Can someone explain hacking in general to me ?
I remember hacking used to allow you to get knowledge or specific designs if you placed a hacker on a planet. It would result in a timer, lots of zombies and finally, the knowledge or design.
Both are still available through the menu that comes up when you select one of the new hacker units
I think they're called "Knowledge Hacker" and "Ship Design Hacker". One advantage of the new model is that the parent "Hacker" unit does not provoke any response by simply flying through an AI planet.
Now i see there is a different hacker unit that can build different hacker thingies, which increase ? or decrease your hacking progress.
Hacking decreases HaP, though possibly we'll change it around so it counts up from 0 like AIP. The idea was that it's kind of a "human progress", but that may not be best for clarity.
So you "spend" HaP to do various hacks. It's actually allowed to go negative, but the hacking responses get MUCH nastier at that point, and if it goes very negative then player-death becomes basically assured.
Secondly, i thought mkv fabs would only allow you to construct at that specific place, but all my stardocks can build mk5 gravity rippers ?
That's relatively new, yes. Basically the idea is that ANY fleet ship you can build, you can build at your normal space docks. Same with starships and the Starship Constructor. This doesn't apply to fallen-spire stuff or whatnot, but anything from an Advanced Factory, Fabricator, etc...
I added that capability because the new hacks include "gain ability to build this fabricator's type, regardless of whether I capture and/or hold the fabricator", so naturally there needed to be another way to build those types.
