So on your cyber panel some blinking lights and words painted in red.

Like Backdoor, Phalanx, Gentlemen's Welcome, etc.

Not to worry! Better yet, start clicking those arrows on the left. Collapse all the junk information about the viruses to see how many you actually have incoming. They might be hiding at the bottom of the screen!

As long as there is no fat red stripe/square on the right from the virus that attempts to attack you - you are safe! A good cyberdefence might force some viruses to waste all attempts and not even go through into phase of attack until the last moments of the virus'es lifespan. But even a weak defence will buy you some time to collapse all the junk data.

Now it's time for the show to start! Pick the virus that compromises your team the most. Now click on the red stripe next to its name. If you did not misclick then something like that will show up in your face:



Whoa! That's a lot of numbers!

Is your screen still there and did not blow up in your face?

Are you still alive/functioning?

Is your ship still in one piece?

Yes? Good. Now lets get to work! Shall we?

Let's see what we can see here.

You see those grey-ish numbers on the top left?



Yeah! These! These are your friends. This is a solid pattern. Let's analyze it real quick.

We have here...

| 53 | 53 | 55 | 56 |

Why does it matter? Well. This is your way to find a "fake" number in all of those other numbers. Those four numbers create a pattern of three fluctuations.

Let's take it from the top. 53 to 53. That's +0. 53 to 55. That's +2. And 55 to 56. That is +1.

We have a pattern!

| 53 | 53 | 55 | 56 |

Turns into:

| +0 | +2 | +1 |

Memorize those three numbers in your head quickly

Zero-two-one.

Zero-two-one.

and we can proceed.

Alright! Let's brace ourselves and move closer to the screen once again in hopes that it won't blow up in our face.



We see two rows. That's not very comfortable for the explanations sake. I will glue them into one.

| 53 | 53 | 55 | 56 | 56 | 58 | 59 | 59 | 60 | 62 | 63 | 63 | 65 | 66 | 66 | 68 |

Still remember the pattern from before?

Zero-two-one.

Then lets get started! We will start from first sure number into uncertain territory. Ready?

56 (+0) 56, 56 (+2) 58, 58 (+1) 59, 59 (+0) 59, 59 (+2) 61 No, wait! It says: 60

We've found the number that breakes the pattern!

Quickly click on it to neutralize the negative effect of that virus to your ship computer!

If you were successfull you will get a short message. Confirming that it was indeed the culprit number of the pattern.

If you failed in following the pattern and picked a wrong number then a negative message will pop up. You will lose your progress on this manual removal and will have to start another attempt from the beginning. Thankfully there is no cooldown period between attempts so feel free not to be pressured into working on the peak of you abilities all the time.

Why are you still here? Feeling a bit intimidated still? I see. Well. I know how to fix it! Follow me! I will give you a few more of those patterns to work on in a calm controlled enviroment before you will try to do the same while your captain screams in panic and your ship being blown up to smithereens.



If you chose 84 then you are correct!



If you chose 61 then you are correct!



If you chose 52 then you are correct!



If you chose 65 then you are correct!



If you chose 51 then you are correct!

Well. I hope that cleared any doubts you had in you about your ability to manualy counter the viruses when ship has no power to spare for cyber-defence or scrap to upgrade the firewall.

Get out there and show them what you've made of!

As always. Leave a "Like", take a hike or whatever. I hope it was enjoyable to read and maybe you even discovered something new for yourself! This guide will be corrected from any errors in the future. As for now that will do. It's better than nothing! Have a good day!

Hello! Creator of the guide here. Just ignore this if you're here for the information and knowledge.

History of creating this guide was quite straightforward. One day I just got fed up with the fact that developers have forgotten to include the hacking mini-game into academy for science role.

I got a bit of encouragement from the user Riff. A very talented and friendly captain and a helpful member of the community as well. He has some amazing and fast guides in "How to XXXXXX in XX Seconds" series that as practice showed I cannot improve or replicate. He-he. You should check them out! You might learn something new. Even if you don't it won't cost you a lot of time. Riff was a big help supporting me through the stages. I'm glad I had a pleasure to have such a friend.

I saw some clips from Star Trek: Next Generation on video hosting service and noted that character called Data had some pretty interesting spectrum of facial emotions. So I decided to spice the guide with them. I hope nobody minds. They suppose to represent how I first felt figuring out how the bloody heck that mini-game works. Yes. I'm not the sharpest tool. He-he.

I also was partially emotional at the moment so this guide is made in this goofy hand-holding personal style. I usually don't write like that. I'm usually staying on an objective side of things and use "one would, that's not how one does it, not how it is done, not advisable" ways and such. If I didn't know I wright this myself I wouldn't believe.

I never. Ever. Ever have leaned anything from just words or writing and doing nothing for a long term. Public school system was a major challenge for me in life. So I decided to incorporate a practice section into the guide as well. Just in case someone has the same problem as I do. And with puzzle-nature of the topic it sort of asked for it.

"These people are trying to hack me!" is a reference to Homestar Runner "These people are trying to fade me!" music video.

"I have a red stripe, Ray!" is a reference to Egon Spengler from the movie Ghostbusters and his straightforward manner of speech when responding to his college Ray Stantz's requests.

Well. I guess that about covers it. I don't think I have anything else to add. I hope that satisfied your curiosity on the matter. Feel free to leave your questions in regard to this guide in the comment section if you have any. If I see it I will try to answer it. Thank you for reading this far! Good luck!