Last week and in other recent SITREPs we've seen map_earth, map_walls, locate_traps, find_shortcuts, and more, but as far as information warfare hacking is concerned, these are small-time benefits compared to the potential of this week's selection!
Info for War (or not)
If you've got your RIF, datajack, and [NC] relay coupler handy, Watchers can be a gold mine of info when you map_route them. Rejoice as you steal all the scan data from their entire patrol route, including terrain layout, machines, items, and exits.
That's my favorite animation from the batch--I spent a while polishing it (okay, spent a while getting it to work xD). It'll trace the route starting from its nearest node to both ends, as you can see here going in two directions (followed by calling up labels for discovered items):
Here's another sample in Storage, where the route happens to come around in a loop:
And the same sample in tiles mode:
It's not often you'll find a Watcher inside a Garrison, but if you do it's an easy way to see a lot of corridor networks and other potentially hidden areas behind the walls.
I can imagine map_route will be one of the most commonly used robot hacks, although it's rather expensive. May your hacked Watchers have decently long patrol routes and not just a short little jaunt through a few rooms ;)
Foresight 20/20
This next hack is even more of a wildcard, because while it can be quite valuable it's not easy to find the right target and much of its information is time-sensitive: show_paths.
What that does is show the current paths of all patrol squad leaders across the entire map, but you have to specifically hack a patrol leader in order to get this info. Sometimes figuring out which is the leader is easy because they'll be a better variant, but other times you'll have to spot which one seems to be followed by the others (easier to figure out with sensors). At the same time, not all squads out there are patrol squads...
Normally the paths will glow intermittently, but when panning the map they stay visible (presumably you'll want to be able to more conveniently follow them).
Here's a sample from a different scenario in tiles mode:
Although the path data will become meaningless after a while since the patrol leaders select new routes when the current one is finished, on the good side any known paths are also permanently revealed as valid open spaces, including even pointing out hidden doors along the routes, so that can have some value in the long run.
I noticed it's kinda fun watching the ASCII<->tiles swap animation after a map_paths hack, as it traces the revealed spaces.
While working on all this stuff I also discovered A* lightning :P
Here's a path animation outtake, a little bug caused by me relying a bit too much on copy-pasted code: The paths should render directly to the console every frame, but instead I'd copied code from another blocking animation that creates stationary particles that fade with time:
Clairvoyance
What's better than one set of visual sensors? Two sets! See exactly what's up ahead, around the corner, or in that next room with a little help from link_fov.
You can merge their field of vision with your own, as if they were a drone. In some ways this is inferior to a drone because you can't control them, but better because they won't be attacked by 0b10 forces, and willing participants can be found all over the place :)
Why stop at two sets?
The blue circles appear for convenience so you know when the connection will be lost due to range--the link can only be maintained from up to 20 spaces away.
When you combine all these new indicators, robot hackers can have some pretty sweet map UI going :D
Context is Everything
All robot hacks also come with context help right in the UI via right-click or shift-letter.
This explains exactly what the hack does, which unlike machine hacking is pretty important to know immediately because robot hacking often has real consequences while facing off against enemies (I talked about this same principle before when covering robot hacking's switch from a percentage system to a finite counter system). Obviously it's also good for learning the mechanics, and having easy direct access to what hacks do so that infrequent players don't have to remember their effects.
The question is, should this same system be applied to machine hacking? From a general QoL perspective, probably--in addition to the above reasoning, it's one of the few systems in the game which doesn't already have in game help.
But there are a few drawbacks as well... Machines are encountered very early in the game, and I don't want to overwhelm newer players with stuff they don't really need to know, and infrequent players won't really be able to get much out of hacking anyway. Having context help at machines both removes a bit of the intrigue and exploration aspect of the experience while simultaneously giving players access to all kinds of detailed information that won't mean much when starting out. The details of machine hacking are not so useful compared to robot hacks. Machine hacking effects are also much easier to guess from their names, and the hacks don't generally take place under duress, so a bit of trial and error is fine there.
I'm open to input here if you all have any perspectives to add.
Here's a bonus hack: ignore_targets, Method #6 (or so?) for dealing with Crushers.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on the GSG forums or r/Cogmind.