Hacking

[Lazerus Artificial]

Waaait calm down, its not about the evil evil hackers who have unlimited shield and onehit lasers.

No, its about a Mechanic for the future.
Electronic Warfare

A Support Module that allows you to hack into the systems of the target ship.
As a victim, you would have a countermeasure to that. as soon as the attacker starts the hack attack, you would have to solve a cipher, the faster player wins. If the Attacker wins, the following could be accessible for him:

• Disable his Life Support for a few seconds
• Disable Flight Assist
• Initiate Silent Running to overheat his ship
• Randomly start his Engines to push him into random directions
• Scramble his HUD
• Add false Radar Signatures
• Lower the output of his reactor so that his shield recharges slower, weapons overheat faster etc

Those kinds of things, but you could not start them all at the same time, only a certain amount of routines every few seconds, one after another.
(disabled life support could last a minute, hacked engines, silent running and flight assist just a few seconds, scrambled hud and radar like 20s, reactor output like 30s - you know, a balanced value based on the effect)
Also you could not start the same one over and over again, each of them would have a seperate "cooldown"
Better module = stronger/longer effect.

If the Victim wins, the attack backfires and fries the attackers hacking module for a while, so that he cant attempt to start the next hack right after he failed.

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In the future, when boarding is implemented, a similar mechanic could be used to sneak into the ship of another player.
So instead of blowing the cargohatch open and alert everyone on board, you could also hack the door. a modern lockpick.
inside the ship then you could hack different things directly, sabotage the ship.
Release his cargo, do the things from above (all at the same time, but you have to access the modules directly)
Or, when you get into the cockpit, override the ownership of that ship so that you can steal it (if you fail that one, it initiates self destruct)

the minigame itself could be a very fast puzzle. a word that is scrambled like "Elite Dangerous" -> "lEite sruneoDag" each second that passes will unscramble the word more and more, and when its over it counts as a loss for the attacker.
so with a little bit of exercise you could solve it in less than a second

 

[Nate 'Redfox' Roache]

interesting, make it work like a scanner?

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

interesting, make it work like a scanner?

thats what i thought yeah, activate it, start the minigame, have fun.

 

[Darth Ender]

any interaction between players or npcs is fairly quick. I dont see strung out mini-games as being a possibility.

That said, I do see this mechanic as being a mini-game in response to a scan. You could beat the scan, or lose to it. The effect being if you beat the scan you look legal (nothing to see here) but if you lose you expose whatever you may have. Think of it as an analogue to interdictions.

That would be an effective suggestion, I dont see some kind of electronic hacking method as an effective means to attack another ship/player since it would not negate the use of weapons which would make the simultaneous effort of hacking counterproductive.

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

any interaction between players or npcs is fairly quick. I dont see strung out mini-games as being a possibility.

That said, I do see this mechanic as being a mini-game in response to a scan. You could beat the scan, or lose to it. The effect being if you beat the scan you look legal (nothing to see here) but if you lose you expose whatever you may have. Think of it as an analogue to interdictions.

That would be an effective suggestion, I dont see some kind of electronic hacking method as an effective means to attack another ship/player since it would not negate the use of weapons which would make the simultaneous effort of hacking counterproductive.

that could also be interesting as a countermeasure.

hacking a target when you are alone might not be that usefull (besides when you could lower his damage output or shielding) BUT: wings are comming soon

the minigame itself could be a very fast puzzle. a word that is scrambled like "Elite Dangerous" -> "lEite sruneoDag" each second that passes will unscramble the word more and more, and when its over it counts as a loss for the attacker.
so with a little bit of exercise you could solve it in less than a second

 

[Winterwalker]

I really like this idea .. plus, if people interested in hacking into the game
would put their effort into designing mini games for hacking IN game ..
perhaps for prizes, if their ideas are adopted,
we could end up with some very high quality content.

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

I really like this idea .. plus, if people interested in hacking into the game
would put their effort into designing mini games for hacking IN game ..
perhaps for prizes, if their ideas are adopted,
we could end up with some very high quality content.

wouldnt even need to be such a thing. most hackers are script kiddies anyway.
designing a minigame idea is not that hard, everyone with a little imagination could do that. my idea was a simple scrambled word (a password if you want)

 

[Winterwalker]

wouldnt even need to be such a thing. most hackers are script kiddies anyway.
designing a minigame idea is not that hard, everyone with a little imagination could do that. my idea was a simple scrambled word (a password if you want)

True .. and it's a good idea. I'm suggesting, why stop there?

Ideas on "backdoors", to markets, engine performance, scams, spying missions maybe could come adapted from the way those scripts work? eg. taking over a CPU, intercepting (secure) transmissions, handing the docking crew a 1000 credits? ..

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

True .. and it's a good idea. I'm suggesting, why stop there?

Ideas on "backdoors", to markets, engine performance, scams, spying missions maybe could come adapted from the way those scripts work? eg. taking over a CPU, intercepting (secure) transmissions, handing the docking crew a 1000 credits? ..

sure, but you would need to keep in mind that it cant be overly complicated.
For example Mass Effects...i guess it was 2? hacking was just a small puzzle where you had to find the right code pieces and put them together.
it should not be "im hacking you, lets play tetris!" it should fit into the theme (thats why i said "password", basically guess the admin password to controll his ship)

when manually hacking seperated pieces (modules, doors etc), they could be different.
Rewire a generator...do it wrong and you get electrocuted and trigger the alarm, do it right and lowe the output.
Remove safety mechanisms that hold the cargo in flight with a pull and push puzzle
Hack a doorcode with a mastermind pin solver
Scramble his hud or fake radar signatures by injecting false code snippets

Bringing the docking crew might be interesting for smuggling, you should mention that here
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=118730
or make a seperate topic, because that would be a great idea.
give them a few % from the value of your cargo so that they let you pass.

 

[Serpentstar]

I could see this "minigame" being useful to make it more difficult to be scanned by system police so one could dock with contraband.... Perhaps as soon as you see the "you are being scanned" alert to come up, if you want to by pass it, you can stop and play the "spoof the readings" response..

Would be an interesting challenge for when you get pulled out of supercruise while "Honest" pirates try to scan your cargo....

 

[herc34es]

Amazing idea but only in one case when you have another co-pilot. Imagine now they start the hacking in the middle of the fight and you can't fly , manouvre ect cause of that. But when they implement the copilots it would be so good.
For the one pilot ships I think they are doomed unless the counter measure is set and it will be automatic

 

[NewYears1978]

Interesting ideas you have there

 

[Distance]

I want a tracking module that you can fire at a ship like a limpet and track a player or npc. Then you can find their trade route and set up an ambush down the line

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

Amazing idea but only in one case when you have another co-pilot. Imagine now they start the hacking in the middle of the fight and you can't fly , manouvre ect cause of that. But when they implement the copilots it would be so good.
For the one pilot ships I think they are doomed unless the counter measure is set and it will be automatic

that would be the risk when you fly alone, true.
but with 1.2 in a wing it could allready work. one player who attacks and baits the target, while another one keeps silent to hack them.

the co-pilot idea is nice though, i guess when we can fly together in the same ship, there could be quite a few interesting things.
Hacking, direct turret control, repairs, boarding, throwing grenades out of the cargo bay...