Terms of play
The short version: be decent, play fair, and respect the mesh. Everything below is just that spelled out. This is a game a real person runs on real radios in a real community, so play like it.
Be decent
There's no rulebook the bot enforces for how you treat people. Just this: be decent. No harassment, no doxxing, no threats, no wrecking the game for everyone else. People on the mesh know each other and each other's public keys, so it's a small town, not an anonymous lobby.
There's no age restriction on the mesh, and no real way to add one, so assume anyone might be reading. Keep the channel chat clean: no vulgar or explicit messages. If you wouldn't say it out loud at the table, don't send it to the channel.
Cross any of that and whoever runs your mesh can cut your key off from N3T C0NTR0L. No bot, no game.
Play fair
The whole point is cracking the ciphers yourself, so:
- Don't automate it. No scripts auto-solving ciphers or firing off engages for you. Thumbs on the keys, same as everyone.
- Don't exploit bugs. If you find a way to cheat the scoring or the bot, report it to whoever runs your mesh. Don't farm it.
- Don't flood. Hammering the bot or the mesh with traffic ruins it for everyone and burns shared airtime.
- Don't impersonate. Don't pose as N3T C0NTR0L or as another operator.
The mesh is shared
These radios aren't only for the game. Other people use the same mesh for other things, and airtime is a limited, shared resource (more so on some bands than others). Keep your traffic light, don't spam, and remember that every message you send takes airtime away from everyone else on the mesh.
What's public, what's stored
The game keeps track of what you do so it can score and rank you.
- Public: your radio's public key and your display name show on the Roster, along with your rank and badges. Mesh handles are already public on the network, so the board just reflects what's already out there.
- Opting out: sending hideme takes your profile off the public Roster. It's display-only. Your captures and score still count, you just don't show on the board.
- Stored: the bot logs your solves, captures, and times so the game can work. That lives in the operator's bot, on their machine, and isn't shared off the mesh.
It's a game, run by a person
Z3R0B3A7 is a game, and someone is running it: a person who enjoys their local mesh and set up the N3T C0NTR0L bot and this board. They set the dials, they can reset the board between Cycles, and they have the final say on how the game runs. It comes with no guarantees, no prizes, and no warranty. It's here to be fun. Play it that way.