A game turn is run every week on sunday around 17:00 GMT. Each game turn is devided into several phases:
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System Update
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Hacking |
Working
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Action Phase |
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Cyber Fights |
System Update
System Update covers all aspects that could be summarized as turns of non playing characters as well as general maintenance of the whole cyberspace. Stuff that might happen:
- System Reboot: A crashed system might be rebooted and start working again.
- Restoration of system access: A system that is closed due to a cyber fight going on, might open its doors again.
- House Cleaning: A system administrator tries to get rid of all hackers in his system.
- Random Events: If you spent time hacking last week (not trying to earn money) you are almost guaranteed to find some interesting tidbits.
Hacking
Not much that wasn't already told in the Guide to Hacking can be listed here. In the Hacking Phase all hack attempts take place in the order listed by the player. Note that all players hack simultanously.
Action Phase
The Action Phase is what covers the intrique phase of this game. There is a whole lot that can be done in order to change the gamflow of the next turn here.
- Trading Favors: You can share system weak points about systems you already have root access to, so others can more easily intrude similar systems.
- Phreaking: You keep a backdoor open for another hacker. He gets a free hack to that system next turn.
- Narking: You give a tip to a system administrator that he has hackers on his system.
- Crashing: You crash a system.
- Housecleaning: You try to clean a system from hackers all by yourself.
- Shopping: Buy new stuff like procs, libs and decks.
- Learning: If you got enough experience you can advance in skill.
Working
Alternatively to hacking and doing other stuff on the web in the action phase, one can also decide to do some boring old working in order to gain money. Money that can be used to do some shopping the next turn. Even a hacker has to do regular work, especially when he is young or when he lost his gear to a corporate raid.
Cyber Fights
A cyberfight usually has 1 of 3 reasons:
- A bad hack that triggered ICE.
- A malicious hacker that wants to remove you from a system
- A corporate raid against your home system.
It should be noted that a system that has a fight going on is excepted from all other actions that is no System Update will take place there and no hacks can be done until the situation is resolved. You can still hack through the system if you got an account there, as long as the fight is going on.
A Game Turn