Hacking - V0.3

This game is a cyberpunk'ish 80's hacker tribute roguelike called Baud. It is a team (multiplayer) game where you protect your mainframe (think: tower defense) while trying to bring down the other teams mainframe. One of the elements I wanted to capture was the notion of program cracking (defeating copy protection and altering a program) and hacking (unauthorized access to a system resource to mutate it) - this is after an 80's tribute where hacking and cracking things was part of the culture. I am trying capture these elements to make this interesting without going too far out there to the point of overcomplicating the game. But I wanted to give the players the ability to effect their surroundings for their (or teams) benefit. I think the corollaries in typical Roguelikes would be a potions, scrolls or spells (but I won't pretend to be an expert) - although I don't think most allow you to brew your own potion which is effectively what I'm allowing.

I'd like some community feedback on an early design idea.

Programs

Each program has two aspects to it  - plus  modifiers that can enhance it:

1. Abilities - stealth [ability to avoid detection], protection [ability to repel intrusion], attack [ability to do damage], damage [how much damage a blow does]. A program's abilities looks something like [SCCAD] - one stealth dice, two copy protection dice, one attack dice and one damage dice.
2. Objectives - instruction (purge, infect, protect, seek, tag, jump, stop), target (self, any, program type, specific instance), condition (none, aggressor, attacked) - e.g. ICE - (purge, player terminal, none) or (purge, any, aggressor). You can see how you can combine these things for interesting behaviors in a program. Some instructions like infect are added by Viruses (modifiers) and are not a part of the default instructions of a typical Core program.
3. Modifiers - additional elements that can be added to the program that gives the  program special or increased or decreased abilities or override it's Objectives depending on what it is. These are typically enhancements done by Operators or Runners and the modifiers can be found on both the AE's and at times on the Cores as treasures.   Modifiers can be temporary or permanent fixtures and can only be uploaded by players that defeat the programs security. An Operator has to only defeat its copy protection; a Runner has to defeat its copy protection and detection capabilities.  A program will not give a visual reference to the fact it is modified by default unless a program is running on the Player deck identifying this fact. 

Daemons

A program is an inert treasure sitting on the map (you will see it in lower case)- until it is launched (executed), at which point it becomes a  'daemon'  represented by an uppercase symbol or * in the case of ICE.  A Daemon can be spawned by an Operator on the core or the Core itself.  Think of a program as simply the code and the Daemon the execution of that program. 

If a  Daemon is terminated, the program and any Modifiers will be replace the daemon in the memory location. These can then be taken, deleted or launched.  If you launch a program after terminating it's daemon, any modifier attached to it prior, will have to be reloaded into the daemon again. Having said that, adding modifiers to a Modifier are only part of a program during execution (in the Daemon), so are left separately from the Program itself in memory post combat defeat.  

< Alternative Ideas  Considered - Boneyard - for now... >

Hacking/Cracking - V0.2

Cracking - using your abilities (a Deck in cyberpunk parlance), overcome the copy protection of a program and alter its abilities or objective depending on the capabilities your Deck has. You can swap a Copy Protection byte (dice) for another type. Other abilities allow you to alter the program's instruction, target, or condition. So the players themselves can make up programs to use in the game by altering in some way one that already exists.

Hacking - breaking into a running Daemon to upload a Modifier to alter the behavior or capabilities of an executing program.  Or...  perhaps swap out a program with a  cracked one you altered, to alter the daemons mission or behavior with .

A daemon is one or more programs running in a single process within the mainframe - it is a character in the game. The daemon decides which program objective to use based on range to an objective and whether or not it sees the condition to run it. e.g. If a daemon had these programs --> ICE: (purge, any, aggressor); Defender (protect, any, attacked). In this case, if the daemon can't see a player terminal, it would look next for attacked resources on the mainframe and go and defend them. If a player comes into range and is detected, well, then it goes after them. So you can see you can alter the makeup of the enemies you face or other players face.

Hacking/Cracking - V0.1

So back to the hacking/cracking:

Cracking - using your abilities (a Deck in cyberpunk parlance), overcome the copy protection of a program and alter its abilities or objective depending on the capabilities your Deck has. You can swap a Copy Protection byte (dice) for another type. Other abilities allow you to alter the program's instruction, target, or condition. So the players themselves can make up programs to use in the game by altering in some way one that already exists.

Hacking - breaking into a running Daemon to upload or swap out a program - may be a cracked one you altered, to alter the daemons mission or behavior.

Of course there is the ability to simply attack a Daemon and try to remove it, but I wanted to introduce something more deep than just simple "move, move, attack enemy, kill enemy, move, move".

Open to thoughts here....