Probespace Tools · Hacking Trainer

The virus has two numbers: coherence is how much it can take, strength is how much it removes per hit. The turn works like this: you strike first, then the target strikes back — but only if it survived. So a finishing blow costs you nothing, and what you should be counting is not "how much does it have left" but "does my hit finish it".

The numbers 1–5 on revealed cells are the distance to the nearest System Core, utility or Data Cache. They never point at defenses, and 5 means "five or more".

Two rules that save the most: a node with six full edges either holds no defense or touches the core — move along those. And the core is never placed closer than eight cells from the start, so opening the near ring looking for it is wasted effort.

A Data Cache is exactly 50/50: a defense or a utility. Never the core. Open it last, and only after scouting its neighbours.

Pairs are coherence / strength.

A Firewall is just a wall: the highest coherence of its tier, but it hits moderately. An Anti-Virus is the opposite — it falls quickly and hits harder than anything else on the board. A Restoration Node, while alive, heals a random other defense for 20 points after every action you take; it cannot heal the core, but it will happily heal another restoration node, which is why it dies first. A Virus Suppressor cuts virus strength by 15 for each revealed copy, stacking down to a floor of 10, and the strength comes back the moment it dies.

The one rule worth remembering as a rule is the restoration node: kill it immediately. Beyond that there is no recipe and cannot be one — what to hit next depends on what is open, what is adjacent and what your hit finishes. It is like asking which piece to move first: it is situational. Get some practice in and it will make sense.

Self Repair — +5–10 coherence per turn for three turns; coherence has no cap, so use it as soon as you pick it up. Kernel Rot cuts half the coherence off a chosen defense or the core — save it for the moment you get stuck. Polymorphic Shield blocks exactly two counterattacks of any strength, and the best place for it is right before a pair of anti-viruses. Secondary Vector targets a defense and deals 20 per turn for three turns, 60 in total, with no damage back: while it runs, you are free to open other nodes.

Which means, for instance, that a Virus Suppressor on Hard (60 coherence) dies to three ticks of Secondary Vector — without touching you at all.

Analyzers give the virus its base — coherence and strength: Data/Relic Analyzer I — 40/20, II — 60/30, Zeugma Integrated Analyzer — 30/30 in a single slot, Purloined Sansha Data Analyzer — 80/40 (data only), Deathless Circle Relic Analyzer — 50/35 (relic only).

Rigs add coherence: Memetic Algorithm Bank (hacking) and Emission Scope Sharpener (archaeology), 10 each at T1 and 20 at T2. A rig costs 200 calibration at T1 or 300 at T2, and calibration is what decides: a hull with 400 fits a pair of T1 rigs, one with 350 does not. The number of rig slots never becomes the limit.

The hull gives strength: an ordinary one gives nothing, a Heron and other T1 exploration hulls +5, a Buzzard, Metamorphosis, Astero or Stratios +10.

Slot 9 and 10 implants: AC-905 and HC-905 — +5 coherence each, EY-1005 — +5 for both skills, Blackglass — −40 coherence in exchange for +20 strength, Bluefire — +60 coherence at the cost of −10 strength.

Skills add coherence only, and only their own: every level of a skill your analyzer requires gives +10. The ordinary Data and Relic Analyzers require the skill matching the site type — Hacking on data, Archaeology on relic — the Purloined requires Hacking, the Deathless Archaeology, and the Zeugma requires both at once, so it gets +10 per level of each. Skills do not touch strength at all: that comes from the analyzer, the hull and the implants.

Hence the main trap of fitting: a rig or an implant works only if the skill it boosts is among the module's requirements. The Memetic Algorithm Bank boosts Hacking — on a relic analyzer it does nothing at all. Blackglass boosts Hacking, yet it does apply to the Zeugma, because the Zeugma requires Hacking. The trainer warns about such cases in a separate line rather than quietly counting a bonus that is not there.

And one more: rigs that do not fit the calibration give neither a bonus nor an ISK cost — as if you had never fitted them.

It models neither the time spent on site, nor NPC spawns, nor loot — only the minigame itself. Prices and attributes are a snapshot. And, once more, this is a wiki-based simulation: if something disagrees with the client, it is this that is wrong.