Untrusted Strategy Guide for Agents

This guide is going to go through all current agent faction roles.

• AL = Agent Leader
• FA = Field Agent
• RC = Resentful Criminal – Dispose of him before he kills your AL
• BH = Bounty Hunter (rarely Blackhat, don’t use this nickname as a Blackhat) – Somewhat allied with you
• SK = Script Kiddie – Can be worth arresting if you desperately need information, although you may have better targets
• RH = Rival Hacker – Allied with you, DO NOT ARREST THEM
• OL = Operation Leader – Priority Target, must be arrested to win off time or through root.
• IM = Inside Man

As agents, you have a total of 3 ways of winning.

1. Arrest the Operation Leader and run Netsec out of time
2. Arrest the Operation Leader after one of your members was granted root
3. Eliminate Netsec entirely

You are generally the individual calling the shots in terms of ordering your faction’s members around. However, coordination is key, and you will need to inform your members in order to increase your chances of victory. Informing your Field Agent of what your cover claim is and any conversion immune or neutrals that you find is important to stay ahead of Netsec.

What you claim as AL depends on 2 things, what you rolled for your day ability between Unskilled Attack, Hack, and Denial of Service as well as what your cover role is for the first three days. The first decision you will likely have to make is whether or not to ditch the cover class for your role if the abilities do not line up well. Things like enforcer and CCTV specialist do not work well with your class abilities and are rather hard to fake. If you rolled a hacking skill, you can reasonably claim Blackhat as you do have a decent amount of overlap with that particular class and OL likes handing Blackhats root, which will grant you the immediate win upon their arrest. Social engineer and Spearphisher are relatively fakeable classes in general. If you rolled Denial of Service faking a class just became a whole lot harder in terms of node logs. You can prevent people from discovering you do not have a valid hacking ability for two days with Denial, but after that it becomes painfully obvious.

Do not go for a convert on someone who successfully hacked a node day one, go for someone who claims to have failed or wait a day. You risk hitting a blackhat or journalist and the cooldown is brutal for your faction on failure. Journalists often open claim though so if you see a journalist claim feel free to go for someone who claims to have failed that node. Using your faction check ability can save you the trouble of failing a convert on a neutral class and increases your chance of gaining a successful strike deal. If you fail a convert, have your FA arrest the target (preferably) or perform a sting on that target (if known publicly as OL or Blackhat with protecting classes still alive) as the only neutral class that is directly on your side and not immune to arrest is Rival Hacker and that class is not immune to conversion.
You may wish to save your convert until you know who the OL gave root to in an attempt to convert them and arrest the OL to win, but in games with less than 12 players, you only have 1 successful convert charge, so use your best judgment. If your FA gets voted out early and you have no charges of strike deal, you are encouraged to use all in, although be forewarned if you claimed Blackhat it becomes much harder to keep up your claim.

• CCTV Specialist
• Enforcer
• Inside Man

• Analyst
• Network Specialist
• Social Engineer

• Improvised Hacker – Any Field Ops that uses Desperate Measures starting from day 4 onwards
• Spearphisher

Coordinating arrests with your Agent Leader’s intel will advance your faction towards victory. You are tasked with the dirty work and have no cover from faction or ability checks for hacking abilities so do not draw suspicion upon yourself unnecessarily, as your arrests are crucial to thin out dangerous Netsec classes and hostile neutrals.

You’ll have to make a decision early on whether or not to go with an enforcer claim or not. Generally people who are on node logs are less suspicious than people who aren’t in my experience, and your Planned Raid ability is more useful to throw suspicion on legitimate enforcers than to successfully claim enforcer.
If you can coordinate with your AL on the night they rollback, you can use a different day ability than your unskilled attack. Watch out for analysts who can out you as a fake hacking class and other Netsec classes that have faction checking abilities.

High priority targets for you to arrest or have the AL convert include various investigative and observational Netsec classes. Blackhats are high priority targets for arrests as they will more often than not be successful at hacking nodes and are very good at stopping your AL from using rollback.
Analysts can and will ruin you if you attempt to claim a hacking class and they attempt to verify it. Eliminate that class as soon as it is safe to do so. If the OL is not publicly outed and you know who they are (through a failed plea deal attempt), you may wish to hold off 1 night with an arrest or sting as OL has an ability to defend himself and make you waste your arrest as they already know that an attempt was made to strike a plea deal with them. You must have the original OL eliminated in order to win, so do whatever you can to remove them from the game.

Your sting ability should be used on someone who you suspect will be followed that night, gaining you extra arrests and becoming closer to gaining majority. Good targets to perform this include any high priority target, someone who is the subject of a Netsec investigation, or when you must gain multiple arrests at once in order to achieve victory. Specific Netsec roles that may be worth using your sting on include the CCTV specialist if you suspect they are being watched since that class has the ability to singlehandedly bring your entire faction down if Netsec still has majority, Operation Leader as they may be watched or followed, or any protected or high priority target.

The mole class has 3 subtypes depending on the class you originally were when converted.

1. Field Ops
2. Investigative
3. Offensive
4. Runaway Snitch – If you’re the only Agent left

It largely depends on trustworthy you were beforehand, as keeping up your now former class logs is somewhat difficult depending on what class you were before the law knocked on your door.

Your ability set is good at stopping any improvised hackers or Inside Men from Dumpster Diving, figuring out people of interest through your follow ability, or spying on a known Operation Leader’s email box. Your ability set tends to be weaker although when needed can become invaluable during the final days, especially as you have the ability to prevent a player from performing their network affecting day ability with Jam Network. Follow and Wiretap are your best abilities and your vote and information shared with your Agent Leader and Field Agent can be the difference between victory and defeat.

You don’t have as many abilities as the other classes, but yours are better for causing chaos and forcing known protection classes to target other individuals, making them suspicious and taking the heat off your allies. Impersonate can be used to sow doubt among players if used well, too much and it becomes obvious someone is spoofing. It also can be used to help assist a fake claim by your Agent Leader or Field Agent if they’re in a bind. Setup is good for keeping enforcers and other dangerous classes off your allies.

Your ability set is arguably the best at delaying the ongoing hack. Rolling back a node can rile Netsec into mobbing any outted journalist, but be forewarned any smart players will be suspicious of offensive classes from that point on. Harden Node is a good ability to use on chokepoints that Netsec is close to hacking. Midnight Meeting can be used to shut down an enforcer on the night your Field Agent must get an arrest on an important target, or to prevent the Operation Leader from protecting another class. Wipe is fantastic to stop Inside Men from giving Netsec a secondary objective that could ruin you, or just cleaning logs to make it less obvious who is a hacking class and who is not.

You’re in a bad situation to reach this point, although it’s not all over. Pulling out a solo win requires that you or your deceased agent allies have at least removed the original Operation Leader from the game. You have no abilities that can directly confirm you depending on what class you were originally but your Snitch to Cops bypasses following abilities and you have 5 charges of Unskilled Attack to keep up a hacking claim. Disorganized Murder can be used to claim an enforcer, but be forewarned if Netsec has no other targets they may vote you out to be safe.
You have no direct allies other than Rival Hackers. It’s a matter of whether or not you wish to risk your life attempting to gain the allegiance of Journalists and other Neutrals, as every neutral once their objective is finished wants the game to end to eliminate their chances of death or arrest.
Do your best, and never give up.