Choosing your Library carefully is one of the most important, yet most difficult parts of a cyber battle. One should never forget that the Library represents you. It is the only barrier you have to prevent physical damage to your deck or even your own body. It is also your instrument to channel your procedures through. So a library has to be extremely versatile. To make comparison easier all libraries share a common template form.

Click to open sample library in separate window.

First there is the name of the library.

Next you see the market price of a lib. A lib can be purchased at various shops for this amount of money. No negotiating about the price, sorry. One might however be able to buy a library used from another hacker.

There is also another 'legal' option to get a library for less money. Libraries by nature are designed with a heavy copy protection in effect. They also have to be encrypted for security in fight - so you won't find one without this sort of security. However every lock has it's key. For half the price of the original library various people offer hacks for them. So you can save 50% on your purchase if you somehow can get a hold of the library to copy it.

Then there is the school needed for a Library (the OS it uses). You need to have at least basic knowledge in said hacking methods to use the library.

The next two fields are the upload cost and the upkeep cost. Every library naturally consumes processor cycles of your deck. These two fields denote how many of them. The upload cost is at the name suggest the cost of the upload. Or in other words the cost in the first turn only. So for the Sub-666 you start with 12 less processor cycles then you normally had. The upkeep cost on the other hand is the cost needed to actually run the library. It is deducted all while the library is in use. Unlike the upload cost the upkeep cost is not an exact value. Depending on the system state a library might consume more or less computational power. The value in the list is the expected cost/turn (100 process cycles).

Sockets are your life. They are probably the single most important value of a library. They are your life points. Your wounds. The more sockets the better. Once your sockets are close to 0 you should get yourself out of the trouble. A warning at this place: A library is only designed for a certain amount of sockets. Overloading it with more connections won't work. Instead it will result in a feedback loop destroying more then you got.

Infiltration is also a very important aspect of a library. It is the only 'active' value. The percentage value denoted is the expected intrusion percentage per turn. However this only is true for an undamaged library. A half disconnected library (only half of the sockets remaining) will also only intrude half as fast.

Visibility is the 8th characteristic of a library. It represents how hard it is to hit a library. A value of 100 is the average stuff. Against a 100% visible library all procedures work as expected. A value of 200% on the other hand would deem a library to twice the vulnerability as normal. A visibility of 0% would equal invulnerability. A value that cannot be reached. Note that visibility only affects targeting other libraries (no matter if friend or foe). The own library can always be targeted easily (200%).

Armor is something similar as visibility, yet quite different as well. Visibility determines how likely you are hit. However if an enemy menages to target you are hit by full force. Armor tries to compensate this. Unlike the visibility, an armor always works. This property comes at a price however: Armor is only working against direct attacks. It will not prevent target, unprotect or other malicious procedures. In principle an armor works just like the visibility value. Just 'reverted'. So an armor of 0%, like for the Sub-666, does not absorb any damage. An armor of 50% would half the damage you receive. Finally an armor of 100% makes one completely invulnerable against direct attacks. Libraries with a rating of 100 are very very rare and expensive.

Resistance tries to do the same as armor. It does as well try to lessen damage if it is not diverted up front by the visibility value. As mentioned for the armor value it is not possible to protect from all effects this way. As such resistance works exactly like armor, but for other types of procedures. Namely target, soften and unprotect. It does so by encrypting the library. Unfortunately that does not come for free. It also prevents restore, evade, shield and protect procedures. So a resistance of 50% would make a target procedure only half as effective. It will also only restore half the sockets when reconnecting to a library. As a result a high Resistance value is only useful if you do not want your library changed during a duel. For weaker libs a low resistance value is often preferred.

The almost last of characteristics is the instability value of a library. This value also represents a kind of stealthiness of a library. When a fight is going on, one is not only attacked by the enemy, but also by the system itself. Instability shows the initial weakness of a library against the system itself. A negative value notes a library that not only hides perfectly, but actively tries to reclaim lost sockets. This is only the initial instability, however. After a time a system will slowly adapt better to a lib and target it more efficiently. Thus even a regenerating lib will be detected eventually

Next you see a big block of Performance percentages at different system states. It is a placeholder for very special libraries to be created in the distant future.

Finally there is the description of the library. It is just a text without impact on the function of a lib. It might however have some useful info like tactics or such.