Aliens\' happiness types
 

I've noticed that you can see anything about another race but their Happiness Type. Perhaps this should be available as a spy mission - Discover Happiness Type?

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

No. This is another 'out of bounds' situation like whether guessing passwords is cheating or not. While it's not as blatant as password cracking it's using factors external to the game within the game. There are a couple of unimplemented intelligence operations in the executable at present, "Combat Logs - Steal" and "Log Reports - Steal", which I hope don't get implemented. While you might argue that a combat log is a 'report' that you could get access too, it's such a total record of a combat session that it really shouldn't be available in a single location where it would be 'stealable'. It's the equivalent of reading all the officer's battle reports and reviewing all of their sensor logs. The same goes for log reports. While some of the information owuld be stealable, the log represents the sum total of your incoming information about your empire. Intelligence operations should have their frame of reference within the game and not be able to access the player's own information.

I am a bit ticked off that 'Covert Recon' doesn't report the current happiness status of the population, though. If your agents can run around and count Troops and WPs on the ground, assess facilities, and report this back, why can't they notice if the people are rioting or grumbling or happy?

And it should be possible for any operation to succeed so totally that the 'victim' dosn't know it occured. Instead, you are informed of every single intelligence operation that succeeds against you.

[ July 10, 2002, 23:33: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Couldn't you change the intelligence file to do this?
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Num Target Messages := 1</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Change it to zero and the target empire gets no message of the intelligence operation.

Geoschmo

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Couldn't you change the intelligence file to do this?
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Num Target Messages := 1</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Change it to zero and the target empire gets no message of the intelligence operation.

Geoschmo</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Sure, but then you NEVER know when that intelligence operation is used against you. This is the same 'all or nothing' problem that plagues so much of SE. Mines, weapon damage (no variability), etc. We need some sort of check for relative capabilities and a determination that allows either outcome.

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

You could add a message like "Sir, we *think* that we have been hit by Intel operations, but we are uncertain about the damage or the source."

If you copy that as message number 2 to all intel projects, there will be a 50% chance that the target will have a hard time to figure out what actually happend http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif .

Rollo

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

And, add that as some random events, so that there might not be any intel operations when you receive that message. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

I had not heard that having more than one message for either an intel operation or an event would result in a 'random' selection among the Messages. Has this been verified? By whom?

[ July 11, 2002, 15:03: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

Personally I think some intel projects are appropriate for the "all or nothing" theory.

Convert scanning, either they scanned you covertly and so you didn't know, or you found out and they failed. I suppose that you could make the point that they could scan you and get the information off to their supervisors, but you discovered it too late to stop them. But that's splitting hairs.

On the other hand sabotage. You pretty much know if your space yard blows up. Not much point in not having a message to the effect. The game will allow you to not have a message, but that doesn't really make sense. You shouldn't have to look at all your facilities from turn to turn and see if one got destroyed, you should just be told if it happens. It would be kind of cool though if you could make it so the target doesn't know who planetdd the bomb, or if you could make them believe someone else planted the bomb.

And it would be neat if you could blow up a ship and disguise it as a natural occurance. I am not sure realisitcally how one would do that though.

How about an intel project that kills all the people on a new colony and destroys the colony. The only message the target gets it's, "Sire, we have lost contact with the colony on Olontra III. No other information is available at this time."

Geoschmo

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

Convert scanning, either they scanned you covertly and so you didn't know, or you found out and they failed. I suppose that you could make the point that they could scan you and get the information off to their supervisors, but you discovered it too late to stop them. But that's splitting hairs.

But that's the point. You can set it up to report that you were scanned, or you can set it up to NOT report that you were scanned. It's 'all' or 'nothing'. See? There is no determination of success at the time of execution. This lack of variation within the game is what I am complaining about.

[ July 11, 2002, 15:44: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

No, I don't see exactly what you are saying. There is determination of sucess at the time of execution. That is what counter intel is for. No matter what the intel op is and no matter what the message is or isn't, if the operation fails due to counter intel the target race knows. Cause they get a message saying they defeated an intel opreation of such and such race. Of course it doesn't tell you what the operation is, and that might be a nice feature to add.

But what I thought you were asking for was not a determination of success or failure, but different Messages of a succesful operation.

Geo