It is probably much too late to make most of the major changes you are suggesting here. Save this for when SE V suggestions are compiled.
I would like to see the race of the population of a given planet taken into account for the effectiveness of intelligece operations. If you are attempting an operation on a planet consisting of
your own race in another empire, it ought to have an enhanced chance of success. And of course any planets in your own empire that are populated with something other than your original race ought to be more vulnerable to intelligence operations by whatever empire that race originally came from.
Resistance to intelligence infiltration could be a special racial trait. It wouldn't hurt to have some new racial traits to choose from.
I would really like to see a way to store intelligence points. The realistic way to do this is to setup "infrastructure" inside the enemy empire. This corresponds to sending "moles" into the enemy territory, hiding Caches of materials, etc. You ought to be able to do this and then use the points to enhance the chance of success for a later operation.
BTW, you can limit available intelligence operations any time you like by editing the text file and removing the ones you don't want. I am considering the removal of PPP, for example. It's far too over-simplified and I don't expect a more elaborate model anytime in the near future. Maybe in SE V...
[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 19 September 2001).]