jammer was looked at. Unlike Enigma, however, it did not hide a character's @age readout.

Removal

Jammer was removed for several combined reasons:

• Stun cooldowns. Before Jammer, Writhing Smoke had a very short cooldown on spew, which meant that players with Focus investment could easily spam spew to keep other players stunned and totally unable to fight. Jammer was introduced partially to counter the effectiveness of this strategy. Before Jammer was removed, a global "stun cooldown" was added to the game, which still persists today. Now, after a player or mob is stunned, they have a hard cooldown of a few seconds where they are immune to all stuns until that invisible cooldown wears off. This removed the spew problem, meaning that Jammer was no longer necessary in this regard.
• Increased itemization options. Before Jammer, there were very few methods of counterplay to focus. Over time, more were added, and today, earplugs and heroin counter Screech and gas masks (which used to be much less effective) counter Writhing Smoke.
• Insufficient penalties. As mentioned above, Jammers were still capable of using Focus mutations against their targets with very high Focus, but their high XP blocked their targets from using any Focus mutations in response. There was no counterplay to this effect at all, and it created some severely imbalanced combat situations.
• Investment asymmetry. To be a strong Focus user, players had to invest in Focus, but to largely nullify the effects of this high-investment skill, all players had to do was take one single mutation. This exchange worked out very firmly in Jammer's favor, and the power that it gave Jammer mutants was egregiously disproportionate to the mutation's cost. To quote one contemporary player's comparison: "If there was a mut that, say, provided a constant passive debuff to guns users, people would lose their fucking minds."

Jammer Today

While Jammer has been removed from the pool of mutations available to players, a small selection of mobs still possess the mutation, blocking the use of low-level Focus on their tile. Examples of this include the wandering hunter Dan Asty, as well as some of the FCEF mobs in the Necropolis gate.

Mutations
Racial Mutations	Abomination • Chromemouth • Chud • Empath • Genetic Purity • Hideous Freak • Vampire • Zombie
Focus Mutations	Carrie • Chiller • Fuck Machine • Salamander • Screech • Writhing Smoke
Movement Mutations	Leapfrog • Phaser • Clairvoyance
	Flight • Blink • Medium
Soak Mutations	High Density • Firewalker • Rubberskin • Snakeskin • Yeti Skin
	Lithodermis • Solar Sponge • Silicone Skin • Eelskin • Yeti Fur
Miscellaneous Mutations	Billygoat • Bleeder • Bloodhound • Brainslug • Brute Strength • Camelfat • Enigma • Fibrocartilage • Hooligan • Hyperimmune • Iron Liver • Junkrat • Mule • Nimble Fingers • Plant Whisperer • Ripper • Stench • Twitchy Nerves • Superclot • Xray Vision
Joke Mutations	Cat Ears • Caucasian • Third Nipple
Defunct Mutations	Jammer