Ways to make Hacking more interactive

[InvisibleMan999]

Note that when I say "hacking" in this post, I'm referring to hacking non-objectives. The fans or cameras in river mall, the doors to the office in aquarius, the mechanical digger in factory, or the generators or door locks in DA and so forth. Anywhere I say hacking does not include actual objectives at all. Those should remain like they are in CT in my opinion.

Well, right now what we do with these is simply put up a "X is being hacked" message (CT) or have the spy be visible on EMF (DA). This is kind of nice, but it's also not very interesting and leaves little interaction with the merc, also in places like aquarius, it leaves you extremely vulnerable and makes your position very obvious.

The changed version
I'm thinking perhaps it'd be nice to have hacking be more like truly hacking a wireless network. Like for instance, each room, or section could have its own wireless router, which is embedded in the ceiling, or the floor or whatever. Anyway it's close to the center of the area. A spy can connect to the router using his wireless hacking device.

Once connected, the spy can access all systems in that area. He also has the option of jumping to another zone. So lets use clubhouse as an example. There could be a router in the garden area, which a spy could access to hack the glass ceiling. In addition, the spy could, once connected to the garden router, jump to the lobby area and try to hack the electrical systems.

Now, this may seem very powerful, given you can hack anywhere in the level, from anywhere. But here's the catch: The longer distance your signal has to go, the slower your hack time. So shutting the cameras in the steambath from the garden may seem like a good idea, but it'll take some time because it's far away.

Under this paradigm also note that almost every electronic device, from lights to doors to cameras would be hackable. The more critical the device, the longer the hack time. So turning out a few lights would be rather easy, but trying to kill the camera network or a laser tripwire might take longer. Once hacked, however these devices stay off until reactivated by the merc (see counterhacking).

Counterhacking
While hacking, there is no message telling the mercs what's going on. There is however a device each merc has which is a network browser. Like the spies can, a merc can go from zone to zone examining systems. If a merc ever happens to be in the same zone as a spy he is alerted of the hacker's presence. He can also do a trace action to learn the spy's zone location. A hacking spy would also appear on EMF vision.

Though his network browser, a merc also has the option to reactivate security this way. Note that the merc connecting will still take time (it won't be something instant like camnet). So if he wants to reset the glass ceiling or something similar, he's going to be sitting there for 2-5 seconds, depending on how remote his connection happens to be.

A merc could for instance, dedicate himself solely to counter-hacking, constantly checking for hacker activity and resetting hacked systems. Of course, since there's no message telling the merc that something is being hacked, he's going to have to be checking a lot, and impeding his ability to visually detect spies. Much like the merc constantly watching camnet, a devoted counter-hacker is going to be begging for a neck grab or sticky cam.

Also keep in mind that anything the spies can hack, the merc can reset, with a few possible exceptions like the mechanical digger in factory. But things will behave like river mall, where you can turn the fans or waterfall lights back on after they've been hacked.

Hacking the Merc
As in DA, it would also be possible to hack the merc, though this must be done through a direct wireless link, much like in DA. Though instead of just screwing up the merc's systems. Hacking a merc would be undetectable. If successful, the spy would learn the location of all the merc's placeables. Mines, spytraps, etc. They could appear as small icons, similar to how objectives are displayed in CT, and would allow more easier detection of hidden mines and so forth. The mines would still need to be disarmed normally however. Also, any new mines the merc places after being hacked wouldn't show up.

A hacked merc also behaves as though he were spytrapped.

A merc could get unhacked by his partner (similar to the unspy action).


Permutations and balance points

The wireless hacking tool and network browser for merc and spy could either be integral gear, or they could be separate gadgets. Depending on how much you want to emphasize hacking and counterhacking.

The actual hack times are going to be something that will definitely need to be fine tuned for balance purposes as well.

If hacking proves too powerful, a glowing line could be added between the router and the hacking spy to make it easier to detect the intrusion point of a given hacker.

This system is in addition to the existing system. So while you can hack cameras using the hacking system, you'd also be able to sticky shocker them off like you normally could, or hack a door using the door controls as normal. Whether you'd want this to show up on the merc's network browser would be something that might have to be balance tested as well, but I'd also suggest at the very least the "security failure" signal goes up for shooting out cameras.

Though one might wonder, why do things manually? The advantage of doing something manually is that it might just be faster, or it may not be fixeable wirelessly. So if you manually hack the fans in river mall, the merc has to manually turn them back on. And as far as cameras or lasers go, it's a lot quicker to just fire your shocker or drop a chaff then spend several seconds hacking off a device.

It's also not always a given that every zone has to be wirelessly connected to every zone. You could also set up a series of interconnections (must go from A to B then to C, instead of going directly from A->C) or even areas that aren't connected to each other at all.  Similarly,  not everything has to be on the wireless system, so the mechanical digger may still force manual hacking.

Generally, the larger the level, the more powerful hacking will be, because it will allow spies more points to hide while waiting for complex remote hacks to finish. Hacking in something small like warehouse will be difficult to impossible. because the merc can easily spot you on EMF (assuming he's using it).

Another design point is that you probably don't want remote hacking to be mandatory. Because it's possible for a single dedicated merc to reactivate all you deactivate, you want it to be another option for spies, but not something mandatory. 

[Lurch]

Nice ideas. I think it's better that a hack panel as we know it in CT would also be the router, thus not having two types of hackables along with the primary objectives. Can't say much about balance really cause it hasn't been tested. One thing I would like is a glowing red dot or something similar detectable with normal vision when a spy is hacking wirelessly. Another thing is that irreversible hacks (blowing something up) should be manual and manual only.

[psyichic]

I really like your ideas. They are well thought out and add a good level of gameplay depth to the game.

Although I feel there should be more options as to what you can do with the merc. I outlined some ideas I had on hacking into the merc. On that note I like the idea of being able to see all the mines that the merc has placed but that strikes me as almost too powerful. I would say allow them to just ping the merc's placed traps once during the hack time and then that ends the hack (read some of my ideas that deal with options for hacking and hacking timers). When the gadgets are pinged they appear and are marked on the spy's map(and possible their teammate) but they are only pinged once and if a merc moves them or replaces them they may no longer be in that last location. For an example it would work like Battlefield 2's satellite scan.

Anyways just my ideas but I really do love the idea although I would say make counterhacking so that it doesn't reveal the exact location of the spy but just the router they are attached to and roughly how far they are from the hack point.

[InvisibleMan999]

When the gadgets are pinged they appear and are marked on the spy's map(and possible their teammate) but they are only pinged once and if a merc moves them or replaces them they may no longer be in that last location. For an example it would work like Battlefield 2's satellite scan.

Anyways just my ideas but I really do love the idea although I would say make counterhacking so that it doesn't reveal the exact location of the spy but just the router they are attached to and roughly how far they are from the hack point.

Yeah, I agree with both of these ideas. I didn't really intend for the mine locator hack on the merc to be something that stays with the merc, I just wanted it to reveal his mines at the point he was hacked and then if they were moved, the spy isn't quite sure where they went. That way a merc who suspects he's been hacked could go and reset his defenses (even just by picking them up and placing them again in the same spot).

Nice ideas. I think it's better that a hack panel as we know it in CT would also be the router, thus not having two types of hackables along with the primary objectives. Can't say much about balance really cause it hasn't been tested. One thing I would like is a glowing red dot or something similar detectable with normal vision when a spy is hacking wirelessly. Another thing is that irreversible hacks (blowing something up) should be manual and manual only.

Well I don't really want to have the hack panel as a router mainly because hack panels tend to be few and far between. I generally wanted each room that was merc accessible to have a router, so the spy has a few points to hack. I'm thinking something easy that people can add to a level, like a ceiling mounted box that works as each rooms router.Because it's on the ceiling it really wont interfere much with the existing game.

So for instance, if we were adding them to Aquarius, we might put a router in pirates, one in tech, maybe one in the fishtank room, another in the office and one in greek. Then all that would be needed would be to bind each hackable to a given router (which I figure shouldn't be all that difficult to code).

After thinking about it for a while, I agree with you that the irreversible hacks should be manual only. Since they can't be undone, merc counterhacking wouldn't do all that much. Though I prefer to keep irreversible hacks to a minimum, because they're less interactive. I like the idea that the mercs have secondary objectives which exist to limit a spy's mobility or visibility.