Hacking

Hacking is a system introduced in the FTL: Advanced Edition update. It can be found on some AI ships during the game, and is a starting system on the Lanius Cruiser, as well as several of the other ships' unlockable C-type layouts. It initially starts with one power bar, and can be upgraded to a maximum of 3 bars. Upgrading the system increases the length of hack it can perform. A hack generally either disables a system or causes it to malfunction (e.g., hacking a Medbay will cause it to harm enemy crew instead of healing them). Upon deploying a hacking drone (they are treated much the same as any other drone by the game, but do not require a schematic to build), if it is not hit by a stray shot it will latch onto the selected system room, giving you constant view of the affected room. While the hacking drone is active and there is power to the hacking system, the doors of the room become purple doors, locked to the crew of the targeted ship with roughly equivalent strength to that of blast doors.

Effects on specific systems

The hacked system will shut its doors to the crew of the affected ship, but will grant access to any crew from the same ship as the hacking drone. For as long as there is power to the hacking drone, the doors remain locked, but triggering the actual hacking process will cause different effects depending on the targeted system. The length of each hack is dependent on the level and current power routed to the Hacking system, and there is a cooldown period between each hack, much like that of the Cloaking system. The effects of hacking each type of system are documented below:

• Weapons: Power down all weapons on the affected ship.
• Shields: Slowly discharges shields, taking ~1.5s to discharge each level of shielding.
• Bridge or Engines: Reduces the affected ship's evasion to zero.
• Oxygen: Depletes oxygen on the ship.
• Medbay: Damages crew instead of healing them; heals boarders.
• Clone Bay: Shut down the cloning bay, killing potential clones permanently.
• Drone Control: Deactivate enemy drones, with a chance of destroying them.
• Hacking: Disable enemy hacking modules.
• Mind Control: Disable enemy mind control and mind controls one of the enemy crew at random.
• Teleporter: Enemy boarders are returned to their ship.
• Doors: Turn all enemy doors into friendly blast doors, effectively locking all enemy crew in their current rooms.
• Battery: Disable your bonus energy and drain two more energy bars.
• Cloaking: Disable cloaking

Side-effects of hacking

Friend-or-foe identification of teleporter hacking will take into account temporary effects (mind control). Thus, the following situation may cause an unexpected outcome:

• Ship A has teleporter and mind control systems installed and activates mind control successfully on a crew member of ship B;
• Ship B has hacking system installed, hacks teleporter system of ship A and perform a hacking surge;
• If mind control and hacking durations overlap, affected crew member of ship B will be teleported to ship A. If Ship B does not have teleporter system installed, that crew member will not be able to return to ship B at all.

On rare occasions when the player's teleporter system is hacked (such as stage 1 of the Rebel Flagship), this mechanic may be used to slowly "steal" enemy crew. It should be noted, however, that the reverse situation is possible as well (if the player hacks enemy teleporter system to defend from boarders) which will likely result in a lost crew member.