The Hacker Project - a free online game

Yeah, I said number of missions allowed to be accepted at once should be limited.

Well, I remembered it because I thought it was a decent idea. I should probably go find the thread and say as much over there. I myself don't have more than 20-40 missions at a time that I'm doing, just so I'm not hogging them all. Sometimes I skip an hour or two just to make sure someone else gets a chance. Not everyone's as altruistic about it as I tend to be, however.

I like that suggestion alot too, it would limit alot of things without being too...limiting
But how many is too many? I do 50 or so decrypts at once when I do do them, maybe faction missions could be seperate..or not

But the people it will also effect is deleters, people who do 100's of delete files one after another wont stand a chance and will be forced to do faction missions

Can we split this topic from hereon and make it a seperate suggestion? (I know its elsewhere, but needs its own thread i think so it doesnt get drowned)

The thing is, it should force people to choose missions based upon their value.  It should also provide ample reward for missions completed.  Having to accept 500 delete missions to stay competitive doesn't work.

Right now, people have to complete hundreds of missions just to keep up with virii installers.

I'd say starting out something like 5 or so missions can be accepted at once.  As you gain levels with your faction you can accept more.  Maybe the max of something like 20 or so for the highest faction levels.

In addition...  I'll say it again.  Get rid of virii as a source of income for players.  Make them missions.  Missions should be the focus of the game.  Not farming virii.

I'm not sure about the elimination of virii as an income source, but I can see your point about shifting the focus of income toward missions.

The reason I'm not too sure about it is because it will reduce or eliminate casual players and shift the game to favor those with nothing better to do than do missions. Yes, I know you're trying to counter that with limited mission quantity, but if we also make missions exclusive to whoever has accepted them missions also means that there's no competition for them, even if they are limited. Casual players rely on a certain amount of virii income to keep up. I don't have a problem keeping up doing a combination of virii and some missions on the side. I see the real launching point where lead players take off as the point where barons are installed.

Perhaps we need to nerf the barons instead, but I also see eliminating them as a potential imbalance.

an extra possible mission for killing barons?(not just you)

Define possible.

Right now, with current disinfect time on barons, I'd consider any mission to disinfect a baron improbable at best.

Virii files and casual don't go together.  Not many Casual players can install a .3 file share, let alone a robber barron.  Most will concentrate on their .1 fileshares and place them on the public server or spend most of their time trying to capture an existing virus.  Others may attempt to do disinfect missions but will get their processes killed and themselves destroyed in the process.

If Robber Barons become fubar like I'm expecting them too, then I'll just concentrate on destroying the little guys from now on anyway.  Casual players won't have a chance if the bigger guys loose the need to keep their AP up while waiting for the big files to install.  300+ hours was way too long for the big files to install....  Having them killed within a few hours of activation will be painful.  And by painful, we'll have 5000 AP to go on a killing spree.

So... that's why I'm recommending virii get dumped to missions only along with limited missions.  I was up to 80+ virii installs.  I'm thinking that Ivan is up there and possibly more.  How does that help casuals?  Only reason I'm not destroying all virii right now is because of keeping my AP near max so I have the AP to pay for my robber baron install.

I'm not saying all missions should be exclusive either.  Big $$$ missions should never be exclusive.  But make some $500 hpd missions exclusive so as to allow a casual player the chance to actually complete missions.  As he gets better he can go up against the $5k missions and start doing some real PVP.  But he needs the chance to get there.  Delete missions for 50 hpd doesn't help them out much and anything much higher becomes increasingly difficult to battle against.  Waiting 50+ hours for that delete to finish and realize someone else has already completed it can destroy a new player...  Heck waiting for 12 hours is hard enough for them and then realize it was deleted hours ago...

With the new rule on barons... Not many will ever get more than a .1 installed.  The .5's will never get installed since it would be too easy to just by IP's and kill them.

Nice, you've thought this through then?

Yeah, while I've been thinking that it is completely unfair that 2-3 players could in essence tie up the whole game, I'm not going to stop until the rules are changed.  My opinion though, is that it is killing the game.  It's too hard for a newbie with little gaming experience to get into a game like this. 

They need nourishing.  They are easily discouraged.  Any mission they try to complete is completed before them.  Any disinfects results in someone hunting them down.  They don't know enough to cover their tracks.  Some are just learning about bouncing while others attempt direct connects.  Hardly any even do an IP change or can afford one.

The result is they choose a mission that ties up their whole resources and come back the next day only to see it was already completed.  After a few days of this they'll wander off and never come back.  Another IP in my private list that just gets used to bounce through.

I don't think faction missions should be separate (when it comes to counting total missions allowed)...

In fact I think all missions should be faction missions.  After all your goal is to help out your selected faction....  Delete missions against your own faction seem counter-intuitive... If your faction where to find out they'd do more than just dock you some faction points as happens right now.



I could see the following possible scenario working as well:

Remove the option of choosing a faction.   
All missions are faction missions.
Allow players to choose any faction mission they like. 

Completing a mission rewards faction points as now.  Attacked faction would incur a 1.2* reward penalty (you earn 100 faction points for the completing faction but get -120 from the opposing faction).  This would allow players to freely move from one faction to the other and even possibly have 3 factions in the positive if the person carefully considers their targets.  But being positive with multiple factions reduces the bonus you get...

If only one faction is the positive faction you get the current 10% bonus. Two gets 7 % bonus each. Three gets 5 % bonus each.

If the person manages to attain level 20 in a given faction, give them a bonus 4%(single faction) / 2% (dual Faction) / 1% (triple faction) to their faction bonus. 
          Thus a three-factioned player with all factions at or above level twenty could get a 6% bonus total. 
          Two-factions would get a 9% bonus.
          A single faction player would have a nice 14% bonus.

A player who starts working on opposing faction missions would SLOWLY start to loose their current faction standings instead of instantly dropping to zero as currently happens when they switch factions.




AP Rewards for faction missions

With the advent of all missions becoming faction missions, the AP rewards need to be rejiggered.  I'd suggest that the faction mission reward .5-.75 of what it costs to complete a mission as the reward, instead of rewarding more AP as it does now.  This would remove AP overloading, period. 

put in a new 2 factions and have them major enemies of the megacorps

tr(keep) - violently opposed to megacorps and believe that the whole world should have a say in all businesses (anti-Hakuza)

freedom.org - loudly opposed to megacorps believes the net shouldn't be used for profit (anti-Omnicron)

scientists united - believes knowledge should be spread through the world (anti-Icarus)

the standing would be lost as such

if you are under a mega-corp you lose
x power per mission in other megacorp
2x per mission in freedom faction(other than big enemy)
4x per mission in big enemy faction

@Bontrose:

MOar factions?  :confused2: I thought we already had some polar opposites.

@Brok:

I have to admit, it didn't make much sense having "generic" missions in which you could potentially be working against your chosen faction. With such a system, however, it would eliminate the possibility of being non-aligned but you really don't have that option as it stands anyway.

Very interesting idea, though, having to pick and choose which missions to do based on the target rather than the source.

Another idea we could use is to take the idea of exclusive missions and basically have "contracts" where the factions offer the specific player missions based on their standing in the faction. Simple deletes at first and moving on to disinfects, codes, and destroy. It would only be one single mission at a time from each faction this way and a faction would cease to offer once you had a negative standing.

Would that work well with your proposal?

The contract idea is an excellent idea.  Especially the idea based upon their standing in the faction.  The lower the standing the lower quality and quicker the mission.

I would even think that it could be that way for all missions, to be honest, only offer missions to a player based upon their standing in the faction.  Kind of like a 'trust' list.  Don't trust the hacker, don't offer them a high-paying/high risk job.  If they want into the faction they need to prove themselves.  Work their way up the ladder.

In that way, the faction would offer level appropriate missions.  High levels wouldn't be fighting low level players --unless they switched factions, but they'd move up the standings quicker as well anyways and quickly away from the more casual player.

i was saying more faction so each corp would have a direct enemy lesser enemies and low interest foes

they already do

 :confused2:

No feedback from emi  :atention:

prolly busy

He's working on a big update. Keep the discussion going or shoot him a PM and he'll look at it. He doesn't always post, though.

details?

Details are given out on a need-to-know basis.  :16:

and i feel a need to know

I've already included this in the new update.

Update is imminent now, here is a small list if you're impatient about it:

- players over a certain power will only be able to accept missions from secret servers
- Remote malware, you will be able to choose the number of hours to use in a remote attack, from the available remaining hours.
- Robber Baron AV will be changed to a chance based system, to be detailed in the update news.
- there is a new mission called "Kill the Baron", where you will be sent to destroy RB virs on a player gateway. Well payed faction mission. The story is that the faction detected the HPD leak, and you are sent to patch it. You'll be using your own RB AV, and will have to crack the IP yourself. The faction will only provide you with the IP and FW / PW protection info, everything else is up to the player to do.

And other PvP related things... all the details will be on the updates section.

Wow exciting!  :5:
Looking forward to it...KILL THE BARON!

But they take hooooooooours to install B0
Should make for interesting gameplay (yay!)

It's good you added more about the baron, I always thought the fact you steal the money from factions was just an excuse to explain where the money came from, yet the factions corps dont seem to care much other than negative rep

Maybe once you get a certain amount of negative rep with a faction, you'll start seeing more anti-hacker missions on you...

Emi... Regarding the Kill the Baron...

I agree that it should be possible to kill them, but Install times/AP should be reflected in this.

I don't want to loose my 5000 AP/300 Hour install to someone who spent a few hours getting a lucky hit on the new random based system.


edit:
I do like Delta's post regarding killing BW that results in the like-wise reduction of income.  Outright killing should be like other virii, granted should not take months to kill... 

I can see that I'm going to comeback from scout camp with all my virii gone, all my servers destroyed and I'll be back at zero...  :shifty:

Also it's gonna be really bad for my main gateways, all my servers have barons going on them, and i'd hate to have my main hacked and all processes killed by some nub who accepted a mission, mostly to do that... hm

Ofc it will be balanced to reflect the difficulty of installing / removing the Baron. "Kill the Baron" is a very difficult mission. I didn't put all the details in here, but if you want to look at it this is it:

- Robber Baron AV is chance based:
- Robber baron AV takes 5h for each vir V 0.1 to disinfect.
On completion, there a small chance to disinfect.
The higher the RB version, the less chance to disinfect.
The higher the AV version, the greater the chance.
Cost: 100 AP
Base chance: 5% - 0.5% for 0.1 V of RB, +0.5% for 0.1 V of AV, min chance 5%, max 50%

This means, it will take on average 100x20 = 2000 AP to disinfect a Baron V 0.1 with the 5% chance.
For higher level RB, you need a higher level AV. Also, chances are modified by RB version and AV version as you can see.

Basically, it needs a very good player to do the "Kill the Baron", it's a very hard PvP faction mission, as the victim can respond and track the mission runner / change IP, etc. It's basically PvP with a twist...

good idea

Emi: make ist so!

sweet

Cool, thanks for the explanation Emi.

So if I have the calculation correct, it would take a 4.5 Baron AV to get a 25% chance of success against a .5 Robber Baron (and a 9.5 Baron AV to get the full 50%)?  And it would take 25 hours for it to complete?

Does the AP cost increase with size, like it does for the regular AV, or is it a flat 100 AP?



The disinfect seems to be quite quick for a .5 robber baron...  Disinfect time of 25 hours versus an install time of 300 hours.  Even a .1 has a disinfect time of 5 hours versus 54 hours of install.  On top of the new abilities to kill robber baron installs makes installing them non-rewarding.  Higher end players can quickly gain the hardware needed for a 9.5 baron AV (researching is a no brainer -- 14 million HPD if my calculations are correct).  So a 50% chance is quite attainable against a .5 baron. 

I'd suggest decreasing the baron install time to no more than two times the disinfect time.  With only 25 hours to disinfect it could easily be done on a weekend, destroying 12 days of installing (let alone the 5000 AP it took to get it done)...  I know a couple players who are regularly gone on the weekends and it will effectively prevent them from using barons.

As a comparison:  to disinfect a .3 FileShare it takes something like 39 hours.  Which in my opinion is much too high.  Those are nearly impossible to complete if someone is monitoring the servers.  When I actually cared about my File Shares I was able to patrol 80+ servers daily and kill anyone who attempted a disinfect.  File shares should be more like the 5.x Adaware that can be done in 18 hours or so...

Honestly, Emi, if this were to be put in place Robber barons will become nothing more than a useless target on our heads.  They need to become quicker and much cheaper AP wise to install in order to allow players the incentive to install them.  Otherwise they'll just be something some newbie will attempt to install only to have it disinfected quite quickly on them.

To be honest, I advocated the barons should be removed from the game.  But if they are to remain and have the missions against them I think there needs to be an incentive for the players to keep installing them.  Otherwise no barons will ever be installed again (not sure if that is the plan, but if we are going to get the new missions might as well allow them to be used)...

A player is gone for a weekend, or for heavens sakes takes a week vacation...

Oh, and not to rant Emi.  I think this is a very good idea.  But needs a bit more balancing.

100 AP? versus 5000 AP install 
25 hours versus 300 hours install

Oh, and it appears my main server can already handle the 9.5 Barron AV.

So, I guess I'll be able to kill everyone's barons rather quickly...

What we want to do here is make the players that have RB actively defend them.

Right now, the Robber Baron is a nice way for players to get a stable income, however they will need to watch their servers closely and guard them, or else they will lose the RB income.

We want players to go from passive mode to a more active mode. It's very easy to escape a RB AV attempt if you just change the IP of the RB gateway if you see an attempt to disinfect it, or track the disinfector and stop his process, or install un-breakable defenses.

All you need to do is patrol your servers holding the RB, however one that wants to disinfect the said RB has to do a lot more, first he needs to break in, then start the AV and hope it completes and is successful before the owner of the RB gets the heads up. This is a very difficult task, multiplied many times if the RB is a high version. At RB V 0.5 it would indeed take 25 hours just to complete the AV on the RB. This is most difficult to do if you are attacking an active player, since he will definitely take action against the disinfect.

What we are comparing a 100% install with a disinfect attempt with a 5% chance and 100 AP cost (for an average of 2000 AP / success). Yes, install takes longer time, however it is more easy to defend your install then it is to defend your disinfect process. All this balances out, however tweaks can be made as we go along and see how it goes.

So, in the end, it's up to the players. Install RB and defend it, or don't install and gain HPD in some other ways.

I understand the activately defending your baron part... But 25 hours to disinfect seems quite quick compared to the Fileshare at 39 and whatnot.  Especially with a 300 hour install.

I also don't want to have to be tied to the game.  A weekend camping trip puts me out of the loop for a good 40 hours.  A weeks vacation 168 hours.

I take a weekend off and all my barons are toast.  With that in mind I'd never install another baron again.  300 hours is just way too long a time for that. 

You say an average cost of 2000AP... But Process Traces are currently 5% success rate and I complete traces for the most part in 7-10 tries.  Every few attempts I'll have to try another batch of 15 but most are done the first round...

As for unbreakable defenses there are no such thing in this game.  Overloading prevents that.  And with a max timer of 1 hour on password break, there is no such thing as un-breakable.

It doesn't seem to be a game play balance problem, but more like a problem related to the time available to play. I understand that some players may require to take breaks from time to time, and when they come back they would probably want to take the game from where they left it.

I think we can make this work if we introduce a vacation mode, I've been thinking for a while on how this could work.

What will happen when the vacation mode is activated is this:

- there will be a 500 AP cost to activate vacation mode.
- once activated, vacation mode can only be deactivated in 24 hours or more.
- the player will not gain any more AP until vacation mode is decativated

- each owned gateway will change IP and then be put in a "frozen" state. This state will make it so no-one will be able to connect to the frozen gateway or attack it.
- only the vir process on the frozen gateway will be preserved. All other tasks will be dropped, including research and running software
- when coming back online and deactivating vacation mode, vir timers on the frozen player owned servers are updated with time from when vacation was started.
   -> example: went on vacation for 72 hours, when vacation is off 72 hours are deducted from virii on owned gateway run timers. This effectively negates any runtime hours on any RB virii for example, as the run hours will remain like it was just before vacation started.

Vacation Mode:  I like it. 

Objections to Robber Baron disinfect withdrawn.

been forgetting to suggest that one

Sure bonbon  :14:

So
Does that mean i can start a baron install, then go into holiday mode until it's installed?
Will i be able to come out of vacation mode before the time i set for it?

My baron install just got killed about 24 hours off completion >_>

Decrease the install time/AP cost if there's gonna be antibaron missions...
But if these missions are so very rewarding, will people not be disinfecting each others barons for raw money ten reinstalling tem asap?
I suppose tat a good reason to keep the AP cost wat it is. mmm


*rereads post*

Sorr for the lack of H/y, i have to RAM it for it to work, crappy laptop 8D

They could try this ofc, but you see the AP to install / disinfect the baron would be about 5 days worth for each mission. The way I tested it, you need two people for this, one that installs a Baron, one that gets the mission since the owner can not get the mission on his own vir. Then, the one that accepted the mission has to disinfect the Baron.

This is a lot of work todo for several reasons:

- the one installing the Baron has to wait XXX hours to install
- the AP cost on both sides
- the HPD reward for the Baron removal is about 7 days income from the Baron

So, it's so balanced that it's a pain to farm, but great if you're just doing disinfects yourself...

How it will work is you will be able to start the vacation mode, but your tasks / vir timers etc. will be frozen in time.
It's like time will freeze and you won't get AP and your tasks will be frozen, as well as vir timers on your private servers.
The virii installed on other servers are un-affected.

This means that when you come back and deactivate the vacation mode, you will have the exact same timers as when you activated the mode, giving no advantage just a break as it was intended.

just a bit of free time in which to go on vacation or take care of buisness