HWS Feature Suggestion

HWS General Discussion
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HWS Hack feature suggestion:

Robob and I were talking some Empyrion and came up with an idea we wanted to share that we think might be cool. Rather than try to propose values for any costs/times associated with the idea, I’d rather just talk about the core of the idea to see how people feel about it and then we could maybe make some suggestions on that stuff later with more information about the state of the game at the time (if it’s ever relevant). Here it is:

Orbital Hacking Drone (OHD)

Commands

X hour cooldown on all OHD commands except ohd:cloak (potentially a lower cooldown for ohd:scan)

ohd:hack

Available to all origins. Call in an orbital hacking drone on your position to hack a nearby unpowered object (change it’s ownership to you) for X credits. If the object is powered on or you leave the immediate area while the hack is in progress, the hack will be cancelled. This means the structure either needs to be abandoned or disabled first, and actively defended during the hack.

The HWS Police actively monitor for hacking activity and are able to efficiently track the signals used by orbital hacking drones. For most origins this means automatic guilty status on a successful hack, so be ready to protect your prize. Here are the exceptions:

Guardians: Guardians have close ties to the HWS Police and do not becoming automatically guilty for hacking. Instead, they pay a RP price of X RP. However… bad reputation can build up. If a Guardian with no RP hacks successfully, they will become guilty.

Pirates: See ohd:cloak for details

ohd:cloak

Available to pirates only. Pirates can pay extra to call in a cloaked orbital hacking drone. This sneaky technology comes with a steep price of X credits. By default, cloaking is off. Using ohd:cloak will toggle cloaking. Cloaking must be enabled before calling ohd:hack if you don’t want to be detected. This also prevents hacks from being detected by ohd:scan

ohd:scan

Available to guardians only. Using ohd:scan will check for any hacking activity on the playfield you’re currently on to let you know if you need to go on patrol. This has no cost.

We thought this would be a cool idea to implement, since its kind of a pain to go through and dig for someone’s core that ha been cleverly ‘ghost cored’ and buried deep within the planet. Also, it’d be great, for pirates who could then come and take over captured booty rather than having to blow up their booty into pieces, and then recore said structure.

This will add a whole new element to the game :), letting people capture bases and vehicles they find in the game. Pirates will be able to actually behave like pirates, and everyone will have to pay more attention to the amount of time left on their structures.

Thoughts?

6 Likes
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As long as you can’t loose your base while your sleeping even easier now then yea don’t see why not :stuck_out_tongue: hacking is cool, maybe hacking (costing only rp) could be used to slowly syphon out power from structures so you could take out a few hv’s before assaulting someone’s base as an alternative idea.

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Just reading through this again, wanted to add that ohd:hack would be available on PVP playfields only (and I guess scan too since it would only be relevant there) @Ranzeth

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Very interesting to bring in this cyber topic into the game :slight_smile:

It’s a futuristic game so why not.
Recently some people are complaining that they don’t know what to do with 200 million credits - here we are.

I will talk with Jascha about it and what it means to implement it.

Thanks

1 Like
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Idea - madness. Scan-drone - good idea. But I still think, thats must be some physical device, not HWS-script.

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Yeah it would be cool if there was a way to make it a physical device, but I don’t know what sort of capabilities there are for custom items. If we can’t make custom items maybe there could be some command to buy (perhaps at a specific place) something that’s not physically in your inventory but just enables the hack command. Could say it’s a program on your PDA that self destructs after use or something. Maybe something similar for the scanning. I’d love to hear a bunch of suggestions on this.

It would just be neat to have an alternative to scrapping/digging for deeply buried cores in a base/vehicle you’re able to defend for a reasonable amount of time. If implemented the way I’m imagining, you’d basically only be able to hack when the object is basically yours anyways, it’s just a little riskier than scrapping but for a slightly different type of reward.

1 Like
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I like the idea, but as Alex sayd it should be a Physical instrument you can put into your CV, HV, SV. AND/OR a portable one, you can make the range bigger the bigger is the device CV>HV>SV>Hand

There must be also a Jammer or something to place inside the CV BA SV HV to prevent Hacking. The jammer works only if the structure is fueled and turned on and you have to destroy to allow the hacking.

You can also make many kind of hacking:
The faster:Turn base down (For a short period of time) For ex 10 min to complete
THe slower: Hack the core For ex 1 Hour to complete
All impossible if the Jammer is turned ON and powered. It is like the Offline Protection. If there is an attempt to hack it will emit a loud sound turn on the turrets if they are turne d off and maybe send you a warning every minute even if you are on the other side of the galaxy to warn you that your base is under attack

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If you’re online and being hacked you should be able to trace the hack to the source vessel and attack.

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Even that alone would be amazing, always scary to leave your base to venture out knowing someone could be killing it while your not there.

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I think this would end up making hacking no different than scrapping. People would just place the jammer right beside their core and you’d have to tear it apart all the same.

Though I do like the idea of jamming too… maybe you could install a jammer on a ship/base etc with a command by ID for some credit cost as hacking insurance. Maybe it prevents X number of hacks before it breaks down.

1 Like
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Or you could drain its power first somehow, not sure.

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if the base if not fuelled the jammer does not work, if it is operational you have to conquer it anyway old stle
I think the hack is a way to conquer abandoned structures, thi is the purpose

1 Like
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tru tru

Yeah that makes total sense, I dunno why in my mind the jammer would just work all the time without power lol. Neat idea.

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I think this is a neat idea too. You’re able to see a list of structures you control, so you could assume your character is aware of the structures on there at any given time. Maybe when you get hacked you see a notification “You notice a change in the structures you control. #{structure_name} is no longer yours. Last seen: #{playfield_hacked_on}”

Edit: Though… I guess when structures are no longer under your control for other reasons you don’t get a notification. Maybe you could have something installed in your structure to alert you to hacks to make it make sense why you’d be notified.

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Yeah, what you smoking :stuck_out_tongue:

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Ultimately, it boils down to what Rex and Jascha can code with their tool.

  1. Physical hacking device - That’d be cool, but I don’t think you can custom code a new item into the game.

  2. Jammer - same thing, I don’t believe custom items can be coded at this point.

Still, really great ideas all around. Our conversation started because I was trying to take over a massive base, and after spending a massive amount of time trying
to locate the ‘ghost core’ I was like this is a waste of time.

So in order for this feature to work as intended, I’m thinking there has to be a few ways for it to work.

  1. As Robob said, has to be an active PvP playfield.
  2. Structure has to be powered down

So, I think if it’s possible if the structure is currently powered on, and you attempt a hack that the hack starts to drain the base until it’s powered off.

Why?

Well for the same reason why we thought of this in the first place. Someone could easily bury a couple of T3 Fuel Tanks deep into the planet making it impossible to hack since you can’t take out the fuel tanks.

If that’s not possible, I think it’ll still be a good feature for hacking people’s SVs and HVs that are found powered off and unguarded, as well as the bases where people don’t use cheese to make them impossible to take over.

1 Like
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The only tweak to this Is I would add a time tracker and the hack would fail or have a failure percentage based on building abandonment.

IE: I blow the fuel cells on base and run Hack = 98% chance of failure and guilt.

I come back 2 days later and it’s still dead and run the Hack = 25% chance of failure and guilt.

Some sort of scale based on owner visit should be part of the equation.

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I disagree here. The primary purpose of this would be to make it easier to take bases/hv/sv without having to dig up THE entire base to do so.

If there was a % failure, the person could just opt to continue to dig/blow up the SV or HV to take it. My vision of hacking is to make it so people don’t have to rip up half a SV/HV/Base to take it, but if they come across it and it’s not defended they can take it over nice and easy.

It also makes it that much easier for pirates to play their roles, where if they do blow up a CV and find that it has spare SV/HVs that are unpowered they could just turn around and hack them rather then having to destroy them to get all the ‘goodies’

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to the point of others, it cant be TOO easy… always a drawback

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Right, you have to be able to hold the base for XXX period of time. Maybe make it so you have to be within a certain distance of the core? That way people can plan out their bases appropriately?