Crew Insurrections - to powerful?

[Utrecht]

I am currently in a game where the Terran's have taken a rather significant disloke to me. Fortunately they are 2 clusters away from me - limiting contact between our empires.

However, I have stumble upon Crew Insurrection as a seeminly powerful strategy. For 50,000 Intellignce points (not difficult to get) I initiate a Crew Insurrection against (which has yet to fail after 20 times):

1) Any human ship entering my space (eliminating a potential raider)
2) Baring that take a random ship and instantly go into combat taking out about 1 other ships with me.

I have also used this technique to create my "zoo" where I cause insurrection on 1 colony ship for each race.

Based off of this experience here it seems that 50k for crew insurrection is to cheap/to powerful. Thoughts on this or have I just gotten lucky?

FYI: I am playing with DevnullMod v 1.31 so the perceived problem may be there or in baseline - have yet to determine

[Nitram Draw]

That is a very powerful project and probably either too successful or too cheap IMO.
The AI doesn't use Intel as good as a human player. I usually remove it from the game if I'm playing solo.
You could change the cost if you wanted, maybe make it 200k or higher. I wouldn't make it higher than the counter-intel 4 cost though or you could not counter it at all.

[Menschenfresser]

I sorta agree here. On one hand, i like to use it sparingly, but now that you mention it, I can see how a multiplayer game could, given the right set of players, devolve into a battle of intelligence...out of the trenches and into the offices, folks.

[PvK]

Ya, taking complete control/ownership of a military ship with intel ops sounds pretty hard to me.

I would suggest that it be given a chance to fail equal to say, 10% for every control system, crew quarters, or boarding/security component, and also add in the crew experience rating. So a cruiser with bridge, two crew quarters, a security team, and +20% skill rating would have a 60% chance of blocking takeover attempts. Larger ships would be harder to take over (more crew quarters), and players wishing harder-to-conquer ships could add appropriate components to their designs.

Master-computer-only ships would be easier to take over this way, which to me makes a lot of sense. I'd also remove their skill abilities, but then, I'd remove it for all purposes, too.

PvK

[Noble713]

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:
I would suggest that it be given a chance to fail equal to say, 10% for every control system, crew quarters, or boarding/security component, and also add in the crew experience rating. So a cruiser with bridge, two crew quarters, a security team, and +20% skill rating would have a 60% chance of blocking takeover attempts. Larger ships would be harder to take over (more crew quarters), and players wishing harder-to-conquer ships could add appropriate components to their designs.

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Sounds good to me.

[Marty Ward]

It would be nice if there was a way to vary the approximate success rate for the intel projects. You could create races that were good at stealing or spying or mis-information.
The way it is now it is just a numbers game, if you have enough points built up you stop a project and if enough races are intelling you so that more than 12 projects hit you at once there is no defense. I have rarely seen a project fail on it's own, one that was not defeated by counter intel.
Hopefully Intel is on the list of future things to be improved.

[rdouglass]

Maybe a possibility for a new facility, ability, or comp - loyalty. Maybe a facility that decreases (or makes more expensive for the enemy) to Puppet PP's, Anarchy Groups, and Crew Ins. Or part of a racial tech or a 'slider' in the race setup. I personally don't have any solid ideas 'cause I'm not real familiar with modding fac's, abilities, etc. so I'll defer to the experts in that area.

Maybe a feature for the proposed expansion pack that has been discussed recently?

I am definitely also of the opinion that those 3 Intel Ops (mentioned above) are too easy and too inexpensive. It would be nice to make it adjustable instead of what we have now - Intel 'On' or 'Off'.

EDIT: Cool! ..I just made First Louie...

[This message has been edited by rdouglass (edited 22 May 2001).]

[Q]

I agree with you that more counter intelligence possibilities would be good. Especially a "loyalty" component and facility, which protects ships/planets would be very nice. Unfortunately after my observations the fate shrine, which should give some protection against sabotage actions, does not do it.
At the moment the only thing we can do is to increase the costs of these intel projects.

[Utrecht]

Which I think would work.

Another Irony of the Crew Insurr. and it extreme power is the ability to analyze the Ship - possible getting 1-X technologies all for 50K

I would think that Crew Inssurection should be at least 300k - This forces someone with even a large investment in Intel (100k/turn) to take up to 3 turns (all the while sacrificing his on counter-intel)

[mottlee]

Hmmm....Every time I try a crew In I get the slowest ships or I get a space station (sitting duck)


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mottlee@gte.net
"Kill em all let God sort em out"