I love hacking so far, but I'm confused about LURE? Is it bugged or what is it supposed to do? I dropped it next to a room filled with ICE, but they didn't come.
Finding the processor is never the limiting factor to success or failure for me but yes gridscan makes it even easier to find. Unlucky room combos or not getting password drops on non-AV are the reasons I fail and I feel like I have zero control over either.
The more hacks I do the less and less strategic it feels to me. Random damage, random drops, random layouts, random spawns. None of the skills I can unlock look like they will fundamentally change this.
Jam - very limited use case that requires prior knowledge of bordering rooms.
Ping - I might use this if it gave info for every room in a straight line, right now it is not worth it.
Decoy - If I have to use this the run is already in trouble (bad scanner or polymorphic) and regardless it does nothing to help me win just slows down a loss.
Lure - Perhaps you could combo this with Decoy? Honestly I have no idea why I would ever want to stack ICE on myself. In addition it also requires knowledge of the surrounding rooms.
Slice - Most of the time I am killing firewalls as a way to get passwords so I have no reason to bypass them. I don't have access to this skill yet so it is not clear if it also works on honeypots and I do not understand why you need to give two directions.
Overwrite - If this is more efficient than Infect it is great, otherwise it would be of very limited use.
Backdoor/Tunnel - Useful to save some ops if you somehow know enough about the layout to set it up before you have already sunk those ops.
Nothing helps with password drop rates (except perhaps overwrite). Am I missing something?
I have done a lot of hacking so I hope this is informative.
Jam - very limited use case that requires prior knowledge of bordering rooms.
I am not certain if jam is actually working -- or if it does, the effect is so miniscule that it's nearly useless for the price in ops. I would jam, move in, and the jam would stop before the scanner even tried to call an alarm, and Avymos tells me that ICE has come in even with an active jammer.
Ping - I might use this if it gave info for every room in a straight line, right now it is not worth it.
In higher hacking security, it's very bad to get caught out by multiple AVs, especially if there is a honeypot present when you're propagating into the room. I believe that despite costing the same amount of ops as moving in and out of the room, the safety you get from looking ahead is definitely worth it. My only complain with this is that you can't detect processors using ping.
Decoy - If I have to use this the run is already in trouble (bad scanner
or polymorphic) and regardless it does nothing to help me win just
slows down a loss.
I have three use cases for decoy:
1. I enter a directory with a variety of ICE. I deploy a decoy so I don't lose significantly more ops from getting hit by AVs while trying to deal with glitches/honeypots.
2. I don't want to get hit when AVs are in the only spot I can slice from.
3. This one I don't have hard evidence on, but it appears that polymorphic antivirii lose a significant amount of ops when they transform with a decoy present in the directory.
Lure - Perhaps you could combo this with Decoy? Honestly I have no idea
why I would ever want to stack ICE on myself. In addition it also
requires knowledge of the surrounding rooms.
This ability currently appears bugged (does not pull ICE, even mobile ICE, from adjacent rooms.) A use case for this (if it worked) would be to deploy a decoy, drop a lure, and then move into a now-AV-free directory with all sorts of goodies to break.
Slice - Most of the time I am killing firewalls as a way to get
passwords so I have no reason to bypass them. I don't have access to
this skill yet so it is not clear if it also works on honeypots and I do
not understand why you need to give two directions.
I usually slice when I have no other option, like my only way forward being past a firewall that's also being defended by AVs. Honeypots block slice if you start the slice in the same directory, but you can pass by honeypots if you slice past them. The two arguments are because you can move up to two directories in one slice: you could just SLICE W to move one directory, or SLICE W N to move west one directory and then move north another directory in a single movement. You can also use slice to lose pursuing AVs.
Overwrite - If this is more efficient than Infect it is great, otherwise it would be of very limited use.
Overwrite is one of my favorite abilities. It's 'channeled', but the same damage as two infects for 20% cheaper (two infects is 10 ops total -- an overwrite is 8 ops). You can also time your overwrite to hit with an infect at the same time that the overwrite finishes, giving just a little more damage to an ICE, especially in a time-sensitive case like an AV. One strategy I use is to deploy a decoy and then begin an overwrite so the decoy takes all the damage I normally would while channeling.
Backdoor/Tunnel - Useful to save some ops if you somehow know enough
about the layout to set it up before you have already sunk those ops.
I personally only use backdoor/tunnel if I find the processor and don't have enough pieces of the password to unlock it just yet. In most cases, I usually have enough of the password by the time that I reach the array that I don't need to use it.
When using the tools at my disposal effectively, very rarely are my hacking attempts luck-based. I do have unfortunate terminals on occasion where all the ICE is piled into one room (one time on a sec 16 terminal I saw a glitch, a honeypot, and three self-replicating AVs in one directory, oh my goodness)
I do agree that very long passwords on low level terminals makes it nearly impossible, and early hacking is very painful. Long passwords on low level terminals are very likely a bug. I didn't feel like I was very effective at hacking until I learned Gridscan, and then I started really pushing forward once I learned Overwrite.
Hey guys, feeling a bit late to the party here, been too busy enjoying hacking.
I've been loitering in the grid testing AV actions... Can confirm that polymorphs are transforming without a decoy. I have left them untouched and watched them attack and transform, sacrificing their GigOps and increasing damage.
I have tryed to get lure to work but nothing consistent and the same with scanners. I suspected them to work the same, pulling from adjacent rooms. Would be cool if scanners pulled from the whole grid.
I've mostly been hacking but am so poor from it, I'd love to see paydata in grids, maybe pull a datashard out and have some fence to pass it on to. There's a lot of ideas for it but any revenue would be awesome
I imagine part of the design intent in hacking not giving money is that it is no risk. You invest nothing but time in a hacking attempt, compared to other sources of experience where your life is in danger.
Personally, I like that. Hacking has been difficult to get started with for me because I often run out of ops before finding the terminal or getting enough hints for a password. Higher risk, even if tied to higher rewards, would discourage me from trying it out as much as I do.
If they just added gold rewards, that'd be awesome. I just don't see it happening without also adding a risk, which I don't see as too good of an idea at the moment.
I imagine part of the design intent in hacking not giving money is that it is no risk. You invest nothing but time in a hacking attempt, compared to other sources of experience where your life is in danger.
Personally, I like that. Hacking has been difficult to get started with for me because I often run out of ops before finding the terminal or getting enough hints for a password. Higher risk, even if tied to higher rewards, would discourage me from trying it out as much as I do.
If they just added gold rewards, that'd be awesome. I just don't see it happening without also adding a risk, which I don't see as too good of an idea at the moment.
The risk is dying of old age a sec 16 terminal gives me ~800 xp for 5 minutes of hacking while I can get more xp from killing 4 terraworms in Whitter's Hollow in less then 2 minutes, plus then I have a chance of getting junk to scrap or new gear
I imagine part of the design intent in hacking not giving money is that it is no risk. You invest nothing but time in a hacking attempt, compared to other sources of experience where your life is in danger.
Personally, I like that. Hacking has been difficult to get started with for me because I often run out of ops before finding the terminal or getting enough hints for a password. Higher risk, even if tied to higher rewards, would discourage me from trying it out as much as I do.
If they just added gold rewards, that'd be awesome. I just don't see it happening without also adding a risk, which I don't see as too good of an idea at the moment.
The risk is dying of old age a sec 16 terminal gives me ~800 xp for 5 minutes of hacking while I can get more xp from killing 4 terraworms in Whitter's Hollow in less then 2 minutes, plus then I have a chance of getting junk to scrap or new gear
I imagine part of the design intent in hacking not giving money is that it is no risk. You invest nothing but time in a hacking attempt, compared to other sources of experience where your life is in danger.
Personally, I like that. Hacking has been difficult to get started with for me because I often run out of ops before finding the terminal or getting enough hints for a password. Higher risk, even if tied to higher rewards, would discourage me from trying it out as much as I do.
If they just added gold rewards, that'd be awesome. I just don't see it happening without also adding a risk, which I don't see as too good of an idea at the moment.
Adding small rewards behind locked doors or chests would be cool, very similar to a rogue lock picking a chest or door for loot. So far I've unlocked doors to find npcs or just empty lockers but a small respawning chest with a low number of marks would be nice.
Enough that one can't get stupid rich for hacking small terminals but enough for the trouble.
I only did the one hack during the tutorial and I sort of swore off hacking. Yesterday I was like okay, why not give it another go, i am bored of bashing right now and I just got back from almost getting my butt handed to me in an incursion. I found a quest in Haven to go hack a bunch of terminals. I was like cool. It took me some time and the last terminal was a pain in the butt. I don't use aliases or any sort of settings when I hack, i do it all long handed and I am both dyslexic and slow at typing so this made hacking even more fun for me because it kept my heart rate up and by the time I finished the hack I was really excited by it.
I really have started to enjoy hacking and yes, it would be awesome to eventually do more with it. So far there are a few quests to do the hacking and some are so you can get to mobs others wouldn't bother trying to get too. But maybe one day being able to download info from a successful hack that you can store in some sort of datapad till you find an NPC to sell it too, so you don't have to sell the info before another hack. You can basically stack the stolen information to a certain amount, maybe tied to how big your datapad's data storage can hold and how much info you got from the hack.
Also, having certain times where you would want to find someone with a high hacking skill lvl to team up with would be nice. Like mentioned above. Maybe even at some point making like an advanced hacking skill in a tradeskill, so if you want to make a job out of hacking with more abilities you can do so without every high lvl person running around with a high lvl hacking skill. The downside of course would be that you can't get to make other things like weaponmods or things like that and would really have to make a name for yourself to make any marks from it.
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "We're called
Scatterhome after what everybody does at
the end of the night when it's time for
someone to pay the bar tab."
(Scatterhome): You say, "Which by my
calculations, it's your turn to pay."
(Scatterhome): Brantar says, "That's what
my calculations have come to."
(Scatterhome): Paavo says, "My math adds
up to that, yeah."
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "Bastards."
Kinda disagree - it's already a pretty close race against the clock, I wouldn't want to have to race against competing hackers at the same time, too.
Adding on to that, it'll be fairly simple to script a whole hack sequence for those who want to do it competitively so that's mother reason to not put you against other players, at the least.
The system is pretty interesting and I like the design overall as well. The accessibility (not a credit/lesson dump) is cool as well. Hopefully it gets integrated more in the future. Some of the aspects (Ops varying from hack to hack) are a bit confusing at first, but it's a pretty solid subsection of the game. Definitely has potential for expansion. Hacking from range in a spaceship, perhaps.
The system is pretty interesting and I like the design overall as well. The accessibility (not a credit/lesson dump) is cool as well. Hopefully it gets integrated more in the future. Some of the aspects (Ops varying from hack to hack) are a bit confusing at first, but it's a pretty solid subsection of the game. Definitely has potential for expansion. Hacking from range in a spaceship, perhaps.
Pretty sure the ops variance takes into account hacking skill, puzzle size, terminal level and maybe a few other factors. For me, makes it a lot more interesting as you never know quite what to expect.
Yeah. I may have started out not liking to hack, but after doing one quest that had me hacking a bunch of terminals I was hooked.
I like the idea of maybe hacking from a ship. Maybe a high level hacker staying on board a ship during a cosmpercier (I know i probably spelled that wrong, so sue me) and hacking their security system, (or even joining the team and doing it while inside) maybe to unlock doors, turn off alarms etc. It does have a lot of potential later down the road.
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "We're called
Scatterhome after what everybody does at
the end of the night when it's time for
someone to pay the bar tab."
(Scatterhome): You say, "Which by my
calculations, it's your turn to pay."
(Scatterhome): Brantar says, "That's what
my calculations have come to."
(Scatterhome): Paavo says, "My math adds
up to that, yeah."
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "Bastards."
Loving hacking as it is, but I'm eager to see some Shadowrun-style matrix overwatch (a hacker opening doors, silencing alarms, redirecting guard patrols, etc) though in addition to updated hacking this would necessitate more complex quests or environment systems.
Also would like to see combat hacking - live hacking of a person's personal tech to introduce malfunctions or such. Your PIECE ejects its magazine mid-fight, your plasma canister dumping its contents, kithblade stuttering and shutting off, so on.
I don't think adding that much range would be good, I'd thought about in the same area using expensive tools or bots or something.
If hackers could be used in combat, wow, i'd love to dive behind a prop and risk jacking in to glitch an opponent.
We all know what rewards we'd like, but regarding risk... why not have an alarm draw nearby mobs if you've entered the password wrong or running out of GigOps drops you off the grid with an affliction... plus an alarm.
For me, hacking is a fun way to break the monotony of bashing. There was a level eight terminal in Praviskar that I would occasionally hit, even though I only have level four hacking at the moment. Took about thirty tries over the course of three levels, but the rush of finally getting it was great. Only took me from level 4.34 to 4.90, though.
The randomness of it can feel frustrating, where a should-be-easy hack is just outright impossible because there's a room with a honeypot and two antiviruses between you and the processor array. But it also makes the super hard hacks possible if you're willing to bang your head against the wall. And it's kind of fun going into something that you shouldn't be able to do and knowing you still have a shot.
If I had to make a teensy suggestion for improvement, maybe an incorrect password could give you 5-10% of the hacking experience as actually solving the thing. After all, your character is still practicing those skills, and it would make the almost successes feel at least a little rewarding.
What in the world? This is suppose to be a level one terminal.
-- An unobtrusive access terminal (#27527) ------------------------------------ Owner: Unknown Usable life: Perpetual Mass: Medium Resetting: No Hacking Level:1
Description: With a blocky, retro-looking case of molded nanoplastic and a tiny, monochrome display, this mid-sized access terminal seems to be for maintenance use or quick downloads for utilitarian purposes, rather than extended commsphere sessions in high definition. The terminal is installed well back from any main areas of foot traffic, and a smartgel palm panel on the side allows syncing with one's mindsim. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An aspect of DECOY that I've noticed is that, while the decoy is guaranteed to pull the first hit from an antivirus, subsequent hits can hit you directly despite the decoy not having been deleted yet. I don't know if that's intended, but it means the decoy isn't as reliable as it would seem. (Still handy if I need to buy a few seconds for hacking damage.)
One bit of hacking I haven't found a statement on are the hacker rankings, which are indicated on score/rankings but are currently nonfunctional. Is there an ETA as far as when that will be up? (I'll admit a certain level of ego at work here; I've put an inordinate amount of time into hacking and I'd like to know how I stack up.)
Seems like the time that successful hacks last has been upped majorly, which is kind of a pain in the ass when you're trying to hack for experience. Nearing the 30 minute mark and still can't hack this terminal again. That, paired with the fact that I only get about 2-3% experience per hack is just so incredibly frustrating. Used to you could loop every single one of a city's terminals (lower and high levels included) and would only have a five minute wait or so, at the absolute most, if your hacks went really smoothly, but now it's inordinate amounts of waiting even if you get the most time-consuming grids. On the other hand, if I only do the terminals at the high end (since lower-level terminals are essentially a waste of time at this point, just a way to kill several more minutes between the higher levels) and loop all three main cities, I still have time to spare until the first terminal's back up again.
Maybe let us hack terminals we've already got access to, and only lock us out of terminals if we fail? I dunno. I kind of understand why they made the change in the first place (longer period of access for one hack), but there's got to be a better way to go about it for people who are doing the hacking for the sake of hacking, not access.
EDIT: Small update, it's now over 90 minutes later and can't go back to the same terminal. This is ridiculous.
EDIT: Upwards of 3 hours.
EDIT: I'm now at 7 hours and still unable to hack these terminals. Maybe I'm just bugged. Idk.
Think you can put me in the hacking for hacking sake group, loving the new updates though, feels a lot tighter and more challenging at higher levels, those scanners .
But... I too am only doing a single loop on terminals though, previously did a lot more heh
Edit, re:rankings... Have been curious about when it's coming. Did anyone else hear Officials saying the hacking we have may only be part of what's to come, or have I misread something?
Comments
I'll just bug it. I would really be surprised if it's truly supposed to be that hard.
I personally only use backdoor/tunnel if I find the processor and don't have enough pieces of the password to unlock it just yet. In most cases, I usually have enough of the password by the time that I reach the array that I don't need to use it.
I've been loitering in the grid testing AV actions... Can confirm that polymorphs are transforming without a decoy. I have left them untouched and watched them attack and transform, sacrificing their GigOps and increasing damage.
I have tryed to get lure to work but nothing consistent and the same with scanners. I suspected them to work the same, pulling from adjacent rooms. Would be cool if scanners pulled from the whole grid.
I've mostly been hacking but am so poor from it, I'd love to see paydata in grids, maybe pull a datashard out and have some fence to pass it on to. There's a lot of ideas for it but any revenue would be awesome
Personally, I like that. Hacking has been difficult to get started with for me because I often run out of ops before finding the terminal or getting enough hints for a password. Higher risk, even if tied to higher rewards, would discourage me from trying it out as much as I do.
If they just added gold rewards, that'd be awesome. I just don't see it happening without also adding a risk, which I don't see as too good of an idea at the moment.
Enough that one can't get stupid rich for hacking small terminals but enough for the trouble.
I really have started to enjoy hacking and yes, it would be awesome to eventually do more with it. So far there are a few quests to do the hacking and some are so you can get to mobs others wouldn't bother trying to get too. But maybe one day being able to download info from a successful hack that you can store in some sort of datapad till you find an NPC to sell it too, so you don't have to sell the info before another hack. You can basically stack the stolen information to a certain amount, maybe tied to how big your datapad's data storage can hold and how much info you got from the hack.
Also, having certain times where you would want to find someone with a high hacking skill lvl to team up with would be nice. Like mentioned above. Maybe even at some point making like an advanced hacking skill in a tradeskill, so if you want to make a job out of hacking with more abilities you can do so without every high lvl person running around with a high lvl hacking skill. The downside of course would be that you can't get to make other things like weaponmods or things like that and would really have to make a name for yourself to make any marks from it.
(Scatterhome): You say, "Which by my calculations, it's your turn to pay."
(Scatterhome): Brantar says, "That's what my calculations have come to."
(Scatterhome): Paavo says, "My math adds up to that, yeah."
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "Bastards."
I like the idea of maybe hacking from a ship. Maybe a high level hacker staying on board a ship during a cosmpercier (I know i probably spelled that wrong, so sue me) and hacking their security system, (or even joining the team and doing it while inside) maybe to unlock doors, turn off alarms etc. It does have a lot of potential later down the road.
(Scatterhome): You say, "Which by my calculations, it's your turn to pay."
(Scatterhome): Brantar says, "That's what my calculations have come to."
(Scatterhome): Paavo says, "My math adds up to that, yeah."
(Scatterhome): Cal says, "Bastards."
Also would like to see combat hacking - live hacking of a person's personal tech to introduce malfunctions or such. Your PIECE ejects its magazine mid-fight, your plasma canister dumping its contents, kithblade stuttering and shutting off, so on.
If hackers could be used in combat, wow, i'd love to dive behind a prop and risk jacking in to glitch an opponent.
We all know what rewards we'd like, but regarding risk... why not have an alarm draw nearby mobs if you've entered the password wrong or running out of GigOps drops you off the grid with an affliction... plus an alarm.
The randomness of it can feel frustrating, where a should-be-easy hack is just outright impossible because there's a room with a honeypot and two antiviruses between you and the processor array. But it also makes the super hard hacks possible if you're willing to bang your head against the wall. And it's kind of fun going into something that you shouldn't be able to do and knowing you still have a shot.
If I had to make a teensy suggestion for improvement, maybe an incorrect password could give you 5-10% of the hacking experience as actually solving the thing. After all, your character is still practicing those skills, and it would make the almost successes feel at least a little rewarding.
http://www.topmudsites.com/vote-starmourn.html
ICE/
@honeypot : 6
@mobile_firewall_east : 6
@antivirus : 7
@glitch : 6
@self-replicating_antivirus : 7
@self-replicating_antivirus : 7
@self-replicating_antivirus : 7
@self-replicating_antivirus : 7
@antivirus : 1
@antivirus : 1
@antivirus : 1
@antivirus : 1
What in the world? This is suppose to be a level one terminal.
-- An unobtrusive access terminal (#27527) ------------------------------------
Owner: Unknown Usable life: Perpetual
Mass: Medium Resetting: No
Hacking Level:1
this mid-sized access terminal seems to be for maintenance use or quick downloads for utilitarian
purposes, rather than extended commsphere sessions in high definition. The terminal is installed
well back from any main areas of foot traffic, and a smartgel palm panel on the side allows syncing
with one's mindsim.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm yet to find it particularly rewarding by doing it, but there's a few high level hacks that seem like they might contain something juicy.
One bit of hacking I haven't found a statement on are the hacker rankings, which are indicated on score/rankings but are currently nonfunctional. Is there an ETA as far as when that will be up? (I'll admit a certain level of ego at work here; I've put an inordinate amount of time into hacking and I'd like to know how I stack up.)
Maybe let us hack terminals we've already got access to, and only lock us out of terminals if we fail? I dunno. I kind of understand why they made the change in the first place (longer period of access for one hack), but there's got to be a better way to go about it for people who are doing the hacking for the sake of hacking, not access.
EDIT: Small update, it's now over 90 minutes later and can't go back to the same terminal. This is ridiculous.
EDIT: Upwards of 3 hours.
EDIT: I'm now at 7 hours and still unable to hack these terminals. Maybe I'm just bugged. Idk.
But... I too am only doing a single loop on terminals though, previously did a lot more heh
Edit, re:rankings... Have been curious about when it's coming. Did anyone else hear Officials saying the hacking we have may only be part of what's to come, or have I misread something?