Strategy expression

In a realistic situation one expects both parties in the two-person game to use mixed strategies. The formulation of the game theoretical pay-off matrix requires one to consider the strategies which the players can adopt. Again, the number of possible strategies is huge and the scope for strategic contrivance is almost infinite. In order to limit the formulation of the problem, it is necessary to break down strategies into linear combinations of primitives again. What is a strategy?

• A set of operations
• A schedule of operations
• Rules for counter-moves

In addition to simple strategies, there can be meta-strategies, or long-term goals. For instance, a nominal community strategy might be to:

• Maximize productivity or generation of work.
• Gain the largest feasible share of resources.

An attack strategy might be to

• Consume as many resources as possible.
• Destroy key resources.

Other strategies for attaining intermediate goals might include covert strategies such as bluffing (falsely naming files). Defensive strategies might involve taking out an attacker, counter attacking, or evasion (concealment), exploitation, trickery, antagonization, incessant complaint (spam), revenge etc. Security and privilege, levels of access, integrity and trust must be woven into algebraic measures for the pay-off. A means of expressing these devices must be formulated within a language which can be understood by system administrators, but which is primitive enough to enable the problem to be analyzed in an unambiguous fashion.