Jamming and Lockdown

Intelligence is not only about seeing. Sometimes the winning move is to take something away from the enemy: blind their radar before you strike, or trap their army at home while you act elsewhere. These are denial effects. They do not destroy anything. They switch off a specific capability for a limited number of ticks, and then it comes back. Used at the right moment, they decide attacks before a shot is fired.

Jamming

Jamming is the lighter denial effect. It costs energy and disables the target's systems for roughly 3 to 6 ticks. A colony hosts three jammable systems (radar coverage, satellite scans, and gate travel), and one jam against a colony blinds all three at once. Jamming a lone outpost touches only that outpost's one system. Crucially, jamming is targeted at a specific function, not a blanket shutdown:

• Jam a colony or radar and you blind its radar coverage and stop it launching satellite scans. The enemy goes dark over the area you jammed.
• Jam a gate (a colony gate or a gate outpost) and squads can no longer travel through that endpoint, cutting an enemy's instant-movement network.
• Jam a silo and it cannot launch a nuke for the duration.

The classic use is to jam an enemy's radar just before your squads cross into their vision, so your attack lands before they ever saw it coming. When the duration runs out, the jammed capability simply returns, no permanent harm done, which is why timing the jam to your own movement is everything.

Upgrade jamming: new hardware boots up loud

One jam does not come from an enemy at all. When you upgrade an outpost into a Radar or Gate role, the new hardware jams itself for 3 to 6 ticks while it comes online: a fresh radar projects no coverage yet, and a fresh gate accepts no travel yet. The map marks the outpost with a red ring while its startup jam runs.

This is free and automatic, and it cuts both ways. Do not upgrade the gate you need for a rescue jump this tick, and when you see an enemy outpost flare with a startup jam, you have just watched them commit to new hardware and you know exactly how long it is blind.

Lockdown

Lockdown is the heavier denial effect and it works from the inside, through an embedded agent rather than a scan. It costs about 50 energy, needs 6 infiltration to attempt, and the attempt drains your agent's entire built-up infiltration whether it lands or fails. It lasts roughly 3 to 6 ticks. While a target is locked down, nothing can leave it: squads cannot move out and nukes cannot launch.

That makes lockdown a pinning tool. Lock down an enemy colony and their army is stuck at home while you act somewhere they cannot respond to. Lock down a silo and a nuclear threat is frozen in place until you have dealt with it. Because lockdown spends infiltration, it rewards agents you have patiently grown rather than ones just planted.

There are guardrails. You cannot lock down your own alliance's colonies or outposts at all, the only exception being the havoc phase at the very end of an era. Locking down your own or an allied outpost requires having held it long enough first (about 24 control ticks), and a target that was just captured has a brief window of immunity before it can be locked down. The infiltration and any protection involved are spent as a single all-or-nothing attempt, so a lockdown either lands cleanly or fails, it does not partially apply.

Both effects expire

The most important thing to remember about denial is that it is temporary. Jamming and lockdown both run for their duration and then end on their own. The capability comes back exactly as it was. Denial does not weaken an enemy permanently, it buys you a window. The whole skill is choosing the right window and having your attack, your movement, or your escape ready to use it before the effect wears off.

See also: Intelligence and Radar for the radar these effects shut down, Spies and Agents for the embedded agents lockdown depends on, Teleport Gate for gate denial, Alliances for the no-covert rule inside an alliance, and Heavy Weapons for silos and nukes.