Intel: I'm Stumped

[Spyder]

The way I do Intel is I set one defense project (my biggest), Puppet political parties, Crew insurrection & resource collection and then tell it to repeat projects & spread points evenly.

Then I just let it do its work.

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Spyder, Chairman of the Arachnid Consortium

[Suicide Junkie]

1) I believe that an Intel I defends against any intel project.

3) Oh, definitely. I had 4 projects going, and they kept bottoming out cause I was MEE. I had managed to get them up to 25% each, and decided to go offence. The offence took away from my defence spending, and the projects dropped to zero. The enemy PPP'd one of my main Intel planets the same turn, and I had to drop 300 electron tanks there to get it back.

That seems like a good plan to start with, but when you get enemy offence happening, you may have trouble keeping individual projects from bottoming out. Micromanagement will do it, but the gain might not be worth it. It is easier just to add more projects, with repeat build on.

[DirectorTsaarx]

quote:

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
1) I believe that an Intel I defends against any intel project.

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My experience has been that Counter-Intel is level specific. I've been running 2 Counter-Intel II's and 2 Counter-Intel III's for a while, and I occassionally see Intel I projects succeed (census records stolen, designs stolen, nothing that will help the AI very much). I have also recently seen my first Counter-Intel II succeed, the second fail (because it "finished" and there was no project for it to block) and both Counter-Intel III's succeed (obviously, because they HAD something to block).

BTW - I think Puppet Political Parties is considered a Level 3 op, even though you need to research Applied Intelligence 4 to be able to run it.

As a funny side note - I'm also running a Crew Insurrection op against one of my enemies (one I've never actually seen; we're at war because one of my other enemies ran a successful Communications Mimic before I had enough Counter-Intel running). Anyway, after failing three times, it finally worked! I captured one of their dreadnoughts! Unfortunately, it was part of a 20+ ship fleet, most of which were armed with Psychic weapons (except for two ships they'd captured from other AI's) and they took the ship back. Oh, and this was with Patch 1.19; can't wait to see what happens with the new, improved AI in 1.27...

[Suicide Junkie]

I belive that you need one defence project to block each attack.

ie. if you have 4 defence projects, and the enemy does 5 attack projects in one turn, you can only block 4.

Level I ops are cheap, so you can get more of them done in a single turn.

[Stone Mill]

That is excatly why (if you read my original case) it smells fishy.

Check the math: 5 Crew Insurrections X 40K = 200K offensive intel points.

If my PBEM opponent were to defend that, he would have to have 10K Counter Intel II projects X at least 20 turns.

We have been playing with the ability to view each other's stats, and I am not even sure he had intel for 20 turns! ...Never mind Intel II. It just does not sound likely.

Could I have been Intel sabotaged? What Messages appear when that happens? Do you get failure reports?

I have scoured these Messages and I have heard conflicting opinions about intel/counter intel amount and level of projects- still no difinitive answer how it works, but some pretty solid opinions! (Thanks guys!)

Does anyone have an "in" to the developers who could lay it down once and for all? In a PBEM game against warm bodies, intel becomes VERY important, even critical to survival!

[DirectorTsaarx]

quote:

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
I belive that you need one defence project to block each attack.

ie. if you have 4 defence projects, and the enemy does 5 attack projects in one turn, you can only block 4.

Level I ops are cheap, so you can get more of them done in a single turn.

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I agree with your first point - one counter-intel project blocks one intel project.

However, I still think that a Level I counter-op will only block a Level I op, etc.

(edit: see my post at top of the thread - I'm wrong about the Level I only blocking Level I; however, some of the other points here are important)

Otherwise, both of my Level II counter-operations would have "succeeded" and only one of the Level III counter-ops would have succeeded. Instead, my first, third and fourth projects successfully completed, (levels 2, 3 and 3, respectively) while the second operation (a Level II counter-op) "failed" (i.e., I spent enough points to finish, but had no operation to block).

(edit: I can't explain this, given the info about defense projects applying equally to all incoming intel projects)

(EDIT: HERE'S THE IMPORTANT BIT)
I'd also like to clear up another point: you don't have to finish spending the full 100,000 points (or whatever) to have a counter-intel project succeed. In fact, if you spend all the points, and there isn't a project to block, the counter-intel project will fail. If there IS a project to be blocked, if you've built up enough counter-intel points, the project will IMMEDIATELY end, and block the operation.

An example:

I have (for instance) 80,000 intel points being generated each turn. I run 2 Counter-Intel I's, 3 Counter-Intel II's, and 3 Counter-Intel III's. Dividing points evenly (of course), that leaves 10,000 points for each counter-operation per turn.

The enemy is running (for instance) "Ship Bomb" and "Engine Damage" against me. Each costs 10,000 points. Assume he is able to complete both operations in one turn. Both of my Level I counter-operations would "complete" every turn, with a message "Intel Project Blocked". Note that I didn't have to spend 100,000 points to block a 10,000 point operation. In fact, there's a setting in the "Settings" data file that implies I only have to spend 8,000 points to block a 10,000 point operation. I haven't tested that yet, but it's a neat idea.

To extend the example, "Crew Insurrection" is a Level II operation, and costs 50,000 points. I could counter that operation at least every five turns (length of time required to build up 50,000 counter-intel II points in my example above); if the "Settings" thing works, I only need to spend 40,000 points, so I could block Crew Insurrection every 4 turns; since I have three CI-II projects running, I could block three Crew Insurrections every four turns.

(edit: given the information about defensive intel projects, just ignore the levels mentioned above; but don't ignore the fact that Crew Insurrection is blocked, and a defensive project "completes", after spending only 40,000 or 50,000 points, not the full cost of the counter-intel operation).

[This message has been edited by DirectorTsaarx (edited 28 February 2001).]

[DirectorTsaarx]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stone Mill:
That is excatly why (if you read my original case) it smells fishy.

Check the math: 5 Crew Insurrections X 40K = 200K offensive intel points.

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Well, actually, Crew Insurrections costs 50k each, so you spent a total of 250k in Intel.

quote:

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Originally posted by Stone Mill:
If my PBEM opponent were to defend that, he would have to have 10K Counter Intel II projects X at least 20 turns.

We have been playing with the ability to view each other's stats, and I am not even sure he had intel for 20 turns! ...Never mind Intel II. It just does not sound likely.

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Actually, you get Counter-Intel II at Applied Intelligence level 1.

See my post below for some discussion about whether there's a "bonus" applied to Counter-Intel spending.

However, it IS odd that he had 5 Counter-Intel Level II's running long enough to build up enough points to defeat your operations. Maybe the system treated all 5 as a single project, since they were all the same type? Try running multiple operations of different types against him, and see if the same thing happens...