The Hacker Project - a free online game

I don't think the current AP system limits newbies at all. There's no way for them to spend 1440 AP on a single day with their inferior hardware. The only ones who need to adjust are the players who can run 50 processes at once and upload dozens of virii per day.

Oh well. It seems I am the first one who really likes the basic idea, even though I understand that the current implementation will probably create new balancing issues.

If these issues are addressed and fixed, I think that the AP system will be effective for protecting the interests of less active players.

In case you didn't understand, a reset a 1.0 means that we would have to reset every few days. Remember when soviet got his first 1.0 firewall?

Even a reset at 10.0 would be kind of fast...

I'm not sure, I just try not to mess with SGP Spam in a Can (pretty obvious), with soviet's files, and with anything significantly above version 1.0.

A mentor system sounds good, and I don't want any benefits from being a mentor. Where can I sign up?

Hi all!

I think the current calculation of process durations must lead to balancing problems, especially for high version files.

Currently the delete, disinfect and virus breaking processes take an amount of time that is proportional to the file size. While this seems ok on first sight, it leads to major problems for very large files, like processes that take multiple days or weeks.

I propose to change the formula to not go linearly with file size, but rather like with the square root of the file size. That way a 10.0 file will not take 100 times as long (for file sharing disinfection that means 2 months!) but rather only 10 times as long as a 0.1 file. Mission rewards must be based on time required and hardware resources used, not file size, to prevent favoring the deletion or disinfection of large files. The virus breaker should probably require more resources to offset this time bonus - it's already too strong (for all file sizes), but that discussion is going on in another thread.

This solves multiple problems:
1.) As versions get higher, some processes will take forever with the current formula. It's almost impossible to delete a 10.0 file. We're still in the lower versions, so all of these problems will increase if nothing is done about it.
2.) It makes disinfections of advanced viruses faster and helps to rebalance the game in favor of the disinfection missions. If the IP change gets fixed, disinfections may be traced and canceled too easily if they take days.



tldr: Change it so that large files don't take forever to delete or disinfect.

Welcome.

Hi Krieger!

For general help, read the forums, especially virus man's Beginner's Tutorial. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. You can also PM me ingame if you need help with anything.

Have fun playing.

Now if you want to disinfect or take over high-profile virii, you should have to make some effort.

1.) You could cooperate with other players and research a log deleter to stay hidden. After all, the people who research viruses must put their money into bandwidth, virus research and log undeleters, so even if you have only a fraction of their resources, you should be fine to become invisible by log deleting.

2.) You could also increase your firewall and PW protect instead. This may be harder because PW breakers can be overdriven, but you should be safe from the weaker virus users like me.

3.) Otherwise you could bounce through some nodes you prepared with a sniffer daemon so that your enemy has to crack every single admin on his way. Non-gold users should be given more bounces to allow this tactic - they need at least 10 bounces -  but you can gain up to one hour cracking time per node this way.

Hey, you can even combine all these strategies for dangerous jobs. Way more fun than clicking "disinfect" or "virus takeover" and become invincible behind an all-defeating IP change, right?

What I want to say is: The current way of changing IPs takes away the point of many of the nice features in the game, like bouncing, faking and tracing logs, protection software and strategic decisions about what to do to keep a low profile.


[Edit] I should add that I don't say this to defend my own turfs. I'm lacking in research - as a strategy decision - and can therefore be defeated easily by any of the above techniques. I use 0.1 viruses and 0.2 hiders, and my log undelete sucks just as bad. I just want the no-research tactics to be one option of many. If I choose to not invest in defenses, I should have to refrain from doing 1000+ HPD missions in order to compensate for the resources I saved.

Modern viruses don't rely on a static IP server to be controlled. For example, the Storm botnet changes the server addresses so often that it's very hard to track down the owner of the botnet, using a method that I never really understood (check Wikipedia for details). So I don't see that you need static IPs for such stuff. Local processes should also be unaffected, on course.

Virus uploads should be stopped like all other active remote connections, so I don't see how disconnects on IP change are unbalancing in favor of virus users. People who upload and install virii still need to keep their IP for an extended period of time - they can only change it when they're done. People who disinfect or capture viruses can also change their IP after getting their job done. If you can change your IP and keep all connections up, that kind of defeats the purpose of logs and log software.

The only way to "trace" people with the current system is to hack people at random and see whether the process you're looking for is in their process list. This isn't a very sophisticated strategy, and I'd like real log tracing to be a viable strategy again. (It was in the first days of the game when no one could afford IP changes.)

If you're planning well, you can use bounces to protect yourself for at least multiple hours. I think the maximum number of bounces for non-gold players must be increased to at least 10 to compensate for this, so a tracing player must spend up to 10 hours cracking if you use well-protected nodes.

Sure, but it would still be interesting to see if there were any failed attempts. Your firewall can surely notice when someone is trying an inferior attack or an outdated exploit.

I don't think it should show the successful cracks though... it should not be that easy to see whether your gateway is compromised.

Hi!

CPU and memory increase the number of processes you can have running at once. Every running process, like your firewall, unhider, password breaker, deleting files etc. needs system resources. If you upgrade your hardware, you can run more programs at once, thus allowing you to do more missions. You should also keep in mind that the hardware usage is proportional to the software version, so in order to run better software, you need more CPU and memory. The speed of your processes is not affected by your hardware for balancing reasons. Your deleting, password breaking and virus disinfection take a fixed amount of time that cannot be influenced.

HD is only for storage of data. Upgrade this when your harddisc is full.

Bandwidth increases the speed of your uploads and downloads. It is useful for downloading files from public servers before they get deleted by other players, and it's important when you want to upload viruses. Uploads to other players' gateways are also capped by their bandwidth, so more bandwidth doesn't help you to infect players faster if they have less bandwidth than you.

Now which one is most important? That depends on your playing style. I advise to upgrade your CPU first so that you can do more delete file missions at once. Later you can switch to upgrading your bandwidth and start earning money by spamming viruses, or you can continue to improve your CPU to do even more missions. Upgrade your memory only when you notice that you need more. Deleting files - the most common mission - doesn't need any memory, so CPU is usually more important.

There's no need to bounce for public FTP downloads of the 0.1 files on the standard servers or for the Public FTP protection software on secret servers. You should use direct connect for that. If you bounce, you leave logs and the download process can be seen by others.

You should bounce for everything else though.

Encrypt would fit thematically, and afaik it's currently underused anyway. So I vote for encryption to protect against virus hijacking.

That was my very first thought when I read Noseedam's suggestion.