Regarding time-based hacking minigames

Hi guys, long-time-lurker, first time poster here.

Long post ahead, apologies--no TLDR because it's a subject I want to get my hands dirty with.

I wanted to talk about a theoretical hacking minigame I discussed with some colleagues over IRC; specifically, in terms of a nonexistant first or third person shooter game where players must compete in two teams of 3-5 players to control territory on a map (think Conquest in any recent Battlefield game). In order to capture this territory, one player must 'hack' a computer terminal of some kind, while the other players of his team protect them.

There are an odd-number of terminals to hack, and the team with the most terminals or the majority of the terminals (best 2 of 3, etc.) at the end of the time limit wins the match. If there is a tie, the game goes into sudden death mode, where the terminals lock and players must simply kill each other to win in some small time frame, like 30 seconds. Last players (or most players) standing wins, in that case.

Okay, so now onto the meat of this post: the hacking mechanic.

To serve its purpose, it would need to be some kind of active, time-based puzzle, where failure is high-stakes and could cost the team minorly or dearly, depending. Examining some hacking mechanics in other games:

1. Deus Ex: Human Revolution and its contemporary, Mankind Divided, had a fairly great hacking minigame system. The player must 'hack' from the first node to the last node to obtain some item or information, each hack being a simple click on the node. With each node captured, the player risks being detected by the security system of the network, and if detected, the system starts a "traceroute" from the security node traversing one node at a time back to the player. Through other areas of play, like combat or looting, players can pick up items that allow them to one-time takeover a node with 0% likelihood of detection, among other perks.

2. Bioshock's camera hacking is very similar to the Amiga game Pipe Mania wherein you must redirect the soon-to-arrive flow of liquid (molten metal, in Bioshock's case) by swapping pipes around a randomly laid-out board of tiles, to prevent spillage and eventually redirect the output (liquid/goo/metal) into the appropriate input. Higher difficulty entails fewer pieces to use and higher pressure on the liquid, giving the player less time.

3. Fallout 3's hacking gives the player a hex-editor-like view of the terminal's memory to extract plaintext strings from random bytes of data to see if it's the password, with a maximum number of attempts before the system locks the player out. Unlike the other two, this one does not have a time limit, but rather, a limit on the number of attempts, and is more akin to a memory match or "guess the number" game.

One particular thing to note is that the common theme amongst these games seems to be the use of time. Specifically, time and timeliness seems to add a mode of pressure onto the player to not get stuck during the puzzle, while also providing an intrinsic bonus for finishing more quickly (extra points in DX:HR for finishing undetected, etc).

In the case of our theoretical shooter game, time absolutely has to be a factor, because there's a timer on the match. Pressure needs to be mounted to complete the puzzle on time, as well, so that the players have time to get to the next objective and capture that as well.

There also has to be a condition of failure. What happens if the player fails? What happens to the team? Should they be locked out of the system? Should all teams be locked out of the system so that players can intentionally throw the hack, forcing the match to sudden death? (Possible emergent gameplay here, but also possible 'ideal strategy' if not countered effectively)

I think of all of these examples I would try to strive most to copy the flow of the DX:HR hacking minigame. It's effective, it has a time-based mechanic for failure, and it has visual cues for multiple routes the player can take. Bioshock gets an honorable mention, though, for making a common puzzle game useful for branching or progression of play, and Fallout is neat because it has roots in an actual, tangible security vulnerability (i.e. storing passwords in plaintext in memory).

The question I'm asking is what could I do to replicate such a flow and is there anything else I should examine or be wary of in designing such a system?

I'd like to not copy DX:HR directly, of course; nor am I asking you guys here to design a game for me! I just wanted to know your thoughts on all of this.