First of all. I want to say that this is an excellent and well written writeup Glitch. Thanks.
Couple of comments though.
I'd also like to make a suggestion to the suggestion that Virii should no longer take up bandwidth on a server. More like an expansion or elaboration of Brok's suggestion to attempt to cover all the angles.
Yes virii should not take up bandwidth on a server and you should get a percentage of profits based on the bandwidth of the server and the HPD per hour per bandwidth that a virus would generate at 100%. Those are 1 HPD per hour per bandwidth for adware and 1.2 for fileshare and 0.8 for barons. Adware takes up 3 bandwidth and makes 3 HD per hour. File share is 50 bandwidth and makes 60 HPD per hour. Baron is 1500 bandwidth and makes 1200 HPD per hour. Divide it out yourself if you do not believe me.
If you install a .3 fileshare on a server with 150 bandwidth server it would generate 180 per hour. I someone then installed a .1 fileshare then you would then take bandwidth of both of them which is 200. Take 150 divide it by 200 and you get .75 and 50/ 200 is .25 so the .3 would 75% which would be 135 HPD per hour and the .1 would get 45 per hour. The same for adware and barons.
There should be 100 secret servers (25 per faction) and 4 new servers (1 per faction) spawn per day. The new servers will have better hardware than the previous servers thus able handle more virii as the game progresses. Also all secret servers ips would be static meaning they do not change.
Not sure if I agree with the static portion of this statement. Yes, it is a pain when they go bye-bye but it does clear out the virii and the systems slowly upgrade overtime. Plus, they only reset once every 25 days. All-in-all they would be resetting something like 6 or so times per round, correct?
I would like to see the upgrade path faster than it currently is. It would be nice to have the software upgrade at something like a 0.1 version per day on the servers. Seems like a lot to begin with, but in reality it is only a 3.0 version increase every month. In nine months (like last turn lasted) the secret servers would be sitting on 27.0 versions.
(Maybe even a random increase between .1 and .3, with results at the end of nine months being something like 27-90).
At the end of last turn we had 300-400 version files. Why shouldn't the BIG mega-corps get much better files.
There can be a range of servers that allow the newer players a chance to get incremental updates as they hack their way through the various levels of secret servers.
Virus disinfecting will be 2 hours per .1 of file share and 1.0 of adware. The 5 hours per .1 baron would stay except Robber Baron AV will no longer be chance based. Disinfect missions will yield 75% of the income of the virus relative to the time it takes to disinfect. For example a .3 takes 6 hours so you would get 180*.75*6 = 810 HPD. That way on a bare server it is more beneficial to you to upload virii and not immediately start to disinfect it while you look for a disinfect mission. On the other hand on a server that is saturated with virii it would be better to disinfect them upload your own.
Reduced income on the disinfects. I like. Should also include reduced file size as well as AP costs.
Virii installs will be 1 hour per .1 of file share and 1.0 of adware. Barons will install take 2.5 hours per .1 to install. That way it takes less time to install than to disinfect.
Virii's income comes from a faction account instead of players. That means no more virus leak and you can install file share virii and adware virii on private servers like barons. That way missions can be added to faction's server to hack player's farms and disinfect virii for money like Kill the Baron missions. This also allows player to get the ip of player's private servers, thus even less need for the IP dealer, and disinfect some virii then upload some of your own and maybe an IP leech virus. This would be an increase of PvP after all what better place to attack that a player's economic base.
I'm fine with this... As long as the Secret Servers spawn lots of virii-disinfect missions against the virii. No more hidden virii-farms.
Spyware would become more powerful especially if uploaded to a player's main farm so it would better for it to become chance based. I was thinking a v.1 spyware would have a 5% chance to capture a virii's income as it collects (at random) and the chance would increase by 0.25% per V0.1 version increase. That would mean in order to get the max 100% it would have to be a v38.1 spyware (Solved from the equation .25(x-1)+5=100). A V38.1 spyware would be .05 GB x 381 = ~19 Gb in size which is would be cumbersome for a secret server and would not yield very much but on a private server due to its relatively small size it would be easy to squeeze in.after you disinfect a few virii for it to fit and would probably yield tens if not hundreds of thousands of HPD if you collect before it gets disinfected.
Alright if have any concerns, complaints, or criticisms I would like to know because I thought this up over the past couple of days in my head and hammered out the details as I was typing in the past 5 hours. Yes this took 5 hours that is why I want to know what everyone else thinks because this is no means perfect and can be improved but only if I hear back from you. By the way you better not pull a too long didn't read. Wow it looked longer when I was typing it.
I think the spyware idea needs a little work. Upon a quick look it appears that it wouldn't be worth it to install any more. As it is, spyware is quickly destroyed after detected.
