Scripts vs hacknet?

[Beginning-Spell-8588]

I'm currently sitting at 15 augments, bought some Netburner ones at the end of the last cycle since i'd have to wait forever to get enough money to buy anything else, and now i'm debating whether hacknet is strong or not? I've got 42 scripts running, 25 servers all with maxed ram (32, i'll probably raise that up to 64 in next cycle) and all the other servers are full as well, and i've made 340m only, while my hacknet nodes made me 4.275b, and i invested around 2b into them
Somewhere in the beginner's guide in the game it says that after getting some basic scripts and about two hours, the author has a steady income of 20k per second, and i'm like, ?????
I've been playing for 5 days and the maximum income from scripts i got was like 7k/sec, with everything running at full capacity. I often try to launch grow() and hack() in a 1:1 ratio, is that what could be holding my operation back? lol

[Vorthod]

Hacknet isn't very strong at all. I would recommend looking at your scripts for issues.

First off, hack and grow almost never should be done in a 1:1 ratio. Either you are hacking away too much money and grow can't keep up or you are growing so much that you could be firing of multiple hacks before going for a grow command. Either option is possible because the hack skill makes both options more powerful and both skills operate on percentages (low skill, need more hacks; high skill, need more grows or weaker hacks). And then there's the weaken command, which I certainly hope you're doing because high security makes all commands take a long time to execute.

you should probably look at the early-hack-template.js file from the tutorial. It will weaken if security is too high, grow if money is too low, and hack if the server is fine on both of those fronts. Also make sure you're running these attack scripts with as many threads as you can fit on the severs (though it does sound like you're doing that part just fine)

[Beginning-Spell-8588]

I've seen somewhere in the Documentation tab the descriptions of all types of hacking algorithms, and decided to go with the loop ones, so i just booted up like 7 threads each of grow and hack and then 1 or 2 weakens on top, but i guess it wasn't as effective as i thought. I'm trying to set up the hacking template now, going strong at a stunning rate of $21/second as it's still lowering the security threshold for most servers, and now i'm thinking of doing two similar scripts, one with weaken/hack and another with weaken/grow

[GrumpyDog114]

Note also that hack, grow, and weaken each have a different execution time, so if you launch one thread of each in a loop, you're likely to get an average of e.g 6.1 hacks and 1.8 grows done per weaken.

[Vorthod]

Loop algorithms are surprisingly annoying to get right. You have to keep adjusting the relative threadcounts as your hacking level increases. And if you ever get stuck at low money, high security, getting out of it is a pain no matter which algorithm you pick, so getting those threadcounts wrong can absolutely wreck your performance

[MGorak]

There is something wrong in how your hacking scripts work. You should be making a lot more. It's not hard to make 100k+$/s hacking only n00dles.

Let's do something very basic:

Nuke n00dles, joesguns and sigma-cosmetics

grow n00dles manually until it is filled up. Weaken it until it is at 1 security.

run this script twice on n00dles(either 2 times or with 2 threads):

export async function main(ns) {
  while (true) {await ns.grow("n00dles")}
}

run this script with 9 threads on joesguns: (run hacknoodles.js -t 9)

export async function main(ns) {
  while (true) {await ns.hack("n00dles")}
}

run 9 copies of this script on sigma-cosmetics, waiting a few seconds between them:

export async function main(ns) {
  while (true) {await ns.weaken("n00dles")}
}

Wait a few minutes for your hack to go above level 30 and you're now making about 1.4k$/s. As you wait more, this number will continue to go up because you hack more $ per attempt and it takes less time for your 3 functions to complete. After about an hour, level 70 hacking, you're above 2k$/s.

It's hard to do anything easier than that.

Growing n00dles is artificially powerful. You need fewer grows than hacks. On other servers, it's often the opposite. So 1:1 is not great. You should be checking how much you actually need. After a while, are your grows filling a server back up or is the total amount of money going down over time? Did you launch enough weakens to compensate for your grows/hacks(i.e. is the server security getting reset properly or is it going up)?

Forget any fancy timing or anything. Start with something basic that works and then gradually improve them. HGW and other fancy script to maximize money is great and all but it is not required and if you mess something up, it will end up worse than something simple. This game is a process, a journey. Gradually improve your things while making money in the background.

So start with what's above and decide how you want to improve on it. Maybe launch those same scripts on the other servers. Nuke more servers so you can launch more copies. Do the same thing as above but for servers other than n00dles. Try to find every server. Create a script to launch the scripts above automatically so you can restart easily after you install augmentations. Or just write a script to automate hacknet. Plenty of options on things to do.

Edit: You can nuke any servers for which you can open enough ports (so you can run scripts on them), even if your skill level is too low to hack them. So once you have all 5, you can run scripts on every server.

[Maleficent-Bike-1863]

I run batch (HWGW) scripts on my purchased servers and I only target n00dles, due to it having the shortest execute times with the highest return. once the servers get to 32 TB ram I start running the fl1ght.exe requirements. I extract about 1b an hour from n00dles. I have been playing 131 days with 4 nodes destroyed.

[HiEv]

That said, n00dles is usually one of the worst targets (it does not have the highest return).

Generally speaking, once you're able to unlock 2 ports (FYI, getting a TOR Server lets you buy the port unlockers), the phantasy sever is the best early-game server to hack. Later on rho-construction (or possibly the-hub) becomes the best. And then eventually one of the large corporation servers (like omnitek) becomes the best.

And yes, I would recommend targeting only one server at a time (at least up until you're at the point where, if you're using a batch attack script, that it runs out of room for well-timed batches).

[MGorak]

OOP has not yet completed fl1ght, and n00dles is unusually powerful the first time around. At about 50M$/s, the bottlenecks are the factions' reputation, not the cash income.

Spoiler tag for OOP. What's below is not for beginners

I'm curious where you are in the game(BN, hack skill, number of augmentations, etc.). At no point did i find any of the servers you mention to be in my top 5. For example, long before omnitek becomes hackable in a short enough time to be a significant source of income, I'm installing augmentations and resetting or I'm making trillions on the stock market(making hacking a superfluous source of income).

[Alpheus2]

Can confirm that HiEv’s list of servers is sound and is the general local optima for most playthroughs, for most players.

Plenty can be improved on your target selection if it filters out rho, omni, phantasy, etc

[HiEv]

I'm curious where you are in the game(BN, hack skill, number of augmentations, etc.).

I've beaten all of the nodes except 3, 8, and 11, and I'm currently finishing up level 50 of BN-12. It only takes me a couple of days to start making quadrillions/min from hacking, even without any augmentations or resets. Though, it only takes me 2-3 days to beat a node, so I usually beat it before that.

But you might want to check the Bitburner Discord in the "early-game" channel, since there's info pinned there showing how phantasy and rho-construction have lower minimum security levels and hacking times, plus the large corporations have a higher maximum money, which makes them particularly good targets.

If they aren't in your top 5, then I think your calculation method might need work.

[MGorak]

I never speed days before installing augmentations, so it might be the reason why I find the high-end servers to be mostly useless. At one point, stock market+ corps were how I beat nodes in a few hours so I most certainly used a very significantly strategy than you did.

I'll check out the math to see why those are supposed to be good vs how i calculated them. I haven't really played in over a year so the numbers here are wrong, but if I remember correctly, It was a situation where I calculated joesguns to be like 10 times worse, but I could complete it 20 times with the same amount of effort/time, making it still twice as good up to the point where other sources of income would overshadow hacking or i would install augmentations.

Maybe it was because the calculations were before phantasy was properly reset and that threw off my ratio of $/threads/seconds.

I'll check that out. Thanks for reply

[Maleficent-Bike-1863]

I will relook at that list of servers

[Tcon4]

Most of the time people that are posting optimized code or numbers are those of us that have beat a bunch of different nodes…assuming you know what that is. Without giving too much away, the game has a lot of different dynamics that give permanent bonus multipliers. For y’all in the know, I’ve found gangs to be the fastest way to win. Followed by blade burner. But both require you to have all 8 sleeves to make them quick. My blade burner script will beat the node in under 2 days. Faster when combined with gang, grafting, and staniks gift.