So, this whole crystal thing (wait I think I used that title already...)

[_K_]

The whole idea sounds really nice. I do want to see the details though, i mean the exact values you plan to use for AIP-hacking response relations.

In the current rough form it looks like a very significant buff to humans though. How are you planning to counterbalance the new hacking opportunities?
I mean, every hack is basically a short-term trouble which gives you a permanent advantage for the rest of the game. AI needs to get stronger over time to compensate, but the only mechanic that does just that (X AIP per Y minutes) is optional. I believe we need more events that increase AIP when the player triggers them as he progresses through the game.

[Wingflier]

Now THIS is what I'm looking for.


YES!

NEW!

REVOLUTIONARY!

WORTH THE EFFORT!

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!

[Irxallis]

This idea is awesome.

I absolutely love it, as this creates five main conflicted resources:

- Metal. To get more you pay Knowledge or AIP. (continuous resource)
- Knowledge. To get more you pay AIP or Hacking. (one-time resource)
- Hacking. To get more you pay AIP. (one-time resource)
- Capturables. To get more you pay AIP (and possibly Metal) (and possibly need to defend). (one-time resource)
- AIP. To get less you use Hacking (Superterminal) or (and?) raid. (game-defining resource)

There is LOTS of elegance in the above, at least for me.


Let me try to suggest something too to complete this 'elegant strategic conversion' (might be too powerful / not suitable), though:

- Hacking ("Surveying") any planet to unearth capturables:

Be it a new Fabricator, be it, say, 20 mk V units of random type or an ancient, dormant defense system - you can make the planet more worth it to capture at expense of raising that Hacking resource.

This is a tool to convert Hacking into Capturables - I know I need to take that 'CSG D' (or E) planet, but it doesn't have anything interesting.

I am preparing for the final assault on enemy Homeworld and I can still use some 'Knowledge' and 'Hacking'. So let's spend it. That way, now, as I see what I need against this Homeworld, I can break the stalemate.


- Hacking ("Surveying") any planet to unearth more economy nodes:

Allows you to convert Hacking into Metal by creating more Metal nodes. Instead of Harvester upgrade or Economy Station upgrade you can use Hacking to buff your 'behind the lines' economy to reduce the 'Netflix effect'.


- Hacking ("Surveying") enemy planet to build a beacon attracting some 'neutral' Neinzul-ish forces

Basically, on this planet from time to time some kind of Neinzul-ish forces appear which are of 'Neutral' type (they attack anything). They cannot travel through wormholes. This makes the planet a hostile place to both AI and human forces. Could be a nice way to protect that one direction I think I never want to move to. This won't eat Exos, Hybrids, this won't be able to stop large forces or threat - but this will be enough to reduce those forces, slow them down and make the 'defence in depth' more in depth, and not only on player planets.

Of course, if I change my mind, I can destroy the beacon.



Why those ideas?

Hacking becomes a primary mechanism which determines (strategically) what do you want to do, the direction of your game and the high level approach - something like a twin of Knowledge.

- In a pinch, dying from 'death from the thousand cuts'? Improve your economy NOT using Knowledge but using Hacking.

- Your fleet is destroyed and that Exo wave is coming soon? Get some capturables from 'your' planets or 'enemy' planets - maybe this will save you from that Counterattack post or that Exo.

- Want to hold a planet or two outside your domain? You need less defences, get the Neinzul Beacon.

- Cannot hold a planet? Hack that AdvFactory or Fabricator and let it burn.



Problem with Hacking and this mechanism:

Basically, multi-player game. For example, if two players are in game, both need to have the same Hacking floor (like Knowledge), right?

Now: Knowledge is 'I can do it' vs 'I can't do it'. As far as I see, Hacking is 'I can do it, overextend and die'. This is where it starts to be more difficult in multiplayer games. Unless moving past the Hacking Floor gives you a very brutal response, I can see 4 players pooling forces to stop it, while every player hacks one-by-one, in round robin fashion, not simultanously.

Of course, in the meantime the AI can do stuff, but I'd like to point in this direction while we're in the concept phase.


And, of course - if I can Hack my own planets, where would the response come from? __K__ wrote this concern much better than I can.

[Wingflier]

For later, but wanted to raise the question now, and related to two things we've discussed here:

One of the things I'm wanting to do leading up to the next expansion is to replace the normal (non-home) AI command stations with a variety of types randomly selected during mapgen.  Not entirely dissimilar to how during the run-up to 4.0 guard posts were changed from always-the-same-thing to the different kinds we have now, but with a focus on utility and support functions rather than just a ton of tank or dps (if you want that, the Fortress King already awaits you).  The expansion would add new station types, but the base game would get a moderate selection too.

One such kind could be a "surveillance command station" or something like that, which is only ever seeded if Lazy-AI is off, and:
- Any planet closer to it than any other surveillance command station is considered "assigned" to that station.  This assignment is made during mapgen and doesn't change if any surveillance stations are killed or whatever.
- That "if Data Center is killed, launch counter-CPA with strength proportional to total number of times this rule has been triggered" rule would be in effect, but only if its planet's assigned surveillance station was still active.
- That "if Command Station is killed and nearer the AI HWs than the Human HWs, lauch counter-CPA with strength proportional to how near it is to the AI HWs" rule would be in effect, but only if its planet's assigned surveillance station was still active.
- There'd be a new form of hacking whereby a surveillance command station could be rendered "inactive" (for the purposes of the above rules) without destroying it and thus without incurring AIP.
- Just to be clear: destroying a surveillance station would render it pretty thoroughly "inactive"

Anyway, this would give the AI some kind of sensible response to you blowing up important stuff, and you'd have four ways of dealing with that:

1) Just eat the counter-CPAs, which shouldn't be terribly hard unless you're playing low-AIP (and it's fine if you want to do that, but this particular option may not be pleasant).

2) Just kill the surveillance stations of any area you want to avoid the counter-CPAs; costs AIP but if the surveillance station(s) in question are on planets you already want, well, there you go.

3) Hack the surveillance stations of any area you want to avoid the counter-CPAs; ramps up hacking antagonism (making it harder to hack for K or Bonus picks or whatever later) and may be a hard fight depending, but no AIP and no CPA.

4) Just turn on "Lazy AI" in the lobby   Perhaps for added challenge you could hang a "Kick Me" sign on the AI Home Command Station?


Thoughts?

Posted for posterity in case anyone else missed his original discussion about "Individual Command Stations".

Personally I love the idea, as I think Data Centers in their current form are too powerful.

I'd also like to see some other forms of Individual Command Stations, that do different things. It's hard to think of anything off the top of my head.

How about a type of Command Station that (Revenge Command Station), as long as it is adjacent to a planet you take, if you lose that planet, they AI takes it over again and begins quickly rebuilding a powerful base? This could be annoying enough after awhile to hack it.

Or a "Guardian Command Station" that produces powerful Guardian units from itself very quickly, depending on your AIP, if the planet is on alert. If you hack the planet before you take it, your own Command Station will build uncontrollable Guardians, at a much slower rate.

Just some ideas.

[Toranth]

Oh, heck, yeah!  I like this idea.  A lot.  More hacking?  YAY!
To me, hacking IS a core mechanic.  I hack stuff every game.

So... yeah.  More hacking stuff gets my vote.  IMO, there's not a more flexible mechanic in the game with the potential for fun (and !FUN!).

So, instead of having different hacker-ship types, just now have a "Mobile Hacker" like the Mobile Builder, and a sub-menu of Hacking abilities to activate (like Champions have)?  Otherwise, I can see some issues with the hacking-ship build menu getting a little crowded.

[chemical_art]

Sleeping on this, I really like the idea.

It feels like a unique core resource. It does things no other resource can do easily. Yet it interacts with other core resources. It gives the player more toys, but to get more then one or two unique things, you have to jack up AIP, so it already passively has a counter abuser.


If you truly make it core and expansive, this could almost be your show piece for a new expansion.

[Cinth]

Food for thought.. What is going to happen when you have say 5 hackable items on a single planet?

[Eternaly_Lost]

- hacking an advanced factory before capturing it to permanently unlock mkIV production capability (on a mkIV, or I guess mkIV&mkV tab on the normal space dock; whatever), though this would need to have a huge impact on the hacking response level to be at-all balanced.

Now that would be awesome, would I be correct in assuming that if you do this for fleet ships, you do the same for the advanced starship factory so we can build MkIV and mkV starships at a normal starship constructor?

- hacking a special forces guard post to decrease SF popcap and rate-of-growth (as long as that post lasts).

Oh Yes!

Anyway, the specifics would be very much up for discussion but my thought is that you could get away with 1 Ship-Design-hack at AIP 10 but further hacking beyond that level would be ill-advised until you were at AIP 30, where you could get away with another one without the sky falling on your head.  I'd probably want hacking-room to scale up logarithmically (or something like that) with AIP so that unless you get to 1000 AIP you can't just hack everything with impunity (and even at 1000 there'd be limits).  In this model I'd like hacking to be core and important, but I wouldn't want you to be doing it all the time.  It'd still be a series of fairly surgical decisions like it is now, just with a broader selection and with those decisions (probably) coming at different stages of the game as your AIP increases.

So my normal game ending of 2000 AIP means I be able to just about hack everything left with impunity?



In any case, I really like this idea, and I think this is exactly what we wanted to replace crystal. Something completely 90 degrees from Crystal and metal as it stands. Yet not a Knowledge v2 requirement.

[nas1m]

Loads of cools stuff

I want this - *so* much !
Especially the neinzul beacon idea is pure gold imho - really interesting!

[Cyborg]

Great idea, best one yet.

[Kahuna]

I really like these hacking things.. but what do they have to do with crystal?

[_K_]

I really like these hacking things.. but what do they have to do with crystal?

Haha, that is actually a very valid point. And probably the reason there is not much opposition to the whole idea in this thread.

Nobody cares enough to oppose the m+c merge, and everyone is excited about potential new features.

[nas1m]

I did say in the other thread "I think I'm done tilting at this particular windmill (crystal) for a while." ... well, turns out maybe not   Still true in that I don't have anything further to say about crystal right now.

Anyway the idea that floated through my head at this late hour was: just collapse metal and crystal together entirely, and "promote" the hacking-antagonism "resource" (that's used to balance Knowledge-raiding, Ship-design-hacking, and Superterminal-hacking) into its slot.  Visually I'd probably put it next to AIP but you get the idea.
...

Just for the sake for completeness ...

[Cinth]

I really like these hacking things.. but what do they have to do with crystal?

Haha, that is actually a very valid point. And probably the reason there is not much opposition to the whole idea in this thread.

Nobody cares enough to oppose the m+c merge, and everyone is excited about potential new features.

Yeah. Combining M/C into one resource is also a fairly major buff to the player econ, just on the grounds that you no longer have a need for conversion. 

[RCIX]

Just to be clear, the nebulous "response" is not permanent, right? Increased ship deployments, triggered waves, maybe CPAs or exo galactic strike forces, but not encouraging a treadmill effect.