Hacking is crap

[audbob00]

Why would anyone bother taking a specialist down the hacker route? The % success rate is misleading. Regardless of what chance you are supposed to have for success, 90% of the time you fail 100% of the time. And gods forbid you attempt to hack a sectopod. Neo from the Matrix would be cowering in the corner sucking his thumb even thinking about it

[Mockingcrow]

Calm down there Brian Fantana... hacking form a distance on objects, and hacking enemies has been pretty clutch for me.

[easytarget]

My bigger issue with it is that it looks like a placeholder game mechanic they never bothered to circle back and complete.

There's no control over it, you just roll dice and see how it comes out. Hardly engaging the player in anything remotely meaningful or entertaining.

[audbob00]

Originally posted by Mockingcrow:

Calm down there Brian Fantana... hacking form a distance on objects, and hacking enemies has been pretty clutch for me.

Lol, well done catching the reference. But hacking is crap in the game. Success rate is miniscule considering the % chance given for success

[JaegerBane]

Originally posted by audbob00:

Originally posted by Mockingcrow:

Calm down there Brian Fantana... hacking form a distance on objects, and hacking enemies has been pretty clutch for me.

Lol, well done catching the reference. But hacking is crap in the game. Success rate is miniscule considering the % chance given for success

It's true that it's a little too dependent on RNG, but realistically the resulting reward can be extreme - it's not a question of landing a hit, you're literally removing some of the opponent's strongest units for several turns and the higher risk option steals the unit. All based on a single dice roll.

Besides, a combination of resistance orders, skulljacks and high level gremlin push that dice roll reasonably in your favour. It would be quite OP if you could stack that roll to such an extent where you can be sure it would work.

[audbob00]

Originally posted by JaegerBane:

Originally posted by audbob00:

Lol, well done catching the reference. But hacking is crap in the game. Success rate is miniscule considering the % chance given for success

It's true that it's a little too dependent on RNG, but realistically the resulting reward can be extreme - it's not a question of landing a hit, you're literally removing some of the opponent's strongest units for several turns and the higher risk option steals the unit. All based on a single dice roll.

Besides, a combination of resistance orders, skulljacks and high level gremlin push that dice roll reasonably in your favour. It would be quite OP if you could stack that roll to such an extent where you can be sure it would work.

Absolutely. But an accurate indication of your chance of success would go a long way on whether or not to take the risk

[SamBC]

Originally posted by easytarget:

My bigger issue with it is that it looks like a placeholder game mechanic they never bothered to circle back and complete.

There's no control over it, you just roll dice and see how it comes out. Hardly engaging the player in anything remotely meaningful or entertaining.

That's pretty much the same as shooting...

Originally posted by audbob00:

Originally posted by JaegerBane:

It's true that it's a little too dependent on RNG, but realistically the resulting reward can be extreme - it's not a question of landing a hit, you're literally removing some of the opponent's strongest units for several turns and the higher risk option steals the unit. All based on a single dice roll.
Besides, a combination of resistance orders, skulljacks and high level gremlin push that dice roll reasonably in your favour. It would be quite OP if you could stack that roll to such an extent where you can be sure it would work.

Absolutely. But an accurate indication of your chance of success would go a long way on whether or not to take the risk

The numbers are accurate.

[Torus]

All I can say is: If you do want to have a hacking Specialist (so with Haywire Protocol), better make sure they also have an upgraded Skulljack, with Skullmining project from Proving Groud.

That adds +25 hacking skill, where a Colonel reaches 80, and you can get +20/+40 from upgraded Gremlins. So the regular maximum is 145, and the Skulljack will be about 1/6th of that.
That's a pretty significant boost in all, and should put you in the range to at least stun MECs & turrets reliably, and have a decent chance at stunning a Sectopod.
(And getting bonuses from the sensor towers in city areas I suppose, but I find those are often not worth the hassle when your action points are better used to complete your actual objective.)

Skullmining is also a 70% chance at instakill on an Advent trooper. Hit chance isn't ideal, and there's a penalty for failure, but the instakilling can make it a worthwhile gamble. And with the boosted hacking skill it's also a reliable source of Intel (well, as reliable as the 70% hit chance) and other bonuses.

[SamBC]

With WotC, you can also get permanent hack bonuses from covert ops.

[Torus]

Forgot about those. but the rewards from covert ops usually aren't that big. They pop up frequently enough though.
There's also the +20 skill bonus you might get from hacking mission objectives, but that's too rare and RNG dependent so I left that out on purpose. If you get it, great! But don't plan for it, because you might not see it at all in an entire campaign.

[AlexMBrennan]

Absolutely. But an accurate indication of your chance of success would go a long way on whether or not to take the risk

If you want to automatically suceed every time you should probably just watch a movie.

[Algol]

If this makes you feel any better..
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1125703954&searchtext=hack+plus

[Veritas]

Most of the hacking rewards just aren't worth 50/50 odds, and it takes a ridiculously high hacking stat to even get 65% chances to start popping up. It also takes forever to even just check the rewards, and if you take the safe approach of hacking when everything is dead, only to find there are no resource rewards, but only combat related rewards, well..

It's a nice little gimmick that occasionally gives extra rewards when I hack an objective, but other than that? I mostly ignore it unless things are so incredibly desperate that I would even risk 16% chance to get squad blitz

[Aranador]

Hacking is way too powerful to allow you high certainty of success. Also - the rolls are in no way rigged. Also - if you put your mind to it, you can have a hacker that is almost certain to succeed at almost everything, which can really make 'terrifying' enemies like a sectopod suddenly the biggest bonus on the map - way powerful.

[audbob00]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

Absolutely. But an accurate indication of your chance of success would go a long way on whether or not to take the risk

If you want to automatically suceed every time you should probably just watch a movie.

If you want to be a stand up comic, you should probably gain some talent. I'm very aware that hackiing could get very OP if it was easy. My entire point is that the % chance of success given doesn't seem accurate. Ifmy chance of success is 25%, than I shouldn't see 70%. Which seems to be the case most often

[KRON]

I have a specialist with 134 hack. With Gremlin mk. 3 and skulljack that's 199. And she got "enemy protocol" bonus only once. Everything else from covert action bonuses. They might not seem like much(like 4-6 hack bonus per mission), but they stack, so by repeatedly sending one soldier on covert actions with this bonus will get get you an expert hacker in the end.

Also, while playing on L/I I've seen hacking work with pretty low chances, down to as low as 22% or something. The chances are accurate, just like your shots(unless you're not playing on Legend in which case your shots would be more accurate than they should be)