The Hacker Project - a free online game

the ability to uprade other ip adresses with your money :12: so you can get more adware and stuff on there :5:

You can buy a new server if needed.

 but if you have somone you like or just a wimpy server w/ 5(not the 6 needed) you just hacked you would be able to upgrade it

So... You're suggesting that we should be able to pay our own HPD to upgrade a target system?

So, if I understand this correctly, theoretically, I can find a target which is still under newbie protection, I can shell out for the 6 additional BW to pump them up to 11 which is beyond newbie protection and start installing virii. Conversely, if someone has tied up their BW I can pay for 500 more BW and upload malware and attack them.

Don't get me wrong, it will work well for groups who are trying to maintain a group repository, but there is room for exploitation here.


Oh, I see... That's the point...

What about setting a cap? You have to earn a set number of HPD and/or getting above a certain level of hardware before you can upgrade and/or recieve an upgrade. This makes sure nobody starts a new account just to help someone else. Now you have to use your own account.
And, of course, you wouldnt be able to give upgrades between your own accounts.

yeah the person would have to be on a different (real world) ip # and you can only upgrade somones software so much like say 3x, or 5x for a better player, on each hardware ( hard drives, memory, cpu, and bandwith)

different ip does not stop person b from helping person a.... nor does it stop people who know how to proxy bounce irl...

I can't get over the image of someone sitting in their little studio apartment hacking away when some random techie shows up, breaks into the place, cracks open his system, adds a new RAM module, nods casually, and walks out like it's nothing.

All this while he's sitting there in his chair looking at the tech like WTF?

 :laugh: Thats the impresion I got from this update, I don't think it would be good or realalistic, plus it would be highly abusable...

There's also the difference in hardware cost between a Gold account and a Freebie account. Gold accounts can make bank shelling out for hardware upgrades in exchange for virii farm rights to Freebie account servers. Think about it. A Gold account user infects a Freebie server and turns around and spends the revenue on upgrading the Freebie account. All the Freebie account user has to do is sit back and let them milk their system while the Gold account user makes bank and farms it. When he's done the Freebie account formats with IP change and he's got a beefy system for only the cost of some time while the Gold user has made a pretty decent amount of cash with little risk. Multiply this time X Freebie account users allowing this slavery of their systems in exchange for upgrades. It really increases the power of a Gold account while turning Freebie accounts into vassals.

i think it would work well, but only if you have admin access to that server. it would increase PvP action massively, and force noobs to learn the game much quicker.

Force noobs to learn the game much quicker? Increase PvP massively? These are no small claims. I'm going to have to require support for such statements.

I contend that it will have the opposite effects.

It will drive away new players as their systems are enslaved by veteran players and they become frustrated with the game as there will be nothing they can do to prevent this once their IP is found. They won't have the HPD to effect an IP change and True Light only allows a once per week free IP change with format. All you have to do under the present system is upgrade the target's HDD to some insane level and it'll take over a month to finish the format. In the mean time, their system is yours to toy with.

PvP will become a matter only of HPD. The winner will always be the one with the money to 1) purchase IPs like mad, and then 2) upgrade and infect them. It will be all about how fast you can spend HPD. Even if you put an AP cost on it, that'll just mean that the Gold account players will, once again, subjugate the freebie players by simple virtue of having a larger AP pool to draw from. Any group of players banding together would rule HP by purchasing all opposition and using the proceeds to upgrade and farm them in a perpetual cycle which will become quite boring quite rapidly for the winners and turn the game into a futile endeavor to the losers.

While this feature would be nice it is a way around the "No transfer of HPD to other players" rule set by Titam.

It would also allow say a #1 slot player to quickly upgrade a brand new player into a top slot for the purpose of winning more money each round.  Another words it is to exploitable in it's current suggested form.

Ways to exploit
Knock a newbie out of protection (someone else mentioned this before me) which could be useful for those newbie protected servers holding Revelations.
Bypass the HPD Transfer rules
Log in from a friends computer to make multiple dupe accounts that you can then upgrade from your own computer
Make it more difficult to identify a persons farm server.
I am sure there are even more ways that I can't think of right now.

Although it would benefit some players, I completely agree with your explanations and listed possible exploits, Virus man. Nicely presented!

Looking from that side as presented - I'm against such upgrades to the game. Too few advantages and too many exploits.

In my opinion this suggestion is not supported by the community and will therefor not be mentioned in the moderator section.

Unless ofcourse changes are made to the idea making it possible to remove the possible exploits and improve the benefits.

Doubt it but I dare you all!  :laugh:

The only possible way I can think of to avoid it becoming exploitable by that much would be to limit the amount of upgrades you can make to a percentage of what the player has made to their own server.  Example

Lets say I am player A and bontrose is player B
I hack player B's server and find it has the following stats (made up stats for this example)
CPU 100,000 HDD 1,000 RAM 30,000,000 BW 1,000

Currently he has all of the stats used up with Virii.
10% cap
I could upgrade him by
CPU 10,000 HDD 100 RAM 3,000,000 BW 100
Not that exploitable and would actually be useful for a group to help out new players with hardware instead of just software.

Now of course that means a LOT of DB work on the backend.  Every server would have to have original stats and remote upgrade stats linked causing a spaghetti of DB links and possibly allow a slow down.  Especially if there was a coordinated effort to purposely generate unneeded DB calls by the following example

You get 100+ players all upgrading 1 person by just 1 upgrade in 1 category.  Now every time that server's stats are accessed it would generate 100+ accesses to generate it's current stats.  If for nothing else than when someone goes to do a remote upgrade on it.  Now if the remote upgrade DB info was kept by the remote players entries and not the actual server being upgraded then it would require fewer DB accesses.  In this case there would only need to be 2 sets of stats for each server.  The players actual stats and the total remote upgrades done to it.

Basically it all comes down to how it is implemented.

I'm not in favor of it because at the moment:

Possibility 1 of many:

Top player gives new player all his software
New player only upgrades HDD and Kbs at first (not too much Kbs)
Afterwards upgrades CPU / Mem just enough to fit huge malwares on it and drop the Kbs to a minimum.. Totally safe..

This won't get you into the top 5 perhaps but will get you very far already..

So making it possible to add hardware also.. Hmm.. It's already easy to get into the Top Ranking page by just downloading some softwares while doing almost no effort.

Many people claimed I was ranked so high last round thanks to my stolen software only. I can guarantee you that perhaps 2 players had better hardware / income than me..

That's why I'm in favor of making several Hall of Fames where not only "best ranked" counts but also "most highest softwares", "highest hardware", "highest income" and even "researched highest file" and "researched most hours"..

In another game I've played in the past, we had many different stats which could be gained by being good at several aspects of the game. People are too much focused on that POWER instead of becoming a good player in all aspects that are featured..

This would also give a much better picture of who really deserves to be in the top 10..

So all the "lucky" guys get their fame in the "best rank" page but the real good players of the round get their deserved fame also.

I'm not saying it's all about fame.. But who doesn't like to get respect for the things they've accomplished..

PS. If many start to discuss this idea of mine, I will make a separate topic for it and move the off-topic posts.

Plz do create a seperate topic for your suggestion Donn; I like this idea very much.

I can think of several different area's for the various rankings (earned virii income, earned mission income, overall earned income, software, hardware, hours of research).
And offcourse the overall ranking which takes all area's into account.

yeah and tell us where it is :5: