Please disable "Hack holo screens" from powerplay weeklies until it can be reworked

[V'larr]

My weekly wants me to hack no less than 11 Holoscreen Adverts in HIP 25436.

There are 2 (crafted) stations in the system.

There are not enough Holoscreens present for me to complete this mission, even in the most ideal circumstances where all the screens at both stations are available.

Until the weekly mission can be reworked to account for how many Holoscreens are actually accessible in a target system, or more Holoscreens made available, please just disable it from the mission generation pool, so that this doesn't waste anybody else's time.

The tooltip should also be improved to better explain if you can avoid being detected or fined while performing this task - and if the current mechanic is just that you get automatically logged and fined, then it should be explained in the tooltip that you need to be prepared to get in, hack the screen, and get out & go find an Interstellar Factor to clear your fines; or else just reworked so that it's not an automatic fine and can be avoided through avoiding detection.

edit: Also, I've been told it can turn the station HOSTILE and cause it to start engaging you by virtue of lowering your minor faction reputation? That seems like a rather big issue in need of reconsideration.

 

[g0oglyeyes]

There are not enough Holoscreens present for me to complete this mission, even in the most ideal circumstances where all the screens at both stations are available.

Hack what is available, then exit to menu and log back in. The holoscreens should reset to unhacked. There will be cases where you are pointed to a system with no hackable holoscreens at all, and FDev is aware of this. Probably one of the reasons why the number of weekly merit tasks was doubled from 5 to 10 while the reward was cut in half is so that undoable tasks do not hit as hard. This was the direction they chose.

The tooltip should also be improved to better explain if you can avoid being detected or fined while performing this task - and if the current mechanic is just that you get automatically logged and fined, then it should be explained in the tooltip that you need to be prepared to get in, hack the screen, and get out & go find an Interstellar Factor to clear your fines; or else just reworked so that it's not an automatic fine and can be avoided through avoiding detection.

edit: Also, I've been told it can turn the station HOSTILE and cause it to start engaging you by virtue of lowering your minor faction reputation? That seems like a rather big issue in need of reconsideration.

This is by design. It's "easy" merits that you can come by frequently so there is a penalty. You don't need to find an interstellar factor to pay off the fine - just dock at the same station to pay it off from the administrative contacts. This will be available so long as you are not actually wanted for a bounty by the controlling faction. You can counteract the reputation hit by donating credits via missions in the support category. Coincidentally, donating credits should also award a small amount of merits if the system is within 20ly of one of your strongholds.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

and get out & go find an Interstellar Factor to clear your fines

They're fines rather than bounties, so you can dock at the station you just hacked and pay them off there, if you need them cleared for any reason. No need to hunt out an Interstellar Factor. (And if you don't plan to dock at that faction's stations at any point, you can just carry the fine around indefinitely, since it doesn't do anything else)

I don't believe there's a way to avoid the fine, but since it's a tiny fine it's basically just "the limpets you use for this task are a bit more expensive".

Also, I've been told it can turn the station HOSTILE and cause it to start engaging you by virtue of lowering your minor faction reputation? That seems like a rather big issue in need of reconsideration.

The amount of reputation damage they cause is pretty substantial for the amount of merits you actually get from it. But it's not so fast that you wouldn't notice from the "your reputation is now unfriendly" inbox message that that's what it's doing and have time to think about whether you want to continue as far as Hostile.

Fits the setting, too:
- random murder: sure, no big deal
- defeating a faction's entire war fleet single-handedly: welcome, valued ally
- messing with corporate advertising: we will kill you

Probably one of the reasons why the number of weekly merit tasks was doubled from 5 to 10

That's just what happens when you hit rank 40. New players still get just 5.

This is by design. It's "easy" merits that you can come by frequently so there is a penalty.

That's only true if you do it as an Undermining or Acquisition action. As a Reinforcement action, it doesn't attract a reputation penalty (or a fine, for that matter) but is just as easy.

Lots of other easy repeatable merit actions - bounty hunting, profitable trade, rares when it was enabled at all, etc. are reputation positive. A lot more (ship scans, powerplay commodity transfer, megaship scans, etc.) are reputation neutral.

It is certainly true that Frontier's design penalises Undermining and encourages Reinforcement. But that's true whether the action is easy and repeatable or difficult and hard to repeat. The point (intentionally or otherwise...) is to discourage competitive behaviour, not to discourage easy merit earning.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Hack what is available...

What if the number available is zero?

I mean, obviously the answer is ignore that weekly task, but it does suggest something is wrong with how this task works.

 

[aRJay]

What if the number available is zero?

I mean, obviously the answer is ignore that weekly task, but it does suggest something is wrong with how this task works.

Some boss/bureaucrat/clerk has messed up. Sounds pretty on point immersion wise.

 

[g0oglyeyes]

As a Reinforcement action, it doesn't attract a reputation penalty (or a fine, for that matter) but is just as easy.

It's all but impossible to find hackable screens in reinforcement systems. And even when you do, it's usually 1 or 2 out of 8 available. When you go to undermining or acquisition systems where you will get the rep hit, all screens are hackable - at least in solo mode. I'm positive this was done to stop farming.

Won't lie though, doing logoutskis for the merit grind does not sound like a good time, but I did it just enough for the weekly task completion. I far preferred to suss out megaships to scan and participate in a defense or two.

There's other ways to farm too. Certain medium+ agriculture settlement layouts have a habitat branch with 3 houses away from the main buildings, and each have a data term. I found that this was the best way to get Faction Associates Data and Cocktail/Culinary Recipes, but you can download a lot of Power data as well to turn in. Don't bother uploading malware unless there is a weekly attached, it simply takes too long for the payoff. If you are lucky, there is a Power container near that ring of houses too (the codes never change). Find one controlled by an anarchy faction and you are golden. Simply touch down, clean out the houses and terminals, then punch out into supercruise and drop back in again for a reset. I gained ~40 ranks or so without intending to when I turned in all the Power data and goods to a nearby stronghold, and gained absolutely zero notoriety for killing the local gang. Then again, that just shows how stupidly rare Cocktail/Culinary Recipes are, and I "only" had to farm "just" 10 after the requirement cut.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'm positive this was done to stop farming.

Even with a full set of 8 or more, the Ops controller only lets you hack 4 at a time, so compared with some other (very repeatable) merit sources it's never going to be the fastest ever.

And plenty of other Powerplay actions are much more farmable - bounties are still AFKable and it's not like a HazRES runs out, rares loops as designed had no penalty for repeating them, ship and wake scanning around a station isn't going to run out of targets, Power CZs in contested systems run long enough to massively exceed the ammo supply on any ammo-limited build. (All rep-neutral or rep-positive)

I'm pretty sure it was done because it was thematic - which it is! - with balance a distant fifth on the priority list, just like the rest of Powerplay.

 

[rootsrat]

My weekly wants me to hack no less than 11 Holoscreen Adverts in HIP 25436.

There are 2 (crafted) stations in the system.

There are not enough Holoscreens present for me to complete this mission, even in the most ideal circumstances where all the screens at both stations are available.

Until the weekly mission can be reworked to account for how many Holoscreens are actually accessible in a target system, or more Holoscreens made available, please just disable it from the mission generation pool, so that this doesn't waste anybody else's time.

The tooltip should also be improved to better explain if you can avoid being detected or fined while performing this task - and if the current mechanic is just that you get automatically logged and fined, then it should be explained in the tooltip that you need to be prepared to get in, hack the screen, and get out & go find an Interstellar Factor to clear your fines; or else just reworked so that it's not an automatic fine and can be avoided through avoiding detection.

edit: Also, I've been told it can turn the station HOSTILE and cause it to start engaging you by virtue of lowering your minor faction reputation? That seems like a rather big issue in need of reconsideration.

It's a weekly assignment. The hint is in the name. It's not meant to be done all in one go. Come back in 2 hours. Or days. You'll be able to complete it.

 

[CMDR_UKmouse]

Here's a tip for hacking the screens without getting a fine. Just go silent running and use heatsinks if you find you start overheating before finishing. I use a Cobra V and have never received a fine for using the limpits at a station. Make sure to stay out of the slot.

 

[g0oglyeyes]

Even with a full set of 8 or more, the Ops controller only lets you hack 4 at a time, so compared with some other (very repeatable) merit sources it's never going to be the fastest ever.

You can definitely hack 8 simultaneously with the C7 Universal Limpet Controller. This will obviously make your local reputation abysmal very quickly, but the potential here was huge if no penalties applied. From experience, 1 almost always janks out (the limpet flies into the beyond and never contacts the hacking point) so let's say 7 are hackable on repeat with logoutskis. I get 240 merits per hack:

7 x 240 = 1,680 per set

The C7 Universal has the quickest hacking time, so let's say you complete 1 set of hacks very 3 minutes including logging out, back in, and traveling the 10km it places you from the station. There are 20 cycles per hour:

20 x 1,680 = 33,600 per hour

Or 38,400 per hour if no screens bugged out. You may adjust the timing if you disagree, but this absolutely would still have been one of the fastest merit farms if not for the reputation penalty, or if you could do it ad nauseam in allied space. The other farming methods you mentioned like AFK res farming or ship/wake scanning, while viable, do not come anywhere close to this figure. FDev killed the potential right out of the crib for the same reason they turned off rares trading, escape pod farming, and severely nerfed fighter farming. You're correct that balance was always an afterthought - which is why these changes were made weeks after the fact (alongside setting a cutoff date for exploration data harvested).

As a side note, I learned to love the Universal Multi Controller. Having 8 hackers or collectors on tap, or any mix, just speeds things up quite a bit. Unfortunately the only ships for which I've found a slot for it on are my Type-10 and Corvette. The 'Conda only has 1 C7 slot, normally reserved for the chonkiest shield generator, and the Cutter is a cargo rack slave. The Clipper does not support such a heavy module as easily with its smaller engines and FSD.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Good point - I forgot the ULC was a fair bit more powerful.

And a considerably faster route is available, too, thinking about it
- attacker A hacks the ads to their power
- attacker B hacks the ads to their power instead
- both generate undermining merits, neither needs to relog, the only limit is that they occasionally need to reload limpets.

 

[g0oglyeyes]

- attacker A hacks the ads to their power
- attacker B hacks the ads to their power instead
- both generate undermining merits, neither needs to relog, the only limit is that they occasionally need to reload limpets.

Having a partner in crime and absolutely metagaming to the max

 

[V'larr]

It's a weekly assignment. The hint is in the name. It's not meant to be done all in one go. Come back in 2 hours. Or days. You'll be able to complete it.

Yes. The hint IS in the name. An assignment that I'm expected to accomplish once a week.

Not log in repeatedly every day throughout the week, going out of my way to revisit a system and look at these holo-screens, just to see if there's an off-chance of the game permitting me to play the damn game.

Look at the mental gymnastics it takes in this thread to justify things. This is not good game design and it needs to change.

 

[rootsrat]

Yes. The hint IS in the name. An assignment that I'm expected to accomplish once a week.

Not log in repeatedly every day throughout the week, going out of my way to revisit a system and look at these holo-screens, just to see if there's an off-chance of the game permitting me to play the damn game.

Look at the mental gymnastics it takes in this thread to justify things. This is not good game design and it needs to change.

It's perfectly fine.

 

[V'larr]

It's perfectly fine.

No, no it is not. And in fact, a rather large problem with Elite's overall development has been apathetic acceptance of the minimally-viable status quo, so I'd really rather you keep to yourself with this strange gatekeeping of feedback about things that could use improving. It's actually a bit infuriating to post feedback about something that I am quite specifically NOT fine with, and get met with inconsiderate condescension and denial.

It's not helpful to me, it's not helpful to the developers, it won't be helpful to the game, and it does nothing to help you that I can discern.

 

[V'larr]

Here's a tip for hacking the screens without getting a fine. Just go silent running and use heatsinks if you find you start overheating before finishing. I use a Cobra V and have never received a fine for using the limpits at a station. Make sure to stay out of the slot.

I'm getting conflicting information about this; some say it's automatic fine, or maybe it is scan/detection-related after all; either way, it ought to be clarified within the mission description for the player to have the correct expectations about it.

And there's an elephant in the room here regarding the loss of faction rep, in a system you're intending to help acquire - and therefore, would like very much to get along with the local minor factions. It's a contradiction in purpose. The game is asking you to set yourself back for the sake of playing graffiti tag, and doesn't even give you the allocated means to do it.

Advice is already starting to go around in the community to just avoid these missions entirely after the first-week initiation objectives. That's very not-good.

 

[rootsrat]

No, no it is not. And in fact, a rather large problem with Elite's overall development has been apathetic acceptance of the minimally-viable status quo, so I'd really rather you keep to yourself with this strange gatekeeping of feedback about things that could use improving. It's actually a bit infuriating to post feedback about something that I am quite specifically NOT fine with, and get met with inconsiderate condescension and denial.

It's not helpful to me, it's not helpful to the developers, it won't be helpful to the game, and it does nothing to help you that I can discern.

But it's just an opinion, nothing else. Just as you can suggest something, just as me or anyone else can say they disagree with the suggestion. There's not much more to it.

Agree to disagree.

 

[DjVortex]

Hack what is available, then exit to menu and log back in. The holoscreens should reset to unhacked.

If you are more of a purist and wouldn't want to resort to such an outside-of-the-game's-universe deus ex machina, you could also just jump to supercruise and then drop back onto the station. Takes slightly more time, but also restores the holoscreens to unhacked.