Black Market: Fake Transponder Codes, Spoofing Software, & ATAC Verification Systems

Burnside

Master endo
Joined
Aug 23, 2019
Messages
308
#1
Black Market Item (implies enforcement jobs can interact with object states or some kind of contraband database): Fake Transponder Code; comes in three varieties

1) Junk Codes that grant all the benefits of an active transponder but show up on [some kind of scanner] as bad codes and read "Invalid Transponder Code" when players look at them, junk codes can be made with a simple (and often illegal) upgrade to a ship editor terminal

2) Spoofed Codes that hide your actual transponder code, tricking sensors that are just looking for a valid code, but show up as garbled characters so a player inspecting it knows what's up right away and can be turned into a junk code by station authorities, spoofed codes are difficult to make and have a varying quality dependent on a minigame where the hacker producing the spoofed code has to lock in the characters on the transponder's title which is always of variable length (tl;dr it's a random name slot machine, where you lock down each slot wheel in an random sequence), better upgrades to the ship editor terminal make the randomized stream of characters slower to change, less erratic, and extends the amount of time allowed before the minigame ends (spoofed codes that do not contain a certain percentage match to the game's database of player names become junk codes instead); a station authority performing the ATAC/license plate check job that wrongly labels a valid transponder as suspicious earns a demerit, docked pay, or whatever (players that have their transponders flagged in this way can read a notification from the station's transmitter), station security software performs the actual database check and takes a variable amount of time to complete based on the quality of the spoofed code- a spoofed code that perfectly matches an existing transponder becomes a Proxy Code

3) Proxy Codes that can only be made from a detailed hand-scanned copy of someone else's functioning transponder and are effectively treated as that transponder and are legally linked to the actual owner, if two identical Proxy Codes or a Proxy Code and its parent transponder are active in the same station safezone an alert can triggered by station security software.

Other Items: Editor Terminal Upgrades (Transponder Rootkit (Black Market Item); Rootkit Enhancers A, B, & C (Black Market Items); Transponder Verification Database Uplink, Grade 1 for Stations and a slower, smaller Grade 2 for bounty hunter ships; Transponder Verification Chipware (each chip can store and process a single flagged transponder code at a time); ATAC Security/Transponder Verification Job; and a sensor system capable of recognizing transponders, their codes, and being able to use the uplink and verification software in a yolol system as well as allowing transmitters keyed to the ATAC job allowing an interface with transponders codes to flag and analyze them and send flag notifications via the transmitter)
 

Burnside

Master endo
Joined
Aug 23, 2019
Messages
308
#2
P.S. I've just come to the startling realisation that outside of creating new items specifically to do illegal things, there's nothing in the game at the moment to provide for the creation of an actual black market or contraband to buy and sell on it. The closest examples are weapons or strictly controlling the market flow in and out of an asteroid mining operation that claims a large amount of rare ore (i.e. preventing others from mining the resource out from under their noses).
 
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