Has anyone figured out the request backup quickhack? I can't use it on enemies once they're engaged in fighting me, and if I use it before the fight starts then they'll just agro against me like the rest of their gang. Come to think of it, maybe this is only for recruiting civilians?

I have been wondering about this too.
The description specifically says enemies.

I just crafted it though, so not gotten to test it myself because of the frequent crashes.

I don't think its for recruiting civies... they don't have guns most of the time.


I think it's supposed to turn one enemy to your side and it's bugged.

I've used when the enemy is not aggravated, and understandably using the quickhack will put enemies into alert status. It functions similar to "Distract Enemy", in pulling one enemy towards another, but downside is both enemies are alerted due to the fake aid request. Only useful in sneaking, when there isn't anything nearby to distract the enemy to change position.

Also comes in handy once you've unlocked cyberpsychosis and detonate grenade :P

Weird... that's not very useful on it's own.
In fact, that seems kinda useless given there is a literal whistle device. I havn't seen those yet.
I'm still waiting for the patch to stop the crashes.

But wouldn't the whistle power do the same thing?
Alerted enemies tend to group together while searching.

Haven't played around with it enough to be sure, but I believe the ingame description is just bad...

AFAICT how it's actually supposed to work, is it calls another enemy from the same faction over to the targeted one and they go into search mode.

as opposed to whistle which calls the targeted enemy to you.

so, Call Reinforcments if you want to group them up at one enemies location (for say, Contagion, Grenades, etc), or Whistle when you want to get one somewhere quiet to take them without being noticed.

I got to play around with it a bit the other night and I do believe you are right.

It only calls one enemy over though, so still kinda pointless.

Do the higher tier ones call more enemies together?

There are perks under Stealth (Rattlesnake, Neurotoxin, and Toxicology) and Quickhacking (Bloodware, Signal Support, Subliminal Messaging, Diffusion, Plague, and Critical Error) which can all be used in concert to make Contagion a true beast.

It's a situational quickhack for when you want to group enemies together. It's not something I bother with since a legendary contagion supported by all the perks and legendary cyberdeck that increase the number of enemies it can spread to, the spread distance and the increased damage can outright take out of action 7 or more enemies spread out over a large area. No need to try to clump them together.

It could be useful if you only use quickhacks for control but your build is really about stealth or something else.

A real QH build that relies on them for killing, incapacitaing, etc. really only needs 4 QH:

1. Legendary PING - you can target and apply QH to enemies through walls, floors and other objects.
2. Legendary Contagion: An AOE incapacitating machine once you have all supporting perks in QH and Stealth (+poison damage.) 2 or 3 uses of this will clear whole 3 story buildings while hiding somewhere and never being spotted.
3 Legendary System Reset: Knocks out one enemy and keeps it unconscious indefinitely - very useful against cyberpsychos and bosses.
4. Legendary Short Circuit - One-shot kill or incapacitate. Works extra well on robots but is also a one shot kill on most humans.

The other slots are totally optional but Suicide, Cyberpsychosis, and Overheat are my other personal favorites. I usually slot 2 of those 3 to round out my build.

I read a reddit thread saying that some of the Stealth poison perks do not stack with Contagion. I believe they were testing Neurotoxin. Said it worked with knives only. I also saw a youtube vid that claimed what you have here, that everything stacks.
I suggest people test for themselves, I haven't gotten the chance to yet myself.