Question: Ship Design Hacker

[Shrugging Khan]

So, that thing. What do I use it for?

1) Stealing Ship Designs without having to take a Planet
2) Choosing which of the three designs to unlock
3) Seeing which designs are at all available at a specific ARS

Now, 1) I'm fairly sure about. 2) I guess, but since I haven't used it yet I'm not sure. 3) I'm most curious about.

Does 3) work, and does it incur the same AI reactions as 1) and/or 2)?

Thanks for any elucidation.

[keith.lamothe]

So, that thing. What do I use it for?

1) Stealing Ship Designs without having to take a Planet
2) Choosing which of the three designs to unlock
3) Seeing which designs are at all available at a specific ARS

Now, 1) I'm fairly sure about. 2) I guess, but since I haven't used it yet I'm not sure. 3) I'm most curious about.

Does 3) work, and does it incur the same AI reactions as 1) and/or 2)?

Thanks for any elucidation.

It doesn't do 1), but it does let you do 2). 

3) you can get with any science ship (I usually use mkI if it's not dangerous to get there, mkII if it is).  Using a SDH for that will provoke a response, on an ARS planet.

[zoutzakje]

purpose of the ship design hacker is basically getting to chose which out of the 3 different ship types you get from an ARS. You can put a regular science lab on the ARS world beforehand to see what available ship types the ARS has (select the science lab once on the ARS world and then select the newly appeared ARS tab). If you decide not to hack, you always get the first of the 3 ship types that show themselves to you. If you do decide to hack, you have to do so BEFORE you destroy the AI command station. Also, regardless of whether you hack or not, if you want that ARS, you HAVE to capture that planet.

hope that clarifies it enough =)

[Shrugging Khan]

Thankee, gents. Clear enough

[LordSloth]

Some basic recommendations:

Hacks get progressively more difficult. Ship Design Hacks exponentially so. You can probably pull off the first one with no more than a fleet bodyguard but it depends. Main factor: Special Forces Patrol, #of previous hacks, interplanetary threats (interplanetary munitions booster, raid engine, dire guardian lair), and various minor factions/AI Plots. If you have the Hunter plot on or a Special Forces Commander AI then I'd be afraid to hack.

Send in fighters to clear tachyon sentinels, send in a MK2 Science Vessel (comes cloaked), select the ARS tab of the science vessel, and then use the galaxy map's note tool to write down the three choices. Then I pull the science vessel back to where I need more K - since I often play with Spire Civilian Leaders and the Dyson sphere, there are usually a couple places I can use a cloaked knowledge gatherer.

The leftmost listing on the ARS tab is what you'll get if you don't bother to hack, like zoutzakje describes. After the hack is complete and the planet is under your control, you can click on one of the three ARS tab selections from any research lab present in the system (including the ARS itself) to unlock it. Note that in co-op, one hack allows each player to choose their unlocks separately, so player A can get more Younglings and player B can get their favorite Sentinel Frigates.

If you do a lot of hacks, it may help to capture the system next to the ARS, clear the ARS system of mobile fleet ships, send in a mobile builder, and set up a small beachead with some repair, shields, turrets, and maybe even a space dock.

A small caveat: moving the Ship Design Hacker will reset the hack timer. This is not fun when you're a minute from completion.

[LaughingThesaurus]

One thing I discovered with knowledge hacking is, building like 30 knowledge hackers to hack faster really just means the response grows exponentially faster. It's based strictly on the amount you gain from hacking.

[keith.lamothe]

One thing I discovered with knowledge hacking is, building like 30 knowledge hackers to hack faster really just means the response grows exponentially faster. It's based strictly on the amount you gain from hacking.

Actually you'll get a lot more of a response with multiple knowledge hackers at once.  The base "budget" for a response is determined by the amount of hacking you've done up til then (and that part doesn't care about how many hackers you had doing it during those previous hacks) but that base is multiplied by the number of hackers currently involved at that instant in time.

[LaughingThesaurus]

So when I DO hack with multiple knowledge hackers, it really just gets the process over with quicker and the response behaves as if I hacked 3000 knowledge to begin with once it's done? No matter how I do it, the increase in response stays the same?
That's what I was trying to actually say, but I don't think I communicated it clearly.

[keith.lamothe]

So when I DO hack with multiple knowledge hackers, it really just gets the process over with quicker and the response behaves as if I hacked 3000 knowledge to begin with once it's done? No matter how I do it, the increase in response stays the same?
That's what I was trying to actually say, but I don't think I communicated it clearly.

The increase in response stays the same, yes.

So if you do your first 3000 knowledge hack with 30 hackers, and then do your second 3000-knowledge hack with 1 hacker, that second hack's response will be identical to if you had done the first hack with only 1 hacker.

But that first hack will be a bit of a wild ride, at least compared to the normal first hack, because it will be 30x as strong as normal.

[relmz32]

...
But that first hack will be a bit of a wild ride, at least compared to the normal first hack, because it will be 30x as strong as normal.

But that wild ride will be in 1/30th of the time, correct?

[keith.lamothe]

...
But that first hack will be a bit of a wild ride, at least compared to the normal first hack, because it will be 30x as strong as normal.

But that wild ride will be in 1/30th of the time, correct?

Yep

[keith.lamothe]

The time acceleration only works for the knowledge hacking, though, not the ship-design-hacking.  For the latter I don't think you'd ever want to bring more than one hacker.

[LaughingThesaurus]

If you did bring more than one ship design hacker, would that ruin you somehow? What would that actually do aside from not shortening the time?

[keith.lamothe]

If you did bring more than one ship design hacker, would that ruin you somehow? What would that actually do aside from not shortening the time?

You'd get twice the response, for no gain.

[TechSY730]

If you did bring more than one ship design hacker, would that ruin you somehow? What would that actually do aside from not shortening the time?

You'd get twice the response, for no gain.

This should probably be in the tooltip that SDHs don't stack to reduce time, but the AI response will stack. The only thing multiple SDHs give you is redundancy in case one or more go down.