Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

Hi guys. Love the forum and appreciate your help.

Playing a multi-player PBEM game for the Last few months, and I thought I had a grasp of how intel worked (by reading Messages in this forum). But I can't make sense of this:

I have a trade and research alliance with player #2. He snuck several fleets into my system, cloacked with cloaking armor. I detected them with gravitic sensors. I did not let on that I saw them while he clearly was staging for a sneak attack (the jerk!) Instead, I decided to pull a shocker and steal a fleet from him before he attacked.

My Intel: 40K
His Intel: 10K

I ran 5 simultaneous crew insurrection projects against a cloaked fleet, building points slowly to pop them off all at once. Only, after all those turns, to my aggrivation http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon9.gif they all FAILED! How?!? It does not seem likely for him to be running 5 simultaneous Intel II defense projects, and his intel points were not even close to be able to keep up! I can see some projects failed due to defense... but all?

Any ideas?

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

Perhaps, He has had the defensive operations in progress for some time now.

The defensive points are stored up, and the defense projects get depleted as enemy intel ops are attempted. He could have stored up 10K per turn in defence, and held off your intel ops using those reserves. If you have 4x his intel, you should be able to wear down his defences fairly quickly, but you'll have to keep at it, and the enemy will know you're trying.

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

Are you sure they get stored up??? I've been reading / hearing stuff to the contrary....

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

....yeah, the manual says its a "use 'em or lose 'em" kind of deal.....?

[This message has been edited by Spyder (edited 26 February 2001).]

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

What I mean, is that they are stored as a partially completed defense project.

If the enemy has one Intel defense III, thats 300,000 points to complete. Since the enemy in this case, generates 10K per turn, on turn #20, he has 200K out of 300K on his defense project.

When you try to hit him with a ship capture or whatever, you may spend 40K in one turn.

That 40K is subtracted from his defence.

On Turn #21, The enemy now has 200K -40K +10K
=170K out of 300K on his defense project. His defense held, and your attack failed.

After 7 turns of this, the enemy runs out of defense points, and your attacks start to succeed.

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

Thanks for the insight, gentlemen.

Could you clear this up as well:

1. Does an Intel III defense project defend against Intel II and Intel I projects?

2. When Intel Projects expire, are all points for that project simply lost?

3. Does the defender see the point reduction in his Intel defense project?

It seems that if #2 is true, you should avoid letting your projects expire like the plague... You could start distributing your points among projects, then allocate your points into one project at a time (new projects), keeping the "held" project alive indefinitely. Anyone use intel like this?

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

The way I do Intel is I set one defense project (my biggest), Puppet political parties, Crew insurrection & resource collection and then tell it to repeat projects & spread points evenly.

Then I just let it do its work.

------------------
Spyder, Chairman of the Arachnid Consortium

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

1) I believe that an Intel I defends against any intel project.

3) Oh, definitely. I had 4 projects going, and they kept bottoming out cause I was MEE. I had managed to get them up to 25% each, and decided to go offence. The offence took away from my defence spending, and the projects dropped to zero. The enemy PPP'd one of my main Intel planets the same turn, and I had to drop 300 electron tanks there to get it back.

That seems like a good plan to start with, but when you get enemy offence happening, you may have trouble keeping individual projects from bottoming out. Micromanagement will do it, but the gain might not be worth it. It is easier just to add more projects, with repeat build on.

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
1) I believe that an Intel I defends against any intel project.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

My experience has been that Counter-Intel is level specific. I've been running 2 Counter-Intel II's and 2 Counter-Intel III's for a while, and I occassionally see Intel I projects succeed (census records stolen, designs stolen, nothing that will help the AI very much). I have also recently seen my first Counter-Intel II succeed, the second fail (because it "finished" and there was no project for it to block) and both Counter-Intel III's succeed (obviously, because they HAD something to block).

BTW - I think Puppet Political Parties is considered a Level 3 op, even though you need to research Applied Intelligence 4 to be able to run it.

As a funny side note - I'm also running a Crew Insurrection op against one of my enemies (one I've never actually seen; we're at war because one of my other enemies ran a successful Communications Mimic before I had enough Counter-Intel running). Anyway, after failing three times, it finally worked! I captured one of their dreadnoughts! Unfortunately, it was part of a 20+ ship fleet, most of which were armed with Psychic weapons (except for two ships they'd captured from other AI's) and they took the ship back. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon9.gif Oh, and this was with Patch 1.19; can't wait to see what happens with the new, improved AI in 1.27...

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

I belive that you need one defence project to block each attack.

ie. if you have 4 defence projects, and the enemy does 5 attack projects in one turn, you can only block 4.

Level I ops are cheap, so you can get more of them done in a single turn.

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

That is excatly why (if you read my original case) it smells fishy.

Check the math: 5 Crew Insurrections X 40K = 200K offensive intel points.

If my PBEM opponent were to defend that, he would have to have 10K Counter Intel II projects X at least 20 turns.

We have been playing with the ability to view each other's stats, and I am not even sure he had intel for 20 turns! ...Never mind Intel II. It just does not sound likely.

Could I have been Intel sabotaged? What Messages appear when that happens? Do you get failure reports?

I have scoured these Messages and I have heard conflicting opinions about intel/counter intel amount and level of projects- still no difinitive answer how it works, but some pretty solid opinions! (Thanks guys!) http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Does anyone have an "in" to the developers who could lay it down once and for all? In a PBEM game against warm bodies, intel becomes VERY important, even critical to survival!

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
I belive that you need one defence project to block each attack.

ie. if you have 4 defence projects, and the enemy does 5 attack projects in one turn, you can only block 4.

Level I ops are cheap, so you can get more of them done in a single turn.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree with your first point - one counter-intel project blocks one intel project.

However, I still think that a Level I counter-op will only block a Level I op, etc.

(edit: see my post at top of the thread - I'm wrong about the Level I only blocking Level I; however, some of the other points here are important)

Otherwise, both of my Level II counter-operations would have "succeeded" and only one of the Level III counter-ops would have succeeded. Instead, my first, third and fourth projects successfully completed, (levels 2, 3 and 3, respectively) while the second operation (a Level II counter-op) "failed" (i.e., I spent enough points to finish, but had no operation to block).

(edit: I can't explain this, given the info about defense projects applying equally to all incoming intel projects)

(EDIT: HERE'S THE IMPORTANT BIT)
I'd also like to clear up another point: you don't have to finish spending the full 100,000 points (or whatever) to have a counter-intel project succeed. In fact, if you spend all the points, and there isn't a project to block, the counter-intel project will fail. If there IS a project to be blocked, if you've built up enough counter-intel points, the project will IMMEDIATELY end, and block the operation.

An example:

I have (for instance) 80,000 intel points being generated each turn. I run 2 Counter-Intel I's, 3 Counter-Intel II's, and 3 Counter-Intel III's. Dividing points evenly (of course), that leaves 10,000 points for each counter-operation per turn.

The enemy is running (for instance) "Ship Bomb" and "Engine Damage" against me. Each costs 10,000 points. Assume he is able to complete both operations in one turn. Both of my Level I counter-operations would "complete" every turn, with a message "Intel Project Blocked". Note that I didn't have to spend 100,000 points to block a 10,000 point operation. In fact, there's a setting in the "Settings" data file that implies I only have to spend 8,000 points to block a 10,000 point operation. I haven't tested that yet, but it's a neat idea.

To extend the example, "Crew Insurrection" is a Level II operation, and costs 50,000 points. I could counter that operation at least every five turns (length of time required to build up 50,000 counter-intel II points in my example above); if the "Settings" thing works, I only need to spend 40,000 points, so I could block Crew Insurrection every 4 turns; since I have three CI-II projects running, I could block three Crew Insurrections every four turns.

(edit: given the information about defensive intel projects, just ignore the levels mentioned above; but don't ignore the fact that Crew Insurrection is blocked, and a defensive project "completes", after spending only 40,000 or 50,000 points, not the full cost of the counter-intel operation).

[This message has been edited by DirectorTsaarx (edited 28 February 2001).]

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Stone Mill:
That is excatly why (if you read my original case) it smells fishy.

Check the math: 5 Crew Insurrections X 40K = 200K offensive intel points.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, actually, Crew Insurrections costs 50k each, so you spent a total of 250k in Intel.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Stone Mill:
If my PBEM opponent were to defend that, he would have to have 10K Counter Intel II projects X at least 20 turns.

We have been playing with the ability to view each other's stats, and I am not even sure he had intel for 20 turns! ...Never mind Intel II. It just does not sound likely.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, you get Counter-Intel II at Applied Intelligence level 1.

See my post below for some discussion about whether there's a "bonus" applied to Counter-Intel spending.

However, it IS odd that he had 5 Counter-Intel Level II's running long enough to build up enough points to defeat your operations. Maybe the system treated all 5 as a single project, since they were all the same type? Try running multiple operations of different types against him, and see if the same thing happens...

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

Thanks DirectorTsaarx, for checking my math. 250K makes my example all the more confounding- and again: I do not believe my opponent had the foresight to counter it. 250,000 Intel points is a serious chunk of change for someone (currently) producing 10K per turn.

I think you may be on to something about the computer treating them as one project... (FYI: I did get 5 separate failure notices) I will continue to run different projects and see if I get better results.

Alas, I will remember to ask him at debrief what he witnessed on his end during all of this.

Re: Intel: I\'m Stumped
 

All right - I'll admit I'm wrong about the levels... this is from the Q&A on the MM website:

"Intelligence Defense projects merely provide points which are used to defend against enemy projects. The higher the level, the more points you can put into the project (cost), and the better they will protect you. The specific type of the offensive intelligence activity does not matter. Defense projects defend against them all."

The best (well, only) example here is the Technological Espionage op, which costs 150,000 points. A Level I counter-op (100,000 pts.) will never have enough points to counter Tech Espionage, but a Level II counter-op (250,000 pts.) will.

Which means the only reasons you'd want the higher-level counter-intel ops are:

1) You're worried about Technological Espionage.
2) You don't have "Repeat Projects" on, in which case you want the counter-ops to run as long as possible, just in case there's nothing to trigger the operation before you spend the full amount and have the counter-op "fail", at which point you have to remember to start a new operation.
3) You realize that the longer you have a single project going, the more likely it is that you'll have enough points built up in that project to counter an intel operation. Even with Repeat Projects on, if your counter-intel op completes before your enemies' intel op does, you lose all the points you built up. And, more importantly, have to build up again - and if the enemy finishes an expensive project one turn after you've finished/re-started a counter-intel project, the intel op may succeed against you, despite the counter-intel...

Although none of this explains why my one Counter-Intel II project completed as a failure; unless it didn't have enough points built up yet, and the Counter-Intel III projects _did_... Also doesn't explain why only the "cheap" projects succeeded against me... hmmmmm....