Note that a suggestion applies to all ranks, even thou "competitive playing" only really apply to high ranks, basing your statement and a opnion on such directly is still wrong. And without clearly stating the fact of "for high rank" you are creating a mislead and biased argument.
By checking ur reply word by word, indeed you never said that it is definitely impossible/not work, just that it usually is.
however, your argument on the point is still a failure, as it address the issue improperly and the misleading nature it contains.

Another point I want to address is the crit hacking part.
Someone presented a theory that crit hacking happens more often when you target a player that is higher rank than you.
Well, I dunno if that is true, but here is my question:
Isn't that pointless most of them?
Whereas it's possible that some high rank quit or is a glass cannon etc, generally ppl higher rank than you will be active and more powerful. So even if you can "steal" a planet from under them, if it is a really good planet, I would expect retalliation. So unless you got rift ready to use, isn't that still a useless reward more often than not?

Hack lower might result in say 1 in 1000 good target, hacking high might result in 10 in 1000. But if 9 of the 10 are planet that are impossible to take, or impossible to hold once taken, the only difference is that the latter is gonna eat up 9 purges.
Besides, I'm not really sure if there is a difference to start with, maybe you get more good from higher ranked because they have a better good:bad ratio due to their purging efforts?

I don't hack nearly enough to know everything about hacking, but that's my 2 cents from pure logic stand point.

fixed that for ya
lets see most times the people with dangerous+ combat rep = usually free blue
see ya
(sorry im not doing what i said i was to do so ill set things straight i will be posting if its something that i need to say other than that i wont post)
(check my new sig PM me about it i want to know what that tells ya)

+1, Hacking needs to be balanced/fixed.

At the very least I would like to see the stupid Quantum Firewall effect disappear when I get disabled. Bad enough knowing that I will be disabled within minutes of setting off the stupid firewall, but then I have to continue to wait the rest of the two hours to repair my ship and go back to hacking. It would be stupid to repair my ship any sooner, because with no cloak, I would just get hammered again immediately. In other words, getting hit with a firewall means logging off for two hours because I can't do anything worthwhile in the game until the trap wears off. I think getting disabled and possibly raided is punishment enough for that one hack. Just let me take my beating and get back to playing the game.

+1 to everything except the copy vs destroy suggestion i used to hack all the time but its to underpowered also heres a new blue badge module

secure servers

cost 100 blue badges description: size 40. after 2 hours your name will be taken off of the enemies news feed. ( because once you become a skilled hacker you will find new ways to not leave your calling card

and a mark 2
,size 80. cost 200 blue badges for rank 200 and up. after hacking the enemy vessel will not be able to target you (same reasoning as above

i +1 the original idea, i like it. Hacking seriously needs a major overhaul (along with raiding and some better arties and modules designed just for these two actions)

here are some of my ideas (don't know if some have already been replicated.

Hacking is a silent combat, in that your attempts to hack will not be noticed unless you trigger a mine, or critically fail to hack. If you critically fail to hack you will be detected by your target.

The firewall trap should prevent further intrusion/hacking attempts for several hours. It would also be classed as a Grey I.C.E program.

I.C.E. Mine, (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics Mine and sometimes known as White Ice). Not exactly a mine but electronic fascimiles of traps to catch an unwary or unlucky hacker. Those activating this mine will have their name alerted to the player you tried to hack. These mines can be stacked so that mulitple intrusions can be tripped and logged and alerted to the user.

Bloodhound Mine. Also known as black ICE mines. As expected this is another type of I.C.E. Mine that retaliates against the hacker automatically spreading viruses and causing hardware damage. Those activating this mine will take 200 damage. These mines could also be stacked to foil multiple hacking attempts.

Electronic Warfare Suite. Module, size 8-10. This module increases the chances of hacking by 5% as well as better chances of critically succeeding a hack and stealing information of planets from an enemies database (also decreases chances of I.C.E. programs being activated. Max number of E.W. Suites is 3 or 4.

Counter Electronic Warfare Suite. Module, size 8-10. This module increases the chances of detecting an incoming hack and activating counter measure traps. It also decreases the chances of being critically hacked and having planetary data stolen from your scan logs

Enhanced Electronic Warfare upgrade, a size 10-20 upgrade package which allows a hacker to steal research information from enemy bases allowing you to hack bases for research points. Bases could also have modules to help protect against this.

All hacking needs is an increase to the amount hacked. No serious changes. Just that. Same goes for raiding.

No, it needs more than that. I assume you mean an increase in the amount of research points received for successful hacking. Increasing that amount would be nice, but still not enough to rectify the obvious problems and inequalities with the system. Unless you increased the amounts tenfold, hacking remains a high-risk/low-reward way to play the game.

One of the biggest problems, which many people have mentioned, is the fact that every person you hack knows who you are and can retaliate. Most don't worry about a single hack, but others know if you are hacking it probably means they can easily disable you. Some even do so multiple times. That's just not right.

If you are a decent hacker, people should not know who you are unless you want them to know. I think ships that are hacked should have to win some sort of battle of the ship systems to know who hacked them. If the hacker's cloak is high enough, the target shouldn't even know who it was. The higher the target's scanning power, the more likely they are to discover the identity of the hacker. There can be a randomized element in there, providing about a 20% variance, so that it is not simply a matter of having a higher cloak and never being detected. And sometimes hackers make mistakes, so critical fail hacks would still occur. However, a higher cloak should mean most of the time you go undetected.

Whatever the solution, hacking needs more than just an increase in the amount of research obtained to make it a viable alternative to straight PvP.

Now, while some people get purely hacker builds, I try to run a hybrid. I focus on strength and keep enough cloak to hack. You don't need to have 10x your opponent's cloak to hack them, and if you can't hack them, bump them off and hack someone else. I rarely fail hacks with sparse cloaking (4x xecti disruptor, non-doubled, 1x CipherBot to be installed) and it really doesn't take much.

The idea that you can't have a good cloaked ship is just idiotic, frankly.

For the record, I never claimed you can't have a decent hybrid ship. However, a hybrid will never be as strong in PvP as a dedicated fighting ship, at least partly because the fighting ships dump all of their research into weapons and defense, while a hybrid spreads it around. My personal style is to push my research into base modules and reactors, rather than fighting upgrades. However, I also like hacking. I would just like to see a bit more protection for people who want to play a more covert style rather than fighting it out with PvP players all day.

Until you reach the end-game you can get away on just special cloak/scan modules, but you may want to make obtaining them more of a priority.

Once again, this is just a general idea to get thoughts moving. What I suggest is not a specific suggestion, but should give a general sense of the idea I'm proposing.

The concept is: Hackers in a legion can now contribute to base and npc boss kills via debuffs. These debuffs are % chance based on scan versus the "defense" value given to whatever they are attempting to hack, and not guaranteed. Buffs will move up the hacker one level on the rewards tier, separately, so as to not interfere with damage dealers. ie. Hackers earns one badge on a level 5 base. With debuff, now earns two and corresponding better chance to raid.

One debuff per individual, and specific debuffs will be ranked according to scan necessary to give them. Bosses and base-level will have innate resistance to these hack attempts in order to not be able to stack fifty. Only one debuff per person per one or two hours.

Here is a small list of ideas, and fluff to go with them. [Fluff doesn't really serve a purpose except to explain logical viability and make people happy.]

Tactical Node
The hacker allows his ship's processors to be used in coordinating attacks on weak points in the opponent's strategy.
10% bonus to all damage on target. Lasts 30 minutes.

Frequency Decryption
Studying the magnetic fields of his adversary, the hacker has found where the shields are weakest.
Every attack is guaranteed to damage the shields of an opponent by 20. Lasts one hour.

Systems Failure
The hacker has gained entry into the mainframe of the opposing ship, he has temporarily shut down the enemies defense!
All attacks do double damage. Lasts: Five minutes.

Smart munitions
An allied ship is temporarily guiding all shots to better saturate defenses.
2% bonus to all damage. Lasts duration of base / boss. Hacker gains the additional 2% in damage per ship to his own score.

Etc.

This allows hackers to have an additional role in battle, and better utilizes people who decide to support their legion by becoming Zolazin, and etc. None of these abilities seem too game breaking, but they do GIVE the hacker a role, DO provide some benefit, and let hackers actually join in on the silver badge fiesta!

+1 I agree totally that hacking should be overhauled.and like most of the suggestions of the author

in addition
The 1st thing that comes to my mind when I think of hacking is secrecy.You hang out in the shadows of space with your high cloaking abilities and hack unsuspecting ships as they pass through your scanning range. Seems logical that most of these hacks would go undetected depending on your stats vs theirs.. That is not the case in this game, if you successfully hack someone they get a message saying so and can retaliate if they choose.Happens every time. I think that If your hacking ability (cloaking,scanners) is far better than theirs you should have "a good chance" of gaining research without detection.The hacked player would receive a message that such and such research were stolen but no name to retaliate against.Each additional hack attempt on the same target would have more and more chance of detection. making multiple hacks even riskier. This would also justify the long time limit on the quantum overload.If you are getting away with a lot of your hacks, the risks when you do get caught should be high, ie disabled, alerted or 2 hours of quantum overload.

I also think critical hacks should have a small chance to infect random systems of the victims ship for short periods of time.Hackers do not just steal information, they also like to sabotage files and systems.
""As a separate idea this could also work separately.you could have 2 hack buttons, 1 for stealing research or critically stealing planet location or sabotage for potentially disabling random systems of enemy ship.Sabotage should be more difficult to pull off than stealing research but could be used to weaken an enemy for either yourself or a legion mate.""

I agree that hacking should gain some sort of experience, its a playing style just like missions, PvP and PvNPC and should gain experience as they do.

I like the idea of hacking/raiding NPCs. Rare critical hacks could result in the location of a planet.either unoccupied or possibly NPC planets controlled by the race of the NPC you hacked.could be a separate stat, 1 stat for PvP hacking, 1 stat for PvNPC hacking.

I dont think the firewall trap should work as a halcyon, it should stay the same.
there are 3 anti attacking artis but only 1 anti hacking arti, why not have a second that that gives yourself either immunity to hacks or a boost in scanning/cloaking.Like the halcyon, you cannot use this arti if you have hacked in the last 24 hours and is disabled if you hack after use.

I agree with most of the ideas in this post, especially considering rewards.

From my point of view, the battle badge rewards are like this:
Dominion Cannon Mk III - size: 17, pts. att: 150, badges required: 128
CipherBot - size: 10, pts. att(cloak) 45, badges required:104, bonus: 7% Chance

With the DCIII, you can get an extra 600 pts. of att vs. the opponent
With the CipherBot, you get get an extra 135, but with Decryption Quad-frames, that will only get up to 235.
The difference is about 0.391666666...%, less than half of the bonus of the DCIII
Combine those numbers with the additional mods stats and you will see that att/def is severely overpowered compared to cloak/def, something that any of you cannot deny, although in proportion att vs. def and scan vs. cloak may be near ([I don't want to crunch all of the numbers, max cloak is 4065 and max scan is 6614] Information from GL Wiki).

P.S. I am a hacker am very surprised and thankful to see non-hackers suggesting, and supporting that this not fair, which, obviously, it is not in the areas mentioned such as: the rewards, penalty, timer, XP, and (I agree) the energy factor.

Okay, so it was a while ago I last saw this thread, things have changed:

I'm now Zolazin. This means I've had an extra 800 cloak available because I remodelled my ship to make use of +40% cloak.

This has made hacking easier. Now, I will say that hacking still needs a boost to the RP hacked, perhaps as a blue badge module or something.

I also still vehemently disagree with the whole "you can't be proficient in hacking and PvP". PvPers carry low cloak and low scan normally, so just raise your scan to pick on the weaker ones. You don't need all that much and you can install and uninstall modules.

Cloak is also not equal to attack, so the Dominion/CipherBot thing is kinda wrong, and the CipherBot is smaller than the Dominion Cannon, and so should not be giving equal boosts. +7% hacking chance is BIG. It equates to the same as +7% damage (note: not attack), and I would drop EVERYTHING to get 21% damage permanently. Think about it.

I'm a low ranking PvPer, but I can keep a CipherBot on and have the ability to successfully hack 95% of the people I see (and kill most of them as well, even with no-scan running, if I had the energy).

Yes, low ranking is totally different.

Thought as much .

You CAN do it with just mission modules. I think Annabell has nearly 1000 cloak without any researched cloak (I may be wrong), it just slowly gets harder and harder as more and more scan modules turn up.

Eh, only really need it for about 250 more "successful" hacks (to show on my stats).

By the time I hit 1000 hacks on my stats though I'll probably have about 1500 badges, in addition to the Cipher and C-Int Nexus I already bought.

At least when I'm done I'll have plenty of future C-Ints. Only problem is people alert WAY more for hacks than for kills...