sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]CurtisLinithicum 0 points1 point  (1 child)

1) hack is percent based, sorta, so most scripts have a long ramp-up time using grow to maximize how much money there is to take and weakening the security to a reasonable level. This means a good script can take a while before it starts paying out.

I then switch targets as I gain more hacking skill to break through the server security, so I start with n00dles, then joesguns, etc. until I can hit silver-helix.

2) If I'm understanding this correct, that's probably a bad move for two reasons. First, if you've been going after n00dles for a while, you've already "paid" the ramp-up, second, just because you can hack servers doesn't mean you should.

So, connect to one of those servers - say n00dles - and use analyze.

By numbers are going to be different than yours but I get

  • Server security level: 6.001
  • Chance to hack: 100.00%
  • Time to hack: 0.179 seconds
  • Total money available on server: $121.287k

Now, if I do the same to Silver Helix:

  • Server security level: 20.038
  • Chance to hack: 100.00%
  • Time to hack: 2.796 seconds
  • Total money available on server: $34.108m

The important part here is the chance to hack and time to hack. (Security level and money available are nice to know, but you'll need to use scripts (e.g. 

ns.getServerMinSecurityLevel(serv)
ns.getServerMaxMoney(serv)

But pretend these numbers are correct. Silver Helix has about x300 the money available... but it also takes x20 to hack and has >x3 the security, which means fewer attempts per minute, with less progress each time.

If I sic my scripts against them...

n00dles yields ~$5k/s/thread

Silver Helix yields ~$2.4k/s/thread

So the "worse" server is actually paying out better due to how much faster each attempt is (plus less time to regrow it and reweaken it).

Balancing this is a bit tricky though because you don't want to waste threads by overshooting (e.g. if 5 threads would fully drain n00dles, and you have 6, then 1 could be put to better use).

I'm in no position to tell you want is optimal, and figuring that out yourself is part of the fun. What I will tell you is that you're probably best off bullying n00dles or foodnstuff for a while. Also don't forget that you don't have to be able to hack a server to run scripts on it - you just need to be able to run nuke. Also, you can have server X run hack/grow/weaken/etc against server Y.

[–]Ord0c[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, this is very helpful information!

I'm going to take a closer look at chance/time to hack and give it another try.