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Hacking - Ideas, Updates, Etc?
Bottom Line Up Front: Hacking doesn't generate marks for users (unlike Bashing/Incursions - both create junk and player-desired commodities), rooms behind hacked doors lead to unresponsive NPCs and inconsequential areas (No quests or lore for my efforts??). Hacking could use some love in the form of rewards as well as more depth to make it attractive to players. Y'all have ideas, aside from the addition that is coming to the 'piercers? Currently just a hobbyist's game.
Okay, so I'm not going to claim to have hacked every available space in the game just yet, but at this point I feel that Hacking deserves a bit more attention thrown its way. I know @Tecton is busy incorporating hacking into PvP aspects of Starmourn, but the general use of hacking is lacking in comparison to bashing and dealing with incursions. Both of these ventures make money through junk and cargo as well as the selling of items for player usage, whereas hacking is just a hobbyist's sport right now. Many of us enjoy it so it isn't really a sin for it to be such, but I think the problem lies in that inequality of Time Spent vs Reward and the fact that a lot of these rooms lead to mobiles that don't interact with the player at all.
To be honest, I don't have any wild solutions to this and would have to defer to the creative minds out there. Having quests locked behind doors or simply siphoning marks from the fictional organization that you're hacking into would be interesting, but I don't know if that is too simple of a solution - it would certainly answer some of the problems I've brought up here and involve the least amount of work for coders. I feel like something bigger would be more interesting and bring hacking to the forefront for those looking for something to do besides bashing, but what do you all think?
Should hacking be a desired skill for some of these NPC organizations? I haven't done the newbie hacking quests in the other factions, but Scatterhome's involve the theft of information to benefit others. An information trade between parties would be interesting, even if it were just NPCs. Since the piercer change will benefit factions, I feel anything else should benefit the player in some form.
I like the idea of other hackable mediums that provide rewards, but come with high risk as well (deployed security bots in an area, countermeasures that recognize your mindsim signature that need to be bypassed before another attempt can be made). Maybe even terminals with multiple levels of security (with Ops resets between levels)? I'm just spitballing things that sound interesting to me as someone who enjoys hacking and I'm hoping there are others who either enjoy or absolutely abhor hacking that have their own suggestions as well.
Okay, so I'm not going to claim to have hacked every available space in the game just yet, but at this point I feel that Hacking deserves a bit more attention thrown its way. I know @Tecton is busy incorporating hacking into PvP aspects of Starmourn, but the general use of hacking is lacking in comparison to bashing and dealing with incursions. Both of these ventures make money through junk and cargo as well as the selling of items for player usage, whereas hacking is just a hobbyist's sport right now. Many of us enjoy it so it isn't really a sin for it to be such, but I think the problem lies in that inequality of Time Spent vs Reward and the fact that a lot of these rooms lead to mobiles that don't interact with the player at all.
To be honest, I don't have any wild solutions to this and would have to defer to the creative minds out there. Having quests locked behind doors or simply siphoning marks from the fictional organization that you're hacking into would be interesting, but I don't know if that is too simple of a solution - it would certainly answer some of the problems I've brought up here and involve the least amount of work for coders. I feel like something bigger would be more interesting and bring hacking to the forefront for those looking for something to do besides bashing, but what do you all think?
Should hacking be a desired skill for some of these NPC organizations? I haven't done the newbie hacking quests in the other factions, but Scatterhome's involve the theft of information to benefit others. An information trade between parties would be interesting, even if it were just NPCs. Since the piercer change will benefit factions, I feel anything else should benefit the player in some form.
I like the idea of other hackable mediums that provide rewards, but come with high risk as well (deployed security bots in an area, countermeasures that recognize your mindsim signature that need to be bypassed before another attempt can be made). Maybe even terminals with multiple levels of security (with Ops resets between levels)? I'm just spitballing things that sound interesting to me as someone who enjoys hacking and I'm hoping there are others who either enjoy or absolutely abhor hacking that have their own suggestions as well.
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It could be abstracted to just "datashards filled with junk data" that you could sell at the shops, the explanation being that organisations buy and mine the junk data to see if they can get anything usable out of it.
The pass through xp didn't feel really great as another thing, it seemed barely noticeable really.
I think a personal space where hacking has a potential to shine is in questing. You can have quests that require it for more reward, set up shortcuts/alternate solutions using it (track down the key vs just hack through), and a few other neat things.
The quest was kind of terrible but I’d love to see more of this.
The rewards were truly shite.
Hacking does have some benefits currently, namely for exploring. Further to this exploration vein, I'd love to see a 'quests completed' tracker. Nexus already lists them so I'm not sure why the game proper can't do the same. Showing us something like 'You have completed % of quests in the Starmourn Sector' would also be very satisfying for the exploration completionists among us, and make hacking essential to do so.
Of course I am in favour of more benefits to hacking overall, not just for explorers.
"They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
Overall, I feel like you start as a new spacer with full opportunity but little motivation to pursue hacking beyond the satisfaction of puzzle-solving and ranking up. That's sufficient for hacking as a hobby/game---otherwise I wouldn't have grinded it as much as I have---but it means it doesn't yet work as part of Starmourn as a whole for me.
Race: Elgan
Class: Engineer
Honestly, I am surprised more of those rooms don't have guards that attack on sight.
Also requesting terminals WAAAAY above level 16, please. Level 16 just isn't challenging enough.
I want to be able to hack items to upgrade them, or risk destroying them if I fail.
I want to be able to hack bugs and drones and change their logic.
I want to be able to earn marks by hacking INRs to significantly magnify their XP gains (but only to the player who died; don't want an INR theft economy).
I want to be able to hack NPCs' mindsims to get a list of all their quest triggers etc. and risk being aggro'd if I fail.
I want to be able to hack PCs' mindsims as an alternate form of PvP.
And more.
Class E 1-16 (Levels 1-16)
- Terminals
Class D 1-16 (Levels 17-32, but actually just levels 1-16 with 50% speed increase on actions, ops drain, and AV attack speed)
- Disable Mobs
- Hack bugs and drones
Class C 1-16 (Levels 33-48, but with 100% speed increase)
- Hack NPCs
- Upgrade common items
Class B 1-16 (Levels 49-64, 200% speed increase)
- Hack INRs
- Upgrade uncommon items
Class A 1-16 (Levels 65-80, 300% speed increase)
- Hack PCs
- Upgrade rare items
Class S 1-16 (Levels 81-96, 400% speed increase)
- Upgrade artifacts???
The next step for increasing difficulty should probably include different challenges (like Black ICE) at higher skill levels, but I think the vast majority of players are a long way from needing the extra challenge. I was top 5 in the hacking rankings last I checked and RNG still kicks the crap out of me enough to keep high level terminals interesting. I've yet to encounter a Level 14-16 terminal that didn't require treading carefully and you can still find yourself stuck in a clusterflakk.
Race: Elgan
Class: Engineer
"They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
Sometimes the systems don't automatically correlate to game theory, but that's where the developers come in and make systems matter. That's why hacking is an inclusion in the 'piercers now. I don't think it is enough though.
1) Ship systems (to steal the ship, plus other options)
Probably handy for cosmpiercers. (Step 1: alert other faction to your cosmpiercer raid. Step 2: Steal their ships when they land. Step 3: ??? Step 4. Profit Laugh)
This'd probably be extremely difficult/tricky to code which definitely puts it in the 'down the line' category IMO but i'm envisioning something similar to hacking becoming a tradeskill at high levels. You get a framework to work with (design template) and you plug in some preset values to run (previous skills in the ability, plus maybe some additional new commands available when you can do this) and it gets a y/n on it from someone, and becomes either a macro in your skilltree, OR becomes a single-use item you can inject into a hack to perform.
Reasoning being is those marks came from someone and they figured out who you were, and are not amused by your antics.
4) Hack Sims.
Something similar to illusions in fantasy games, but more tech-y. Possible options include: garbage data filling your vision, mail from suspicious Bushraki princesses trying to offload marks, jump scare gifs, et cetera. Maybe even tie it to #2?
While a reward would be nice, I understand that it's technically a no-risk minigame, whereas cloning costs marks. Could potentially add, down the road, some high risk terminals that require paying some marks to initiate the hack (manipulating the data or whatever), so that there is a risk of loss upon failure. Risking regular exp is fairly irrelevant, given the low level cap that quite a few people are already sitting at. Risking hacking exp in the mid to higher levels wouldn't be too awful, but the early hacks with no abilities are so rng based that I'd rather it not kick in right at the start - much like cloning is free up through (I think) level 15.
- Higher level hacks vs word length issue: -- Consider making hacks that have multiple words (shouldn't be too awful to code), so that shorter words can be used while the overall number of password characters increases (and it's harder to guess multiple short words vs a single long word). Or alternatively/additionally, have a different Processor Array for each password input (password 1 unlocked at array 1). That'd be a lot trickier to balance, though.
Chain hacks might be interesting. Such as needing to complete two+ hacks in succession (thinking that it auto-starts a new hack with a fresh map/ops after the first is completed) to hack a terminal.
Lure and Jam are either broken or explained incredibly poorly. I'm not sure if polymorphics are supposed to lose most of their health after transforming or if they're basically being set to level 1 health due to an oversight. Not sure how they're coded, but if they essentially get swapped for a higher damage version then it'd make sense if it's unintended. Otherwise, their glass cannon transformation is a unique and interesting interaction.
Speaking of which, ideas for additional antivirus/ICE types would be cool to explore. One thought is a "hazard" that isn't directly fought. Something like a conduit that'll teleport you to a random room (couple second warm-up), though it'll warp a decoy instead if you make one. Would be a single warp hazard, rather than having to continually make decoys while hacking it.
Jin
VOTE FOR STARMOURN
if there's no kittens in space
I'm going on a rampage
TectonToday at 2:17 PM
They're called w'hoorn, Groot
sets out a saucer of milk
Defensive Hacking
- There are issues in a certain server and the character is hired to work with the system security to find and stop a hacker before they have a chance to finish their job.
- Pay is based on the difficulty of the operation and similar to current terminal levels; the enemy hackers will be inside the mainframe and the player can use certain skills to incite, lure, or otherwise move the ICE around to try and stop them before their Ops run out.
NodesMulti-Node Systems
Not to completely deviate from the existing hacking, but boss ICE or hacking terminals that have multiple objectives would be nice. Or even alternate objectives. Examples would be:
- Dual Passwords? We've touched on this with layered hacks, but this is an option as well.
- Boss Ice would be nice. Rather than make them an ICE with ungodly amounts of health, maybe create various objectives that disable certain abilities or enable abilities for the hacker. Ex: Each overwrite restores a bit of ops to you. Alternatively, these new hacking dungeons could have multiple terminals within them that act as gates for this sort of thing.
- Variable or bonus objectives. Hack the terminal under a certain amount of time, defeat a certain number of ICE.
- In the same vein as above, allow for multiple objectives. Rather than unlock a password, maybe the UNLOCK function is enabled once conditions are met.
And challenge terminals that scale to the hacker would be neat. Level 16 terminals are kind of easy already.
The most important by far, though, is to add Hackers to the list of earth movies that survived.
BYPASS: Once per hacking attempt, you may bypass the terminal's ICE to learn 1 letter of the password.