Subset Games Forum

IF hacking is added it needs to be both simple by design, and situational by nature, and also a rare and costly system like drones or cloak.

Heres a few ideas i have on ways to implement it with balance etc in mind.
- Personally I think the hacker should be a drone, this would require you to have the drone systems, and the specific drone which performs the hacking.
- The drone should be treated as a crew member. It should have no repair or fighting abilities but be selectable, controllable and healed in the same way crew is.
- The drone would need to be in the room of the subsystem it is attempting to hack. This means you will require a transporter system in order to use it. This will also limit the size of your boarding party, as the drone will be taking a transporter slot. So picking the right crew to take with it and the right location to teleport to will be important.
- the drone must remain at the control station in order to maintain the hack against the opponents systems. (this makes then use of the drone a specific targeted ability. It may be possible (depending on balance) to hack 2 systems simultaneously if you use both your drone slots for hack drones. This would be very effective vs ai ships as they have no crew to stop you, and the drones don't require oxygen, but it would also be very weak against many other races as your boarding party will be mainly defenseless drones which will be easily destroyed by engineers.
- if the drone is destroyed it will cost you scrap to manufacture a new one
- the actual impact of hacking should be universal no matter the system being hacked Because of this the effects on a hacked system could IMO only be...
- the system will be have 1 less maximum energy while hacked (eg with weapons, if your weapons array accepts 4 energy, it will only receive 3 energy and thus not operate at maximum potential). Depending on balance you will or will not be able to overpower the affected system (with 1 additional power) to counter the hack at the expense of that extra power being used in other areas of the ship. If (depending on balance) you can have 2 drones and are hacking a system which has 2 consoles you can have both drones hack the one system, lowering it's power by 2 and requiring the victim to channel much more energy into the system to counter the hack.
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While this concept may seem complicated the way i have written it, in practice it would create a very simple system which has a lot of overheads (multiple required systems, and energy to maintain them), a lot of risk (smaller boarding parties, and replacement drone costs), and can be countered by many means (overwhelm the boarding party, knock out the transporters or drone systems, divert additional power to the effected system and ignore the drones). I also believe that this system would be understandable and manageable when encountering enemy ships which utilize the hacking drone.

Isn't your system letting the guy beeing hacked decide where he is hacked? IE where the effect of your hack ends up.
(does hacking a system remove a power bar, reduce max powerbars or does it reassign it away from the hacked system?)

I like the idea that the unit doing the hacking ust be present at the system, and even that he must stay to maintain it. I also somewhat like the idea that it affects the power distrubeted to that system.
But if that is the only effect I'm a bit worried about the aI (or player if the AI hacks you) being able to just reassign energy to counter your choice of what system to attack.

Yes they could just reassign power from another system to counter you, but even if they do they are down one energy. Maybe they would need to reassign 2 points of power from other locations. That way the choice is be short 1 power on a system of the attacker choice, or be short 2 power from systems of your own choice as a counter. This when combined with loss of power from damaged areas of the ship would create a lot of power tension.