[2.0] Hacker drones are now broken (intermittant)

[Scoob]

Hi,

Well, this is a disappointment, hacker drones are now broken.

The scenario: a PMC Taranis is closing in on one of my ships, I don't have the firepower in the Zone - due to another bug unfortunately - so, I send one of my hacker drones in to slow it down so my ship can vacate the area.

I target the PMC Taranis and launch the drone. Upon getting close, double-clicking the Taranis no longer brings up the "Hack" option so I'm stuck.

I reload and try this again and things went even more screwy! I was in the drone and close to the Taranis and suddenly I was booted back to the Skunk - no, I wasn't out of range - however, I then got a mission pop up saying "Find Captain for Hacker Drone!!" WTF? I then saw my drone (marked green) actively fleeing a bunch of the PMC Tarans's Interceptor drones. However, the Hacker Drone wasn't coming back to the Skunk. I chased it for a while, but there was nothing I could do about this. Reload again.

The third time I manage to close on the Taranis, so no weird returning to the Skunk rubbish, yet I still have NO Hack option.

What's the deal, something has certainly changed here, but whether it's a bug or a new feature that's broken I don't know.

Anyone else seeing this? I hacked a Taranis just fine in the Earlier 2.0 RC's - enough to disable it and escape with my ships - but now it simply cannot be done.

Scoob.

[Scoob]

After many re-tries, I got the Hack option back, but I'd been trying for several minutes and the Taranis closed on the Skunk and destroyed it - a little too late methinks. Going to try again as the issue is evidently intermittant, though so far more fail than work for me.

More information:

After a fair bit of testing, I've discovered that the "Hack" option only appears when the drone is VERY close to the Skunk. Each time, the Taranis has just started firing on the Skunk (so about 7km away) when the "Hack" option finally appears.

Thankfully this time, I seem to have managed to disable certain weapons on the Taranis before the Skunk was destroyed, so I could continue hacking.

A most unusual bug, if it is indeed range related as it appears so far.

Scoob.

[Scoob]

Ok, stratch that theory!

I get close to the Taranis double-click OR tap "f" with the Taranis selected and nothing happens, except the target square shifts slightly. I've been trying this for ages...seems the Skunk doesn't die when you're in a drone, only if you return to the Skunk when it's being hammered.

Anyway, if I alt-tab out then back in, the "Hack" option returns right away.

So, I'd say this is one of the Icon type bugs back again, where the player cannot click on an Icon - in this case the entire ship - and get a menu option up.

Work Around: Alt-Tab whenever this happens...thankfully Rebirth is fairly stable these days, so this should be doable.

Scoob.

[YorrickVander]

Ties in nicely with a glitch I found last night but wanted to retest - set out to bomb a titurel but couldnt launch any bombs - I could target the subcomponents but nothing else. Then the drone exploded for no adequate reason tucked in behind the engines

[Scoob]

Ties in nicely with a glitch I found last night but wanted to retest - set out to bomb a titurel but couldnt launch any bombs - I could target the subcomponents but nothing else. Then the drone exploded for no adequate reason tucked in behind the engines

Does sound like a related issue, doesn't it? I noticed the Release of 2.0 was a 20mb+ update, rather than the usual switch to "Release" status - wonder what else they changed?

I will say however, that after I did that one alt+tab out and back in, the hacking was more stable - not perfect, but a little more consistant. Managed to capture that pesky Taranis!

Scoob.

[A.Persyn]

Unless they have changed something since yesterday, on hard mode, hacking apparently only damages the hull, it doesn't disable the weapons or engines. Hacking seems pretty useless now.

[Scoob]

I did noticed a fair bit of hull damage was caused during the hacking, certainly. However, some weapons also appeared to shut down, as did the engines - well, the Taranis came to a halt, so assume that's why. In the end I hacked a few, blew up a few which was enough for most of my pods to land.

Hacking as a way to aid ship capture was a bit of an "I win" button previously though wasn't it. I mean, I hacked an Arawn in an earlier game, then just blew the engines and jumpdrive & launched my pods - easy capture. Compare that to my next Arawn capture where I refused to use drones and it was a half-hour + fight disabling the weapons on one side before launching pods - MUCH more satisfying.

Now, a combination of hacking and destroying surface elements seems the way to go on more heavily armed ships. Add to this the greater turret range and it's quite the achievment to capture the larger ships. I sorta hate/like it as we had it easy before lol.

Scoob.

[Rupert Hound]

I tried hacking a station today but it didnt do anything at all. Was using a Trojan to hack a station, it came up with the option to hack i selected it but nothing happened. Probably just me doing it wrong though as ive never tried it before.

[werewolves?]

Unless they have changed something since yesterday, on hard mode, hacking apparently only damages the hull, it doesn't disable the weapons or engines. Hacking seems pretty useless now.

No I've been hacking today, definitely knocks out everything, you just need a higher level hack 4* or 5* on everything. Low star hacks might drop loot but not disable.

I did notice I couldn't initiate a drone hack on a station.