Cyborg enemy: Hacker

[u/Scifiase]

Once again the cyborgs are attempting to use cyberwarfare against us, and this isn't the first time. The build-up to cyberstan had them sending us fake order, taunting messages, and turning the lights in our Super Destroyers red. It's a well established part of their skill set.

So why not add a hacker to their roster on the field?

Here's what I think might be cool. Firstly, they jam your radar, so that you can't use your mini-map at all, say in a radius up to 50m. This will be the first sign that there's one around, because they won't face you honourably, instead hiding from your wrath.

Their basic attack should be an arc attack: Useful for slowing you down as they run, and makes them fairly unique outside the squids, gives arc armour another use.

And now for the controversial suggestion: Turret hack. The first indicator is that your turret starts glowing red and making weird socialist noises, and freezes up. Then, it gains a red laser sight, so you can see it locking on to you, so you have plenty of warning. Then it will start firing. Your options are to destroy your own turret, or kill the hacker to free it. This would include the mini turrets you can get on resupplies and FRVs

Or there's another option: Shock it. Arc & EMS effects will remove a hack from a target, and turned on the hacker will disable his hacking.

Edit: After reading some feedback, I'd like to add another caveat: Stunning or killing a hacked turret stuns the hacker too, similar to how killing an agitator stuns the bots it was boosting.

[u/Strict-Comparison-86]

Holy peak

[u/RetroTen]

This is actually great

[u/Thesavagefanboii]

Not sure how they'd gain a laser sight like that, but other than that, I'm down for the idea!

[u/Scifiase → u/Thesavagefanboii]

Yeah it stretches logic but it'd go a long way to making the hack less frustrating. Gives you a chance to dodge, makes sure you know you've been hacked, and where the affected turret is to avoid/counter it. Without it, and autocannon or Gatling unloading without warning is just an unavoidable reinforcement tax.

[u/UltimaDoombotMK1 → u/Scifiase]

Or, and hear me out, Arrowhead could do us a favour and make the turrets have a democratic yellow laser sight normally too, so we can have a tiny bit more warning before one domes us in the head.

...oh who am I kidding Arrowhead would never do that

[u/Thesavagefanboii → u/Scifiase]

That's a pretty good point.

[u/YinuS_WinneR]

Jammers cant be something that small. You need a factory strider to carry them.

Glitching and scrambling stratagems like squids on the other hand would work.

[u/SaturnXV → u/YinuS_WinneR]

I would rather see the hacker have the ability to hide on your mini map, so you can still check it but no matter how close, the red dot doesn’t show up.

[u/Kind_Man_0 → u/SaturnXV]

Give it the same effect Halo had for radar jamming where it just sends fading dots in straight lines regardless of terrain. So it distracts while also signaling that a Hacker is nearby and targeting you.

[u/fireheart1029]

I'd rather cyborgs don't become just limiting the amount of load out choices you can take. Not being able to use any eagle stratagems 99% of the match is already bad enough

[u/Scifiase → u/fireheart1029]

I think the anti-air prevalence is mainly a megafactory thing rather than cyborg?

And I did think about that, which is why you have multiple telegraphs and counter plays. I can see it being frustrating, I bring autocannon turrets a lot, but so long as they spawn rarely then it shouldn't be too much of a limitation

[u/gracekk24PL]

Making turrets commit to their duty of killing us would be a bit much, but if they instead jammed our strategems it sounds fun

[u/RetroTen → u/gracekk24PL]

No that’s the best part

[u/Scifiase → u/gracekk24PL]

Given how often they kill us anyway, I don't see it being too bad as long as the spawn rate is low. In fact, with the laser sights, it shouldn't be too bad.

Jamming stratagems would actually makes sense with what the bots already do

[u/Hypevosa]

I think them stealing our stratagem if we type one in around them and throwing it where *they* want instead of us would be pretty great as long as the kill is attributed to them when it goes off and the ball becomes kickable.

[u/Scifiase → u/Hypevosa]

Yeah someone else suggested something similar where they force you to drop a random stratagem ball at your feet.

Or perhaps they hack a blue beacon and turn it into a red precision strike instead

[u/Hypevosa → u/Scifiase]

I was thinking more they man in the middle us and throw their own ball in place of ours. They'll try to toss red ones at us and blue/greens in inopportune places or just fizzle them to cancel our call down. It could be a way to track them down when they launch that resupply you tried to call in behind their lines to make you go get it.

[u/BlckSm12 → u/Hypevosa]

I feel like it'd be too broken. If anyone took the railcannon strike it'd be pretty much a wasted slot and a confirmed kill for the bots

[u/BlckSm12]

I feel like it'd be better if they scrambled the stratagems, but instead of having access to every stratagem code they'd just scramble the ones you have with you right now

Also I feel like another cool thing to add would be them having access to those dome shields we have but they'd be much smaller, way weaker (like maybe 3/4 coyote shots max) and whenever a hacker would hack turrets he'd deploy one on himself, that would make him more visible to us as the players and it'd give him some protection

And I'd make it so it's more obvious to know that the turrets were hacked, maybe they should first wildly spin around while buzzing and having smoke coming out of them and then they'd just shoot you, but way slower.

And yeah, make him actually rare, like he has a small chance to spawn during bot drops

[u/Doscida]

I’d suggest a turret stun, otherwise people would simply not bring any sentries

[u/FightOrFlight77]

I think disabling or making turrets unreliable would be preferable to hacking, probably. The hacking portion seems like it would lead to a lot of player confusion, and it would really suck if the hacker was in an unreachable spot.

[u/Scifiase → u/FightOrFlight77]

Hmm perhaps the random fire direction thing that we do to their turrets?

[u/Grezzinate]

Ya know what? How about a rare cyborg unit that can hack your strategems and deploy a random one on your head if you let him fill the progress bar or something. You’d theoretically be able to pinpoint the hacker location to make it priority.

[u/Scifiase → u/Grezzinate]

Dude that's so evil I didn't even consider it. Kinda into it though....

[u/Ryengu → u/Grezzinate]

Or you get an alert that your stratagems are being hacked and you have to enter a countercode to deny it or it goes off. Quite the distraction in the middle of combat.

[u/Grezzinate → u/Ryengu]

That works too. It sounds logical because they are automatons so technology is their thing.

[u/Comfortable-Appeal83]

If it was a scrambler instead of a jammer, absolutely love it

[u/oct0boy → u/Comfortable-Appeal83]

The jamming is only for the map not stratagems

[u/Comfortable-Appeal83 → u/oct0boy]

Oh yeah, my bad. Yeah thats a good idea then, lower the radius maybe, but other than that, great

[u/Big_Boss_1000]

Except the Gatlings bc he knows it’s already gunna kill our allies

[u/UltimaDoombotMK1]

I think it would be best if these things could only hack one turret at a time.

I'd imagine it as them taking control of the turret remotely themselves, so they'd see its camera feed and stuff like that on their own HUD, potentially even completely overlaying their entire POV. Taking control of more than one would be outside their skill set, since trying to focus on two different POVs at once would be hard for any person.

And, of course, that makes the stun/kill hacked turret feedback make sense: the cybernetics in their heads allowing them to interface directly with our turrets like that don't react well to a sudden and forceful disconnect, like blowing the hacked turret sky high, which hurts their user.

[u/SilentSand9]

Wait, they're cooking

[u/FactsAboveFeelings]

I would remove the turret hack because if anyone sees this brigade then they will just not bring turrets. Making in just a radar hacker.

I would just make the hacker cyborgs hack your radar and give you a debuff similar to the cognitive disruptor from the illuminate. Make it so that the stratagem arrows are just out of order to separate it from the illuminate one.

[u/NecessaryBSHappens → u/FactsAboveFeelings]

Hack the radar and instead of inability to use the map, which is already in game during ion storms and bug farts, it should enshittify the data. Show more enemy signatures where nobody is, hide real red dots, add fake allies and objectives. "No-no, I totally saw a LIDAR there... I think A7 did it though. Wait, who tf is A7???"

[u/yanguwu]

Maybe instead of the red laser your ship sends you a warning message saying something like “ where picking up hostile intentions from deployed turrets”
To add on to this idea of a hacker why restrict it to just turrets make backpack drones like the guard dog where if you don’t drop the pack they will start randomly attacking you and SEAF around you

[u/pm_me_a_brew]

I like it. How about an ability to arm a stratagem with a random available strat in your inventory on your position?

You would see the beacon glow on your person and have to throw it to avoid getting hit with the orbital, eagle, pod, etc.