The Hacker Project - a free online game

I'd like to make a suggestion on how virii and bandwidth works with servers.

Change it so Virii no longer take up bandwidth on a server.

Instead, the BW (of the server) determines how much HPD can be collected per hour.

So a FileShare .3 could collect up to the 150 BW limit it normally gets, but doesn't use of the bandwidth.

BUT, if another person were to install a FS .3 then the HPD would be divided amongst both virii (whether they collected or not).  So with both virii on the server the max that could be gotten by each would be 75 HPD per hour.

Eventually servers would start to become saturated with virii as everyone starts uploading their own virii.  This would result in more disinfect missions against the virii. 

With this change SpyWare will become more powerful.  Now potentially dozens of virii could be snagged by a spyware.  Some changed might be needed here, something along the lines of a percentage chance of snagging the income and/or IP of the virii owner instead of a 100% chance as it is now.  Each virii stream would be checked separately.  The higher the SpyWare the higher the chance.  In addition, .3 FS would be much harder to snag than a .3 Adware.  The Bandwidth usage may be the factor here for determining chance of theft...

Interesting.  :21:

I agree, I like

I like this idea as well.

I like it except the


BUT, if another person were to install a FS .3 then the HPD would be divided amongst both virii (whether they collected or not).  So with both virii on the server the max that could be gotten by each would be 75 HPD per hour.

Part

if using the equivalent of 150 BW i want to get payed for 150 BW

Nope.  Reason I put it that was was to prevent them from becoming huge farms for a single player.  You put a bunch of 150 BW FS out there then you end up with farm for that player.

Forcing it to split amongst all virii allows smaller players to get their finger in the pot, but also opens up major disinfect wars as people try and clear up servers so they get a bigger cut.  This would also allow more people opportunity to disinfect virii without the huge repercussions as they are now.  Right now a single FS .3 takes up all bandwidth and very easy to track down who is disinfecting. 

You get 10-15 virii on there and a bunch of disinfects then, well you got yourself more fun  :laugh:

Disinfect HPD might need reduction to compensate for lots of disinfectable virii.

In addition, if you want a bigger part of the pie, you install more virii thus getting a bigger split.

This would then free up the BW for more missions that could use BW (other than the actual uploading of virii, but that could be another mission to kill that virii upload process -- more pay than the current $250 mission and only collectible by the person killing the process).

Sounds kinda complicated, maybe when you collect it has red text like
"Multiple Virii Inclusion, Collect split X4"

or somethign  :21:

Not to accuse anyone of anything, but that's sort of how SlaveHack virii work. The payout is diminished by how many virii are attempting to use the available bandwidth.

Under this suggestion, the bandwidth usage would be the maximum and the virii would take "shares" of what's available up to their maximum to determine the payout. The formula would not be overly complicated. This would allow even noobs to upload and install virii on servers already saturated with virii and still get something. This would also drastically increase the number of available disinfect missions and give an incentive to eliminate and/or defend virii.

We could apply this principle to upload/download bandwidth sharing. We can set the transfer rate up to the maximum bandwidth between the sender and receiver, whichever is lower, but that would only be a share of the bandwidth. Each transfer diminishes transfer rate because you are splitting the target's attention. This could be used as a tactic to frustrate another player's transfer or as an incentive to trace a process and shut down the transfer to increase the speed of your own.

Basically this is what I was thinking:

A server has 200 BW.  It therefore generates 200 HPD per hour.

Someone installs a FileShare Share .2 which steals 100 HPD per hour.
Another person install a FileShare .2 which also steals 100 HPD per hour.  Total is now 200 HPD stolen per hour.

Someone else comes along and installs a File Share .4 which steals 200 HPD per hour.  Total Stolen i now 400 HPD per hour.  

Since BW is only 200, the HPD is divided amongst all installed virii.

Each .2 would get 50 HPD and the .4 would get 100 HPD per hour.

It doesn't matter how many times you collect, the ratio is always the same.  This allows someone to collect once a day or every 10 minutes if they so choose.  It does the checking when the person collects.  It doesn't need to try and determine if at a given period of time someone else installed or disinfected a virii.

When the person goes to collect it'll just tell them how much HPD they collected.

If someone wants to disinfect all the other virii before they collect, then when they collect they get the whole amount.


As an aside, this would allow SirEmi to increase bandwidth on many of the servers to facilitate faster uploads and downloads.  I would also expect to see much more virii action in the game as a result.

Maybe, even enough to get rid of barons  :laugh:

I do not like this idea unless we take off the cap of 200 secret servers and go back to more spawning every day to give people a chance to try to snag a blank server to upload virii. With the IP leech you can install an network of them on secret servers to find new ones before other people do. Also since the ip dealer gives ips in and not in your ip database we do not have people like SGP buying the ip before other people do.


How? People will still try to defend their virii and with a process tracer I trace you in 30 minutes or less overload my software and kill all your processes. What we really need to do is get rid of software overloading.

Also how would this suggestion work on private servers?

LOL.  Glitch.  When this round started I snagged every d**ned secret server and kept them filled with my virii for the first month.  I had something like 160 active File Share virii going at all times. As new servers spawned I grabbed them too.  Ask Alpha and Ivan how much of a pain it was to take my servers away, or to get theirs going.

If someone attempted to disinfect my virii I would hunt them down and stop them.  If they continued I'd cause damage.

200 is plenty of secret servers, especially with less than 20 active players.

What I am proposing would stop what I was capable of doing.  Anyone and everyone would start uploading virii to all the servers.  Thus the more virii being uploaded the bigger player would get less of the chunk of income. 

Getting Secret Server IP's is EASY cakes if you know how.  No purchasing necessary.  I can go from having the only secret server at the start to having them all in less than a day. 

As for disinfecting, you start getting alot of people installing virii and I'll guarantee the disinfects will skyrocket.  There was only a couple of people attempting to disinfect me.  A few time of me hitting their servers and they backed down real quick.  Get everyone installing and disinfecting and you'll be very sore trying to track them all down.

After the first month I had plenty of income from my virii that I started mass producing the barons.  As I built them up, I started to let others install their on virii. 

As for private servers, I would say the same thing.  100 BW = 100 HPD per hour.  Just like it is now.  Multiple people attempting to install virii on a private server only degrades their income if they reach the players bandwidth limit.  Plus, this would prevent those of us who would take all bandwidth on a private server with our virii.  Those are much freer or problems than secret servers (at least the AFK players).

For Robber Barons the server it is installed on has to have at least 1500 BW for it to work.  Someone who installs virii on their box would start taking away from the barons income in the same fashion.

1500 total bandwidth, a .1 baron installed = 1500 Income (actually 1200 if you take into the .8 factor).

Someone installs a .3 fileshare now they baron gets ~90% of the income and the player gets ~10%.

This here allows even more PVP.  Files become that much easier to steal.  Spyware easier to upload.  Malware easier to upload.  On top of all that you can start filling up their server and stealing some of their income.  That fileshare not only reduced their baron income but collects against the player.

Nice.  I just went and signed up for SlaveHack.  That is exactly what I am talking about.  The first server I just hit had over 20 active virii on it.  I just collected and got 2 dollars for an hours worth of virii activity.  Not only were there tons of virii but I was able to download the files on it with no problem....

and HP has taught me that the LogFile is super important.  Although, not sure about being able to delete the whole thing.  Seems strange, although probably more realistic.  Much different than Uplink.

Is there a way to bounce?  I can't seem to find that ability.

Thanks for the pointer on SlaveHack, Exousia.  But that just goes to show that my idea has merit.

No you cannot bounce. By the way Brok if you need any money I have 27343225.84 euros in my bank account on SlaveHack. That is what you get with a persistent game people who do not give a crap.

I'm fine.  Although it looks like my bank account just got hacked.  Not sure how that happened.

Tracking down less that 20 people? That is not hard. Besides if you lower the reward for disinfects then less people will do them because you get less money. Just like in business the less you pay someone, the less qualified are the people who apply for the job.
Also if you are going to reduce the reward we better speed up the time to disinfect.


Not really newbies would log in to the server see that it is completely saturated with virii and say "oh well something is better than nothing." So the big player upload their large virii and take all profits while the newbies are left with crumbs that too small even for a mouse. So it would not stop what you are doing just make it more sophisticated.


I know but in Round 1 of hacker project SGP, the number one group, since they controlled many of the secret servers they would buy ips from the ip dealer when new secret servers spawned because back then the ip dealer gave only ips not in your ip database and did not cost ap. So using their wealth they would buy up all the secret server ips before everyone else and install more virii. I just do not want a similar situation where large established players have totalitarian dominion over everything.


I do not think so because why disinfect when you would just install a high version virii? It takes a day and a half to disinfect a v.3 fileshare obviously it would be better to upload and install a higher version virii. If secret servers did not change ip that would help because then would be a reason to disinfect instead oh lets just wait until it changes ip then install since they guys got their viruses disconnected.


I was just wondering because if bandwidth is what determines income then what stops me fron installing a .1 baron and just increasing the bandwidth continuously? By the way the conversion  100 BW =  100 HPD per hour is low if people are sharing a server it should be like 100 BW = 500 HPD per hour or more because at least that way the little person that you seem care so much about can at least get more than 1 HPD per hour.



Since its takes at a minimum of 5 seconds to change the log someone was probably log camping and grabbed your ip.

It's true, it's how he got so far ahead in the first place  :2:
But tbh, start disinfects from every server, multiple amounts per virus, and they wont all get traced and cancelled unless they want to waste silly AP

BW would determine maximum amount of HPD the server has to offer.  But the virii would determine maximum amount it could get as well.

a .3 FileShare could still only get 150 HPD per hour, even if the server had 10,000 BW.

This way the BW on servers could increase much more rapidly than they do now, without giving a single player total control of it with just one virii.

In addition, if you were to install a level 30.00 FileShare Virii on a 150 BW server it would fail.  Virii still would be limited based upon the total BW of the server.  So the maximum allowed would be the .3 FileShare.  This would prevent big players from installing a 30.00 FileShare on the server just to get a bigger pie.

Now it would prevent them from installing 30 .3 virii.  But most likely they'd start concentrating on disinfects.

Disinfects: I do agree disinfects should be much quicker.  They also should not return as much income.  I would turn into one player installing a dozen virii on a server and his buddy disinfecting all the virii and earning vast sums of money.


Knock Disinfects down to about 1 hour per .1 for FileShare an 1 hour per 1.0 for adware. 
Reduce their income to 1k per .1 for Fileshare and 1k per 1.0 for adware.

Installing Virii and disinfecting them should cost that much less AP as well.  Right now it is a huge investment to install virii.  Make it less so and make it easier/cheaper to disinfect as well.

That would speed up the game somewhat and give someone with some energy the ability quickly clear out a server and try to cap it for a bit.  It would also allow someone to dump a butt-load of virii on a players server and block their barons.

This game needs more speed!   :13:

I quite like the idea, but it put me off when i heard it was on slavehack (the #1 googleresult for "hacking game")

I dont want us to become some sort of hybrid rip-off

#1?

There should also be a reason not to want to disinfect your own virii. Right now it is much more profitable to install a v0.1 Adware Daemon and then immediately start a disinfect on it. You can collect 50 HPD or whatever in the time it would take that same virus to collect about 3 HPD.

I agree, accepting a disinfect mission for your own or your groups virii should be prevented by the game. 

I was also thinking any server in the same gorup as you should show their group tag in front of its name
[GoS] Red Fortress
for example.

The game should encourage the use of groups as they're especially helpful to newbies, 5 brains are better than 1, as it were...
ya

:update:

I disagree. While it would be useful, that's what we have the Group IP lists for. Not everyone may want to giveaway their server IP's. While group play is encouraged, it's still a dog eat dog world out there.

My suggestion would be as soon as an ip is added to your group list, your group tag is displayed and coloured according to if they are your friend, neutral to you, or your enemy. It's very similar and would serve the same purpose, all you'd have to do is add your IP to the group list and it would be displayed just as you say. Your enemies would also :)

Or how about this.  Have a flag that says your servers can be added to the group list.  This way when you change IP's it updates the group list.

In addition, give the ability to allow other players in your group to have admin access to your server (another flag).  That way you don't have to drop protection, let them crack and then raise it again.

Group IP list is never used, IP changes are far too frequent and it's more hassle.. Needs a add to GroupDb at least...

I didn't say anything about your server IPs being public, just that if you stumble across someone who is in your group's server, you should be able to tell its theirs without having to say scan it or hack it

Or start some malware overload bombs on it and wait to see if one of your group starts yelling about someone attempting to malware them.

That's always fun :)

but it raises tensions

BrokIronfist told me that you should start of with 40 secret servers and 1 more spawn per day. I said we should have 200 secret servers and 4 spawn per day. Maybe it should be something in between.

Virus disinfecting 1 hour or so per .1 of file share and something like 1 hour per 1.0 of adware.

Virii's income comes from a faction account instead of players. Missions are added to hack player's servers and disinfect virii.

Virii also installs faster at some rate.

100 and 2 a day?