Hacking System tips and tricks

Overview

Everything you need to know about Hacking, from basic use to advanced tips and tricks!

Welcome!

I’ve been trying out the new Advanced Edition content recently, and I had a look to see if there were any advanced tips or tricks to do with the new systems – especially the hacking system, which has quickly become one of my favourites (second only to the teleporter). A quick search revealed nothing at all, and I felt there was an opportunity there… I should at least share what I know, and maybe I can actually contribute something back to the Steam community who have given me so many great tips over the years.

I’m not claiming to be an expert with the Hacking system, or FTL in general (I like to think I’m pretty good, but there’s a lot I don’t know), and I’m not claiming this is the only way to use it. While most of this guide is written to explain Hacking tactics to people who have never used it, it is written assuming you are playing on Normal mode, simply because it is much more focussed on those luck-based decisions you’ll have to make at nearly every jump. If you’re running around on Easy mode, you can run some tests yourself – you won’t need this guide to explain things to you because you can still win with little trouble, even if you mess up your hack.

Feel free to contribute your own tips (or ask questions!) in the comments, and I’ll add them (with full credit given, of course) into the guide.
(Please note, I may choose to re-phrase your tip rather than quote it verbatim, to make it more concise, easier to understand, or just to expand upon it. You will still get full credit, and if you think I detracted from or missed your point then please let me know and I’ll change it to a direct quotation.)
17/3/15 – Wow, I’ve had over 2000 unique visitors to this guide! That’s awesome! And nearly a dozen favourites ^_^
But… only 27 ratings? Geez, now I know how Youtube content creators feel. Come on guys – even if you don’t like the guide, at least rate it down so that the rating more accurately reflects what you think of the content.

What is Hacking?

Hacking is a system module which allows you to take control of one enemy system for short periods of time, at the cost of one drone part. It can have a maximum of 3 ranks, and each rank increases the length of time you can control a system (4/7/10 seconds). After the hack wears off, the system becomes ionised for 20 seconds, regardless of what level of hack was used.
It comes as a starting system on the Lanius cruiser, as well as on several type-C cruisers, or it can be bought from a store (80 Scrap) much like any other system.

It costs 35 Scrap to upgrade the Hacking system to rank 2, and 60 more to upgrade it to rank 3.
It is always worth having rank 2, even if you can’t spare the scrap for rank 3.

How do I hack?

Launching your Hacking drone requires one drone part, and the system must have at least one bar of power (you can change the power allocation even after drone launch). In addition, you cannot launch the drone when the enemy has Zoltan Supershields or a cloak active, or if the target system is completely destroyed, and it can still be destroyed en-route by stray shots, defense drones, and asteroids.

Launching the drone is exactly like Teleporting or using Mind Control – you just select the system and then pick a room. Your drone will then fly over and latch onto the enemy ship: this immediately locks that room with cool purple doors; these will act as level 2 blast doors towards the enemy while allowing any of your boarders free passage. It also gives you equivalent to level 4 sensors into that room – you can see all the crew inside, the weapon charge/clone progress/oxygen level (if you hack the respective system), power allocation, ion cooldown, damage level, and even the repair progress.

The drone also disables the “manning benefits” of the hacked station as long as it has power, so bear this in mind if the enemy also has a hacking system – if they hack a manned system, you lose those bonuses.

Once the drone is in place, you are now ready to hack! Before you launch your drone though, you should consider some other points…

When should I hack?

This is arguably the most important section in this guide, even though it’s tiny. Hacking can be a powerful tool, or it can be nearly useless; it all depends on your strategy and timing. You may have noticed that I only refer to the hacking drone. Singular. The most important thing to remember about this system is:

You cannot change the target once the drone has been launched!

Unless your drone is destroyed (which can happen if your hacking system gets hacked, or the enemy defence drones shoot your hacking drone down), you get one choice of target – make sure it’s useful! If you easily outmatch a ship but want to try to keep it intact, hacking the weapons or shields won’t help you much. Similarly, if the enemy has powerful weapons or strong shields, hacking their Medbay or their doors probably isn’t going to change the outcome of the fight. Choose your target based on the goals of the fight, and always remember to be patient – once you’ve fired your drone, you don’t get to change your mind.

Anti-Drone Drones are unreliable at shooting down hacks – I’d suggest not worrying about them unless you’re low on parts. They’ll miss reasonably often, and even when they hit they’ll only destroy the hack about half the time – otherwise it’ll go ahead and land when un-stunned. Defense Drones will miss hacks about 25% of the time – not reliable, but an important consideration for Flagship Phase 2.
~ Twinge ~

What does hacking do?

So this is very important. Before you consider a target, you must first understand the two phases of the hacking system. First is what I call the “latching phase”, which we’ve already covered – it locks the doors and removes “manning benefits” from the station… and these passive benefits are permanent – it keeps doing this as long as the drone has power, whether you use the hacking pulse or not.
The second phase is the “malfunction phase” – this is what happens to each system when you engage the hacking pulse:

Taken from the FTL Wiki[ftl.wikia.com]

Shields: gradually drains shield charge.
Medbay: drains the health of all enemies in the medbay, your crew are unaffected.
Weapon Control: gradually drains the current charge of all weapons on the ship.
Artillery Beam and similar Rebel Flagship weapons: gradually drains charge.
Hacking: disables/destroys the opponents hacking drone.
Battery backup: disables bonus power and lock two more power bars.
Drone Control: disables and sometimes destroys drones.
Doors: locks all doors, inhibiting movement around the ship.
Teleporter: forcibly recalls any boarding parties launched by the affected ship.
Piloting/Engines: reduces evasion to 0, if they’re charging FTL it’s also delayed.
Oxygen: drains Oxygen levels of ship
Mind Control: temporarily turns one random enemy into an ally, and removes enemy mind control from allies.
Cloaking: forces enemy ship out of cloak.
Clone Bay: crew currently being cloned is lost.

As I already mentioned – once the hacking pulse has ended, your hacking system is ionised for 20 seconds, regardless of the level of hack. It is always best to use the highest level of hack available to you, assuming you have enough power.

Before you do anything, you should wait and see where they deploy their hacking drone (if they have one) because you may need to counter it: if they cripple a key system, to the point that you can’t hurt them or avoid their shots, then it’s all for naught anyway.

So you understand what the drone does, but you don’t know what to aim for… You only get one shot, and the target you choose could make or break the fight. To make your choice, you need to consider what you’re trying to achieve. You only have three potential “winning” outcomes for any given fight, and you need to decide which one you want to go for:

You run away
You destroy their ship
You kill their crew

Run away

Right…let’s start with the easiest one first.

You only have one target when running away – their weapons. You want to take as little damage as possible before you can get out of there. You hack their weapons, focus-fire on them, board them if need be, but the goal is to stop them killing you before you leave. The most efficient way to do that is to drain their weapons when they’re close to fully charged – higher rank helps more with this, but ultimately you should be re-hacking their weapons almost as soon as the drone comes back off cooldown.
The only exception to this is if they’ve Hacked (or Mind Controlled) your pilot or engines – in that case you hack that system right back, because you can’t run away if you can’t charge your jump.

Destroy their ship

Alright! The first proper winning scenario. You need to destroy their ship, and there are plenty of ways the hacking drone can help with that. Which target you pick is going to depend on which level of hack you have. Obviously, anything you can target at rank 1 is also a viable target at any higher rank.

Rank 1+ target systems:
Pilot, Engines, Drones, Weapons.

At rank 1, you have 4 seconds of downtime before their system comes back online…that’s not much. If you hack the pilot or engine systems you can reduce their evasion to 0 for the entire duration (no drain, it just hits 0 immediately), which is perfect. You activate that right after you fire your volley, all your shots are a guaranteed hit, and you hopefully cripple one of these other keys areas.
You should only target drones if they’re the main thing stopping you from doing damage (your main weapon is a missile, for example), and weapons should only be targetted if they have something really painful, like a Glaive Beam, Burst Laser MKIII, or Pegasus Missile. You don’t have much time, so it’s a short burst of emergency defence.
This tactic is effective all the way up to the end, but generally speaking a longer hack that would allow you to fire multiple volleys would be more desirable.

Rank 2+ target systems:
Doors.

Rank 2 is much the same as rank 1 (for destruction, anyway) – 7 seconds gives you almost double the duration of immobility or weapon-draining, but it’s much the same deal as before. The main advantage to rank 2 is that you can now lock all the doors for long enough that a fire will have time to spread before they can get to it.

Rank 3 target systems:
None.

If you have a rank 3 Hacking module, you should either be trying to kill the crew, or be taking down that ship by disabling its Pilot, Engines, Weapons, or Doors. None of the tactics change at all from the rank 2 or rank 1 hack, except you modify your timing slightly to take advantage of the longer duration.

“But Scarper, what about their Shields?” I hear you cry…*sigh*

Rank 3 target systems:
Shields…rarely.

Let me get one thing straight: with a general loadout it is not usually worth hacking your opponent’s shields, because it doesn’t reach full effectiveness until near the end of hack duration (as opposed to hacking the Pilot/Engines, which is immediately effective). The only exception, as I have had pointed out to me by a seemingly endless number of people, is when you have Beam weapons. In particular, I have to call out a special exception (thanks to Master of Almonds) for Beam Drones, which fire fast enough to make use of the extended down-time (provided by activating a shield hack after shooting their shields) in order to tear the ship apart.

Since writing this guide, I’ve had several comments that “Hacking shields worked really well for me!”, and yet I’m still recommending that you generally avoid doing it…well that’s because hacking the shields can be used to make up for bad luck with weapons, but if you need to drain the shields of your enemy to even do any damage, you’re in a pretty chancy situation; your first priority should be to get new weapons, or else you will be limited to always hacking their shields.
It can, and will, keep you alive when you’re too weak to damage enemies – it’ll even allow you to kill the Flagship, if you get the right gear en-route – that doesn’t mean it’s a good general tactical choice. It’s possible to kill the flagship with the starting weapons on the Zoltan B after all (2x Ion Blast I and a Pike Beam) but how many people do you think treat that as a valid tactic? It’s considered a challenge for a reason.
See the “Never have I ever” section for a full explanation.

Kill their crew

Here we go…this is the reason you bought this system. Hacking is pretty good for destroying a ship (better than the Teleporter, or Mind Control, but less effective than, say, more guns), but it truly shines at killing the crew.

Rank 1+ target systems:
Pilot, Engines, Oxygen, Medbay, Mind Control, Doors.

That’s right! Even at rank 1 your hacking system can still be useful in wiping out the crew. All it does at this point, however, is make things easier – you would likely have been able to kill this crew anyway, the hacking just streamlines it. As before, you can negate their evasion to ensure you keep landing those critical shots to keep their Oxygen or Medbay offline…but why bother reducing their evasion when you can just hack those systems directly?
If you hack the Medbay, they have to fight to get inside. This gives your fire/breach/boarders a much better shot at killing them, because they won’t fight back while they try to get into the medbay. The best part? Once they’re inside, you wait until the doors shut and suck the life right out of them with the hack. Even at rank 1, it does ~50 damage if they stay there for the whole thing…if you time it properly, they won’t heal enough to survive.
Oxygen is much the same – you hack the system (draining around 20% of the oxygen) and then break it, preventing it from regenerating. Once they’ve fixed it, you use it to drain more oxygen…and then break it again.
Doors are pretty situational – because you only have 4 seconds, it’ll usually run out before they manage to break through a door. You should really only use this on the narrow “one way” ships like the Mantis or Slug, where they have to hack through both of your purple doors already, only to have the next door slam shut in their face as well.

Rank 2+ target systems:
Medbay, Oxygen.

These two deserve special mention, because at rank 2 they become deadly in their own right. The Medbay now does enough damage that you can trap a completely healthy human in there (or wait until they’re nearly healed, just to taunt them), drain their health, then shoot the Medbay once to break it and kill them. You can draw the enemy crew into the medbay by breaking it, and then use the newly fixed room to trap and murder them…
Oxygen is the same – where before it was merely an aid to speed up the drain from a broken system, it can now drain more oxygen than a rank 1 system can replenish during the cooldown. Given enough time (and assuming they only have a rank 1 system), you can completely empty an enemy ship of oxygen without firing a single shot, and there’s nothing they can do to stop you.

That said, these are by no means the only tactics – everything from rank 1 only becomes more effective at rank 2.

Rank 3 target systems:
Medbay, Oxygen, Doors.

I know, I know, I gave them special mention before…except the Medbay now does so much damage (~125) that it will kill anything except rockmen if they are stuck inside for the full duration – while they will almost certainly escape before then if you don’t have the “Hacking Stun” augment, you can simply leave a hazard outside for them.
Oxygen now drains over half the ship’s supply in a single hack. If you break the system between hacks then you will almost certainly wipe out the crew after they repair it.
As for hacking the doors – let’s just say a single firebomb in an isolated room has a good chance of completely killing any non-rockman crew members, because they simply can’t reach it to put it out.

Never have I ever

Ok, so we’ve covered most of the main uses of hacking – but what about the systems I didn’t mention? Aside from describing what happens, I didn’t recommend ever hacking the Sensors, Cloak, Flagship Artillery, Clone Bay, or Teleporter, and I strongly recommend against hacking the Shields… And that’s because you should generally not waste a hack on them – there are specific situations where some of these will be good tactical decisions, but they are very few and far between.

Sensors: The AI doesn’t even use common sense (they aim Ion guns at empty rooms) much less sensors, so hacking them would be pointless. The only time you should ever hack this room is if it’s the only way to block the path to whatever you just destroyed (and it’s worth wasting a drone part on that when you could hack Doors instead), and since the only ship that you’re likely to see with sensors is the Flagship…Yeah, it’s pointless.

Cloak: Hacking the cloak ends it immediately, but you would be better served simply waiting until their cloak ends and then hacking the Pilot. That way they wouldn’t be able to dodge your shots at all, and you could simply blow up their cloak system. A cloaked ship is just a regular ship except for short bursts of cloak. Hacking the cloak turns them into a regular ship all the time, but hacking the pilot turns them into a crippled ship except for short bursts of cloak.

Flagship Artillery: Just like the cloak, you can (and should) just blow it up (or teleport in there), so there’s usually no point in wasting a drone on it when you could instead hack the Pilot so that your shots connect. If you have enough firepower to blast through the Flagship’s shields though, and can’t teleport in to the artillery room (or perhaps on Hard Mode, where the missile room is connected to the main ship), you can hack the missile launcher and combine that with your cloak to ensure they they will never hit you with it.

Clone Bay: Hacking the Clone Bay kills any clones they might be trying to make. You know what else kills the clones? Destroying the clone bay.

Teleporter: Unless your doors are level 1 (and even then if you stand in the control room it acts like level 2), you can get a decent amount of damage on the invaders by simply venting rooms. They’re trapped on your ship until the teleporter cools down – it’s usually not worth freeing them. Sometimes I even cloak right before they can teleport out, to keep them there until they die. That said, Manwithgun pointed out that some event texts can cause boarders to spawn on your ship, and if you then end up fighting a ship with a teleporter it can be easy to become overwhelmed (especially if your crew is weak at combat, and doubly so if your enemy is Mantis). If you hack the teleporter, it will immediately clear your ship of enemies so you can regroup and repair…just make sure none of your guys are Mind Controlled at the time, or they’ll get taken too.

Shields: The big one. You would think that hacking shields would be one of the best ways to destroy a ship…in fact, generally speaking, it’s one of the worst. It does work, and it can keep your head above water if you’re having a really bad run, but it’s horribly inefficient compared to some of the other targets.

For starters, you have to drain an entire bar of shield-charge before a single bubble drops. You would really expect the first bubble to disappear the moment you started hacking, because if one full bar makes one bubble, anything less than a full bar should be one less bubble, right? Nope.
It’s not a drain as such, instead think of it as hacking into and blocking a layer of shield, so you have to take the time to apply that block before it will actually kick in. To get through 3 levels of shield, you need to block 3 layers of shield, with each one taking ~1.5 seconds. A rank 1 hack will only remove 1 shield. It’s a tiny fraction away from 2, but it doesn’t actually drop; unless they’re midway through recharging that shield bubble when you start hacking (which means you already hit it with something), there’s no difference. A rank 2 hack will remove 3 shields (though it won’t keep them down for very long) while rank 3 brings down all 4 long enough to get your volley off.

The only time this is really worthwhile is when you have enough laser shots to drop their shield (or a good beam weapon, or beam drone) but couldn’t do any damage afterwards – in that situation you hack their shield, it drops, you focus on their shield system (or crew, in the case of Anti-Bio and Fire beams) and take out a layer or two, then keep blasting it down until it drops. And if you miss, or if they have an Engi, or if your weapons charge slowly, you’ll have to start all over again because they’ll have repaired the damage. You can kill an enemy with chip damage this way, but it’s very slow going…and frustrating when you miss. If you have fewer shots than they have shields – forget it, it’s not worth the time. It’s possible, certainly, but you have to hope that they can’t hurt you while you chip away at their hull, and you need to use a hack every time you want to damage them, unless all the shots land, and you then get your second volley off before they’ve repaired a single layer…

If you have more shots than they have shields, on the other hand, there’s much less point in hacking the shields. Hack the pilot and you’re guaranteed to land one hit through their shields every single time – and you aren’t locked into aiming at the shield room – if you take their weapon out they might lose the charge, or you can take out the pilot and maybe land your next volley too, while Hacking is on cooldown. It’s slow going, as before, but at least you won’t miss those crucial shots. If you have fast weapons, you might even get multiple volleys off for each hack, because you can start hacking after your shots are already in the air instead of waiting until the hack is nearly over.

N.B. Akantor pointed out in the comments that I didn’t mention beams, and that hacking shields is an effective tactic for using them. Master of Almonds also brought to my attention the fact that I hadn’t mentioned Beam Drones at all, and I have edited the guide to allow for these excellent points.
I do, however, have a bit more to say on the subject.
While it is true that hacking the shields works well with beams, you should always try to avoid them becoming your only source of damage. The Glaive beam in particular is one of the few beams which can hit through shields, but since it takes 25 seconds to recharge (and 4 power) it’s also horribly inefficient and requires way too much support to function effectively. For that 4 power you could have 2x Burst MK2, or a burst MK3, or some Heavy laser combo, all of which fire faster and are more situationally-flexible than the Glaive beam.
Hack the shields if you really need to, but also keep an eye out for new weapons because the Glaive generally won’t work very well past the halfway point of the game. Don’t get me wrong – I got to the Flagship with that weapon alone, without Hacking (on the Stealth B), on Normal mode… I know what I’m talking about. I upgraded to include a Charge-Ion one jump before the flagship, and then I got torn apart because I hadn’t earned enough scrap to let my ship survive the charge time.
I don’t think I won a single fight after Sector 5, and even they were only the rare 2-shielded ships, because I didn’t have the firepower to take them down.

Advanced tips

You cannot target destroyed systems but, if you engage the hacking pulse and then break the system, it continues to malfunction until the hack wears off. Engage a rank 3 hack on an Oxygen system or Medbay and then immediately destroy it, then laugh as they panic to fix the system only to have it immediately malfunction again. That way you don’t have to worry about missing the system with your disabling shots and allowing higher-rank systems time to undo the damage.
Recently broken doors are not re-locked when you engage the hacking pulse, so allow them a second or two to close before you hack the Medbay – otherwise they will immediately flee…back into whatever they were running from in the first place.
Hack their medbay and send your boarders to destroy it. If they manage to break in before you finish, drain them dry before finishing the job. A hacked Medbay is one of the fastest damage-dealers in the game – bonus points (and a mention if you send me a screenshot) if you also set it on fire and fill it with Rockmen.
The “Defense Scrambler” augmentation prevents the enemy taking out your hacking drone with anything other than a stray shot.
The Hacking module has several good event-text options, especially in the slug sector where it stops them disabling your systems. [That said, taking these options will disable your hacking module for the duration of the fight. Sometimes you’re better off just letting them disable you in order to keep your Hacking online] ~ xNTPxLuffy ~
You can change the power assigned to the drone at any point until you engage the hacking pulse – put the power in the engines to dodge their volley, then shove it into the Hacking module on their pilot/engines to make them an easy target for yours.
Leave Hacking with a single bar of power (to keep their doors locked) until you plan to engage it, then take power from the Medbay or Oxygen system, and replace those with Engine power if you start running low before Hacking comes off cooldown.
Hacking does not prevent repair – though if you grab the “Hacking Stun” augment it will certainly slow them down. That said, I fought an AI scout who didn’t repair his hacked and broken cockpit for the entire fight, so it might prevent automatic repair (which would include the flagship, when all her crew are dead, making it a good idea to hack the shields in this case – I have not tested this idea).
Hacking Stun can also be used to guarantee kills in the Medbay – they can’t even try to escape because of the stun, and anyone else who comes in will be held and damaged for the remaining duration.
If you’re fighting an enemy in an asteroid field, especially low-shield AI scouts, hack their evasion or shield to 0 and watch as the environment destroys them for you. Hack’n’Flak works much the same way – if you can get most of the circle over their rooms it will tear through their defenses like nothing else.
Hack their Pilot to make them a sitting duck…and then unload your entire arsenal into that room. You’ll likely kill the Pilot, or at least send him running to the Medbay, and they won’t be able to get into the room and fix the cockpit before your next hack is ready. (Works even better with Mind Control – the pilot will destroy his own room for you, and no one can get in to stop him.)
Backup batteries are your best friend – apply the power to the Hacking, Cloaking, or Mind Control systems when the battery has enough time left to sustain it (a minimum of 4 pips, 6 pips, or a full charge respectively) and none of your reactor power will be tied up when the system becomes ionised. Rumours that the battery will cancel or skip the cooldown if power cuts out during use are false (at least when Cloaking is concerned, so presumably also for Hacking and Mind Control) – it will simply cause the system to be ionised when the battery drains the power.
Hack their weapons and engage your cloak for an almost impenetrable defence. Cloak for the first volley and then drain their weapons while you wait for the recharge.
If you can, shoot an enemy system or use level 4 sensors to find out how strong it is – that ship with 4 shields that you can only chip away at might have a weak Oxygen unit, meaning you could kill them without needing to get through their shields…or it might be rank 3, and you’d be wiser to choose a different target. Know your enemy.
Removing power from a drone mid-flight stops it dead. Doing so when drones fire at it will force their shots to miss (they lead their shots, and can’t adjust their aim once the shot has fired), and allow you to pierce their defences. This takes careful timing, especially on the Mk II drone, so use your pause function if you need to.
Hacking the enemy’s Mind Control not only removes it from your allies, it applies it to a random enemy. If you have a MC unit of your own, you can control two enemies at the same time. The fun has been doubled!

Community contributed tips

So I hope this was helpful, whether you’re new to the game or a veteran. Now here are some more tips which were contributed in the comments section:

Instead of allowing enemies to break the Medbay doors open when entering, a much more efficient method is to simply depower the drone after launch, then re-engage it when they’re inside.
~ Antaeus ~

Hacking does not affect the drones released by the Flagship’s Power Surge, so don’t waste the drone trying to stop them.

If the enemy has a defence drone up, a carefully timed missile can distract it while your drone approaches. This also works in reverse – using the drone can open a path for a missile to hit.

Weapons with multiple Charge levels (such as Charge Laser and Ion guns) will only be drained of the progress towards their next level of charge – previously stored shots will not be drained.
~ Specialist Frost ~

Hacking the shields can be very effective when used alongside beam weapons, because beams aren’t affected by evasion and cannot miss.
~ Akantor ~

Activating a shield hack after popping them with your weapons will keep the shields down for a long time, and allows a Beam Drone to just go to town on the ship.
~ Master of Almonds ~

Hacking is very effective against Engi crews. Their bonus to repair speed usually means your damaging shots have less of an impact on system performance, but their combat deficiency means it takes them much longer to break into hacked rooms. They also can’t “fix” a hack, only wait until it expires, so you can isolate and disable their systems this way.
~ <(TBF)> Q3ddz ~ [This combines very well with Advanced Tip #1 – Scarper]

Community contributed questions

I decided to add a new section, just in case someone asks a question that I think is important enough to warrant more than just a comment reply. Replies won’t just be limited to me (I think I’ve blethered enough as it is…), they’ll be taken from any other appropriate comments as well!

FTL: Faster Than Light Guide