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

[The Great Garrus]

hacking and psi are both pretty nasty as long as you are advent....rarely does either of my skills work, and when they do actually work it is for something nearly useless oh btw the NEW PATCH SUCKS A##

[Algol]

Originally posted by audbob00:

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

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

"Seem" is the operative word here. It's just an opinion. Can you back it up with examples of the game's code? Because at this point you sound like 9001st rant about "zomg, my 90% shot missed, not faaaaaair!!!1111"

[Explodium]

Vanilla hacking isn't worth it in general. Early game, the odds are no where near good enough and even in the late game unless you got a ton of buffs the success rates still won't be reliable.

50% chance to get a small buff for a couple turns, with the risk being every enemy on the map gets a permanent buff? Not a chance.

If you ask me there should be a regular fail, and a critical fail. Regular just being you wasted a action and critical fails being you rolled a 1.

[learnedhand]

As others have said, hacking takes some investment of time and energy, but you can get some pretty strong bonuses by building a successful hacker, for example, halving research times. One strategy in vanilla L/I was to always switch your research to the longest research item just before entering a VIP mission or a hack/recover the objective guerrilla op in the hopes that you got the reward as an option. This could save a lot of time and really give you a competitive technological edge.

[Tiasmoon]

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.

Actually, a guaranteed success is often the only time a Hacker is worth having if you are playing on Ironman mode. Even then, often it comes down to use a turn to shutdown (more likely then control) instead of outright killing the target.

Originally posted by 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)

That's not enough to touch a Sectopod tho.

Originally posted by learnedhand:

As others have said, hacking takes some investment of time and energy, but you can get some pretty strong bonuses by building a successful hacker, for example, halving research times. One strategy in vanilla L/I was to always switch your research to the longest research item just before entering a VIP mission or a hack/recover the objective guerrilla op in the hopes that you got the reward as an option. This could save a lot of time and really give you a competitive technological edge.

Yeah those are the main reason for even having a hacker at all tbh. Tho I have to say that imo Hacking should of been a possible soldier 'subset' ability rather then a class line of abilities.

[Tamiore]

Rule #1: you can always cancel the hack at no penalty and no actions used. That being said:

There are two types of hacking:
haywire protocol and everything else.

- haywire protocol is, indeed, rather situational at best, and I only use it when I have 90%+ (preferably 100%) chance to disable the target

- "normal" hacking, on the other hand, is very powerful and useful, you just need to understand one thing: it pays to be reasonably opportunistic and only hack when the reward is valuable while the penalty for failure is acceptable. Fun facts: map alert is not much of a penalty at all if you are in a good spot and would prefer to engage enemies from it. Reinforcements is FREE EXP and EXTRA BODIES for autopsies if you can handle it. So it's actually a bonus (I literally go for the harder hack if the reward if irrelevant every so often just to trigger the reinforcements). If the reward is valuable, but the penalty is buff for all enemies, just wait to hack until only one enemy is left. Etc, etc.
With all this in mind hacking will give a rather steady stream of bonuses and extra resources at minimal risk.

[JaegerBane]

Originally posted by audbob00:

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

You’ve said this twice now and I initially assumed you meant that you weren’t getting a high enough success chance from your stacked hacking score (or you felt it was too hard to get a higher one, etc)

The actual success chance you see is accurate - the game won’t tell you that you have a 70% chance when you actually have a 50% chance or something.

[talemore]

Originally posted by st88:

Rule #1: you can always cancel the hack at no penalty and no actions used. That being said:

There are two types of hacking:
haywire protocol and everything else.

- haywire protocol is, indeed, rather situational at best, and I only use it when I have 90%+ (preferably 100%) chance to disable the target

- "normal" hacking, on the other hand, is very powerful and useful, you just need to understand one thing: it pays to be reasonably opportunistic and only hack when the reward is valuable while the penalty for failure is acceptable. Fun facts: map alert is not much of a penalty at all if you are in a good spot and would prefer to engage enemies from it. Reinforcements is FREE EXP and EXTRA BODIES for autopsies if you can handle it. So it's actually a bonus (I literally go for the harder hack if the reward if irrelevant every so often just to trigger the reinforcements). If the reward is valuable, but the penalty is buff for all enemies, just wait to hack until only one enemy is left. Etc, etc.
With all this in mind hacking will give a rather steady stream of bonuses and extra resources at minimal risk.

The highwire was like an early preview gimmick where a scenario of defending a postion until skyranger arrived by hacking a turret. Them used to be permanent hacked once you succeeded but it made a bug where you had this turret hacked across the entire map with no purpose. It's rather to be said if you are going to add the hacking of units like turrets, it's most of the time to give you a gimmick to play with or if now we want it to be reliable haywire doesn't give a chance for anything, we only push the off-switch. If the machine is off it can't reactivate.

Besides the lore said sectopods are automatons, how we managed to hack it was magic.

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by talemore:

Besides the lore said sectopods are automatons, how we managed to hack it was magic.

I'm sorry, are you asking how can one hack a machine..?

[Halfinger]

I love hacking and the bonuses you can get stack up to a fair amount. Like many abilities you need to pick the right time for it. The rewards from the towers are often useless for the cost but I see those as nice bonuses if a decent reward comes up. They are not part of my decision to take a hacker. Using it to control a mec is overpowered. It gives you a fully operational decoy and can turn an enounter from being a potential disaster to almost certain success.

Also why should hacking be easy for one of the most poweful units in the game? Makes no sense.

[jimkatai]

Originally posted by 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:

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.

Type "savescum" into the console to turn on savescumming. The numbers are, in fact, not accurate. They are accurate with every other action but the hacking minigame.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by jimkatai:

Originally posted by SamBC:

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

The numbers are accurate.

Type "savescum" into the console to turn on savescumming. The numbers are, in fact, not accurate. They are accurate with every other action but the hacking minigame.

And you came to this conclusion based on what?

[Mr Compassionate]

If you manage to hack their front line robot all the enemies will shoot at it and it'll shoot at them, wasting their health, ammo and valuable time while your soldiers pick them off. Hacking an enemy MEC isn't just a neat advantage it's a guaranteed clean win to that fight.

[MagnusGrey]

Let's not forget the hack the chest mission rewards. 50% reduced scanning times for 4 weeks is straight out the strongest boost in the game.

[Mr. Nice]

Originally posted by jimkatai:

Type "savescum" into the console to turn on savescumming. The numbers are, in fact, not accurate. They are accurate with every other action but the hacking minigame.

That the animation is synthetic (half the time anyway) is not the same as the chance itself being inaccurate.