[Suggestion] Add Vehicle Hacking

Discussion in 'Infiltrator' started by Scroffel5, Nov 13, 2018.

  1. Scroffel5

    Now I know what many people are already thinking. "Vehicle Hacking is way too unbalanced and if they have my vehicle, its unfair that they get to keep it and gain my nanites!" That is true. However, you are probably thinking of vehicle hacking as basic. There are work-arounds to different things and different mechanics implemented so that it will be balanced. I just wanted to get that out there first.

    Infiltrators have no way to deal with vehicles, other than using the explosive crossbow or hacking a base AV/AA turret. If a vehicle comes up to an Infiltrator, the only thing you can do is run. Your cloak helps you with that, but not after a competent vehicle operator has spotted you uncloaked. I propose that DBG adds Vehicle Hacking to Planetside 2.

    I know it was in Planetside 1, though I wasn't there then. I don't really know how it worked, but from what I heard, it took a while to hack a vehicle, you couldn't have a deployed sundy, and an alert would pop up saying that you were being hacked. Sounds balanced to me, right? What I propose is to bring back the same concept. Infiltrators have a hacking ability. Really, they should be able to hack everything they can get their hands on. As of now, we can hack terminals, Spitfire turrets, and AV/AA Turrets on bases. (I may be missing some things, so please remind me in the comments.) It would be nice to have the ability to wreak havoc on a base or vehicle crash because you saw that one Engineer repairing a tank, and you shot him. Congratulations, you deserve a vehicle now. Because we don't have vehicle hacking, that Engineer can just come back into his tank and drive off. You have done nothing but delayed him. With vehicle hacking properly implemented, Infiltrators can help their team in another field; taking over vehicles and causing chaos.

    I am by no means saying that it should be easy to hack a vehicle. That would be very unfair to those people who spent their Nanites to get a vehicle. There could be many ways to balance it. If you go through the trouble of hacking the vehicle and if the owner got a new one, it would give you a timer and it would delete itself, for instance 10 seconds to deletion or something like that. It could also just take your own Nanites to hack a vehicle, kinda like buying it from a dealer, but you stole it.

    You should, however, not be able to hack a deployed sunderer. That would be game-breaking. How many times have you come across a cloaked sunderer, and you can't do anything about it? What if EMP Grenades drained the cloak? (That has nothing to do with this post; I just wanted to get it out there.) How many times has there been a MBT or Lightning or even a Flash guarding it, and you can't do a thing about either of them? Vehicle Hacking would take expertise and maybe a high enough hacking skill and time, but then you could take out that deployed sundy or at least damage it.

    Another issue that people may complain about is reworking textures of vehicles so you know what is hacked and what isn't. That is stupid. A hacked Spitfire maintains the same color as the faction it had, if I am not mistaken. When it shoots at you, you know it's not yours. The AV/AA turrets on bases do not maintain the same color as the base, but you still know it's not yours when it shoots at you. It's the same concept. When that tank that looks exactly like your Prowler or your Magrider or your Vanguard starts shooting at you and using your own abilities against you, you know it's not yours. Also, in Planetside 2, there are tags above your head that say if you are an enemy or not. Vehicle hacking will require Auraxians to be more vigilant and alert to their surroundings, immersing them in a war.

    With the implementation of Vehicle Hacking, it gives Infiltrators a way to deal with vehicles. Implemented properly, it will be fair and balanced, and will encourage the teamplay aspect of an Infiltrator, which is severly lacking. The only other tactical advantage that an Infiltrator offers is recon, stealth, and backup. I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Please give your feedback on any points that I may have missed or something I may be forgetting about vehicle hacking. I am confident that Planetside 1 players would enjoy this and will bring more of them back to the game, and DBG, where there are players, there you will find mom's credit card.
    • Up x 3
  2. utofbu

    tbh, craftily playing with explosive hunter qcr you can really ruin vehicles (especially with a few buddies focusing down the backs of tanks).

    But I am soooooo down for this. yesplz!
    • Up x 1
  3. Scroffel5

    I love my explosive crossbow. I rekt a Lightning with it cuz he underestimated me. I even got a Renegade Flash who was taking out all of NC. Also, whats up utofbu? It's me, TetsuyiWST.
  4. Scroffel5

    Also while the Hunter QCX is a fun weapon, it is an NS weapon that all classes can use since it is a sidearm. If you'd like to, you can recommend this post to your friends, and we can actually get it into the game if this post gets enough buzz.
  5. Scroffel5

  6. Talthos

    Star Wars: Battlefront II (the original 2005 one, mind you, and not that abomination EA created) had something like that, except Engineers were the only class that could do it. In that game, it was called "slicing".

    You would run up to an enemy-controlled vehicle with your fusion cutter out (the repair tool of that game, basically), and hold down the firing button (you had to be very close to the target). You'd get a percentage-based 'slicing progress' text on your screen, but the enemy occupants of the vehicle would also get a visible percentage-based 'slicer alert' on their screen. If the vehicle moved away from you, the slicer progress would begin to tick back down to 0%, giving you time to potentially sprint back up and maintain your slicing progress, or for another Engineer to attempt slicing from another angle.

    Once the slicing progress reached 100%, the enemy occupants would get instantly kicked out of their vehicle, and you would be able to immediately run up to it and commandeer it for yourself, effectively turning an enemy's own faction-specific vehicle against them (when your faction-specific 'tank' on many of the maps was a puny scout walker that left the driver fully exposed, stealing a CIS AAT was so satisfying).

    It would take some special care to make a similar mechanic 'balanced and fair' in Planetside 2. Especially since it would be so easy to utterly abuse the ability to steal another faction's MBT.
  7. Scroffel5

    Yes.
  8. Hellhammer

    I think a lot of people are thinking about "hacking" a vehicle in terms of taking control of it. Since one of the arguments is that vehicles costs nanites (that the Infil doesn't have to spend) to pull, why not make the act of "hacking" the vehicle just disabling the vehicle for a brief period of time. Of course an Engineer could pop out and "repair" the vehicle, shortening the time it's disabled, but disabling it could be a fair compromise. Just like hacking anything else, there would be a timer for the action where the Infil is more vulnerable
  9. Badman76

    i don't see how a infiltrator could hack a vehicle without the driver knowing and running him over or jumping out and killing him tbh.
    But it would be fun to commandeer abandoned vehicles.
    Only problem is deployed sunderers. they shouldn't be aloud to hack these when deployed.
    Also, how do friendlies know that you've hacked into a enemy MBT and not shoot you?
  10. TRspy007



    So yeah you're talking about being defenseless against vehicles, then brag about killing lightning with a CROSSBOW.

    Sound wrong to you? The crossbow is actually pretty powerful against vehicles, especially if the infil sneaks up and hits it from the rear. I don't even know who thought of giving "AV" capabilities to infiltrators. Seriously, you'd be surprised how much a crossbow can inflict on a tank.

    So yeah why shouldn't infils get AV? Because that's not their class. You want to shoot vehicles, you pull a heavy or maybe a MAX if you've got nanites to throw away. Or you can just hop on any other class and use C4.

    Having a class that can turn invisible and steal vehicles? Yeah, no thanks. Infils are already annoying as it is, I can't imagine those little ***** stealing your vehicle everytime you turn your back on it.

    No reason for there to be vehicle hacking in Planetside 2, nanites are scare and vehicles have enough threats to face as it is, there's no point of adding to that. Infils are already pretty powerful as it is, no need to add to their trolling arsenal.
  11. TRspy007



    Yeah I can already imagine the alts or the trolls that would spawn vehicles from one faction to hack it with their alt or let their friends from another faction hack them.

    There's no need for such shady mechanics in this game
  12. Scroffel5

    What is your point with that first paragraph? I said it was because he underestimated me. Do you know how hard it is to kill a Lightning or Harrasser with a crossbow? You say it is powerful. It takes a few mags to destroy a Lightning with a crossbow, but only one shot from a tank to destroy you. I don't care how you play it. If you destroy it from full health, props to you for pulling that off. I know that in whatever vehicle I play, when I start getitng shot, I move away. If a little alarm in my vehicle says I am being hacked, I'll back up and run over the dude. In most of your comments, you don't find a way for it to work. You tend to find ways that it will fail. I never said there would be a little 5 second timer that an Infil has to hold to hack a vehicle. It may be hard to react in that short of a window to move. If an Infiltrator can hack a vehicle, but it takes a minute to do so, you have to be uncloaked and a sitting duck, there is an alarm in the vehicle saying you are behind hacked, and your weapons are disabled while you do it, the owner of the vehicle should lose said vehicle for them being so stupid as to not realize what is going on.

    When you are playing Infiltrator and you are out in the field, you can't simply just turn into a Heavy or MAX. You have to run back to a terminal or redeploy. Yeah, they can destroy vehicles fine and dandy, but they aren't your option when you are in the field. If you are being attacked by the vehicle, vehicle hacking would still not be your option. You'd have to sit still for a minute or so and hack the vehicle while everything is against you. The vehicle backs over you. You are dead. The vehicle shoots you. You are dead. The guy gets out and kills you. You. Are. Dead. Vehicle hacking doesn't help you fight a vehicle. It helps you to neutralize it.

    Maybe asking to commandeer a vehicle is too much. Maybe you could just hack the vehicle to kick the driver out and kill him. Do you think that would be fairer?

    They don't until they shoot you and get a no-no marker. The enemies don't know until you shoot them. Maybe to combat abuse, when you hack the vehicle, all utilities and special stuff is disabled except for the weapons. That may be fairer, because it doesn't make sense for someone to spend nanites and lose their tank while you get everything they payed for with certs and DBC. Again, maybe just neutralizing the vehicle may be better, I don't know. All I know is that it is a fun concept and we should be trying to see how we can make it work, not how we can make it fail.
  13. TRspy007



    So now you're saying it would be impossible for the infil to hack a vehicle without getting killed. That would just increase the chance of abuse, since it would be impossible to take over vehicles without some exterior help unless they are already abandoned.

    There's no point in this
  14. TR5L4Y3R

  15. Scroffel5

    There is a point to this. It emphasizes the point of having people dedicated to vehicles. If they leave their vehicle, it can get stolen by an Infiltrator, or at least disabled. You could use the vehicles to cause a distraction, a big "shoot me" sign by driving around, you could use it to disrupt an armor column by drawing fire from behind enemy lines and buying time for your team to push, or you could use it for transportation. I am not saying it is impossible for the infil to hack a vehicle without getting killed, but it would be hard. You are making it sound like an unbalanced mechanic, when we can balance it by changing up a few things to the basic idea. I was using all that as an example of how to not make it OP.
  16. TRspy007


    Sounds like an unbalanced mechanic because it is unbalanced. The only time people get out of their vehicles is to repair. And that's usually when a sniper tries taking a hit at them. If snipers are allowed to take over the vehicles of people they snipe repairing it, that's just more infil trolling. We already have enough of that
  17. TR5L4Y3R


    so you already played with and tested it to come to that conclusion? ok sure dbg and all of the playerbase is gonna follow your expertise in ballance ..
  18. TR5L4Y3R


    yea but that´s just it .. you always need buddies if you are not in a vehicle yourself ..
    thing is a splosionbow infilsquad (even with stealth) has a harder time to knock out a vehicle vs a archerengy- or lancer heavysquad (mostly cause the range required to effectively deal damage)..
  19. Scroffel5

    It was in Planetside 1. It worked. People ditch their vehicles to kill people the vehicle can't. They also ditch them to repair, as you said. Killing the engineer of a vehicle only delays the inevitable. They will come back for their vehicle or get a new one. You didn't do anything except for delaying their killing spree, just for them to start it again because you can't do anything about vehicles. You have to heavily rely on your team to do anything to stop a vehicle.

    A Heavy Assault or MAX or Light Assault can stop the vehicle, but all you can do is kill the driver when they get out. However, in a game with respawns, that really didn't do much. It isn't an unbalanced mechanic. In a real war, if you didn't have a vehicle and you wanted to get somewhere, you'd shoot the driver of the vehicle when he gets out and steal his. What sounds unbalanced about that? That only Infiltrators can do it? If thats so wrong, why not allow the hack on the vehicle to open the vehicle for everyone, including the other team, a hack that gets rid of the vehicle lock? That would add to teamplay, since a group of Infiltrators can go on a hacking spree of unused vehicles and open them for their teammates, while at the same time opening them for other enemies.

    Once again, you say this is an unbalanced mechanic. Vehicle hacking is a general idea. The execution can be changed and balanced as needed. You don't have to stick to a singular idea of how it would work. Open your mind, TRspy007.
  20. Imperialguardsman

    There’s no way this is getting added by now. Disappointing that they never added it. Stuff from ps1 dat shoulda been in dis game.