new vehicle hacking discussion

[Lonehunter]

Empire Specific Weapons, are empire specific weapons, period

The main reason in alpha, and in beta, for never implementing hacking vehicles was the same reason they VERY early on decided against inventories, swapping of ES gear.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it adds a whole degree of difficulty for game balancing when all 3 factions have access to everything. Plus it opens up to exploiting, and adds more work for the GMs. It's a f2p game where multiple characters are encouraged and multiple accounts are fine. How can they stop an organized arms deal of swapping enemy vehicles?

Plus it's better for the game for each empire to actually own their benefits and traits. To get them you have to play them.

BUT, a compromise I always thought would be beneficial, is for Infiltrators to be able to hack into passenger or gunner seats. They would never show up on the driver's status window so could remain undetected for some time, or just start blasting nearby targets away for a few spontaneous kills.

Now even if you add hacking to NS vehicles only, further game balance is needed. Infils are about to get the ability to cloak permanently and sacrifice a primary weapon. Adding the cloaker game of sneaking in to hack an enemy AMS would be amazing. But right now there is no counter for that. There are no engi deployables to detect cloakers, etc.

[Shogun]

so how will this be exploitable?

keep in mind that you need ressources to draw a vehicle.

easy solution for absolutely any form of vehicle muling: deconstruct a vehicle when the person who spawned it logs off. (hacked ams excluded because this would cause exploiters to log off when their ams is hacked, just to destroy it)

and if vehicle hacking was in, it´s not like any empire can access everything in the game! if you want to drive an enemy vehicle, you would first have to find an empty one and hack it without being noticed. that´s a whole different story than walking to a term and hit e!
in ps1 almost everybody could hack vehicles, and advanced hackers could even hack occupied vehicles, but it was no problem at all. most of the time the factions used their own stuff. only when people let their tanks or bfrs unattended, or were stupidly camping, this tactic was used a lot. and that was a good thing.

and don´t start about empire specific is empire specific. there is almost no difference between the factions in ps2 anyhow, but the looks. and the devs get the same amount of balance complains from all factions, so a handful of vehicles changing the color wouldn´t change any balance.

if introducing v-hacking will create the need for new engineer items, that´s excellent and i want it even more! because the engineer needs things to do just as desperate as the cloaker needs them!

being able to hack just a gunner seat would be a source of frustration. this would only work if the driver can eject the hacker via vehicle menu easily. forcing someone to shoot his own vehicle and risk a weaponlock due to friendly fire totally sucks.

[Rivenshield]

Hack a vehicle, it reverts to the plain-vanilla starting model with no certs, weapons, decals, or superpowers. Problem solved.

It would still be fun. Oh, it would be so much fun.

[Lonehunter]

it's easily exploitable because me and my 10 buds would log on other empire characters and just meet each other to swap vehicles. Trust me most of the time we'd use EStanks that aren't our empire's

And you can't remove weapons, attachments, or anything like that from a vehicle once it's spawned. The game doesn't see it as a modular system, it's one item with different attributes. Kinda like they'll never allow swapping of vehicle weapons while they're out because it requires a whole new vehicle to spawn.

Originally Posted by Shogun

and don´t start about empire specific is empire specific. there is almost no difference between the factions in ps2 anyhow, but the looks.

I thought this was a good convo till that. Either you haven't played PS2 more then a couple sessions or are a generic "my exaggerated opinions are fact" internet trolls

[AThreatToYou]

it's easily exploitable because me and my 10 buds would log on other empire characters and just meet each other to swap vehicles. Trust me most of the time we'd use EStanks that aren't our empire's

I think you are oversimplifying the logistics of the situation. Empire technology trades would be very cool imo. If you arrange them, people can sabotage them or stall to distract forces from the battle. It is a sandbox game, and may you excuse me when I conveniently shove this into "This is the player's game, we should be able to do this".

If we, the players, can do it... we can also stop it by in-game action.

Now, back to the logistics, firstly you won't be able to spawn these tanks which is a big deal after they inevitably get blown up. You won't be able to pull them whenever and wherever they would be normally available, making their use extremely limited for what is essentially 0 power gain. And the enemy Empire would know if you had one, and if you did a trade, they would know who has one. I imagined stolen or traded vehicles would be high-priority targets...

In PS1, traded vehicles were a complete non-issue. I really don't see why it would be one in PS2.

[Helwyr]

Originally Posted by Lonehunter

[...]
Now even if you add hacking to NS vehicles only, further game balance is needed. Infils are about to get the ability to cloak permanently and sacrifice a primary weapon. Adding the cloaker game of sneaking in to hack an enemy AMS would be amazing. But right now there is no counter for that. There are no engi deployables to detect cloakers, etc.

Sounds almost exactly like what PS1 Infiltrators had, and they were never considered OP, not by a long shot.

Granted there's no Engineer motion sensors in PS2, but PS1 Infiltrators had means to defeat those with things like Sensor Shield implants. There's no Darklight either you might mention, but then the PS2 cloak is a lot more visible than than the PS1 cloak, to the point the naked eye is usually enough already for anyone paying attention.

In short there's no good reason yet presented why Infiltrators should not have Vehicle Hacking for at least NS vehicles. PS1 has already proved it can be balanced and good gameplay.

[Ghoest9]

Originally Posted by Rivenshield

Hack a vehicle, it reverts to the plain-vanilla starting model with no certs, weapons, decals, or superpowers. Problem solved.

It would still be fun. Oh, it would be so much fun.

this

A vanilla starter vehicle is not going to create balance issues. So your TR has a vanilla Mag Rider - no one cares.

[Shogun]

Originally Posted by Lonehunter

it's easily exploitable because me and my 10 buds would log on other empire characters and just meet each other to swap vehicles. Trust me most of the time we'd use EStanks that aren't our empire's

why do i always have to write all things twice?
you and your 10 friends would not be able to have fun together in opposite faction vehicles this way, because half of you would have to stay on the wrong faction for this to work.

i already said that a anti troll solution would be to automaticly dsconstruct any hacked vehicle if the original owner logs off. (ams excluded for the opposite reason)

so you can´t just meet, hand over the vehicles and log back to your faction to use them.

also, why would you do this? if you would go in opposite factions vehicles all the time, why not simply go as this faction? there are no restrictions on factionchanging anyhow. and i don´t see any balance problem even if you would do it.

like some already said, there was absolutely no issue with balance because of vehicle hacking in ps1, and it was even possible to hack a vehicle right under your ass while you were camping a tower or backdoor. and due to the superior seat system in ps1, the hacker could pull off an extremely funny stunt by placing a boomer exactly where the pilot would be ejected and blowing him to the spawntubes a second after the hack.

[Figment]

Of I recall correctly, there were several issues:

1. Getting to use a load out you haven't certed, like scavenging (which really is a case of: who cares? Where it comes to players anyway):

Solutions:
A: keep up- and sidegrades
B: revert it to a basic level
C: keep up- and sidegrades you have certed the equivalent of, revert the rest to basic

2. Identification issues: camo, cosmetics, profile.

Profile is not an issue. Diverse enough.
Camo: turn into own empire's equivalent
Cosmetics: use defaults of loadout 1 on own unit

3. Need to make three times the amount of skins and therefore three times the amount of work and costs.

Solution:
A. Only replace some colours by simply swapping them
B. Make default skins for hijacked vehicles (at first)

4. Even more texture heavy game (player memory)

Probably this is the biggest issue, there are non-player rig related solutions for the rest.

[Lonehunter]

Originally Posted by Helwyr

Sounds almost exactly like what PS1 Infiltrators had, and they were never considered OP, not by a long shot.

Motion Sensors, Audio Amp, Radar from Mosquitos and Interlink facilities, sensor shield on cloakers, cloaks with total invis while immobile, darklight...

There are many things that where factored into stealth gameplay.

Originally Posted by Figment

B: revert it to a basic level

Pretty sure they don't have the tech to do this

[Ghoest9]

If you simply have it revert to a base vehicle(no cert and upgrades) and just swap the empire colors it eliminates all issues.


-base vehicles are weak so no balance issue
-there will be no memory issues if you simply swap to empire colors
-base empire colors are easy to tell apart(plus we have triangles anyway)



This would be fairly simple with no downside.

[camycamera]

lol in PS1 i shot at a reaver not realising my teammates had hacked it..... i've got to get used to PS1....

but yeah hacking would make the infiltrator allot more useful

[Mordelicius]

Barriers/Drawbacks:

1) It would be OP (low risk/high reward).

2) Easily exploitable. With all the alt griefing going on. What's to stop "organized" groups from exploiting it?

Example - low lvl Faction A alt logs in to 'deliver' free vehicles/aircraft to friends of Faction B. Now, with an Outfit, log in 10 alts and get 10 free Liberators. Right...

Unless:

The only way it would work is if the chance is very low and if you fail, the vehicle will electrocute you to death resulting in a suicide for the infiltrator. Say 15% initial chance. 18%>21%>25% chance max upgrade.

Of course to prevent exploitation the vehicle owner won't get XP for every failed attempt. Also there should be a 10 minute cooldown after each attempt (successful or not) to prevent alt spamming and exploitation.

Better yet make every attempt cost resource as well.

Hacking kit - costs 50 infantry resources.
Cooldown - 10 minutes.
Chance - 15%>25% chance to succeed
Suicide - upon failure.

It's a high risk/high reward deal. Without limitations, it's low risk/high reward and easily exploited.

[AThreatToYou]

I don't know why anyone would think it is OP or why "exploiting" it is a problem...

[Helwyr]

Originally Posted by AThreatToYou

I don't know why anyone would think it is OP or why "exploiting" it is a problem...

I don't think most of the posters saying those things played PS1. Either that or they simply don't want vehicle hacking in the game period and are coming up with whatever justification they can no matter how weak to keep it out.