Hacking

This page describes content that only appears in Advanced Edition.

Targets a single system, locking its doors and granting the ability to temporarily disable or disrupt it. Requires drone part to launch.

Overview

• Launches a hacking drone that attaches to the enemy ship.
  • Drone can be shot down in transit but can only be removed if destroyed by the hacking system being hacked (so you can't move it either, choose wisely).
  • Drones hit by an ion shot are stunned for 5 seconds for each ion damage. Each second of stun after the first, it has a 15% chance to be destroyed.
  • Hacking drone cannot be launched at a ship with a Zoltan Shield, even with the Zoltan Shield Bypass augmentation. A hacking drone launched prior to a Zoltan Shield being up (e.g. when created by a Shield Overcharger Drone) will be destroyed upon impact with the Zoltan Shield when it goes up.
• Passive effects on a system with attached hacking drone:
  • Room vision and max-level Sensors information on the system.
  • System cannot be manned, but automated ships still get their manning bonuses.
  • Repair speed of the system is halved.
  • Doors are locked for hostile crew, but friendly crew can pass through freely.
    • Hacked doors are equivalent to level 3 blast doors; after being broken down they will "heal" and close automatically in 7 seconds. You cannot directly control these doors, but you can "open" them (for hostile crew) by removing all power from your hacking system.
    • Doors previously broken open (on the enemy ship) become closed and at full health if power is removed from your hacking system, thus, obstructing your crew movement.
    • Crystal Lockdown completely restores the doors health and protects it while the coating is present. However, if a room is locked down before a hacking drone attaches to the system, then the room's doors take only 4 hits to be broken after the coating disappears (instead of regular 10 hits, on Hard mode), but another lockdown will reset the doors health appropriately.
    • Fires spread through a hacked system doors at the fastest pace (equivalent to the opened doors or no Door System).
• Hacking pulse:
  • Hacking pulse lasts either 4, 7, or 10 seconds, depending on the amount of power in your hacking system.
  • When the pulse finishes, the hacking system enters 20 seconds cooldown before activating the next pulse.
    • Due to a bug, ionising an active hacking system will reset the system cooldown to the amount of ion damage applied, instead of 20 seconds.
  • Hacking a system, which is a on cooldown, does not affect its cooldown. For example, hacking the cloaking system while it's on cooldown will not change the remaining cooldown time.
  • Higher system level power for the hacking pulse increases chances to destroy drones (when disrupting Drone Control system) or an attached hacking drone (when disrupting Hacking system).
    • The chance to destroy a drone is 39%, 62%, 77% with level 1, 2, 3 hacking (after a one-second delay, there's a 15% chance to destroy the drone every second).
  • A destroyed system cannot be actively hacked, but a hacking pulse started prior to the system destruction will not be interrupted.
• Active effects during hacking pulse vary by system:
  • Weapon Control: drains the charge of all weapons on the ship and prevents them from being fired; a near frame-perfect hack can split a burst laser volley (e.g. Burst Laser I will shoot only 1 laser on the hack start and another one - after the hack, upon charge completion).
    • Draining speed is the same as speed as the base-level charging speed -- i.e. hacking "reverse charges" weapons.
    • On multiple charge weapons, only the current charge will be drained (stored charges aren't affected).
    • Chain weapons do not lose their warm-up progress.
    • Ion Bomb, Breach Missiles, and Flak II can be prevented from firing before the 2nd hacking pulse start. (doesn't work vs Auto-ships with non-damaged weapons system - it retains manning bonus)
  • Artillery Beam / Flak Artillery / Rebel Flagship weapons: drains charge (same effect as on weapons).
  • Shields: discharges shields, requiring 2 seconds to remove 1 shield layer.
    • Level 1 hacking lasts exactly 4 seconds, and will randomly remove 1 or 2 shield layers.
    • If your frame rate is locked to 30 frames per second, level 1 hacking will always remove 2 shield layers.
  • Hacking: ends an active hack, with a chance to destroy the hacking drone (higher chance with higher-level hacking).
  • Backup Battery: disables bonus power, putting the system on cooldown if active, and temporarily removes two regular power bars from reactor.
  • Drone Control: disables drones, with a chance to destroy them (higher chance with higher-level hacking).
  • Door System: locks all doors, converting them into temporary enemy level 3 blast doors.
  • Crew Teleporter: forcibly recalls hostile boarders, putting the system on cooldown if anyone was successfully recalled.
    • Does not retrieve crew from a cloaked ship.
    • If one of your crew is mind-controlled on your ship, hacking the enemy teleporter will not send the affected crew to the enemy ship!
    • Enemies will also not be recalled in this case, unless they enter the same room as your mind-controlled crew.
    • The reverse is not true: when your teleporter is hacked, it will abduct enemy crew that you have mind-controlled on the enemy ship.
    • Depowering a hacked Teleporter system will prevent sending your crew back by the enemy hacking pulse. However, if you remove power from a hacked system with Zoltans, have the system on cooldwon, and have spare reactor at the moment the hacking pulse occurs, it will redistribute the spare reactor back to the system and force the crew back to your ship (e.g. Teleporter-1 case).
  • Piloting/Engines: reduces base evasion to 0 and stops the FTL drive charging. Does not affect evasion gained from Cloak.
  • Oxygen: drains O₂ levels of ship at 6% per second.
  • Mind Control: temporarily turns one random enemy into an ally, and removes enemy mind control from allies.
    • Fails completely when used by automated ships.
  • Medbay: drains the health of hostile crew in the medbay at 13 health per second. Friendly crew are unaffected.
  • Cloaking: ends an active cloak, and prevents the enemy from entering cloak.
  • Clone Bay: disables the clone bay.
  • Sensors: disable sensors.
• Hacking specifics for enemy ships:
  • Enemy hacking choice of a system is completely random each time they launch a hacking drone.
  • Most enemy ships have a maximum of level 2 hacking. Enemy ships with level 3 hacking: Lanius Scouts, Engi Hackers, and the Flagship in phase 1.
• Hacking system can be used as a blue option in many events.

Choosing your hacking target

Choosing a hacking target works much the same as targeting your weapons. With power in the hacking system, click on the hacking drone icon, then click an enemy system room. If the enemy has a Zoltan Shield, you must destroy it first; if they are cloaked, you must wait for the cloak to end.

Once the game is unpaused, this choice is permanent: you can only hack one system in a fight, unless your hacking drone is somehow destroyed. If you change your mind while still paused, you can cancel the hack launch by clicking on the drone icon again.

Upon choosing a target, your ship launches a hacking drone towards the enemy. This costs one drone part and takes about 2--3 seconds to reach the enemy ship. While travelling, the hacking drone can be targeted by defense drones and anti-combat drones, or even destroyed by random collisions. If the drone is destroyed, you will be able to send another one after a short delay. Defense drones can be dodged by de-powering the hacking drone as they shoot, which freezes the hacking drone in place and causes all shots to target ahead and miss.

When the drone reaches the enemy ship, it latches onto the hull and becomes invulnerable. It can only be destroyed if the enemy hacks your hacking system.

Defences against hacking

• Defence drones will shoot down hacking drones, although they can miss. Enemy ships can eventually run out of drone parts due to the limited quantity.
• Zoltan Shield prevents hacking drones from being launched (and a hacking drone launched prior to having a Zoltan Shield up will be destroyed upon impact with the shield).
• Destroying or ionising the enemy's hacking system will interrupt the hacking effect, until their hacking system becomes operational again.
• Hacking the enemy's hacking system cancels the active hack and has a chance to destroy the hacking drone.
• Destroyed systems cannot be actively hacked, so it's possible to bomb your own system to prevent the hack. This is generally not useful, however, and will not interrupt a hack that has already begun.
• Oxygen level 1 system counters Hacking level 1, while Hacking-3 (60% O₂ drained) is easily countered by Oxygen-2 system being operational for merely 12,5 seconds. Additionally:
  • A working Medbay-1 negates the suffocation damage for crew in the room.
  • Emergency Respirators augmentation halves the suffocation damage.
  • Crystal crew can be sustained by Emergency Respirators and Engi Med-bot Dispersal powered Medbay, while staying outside of the Medbay on the player ship.

System upgrades

Level	Cost	Hacking duration
1	80	4 sec
2	35	7 sec
3	60	10 sec