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Another level of SIC encryption
Obscures your alias as well

The one problem with SIC encryption is that others can still see that you are talking on SIC even if they don't know what you're saying.

How about stronger, more expensive encryption keys that can also change the alias, encryption name, or both. The alias/name would be scrambled, much like the message, to everyone who doesn't have the key.

I think that ruins the point. This is a game. Things should be fallible. You could always switch your sic around after all.
Yeah.. if you want communication that isn't visible on SIC, and don't want to pay for private SIC, there are still options in game. Otherwise the idea would basically make encrypted sic over-powered.
My problem with the idea is less to do with game-balance and more that... it doesn't seem logical to have such a thing. This kind of SIC encryption would obviously be largely used to cover illicit activity... Why would that be supported? A more legal use might be to scramble law enforcement aliases but if they're the only ones to have it then it removes the point entirely because it's a dead give-away that law enforcement activity is spiking when SIC floods with scrambled aliases.
And people already do change their alias when using certain encryption keys, so it's obviously not necessary to be coded to work in a practical sense. And the process leaves them vulnerable to someone stealing their alias, keeping a coded downside to the coded advantage.
I can see kind of where you are coming from, but one thing I understand is that what we as players read are actually Voices to the character. So, our characters are technically Hearing all this chatter across the public sic. The encryption isn't read but heard.

I personally, when I hear people speak, begin to recognize their voice and can eventually associate it with someone, even if I've never seen their face. The encryption just seems to do the job of scrambling the voices, not changing them. I gather the system also evens the voices out (make less feminine or masculine) as it is thoughts, not our own vocalized speech, which come across, & which can also accounts for some people thinking others are female or male at first and discovering they are not later.

Hopefully that, along with the above posts, helps.

SIC isn't audible speech in any way, you don't hear the person's voice or even their accent or gender, unless they integrate it into their normal thought patterns.
Interesting. I must have been misinformed.

It is other's thoughts, not something flashing before our eyes. That is why I used the term "hearing" though technically it is a thought, not a voice. Plus, there isn't something for our character's eyes to read that I can think of. No screen our character's body's eyes read from.

This was my understanding.

http://www.sindome.org/wiki/index.php/SIC

"The implant, a tiny microchip implanted near the C3 vertebra at the base of the neck, transmits chosen thoughts through the SIC network."

Admin have specifically said there is no audio component to it.
That's right. It is thoughts.

Thank you.

It's a leap that's necessary to make since IRL our thoughts / 'mental voice' is tied directly to our speech center and uses the same parts of our brain and body as when actually speaking, but in SD the SIC does not use the audio component of that. So thoughts are abstracted out, and they are even language translated, so unless someone thinks in heavy slang, you cannot automatically tell a non-English speaker from a native English speaker on SIC. Makes not a whole lot of sense in real world logic, but gameplay logic trumps everything else.
You know, I wasn't going to reply again, but I'm laughing a little bit here.

You and I are thinking the same thing. I know exactly what you are saying.

I happened to try to communicate it more simply and used "hearing" as that was the closet concept *I* could think of at the time to communicate the idea that we aren't reading anything, but that the thoughts are, well, there.

I do understand completely what you are saying, which is why I am laughing at this.

Good show.

Personally , i'm not for this idea. There is already an abundance of sic encryption floating around to the point where it becomes a red wall of death on the eyes.

I know i personally am biased against sic encryption and i would rather see the sic encryption become less safe and see ways to bypass or break into certain keys by people with the correct skillsets. Adding even more layers on sic encryption will mean even more red spam with no usefull information to the other people. I wouldn't be suprised that sic encryption has more lines of text than normal dialog on the sic.

However the sic encryption gives the sic an feel of always being active and that is good.

If you want other means of communication that doesn't show up publicly , there are other ways. All of these have flaws. As well as the sic encryption or communicating via the sic in pm have their flaws.

I feel the only risks to sic encryption is that someone in the group reveals a crypto key and then you only have to switch to a new key, at a cost. Other than that evrybody knows that you are talking to someone else, unless if you switch your sic alias.

i would rather see the sic encryption become less safe and see ways to bypass or break into certain keys by people with the correct skillsets.

Never assume something already doesn't exist just because you haven't experienced it first hand. ;)

I am considering adding a command to let you 'tune out' the encrypted messaging should you want it quieter. I would probably leave the start of the message (with the useful bits) and ... off the randomized characters at some point. At least making the lines shorter and less disruptive.
Now that encrypts are much less spammy, how are we feeling about this?
It's still a lot of chatter sometimes, but it's definitely far more manageable. It's not nearly so easy to lose yourself in spam, and it's much easier to notice encrypted messages you have the key for.
I still have the same reservations about the (original) idea in this thread as before.

The shorter SIC messages is a definite improvement but doesn't have much bearing on the OP, in my opinion.

As the game grows there will be an increasing need to be able to simply ignore the encrypted chatter you don't have access too.

Would you guys like to see a blanket encryption ignore command or would you prefer to filter out encryption one by one.

IE: ce off <-- turns encrypted visibility off for ALL encrypts you dont have

OR

IE: ci Encrypt-Name <-- ignores JUST that encrypt.

For some of us, even knowing that communication is happening over a specific encrypt is important info. For some of us it's not.

What would be the most useful?

Now only very short messages are sometimes lost in the chatter. But as to the original topic, I feel that we should stick to what we have. As previously stated there are ways to communicate not over SIC if the situation calls for that level of secrecy.
It would be FAR more useful to ignore specific encryption keys for the same reasons you gave.
I feel that north would be useful. Blanket would be more convenient, but specifics would be the better option.

I am constantly influenced by SIC encrypted chatter, so ignoring all wouldn't be something useful to me at all.

But the ability to choose to ignore a specific key could be quite useful.
I wouldn't mind seeing the length of unknown keys randomized, rather than the fixed short length we have. It would make it look a bit more natural, and avoid creating a 'block' of messages you automatically ignore and potentially miss some short messages you could actually see.
Both options are viable Slither. "Ce off" blanketing, then being able to then select individually to turn certain ones back on. But as for the OP, there is absolutely no reason to scramble aliases as well as the message. You can already do this ICly on your encryptions, provided the others with the key are intelligent enough to figure out who is sending what message.
I will not permit you to ignore it, sorry folks.
What I'd really like to see with the SIC is a legitimate reason, backed with common knowledge, why your character may have it be inactive while your character would otherwise be awake, but you are not around to play.

If I take a day off, my character is certainly not going to sleep for an entire day. I hate when people say other characters are sleeping -all the ****ing time-. It just doesn't make sense from a realistic standpoint. Unless it does make sense from a realistic standpoint, but then there needs to be a common reason for such a thing happening.

As far as I know, in 2099, we don't all need days of sleep at a time to recover from being awake for a couple hours.

Anyone who doesn't play every day is obviously playing a heavy sleeper? :-D
That's honestly what it feels like half the time!
What I'd really like to see with the SIC is a legitimate reason, backed with common knowledge, why your character may have it be inactive

Well, are ca <newalias>, cignore chat, and brownouts legitimate? They explain missed messages when someone's awake - people can avoid ccoms, ignore/block reception of ccoms from psecific senders, ignore ALL coms, or be offline, all while awake.

Plenty of people actually do these things while awake. Why not while "at work" too? There was a time when that used to be the conventional IC explanation for where people were all the time - "at work", "in the Wastes", "hustling secrets", "I was fucking busy, baka" - whatever takes them out of my face where I can't see them.

What I'd really like to see with the SIC is a legitimate reason, backed with common knowledge, why your character may have it be inactive

I have an opinion on this too but I'm taking it to a different thread.

whoops the second quote should have been the one about people sleeping all the f****ng time. Look for a post in either the Theme section or the Game Problems And Complaints section, I haven't decided yet.
Because only brownouts take you off the SIC, and some characters have legitimate reasons they would -never- be in one.
Brownouts are not the only reason someone might be off SIC.
I'm paranoid and huddle under my modded tinfoil hat to protect me from the corporations trying to steal my thoughts.