Ok, so let's see, UC can usually win conquest victory by turn 50ish @fast without being discovered and ever reseraching military oriented tech.

I have done it, most of you have done it, it is not incredibly hard.

Let's talk hacking counterplay.

You as a non-UC empire have 60 badnwith, that's 4 encrypts/defensive programs in total - that's enough to make one system unhackable provided placing 3 defensive programs on a single node is enough... unless someone were to overload your node and make that impossible aswell.

Provided UC do not fall asleep and get a tech 2 home system upgrade you need a T4 tech to see/threaten them at all.

Some easy options: 

1. given you can make an educated AND correct guess where the home system is, and somehow outperform the UC output in an academy contest, you are in luck, your academy fleet shall make short work of them. Placing detection probes alone will make sure your end of the galaxy is safe-ish.
2. you can set the galaxy density to low, making it hopefuly somewhat more difficult and conflicting to establish sanctuaries by removing the freebies giving you enough to time to
   1. reserach the top tier military tech and establish maximum detection levels
   2. finding and flying through ALL off-lane nodes in the galaxy once you do.

Let's say that the RNG was not in your favour and academy quest is unachievable for you and or, you did not find the home in time and got to clean out a sanctuary or two (sanctuaries take 1 turn hacks to reestablish from nearby backdoors you are not always able to detect/remove.

What do you do to stop them from growing at 4/5 (and more, provided they do hold the academy fleet and invade you + can assimilate minors) systems a turn?

I am open to suggestions cause I must be missing something vital.

I think you are talking about multiplayer, in which I have no experience, but I have been trying a few more games with the UC and have had a ton of trouble with hacking.

I get to the point pretty early on when I don't have an empty nodes for easy hacking. That is, I already have say, 2 backdoors, 3 sanctuary systems, 1 trans beacon, and my home system.

Now if I try to hack from any of these places I immediately encounter an occupied node. This is when the quests pop up as well. If you go science route for UC, they want you to hack through a specific node. And of course, the hack through the academy node quest.

But with every node occupied, it is almost impossible to hack anything without getting traced, destroying your backdoor or revealing your home.

I was hoping to find some tips on hacking. But even using all my bandwidth and programs to put accelerators on every node, I could not complete either of these mentioend quests. And there is only one defensive program that slows down enemy trace operations, lockdown, also not enough to let me finish these quests.

Again, I only play with AI, but since the nerf to obliterators I have only had one game where theUC AI won, and it was with economy, which I normally disable, the typical front runners in my games are Cravers, Vaulters, Riftborn. followed by horatio or UE

Because UC only have the one system (which is pretty easy to find later on, just look for the pile of UC ships) I'm normally able to cripple em whenver I want.

I expect this would be even easier in multiplayer, as the AI sometimes immediately transmigrates before you do anythign aggressive, whereas a player likely would not notice until after you invaded.

being newer to this it's hard to tell which of you last two posters actually has the correct (or more so) stance on this hacking thread.

I can also vouch for hacking being a pain vs the AI, but I also don't play multiplayer, so the optimal routes for thrashing people sub-100 turns are a complete mystery to me.

As far as getting your shenanigans traced by AI goes, the solution is to very slowly build up speed boosts around your target. The more well-developed (I assume population and system level?) a system is, the quicker it can trace you. So, if you want to attack a well-developed system, you painstakingly set up backdoors on every single connected node, to stack up the "5% bonus on adjacent" buff. Additionally, choosing long and convoluted routes through dummy systems, other backdoors, etc will lower the chance that the trace reaches you.

The way tracing works, as far as I understand, is simply an automatic "counter-hack" with around double the speed of the target empire's normal hacking power. The trace does not succeed if it fails to reach the original starting point of your hack. Therefore, if you hack through an occupied backdoor, but that system fails to detect you and start a trace, that backdoor is safe when the next target's trace passes through it.

This all being said, you really have to prioritize hacking bonuses when playing, in order to actually outpace the traces. Assimilating minor factions with hacking boosts is basically required.

I also have no idea what actually triggers traces to start to begin with. Well-developed systems obviously do it more often, but there have been times where a system just... completely fails to detect my hacking, even though it had previously detected it on the very first turn it reached the target.

dragontyron wrote:

I also have no idea what actually triggers traces to start to begin with. Well-developed systems obviously do it more often, but there have been times where a system just... completely fails to detect my hacking, even though it had previously detected it on the very first turn it reached the target.

Traces are started by defensive programs. Of course, the AI is more keen to protect well-developed systems than extreme outliers. However, in general you should try to place your own defenses ahead of the actual valuable targets, so you start tracing before the enemy even reaches the system they want to hack.

Furthermore, as far as I know system development has no bearing on trace speed, as both Hack Speed and Trace Speed are empire-wide (with the exception of programs modifying the hacks), but well-developed systems take longer to hack, given the trace more time to succeed.

Thanks for hijacking the topic from "how to defend yourself with 4 programs in total vs 5 hacking actions and impede the expansion" to "how do I hack?" =D

The-Cat-o-Nine-Taleswrote:

Traces are started by defensive programs. Of course, the AI is more keen to protect well-developed systems than extreme outliers. However, in general you should try to place your own defenses ahead of the actual valuable targets, so you start tracing before the enemy even reaches the system they want to hack.

Furthermore, as far as I know system development has no bearing on trace speed, as both Hack Speed and Trace Speed are empire-wide (with the exception of programs modifying the hacks), but well-developed systems take longer to hack, given the trace more time to succeed.

Wait, any defensive program starts the trace? I must have missed that somewhere.

koxsos wrote:

Thanks for hijacking the topic from "how to defend yourself with 4 programs in total vs 5 hacking actions and impede the expansion" to "how do I hack?" =D

That sounds kinda rude.

In any case, as Cat mentioned, you prevent hacks into your own systems by placing your defenses in a wall between your important systems and the Umbral Choir. There's no real answer for them expanding into un-colonized space outside of casting your own outposts really far/rushing detection tech, though. Otherwise, some reasonable deductive work ("what region of space did I expand into when the Choir first started hacking me?") and a wall of cheap hacking defenses would make you a suitably annoying target.

Now, imagine your wall is now a backdoor, since it is easily hackable through a proxy.
Add a fact that double accelerators make even non-proxy hacks quite succesful.

Add an overload program, so that instead of 4 encrypt cap, there is now 3 encrypt cap.

I imagine you just move the wall closer to any systems that matter? You're not really supposed to out-hack the empire whose gimmick is hacking; bully them in the physical realm instead.

In the original post I thought it was about hacking in general as a method of expansion, but if you mean when the UC have citadels on your systems...

you can just build a detector and like, invade the citadels.

While I do find the UC AI has way stronger troops/manpower than expected,invading them in your own systems is still trivially easy.
The detection level for citadels is based on how many citadels in the system, to a maximum of 3.

If you find the UC is consistently winning so early by conquest, it seems to me that you must not be building detection at all. Or, like me, you don't want to get any detection until you have the highest level.

decloacker 3 on a carrier? isn't that like 80 antimatter? :-D
I suppose you would be better off with a probe, probes are great in the way that you can place them at level 2 and later upgrade them to level 3 detection through tech alone without replacing them for cheaper results.

But it still is in extra investment you may not be allowed to afford by an ongoing conflict with visible and more threatening enemies. And you can't place probes on nodes/enemy systems.

Speaking of those enemies, they do not have detection and they don't care much as their current primary focus is to take YOU out, so UC won by conquest in a different direction than yours, there you go.

Collecting sleepers through hacking seems a waste of time to me, if you do hack the home and get an option to abduct like 5 at a time (which means you have about 50 sleepers overall), then still I would rather steal a tech or cause a riot.

Of course home systems should be backdoor-proof at that point of game and minimize hacking outcomes aaaaand by placing a single overload you will probably nuke their bandwith to shreds and have free reign to establish sanctuaries all over the place without tracing cause bandwith.

Unless you are nakalim and your research is gimped and you don't get to have all the techs you need at the right time.