Has hacking made the Flagship too RNG?

[5thHorseman]

I know a way to make the flagship randomized now and plan to make a mod that does just that some time in the future when I have time. For anyone who thinks the flagship isn't hard enough already. But seriously I don't want to make it harder, just less predictable. It works by giving the flagship access to more "stuff" and using the limit= control what "stuff" up it does or does not use.

*snip awesome ideas*

YES!

[LostAlone]

I guess the real problem that I was trying to point to when I made the thread was that there is no real counter to hacking - Nothing that you can just casually acquire in the average game that can insulate you from hacking.

Countering the Flagship hacking your ship is easy, you just need a decent build with one of the following:

-Hacking.
-Fast-charging weapons (Ions, BL2, Chain Laser, Vulcan, the faster Flaks...)

Or any 2 of the following:

-Missiles/Bombs.
-Mind Control.
-Teleporter.
-Lots of non-Beam attack drones (or boarding drones).

The problem is not that there is no counter at all, it's that there's such a degree of randomness involved.

There are some runs where you didn't need to pick up anything specific to counter the hacking because it hit something useless. And then there are some runs where it was going to hit your shields or your engines where there was a solid chance you would get wrecked no matter what precautions you picked up - No matter what your fit if you take that first volley on the chin and take subsystem damage then you can just spiral down the drain without having a chance.

The variance is really high and so it feels really unsatisfying.

I don't expect every run to be a winner, far from it. But the extremes of the difficulty curve, where that last fight is either a complete push over or an absolute massacre, they make the game not feel fun. Either because I feel way overpowered and not challenged, or where I couldn't have won no matter what. And these runs can be the same fit.

Yes, some degree of randomness is good because the boss always needs to be challenging and not totally predictable. But it's silly to have to build very middle of the road ships run after run because you just don't know what is going to get hacked and if you'll have to deal with it or not.

[obliviondoll]

The problem is not that there is no counter at all, it's that there's such a degree of randomness involved.

There are some runs where you didn't need to pick up anything specific to counter the hacking because it hit something useless. And then there are some runs where it was going to hit your shields or your engines where there was a solid chance you would get wrecked no matter what precautions you picked up - No matter what your fit if you take that first volley on the chin and take subsystem damage then you can just spiral down the drain without having a chance.

If it hits your shields or engines, and you counter with your own hack, then there's no problem.

If it hits your shields or engines, and you drop a boarding party, Bomb or Missile in their hack room, then there's no problem.

If it hits your shields or engines, and you have cloaking, the cloak can more than negate the loss of engines if they're hacked, and can prevent any shots from hitting your shields if they're hacked.

If it hits your shields or engines, and you have a couple of Ion weapons, ANY other damaging weapon at all and 3 Anti-Ship Drones, they'll be taking damage before you do, and you can target whichever weapon(s) you deem to be the most dangerous in your current situation.

If it hits your shields or engines, and you're well upgraded, the risk of severe damage to your ship is minimal. Minor, easily controlled damage? Sure. Occasional bad luck with a critical system taking a hit? Sure. But it's the last boss in a Roguelike. It's not meant to be easy.

If it hits your weapons, you can counter-hack, Mind Control the guy in the cloak room so they can't chain their cloak and hack for infinite interruption of your attacks, hack their missiles and use your own cloak in conjunction to avoid the majority of damage if you have decent shields and engines, rely on drones, or just fire anyway with fast enough weapons.

In the last run I played using the Fed Cruiser (A), and I literally got my second weapon system in sector 7. I relied entirely on the Artillery Beam and Burst Laser II all they way up to 3 jumps from The Last Stand. I used my new and shiny Halberd Beam in only two fights before the Flagship, one of which was after reaching Sector 8. I also had only 3 layers of shields going up against the Flagship, and no cloaking device, drones or teleporter. And I went in with 2 hull damage from an earlier fight.

What did their hack drone target? My shields. One of your "worst case" options. When I finally beat stage 1, I had only taken another 2 points of damage to my hull. My shields got damaged (dropping me to 2 layers for a moment) and so did my weapons (cutting off my Halberd for a while because there was a breach in the room as well - lucky I'd put my Engi there).

I don't think it's as random as you seem to think it is. There are SO MANY different ways to counter the hacking. If you're really unlucky on most of your runs, OR if you don't plan well, then I can see it causing problems, but I'm pretty sure that's not a problem with too much RNG in that last fight.

[Laenor]

Hacking can easily be countered by the following :
- Destroying the module (Bombs, Missiles, Boarding drones)
- Hacking the module
- Using defense drones to prevent the module from even sticking to your ship.

On top of that, the possibility of hacking hitting your weapon system is about one in ten, aka : pretty slim.

So, no, it's not a problem IMHO

[5thHorseman]

Yeah I just got my engines hacked, so I tossed my hacking drone on his hacking room and was done with it. The only problem was the few second delay between his hacking starting and mine not being cooled down yet. I think next time I'll launch the drone but not use it on that first hack, so they'll be better synched. You only need L1 hack too, much like mind control. I also had a defense drone that I didn't bring up in time (I r dum) and enough weapons to take the room out if I so chose (I opted to go for shields and the missile, and then the cloak instead).

It's a non issue, and the fact that he can hack these important rooms as opposed to non important rooms is also a non issue. Be ready for it and be ready to take advantage if he targets your medbay or battery instead of something important.

[stvip]

Be ready for it and be ready to take advantage if he targets your medbay or battery instead of something important.

Get your violin, it's Sad Story Time: I lost a game to the Flagship hacking my Medbay. You see, on the Rock B (aptly named for this run "Firestarter"; "Twisted Firestarter" is too long) the Engine room is near the Medbay, and only accessible through it. A lucky hit could set it on fire. You see where this is going. Moreover, my four Rockmen were busy killing the puny squishy pyrophobic humans aboard the Flagship (on Hard Mode, Fire + Rockmen is a good way to keep the Flagship's weaponry down despite the connected rooms), and I took precedence to placing Firebombs on the Flagship's Missiles and Medbay, so that the Ions were active for quite a while. Engines having burned away, with ions pummeling the Shields means have neither evasion nor any shields for much of the battle. Ouch. Still won the first phase, though, and took only 1 Hull damage in the second. Then I came to the brilliant conclusion that a repair beacon was still available, despite no longer showing on the sector map (thinking it was an effect of Hard Mode), took unnecessary hits from missiles and the ASB, and faced Phase Three with only 2 Hull Points. Next run I made sure to select the Rock B again, instead of using the random ship feature, and got my redemptive victory, despite hacked Engines. Now put that damn violin away.

[hierbo]

I felt so strongly about this matter that I made an account on this forum solely to reply to it.

I have put much more time into this game than any game in decades, and feel that I am an expert-level player at this point. As such, the only time this game could ever beat me is when I am playing one of the "handicap" ships (Engi B, Stealth A/B, etc.) or if the RNG is in rare form, relentlessly trying to kill me and giving me no good items.

I was thrilled upon the release of the AE expansion; the introduction of hard mode made it a challenge to win, and the game was no longer a foregone conclusion every time. I particularly like that the boss ship has its rooms restructured to allow their crew to repair the triple laser and triple missile guns; that alone upped the difficulty of that fight significantly.

I also really like the new systems and weapons a good deal. They add a lot of variety and enable new viable strategies, allowing more diverse play-throughs.

All that said, I must admit that I found the original edition of the game to have more checks and balances in place to make sure that there were a number of potential counters for each enemy build. If the guy has missiles, you could use defense drones, high evasion, cloaking, or hull repair drones to counter it. If the enemy has strong boarding, you could vent the ship, use anti-personnel drones, use your own crew, etc. Many avenues of attack had multiple effective counter-strategies.

While those things are still largely true, I find that there is an exception with the hacking system, and not just on the boss (though it is particularly aggravated there). If the enemy has hacking, you can use a number of strategies to try to thwart him, but unfortunately none of them are particularly reliable.

1. Using defense or anti-drone drones is unreliable, because the enemy will repeatedly fire hacking drones (with no cool-down in between, I might add) until you get that unlucky drone miss. On that note, I have noticed that additional defensive drones rarely improve the chances of avoiding the annoying drone misses.

2. Firing on the enemy hacking system can work, but only if the enemy is already well outgunned and doomed. Personally, I often adopt a strategy of disabling enemy ships and defeating them on my own terms, and am often not even able to hurt them through their shields until late game. If I have enough guns to blow the enemy away, I don't care if he has hacking or any other systems, for that matter.

3. Hacking the enemy's hacking is a pretty reliable solution, but this is hardly a valid argument in favor of hacking being balanced, as you are claiming "hacking isn't over powered, because you can beat it with hacking"; hardly a strong point.

4. Boarding the enemy's hacking system doesn't serve to disable the hacking, because the enemy crew will fight your boarders until they are all dead before they let you destroy the system, this making it a moot point. Meanwhile, the enemy is blithely hacking away at whatever system his drone is latched onto.

5. Ioning the enemy hacking system is only feasible on very specialized builds, as normally ion weapons are best at bringing down shields for your real guns.

I think that's a comprehensive enough list for my point to be made.

Now, I do like the hacking system, generally speaking. The problem I see with it is strictly that there are not enough valid counter-strategies, as I said before. I can think of a number of possible solutions to this problem. The one I like the most is this:
Your crew can "repair" the hacked system. Once they succeed, the hacking drone is "drone stunned", and cannot operate for a time. This "drone stun" effect has been introduced in AE has a decent chance of destroying the drone, as well, if you've noticed. I think this alone would make the hacking drones less game breaking. There is little else in the game that can be so game-ending with a single unlucky die roll.

I'd love to hear some other thoughts on the matter or discussion of any of the points I've raised. Thanks!

[obliviondoll]

1. Using defense or anti-drone drones is unreliable, because the enemy will repeatedly fire hacking drones (with no cool-down in between, I might add) until you get that unlucky drone miss. On that note, I have noticed that additional defensive drones rarely improve the chances of avoiding the annoying drone misses.

That's why you don't rely on defense drones ALONE to counter hacking.

2. Firing on the enemy hacking system can work, but only if the enemy is already well outgunned and doomed. Personally, I often adopt a strategy of disabling enemy ships and defeating them on my own terms, and am often not even able to hurt them through their shields until late game. If I have enough guns to blow the enemy away, I don't care if he has hacking or any other systems, for that matter.

If you have bombs and/or missiles (and in the case of missiles, if they don't have defense drones, which the hack-capable Flagship stage doesn't), you can target the hack system first WITHOUT needing to blast through their shields first.

3. Hacking the enemy's hacking is a pretty reliable solution, but this is hardly a valid argument in favor of hacking being balanced, as you are claiming "hacking isn't over powered, because you can beat it with hacking"; hardly a strong point.

As a lone counter, it wouldn't, but as one of many, it's another option to add to the list.

4. Boarding the enemy's hacking system doesn't serve to disable the hacking, because the enemy crew will fight your boarders until they are all dead before they let you destroy the system, this making it a moot point. Meanwhile, the enemy is blithely hacking away at whatever system his drone is latched onto.

Crystal Lockdown, putting a crew member elsewhere on the ship, manipulating enemy boarding AI by attacking shields and forcing them to go for repairs, having a well-placed hack to isolate enemies from the room you're destroying, wounding enemy crew on a ahips with a medbay and forcing them to retreat there instead of trying to counter your boarders, using Mind Control on an enemy in the hack room (the enemy crew don't usually attack MCed crew members until they've caused damage to the room, which is often enough to completely disable the hack system)... There are lots of ways to manage a boarding action to take out a specific room.

5. Ioning the enemy hacking system is only feasible on very specialized builds, as normally ion weapons are best at bringing down shields for your real guns.

Using Ions to lower their shields then your "real guns" to cut through the hacking system first is generally a more viable option than just ioning the hack system.

I think that's a comprehensive enough list for my point to be made.

And I think that's a comrehensive enough list of counter-points.

Now, I do like the hacking system, generally speaking. The problem I see with it is strictly that there are not enough valid counter-strategies, as I said before.

And I still think you're wrong.

I can think of a number of possible solutions to this problem. The one I like the most is this:
Your crew can "repair" the hacked system. Once they succeed, the hacking drone is "drone stunned", and cannot operate for a time. This "drone stun" effect has been introduced in AE has a decent chance of destroying the drone, as well, if you've noticed. I think this alone would make the hacking drones less game breaking. There is little else in the game that can be so game-ending with a single unlucky die roll.

As long as the usual "slowed repair" rule applies to "repairing" away the hack drone, I think this would be a viable option. Also, which would take priority? Fixing damage to the room, or disabling the drone?

I don't believe it's needed, but something like this would be a cool added option, and more options is always a good idea.

[hierbo]

@obliviondoll : Thanks for the comprehensive reply!

You do make some good points in your post, some of which I have not thoroughly explored and will do so the next chance I get. That said, though, many of your proposed solutions do require substantial preparation for the hacking that otherwise would not need to be done, and represent one more base to cover in order to have a solid end-game ship. I understand that this is an additional challenge to be overcome, but due to the substantial randomness inherent in this game, one cannot reliably count on getting all of the optimal gear required to have an unassailable ship design, even by end-game.

Don't get me wrong, the scrapping by on whatever garbage gear the game offers you is one of the big appeals to this game, and not one I would like to see changed. I like that I cannot count on getting a full badass loadout every time. Because of this, though, there must be multiple effective counters to any given enemy assault, otherwise the game degenerates into excessive luck being required to succeed, which I'm sure nobody wants.

Allow me to elaborate on what I mean to see if we can find any common ground:

An enemy has many possibly modes of attack, any of which can be your end if you can't respond effectively.

----------------------------------------------------
Example 1:
Boarders can devastate your ship if you cannot repel them. That is acceptable, though, because there are tons of ways to do that, as follows:
> Vent most of your ship, forcing them to fight in your medbay or suffocate.
> If you have a good crew, simply overpower them with your own crew
> Use anti-personnel drones to force a battle in a vented room, which doesn't hurt your drone.
> Target your own ship with bombs to hamper the boarders.
> Hack the enemy teleporter to force the boarders off your ship if the going gets too tough.
> Use upgraded doors so that boarders do not have free reign of your ship.
> Vent all critical system rooms so that the boarders only attack systems that are not important for that battle.

All of those methods are perfectly viable, highly effective, and many of them can be readily available with any ship right with little or no additional luck required to get the necessary load out.

Example 2:
An enemy with a large volley of shots can cripple and destroy your ship if you cannot quickly damage their weapons system. This is acceptable because there are a lot of ways to damage or impede that system, and still more ways to buy yourself additional time to get the job done.
> If you have a lot of guns, simply overpower the enemy's shields, directly firing on the weapons.
> Hit the enemy weapons system with bombs or missiles, damaging or ioning it, buying time for you to get the upper hand, in addition to getting their guns "out of sync", such that they cannot reliably penetrate your shields.
> Invest in good evasion, mitigating the enemy volleys by causing many, if not most, of their shots to miss you entirely.
> Board the enemy ship in another system that the AI considers critical, like shields, forcing him to have his gunner crewman leave his post to fight you, which slows down his weapon charge rate.
> Employ the cloaking system, allowing you to use cloaking to dodge the worst parts of the enemy volley, ensuring that you take little or no damage for long enough to try to get the battle under control.
> Hack the enemy guns, substantially slowing down his guns' firing, buying lots of time to otherwise disable the threat.

As with the previous example, there are so many solutions to this problem that it is highly improbable that you will have absolutely none of them at your disposal (except for very early in games using underpowered ships, of course).
----------------------------------------------------

This game is full of scenarios like these, involving a potentially dangerous enemy ship load out that can be completely thwarted via numerous means that do not involve being particularly lucky. Of course bad luck can turn an otherwise good run into a tragic defeat, but the fact is that luck in this game is mainly related to non-combat elements, such as availability of systems and crew, as well as the system layouts and types of encounters. Once in combat, there are very few luck-based elements (only miss chance, really), and strategy is king. I feel this is a great balance and has kept me playing for hundreds of hours, seeking new ways to challenge myself. The reasons why this game has held my interest so are:
- It is luck-heavy in all the right places, and none of the wrong ones.
- It is strategy heavy overall.
If there are an excess of luck-based elements to a game, it becomes more like shooting dice in an alley than playing a thoughtful strategy game. Many games suffer from this problem and fail to hold people's interest for a long time as a result. I find that the hacking system has stepped over that line in this game, and while not a deal-breaker, I see it as a blemish on an otherwise masterful game.

I would be satisfied with any number of remedies, and not necessarily just the one I suggested in my earlier post. In short, what I would like to see is not a weakening of the power of the hacking system, as I feel it is great as it is. Instead, I would like to see several strategy-based ways to undermine hacking, just as virtually all other threats in this game have, as in my examples. As it stands, there are only a handful of tactics to use against hacking, and of those, most are unreliable. To be like the other checks and balances in the game, at least some of the solutions to being hacked must be readily available to virtually any ship that bothered to take the precaution, not just those that were fortunate enough to have obtained the right systems throughout their game. It is a disservice to the strategy side of this game for one system to be able to end a run, unimpeded, because the player was unable to get his hands on the proper system(s) needed to defeat it.

I hope that I am able to get my point across effectively, and that we can at least somewhat see eye to eye. While the counter-examples given by obliviondoll are all effective tactics, leading me to believe that he is a very skillful player, they all rely on either prior luck (having gotten the right systems to counter the hack) or a narrow set of conditions that do work well when doable, but are often not present or reliable (such as the boarding scenarios he proposed).

I look forward to hearing more conversation on the topic with obliviondoll or any others that have insight on the subject.

[obliviondoll]

Example 1:
Boarders can devastate your ship if you cannot repel them. That is acceptable, though, because there are tons of ways to do that, as follows:
> Vent most of your ship, forcing them to fight in your medbay or suffocate.
> If you have a good crew, simply overpower them with your own crew
> Use anti-personnel drones to force a battle in a vented room, which doesn't hurt your drone.
> Target your own ship with bombs to hamper the boarders.
> Hack the enemy teleporter to force the boarders off your ship if the going gets too tough.
> Use upgraded doors so that boarders do not have free reign of your ship.
> Vent all critical system rooms so that the boarders only attack systems that are not important for that battle.

All of those methods are perfectly viable, highly effective, and many of them can be readily available with any ship right with little or no additional luck required to get the necessary load out.

All of those methods are "perfectly viable", just like all the methods I listed for countering an enemy's hack on your ship. Many can be readily available with any ship though? Not sure on that.

> Venting your ship is an option on most ships, but not all ships have medbays now, and there are advantages to a clone bay which can make it look like a great option... until someone boards your ship.
> Having a good crew of your own is a pretty limited option for the same reason you're trying to fob off the hacking counters with.
> Anti-personnel drones require luck (or the appropriate ship) to get access to drone control, AND luck getting the relevant drone.
> Bombs are as viable a counter to hacking as to boarders, and just as luck-based in having access to them.
> Hacking is as viable a counter to hacking as to boarders, and just as luck based again.
> Upgraded doors are only really important for countering boarding and controlling fire. It's a specialised upgrade which costs scrap and provides no benefit in any other situation.
> Venting all critical systems forces your own crew out (unless they're Lanius), meaning you're weakening your own critical systems to prevent the enemy from weakening them more.

These are all viable options, but realistically, there are only 2 options which are more consistently available than the counters to hacking. One of those is almost entirely specialised to countering boarding and does very little else, and the other has a pretty significant drawback.

Example 2:
An enemy with a large volley of shots can cripple and destroy your ship if you cannot quickly damage their weapons system. This is acceptable because there are a lot of ways to damage or impede that system, and still more ways to buy yourself additional time to get the job done.
> If you have a lot of guns, simply overpower the enemy's shields, directly firing on the weapons.
> Hit the enemy weapons system with bombs or missiles, damaging or ioning it, buying time for you to get the upper hand, in addition to getting their guns "out of sync", such that they cannot reliably penetrate your shields.
> Invest in good evasion, mitigating the enemy volleys by causing many, if not most, of their shots to miss you entirely.
> Board the enemy ship in another system that the AI considers critical, like shields, forcing him to have his gunner crewman leave his post to fight you, which slows down his weapon charge rate.
> Employ the cloaking system, allowing you to use cloaking to dodge the worst parts of the enemy volley, ensuring that you take little or no damage for long enough to try to get the battle under control.
> Hack the enemy guns, substantially slowing down his guns' firing, buying lots of time to otherwise disable the threat.

As with the previous example, there are so many solutions to this problem that it is highly improbable that you will have absolutely none of them at your disposal (except for very early in games using underpowered ships, of course).

As with the previous example, there are still limitations here.
> Massed weapon fire like this isn't always available, particularly near the beginning of the game. Blatantly luck-based.
> Relying on bombs and missiles is, once again, luck-based on having those systems available. Ions are also luck-based, and you're relying on the enemy ship having weak enough shields that you can get through them before taking significant damage.
> Boarding is, once again, reliant on having the right specific upgrade, but ALSO dependent on having a good crew. Even then, it doesn't prevent the enemy ship from using its tactic, it just delays them slightly, much like using a defense drone against hacking, but with significantly less benefit.
> Cloaking is a good option here, but as with all your other examples, it's something you can't always rely on having available to you.
> And in this case, hacking the weapons is actually a LESS viable counter to a ship with lots of weapons than hacking their hacking systems will be on a ship that relies on that system.

So once again, the counters are no more numerous than counters to hacking, and equally reliant on you having the right tools, most of which are in some way luck-based.

You have a lot of options for countering an enemy with hacking, and in the majority of cases, you WILL have one available if you've considered the validity of the threat. I've found Mind Control, bombs and missiles when I don't have defense drones to be more dangerous threats than hacking even when I have a "crucial" system taken over.