Why do we get such bad exp for hacking? Engineerings get around 5 exp per little nodule thingy when repairing a turret/ console. there's between 5 and 6 nodule thingies per quarter, 4 quarters. that's a minimum of 100 exp per full repair. 2.5 turrets per cert (inexact figures, it's late) INF, flat 25 exp IF you manage to finish the hack. It is much harder for an INF to get into a base, get up to a turret and then hack it, while not being cloaked deep in enemy territory. Why don't we get exp per hack point like ENG? well, you could just go into an empty base and almost hack a console, get exp then stop hacking and insta start again!"** (see bottom for ENG abuse and why this argument doesn't hold up) The satisfying solution: Hack meters should stay filled up. Get exp per hack point. Like other support classes & it isn't open for abuse** (you can't "unhack" something) Working as a team with other INFs you could effectively do something behind enemy lines (like multiple engineers). To deconvert a turret that has been partially hacked, get an INF from your side and un hack it. That is consistent with how control points work and the hacking circle. Colour indicates enemy hack amount present, TR red, NC yellow, VS purple. NC checks a turret in VS territory, it is half red, cheeky TR got there first, NC unhacks the red TR half and then has to hack the full VS amount, changing purple to yellow. The amount a turret is hacked should be invisible to everyone except an INF who tries to hack it &/or an ENG who tries to heal it (A flashing skull symbol appears inside the node wheel thingy, showing a virus is present when the ENG tries to heal it, maybe make an ENG cert). Imagine if the v commands had a "we need an infiltrator over here!" An unsuspecting someone climbs into a turret only to find out that it is partially hacked and OH NO! it has a virus... Onto the viruses: At each 1/4 mark on the hacking circle, the turret/ console gets infected with a more potent virus. The certs would work by getting the least disruptive virus first and you would have to hack to the 3/4 mark to put the virus on. The next level would be the 2nd most disruptive virus which activates at the 3/4 mark, the least disruptive would move up to the half way mark. At full rank you would have 3 viruses, least disruptive in the first 1/4, 2nd worst in the 1/2 way mark. worst at the 3/4 mark. bonus minigame idea- How far past the mark you fill up on the hacking circle is how badly the turret/console is affected by the virus. Trying to fill turrets up to the 99% mark without accidentally going to 100% and ejecting the pilot who shakes his head, shoots you in the face and then gets an INF to undo the work. turrets- It starts acting screwy but not too noticeably. From the gunners perspective, every shot gets more shake then the gun starts to overheat more, there seems to be a variable vertical drop off, range finding is harder. Imagine 3/4 hacking every cannon on the crown only to have the range finder slowly "droop" on every 1 and shots fire to slightly to the side. vertical and horizontal axis are reversed. imagine how crazy you would feel. imagine the disconnect from trained hand eye co-ordination. Infiltrating actually has a purpose, Hacking like this sounds like a much better tactic than hacking 1 AA, the pilot gets ejected, shoots you in the face and the gun is out of action for the time it takes them to visit a change room and hack it back or a passing INF sees it needs hacking. all that for 1/2 hour of not killing a single soul so you can sneak into the base. Shouldn't we be undetectable unless we want to reveal ourselves? shouldn't be able to actually DO something while staying undetected? lack of c4- Take over turrets by remote control or AI friendly fire, activated by 3/4 hacking and putting a non explosive c4 charge on the side. detonate the charge and you get control. doesn't stop until fully hacked back or destroyed. hacking vehicles- should be able to. sundy- confusion c4: anyone who spawns here respawns at a random location. hack a sundy: you get 2 exp for every spawn and deny the owner. imagine the confusion and rage with these 2 equipped. hack: take control over spawn point for a time (time balanced against reward) hacking consoles- unless fully hacked, all consoles appear their original teams colour. You can fully hack to gain control like normal. Class consoles- spawn you as the wrong class. there's a chance you'll spawn a HA when you needed a MED. They don't allow anyone to spawn an INF (same as a full conversion just your stealth isn't blown until the confusion is overcome, hilarity ensues) so its not so easy to change it back. Tank consoles- wrong vehicle spawned (that would make people FURIOUS, maybe that needs a little balancing) or spawn with 3/4 health, abilities or guns locked or randomised. air craft consoles- highest level cert (i'm talking 1000 certs here) could be for aircraft, vertical thrust is now decelerate, bank left is go higher etc, randomised every time someone flies (so you cant learn to fly using the alt commands), The new ship has no cool down time so if they want to get another straight away they can (and crash that too) (what I'd really love then, but this is asking a bit much, is if we could hack the vehicle and take it over but with the controls set back to normal, imagine someone spawning an ESF, controls are all screwy, they crash land it back on the pad and angrily go back to the console and call for a friendly INF to sort it out. The ex pilot gets miffed that there are no INFs around, and goes to change class. While that is happening you sneak behind their damaged ESF and start hacking. More aircraft take to the air, only to spiral out of control. There's bedlam at the class console as no one can spawn an INF to change the turret back. Back at the landing pad you finally take control, enemy AA turrets see you on their radar just as you detonate the AA control virus. As the enemies AA makes swiss cheese of the quickly assembled and highly comedic uncontrollable airforce that is bumping into itself, you fly off into the sunset with the largest amount of unmitigated rage left behind you.) I admit the vehicle viruses can use work. these are just suggestions, I'd rather get the mechanics sorted 100% and worry about OP balance later. Balance of mechanics: Balance issues would be offset by likelihood of discovery. You are lucky to get to 1 turret without being spotted these days, and that doesn't change. Imagine how paranoid everyone would become when on defence. What changes is hacking damage hangs around so is cumulative which results in more success. Exp gains always means more people will go for it, more people going for it and INFs being the only hard counter to hacking means more INFs on patrol which in turn leads to more successful hacks (when you roll a class because its a necessary hard counter in defence, you find out what that class can do offensively as well, which simply for the mechanics sake is the same as what you are doing as a counter, just in the enemies base instead, has a lovely chess feel to me). instead of 1 guy trying to do this by yourself http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...decimate-a-tank-line-as-an-infiltrator.81300/ imagine a whole squad of INFs. Before people would see an INF somewhere near a base and either take him out, or shrug and put a priority on a more important target as the horrible decloaking sound would reveal him at the wrong moment anyway. If you see the predator blur after this change, you would panic. As it should be. Summary: What the INF does should be invisible until he decides to devastate the area. sew confusion. make life harder for the enemy. The way you motivate people to play the class is by rewarding actions, an infiltrating infiltrator is way harder to play than any other class. They should be getting exp compensation that is the equivalent to their actions. This wouldn't be a newbie class, it would be difficult to master but worth the reward. These suggestions solve both through exp and fun. Even with the shoddy cloak I think this would get a lot more people interested and much more enjoyment out of playing the INF. Bonus goodness for other supports: **How is that different from what an engineer can do? if you are a masochist and want to farm exp, simply blow up a console (hell, go to a room with 2 class change consoles, go HA, spam rockets, change back to ENG) and repair it. (disclaimer, you might get weapon lock like this, and ive noticed no exp on aircraft for self damage, i'm not cheesy enough to actually do this so please someone correct me if im wrong.) What you should do though when capping a totally taken point is help your ENG buddies out. shout for ammo, when they drop it fire into the air, reload and pick it up. Do this when just standing around and give them a free 10 exp every time, tell everyone else to do it too. with 6 dudes standing around, get everyone to fire 5 bullets with reloads and ammo picks and youve just given a cert to your ENG mate. You can do the same with medics, but it just involves more lead induced blood transfusions and team anger. I won't be on the boards over the weekend, I'll be back on sometime mondayish to take the heat. (will ninja edit this out later)
I'm going to be "that guy" who says TL;DR... Not for content but because I just wanted to deal with your original topic. I used to think the XP was too little until it was a double XP holiday I started getting 50-60 xp per hack... That's almost a full cert for filling up your CD that resets shortly. Also, there are certain things you can do while hacking that, while cheezy, you can achieve greater CP farm. For instance, hacking one turret and then using that turret to blow up all the others
1 cert for capping 5 turrets during a 2-times exp weekend.. whoohoo.. only 999 more to go to get 1 weapon thats why Not saying the hacked turrets cant be usefull, but the exp certainly is not even worth it to hack more then 1 turret
for anyone whos interested this is what im talking about, got this off of http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/14xnmb/infiltrator_issues/ from TheSecretMe It feels very silly that you can be a hacking infiltrator whose locked out of bases until some grunt overwhelms the generators. By the time you can properly get in to hack some stuff, the jarheads are already blowing up the consoles. Different types of cloaks would be great as well. Imagine a cloak that creates 2 holographic copies of the infiltrator if a cloaked player get's hit. Each hologram copies the players action but moves in a different direction. You only need a split second of 3 infiltrators running in 3 different directions to make a getaway and cloaking properly again. Different types of hacks would also be interesting. Currently the hacks are very counter intuitive for a infiltrator. Hack a console and you can spawn a tank, hack a turret and you can stop infiltrating and start shooting. Instead start sabotaging things. For example a faster hack that doesn't give you control of the console but deals shock damage whenever the opposition tries to use it. Essentially sabotaging and booby trapping it. Sabotage phalanx turrets so they blow up when people reach the max heat level while using the turret. Sabotage vehicle consoles so the spawn pad instantly kills anyone moving across the pad . Put in bigger hacks like reversing the shields instead of destroying them. If you pull off a hack on a shield generator the shields are suddenly entrapping the opposing forces instead of protecting them until the generator resets itself. Or charge the shields so they cause damage on opposing forces moving through them. Different types of mines and grenades could let infiltrators create havoc in other ways. Imagine haywire grenades that temporarily remove vehicle huds and third person mode. No damage but you'll have to aim your tank shots without a reticule until the tank's computer resets.
TLR cumulative hacking like engineers ability with same xp bonus viruses work on 1/4 of hack circle hacking should mess with basic functions, randomising and causing confusion while allowing you to remain undetected to continue causing trouble some hacking suggestions how it would give purpose through fair exp and fun back to INFS
You're not supposed to level through hacking though... I think that's by design. We're in a funny spot though, of hybrid support / combat role. *side note* I think it's B.S. that engineers get xp for healing their own vehicles I guess maybe that'll give you an idea of where I'm coming from with support xp.
I don't mind that support get exp for doing what is useful on the battlefield. It reinforces their role as a valuable one and means you don't lag behind in exp from the purely shooty classes. If anything I think we need MORE ways to get exp for being versatile and not just trying to solve the problem with bullets to the face
true that, it's in their best interest to maintain their own vehicle, they shouldn't be rewarded for scratched paintwork. Infantry has to maintain their bodies with healing and they don't get any xp if they heal themselves.
well, it's all numbers and they can be normalized up and down if necessary to offset the tweaks. The relative balance between classes is all that matters and only engineers have such a ridiculous synergy.
That's my problem, we are fine as snipers, I want to play an Infiltrator. There's no reason to do it right now, its too difficult and there's too little pay off, exp and group co ordination wise. Imagine if engineers couldn't piece meal repair turrets or tanks, they'd only heal when fully healed, and you only got 25 exp back.... No one would play them to the detriment of everyone on your team. It's not so much about what we do get exp for right now, but rather what we should be getting exp for as a support class which would add depth to our role.
There's no real way to measure how useful hacking something is though. I.E. Hacking a vehicle terminal to spawn a sundie or hacking a flanking tower is extremely useful. But how do you distinguish that from when the other team is being spawn camped and is on farm status, and you're just running around hacking for extra XP. But even then, the reward for doing something useful with your hack comes from reward XP. If you hacked a useful turret, you'll probably get XP in kills with said turret. If you spawned a hacked sundie, you'll get XP from people spawning on that sundie (admittedly this one isn't has steep of a reward). Same problem with engineers. Repairing other vehicles is providing support where as healing your own vehicle is something you were probably going to do anyway and is a pretty selfish act. It would be like if medics got XP for using first aid kits. It doesn't make any sense.
