Straightforward : improve hacking by making it undetectable.

Some ways to implement this :
1. Crit hacks now happen more often, but does NOT steal planet location, instead the hacker is not revealed to the victim. More cloak = more crits.

2. Change the mechanic
* Successful hacks (logically) should not reveal your identity, but failed hacks do reveal your identity.
* *Always steal some RP, but far less if the hack is failed. OR
* *Roll again for the amount of RP gained, less than a specific amount gives you nothing.

3. When you have cloak equal to x times (2x ?) target cannot detect the hacker.

This way people would be encouraged to explore the 'hacking' side of the game. I choose hacker hoping to hack people WITHOUT them noticing, and I greatly disappointed that hacking ppl usually grants me a disable AND a raid (yeah, that's when I still <50) and stopped hacking afterward.

And I'm aware that with this change, high ranker - with high cloak - can hack low rank with low scan without detected, and currently trying to find a solution. Maybe outside the badging range they will always be revealed?

i think that a QFT should still always go off when there is a successful hack. that identification notice should still continue to appear on the victim's newsfeed.

currently, when no QFT is set, no identity notification is sent if a successful hack gets no resources. i think that higher cloak / success chance should increase the chances of the hacker's identity remaining hidden, so the pilot hacked would only get the informatioon about the amount of stolen resources.

as much as i disliker running into QFT's ... this change would undoubtedly increase their usefulness and value.

i prefer keeping the crit hack for planets.

i do think that hacks should be able to access more than resource points, but i'm not sure what information could be hacked that would be useful in pvp.

however, maybe hackers could hack elite npc's to achieve certain effects ?

Hack - 25 energy. Duration of effect 1 minutes, cooldown 10 minutes

Activate random debuff to npc attack OR defence (randomised percentage reduction), with a chance to fail, causing attack OR defence to be increased by the random percentage. The random percentage should never exceed 25% on an elite, and 15% on 10+ bosses.

Only one hack caused debuff can be active at any given time.

was something along these lines what you were thinking?

sure, QFT should always go off

OR

possible variation :
QFT blocks the hack, and it always counts as failed hack. Using this scenario, now all hacks become almost undetected and will only reveal the hacker on crit failed (or failed)

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I always want to hack NPCs crit hacks on NPC should get the location of a planet held by their faction

NO CHANGE HACKS!

I like them the way they are.

Says the 61 Hacks player...

C'Mon- I just prefer raids. (Mainly cause there are less of them needed for the medals... And they you get more complaints for multi-raiding than for multi-hacking.) But seriously, Hacks are just fine the way they are.

I hate hacking. Crit hacks are almost universally not worth taking (only 3 marginally good crits ever out of 150 or more, and one of the 3 was a legionmate's planet that happened to be scanned by the enemy).

On the flip side, crit fails (these seem to occur at double the rate of successful crits for me, so about 300 so far) are too common for me to enjoy hacking (highest risk PVP activity in my opinion). Especially since the really nice planets that I've crit failed (VM 4x MR+ arti planets, cloaked storage planets, maxed toxics) are worth much more than the 2 planets I've gotten from crit hacking.

I only ever hack a lot now if I'm sure I've got time to probe my good planets in case of a crit...

Cost vs benefit for me says hacking it only marginally worth it at lower ranks, and decreasingly so as you rank up. Not saying the mechanic needs to change to eliminate crits, but I would hack more if it did.

Raids on the other hand, they simply increase the amount of points on a crit success and kill a crewmember on a fail, and that's just plain fun. I would be much happier if a crit hack gave me double RP and a crit fail killed a scientist.

I think i like Crit hacks and Counter hacks, BUt the point of hacking is usually to Exploit something WITHOUT getting caught... so... I think a successful hack shouldnt have a linked name

-1 so someone trips your QFT and then the next person zeroes you from whatever actions and can expect no retal for it? sorry all offensive actions should give the possibility for retal. It is just fine the way it is now.

-1 hacks are fine as is.

The only real improvement needed to hacking (and raiding for that matter) is the amount of resources stolen. It needs to be at least double the current rate and triple would make it more potent in pvp. We all know that 75 hacks for an hour's worth of rp is out of balance. It may have been devastating 2 years ago, but now it is just a joke.

just putting my personal thoughts out ther...

In real life there are several nasty things you can do with a hack stealing information probably least amongst them unless the information stolen is extremely sensitive, lets face it stealing 1k RP... not that damaging

the tac bypassess however are more in line with what a hack, at least to me, should be

I would LOVE to DDOS someone and turn their weapons or shields or defense, SOMETHING off for ~1 minute but the amount of infformation that would put on the server may be to intense to handle which could be why it is set up this way.

Hacking?! I'd rather see an Increase in Ships Cloaking modules. Once you hit rank 1k cloaking is a friggin joke. Something has been needing to be done about the Cloaking on a ship for a long while now. Especially considering the range of hostile players abilities to see ships over 600-1200 ranks their junior and constantly be harassed by those players to Pad their stats for the leaderboard.

Having a high cloaked ship used to mean something in this game, now it's the Joke of this game. You'd almost do better to Abandon cloaking all together and save some ship size/damage at this point.

Dan, Fix the Cloaking for ships Give us another cloaking tree to research that ACTUALLY WORKS to a Spy's advantage! Even a Zolazin Spy's Cloaking is a Joke!
The planet cloaking could use a little boost too. Especially with the Overpowered scanning some people seem to get...
Smaller ships still need protection from Griefers in this game. You know who you are...