You’re correct that the suggested use of hacking in the op would be… well… op. But, the hacking minigame could be used in other ways that aren’t quite as snowballish.
Instead of completely shutting off modules, what if it created timed debuffs? -10% cap, -10% lock range, -10% shield, -x% rep / boost amount, -x% of y resistances, ect. There are many things that could be done that aren’t quite as fight deciding as fully shutting off a module or taking control of it (especially if the debuff only lasts 15-30 seconds.)
And… you could make it so the debuffs don’t stack, so multiple people hacking a single target wouldn’t really achieve results.
Alternatively, you could use the same idea on an allied target to give buffs.
I would also suggest giving the pilot being hacked a way of countering the hacking attempt, kind of like how 2 player Tetris creates obstacles for the other player when milestones are reached. So the plaeyr on defense could operate their own hacking minigame screen (without needing the hacking module) if they so choose to.
As for unattended ships, I 100% support the idea.
This is short sighted. Just because something is accomplished one way doesn’t mean another avenue to accomplish the same task should be eliminated. More importantly, we’re talking about active game play that’s not easily dual boxed or botted.
Alternatively… give us similar minigames for those various types of ewar to reward active gameplay. Obviously they can be skinned in whatever way you’d like, but the important part of it, is that it’s an active gameplay style.
There once was a suggestion I liked about ‘hacking other ships during combat’.
Hacking other ships in order to make their pod leave their ship, so you can board them.
Of course this is way too strong in almost any situation, so it should only be possible to hack enemy ships in situations where you would already be close to killing them anyway, which is to say, below 20% hull yet still alive. If you can catch someone and destroy most of the defences of their ship and manage to bring a hacking tool, I do believe you should be able to hack and steal their ship. And if you fail the hack, the ship explodes in a massive explosion that damages all the ships close enough to tackle it. Of course with increasing hacking difficulty for bigger and higher tier ships.
Allow us to hack and steal ships, it could be fun.
I’d be game with that, but I don’t agree with the ship exploding on a failed hack though.
What I would suggest is that there would be multiple levels of contested (the tetris analogy from above) successful hacks the assailant would have to make their way through. And the larger / more advanced the ship, the more levels they’d have to go through. This way it’s actually a challenge, and not just a matter of course.
So for example… once you reach 20% structure, you’d have to do 3-4 successful hacks on a t1 frigate or destroyer. Navy and t2 ships +1 hack, ewar ships +1 hack. Cruisers and battle cruisers would be 5-6, Battleships would be 7-10. And caps would be immune (but maybe you’d have to land 10 hacks to launch a shooter match, which could kick the pod out if the attacking team wins. )
But yeah, I generally like the idea. Anything to give people reasons to bring a wider range of modules into pvp scenarios is a good thing in my opinion. And of course, the more active the play style, the better.
it wouldn’t be a popup… it would likely show up as a blinking… or color changed ui element warning the player of the hacking attempt. The player could then click on it or interact with it another way (ex: hotkey) to bring up the defense window.
But yeah, I agree with you. Involuntary popups blocking your vision would be a non starter. (And I put that heart on your post to prove the point.)
The explosion on a failed hack means you got to succeed that hack or probably lose your tackle ships. The target is already done for anyway (I mean, he’s being kept alive but tackled below 20% hull in order for you to be able to hack them), so the explosion on their end would feel good, as revenge, when his ship explodes and takes with him the hacking frigate and tackle frigates.
On the hacker’s side the chance of explosion introduces a risk, and pressure to succeed the hack the first time, which encourages more expensive hacking equipment and rewards high hacking skills (and player hacking skills).
That seems like the sort of thing, that would be done at the same time, in the same expansion.
Hacking mtus, mobile depots, secure containers, ect. could also be done. (Successful hack, structure goes into reinforce, failed, player turns yellow… or maybe even red depending on what is being attempted.) Anything that expands the scope of gameplay in a reasonable way, I’m all for it.
The farms and fields approach that was touted years ago is a fantastic plan, but there’s a severe lack of farms and fields. The hacking mechanic could mitigate that somewhat.
If you really want hp reduction, I would suggest it directly hit the hull of the ship doing the hacking, like some sort of negative feedback. It just seems like something that can be abused to do more damage to a target, if the ship could explode at 20% hull. On some ships, that’s still thousands of ehp.
I’m describing a situation where one ship is tackled, almost completely killed yet barely left alive below 20% hull hitpoints, at which point the attackers bring a hacking frigate to hack the target to steal their ship.
The hacking frigate is bad, fails the hack and makes the target ship explode, killing everyone in the vicinity.
The victim of the hack (who was about to lose their ship anyway) has a laugh seeing the enemy fleet explode, while the allies of the hacking frigate scoff at him for killing them all.
I’m not asking for a hp reduction. I’m asking for a complete HP removal of all ships within tackle range upon failure.
Right, that’s what I understood it as, perhaps a poor word choice on my part.
But yeah, my concern is someone enters 20% hull, but it’s still a lot of hp left, enough to do a quick hack and purposefully fail the hack. (which would take all of 5 seconds.) Boom, ship is dead. And maybe… it’s not enough to actually kill the assailant… but if the fight were to play out normally… the ship being hacked would have won.
People do like hull tanking ships after all. iirc, hull tanked gnosis are fairly popular.
Also… in highsec, who gets the status hit? You’re basically suggesting a massive smart bomb explosion.
Alternatively, if it’s just the ship doing the hacking that takes the damage directly to hull, you get all the desired effects you’re after, without the various complications. Though, perhaps it’s a bit less cinematic.
The explosion only happens if the hack itself lasted long enough (say, a minimum amount of 10 seconds) and does not trigger when you intentionally open and close the hacking window ‘for a quick explosion’.
Even then, holding someone below 20% hull for 10 seconds or simply killing that last 20% isn’t much of a difference, I’d say. If you think it is, the theshold could be reduced even lower, like 15% or 10%, which would have the consequence that the hacking window will be considerably harder to obtain on non-hull tanked ships.
Yep!
I guess activating such a giant smartbomb explosion would require red safety settings, so hacking a ship should also take red safety settings. Standing hit goes to the hacking player, and they’ll get killed by CONCORD if the explosion hits any illegal targets and the explosion didn’t kill them already.
If the hull % were lowered down to 5-10%, that would probably be ok. Alternatively, it could just be a flat hp value, so the system could still be used on caps (if ccp thought that were a good idea.)
Personally, I want to be able to make use of marines in a similar way. It could be in conjunction with your hacking idea, or completely separate, but I like the idea of eve players being able to go 2142 style and raiding enemy ships with npc marines.
More or less it would go something like, hack ship, drop marines into the inventory window associated with enemy ship, which would open up another minigame that’s basically a skinned version of the hacking minigame. You’d get resources for your minigame based on what you dropped into that inventory. If the enemy ship escapes, then you’d lose your marines.
Alternatively, to make that hacking part a bit more smooth. There could be a button in the hacking interface to inject the marines into the enemy ship, which would then cause the hacking minigame’s ui to change to the marine version of it.
This would even allow CCP to make specialized boarding ships. Maybe like a modified version of an industrial.
circling back to my previous post, I think this would also be good for when war clones are bought back into the game, as Viruses could be used in a defensive manner for the internal aspects of your ship, allowing pilots to infect undesirable entities within their ship, this way if you get boarded by one group, you can infect / kill them. this way if you have war clones in your corp, who are in your ship and you get boarded, it would not infect them so as the fight breaks out naturally, the pilot can then aid the war clones by infecting the enemy soldiers.
it would also become a case of if you gave war clones a virus, if they win the fight they can upload it.
this way its an ease defence for pilots, hard work for war clones but a worth it reward.
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