Wednesday, June 11, 2014

News From Abandonia...


~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  =/|)=

8 comments:

  1. I too have cleansed systems with too few bs, but am not as keen on making it easier.

    The exercises have been our biggest fleets to date.

    BUT as a pos defender surrounded by too many pricy ships, i would love to 'scorch earth' by blowing up my own pos with the possibility of taking attacking ships with me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Foo,
    I too have run in POS Bash ops... and due to that I am very keen on having some other, more engaging way of taking down offline POSes. I have been lucky I guess to have flown in SYJs 30 to 60 man fleets, including Raid POS Bash Fleets so pure POS Removal Fleets simply don't interest me as they are such a frakkin bore, I mean brainless F1 monkeys in null have more interesting gameplay man.

    Plus aside from simply getting rid of an offline Spike, which granted is a good thing in and of itself, there is no 'profit' in doing it... and I believe, there should some profit in a multi-hundred to multi-billion ISK Control Tower that is unfueled and abandoned. I mean look at from a IRL perspective... you abandon a fort, and anyone can break in and make it their own. This is the way it should be in EVE too... only we can pack up the fort and take it with us, or sell it.

    As for self-destruct, yea, OK I can see that... as for self-destruct having area affect... well, I've never been a fan of self-immolation being a 'weapon' though the idea is supported IRL... It just seem like the cowards way out and makes it too easy to deny the attacker his rightful spoils.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'd like to see an "anchor" module that is outside the force field. Anyone can hack it and the entire POS, bubble and all lifts off and floats away. It would still be in the system and you could nudge it around like a giant soap bubble.

    Just kidding, of course :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. With regards to the risk involved in your potental hacking mini-game, how about automated hacking defences installed on all pos's.

    If you fail the mini-game, the pos emits some kind of damaging burst that easilly covers whatever range your ship needs to be in to hack, however the first burst is easilly tankable.

    Bursts from subsequent hacking failures get significantly stronger, where an untanked scanner won't survive the second burst, and only a well tanked scanner (T3?) will survive the third. Nothing capable of effectively hacking can survive the fourth burst.

    you can still remove the pos, by successfully hacking on the fourth attempt, or, if you're not confident after 3 failures, the bursts have a cool-down timer... maybe 6 hours reduces the 'burst counter' by 1.

    This will allow a lower SP, or inexperienced pilot to attempt multiple hacks on the pos over time, whilst risking destruction if they are impatient and try to hack too many times too quickly.
    It also allows people to purposfuly fail hacking 2 or 3 times and then lay in wait for someone to come along and hack, thinking they're safe from the first burst... but instead get the fouth burst and lose their ship.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about... I like it.
      Reward = POS Spike (mebbe Lrg Faction spike worth billions)
      Risk = cost of Ship & Fit (so T3 + expensive hacking mods) with increased possibility of getting jumped...

      Risk approx commensurate with Reward PLUS we get to CLEAN UP SPACE!!!

      Delete
  5. This is not really even an objection, but I remember poking my head into a C2 that was a graveyard for corps who tried to make it. There were six dead sticks; looking each one up gave me some sweetly optimistic description of a corp that was going to make it on the frontier. The last POS I found was still active.

    It was moving. Annoying as they can be, dead sticks are the only lasting evidence of someone's attempt to have a go at W-space, and it would something of an erasure of history if it was *too* easy to get rid of them. Every one of them is a story.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LOL I never saw deadsticks as 'ruins' before... wouldn't be so bad if

      (1) after enough time they actually did become ruins... IE just a dead object in space with attendant degradation 'aging' (IE end up looking like a ruin) and also no longer get in the way of anchoring a new Spike at that moon or
      (2) you could 'take over' (read rebuild) the old spike but it's history remained... name, org corp, battle records, etc.

      I have to admit, it's an Interesting take on dead POSes...

      Delete

I have opened my blog to Anonymous Users... I hope I will not come to regret this. Please identify yourself when posting and read my Blog Disclaimer and Comment Policy.

All posts on my blog are moderated by me. I will post em as soon as I see um...
Tur