Spies and Cargo

OK, how about making the goal of spy mission more into "general espionage"..?

I think this is the best way to start. We could place cargo pods representing prototypes, or other items, near the stations. And players could snatch them.

Mdvally had a come up with some good ideas on hacking cargo pods(pods trapped with alarms, self destruct). Those ideas, plus sneaking close to get docked would be an interesting set of first challenges.

Cambragol was tossing out ideas for items that could be used as part of "spy equipment" and mentioned the comms laser. An idea came to me this morning on how we could build a generic hacking system.

How it would work is that the comms laser is used to transmit hacking code into specific objects. You need to keep the comms laser on the object long enough to destroy it, and then the object is "hacked".

Hacking objects would be attached to anything we want the player to be able to hack in some way. Remember the Iwar 1 mission where you have to free your captured wingmen by shooting off the little control pod? It works like that.

EoC aliens had a special property that they could not be damaged by normal weapons. We give this property to hacking objects. And we give the damage property to comms lasers. This lets comms lasers destroy the hacking objects, but normal weapons don't let you hack. Then we lower the damage of a comms laser to very little, and it is only useful against these hacking objects.

To increase the challenge, we let the hacking objects heal quickly with time. If you don't keep the laser on them most of the time, they heal back (internal security fighting your hacking programs). And to make it more exciting, once you start to hack and object, you need to finish. If the health goes back up to 100% the security alarm goes off, drawing nearby guards. (or it blows up, or whatever the effect needs to be).

Better levels of comms lasers would do more damage, letting you hack things faster. Higher security objects would heal faster, requiring more skill or better gear.

One of the main advantages of this kind of simulation, is it puts piloting as the primary challenge up front. Any improvements to stealth or other gameplay would only enhance the experience.

Thoughts? Opinions?

That seems like a decent way to game hacking, without resorting to (even more) elaborate coding and game mechanics. It does, however, make me wonder if "interception" fleet events might even try to "hack" the information off of YOU? That'd be a nice touch...

You were mentioning earlier that such interceptions would be fantastically rare but I disagree; the fact that you're going on the mission may be compromised, or even the original contractor(s) might be trying to get off cheap, you know?

While purely random searches WOULD be ridiculously unlikely to find you, since you're restricted to the use of L-Points (known/stable or not) to travel outsystem your movements are actually relatively predictable. Now, I'd have interception of "spy" missions that stay entirely INsystem as extremely rare; more likely it'd be just a general pirate or w/e, not someone looking for the info you have.