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

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

But if what I am now thinking you are saying is correct I agree with you. I suggested it a while back but it would require a complete overhaul of the intel engine.

My idea was that instead of intel projects always suceeding unless there was suficent CI in which case they would always fail, that intel projects have a chance of sucess that was dependant on the operation, and the level of CI. More damaging projects would be harder to do (less chance of sucess), and take a minimum amount of time to acomplish. Throwing more points at the project wouldn't make it happen faster, as is the current system, but would increase the chance of sucsess up to a point. CI on the other hand would not guarantee failure of a project once a threshold was reached, but would decrease the chance of sucess depending on the amount of points spent on it. But every project no matter how many points you spend would have some chance of failing regardless of whether or not your enemy even had CI. And no matter how much CI you had the enemy would have a chance of "getting lucky" and sneaking one through.

Also with this system there could be "partial failures". Since a project has a fixed minimum amount of time to accomplish, a partial failure could set them back a few months and would reflect the agents having to go deep undercover or hide in safe houses. While a complete failure would remove all progress on the project and would reflect the operatives being captured, etc.

Also, I didn't think of this before, but since the projects have a fixed minimum amount of time to perform, these projects in progress should require a certain minimum maintenence in intel points, or they would go away, losing all progress up to that point. You could "put the operation on hold" so to speak, but you would still have to spend points to keep it avaialable, and the longer it's out the the more chance of being detected and thwarted.

Another thing I just thought of you could do with this system would be to turn the agents, as the British did in WWII. Keep them in place, but feeding misinformation to the enemy. The enemy would be spending point on the operation, thinking it was still working, but the points are being wasted because the agents are in control of the target empire. You could even give false Messages that facilities were blown up, or incorrect fleet information. That sort of thing.

Of course this is all a pipe dream. This would almost be a game in and of itself. "Intel Empires" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geo

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

Well, I had forgotten that there is an occasional 'We suspect the (name) empire of this act." appended to the message. -- I guess because I haven't seen it in ages. Maybe it's stopped working? So at least it used to be that you would occasionally see a clue of who committed a particular intel operation against you. Some creative editing of the Events.txt and Intelprojects.txt files to make many of them use the same text would indeed mask a lot of intel projects. I'll have to get into a deliberate intel war with someone and restrict counter-intel to see how the recognition message is working, or not, at this time.

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, this is 'disinformation' and I requested it a long time ago. You should be able to take control of someone else's intel project against you and send fake information.

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

posted by Baron Munchausen: "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?"

I just tested this. Added another message to the ship bomb. The split between the two Messages seems to be 50/50. Of course the image that is shown is always the same. Sometimes the sentence "we suspect the [empire] for this [adjective] act." was added. I reckon this showed up in one out three or four cases.

There are some good ideas in this thread. I like the idea of intel ops that seems to be a natural event. Some extra projects could be added like "Ship Bomb (natural)" or "Food Contamination (natural)". These projects would be more costly, but attempt to blame it on Mother Nature. Of course, corresponding natural events must be added. The player using the intel project still runs the risk of the "we suspect..." sentence though. Now if the event.txt allowed something like [%randomempire] that would be great http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif . You could make an event that puts the blame on a random player http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif .

Hmm, I am considering a little overhaul on the intelprojects and events in DevnullMod. Any takers? Geo? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Rollo

edit: I was offline typing. so my post isn't completely up tp date. Baron, the "we suspect.." addition is still working.

[ July 11, 2002, 17:03: Message edited by: Rollo ]

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

No, not RANDOM. That's not good. It might blame you anyway, and it might blame the victim. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif We want a special intel project called 'Frame' or 'Spoof' that takes another intel project and tries to setup clues to make it look like another empire did it. The cost should be 50000 or so, PLUS the cost of that other project. If it fails then your victim gets a message not only that you did it, but that you tried to frame someone else, and WHO you were trying to frame. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

[ July 11, 2002, 19:30: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

I seem to recall seeing something called "Blamed Sabotage", but I can't find it now. Was that in SEIII maybe?

Geo

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

I think you misunderstood what I wanted to do with the randomness. I was calling for randomness in the events. So could make an event that said "Our ship blew up in the xyz system. We suspect the [%randomempire] for this act." This way not all the suspicions would be correct. If you make good pairs of intel ops and events that match the same text, it could work. Sometimes something bad just happens and your paranoid hardliners want to blame it on someone http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

The issue of blamed or framed sabotage is a different one and I agree with what you said in your post.

Rollo

[ July 11, 2002, 19:53: Message edited by: Rollo ]

Re: Aliens\' happiness types
 

Ah... Well, it's true that more message functions in events would be useful for creating paranoia, yeah. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Given that the 'We suspect...' message only appears about 1/3 of the time anyway I think that simply using events with the same target titles and descriptions as certain intel projects will do the trick. You'll then be paranoid about the ones where you DON'T get the 'We suspect...' message. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif