I guess it hinges on what you can do with the hacking. Personally, I don't have much reason to do much hacking. Normally I just hit the ARS and ST and be done with it.
Right, right now it's just a secondary mechanic. Cool (imo), but secondary.
Here I'm talking about making it core, to replace the departing core resource from m and c imploding on each other. I'd want to avoid anything where you actually _have_ to do anything with it (for reasons I'm sure we don't need to retread here) but I wouldn't want there to be any game where you'd just have no reason to _want_ to use it.
Anyway, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves with "details on how to do this" before we decide "is this a good idea at all", but some examples of hacking that could we could add (some stolen shamelessly from player suggestions) :
- hacking a fab before capturing it to permanently unlock that mkV type (buildable at a special kind of dock or maybe a mkV tab on the normal space dock; whatever)
- 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.
- hacking a special forces guard post to decrease SF popcap and rate-of-growth (as long as that post lasts).
- assuming we do go with "individualized AI command stations" like I mentioned elsewhere recently, there could be a variety that buffs reinforcements but if you hack it you gain permanent (as long as that station stands, at least) metal income from the resource spots on that planet
- in the same vein, there could be an AI command station variety that gives a planet-wide munitions boost (or whatever) but if you hack it you gain permanent (as long as that station stands, at least) energy production from that planet
- also in that vein, there could be an AI command station variety that buffs the strategic reserve but if you hack it the strategic reserve gets a debuff to popcap/rate-of-growth instead (as long as that station stands, at least).
- hacking a CSG to destroy it without taking the planet; this would need a pretty severe response for balance, such that you're not really saving much in the way of AIP (though you wouldn't gain AIP directly from doing this) but you wouldn't be forced to take that
particular planet.
- hacking a brutal core guard post to destroy it without doing it the hard way. The AI would go nuts and you'd have a tough time maintaining cloak that close to a post (and it's right out if there's an eye, unless you can put it out), but I imagine there could be situations where you'd want to do this.
- edit: another one that comes to mind, harkening back to that "military builder" idea I tried to shoehorn in to crystal, is being able to hack an AI command station into giving
you supply as long as the station stands, so you could start throwing down turrets on that planet or adjacent ones without actually taking the planet. It could also count as non-AI for the purposes of computing "is the human player deepstriking?".
- edit: and another (not doing too good a job about not talking details yet, am I?) relatively low-impact-on-response form of hacking could be "suppress the AI Eye on this planet" as long as the hacking is happening. Or perhaps it's just a permanent condition once the hacking is done, but that would need a bit higher response.
I would ask, can we get an idea how the scaling would work? What kind of AIP levels are we looking at to get less murderous responses from the AI?
Well, the idea is that the higher the AIP goes, the more hacking you can get away with, rather than less. So basically gaining AIP raises your "hacking cap", though it's not a hard cap as you know.
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.
