Cowabunga!
 

Say, have you ever noticed the similarity in format between the EVENTS and the INTEL PROJECTS? I have, and it's made me wonder. I finally got around to an experiment and confirmed what I had suspected. RANDOM EVENTS and INTEL PROJECTS use the SAME ABILITIES! Yes, anything in the EVENTS file can be turned into an INTEL PROJECT.

I invented a 'plague' Intel project and infected an AI planet with it. It works!!! Needless to say, since the AI is too stupid to defend itself against plague, that this is practically cheating when used against the AI. But in human-only games it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Especially if the text Messages for 'random events' and 'intel projects' are copied between each other so you can't be sure which is which!

Now I'm busily editing my EVENTS and INTEL PROJECTS files to make as many parallels between Messages from events and intel projects as possible to make life confusing. Only when you see the 'We suspect the (name) empire of this act.' will you know it was an intel operation. Coolness!

Come to think of it... what if 'Planet - Destroyed' and 'Star - Destroyed' can be made into intel projects??? Eeep! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif We'll just have to have a convention against that. Read your data files before joining a PBW game! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ July 15, 2002, 05:06: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Cowabunga!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Coolness!

A san aside -- tie the project for detroying a star to the tech needed to BUILD that kind of SHIP ... andmake it bloody expensive.

Dittof or world-destroeyrs.

HEck, if you can buld such a device in a shipyard and strap engines to it ... makes sense you might make it "on the sly" somewhere.

Re: Cowabunga!
 

"Now I'm busily editing my EVENTS and INTEL PROJECTS files to make as many parallels between Messages from events and intel projects as possible to make life confusing. Only when you see the 'We suspect the (name) empire of this act.' will you know it was an intel operation. Coolness!"

I think you can easily make the differentiation in the log file: just select "intelligence" or "events" and you still can determine, if it was a natural event or an intel operation.
But besides that great idea and good observation!

Re: Cowabunga!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Awww, crud! I hate it when someone comes along with an inconvientent fact and ruins a perfectly good theory. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I was really hoping this was going to work. Ah well, we could make a house rule that humans aren't allowed to sort their turn log. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geo

Re: Cowabunga!
 

Or we could ask MM to alter the way intel attack results are displayed. If you succeed in 'disguising' your attack it gets entered into the log as an event instead of an intel message. Maybe it should be a settable flag/attirubte so we could distinguish between intel that is obviously intel and something that could be mistaken for an event.

Re: Cowabunga!
 

Hey great, I am glad that somebody is willing to take the stuff that we discussed on the other thread (don't remember which one... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif ) and do something with them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

edit: found the other thread, title didn't have anything to do with intel.
here it is &lt;-- that's a link

Despair not, Baron. Intel attacks against you are already displayed as events. The only way to tell that they are intel attacks is that they have a prefix "Intelligence Minister: " before the actual text. So when you make matching pairs for events and intel projects, just put Intelligence Minister: before the text of the event http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif .

Rollo

[ July 15, 2002, 16:27: Message edited by: Rollo ]

Re: Cowabunga!
 

Baron some question about your new intel projects (plague, planet or star destruction):
Can you target them to a specific planet or system or is the location random?
Are the planetary and system gravitational shields ineffective, as I suspect, or give they protection against the destruction of the planet or the sun by your intel projects?
And would you post your new intel projects? I would like very much to use them in my games.

Re: Cowabunga!
 

One more thing:
The AI can handle plagues, if you give them a population transport design with a medical bay in it!
So I think you could use the plague intel project without being unfair against an AI empire. More important seems to me that the plague level is not too high, otherwise the entire population is dead before the ship with the medical bay arrives.
And I like the idea to link these projects to the tech levels of the corresponding weapons. So you still have to research quite a lot before you can use them and IMO these super intel projects should be expensive, very very expensive!

Re: Cowabunga!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ah.... Thanks, Rollo. Now I know what to do. I'll go back to my matching text Messages and do the required editing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I've been thinking up new descriptions for events, both the original ones and the intel related ones, so there will be lots of variety. You can have a formerly intel-only affect, loss of crew experience, hit you as an accident now, for example. And it might use the same description as the intel project (the experienced crew was broken up) or it might have a different message (the experienced crew resigned in protest against a tyrranical captain... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ).

[ July 15, 2002, 19:06: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Cowabunga!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The plague project, which I've titled 'Biological Warfare', lets you choose a planet just like any other planet sabotage project. I figured it would. I haven't tried planet or star destruction yet. Wasn't intending to, actually, but I'm sure someone will now. That's why I posted. We need more researching of this part of the game.

I'm still thinking of releasing my stuff. Guess I'll have to do it some day. Then we can have 'Munchausen Mod' games on PBW... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ July 15, 2002, 19:04: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]