It's probably a bit too early to ask for advice, as the expansion came out not too long ago, but...

I keep having my capital system hacked! What's worse, they keep changing my government (I've had like 5 switches already, and since I'm not good at this game, I also overexpanded, and now I'm not able to properly contain civilian anger). I tried to put lockdown on my capital, and encrypt on two systems that connect to it, but to no avail, still getting hacked.

Can anyone please advise on how to protect oneself from this?

Thanks!

Hey,

It seems you have a pretty good grasp on the system, so without more context it's hard to give you relevant advice. Do you have a save at hand or maybe just a screenshot of the situation?

Hi, thank you for the reply!

I'll attach the last savegame, however, I don't have any saves that happened prior to / after the actual hacks (I mostly rely on autosaves): Too much.sav

There's a very good chance the enemy is hitting you from a nearby backdoor system and has enough hacking proficiency to beat you trace timing. Here is what I recommend. Put "lockdown" on the the neighboring systems to your capital, it actually isn't doing much for you on the capital itself. This will prevent any backdoors on your neighboring systems. If you can afford it, I would also put Encrypt on both systems AND your capital. If you still have enough bandwidth after that, I'd strongly recommend putting Interrogate on both neighboring systems as this will hinder your opponent's ability to use offensive programs to bypass your defenses. 

It's a lot of dedicated bandwidth but it makes it near impossible to hack your home system without giving you a chance to trace it first. 

The problem as I see it is that if the enemy does a "far-system" hack, by the time it reaches even your outer systems it takes too long to trace comparable to the time it takes to reach your home system. 

No amount of encryption changes this, the only way to solve it is having more systems between you and your enemy, which can be impossible in some galaxy designs. If you start on the edge of the map and have plenty of systems to the nearest enemy, then you are fine. Encrypt your outer systems and you will have traced the hack before it gets close to your home system.... If you start in the middle of the map however and have competitors around you, not being able to move your homeplanet can really mess you up.

A fair point, honestly. Location and galaxy orientation can be major players in hacking and can be difficult to contend with if your homeworld is in a vulnerable location. What would you suggest as some ways to rectify this? The only thing that really comes to mind for me is some kind of defensive program that everyone gets for free specific to their homeworld that shuts down hacks or something in the first so many turns?

That is actually a pretty neat idea. 

There is also the ultimate answer of war! Make a guess who is hacking and attack, conquer their systems, then use those systems as a encryption shield against hacking.

@gap81

Yeah, I really like that idea too.  Perhaps a module that gives a bonus to your hacking speed and/or a penalty to the hacking speed of opponents?  Also, maybe another module that either boosted hacking range, or possibly acted as a remote point of origin for hacks?