Welcome, friends, to the internet, that wholesome place of education and sharing knowledge for the good of all. Of community building and friendship across the boundaries of geography, of personal growth and- ok, look. You’re all hackers. You’re friends with other hackers, and enemies with different other hackers. Recently you got together with your friends and built a zone all to your own, where you can do, idduno, hacker stuff in peace and privacy. However you just learned that your rival hackers just did the same thing, and you can’t have that. No, in the name of hackerness and bragging rights, there can be only one top hacker group on this internet.
And that group better be yours.
Time to get together with your friends, your friends’ friends, and your friends’ viruses, and your friends’ friends viruses, as well as with your own viruses and get to winning this war.
After all, if they beat you they’ll never let you forget it. In preemptive vengeance for that, you need to beat them and never let them forget it.
So as people probably are realizing right now, this is an arms race in the style of Digimon Cyber Sleuth, Megaman Battle Network, Megaman Star Force, Code Lyoko, and other generalized cyberspace verses where the best remedy for your computer being infested with a virus is a large hammer and the willingness to use it on some program’s face equivalent.
Fight for the right to ‘ownz’ the internet in all its myriad clusters, seek control over the zones to trace down where your enemy has made their home, and then bring the battle to them to once and for all show everyone whom the best hackers are.
Just watch out for the Data Police as you do it.
RULES
It is in the zones and clusters of cyberspace where hackers wage war, and it is the clusters and zones of cyberspace that they wage war to control. Each Cluster is made up of more then one internal zone, and to control the majority of the zones within a cluster gives that group of hackers controlling influence over the cluster, which is a thing any group of hackers can find many uses for. Each zone has at least one, but usually more, control points, and a group of hackers is considered to control the zone once they have taken control over each control point within the zone.
However, it should be remembered that hackers are not the only individuals whom use the internet, and just because a group of hackers controls a zone does not mean that others do not travel through it or take advantage of its functions. It might technically be possible to, say, leverage control of the Maze of Utilities for a group to take personal control over all utilities linked to the internet, but few hackers are foolish enough to bring that amount of public outrage upon their heads. And the perils of openly maintaining control over MilSpec sectors is far from limited to the attention of the Net Police.
As such, these independent agents and members of the general public are likely to interfere with any operations and combat going on in the zones they work within or otherwise visit for good or ill.
Being as this is the internet, unlike most arms races there are no defined lanes or tracks that one must fight through to reach the enemy. If someone takes over the Amazon Commerce Forest, you are not thrown back into the Maze of Petrified Paperwork and unable to reach Application City because the enemy is between you and it. I mean, what, are you going to invade the router and then fight up through the modem? Don’t be silly. Instead, you can always attack any zone you like, baring special events or considerations. And of course, so can the enemy...
The Public Cluster
The public cluster is the area of cyberspace where the general public spends the majority of their time, thus the name. It is here that schools maintain their own virtual presences, cities and towns control their infrastructure and fail to prevent hackers from ensuring they always get green lights, and the general public hosts websites of their own for whatever purpose they might have. Like running their own forums, that always seems like a popular idea.
- Academic Complex
The sprawling Academic Complex consists of sprawling structures surrounding and surrounded by open greenspaces, where students (theoretically) go to learn and teachers (theoretically) go to teach. Also found here are vast libraries full of uploaded books, stores of overpriced educational material, ‘secured’ facilities for propitiatory data, and the esoterically equipped research centers where the actual work gets done. It is also here that new generations of hackers grow and practice their skills.
The Academic Complex has Two Control Points.
- Maze of Utilities
This maze could be underground or it could be above ground, but it’s impossible to tell from within these enclosed hallways. Twisting about and crossing each other without reason, the walls are taken up with readouts and controls for the varied public utilities that the public depends on for their day to day life. It goes without saying that uncareful disruption here could amass considerable public ire, but given the general rarity of common sense amongst hackers it is worth saying anyway.
The Maze of Utilities has Two Control Points.
- Public Forums
Floating platforms linked together by mazelike corridors in the void, the Public Forums are where the varied cities of the world established their cyberspace presence, and around them members of the general public established their own private websites. The Public Forums are also where most public and personally owned computers link to cyberspace, so it is always full of the general public and agents thereof.
The Public Forums has Two Control Points.
The Undernet
Just as there is a public facing area of the internet, there are also areas where the general public would be smart not to go. This ‘Undernet’, sometimes known as the Shadow Internet or the Dark Net, is where wild viruses breed and hackers plot and scheme. Or so it is said at least. It is also where old data goes to decay and die and rot and mutate into a horrible monster that might threaten the entire cyberworld. But hey, that’s someone else’s problem.
- Sea of Recycling
A literal ocean of old and decaying data, the floating platforms that make up the ‘ground’ in the Sea of Recycling are usually safe, but it’s not unknown for the paths between them to be flooded or just break. Watch your step. It is here that the binary goes to die, and you never quite know what might wash up on shore.
The Sea of Recycling has Three Control Points.
- Archival Sediment
When data in the Sea of Recycling gets old and dried out, it joins the Archival Sediment below. Over the ages explorers, collectors, hackers, and viruses alike have tunneled out a vast maze beneath the ocean in this sediment, and both great caverns and narrow tunnels await anyone who would explore the depths. Watch out for cave ins though, as no one ever said it was safe to venture down here.
The Archival Sediment has Three Control Points.
- Viral Jungle
Feral viruses need homes too, and it is in this digital jungle that they’ve made their home. Even the trees are infectious here, rogue viruses mutated and adapted until they’re entirely feral and the base form of cyber-space’s only ‘natural’ ecosystem. Many hackers are interested in this area for the remarkably deadly native viruses, but the same thing that attracts them makes this area remarkably hard to control. Beware of (digital) tiger.
The Viral Jungle has Three Control Points.
The Commercial Cluster
Just as the general public has a place in cyberspace for their own desires and purposes, so does what is popularly known as ‘big business’. Here you can find the big bucks waiting to be ‘acquired’, but that also means more competition. And more money to hire bounty hunters/buy security. Remember, don’t download that song without paying big bucks that the musician will never see. You wouldn’t download a car, would you? It’s usually a falsehood, but many hackers think of what they do here as a victimless crime.
- Amazon Commerce Forest
This sprawling rainforest canopy is where people order stuff online for special one day delivery, buy now while the deal lasts! Many people travel through these wooden platforms and suspended half vertical maze to find just the perfect product to spend their money on, but fewer venture into the trees to find the hidden root tunnel where the backend of all this commerce is managed. Though all this, one question haunts staff and customer alike. Has anyone ever seen the forest floor?
The Amazon Commerce Forest has Three Control Points.
- BitMines
No one is sure for certain what is mined in the BitMines, but big businesses are hungry for the product none the less. Here entirely automated mining programs excavate through the binary soil for whatever they can find, entirely automated refineries refine the goods, and entirely automated transport networks carry the goods off to whomever actually owns them. Rumor has it that the deepest tunnels connect to the bottom of the Archival Sediment. But then, rumors say many things.
The BitMines has Three Control Points.
- Application City
The big city awaits, and it especially awaits for those with big wallets. Look at all the applications one can buy for your phone or computer! Remember, trust the big flashing lights and spend spend spend, and then spend some more on micropayments. If gringy back alleys of the city are less traveled by the public, and many of the flashing and fancy buildings are hollow inside, well, that’s just part of the game of commerce.
The Application City has Three Control Points.
The Governmental Cluster
Just as the general public and big business has claimed a part of the digital world as their own, so has the government. It is here that your voted in representatives pursue their duties with the highest of standards, working night and day to pursue the desires of those who voted them in and representing the little guys to-pfff, sorry, I couldn’t keep a straight face. Well, anyway. Here lies the government for good or ill, and here lies the home of the World Data Police whom are always getting into other people’s business just because it happens to be against the law.
- World Data Police HQ
The shiny walls of this sector prevent the public from noticing that the walls are built from reinforced code and patrolled by a myrad of Guardbots.exe. These high security installations are where the next generation of meddling do gooders are trained and from where the highly trained Data Police Agents set out to do their annoying work. And less highly trained general data police… police. It is also where rogue viruses, uncontrolled intelligences, and anything else they don’t like is locked up, so it comes under not-infrequent assault. There’s a reason it has those walls and security programs after all.
The World Data Police HQ has Four Control Points.
- Petrified Paperwork Caves
It is said that the government runs on paperwork. it certainly generates enough digital paperwork to make a giant maze of petrified stacks of obsolete forms, where one must wind themselves through twisting corridors to the relatively more open work areas in search for someone to sign Permit A 38. Or was that the new Permit A 39 as laid out in circular B 65? Either way, this place has been known to send people mad, and rumors claim that one can find the fallen bodies of those who came before in the stacks…
The Petrified Paperwork Caves has Four Control Points.
- Mountain of Public Relations
At the top of this mountain lies the shining Buddha of Public Accord, whom can explain anything to anyone accurately, completely, comprehensively, and without raising tempers or leaving bad feelings. Unfortunately, only the truly enlightened can find the hidden paths to the top of the mountain, so most people have to satisfy themselves with the PR Agents and Marketing Directors that wander these paths looking for paying work. Oh, and sometimes the public storms the place when someone in the government makes a sufficiently large gaffe. Beware of torches and pitchforks when it’s mob season.
The Mountain of Public Relations has Four Control Points.
The Milspec Cluster
I’m sorry citizen, this subject is classified. We can not confirm or deny that these sharply dressed programs in their black garments and black mirror shades are government agents, nor that the military has taken control over this area of cyberspace. Be aware that trespassers will be shot, arrested, and then sued. And no, for the last time, we can’t give you directions to area 51.
- [CLASSIFIED] Dunes
Rumors of hidden government complexes buried under the sands here are certainly false. Those are somehow existent ancient mummy tombs, not government complexes, whom couldn’t get the budget to dig out that much sand. The government complexes, complete with digital barbed wire, digital guard dogs, and moats of black ice are built on top of the sand where their searchlights can pick out intruders from miles away. Remember to check for buried pyramids if you stub your toe.
The [CLASSIFIED] Dunes has Five Control Points.
- [REDACTED] Peninsula
These idyllic looking beachfronts have been officially denied to hide high security government facilities of redacted purpose, and there is certainly no hidden mad science labs submerged under the waves. Please ignore the SharkWithHeadLaser.exe security programs, they are nothing to be concerned with. And no, you can’t go surfing here, it’s private property.
The [REDACTED] Peninsula has Five Control Points.
- [EXPUNGED] Mesa
Rumors that the government has hidden a UFO in a high security facility on this Mesa has been widely concluded to be false by the general public. After all, how’d they digitalize it to get it to the facility? No, everyone knows that this is just the digital side to whatever base they’re actually hiding the UFOs, and the strange lights in the digital sky are just stuff they’ve reinvented from studying the UFO. I mean, everyone says so. Can they all be wrong?
The [EXPUNGED] Mesa has Five Control Points.
Once a side has controlling influence over at least half of the internet (where ‘control’, for this purpose, counts as ‘controlling at least half of all zones within a cluster’ to control a sector and ‘controlling at least half of all clusters active in the internet’ for having an overall controlling influence.) they can use that influence to localize the location of the enemy home zone, the location where they run their operations, and attack it. If you manage to conquer the enemy’s home zone, that’s it. You’ve won this war and won the game. Of course, if they manage to take over your home zone, that’s also it, you’ve lost this war and lost the game. If such a thing was to begin to happen, you are highly advised to counter-attack and disrupt the enemy’s controlling influence over the net by wresting some sectors from their control. With that successfully done, you may once again disrupt their trace attempts and prevent them from continuing to invade your home zone.
Hackers
None
Viri
Minion.exe
These roughly humanoid programs are neither very sophisticated (intelligence and coding wise) or very strong, but they are mass producible and smart enough to obey orders without continual direct supervision. Which isn't always something you can take for granted with generic digital constructs, as a lot of them are dumber then rocks. They're not coded with anything more powerful then a basic energy pulse pistol, but they can still defeat the average civilian whom thinks too much of themselves. Just avoid putting them up against Data Police Agents. (Simple)
Officer.exe
Based on the generally available in the Undernet Minion programs, Officer.exe constructs aren't much stronger then their lesser kin, still only coded with a basic energy pulse pistol, though officers also come with basic melee coding. But the big difference between and Officer and a Minion is that Officers are coded with noticeably more advanced bit-brains and have a basic tactical library integrated in their knowledge banks, allowing them to lead teams of Minions on operations without needing constant hand holding. (Complicated)
Autonomous Digital Intelligence
None
Battle Chips
Recovery 10
This tactical battle chip is designed to mend damaged and corrupted code, healing the individual it is applied to by a minor amount. (Simple, Memory 1)
Atk+10
This tactical battle chip pre-allocates resources to empower the next program used, improving the targets ability to deal damage for a short while. (Simple, Memory 1)
MinionCall A
This strategic battle chip creates temporary replicas of the commonly known ‘Minion.exe’ program, causing a short term burst of reinforcements in the targeted zone. (Simple, Memory 1)
An Arms Race game is a 2-team "suggestion" game about designing new weapons, items, and other objects for your nation's military. These designs will be routinely compared to the other team's arsenal in Battle Reports. The game is split into three phases:
Phases
A Turn (three months-ish) is divided into several phases, done in order.
Design Phase
In the design phase programmers design or domesticate new viruses, create or win the allegiance of new ADI/Navi, and craft, find, or steal new battle chips. You can also establish facts about your teams hackers, revealing new personality traits for them that effect their behavior in the field, or use a design to alter an already existing design at a larger scale or effect then possible in the revision phase.
To do so, people propose their designs, and then people vote on all the designs proposed. Whichever design wins the vote gets designed that phase. Please see the Successes, Difficulty and 2d4 spoiler for exact information on how designs are rolled.
Revision Phase
In the Revision Phase, you revise things already done in the past turns or otherwise acquired, either making work better, removing something’s flaw, or making a related but alternate form of whatever it is. Revisions can't make something new out of whole cloth, but they can certainly use technology developed after something was originally designed to rework it into something 100% more useful.
Deployment Phase
In the Deployment Phase people vote on which zone of which sector to send a team’s hackers to attack, or to do any other missions which might be available. Alternatively, if a special event is active, other options may become available in this phase.
The Deployment Phase is also where people may change which battle chips a hacker has in their chip library, which is also done by vote.
Flame War Phase
In the flame war phase hackers go out to achieve their assignments and you all get to wait for them to write up their reports on their victories, or at least reports which try to deflect all blame for any failures they experienced. Combat will always result in gaining at least one point of control over a zone, and if one has achieved a great enough victory it is possible to take more then one point of control in a single attack. Note, however, that combat does not always result in you being the one to gain points of control...
Being as all combat takes place on the internet between programs, there are not actually any resources, per say, that one must fight over sites to control. The BitMines might be a zone, but a programmer doesn’t actually need to mine ones and zeroes from it to craft their programs. Instead, programs have a complexity level which determines, in the case of viruses, how many of them may be deployed into the field or, in the case of battle chips, how often they may be used.
The four levels of complexity are…
Simple : This program is dead simple to copy and control, and a hacker can deploy essentially as many of them as they care to deploy. It should be remembered that sometimes ‘as many as they care to’ can be downright few.
Complicated : This program is complicated to create instances of and/or control in the field, but not too complicated. Hackers can’t deploy arbitrary amounts of complicated programs or use complicated battle chips at will, but they can still deploy a large amount of them/use it relatively often.
Complex : This program is a headache to create, control, or create and control. They’re still usable, but unless a hacker really really likes these programs they’ll deploy a pretty limited amount of them. Battle chips at this rating take a significant amount of time before they can be re-used, forcing careful consideration of when to deployment them.
Exceedingly Complex : If you thought a complex program was a headache, go try to put these ones to use. They’re positively migraine creating, and in the case of battle chips have so long a recharge time you might only be able to use them once or twice in an entire war phase, and so few hackers are willing to go through the bother of deploying more then a handful of these programs.
Stolen without shame from NUKE9.13’s Battle for Aljadid, which hopefully he will someday update, this game runs off two four sided dice, or “2d4”, which are rolled and compared to the below table to figure out how successful the design or revision in question was.
Roll (Probability): Result
2 (1/16): Utter failure. You get nothing except the knowledge of what not to do.
3 (1/8): Buggy mess. Whilst you managed to make something, it isn't really usable.
4 (3/16): Below average. It works. Not especially well, but it works.
5 (1/4): Average. You get what you asked for, more or less.
6 (3/16): Above average. It works, and somewhat better than might be expected. Not a lot better, mind.
7 (1/8): Superior craftsmanship. It does its job and it does it perfectly. Its performance is exceptional and it is as reliable as clockwork.
8 (1/16): Unexpected boon. Not only does it work, but it does things you never even expected it to. If no 'bonus features' make sense, then you just get experience with some related field.
As you can see, this system tends more towards the middle then the extremes, which, yes, means you are less likely to do super well and get something super cool, but also means you’re less likely to fail miserably, completely, and totally. And isn’t that worth some minor sacrifices?
As well, each attempted design or revision also has a Difficulty. These ratings assign a modifier (+/- #) to the roll, changing the effective result. The Difficulties in question are Trivial (+2, Requires no new knowledge at all and has no notable challenges involved), Easy (+1, Actions where some minor challenge is found but nothing really that hard), Normal (+0, Actions involving new concepts or technologies, or old technologies being made better, but nothing intentionally revolutionary), Hard (-1, Entirely new concepts or technologies not using what you already have, but already implied or based on what came before), Very Hard (-2, Actions involving entirely new stuff where you only have a tiny idea of what you are doing), and Ludicrous (-3, Ok, this time you have no idea what you are doing, but according to theory it’s at least possible. Maybe).
There is also the Impossible Difficulty, which means you flat out fail because whatever you are trying to do is impossible with your current understanding of the world. You’ll still get some experience though, as you bash your head against the invisible walls of science repeatedly, over and over again. As well as a few headaches. But I'm sure most scientists would believe that is a small price for progress, especially the kinds of scientists found contributing to arms races.
Hackers
Hackers are the most important part of an attacking force for all that they rarely ever personally get involved in combat. Instead, a hacker provides the necessary leadership to keep a swarm of questionably intelligent viruses on task and behaving, as well as providing direction and higher planning for said viruses. As well, hackers support their forces and champions more directly with Battle Chips from their chip library.
Being the leaders, a hacker’s personality traits are very important, as said traits determine not only how they do their missions, but what viruses they attempt to do their missions with. Sending the proper hacker to do the appropriate task can be the difference between victory and defeat, or victory and victory with a mess on the side.
When used on Hackers, designs allow you to either find new hackers with the personality traits you seek, or ‘clarify’ that an existing hacker already has that trait all along.
Viri
Hackers do not generally go into combat. Instead, they are supported by, and command, large swarms of subservient combat programs. These are popularly known as Viruses or Viri, and are a general plague upon the internet as many of them have some self replication capability and have gone rogue in the past.
These somewhat self aware digital monsters are probably what you will be spending the majority of your actions creating, and range from mobile suicide bombers through replica storm troopers to heavy fixed self-aware fortifications. Very few viruses have ever been fully autonomous, due both to the difficulty of creating such a program and most programmers not wanting to create something that they can’t put down if it goes rogue, and so they need guidance and command from more intelligent entities. This is where the hackers usually enter the picture.
Each virus has a complexity level, and more complex viruses are harder to replicate (or control, which is close enough as far as the averaged hacker is concerned), resulting in higher complexity viruses having lower levels of ‘actually showing up’ on the battle field. However, even the most simplest of the viri can not show up in infinite numbers, even if it can sometimes seem like they do, and depending on an individual hacker’s personal affinities, general strategies, and opinions low complexity viruses can sometimes be deployed in numbers lower then they otherwise could. Or, by the same token, a higher complexity virus might have the effort spent to deploy more then otherwise normal upon the field.
Autonomous Digital Intelligence
No matter how much some hackers wish it was otherwise, so far no one has found out how to allow and analog being of flesh and bone to transmit themselves into the internet and beat viruses up with their own bare hands. Instead, people have found it necessary to use agents and proxies to ensure their will is carried out in the digital world. For most people these agents take on the form of a Navi, or a Net Navigator, but other, far stranger, self aware digital intelligences are not unknown in the digital world.
Such agents will, in this war, take on the role of champions and generals for their less intelligent kin, and can possess far more potent power then the average virus. More importantly, with increased intelligence comes more flexible powers, and applications of said powers, then their generally script-minded kin.
While some Autonomous Digital Intelligences are entirely independent and self supporting, the ones deployed by hackers are generally payed and supported by said hackers in return for their services, and so will require dedicated memory like a Battle Chip. (See the Hacker’s Spoiler for more information on Chip Folders and Memory.)
Battle Chips
While continual function programs (IE, viri) are the most common, or at least most talked about tool of hackers, no hacker would be found without a ready library of useful executables. These ‘battle chips’ allow for instant application of pre-designed advanced effects on scales both tactical and strategic. Despite the screams of certain programmers about ‘that is now how computers work ieee’ it is a fact that once used, battle chips require a certain amount of time to recharge before they can be used again. For this recharging, simpler battle chips recharge faster then more complex chips, so the more complex a chip is the less often it can be used on a battle field, and the simpler it is the more often it can be used.
As said earlier, chips can work on both a tactical or a strategic scale. Tactical Chips are chips that cause effects useful in personal scale activities, usually used to support aligned Autonomous Digital Intelligences in combat or non-combat purposes. The iconic Tactical Chip is the GodMode.exe, which renders the user completely invulnerable while the chip runs its course and allows them to delete anything they touch at will.
Strategic Chips, as the name would suggest, are chips that function on the strategic scale of events instead of the personal scale. An example of a Strategic Chip would be Gateway.exe, which allows for the user to establish long ranged teleport gates that allow for bypassing of annoying areas of terrain and high quality strategic mobility. Other strategic chips can do things such as summoning reinforcements to the field, amplifying allied constructs in varied ways, changing the field in mass, and so on.
Each Battle Chip, besides their complexity rating, also has a Memory Size. This is how much space they take up in a hacker’s Chip Folder.
Hackers are the leaders of your organization and the programmers/managers of all the viruses and programs that do the grunt work. Each hacker carries around an assortment of unique tools they use for their tasks. This is more commonly referred to as ‘their chip folder’. At the start of the game each hacker has a chip folder with Five Memory, but this rating can be expected to increase as the game continues and your hackers get access to better gear and become better at programming more space efficient programs. Hackers often carry copies of the same chip in their folder as that allows them to use that effect more often, but doing that is always a choice between the reliability of consistency or the flexibility of more kinds of chips.
Do remember that each of your team’s hackers are individuals, not faceless cookie cutter mooks, and will have their own personality traits that determine what kinds of viruses they enjoy, how they go about their missions, and where and when they prefer to use their chips.
Also, before someone tries it, no, designing more hackers then you have attacks does not give you more attacks. You can send more then one hacker on the same mission, but they don’t get any more resources then normal, so that just halves the effect of their trait/decreases how often they can use battle chips/weakens their champions. Or thirds of you send three, and so on.
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http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=156417.0Discord Link :
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http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177891The Firmament Thread Link :
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177890
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