One part of the game that has frustrated me about hacking is that walking into an enemy repeater got you access to every enemy hacker. This means hacking interactions are often very all-or-nothing, where one side establishes hacking dominance without much finesse. Consequently, there is very little depth to the hacking interactions, especially if playing against a wide-spread hacking network. You walk in, and hope you can do enough damage before you're isolated or killed or you accept that your opponent's hacking is superior and your maneuvering room gets very small. The wide-spread access to hackers via a single repeater also means that I can't protect my own hackers if I decide to expand my network coverage with a repeater. This can be particularly annoying when bringing Evo hackers that basically have no hacking defense, but can also come up if I chose to bring an Lt hacker or just a weaker hacker (ex. Fusilier hacker). What if hacking adopted the idea of range bands. The way these could work is by limiting repeater access by distance. Let's imagine that hackers can only use repeaters that are within 16 inches. Repeater hops can be chained, but perhaps with a penalty (-3 to hit?) applied for each hop. Limiting hacking range in this way would allow more flexibility between hacker engagements since you could choose to keep your hackers within the network or outside of it. All of a sudden, you could enter the network in your active turn to do active turn hacking and then have a choice: do you stay in the network range and get a chance to aro, or do you leave to be safer in the reactive turn. Limiting hacking range would also encourage hackers to move into the midfield if they want to influence their opponents deployment zone, but they could also choose to stay in their deployment zone albeit with a less pronounced impact on the game table. Indirectly this could also introduce friction into the guided missile in opponents deployment zone plan by requiring more repeaters to be placed for the chain and applying a penalty for multiple hops without reducing the effectiveness of this strategy if you choose to push hackers forward or have your opponent push aggressively toward you. Limiting hacking range would also give more counter play against hacking networks by allowing to break specific links in the repeater chain, rather than having to destroy every repeater in an area. I do see that with this change a lot more measuring would be required, but probably in line with bs attacks or less. The interaction of penalty via hops and strong tinbots (-6) could be a bit much, but if this rules change was implemented I'm sure play testing would surface these interactions and they could be fixed.
Been thinking the same thing. Have also been thinking about a "what if cyberspace was space on the board" where some terrain features also breaks hacking LOF. Holo-ads provide hacking total cover, generator rooms creates hacking dead zones, and certain natural features on alien worlds also dampens hacking horribly. You know. Stuff that you need to either walk around or signal bounce around. Would it be balanced? No idea. Would it be practical? No idea. Would it be cool? Also no idea.
