HACKNET - revamp suggestion

[William Antrim]

Hacknet improvements brain storm


This was written over a night shift at work. any thoughts?

P.s this is a long post too and it was written as I thought about it so apologies for the drivel.


Hacknet needs rares!

Rare offensive item – attack software
Rare defensive item – heal software
Rare shield item – shield software

Rare offensive glove

Rare defensive glove

Possible armour – to be worn/activated inside hacknet only. 6 pieces to cover each body slot.

Rare recycle tool for hack boosters (See below)

Due to Item rebalancing and general Sparta related stuff no item statistics will be given.

11 rare items in hacknet. Six parts per rare. 66 rare parts.

Currently all items have hack requirement and primary skills. No difference between OFF and DEF. Runner can use both but only one at a time and cannot be switched whilst in hacknet - need to be poked in in the "real world".

What about specialisation? Down one path or the other. Hack PPU and Hack Fighter (either role can be taken up by ANYONE with enough hack to use the glove - doesnt necessarily need to be monk/spy/etc). What separates them?

Glove. Interchangeable however. Hack requirements are the same to “wield” each glove. Just gives the chance to “use” one software or the other.

How does the hacker get the glove? Rare parts of code. Unidentified code snippet/fragment like the Fergusson Run. Drops from mobs, usable in the “real world” and has to be id’ed like real rare parts. Stacks in one stack also. No L,T,E stuff.

Take them to researcher get the glove parts ID’d. Take the parts to cster and get the glove. Separate parts for OFF glove and DEF glove.

Wearing each glove gives the same benefit but allows the user to use RARE hack weaponry. Heal for DEF glove and Attack software for OFF glove.

Rare shield has no requirement for either glove. Can still be worn by solo hackers and those without the glove. Make it a prized commodity. Essentially hacker is able to use rare defence before he has the other parts. It makes it easier on the hacker to go about getting the other parts.

How do the hackers get these gloves?

Rare parts found in hacknet. ID’d in the real world – same as the way they get the gloves.

Mobs that drop these “rares” need to be 50/50+ at least and spawn on NC and DOY Travel 6+. Make the hackers work for their parts – they spawn on the travel ways or sometimes in the UPLINK nodes for each.

So now we have teams of hackers who can have the ability to work together with “PPU style heals and defence”.

Uplinks become dungeons for hacker teams. Better xp, better loot. Perhaps lots of money to be made from mobs in hacknet, to represent lack of real physical loot. Or perhaps hack boosters can be recycled from hack garbage. Dead code scraps, half stripped data fragments and the like.

The current hacknet content remains the same. Phoenix mods still available from the phoenix for use in the rare software.

Perhaps a tool can be built in hacknet to do the recycling. Activates inside hacknet along with all of the other kit. Is unusable in the real world.


Lower end stuff – getting from 0/2 to hacknet in stages.

0/2 to /20.

3 separate levels of dungeon in the faction database. As is current. Get a citycom in hacknet. Allows the runner to do missions focussed on each DB. Enter DB 1 blah blah blah and get X item.

When the runner has done enough missions in the lowest 3 dbs he can retrieve an item from the top of the db – e.g a faction bp for his boss. Something small that the boss cannot get for himself but makes the runner feel like he is important, part of the faction.

/20 - /30

NC and DOY travel ways. Runner goes out into the “real world” and does missions on the travel ways, killing daemons etc.

/30 to /40

OP zones – use HN OP zones as low level dungeons. Mines and Factories. Focus on the NC travel op zones. Runner is assigned a random op to go to and do missions at or certain mobs are assigned and they only spawn in a given op zone(s). KEY NOTE – NOT UPLINKS!

Minor chance of rares dropping.

/40 to /50

Fortresses – Jeriko for example. Runner has a mission to clear out Jeriko fortress or some other op close to NC. Similar deal to before. However these are higher level mobs as they represent Fortress attackers. The runner (group?) is now high enough to use some of the rare software. Fortresses could represent lower level group dungeons or really tough solo challenges for single runners. Moderate chance of rares dropping

/50+ Uplinks. Hard as nails. Need a team to bust in. Get the rares dropping here regularly?


Thoughts/feedback/abuse please.

[Doc Holliday]

So i was googling hacknet threads as we were talking about it over help channel the other day and how it needs to be revamped and stuff.

This thread came up. I had a read (no bias towards the op) and i thought it warranted some more discussion.

[Netphreak]

Not sure about the requirement for separate gloves as it makes things into the PPU/APU system we have now. Being able to use all software to adapt to the situation is always good.
I like the rest of the points/ideas.

[William Antrim]

I was thinking youd be able to swap gloves out fairly easily but then I guess there is no real difference between the two in terms of base ability. I guess if one glove just gave ass loads of hacking it could be used by the person using the heal software or the attacking software.


p.s where have you been!

[Torg]

this concept is about "making the hacknet similar to the rest of nc". ok. i'd rather make it a different game. just a few items (like now), no rares, armor, gloves, but somewhat more "things to do", more loot. i guess the hacknet overhaul is scheduled "long after nc rebalancing". so. well.

[William Antrim]

Add something please Torg. You were dangerously close to actually posting an idea just then. Please elaborate further


Making it similar to the rest of NC is a base concept and it is simple and easy to implement as a yard stick, it also provides a level of familiarity to new people to "learn the ropes" as they say in nautical circles.

If a player picks up a HN char as their first then they wont be bewildered when they move into the "real" world. This helps the design process, the building of said new weapons/items/tools and the end user - the player. They know how to do all of this stuff and they find a different spin on it. It is "new" content but following a similar line of current content.

The beauty of it is in the simplicity. Even with these changes it does not rule out any of the stuff you were about to post.

[Torg]

Please elaborate further... ...Making it similar to the rest of NC is a base concept and it is simple and easy to implement as a yard stick..

sorry. i said what i wanted to say here. thats it. your proposal isnt a concept, its an idea. which i dont like as much as you do. and sorry, no, it isnt easy to implement, it means recoding the whole hacknet thing, just to make it more similar to the rest of the game. uhm. no. sorry, i'm not going to buy this. nor am i going to support any WoW-ifying (simplifying) of this wonderful, crazy MMO.

[Divide]

Torg doesn't like your idea or your stupid face. Or rainbows or icecream or ponies. Or WoW. I think that covers .001% of what Torg doesn't like. Further updates to updates to come whenever one of you neanderthals posts another thread.

[Divide]

I hope that post doesn't get edited, I just started cracking up at work reading it. Yeah, I laugh at my own terrible comedic attempts. What of it?

[BlueRobot]

You forgot PvP. He doesnt't like PvP. You don't have to try PvPing to not like it. Neptune failed, so just remove it from the game.

[William Antrim]

Torg you misread my point.

I don't give a rat's ass what you don't like I am interested in hearing what it is you DO like.

You're quick to jump on an idea and say it is bad but this is the brainport. Therefore I was kinda hoping you'd offer an alternative suggestion?

Your last post is just a bit pointless here. Wow-ifying? Cycrow-strike... Whatever next?

[Torg]

Houston, we have a communications problem. i didnt misread whatever post, but you seem to expect me to communicate the way you do. dont you? in fact i wrote my ideas on a future hacknet, on the urgency of a revamp of it and added my thoughts on the value of complexity at your additional request. to make the last point more clear: NC is an MMO, not a shooter. it should be complex beyond imagination, so success in playing the game comes from understanding game mechanics rather than hitting that keyboard and mouse pretty fast.
speaking of which, PvP is entertaining, so is cycrow, ponies... not as much.

[William Antrim]

But youre not really saying anything. Its just words coming out of your keyboard. It is so generic that there is nothing to contribute, compare, inspire or discuss.

Complex beyond imagination? In what way? More mobs? harder missions? what?

Hitting the keyboard fast? what part of hacknet is a shooter? Im lost now.

Understanding game mechanics? uh what? If you understand the mechanics of hacknet you can go there you mean?

Every post is just words dude. Come on post something that we can actually talk about? Any of you?

Even divide?

[Divide]

So let me start off with: I tl;dr'd the OP.

I'll move on to what I THOUGHT hacknet would be like before I ever saw it.

1- An intense inter-connection of all genreps in the game, with spatial context. Not just OPs, faction HQ's, and neutral areas. It is my opinion that EVERY gr in the game should be accessible via hacknet.

2- Multipathing from about every point. No network is built light a highway, they are built like a city. There may only be one way out of your front door, but once you get on the road you can take one of 20+ paths to get to your destination. Hacknet travel should be the same. And, your starting point should be the GR you hacked, not your faction db or the UG gr.

3- faction agnostic. none of this doy travel/nc travel bs until you get to the faction dbs.

4- (tied to #1 & 2) hackers should be able to transport groups of players through hacknet to any destination in the game.

5- how the holy hell can we not hack the city com? hackers should be able to snoop on previous players' use of a citycom, and perhaps use it to identify the location of ANY runner in the same fashion that the NCPD list operates today.
-caveat, perhaps there should be an SL cutoff relating to lore. Something to the tune of 'NCPD secretly tracks runners with 50 <-> -15 SL, while publicly tracking runners -16 and below.' This way, if a player really really didn't want to be tracked, they could get their SL up above 50, which I imagine most players with a strong aversion to this would likely have high SL

6- alerts & counter-measures - hacking alerts/etc... just in the same way an op warns when a hack goes down. Notifications that someone is snooping your citycom sessions, notifications to clans when a hacker exits an op gr, if they haven't defeated the counter-measures first. difficulty of the counter-measure should be scaled if a hacker is transporting other players through hacknet.

7- random insano encounters with the AI's from the NC lore.




Those are pretty much all of the things I hoped/expected from hacknet. It is rather bland in its current state.

[William Antrim]

I like it.