[1.0](WIP) What The Hack?! - Mechanoid hacking

[Canute]

Just a question, what skill is important to hack a mechanoid ?
I would say crafting since it is required
, but it could be intellectual too.

[Roolo]

Just a question, what skill is important to hack a mechanoid ?
I would say crafting since it is required
, but it could be intellectual too.

It's crafting only. I agree that both make sense. I chose crafting because the name (crafting) in the job section is more appropriate. If I picked intellectual, the "medicine" job would have to be assigned, and I don't think that makes sense. Picking crafting as requirement and intellectual as success factor influencer would be too confusing I think.

[Canute]

Ok, but then the chance to hack are very low.
My skill 18/19 crafter allways failed so far.

[Roolo]

Ok, but then the chance to hack are very low.
My skill 18/19 crafter allways failed so far.

Ok, I suppose it could use tweaking then. Succesfactor is set to 1.0, which means it shouldn't be too hard. I'll check if medicine skill isn't used somewhere under the hood. How many times did you try by the way?

[Canute]

Until a disaster happen and the scyther died. At last 5-6 times.

[Madman666]

Damn, that must some crappy random. At least i hope it was random, 6 fails in a row seems way too harsh.

On a sidenote, I wish you could make it rather be Intellectual skill, not Crafting. Most jobs concentrate on crafting from tailoring a pair of pants to assembling a minigun. Researchers on the other hand just get utterly useless once you have nothing to research. I mean a godlike Intellectual pawn sweeping the floor and washing dog vomit as a main job... seems a bit too like reality, no?

[Roolo]

It's supposed to be hard, but not that hard. In my tests I had roughly a 70% success rate, but that was at lvl 20 and I don't know how it scales down. It could be that you were really unlucky, or that I was particularly lucky when testing. But still, I think even 70% is slightly too low at max skill level. Either way, I should more thoroughly test this at multiple skill levels. I'll make sure it's more balanced when I get home later this day.

[Roolo]

Damn, that must some crappy random. At least i hope it was random, 6 fails in a row seems way too harsh.

On a sidenote, I wish you could make it rather be Intellectual skill, not Crafting. Most jobs concentrate on crafting from tailoring a pair of pants to assembling a minigun. Researchers on the other hand just get utterly useless once you have nothing to research. I mean a godlike Intellectual pawn sweeping the floor and washing dog vomit as a main job... seems a bit too like reality, no?

Yeah I agree the intellectual skill is underused, especially late game. I guess I could use the "doctor" designation which depends on intellect. Not entirely appropriate, but you could see it as a mechanoid doctor. Another option is the following:

In real life you would need both intellectual capacity to perform the thinking, but also some crafting skill, to carefully open up the mechanoid and connect the right wires etc. So we can use crafting as minimum requirement and as job designation, and intellectual as skill that determines chance of success and the skill that is trained. So like I said before, this will likely confuse players. But what I could do is show a warning when a crafter with low intellectual skill attempts to hack. With that the player should understand what's going on. With this option I'd lower the crafting requirement to 6 since otherwise it would be too harsh

And yet another option is to use a new designation called "hacking", which depends on intellectual. But this would maybe add too much clutter and requires more time to implement.

What would you guys prefer?

[Canute]

I finaly hacked a Scyther. But the crafter broke 2 other before.

Yeah I agree the intellectual skill is underused, especially late game.

Does that mean i need my crafter to train intel, or my research need to craft ?
But Rim of Magic allready need these both skill for the enchanting/scribing.
You can made a requirement of crafting skill to start the operation and Intellectual for succes chance.
But please mention this somewhere in a description or maybe learning helper (even when i never read these).

Edit:
It is possible to give Mech's missing parts back ?
Like Scyther install blade's on lost arms ?
Or is there another way to fix this ?

[Roolo]

I finaly hacked a Scyther. But the crafter broke 2 other before.

Yeah I agree the intellectual skill is underused, especially late game.

Does that mean i need my crafter to train intel, or my research need to craft ?
But Rim of Magic allready need these both skill for the enchanting/scribing.
You can made a requirement of crafting skill to start the operation and Intellectual for succes chance.
But please mention this somewhere in a description or maybe learning helper (even when i never read these).

What I meant is that I'm thinking of three options:

1. Use the "doctor" designation, and only use intellect for the minimum skill requirement and for the training.
2. Use crafting to assign the job and as a minimum skill requirement, and intellectual to determine the chance of success and as a skill that is learned while hacking. And make it really clear that this works this way (not only in the mod description, but also in-game)
3. Use a separate new "hacking" desgination instead of doctor, also depending fully on intellect.

To answer your question "Does that mean i need my crafter to train intel, or my research need to craft?"
Only if we choose option 2. In that case, your researcher should have some (but not a lot) crafting skill.

So my question to you guys is:
What option do you prefer? 1, 2, or 3, or something else?

[Canute]

I vote for 2.
I think this "hack" isn't a pure remotely over Wifi hack, which just require the knowledge over the software.
I think the operator need to bypass some hardware security/encrypting node before he can start to reprogram the targeting/locomation routines.
That would explain why he is in need of parts/chips for this process ! :-)

BUT , just got an idea.
With the Mech. controller belt, it should be possible to temp. hack a free mechanoid.
Like override the targeting or locomotion system. Based on the Intellectual skill are the succes chances. Skill 20  = 90%  Skill 10 = 50%.
Ofcourse the hive will counter the hack, so each x ticks there will be a new check for a succesful hack, but with increased difficult.
You can't perma control a mech at this way, but cause trouble at the mechanoid attack.

[Madman666]

I am fine with options 1 and 3, where 3 is more immersive i guess, as for 2 - it can also be fine with a little rebalance. If the job requires two skills, its success rate should be increased then, as its much harder to find, recruit and train a suitable pawn.

As an option 4 i can offer using Crafting skill to create new item - wiring kit, that will be used as a "medicine" when hacking operation is performed. Hacking itself will be like in option 3 - new kind of job depending on Intellectual skills only. You can then use those "wiring kits" to also fix your damaged mechs and etc. Could be quite immersive.

As for idea suggested above - i quite like it, and agree with hacking checks increasing in difficulty, but i hope the range on that type of hack will be sufficient. Mechanoid don't screw around and eat limbs for breakfast.

[Roolo]

Thanks for the feedback you both, it's really helpful! I think I'll go for option 2, with some re-balancing (I way going to do a re-balance anyway).

BUT , just got an idea.
With the Mech. controller belt, it should be possible to temp. hack a free mechanoid.
Like override the targeting or locomotion system. Based on the Intellectual skill are the succes chances. Skill 20  = 90%  Skill 10 = 50%.
Ofcourse the hive will counter the hack, so each x ticks there will be a new check for a succesful hack, but with increased difficult.
You can't perma control a mech at this way, but cause trouble at the mechanoid attack.

Adding items that can be used to  temporarily hack mechs from a distance was already on my list, but using the existing controller belt, and the existing types of hacks is an excellent addition! I can add extra research that allows you to upgrade the software in the controller belt to enable these two types of hacks. Except from being temporarily, they should work the same as the permanent "hardware hacks", so you'd have to hack the targeting first, and after that you can try to hack the locomotion system.

As an option 4 i can offer using Crafting skill to create new item - wiring kit, that will be used as a "medicine" when hacking operation is performed. Hacking itself will be like in option 3 - new kind of job depending on Intellectual skills only. You can then use those "wiring kits" to also fix your damaged mechs and etc. Could be quite immersive.

I considered adding such an item, but eventually decided to keep things simpler, by letting players use the mechanoid parts directly as a "medicine" (for hacking operations only). On the one hand, I like the idea of adding an intermediate item because of the added immersion. On the other hand, what I dislike is the added complexity of introducing another step in the process, and that it requires me to do more coding/sprite drawing. Using mech parts or a new wiring kit to let your pawn repair mechs would be nice, but has proven very annoying to implement (I gave it a try), because the logic that determines what medicine can be used on which pawn type, is hard-coded in an enum, and cannot be patched directly. So to make this work, I'd have to patch all the code that calls this logic, which isn't compatibility friendly, and also just annoying/ugly to do. That's why I decided to go for the approach in which the mechanoid platforms handle the repairing, and I started to like this new mechanic, since it makes mechanoids even more distinct, and can - with some fantasy - still be immersive.

[Madman666]

Ah, ok, coding ugliness. Got it. Well thats fine, I am ok with mech platforms repairing mechs on their own.

Actually i got one more thing on my mind - i keep several downed mechs in my killbox area while i am researching hacking and they kinda started to annoy me\get in the way of things. I also don't wanna just shut them down. Could we get some way of transporting downed mechs to a zone of some kind?

[Roolo]

Ah, ok, coding ugliness. Got it. Well thats fine, I am ok with mech platforms repairing mechs on their own.

Actually i got one more thing on my mind - i keep several downed mechs in my killbox area while i am researching hacking and they kinda started to annoy me\get in the way of things. I also don't wanna just shut them down. Could we get some way of transporting downed mechs to a zone of some kind?

Good one, I'll see if I can implement that without spending too much time.