Intel: I'm Stumped

Stone Mill · #1 February 26th, 2001, 07:58 PM

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

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?

Suicide Junkie · #2 February 26th, 2001, 08:10 PM

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.

rdouglass · #3 February 26th, 2001, 08:26 PM

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

Spyder · #4 February 26th, 2001, 08:34 PM

....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).]

Suicide Junkie · #5 February 26th, 2001, 08:48 PM

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.

Stone Mill · #6 February 27th, 2001, 11:21 PM

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?