As it stands, i'm somewhat pissed at how hacking terminals is in this game. Same from FO3. It always seems you're set to 4 tries, or 3 and resetting before you're locked out. Any mods that change this based on science skill? Maybe, add more attempts at higher science levels or something?

It's already in the game.
The higher your science skill the more words you can eliminate by mousing over pairs of brackets or parentheses or greater than/less than signs,
if stuff highlights in between the two you can click on it and eliminate a word.

At level 100 you find so many of these you eliminate every word except the password.

IE.

<&#^$#((@> [*#*@)(#$!@@%] {@$@#^^^###}

if you moused over any of those examples above, all of the stuff inside the < and > or [ and ] or { and } would highlight and you could click on it and it would eliminate
a word from the list, keep doing that (at science level 100) and you'll eliminate every word except the one you need,
sometimes you'll also replensish your attempts at hacking, so if you've tried three times, and mouse over one of those examples above,
sometimes it will say "Allowance replenished" and set your tries back to 4.

Other than that, which mods have you tried at newvegasnexus.com?

theres a mod that only checks the skill and eliminates the mini game

I never knew nay of that. I'll give this a try to see it.

Yea, it was the same way in Fallout 3 also.

Did you play the entire game just try to guess what the word was by using 3 tries, then exiting the terminal and
relogging in, and started guessing all over again?

I refuse to answer this on grounds of incriminating myself :banghead:

Only on computers way below your max science skill threshold. Right at your threshold? There will be very few brackets and very many word choices. More often than not, they'll eliminate ones you already tried or ruled out by process of elimination. And if you start off finding the brackets, you inevitably end up wasting the allowance replenishment.

The hacking game really needs to be rebalanced. Adding the save scum guard only increases the hassle of those things.

I wasn't sure how to do the hacking game at first from the instructions the game gives you, but I eventually figured out how to play it and it became fun for me to get the right word. I didn't know about finding the words in between the brackets though. The first time I ever hacked I got the first attempt right by chance.

Here's an example for anybody who doesn't know how to play:

mead<--only 2 right so look for a word that only shares 2 letters in the same position

mood<--none right so now you know the matching letters are wrong

sean<--3 right now so you know it's a word with only one letter different and you know it has to have the ea in middle. If you see 2 more words that also share 3 letters with this word then you would have to guess which one is right so it would be better to just restart again. At least you know which words it's not now.

That's why I've switched my strategy to

1. SAVE GAME
2. Use up 3 of my tries
3. Look for pairs of Brackets, Braces and Greater/Less Than, on the chance there will be an "Allowance Replenished"

They added anti-save scumming? For the the New Vegas Terminal Hacking?

Why would anyone need to save before hacking? You can try as many times you like as long as you don't go over 3 tries. Did something change with an update? I played my first play through with the original game.

Because I have a twitch in my Index Finger caused by a pinched nerve and sometimes I inadvertently left click
on the hack screen and it's counted as a "Try".

Needless to say, if I'm at 3 tries, and looking for a "Allowance Replenished" and my finger twitches and left clicks,
I'm now locked out of the terminal.

@pintocat good to know i am not the only one who didn't know about the brackets in FO3 =p the brackets really make hacking a lot easier, and strategic.

That's my strategy too, except that the brackets are rarefied on near-threshold difficulty hacks. Since it's quite uncommon to get the right word on your first try with a near-threshold hack, you will inevitably have to wait through the fifteen-damn-second long command line prelude to the actual hacking minigame every bloody time because they removed the insta-click-thru that FO3 had.

That's removed? It was in the game when I was playing, but that was before I updated my game. I still haven't started a new game yet.

That has been the biggest PITA so far. For me it seems intermittent on some terminals and completely non-existent on others.

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=40741

Real-Time Entry Skills. Requires NVSE.

Enjoy.