Has anybody else noticed if you are hacking a terminal and you guess a wrong word there is a number next to the word? I always assumed that number was the ammount of letters in that word that also featured in the correct word.

Well several times now I have been hacking and have come up with a word with a 0 (zero) next to the guess which makes me think that the password contains no letters in the guess I just made but actually it does.

For example the most recent hack attempt :-

Incorrect Guess = Ranged (0)

Correct Guess = Museum

Both of those words contain the letter e and so the incorrect guess report should not be 0 (zero) it should be (1)

Anybody else seeing this?

The letters aren't in the same slot...

Your example is of two 6-letter words: Ranged has an "e" in the 5th slot while Museum has an "e" in the 4th slot.

Therefore it's an incorrect match, the number on the side is telling you how many letters are in the correct slot of the word.

You're missing a step. It's the correct letter in the correct position:

Missing(3)
Pecking(Correct)

EDIT: Cyric, you ninja!

Actually, it's correct. The only time it shows a 'valid' value, is when the same-letter is in the SAME location.

So
Ranged
Museum

are not the same

but

Ranged
Blazer

would be correct as the ONLY same-letter, same-location matches

EDIT: Jinx?

By the way, this is the exact same way it was done in FO3

As everyone else typing at the same time has said, same letter, same position,

Otherwise if your choices were
Dare
Dear
Read

They would all be correct as they use the same four letters but in different positions.

Wow....ok I stand corrected.....I did loads of hacking in fallout 3 and I never noticed that before :banghead:

Yes.
Everyone agrees; no one is wrong.
And the OP has learned!
This info will help his password detection greatly, heheh...
L8R

Reminds me of the old quip about the centipede.
pretty much, as soon as someone asks the centipede HOW he co-ordinates AAAALLL of those legs to walk.... he can't do it anymore. It was natural at first. Thinking about it too much 'breaks' the innate somewhat

Same as me. In FO3 I just picked the first three words and if they were wrong just exited out and did it all over again until it said "exact match." Unfortunately for that tactic in NV to work it become very time consuming. This is because getting to the "pick your word minigame" it is no longer instantanious, but forces your player to sit there and watch 20seconds worth of typing before you can get to that step. This has forced me to actually try to figure out how to play the game correctly.... :brokencomputer:

Don't worry about it - I was hacking terminals in FO3 for ages (probably on my 3rd playthrough) before I realised that paired brackets removed dud passwords :facepalm:

Wow... y'know... i never picked up on that. I'll have to take a look later tonight or this weekend to verify.
But just in case.. .a pre-emptive :facepalm:

I'm something of a speed-reader, so I can usually zip through the things pretty swiftly. usually never takes me more than 2, MAAAAYBE 3 tries to ever get the right one.

Look for pairs of facing brackets on the same line either without other symbols between or with just random symbols between them...
the matching pairs of brackets will highlight as a block when you hover the cursor over them.

For example:
()
[,,!&*]
{**&,,.!}

selecting these will either replenish your allowance of 'tries' or remove one incorrect password. If your science is high you can remove most if not all the duds before even attempting your first guess - makes it a lot easier.

I also did not know that...

Usually I just pick words until it says I'm right. :facepalm:

lolol. i remember that on fo3..

nothing worse then just finishing up in a dungeon/building and seeing a terminal there in fo:nv.. knowing you have to spend at least a minute or two digging through all the brackets and counting the letters in your head..

I wrote a program and takes all of the words in the puzzle and calculates the one with the most matches with other words. Then I recursively input the word I guessed and the number of matches and the program gives me the possible matches sorted by their total matches with each other.

It's my way.

All this time painstakingly checking the Vary Hard terminals word by word... I never knew that :facepalm:

Well, you should probably make a couple of guesses first thing.
If you go straight to the brackets, it might replenish your choices right away - which (if you have not yet made any choices) would of course be a waste.
L8R

I can't believe I never picked up on this... giant facepalm for me. :facepalm:

< > these also work

Is that what is called a password brute force attack? :wink_smile:

Yeah, you should definitely make three guesses then, if you don't have it, hunt for brackets. That way, if you get the replenish you're not wasting any of them. You'll know you're on a set of brackets because it will select the end bracket and anything that may be between them.

If the words are all 7 characters, I dance for joy if I only get zero / one / two character matches on my first guess - because that generally eliminates a lot of the other words. Likewise, getting 5-6 correct out of 7 on a guess is a good thing. It's those 3-4 right out of 7 that are the harder puzzles because it doesn't help you enough either way.

I'd just like to say I wish they had changed hacking. I didn't like it in FO3.

It shouldn't be a word game... like wtf.


Anyone remember hacking in splinter cell? It should be like that. Its been years since I've played it to explain exactly how it worked and I couldn't find any you tube vids but It had something to do with columns and rows of NUMBERS.