new vehicle hacking discussion

[Shogun]

ok, i guess there were already about 90 threads about being able to hack enemy vehicles, but i didn´t want to necro, so i start a new discussion.

what was the reason for the devs to not include vehicle hacking again?
if i remember right, in the early discussions the vehicle addons were accused to be the problem. but why?

i haven´t checked ingame lately, but i saw in the video where hamma and jenny showed off the harasser the first time, that they could swap their vehicles. so obviously you can take over a vehicle from a friend with all of its equipped upgrades.

so i don´t see any problem in hacking an enemy vehicle and being able to use it with whatever the enemy had equipped in there.
we can´t change upgrades on already drawn vehicles anyhow.

the infiltrators could really use the v hacking ability to be more useful.

i am not sure how risky the hacking should be.
if the infiltrator could cloak forever, i would say hacking needs a visible ray like it had in ps1, take some time and emitt the distinctive hacking sound it already had in ps1.
but i don´t know how this would need to be tweaked for an infil that can´t move up to a vehicle and hack it in one cloak-pass.

if we get vehicle hacking, we also need 2 other changes:
the timer that deconstructs unmanned vehicles has to go!
and the deconstruct vehicle button has to return.
deconstruct button should only work if vehicle is unmanned and it will not deconstruct immediately but after some seconds to prevent last second killdenial.

turning the empirespecific colored parts to the new owners factioncolor should be possible as well.

the only problem i see is the unreliable friendmarker. someone in a hacked enemy vehicle with desertcamo will take friendly fire for sure.
but i hope this will be adressed in the big quality of life patch.

so what do you think? do you want infils to be able to hack empty enemy vehicles? or if certed to maximum even vehicles with enemies inside, ejecting them when vehicle is hacked?

do you see any problems i have missed?

[Bocheezu]

I really don't miss having to babysit the AMS from cloakers. I hated that bitch duty in PS1 and I'm very glad it's not revisited in PS2. There are so many more AMSes floating around in this game, and coupled with no static defense from combat engineering, you would have to devote entire squads to defend all the different AMSes from the possibility of one fucking cloaker hacking one of them and turning it into a Trojan Horse in the middle of your base. No thanks. Not without a "unhackable" cert that would 100% disallow any hacking of the vehicle.

[Wahooo]

I miss it so much... especially because black and red Magriders and Vanguards looked so bad ass.

Anyway it would seem it has a lot to do with the way the ES stuff is coded.
See how there are a bunch of SC unlockable cosmetics are still empire specific, as well as vehicle weapons you'd think were common pool end up being empire specific purchases. The front grill I bought for my Sundy is TR only... really?

It looks like it is not as simple as just changing colors and updating the IFF. Maybe after they have figured out how to make the Bulldog purchased for a prowler also unlocked for my magrider they can look into hacking enemy vehicles but my feeling is there is something either too complex in the games coding to ever do it, or it is going to be very very far down the road.

[Shogun]

Originally Posted by Wahooo

I miss it so much... especially because black and red Magriders and Vanguards looked so bad ass.

Anyway it would seem it has a lot to do with the way the ES stuff is coded.
See how there are a bunch of SC unlockable cosmetics are still empire specific, as well as vehicle weapons you'd think were common pool end up being empire specific purchases. The front grill I bought for my Sundy is TR only... really?

It looks like it is not as simple as just changing colors and updating the IFF. Maybe after they have figured out how to make the Bulldog purchased for a prowler also unlocked for my magrider they can look into hacking enemy vehicles but my feeling is there is something either too complex in the games coding to ever do it, or it is going to be very very far down the road.

what would you need the unlock for? the vehicles are already spawned with the empire specific stuff installed, and the stuff wouldn´t change when the vehicle is hacked. we can´t reset vehicle stuff on existing vehicles anyhow. so we don´t need it on enemy vehicles as well.

[Wahooo]

My point is, that it seems it is way more complicated than just a simple color change.

I have a couple very early SC purchases. Digital camo and the front grill on my Sundy. Both are still empire specific. I don't know the details, and I can only assume so I could be wrong. BUT, my assumption is based on the fact, that there are many things like this that are still empire specific, that taking something and just making it usable for another empire's person, somewhere involves bits of code linked deep in who knows where and that it is not only not as simple as it seems it may very well be impossible... or at least such a monumental task as to not be worth the effort.

The IFF part... for all we know it could break 'Q' spotting or mines or lock-on weapons or shields or terminals or warp gates or spawns OR it could break something else linked to something else that doesn't even seem related...

I want it back, one of the things I soooo miss about PS1 and I wasn't even that much of a pirate. But I can understand where it might simply be to much to even try. although had it been part of the original design maybe it wouldn't have been so hard now but who knows how things grew. It just looks like a Y2K thing to me. When they started it wasn't considered and now there are so many layers of code dependent upon other stuff there is no way to implement it now.

[Dragonskin]

I haven't done it in a long time, but you used to be able to spawn vehicles and if you wanted you could unlock them for other people to use.

I have used other peoples liberators and scythes in the past... yet at the time I hadn't unlocked the zypher or rocketpods. I don't see what would prevent that same thing from allowing an enemy to use a vehicle if it was hacked. The game doesn't do a check to see what weapons you have unlocked to your account before allowing you to use weapons in other vehicles.

[Ghoest9]

I really miss it.

Sneaking up behind a tank - hacking - then jumping in and killing the driver is extremely fun when you pull it off.

[Shogun]

ok, i understand that the game may have problems with the Friend or foe detection if a vehicle is flipped (for shields, ammotowers and maybe even warpgate painfields).

but i would like to get info on this from a dev. to know if it´s really a problem, or if vehicles have a simple flag that could just be changed to another faction and that is checked by all gamemechanics.

for the coloring i would not change the whole camo that is applied to the appropriate camo of the other faction, but i would simply change the color value of blue/purple/red.

so the faction specific things stay on the vehicle as they are, only the color value of the factions maincolor is changed. for example, a prowler with lumifiber wouldn´t change any pattern of the fiber, only the color is switched.

[Dragonskin]

Some ideas kinda building off yours.

Infiltrator only ability.
-Have to be visible to hack like any other hacking currently.
-Has to cert into a tree for hacking. Certs spent in the tree reduce hacking time like they do for hacking terminals.
-Hacking a vehicle has a unique sound that could be heard within the proximity of the vehicle.

From the vehicle side.
-Anti-Hack defensive utility slot added
-Has to cert into hack time increase to make it harder to hack. Final tier of anti-hack can permenantly disable hacking
-Vechiles being hacked would show on the owners vehicle display HUD with a burn timer like base capping.

[AThreatToYou]

There's something deep in PS2's code that simply does not allow a registered NC or TR character to enter a Magrider. There is also an issue with player assets loaded into memory on game startup: The game knows you are NC. Thus, it doesn't load the Magrider HUD. I know that can be handled, but how?

The way they would do this now is clone all of the vehicle assets for each Empire and then, when the vehicle is hacked, quickly de-spawn it and then re-spawn the proper faction-type vehicle. The server would have to transfer the weapon types and upgrades associated with the vehicle when it was reloaded, and if these don't match up (i.e. bug), shit gets real on the server's ass. i.e. the server crashes. Plus, you're either loading these new assets into RAM all the time, which takes memory, or loading them on-the-spot, which... I don't even know if PS2 can do that.

Now, vehicles already handle their hidden upgrades on the vehicle, not the player who is driving it. I'm not sure how ownership works though.

In PS1, the ownership just flipped and it got re-painted.

[Shogun]

nice ideas

the antihack cert would be in the defensive slot. so you would have to choose between protection against hackers or c4.

i think it should only be available for the sunderer (and the galaxy if it gets back ams functionality some day)

if you let your tank or airplane unattended, it should never be safe. that´s why i wanted the automatic reconstruction to be gone. the danger of losing your vehicle to a hacker would replace this autodeconstruction. at least you can be angry at the enemy about losing your ressources, instead of being angry at the game.

also hacking an enemy scout radar quad would turn out a better strategy than destroying it. would add a little more strategy to the radar dumping because you might help the enemy if you don´t park it somewhere safe or hidden. so the quad should use the antihack cert on the same slot it uses the radar, or be not available at all.

[Dragonskin]

Yea, would be cool.

If you could hack NS vehicles you could get around what AthreatToYOu is talking about. They all use the same weapons. So once the vehicle flips to your faction from the hack then you don't have to worry about funky HUDs loading or worrying about weapon restrictions.

The part I mentioned for defensive slot was more specifically for sunderers. Forcing players to take anti-hack, blockade armor or mine guard... but you can't have more than one of those.

I think making people have to make an active decision on their defensive slot is a good thing. If a harasser suddenly had to choose which defensive slot then it might make them double think just picking composite every time.. or a lightning would be forced to think about something other than mine guard.. so I think the defensive slot is a good place.

If sunderers were able to be hacked then suddenly they become more like chess pieces instead of "SUNDERER! CERT PINATA! MUST KILL!". Hacking an abandoned battle bus could be just as beneficial as hacking an enemy AMS sunderer. Over time people would probably blow up less sunderers on sight. They would at least try to see if it can be hacked before blowing it up in some cases.

Like Shogun was saying hacking a vehicle with a scout radar could change the tide just as easy. Suddenly the enemy doesn't know where you are, but now you know where your enemies are instead.

I think hacking someone's battle galaxy could be pretty entertaining too and if they ever bring back the AMS galaxy then you could have a game changer.

Just hacking in general. Especially with the NS vehicles seems like it should be easy to do and could change up battles to make them more interesting.

[AThreatToYou]

The system is already in place (each faction has their own loaded type) of NS Vehicle, so yes, you should and could be able to safely implement a hack-to-reload system on Lightnings, Sunderers, Flashes, Harrassers, Galaxies, and Liberators.

[Sunrock]

Fun idea. But in reality I don't think it would be overall good for the game play of PS2. For it to work you need to not only redesign every single continent from the ground up but also redesign the entire game from the ground up. I hope SOE learned it's lesson with NGE for SWG and never do that again.

[AThreatToYou]

Originally Posted by Sunrock

Fun idea. But in reality I don't think it would be overall good for the game play of PS2. For it to work you need to not only redesign every single continent from the ground up but also redesign the entire game from the ground up. I hope SOE learned it's lesson with NGE for SWG and never do that again.

wat.