Does anyone else hate hacking terminals in Fallout 3?

[la-le-lu-li-lo]

yeah, there's a few tricks to make it less of a pain in the ass, though it's still no fun.
you can go back and try as many times as you like, though this restarts it.

also, if you scroll through everything, you'll come across several symbols that stick together like they're a word. select these, (there are several), and it'll either refresh your attempts, or remove a dud.

just a bit easier that way. :]

 

[Atvomat_Nikonov]

I absolutely avoided them whenever possible also. It was only untill recently that the little tricks used to get rid of duds makes it minumentally easier. I just don't understand why it couldn't be that upgrading your hacking skill would make the terminals less difficult. Ah, well. Maybe Bethesda will take it into account for the next game...

Getting a science skill of 100 makes all terminals at hard difficulty or lower have only four or five options. It makes them ridiculously easy.

 

[Hazy]

I dislike it. But if you must, Save or cut out when you have 1 guess left, then start over.

 

[CrazyBerk]

http://mediumexposure.com/dev/f3hack/
Use this, it's what i did when i was playing through Fallout 3. Really, really helps. Unless your completely opposed to cheating or something. Pfft..

 

[pha kin su pah]

I loved them, loved the word puzzles, it was like nice refreshment for my brain (i work with numbers all day long).

That and guess thrice, Quit it, then hit it up again.

 

[jimduckie]

it was a pain at times but it should of gotten easier as your hacking skills got better as for picking locks the pins are made of steel ,they shouldn't break that easily and why with all the weapons available why can't we shoot the fucking lock off , and locked ammo boxes ? having a locked ammo box doesn't make sense

 

[lleihsad]

I found it annoying until I figured out the tricks to make it easier. It still hurts the pacing pretty bad when I have to retry several times, especially if I'm under fire at the time.

 

[Mewick_Alex]

I dislike it. But if you must, Save or cut out when you have 1 guess left, then start over.

That was a damn useful trick, worked with lockpicking too.

why can't we shoot the fucking lock off

I think I read somewhere that it's pretty much impossible to shoot a lock of off something, usually it'll just break the lock and jam it shut (ignore me i'm just nitpicking).

 

[jonnopon3000]

It could have been better done. Just save then guess if you must.

Lol, go into the terminal, guess 4 progressivly getting closer to the actual word due to the telling you how many letters you got correct thing, try to work oot which letters you were getting right by selecting words with suspected letters in...if not open after 4, exit and re-enter. The new passwrod will be an anogram of the old one, so keep looking for your correct letters. It gets easy with this technique

NOTE: if you love karma, then dont do this too much as it reduces karma progressivley more the more you enter the terminal. Either that or do summat reeeaaall nice afterwoods...

Cause of this technique i have never failed hacking and do not get annoyed with it. With this it feels really good when u manage ot hack it

EDIT: lol u only get 4 tries...i mean try 3 times, then exit on the 4th, last chance

 

[Jandau]

I like it, and it's pretty simple once you get the hang of it.

1. First try three options, this can give you some basic idea about the word you're looking for, such as if it ends with -ing or -ted or some such common suffix.

2. Next, scour the lines and find all (), [] and {}. Click them all. Most of them will remove duds. Usually one will replenish your allowance of guesses back to four.

3. If you got your allowance repenished, you now have some idea about the word you're looking for and removed a ton of duds. You can easily finish.

4. If you didn't get your allowance replenished and aren't 100% on what you're looking for, just restart.

As minor minigames go, this is one of the better ones and it actually requires you to use a bit of your gray matter...

 

[Guy32]

I enjoyed lockpicking so I put my skill points into that. I couldn't hack anything beyond "very easy" so I never payed much attention to terminals.