Vehicle Hacking is now Possible

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Originally Posted by Edfishy

As for vehicle hacking, any reason why it can't work the same as PS1? Seemed to work out pretty well to me...

3 words as to why it won't work like PS1 (ESF focus):

Free to play.

It'd be ridiculously easy to exploit out a dozen+ jacked ESFs and go surprise that faction. (simply due to the fact you can fly between warpgates in under 2 minutes, or just go to one of the 29 places (on Indar) you can pull an ESF from)

With the above, the whole point of 'Empire Specific Fighter' is finally redundant.
They should have just stayed with the PS1 common pool airchav instead of having wasted all this time on 'balancing' them to be nearly identical in the end anyway.

[Edfishy]

Maybe everything was just a little more brightly lit in PS1, but I never mistook a parade of Terran Republic Magriders / Vanguards for a friendly, and the same exploitation potential existed then as well.



The time and trouble you have to go through to perform such an exploitation (on a dozen+ scale) is worthy of a couple trollulz, and that's about it. Reminds me of when BuzzcutPsycho and the TE would roll a million bazillion Mosquitos, Liberators, or Galaxies. It'd be funny, then they'd all eventually die, get bored and return to normal gameplay.

Edit:

If it helps, an "aquisition timer" could be added for when you can enter and drive the vehicle, yet you always still have the option to de-spawn it.

[Mordelicius]

Vehicle hacking is a low risk/high reward proposition and OP. They can't just implement this game-changing mechanic like that. There has to be a thoroughly thought out system.

Add extra risk to vehicle hacking - What's the percentage success of hacking? What if hacking 'failed'? Length of hack attempt?

suggestion:
- 20% base chance to succeed (unoccupied). Failure means the vehicle will eletrocute the hacker (suicide).
- 5% base to chance to succeed (occupied). Failure means the vehicle will electrocute the hacker (suicide).
- Add cooldown (eg. 1 minute) for hacking tool for every attempt. So one can't just get resuscitated on every failure until it succeeds.
- add certline to improve toolkit in hacking 23%, 26%, 30%, 35% (unoccupied)
- add certline to improve toolkit in hacking 7%, 9%, 12%, 15% (occupied)

Hacking countermeasures - There has to be passive counters to hacking. Sunderer spawns will be high value targets.

suggestion:
- Certline to increase difficulty of hacking a vehicle. If a hacker will have the ability to increase chance of success. Then drivers can cert defensively to lower it.

Alt Account Exploitations prevention - I'm pretty sure this will be exploited. Players logging in to an enemy base and giving their vehicles to ally infiltrators, circumventing resource denial.

- That's why there has to be cooldown or penalty per attempt. To prevent it from being spammed.
- This is another reason why there has to be a % chance to succeed.
- They are overhauling the game's resource management. This is going to be used as a loophole to supplying allies with vehicles when there are no resources around.

Lastly, I suggest a 'hacking' mini-game (like Skyrim's lockpicking). I doubt they will implement it that way. But just a thought. That's a better alternative than just walking to a vehicle and just oughtright stealing it 100% of the time in such a short period.

Those are my initial suggestions to vehicle hacking. The most vital thing is that hacking has to a failure/downside. Vehicles aren't just turrets or terminals. They are mobile and expensive.

[MrMak]

Oh yeah random chance to fail and die. Thats is surely a fun afair game mechanic that will not cause more frustration than its worth......

There i nothing more awesome than perfectly eliminating the crew while they are repairing only to die due to something that is 100% random chance....

[camycamera]

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

Vehicle hacking is a low risk/high reward proposition and OP. They can't just implement this game-changing mechanic like that. There has to be a thoroughly thought out system.

Add extra risk to vehicle hacking - What's the percentage success of hacking? What if hacking 'failed'? Length of hack attempt?

suggestion:
- 20% base chance to succeed (unoccupied). Failure means the vehicle will eletrocute the hacker (suicide).
- 5% base to chance to succeed (occupied). Failure means the vehicle will electrocute the hacker (suicide).
- Add cooldown (eg. 1 minute) for hacking tool for every attempt. So one can't just get resuscitated on every failure until it succeeds.
- add certline to improve toolkit in hacking 23%, 26%, 30%, 35% (unoccupied)
- add certline to improve toolkit in hacking 7%, 9%, 12%, 15% (occupied)

Hacking countermeasures - There has to be passive counters to hacking. Sunderer spawns will be high value targets.

suggestion:
- Certline to increase difficulty of hacking a vehicle. If a hacker will have the ability to increase chance of success. Then drivers can cert defensively to lower it.

Alt Account Exploitations prevention - I'm pretty sure this will be exploited. Players logging in to an enemy base and giving their vehicles to ally infiltrators, circumventing resource denial.

- That's why there has to be cooldown or penalty per attempt. To prevent it from being spammed.
- This is another reason why there has to be a % chance to succeed.
- They are overhauling the game's resource management. This is going to be used as a loophole to supplying allies with vehicles when there are no resources around.

Lastly, I suggest a 'hacking' mini-game (like Skyrim's lockpicking). I doubt they will implement it that way. But just a thought. That's a better alternative than just walking to a vehicle and just oughtright stealing it 100% of the time in such a short period.

Those are my initial suggestions to vehicle hacking. The most vital thing is that hacking has to a failure/downside. Vehicles aren't just turrets or terminals. They are mobile and expensive.

a random chance of death? that is silly. a mini game would be good, but i don't see how it would work. a random one? i think that there should be a warning signal on the driver's HUD to alert him that he is being hacked. OR, you can only hack vehicles that are still.

its your own damn fault if you get hacked, because you weren't paying attention.

[Qwan]

If they are going to impliment this hacking back into PS then they should work on the ability to see these cloakers. Since the release of PS2 Ive been waiting for this implant to get released, because if this ability to hack comes into play no one will be playing any other class but cloaker. I mean currently (and ive seen this alot lately) alot of gamers play cloaker with sub machine guns, they cloak, then decloak and blast away. I can hear cloakers when they cloak, but if they stand still there is no way of detecting them. Now your talking about giving them back there hacking ability, you might as well give them back there shot guns as well. If there going to give them the ability to hack then they should also give us the ability to detect them, instead of after they have decloaked and opened fire. IMO

[kubacheski]

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

Vehicle hacking is a low risk/high reward proposition and OP. They can't just implement this game-changing mechanic like that. There has to be a thoroughly thought out system.

Add extra risk to vehicle hacking - What's the percentage success of hacking? What if hacking 'failed'? Length of hack attempt?

The extra risk is that you're a soft target exposing yourself to an armored vehicle, usually with a crew in it.

I can see different vehicles taking longer to hack or even a vehicle cert so your ride can have hacking countermeasures to extend the time, which for balance will be countered by the cert of the hacker.

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

Hacking countermeasures

The countermeasures are to run with infantry or drive your vehicle. The strategy of troop movement needs to change to compensate for hacking.
It's not drive your armored column up and sit still and shoot the base. It's a mixed arms game. I can't tell you how many times I've not hacked a vehicle due to troops around.
Or DRIVE. simply moving back and forth are not only a defensive mechanism against getting shot, it runs over nearby squishies. I can't tell you how many times I pulled out my REK only to be squashed underneath my target.
Mines? anyone? we used to ring the AMS with mines and turrets and motion sensors in PS1. There are issues with implementation in PS2, but people with eyes work fine too. Infils have to creep up on a vehicle and people can see that.

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

Alt Account Exploitations prevention

The general account hopping should take care of most of this. I mean SOE is supposed to be banning people for this. If it becomes prevalant, it will most likely be actively looked at.

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

This is going to be used as a loophole to supplying allies with vehicles when there are no resources around.

That's the point, isn't it? Or no friendly bases. Hack a vehicle or 2 and drive to your front to deliver the goods.

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

Vehicles aren't just turrets or terminals. They are mobile and expensive.

Which is why they need to be protected. See above about troop movement.

Heavy Armor and Sundys are simply targets for hacks. But they do have people in them and should have people guarding them. Hacking a turret in a base where noone is is easy, hacking a moving target with guards is another situation completely.

My fav hack was when an enemy Reaver would be parked at a tower and you'd hack it, jump in and then blast the guy when he pops out of the door thinking he's going to run to the next tower. Sometimes you could get back in the tower before he spawns, but it's much more fun to get out and let him try to hack it back, only to deconstruct it when he tries.

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Originally Posted by Edfishy

The time and trouble you have to go through to perform such an exploitation (on a dozen+ scale)

Except you could do it with 1 person, it was merely an example of what 'organised' people could do.

You aren't going to be able to visually identify enemy ESFs of your faction at any decent range unless they're exposing their top/underside and then good luck with that at night now.

Compound that with enemy airchav 'popping' into sight sometimes less than 200 metres away and the inconsistent audio where I've had Reavers of all things, overtake me and be 50+ metres past me before I even hear them.

You're essentially going to have to mash spot for every single aerial vehicle now, oh wait, they've limited that anyway, that Mozzie I've been trying to spot is actually friendly, oh that Scythe is actually enemy but I have to get silly close/cross reference minimap to determine FoF, ie giving someone else more than enough time to get the drop on you.

[kubacheski]

Originally Posted by Bobby Shaftoe

Except you could do it with 1 person, it was merely an example of what 'organised' people could do.

You aren't going to be able to visually identify enemy ESFs of your faction at any decent range unless they're exposing their top/underside and then good luck with that at night now.

Compound that with enemy airchav 'popping' into sight sometimes less than 200 metres away and the inconsistent audio where I've had Reavers of all things, overtake me and be 50+ metres past me before I even hear them.

You're essentially going to have to mash spot for every single aerial vehicle now, oh wait, they've limited that anyway, that Mozzie I've been trying to spot is actually friendly, oh that Scythe is actually enemy but I have to get silly close/cross reference minimap to determine FoF, ie giving someone else more than enough time to get the drop on you.

Definitely makes it more interesting, but does it make it more dangerous for you, who can start shooting at an ESF, or more dangerous for the friendly who has hacked the enemy ESF?

[Wahooo]

woot!
Bring it. Some of the most fun you can have in a game.

[Calista]

The vehicle entry/exit makes it so much more entertaining to watch

[Calista]

Originally Posted by Bobby Shaftoe

Free to play.

That's about 90% of this game's problems. Should have charged a "box" fee and tie it to accounts. It wouldn't even have to be all that much money either. Maybe next time.

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Originally Posted by kubacheski

Definitely makes it more interesting, but does it make it more dangerous for you, who can start shooting at an ESF, or more dangerous for the friendly who has hacked the enemy ESF?

No, it's not an interesting game mechanic, it's simply getting shot at by everyone 'checking' who's friend/foe and with this 'playerbase' one hit marker never seems to be enough to determine FoF for them.

Oh, I'm taking fire, evades/turns, nope, just a friendly 'tagging' me, oh look I'm now a perfect target for an enemy airchav to empty a mag into.

It would have been horrendous before they nerfed 'camos', now it would be only marginally terrible.

It wasn't a problem in PS1 since, funnily enough, vehicles were entirely faction colours, not some small region impossible to discern from 100 metres away requiring decent viewing angle and lighting levels.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by Wahooo

woot!
Bring it. Some of the most fun you can have in a game.

Tank Pirates - YouTube

Heh, I can remember Bobbyshafto hacking me out of my prowler on Ishundar, near Irkalla if I recall proper.

[OCNSethy]

I wouldnt worry too much guys. The way things are going, infils will get nerfed right out of the game.

Jeese... complaining about infil snipers, infil infiltrators and now trying to limit the only other skills they have left - hacking & stealthing.

Just give them a pointy stick and they can shake it use harsh language...