Development Roadmap

This roadmap explains where Silicon Pirates stands today, and where it's heading. It's split into two parts: what's already shipped and playable right now in the free browser build, and what's still ahead, some of it self-funded, some of it accelerated by outside support.

Already Shipped, Playable Today

Everything below is live in the free browser build right now, not a promise for later. Play at sp.silicon-pirates.com.

• Daily missions for everyone (2026-08-14): Shards, streaks and the cosmetic track accrue from the first minute with no account -- registering (free) is only needed to convert Shards into Chips, and brings everything already earned with it
• Quick Start (2026-08-14): one click builds a small working rack -- PDU on the grid, server and router wired, powered and online, first contract accepted -- at real catalogue prices, for players who'd rather learn by poking a live setup
• Corp drills (2026-08-14): practice intrusions with the stakes removed -- full alarm and defence for players who haven't opted into live hacking, nothing ever taken, a credit reward for the traced repel, and its own off-switch
• While you were away (2026-08-14): services keep earning at half the measured live rate (capped at 8 hours) while the tab is closed, collected on return
• Rack alerts by email (2026-08-14): optional, registered players only -- a raid or break-in sends a real email, with a no-login one-click unsubscribe
• Live multiplayer raids (2026-08-03, opt-in): a won breach opens a live raid, not a lump-sum payout -- the attacker stands in the defender's rack for up to 8 minutes, walks it one cable at a time, and must hold still 30 seconds at a device to take anything, while the defender gets a scanner, per-device cable cuts and a contested duel. Loot is a partial cut of money that already exists, never anything backed by real money and never a total wipe; a player who isn't at their rack can't be raided, a robbed player gets a two-hour shield, and staying opted out is the default
• Corp racks -- AI-run opponents (2026-08-03): computer-run corporation racks live in the same directory as real players, so there's always something to scan, breach and raid without ever touching another person's rack
• Blackport Institute of Technology: an in-game school of seven courses on power, thermals, networking, storage, security, raiding and the terminal, each ending in its own practical exam that pays Lab Credits, awards a certificate, and permanently discounts the hardware it covers
• Player profiles: biography, picture and a public cabinet of certificates and diplomas, with uploaded images reviewed by a human before anyone else sees them
• Gambling Server and the house slots: published odds (93.5% return, ~28% hit rate), an hourly jackpot, and a global jackpot shared by every player that starts at 100,000 credits and announces its winner to everybody
• Full 18-device rack roster: PDUs, UPS, routers, firewalls, switches, NAS (3 tiers), servers, AI compute, crypto rigs, hosted game servers, terminal servers, KVM consoles, and a Comm Device -- each a real, individually-purchased unit, not an unlimited unlock
• Real power distribution, grid simulation, PDU/UPS overload risk, and brownouts that knock out a grid slot until a genuinely-charging UPS carries the load
• Real utility billing: an hourly bill that swings with both your own load and real time-of-day peak/off-peak pricing, with genuine disconnection (and a paid reconnection) if it goes unpaid too long
• Overload fires that can spread from an overloaded PDU to every device plugged directly into it
• Layered networking: routers, switches, DHCP, ISP uplink, and a live bandwidth graph driven by your actual hosted-game players, AI rentals, and mining activity
• NAS storage with real capacity, growth, sharing, and failure states, plus a rack-wide storage overview showing exactly how much is unprotected right now
• A full terminal command system, including man documentation across 20+ topics, scripting, and cron automation
• Custom racks and cross-rack cabling for multi-rack setups, including full cross-rack PDU/UPS power sharing -- a device powered through a cross-rack link behaves identically to a locally-powered one in every system (degradation, thermal, disaster recovery, revenue)
• Three recurring hacker collectives (one assigned at random per rack, each with a distinct full personality -- a comedic broken-English crew, a cold corporate-clinical outfit, and a chaotic Gen Z collective): ransomware, a mailbox, and a hackback path
• A full offensive and defensive hacking loop: firewalls and Heat/Reputation on defense, a rotating target board and scan/exploit/steal tools on offense
• A darknet market for grey-market parts and exploit kits, plus a separate used device market with fluctuating, rolled-condition pricing
• Client contracts, including black-box security audits that actively trigger a fault to test your response
• Disaster recovery via NAS mirror shares
• Device degradation, thermal modeling, and random faults -- degradation now only accrues from genuinely sustained overheating (a brief spike leaves zero wear), and continued neglect while both degraded and still overheating can permanently destroy a device; cooling down at any point resets that destruction risk to zero
• Recoverable software faults: watchdog-error and stack-overflow are a distinct fault class that never takes a device offline and never touches its uptime -- clear them for free via a diagnostic-sequence repair mini-game (or Instant Repair), no restart required
• Rack uptime streak: a live clock tracking how long your rack (4+ properly configured devices) has stayed genuinely healthy, visible on both desktop and mobile -- a recoverable software fault or an intrusion attempt never breaks it, but a degraded or destroyed device does
• Auto-Repair Protocol: a per-rack chips subscription that automatically clears one eligible fault or degraded device every 30 real minutes, with real limits (a fixed cooldown and a fixed exclusion list, never a way to remove all risk) instead of an escalating cost
• Welcome Tour: a brief, skippable 7-step primer on rack basics, purchasing, cabling, power, contracts, and where to find help, shown once on a new session and replayable any time from the account menu -- on both desktop and mobile
• Terminal-tracked achievements that pay a real one-time cash + Reputation bonus the moment you earn them
• A fully playable DOOM easter egg inside the simulation
• Player Reputation rank badges shown wherever a player's name appears, including Marketplace listings, not just your own HUD
• The Comm Device: own and power one to open a live directory of other genuinely active players, real usernames, Reputation rank, and how recently they were online, the first real step toward multiplayer
• Dark Room mode: dim the rack view to real low-light lab lighting with every LED and cable glowing bright against the dark, free for every player tier
• Anonymous session persistence: your rack saves and resumes automatically, no signup required, plus a one-click Reset Save (Chips you've bought are always kept)
• A premium shop (chips) with real purchases: device/rack skins, full-UI accent themes, a custom rack nameplate, a Hacker Ward, an Insurance Policy, an Auto-Repair Protocol, a Device Insurance charge, and a one-time Cable-Tie Auto-Organize (routes power cables down a left rail and data/network cables down a right rail instead of free-hanging physics), plus a same-value chips option to escape active ransomware -- cosmetic, convenience, or an alternate route to the same outcome, never pay-to-win
• Hardware upgrades: install real, priced upgrades onto an AI Server, NAS, Router, or Crypto Rig you already own -- GPU Risers, extra disks, a RAID controller, a VPN module, a 3-tier Hash Board -- either from that device's own panel or a dedicated drag-and-drop Upgrade Console, with a real jumper switch on every installed upgrade to suspend it without losing the purchase
• A private Notebook: unlimited pages of real rich text (bold/italic/color/headings/lists), full search across every page, insert a live snapshot of your whole rack or a single device right into a page, link selected text to another page, and download your entire notebook as a real .txt file to your own computer whenever you want a permanent, off-site copy
• Mobile companion: a genuinely full-featured build at sp.silicon-pirates.com/m/, sharing the exact same account and save as the desktop browser build. Rack view and device placement, touch-friendly cable wiring, Residential Grid, Wallet (including the Darknet market, Hacking tool shop, and Post Your Rack to the public gallery), Client Contracts, Internet, Logs, Library, Radio, Notifications, hardware upgrades, the Comm Device directory, the Notebook (including rack/device screenshots), and a real terminal (including the offensive hacking scan/exploit/steal loop) are all live -- the DOOM easter egg is the one deliberate desktop-only exception, since it needs a real keyboard and mouse

Your Economy, Your Rules -- Real Billing, Real Transaction History

The browser version may include unobtrusive, SFW ads. There are no pay-to-win systems.

Still Ahead

Depth before polish, stability before scale, transparency over promises. If something changes here, it'll be explained publicly, not quietly dropped.

Near Term, Browser Build

• Continued balance passes and tuning
• Performance optimization passes
• Inspector clarity and UI/UX polish, without cutting depth
• Expanding service manual and in-game documentation coverage

Multiplayer: PvP Raiding + AI Opponents -- Shipped

This block used to read "planned but not yet built". It shipped on 2026-08-03, and it went further than the async, snapshot-based design once described here: raids are live and walked in person (see "Live multiplayer raids" above), and the AI-run opponents exist today as Corp racks in the same directory. What guided the design still holds: loot is a partial cut of money that already exists, never anything backed by real money, and never a total wipe.

Ahead: Deeper Multiplayer

Raiding is the first live multiplayer system, not the last. The app-server seat system is deliberately built so the tenants filling seats today can one day be other players, and what raiding's live data shows will guide what comes next -- explained here first, as always.

Mobile Companion App -- Full-Featured, Live Now

The mobile companion is real and already playable today at sp.silicon-pirates.com/m/ in any phone browser. Log in with the same account you use on desktop and it loads your real rack, no separate signup, no separate save, switch between phone and desktop mid-session and pick up right where you left off. It's not a read-only monitor: rack view and device placement, touch-friendly cable wiring (tap a device to open an enlarged view with real touch-sized ports instead of trying to hit tiny chassis ports with a finger), the Residential Grid, Wallet (Shops, Chips, the Darknet market, and the Hacking tool shop), Client Contracts, Internet, Logs, Library, Radio, Notifications, hardware upgrades, the Comm Device's who's-online directory, the private Notebook (including inserting a real snapshot of your rack or a device into a page), and a real terminal -- including the offensive hacking scan/exploit/steal loop, since that's entirely terminal-driven -- are all live and fully connected to the same backend as the browser build. The one deliberate exception is the DOOM easter egg, which stays desktop-only: it needs a real keyboard and mouse, and there's no touch control scheme for it planned.

Silicon Pirates is staying a web app on both desktop and mobile, no port to a game engine or an app-store build planned. The companion is a second, phone-shaped entry point into the exact same simulation, not a separate game.

Extra hands would go toward exactly what you'd expect: contracted art and UI polish, project management to keep scope realistic, and an extra programmer to speed up feature work on the web app and the companion app alongside it.