~or “Mebbe We
Can Hack Your Stuffs.”
I got this
one from Hermit, here…
If news like this keeps up, I may have to consider keeping tabs on the forums
now.
In this
post in the Features & Ideas forum, “[Summer 2014] Starbase tweaks” CCP
Ytterbium said…
“On the bright side however, we are
working on ways to remove offline Control Towers. It's still in early
design and with our team bandwidth being quite full for Crius, this will have
to wait after that, but it's definitely on the menu.”
Now THIS is
a mechanic I can sink my teeth into! We, especially those of us who live in
Anoikis, have been hoping and praying for this since… well, as long as I have
been ingame. Abandoned offline POSes and their incapped mods litter W-space… some
intentionally or unintentionally abandoned, some due to Corps being evicted or just
podded out w/o hole-cards, scan alts (in scan frigs) permanently in the hole as
a backup.
No matter
how it happens, the simple truth is that because any corp can setup POSes at
every moon in every system in W-space and due to the access issues, IE evictions,
POD outs, need for scanned access BMs, etc., there are possibly literally hundreds
of offline POSes scattered throughout the systems of Anoikis. We have lived long
term in a C2, C3, C6 and now another C3… we have had left over offline POSes in
2 of them… the hole we live in now has one and we’d LOVE to get rid of it…
especially if we could also profit thereby.
Yes, we
could bash it… but DAMN, have you ever done a POS Bash? We are a small yet
feisty corp, we don’t have Dreads or Caps so at best we could field a small
gang of BSes… it would take HOURS. I know, I’ve done it… it SUX. Yet, if you
eject from your ship… ANYONE with the prerequisite skills can simply jump innit
and warp off. Abandoned POSes should be the same only in some way that is
commensurate with how POSes work (or will work after the Corp & Alliance
Roles and Rules Revamp).
Personally,
I prefer something that might go like this…
You find an
offline POS… no active Force Field, armor and hull at 100% and with some defensive
modules, mebbe some others, still anchored and incapped. You would need to be
in a scan frig, fitted with new hacking modules, POS Hacking modules. There
would be some form of new hacking mini-game, but gods please not the random almost
pacman like thing we have now in some sites, but a real code breaking/puzzle solving
type game and maybe new Mods and Skills could apply.
Something
based on the idea of a password or PIN number hack… or maybe an X-ray type of
scan that give you a wireframe view of a circuit, you then select several of
multiple connectors to send a charge or data packet in order to close, open or
bypass a series of logic gates in order to eventually open, close or bypass the
whole circuit to gain access. Or maybe something like a puzzle… a 3D wireframe
or virtual looking puzzle that has to be solved… think a virtual Rubiks Cube or
Tetris not really Rubiks Cube and not really Tetris but you get the idea.
So you have several, say three, of these getting progressively harder to hack but at
the end, quite simply, you gain full Administrative (all Roles) access to the
POS Management Interface and all Attached modules… with one caveat…
If you do not
complete all three hacks in a reasonable amount of time… the self defenses kick
in and the POS assplodes… with a very,
very high Alpha and a radius of… well let’s just say you can’t run the hack
from outside the blast radius mmkay?
So in the
end, with some well balanced risk, let’s say the POS Hacking Modules are, well
expensive… really expensive, enough so the loss of the scan frig, mebbe a new
Special Purpose Frig, so that risk inherent in the cost of the Frig and POS Hacking
modules, if lost, would… to a degree balance out the reward that the sudden acquisition
of a free Planetary Orbital Station Control Tower… mebbe even a Large Faction Control
Tower would bring.
Fly Wreckless and see you in the Sky =/|)=
