AI War:Hacking

Credit for this is shared with forum member tadrinth, who originally posted these ideas here.

What is Hacking?

As you scout, capture planets, and otherwise progress, you accumulate AI Progress (AIP), which in brief is a measure of how annoyed the AI is with you. The more exposure you get to the AI, the more familiar you'll become with the AI's capabilities and vulnerabilities, which means you'll learn various exploits you can use against it. Your ability to execute these exploits manifests as hacking points (HaP), which you accumulate at the same time and at the same rate as AIP. If you never spend any HaP, your HaP at the end of the game will end up greater than or equal to your AIP.

As of core game version 8.xx, almost all hacking gets done through the Hacker unit.

All of the following are examples of hacks you can perform:

• Fabricator hacks. When you capture a planet with an advanced fabricator, you get to build a new Mk V ship type. However, only that fabricator can build that ship, and if you lose the fabricator later, you lose that ship type too. Hacking a fabricator lets you add the design to your Space Dock directly, so you can build it there without ever taking the fabricator at all.
• Design Download hacks. This type of hack lets you steal a ship design that you can then unlock through the normal Mk I/II/III tiered structure. This gets you ships that would normally only be available to the AI.
• Knowledge hacks. Stealing Knowledge Points from the AI.
• Using the SuperTerminal (which will not spawn in all games) to lower your AIP.

One player's opinion about the value of various hacks: Fab hacks are very popular, since hacking a fab means you don't have the capture the planet AND you don't have to defend the fab. They're also super reasonably priced. Factory and ASC hacks are pretty expensive, but potentially worth it if they're in particularly indefensible spots. Design Download hacks are solid gold, if there's a very strong ship type available and you have the K to unlock higher marks, as they get you an entirely new ship type. They're not cheap, though. Design Corruption hacks are nice if there are any ships that you just don't want to deal with. Most useful against ships that are a threat in waves; the hack will not stop Mark V versions from showing up on the AI homeworlds. Eyebots are a good example, as a wave of eyebots is a pain in the butt. Sabotage hacks are nice for getting past otherwise unwinnable defensive combos. Guard post that wrecks bombers under a FF? Sabotage the FF. It's also great for AI Eyes, since the hack response will up the number of ships in system, and the eye itself is a valid target. Haven't found much use for Sensor hacks yet. K(nowledge) hacking is a great place to spend spare HaP, you can always use more K.

What Happens after a Hack (or Attempted Hack)?

Hacking, in general, will lead to the AI deploying forces in the system where the hack is taking place to stop it. How heavy the forces the AI sends for you depends on (roughly, and among other things):

• How much hacking you've already done
• The value/cost of your current hack
• How many HaP you have now

Some of the AI's options include:

• Spawning a set of Raid Starships with an Exo-Wave style goal (Hitting some key-component of your infrastructure)
• Spawning in a random place on that planet.
• Spawning on a connected AI World and attacking via a wormhole.
• Spawning Guardians.
• Firing a Tachyon Pulse to show all cloakers.

The list of possibilities here is large, and will probably grow with time as more options are included. Many options aren't listed or described in detail here simply because part of the 'fun' of hacking is to be forced to react to the new environment. You always have the option of digging around to find all the options if that's your choice.

Rough notes about hacking

Each Ship hack is exponentially more expensive, hacking wise, than the one before it. In most games you'll only want to hack two, perhaps three, ARSs. The third one will heavily challenge newer players. The fourth and fifth hack are purposely meant to be game-ending cataclysms to keep some enforced variety in the game play. Choose your targets well.

Each Knowledge Raid is roughly equivalent to about two and a half of the first ARS Ship Hack, and about two-thirds of the Hacking the second Ship Hack will cause combined with the first. More than two planets worth of Knowledge stolen will be challenging without serious strategical thought. Also, if you only need 500 Knowledge or so, don't fully K-Raid it and you won't incur the full penalty. It is based on the amount of K that is stolen, not the number of planets you've stolen from.

For the SuperTerminal, removing 3 planets worth of AIP (60 points) is worth roughly as much as a full Knowledge Raid or the second Ship-Hack.

All of these activities add up together. So if you've Ship-Hacked twice and are now at about 1.5 K-Raids, your next K-Raid will be that much more difficult.