Suggested Improvement to Intelligence Ops

[Commander G2]

I sent the following suggestion to 'se4@malfador.com', but I am sure others here could elaborate and help add more to my suggestion. My attempt here is to improve the Intelligence side of the game so it is more than a point versus point system where the bigger empire can easily crush a little empire. It will add more strategy and risk to the Intelligence side as well:

I am going to start a thread on this in the Forum, but I thought I would submit it to you via email as well so you can start thinking about this. I have suggested some of this before, but I have thought this through a bit more and want to re-present it. I really want to make the Intelligence part of the game viable so that I am not inclined to turn it off in any game I play. I really like SEIV! Keep up the good work!

Make all intelligence operations target ships or planets. Resource stealling would apply to a particular planet and the extent of the damage would be limited to:

Max( Planetary Queue Limit X 1.5,
Resource Production on Planet + Stored Resource * Planetary Storage Capacity / (Global Storage Capacity-50K+1) + Min(Global Stored, 50K)/ Number of Colonies
)

Where the Max function is the larger of two numbers and the Min function is the smaller of two numbers.

(The first term applies to what resource would be available at hand to provide the production queue with the necessary resources to conduct an emergency build. Shipyards should be guarded by troops).

You could allow them to target ships as well I suppose since repair ships and shipyard ships use resources as well.

For ships you could use the formula: Resources to Maintain + Shipyard capacity x 1.5 + Resources used to conduct repairs that turn.

Drop the Shipyard from the formulas if the queue is on hold (closed access). Players could use Queue on Hold to restrict damage from repeated attacks.

Modify success defending intelligence against planets based on troops present and to a lessor extent security components or troops on ships in orbit.

Modify success defending against intelligence against ships based on security components on a ship. This would make this component much more valuable. To a lessor extent add troops in a cargo hold as well.

Failing at an intelligence operations should jeoprodise your intelligence network in someway (lose of points from outstanding projects or other operations against the same target). Security forces should have a chance each turn to foil a developing intelligence attack.

Uncompleted projects should loose a percentage of their points every turn (prevent building up counter intelligence stockpiles).

Consider removing counter intelligence all together and rely completely on troops and security components. Or allow counter intelligence to be allocated to fleets and planets (big change). I do not oppose the counter intelligence operation itself as long as you implement some sort of decay value to prevent saving up points. Counter Intelligence could be viewed as blanket protection divided by the number of defending ships or number of defending planets. If you do this division, you might consider dividing by the square root of the number of ships or planets, otherwise the division would kill the effectiveness too much. Blanket protection for a large empire would be very costly (just as it would cost the USA much more than Isreal to achieve the same amount of coverage).

Stealing Technology would work on any planet or ship and be limited to technology employed in units and facilities or on the ship itself. Exception: Shipyards would have available any technology for all designs.

Using security and troops to prevent intelligence will allow small empires to defend themselves better against juggernauts who can rip them apart quickly using intelligence. It even gives a race an option of conducting no intelligence and purely defending against it with security forces.

This will add more strategy to the intelligence game as players probe for weak points in an empire. This would prevent players from robbing an empire completely of all their assets if a race is willing to buy security components or troops. Players can choose to only defend against intelligence (some races might think it is dishonarable). Races that have not researched intelligence will have alternate means of defense.

Finally, add Advanced traits that affect Intelligence:
Collective Conciousness - near immunity to most intelligence operations, side affect: magnify happiness shifts by a factor and magnify the limit by how much they can change in one turn. Or instead, treat every system where they have a colony as one big system for figuring out the modifiers.
Absolute Loyalty - near immunity to most intelligence operations (especially sabatoge and puppet political parties).

I am sure others on the forum will elaborate on this.