Hacking tool rework#939
The hacking tool as it stands is… Not extremely useful. Opening/closing enemy modules isn’t that big of a deal when you have high-explosive mortar grenades and being on the inside deals extra damage. Even closing turrets isn’t that big of a deal since that means they get armour.
So, here’s a few things that might help make the hacking tool a bit more worthy of getting a place in your inventory :
The ability to open/close module is not removed. Who knows, some people might find some quirky use to it or something. And it doesn’t hurt to keep it, we’re just going to add onto it.
The ability to close/open enemy doors. Doors take a while to break, and lockpicking them might be faster, especially if it gives no alarm to the COGs, so you could sneak into a ship without making too much noise and drawing too much attention on yourself. And imagine when iron and titanium structures will be added… These doors would be quite solid I imagine.
The ability to use all devices in enemy ships. For example, you could “hack” a healing station and be able to heal yourself from an enemy ship. Same goes for armour repair stations. There might be other stuff to use in the future, new devices get added sometimes. (Obviously, you still can’t send it underground)
The ability to “hack” turrets. Since you can already open/close them, I guess this could use RMB instead of LMB. This would change the turret’s light indicator to something like green, or another unused colour, and make it turn on your side for a while (something like 60 seconds ?). That means the turret would become inactive, and wouldn’t shoot you and your crew anymore, but would instead shoot COGs if some show up. (They wouldn’t shoot the ship itself because that’d be op). But wait ! There’s more : before I explain the rest, I recommend reading #938. While the turret is “hacked”, you could use enemy gunner seats (if there are any) and take control of the hacked turret, for the duration of the hack. (the duration would be indicated when controlling the turret).
That would make raiding ships a lot easier since you can get in and hack turrets to basically cancel any reinforcement for a while, but it would also make it easier (and funnier) to destroy the ship using it’s own turrets.
Those things would make the hacking tool much more fleshed out, useful, and fun to use !
If you have any more ideas, make sure to comment them underneath ! I love discussing ideas :)
I think this would be a far better use for the hacking tool.
Personally i have found it lacking in usefulness, and i think that any if not all of these changes would fit well within the game as well as potential giving people new ways to destroy ships and ways to play.
Hello The Fire Dragon,
I received your invite to comment on this post of yours and thought that I would do so, given how thoughtful your insight was on my post, I thought it only right that I engage with you on your thoughts.
I must agree with you regarding the HACKING TOOL, it doesn’t seem to be a very useful item at this stage in the games Development, I also agree on some of the things you have mentioned above.
One thing that I would have a slight addition to would be POINT 3 above i.e. The use of Enemy Devices.
As far as I am aware, and perhaps I missed something in my playthroughs, I haven’t encountered a COG Drillship with Devices such as Healing or Armor Stations. The HACKING TOOL would indeed be very useful in that regard but I dont see why the COG Enemies would need those devices on their ships as they have SPAWNERS and seem to Spawn enemy COGS relentlessly until we destroy them. I would definitely love to be able to hack those devices and others like them should they be added in the future.
The Other contention I had was that, again, as far as I am aware, we are currently able to use all of the PRODUCTION, REFINING, and RESEARCH Modules on an enemy COG Drillship by accessing their corresponding STATIONS. So as you mentioned above, this might be very useful on future additions to the game.
A suggestion that I might add regarding the Hacking of Devices would be to HACK The COG SPAWNERS, Imagine having the SPAWNERS HACKED and producing COGS to fight along side you. I have been able(as I am sure many others have) to capture a COG Drillship while SPAWNERS were still active on the Drillship. I was unable to use the SPAWNERS but they were nonetheless part of the Drillship that I owned. It would be quite the sight to engage enemy COGS with an army of COGS that you control.
Your HACKING Turrets Idea is a great one and I would definitely try my hand at that, I would assume though for that to happen(especially the Gunner Seat Idea) we would first need to disable the SPAWNERS inside the COG Drillship otherwise they would attack us while using the SEAT. After removing the SPAWNERS, it would indeed be really fun to use the enemy COG turrets against their own units.
All in all, some great Ideas you have, I look forward to something like this being implemented in game or even a MOD.
Thanks for your Ideas and hopefully we will see them or something similar in game soon.
Take care and Stay Safe.
Indeed, there’s currently not much devices to hack in their ships, but this post implicitely suggests to have devices put in COG ships, otherwise you’re right, there’s not much point - except in PvP, whenever that will happen.
As for hacking spawners - I won’t say much other than direct you to #32 , it should be obvious enough to see that it’s been suggested a bunch by seeing the ~40 reposts, and the fact that this has been rejected. Devs have said multiple times that friendly COGs won’t be a thing, because it would take up a lot of room inside your ship and make it uneasy to move around, it would be unoriginal, and cause a lot of performance issues. Instead, there’s drones planned (#504), which will be a lot cooler, and a much more elegant response to the “pet” suggestion.
Although I do agree, I like claiming ships with spawners still on it, so I can deconstruct them and store them as trophies.
Thanks for checking this post out, have a good time out there !