Aliens' happiness types

Baron Munchausen · #1 July 11th, 2002, 04:02 PM

I had not heard that having more than one message for either an intel operation or an event would result in a 'random' selection among the Messages. Has this been verified? By whom?

[ July 11, 2002, 15:03: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

geoschmo · #2 July 11th, 2002, 04:24 PM

Personally I think some intel projects are appropriate for the "all or nothing" theory.

Convert scanning, either they scanned you covertly and so you didn't know, or you found out and they failed. I suppose that you could make the point that they could scan you and get the information off to their supervisors, but you discovered it too late to stop them. But that's splitting hairs.

On the other hand sabotage. You pretty much know if your space yard blows up. Not much point in not having a message to the effect. The game will allow you to not have a message, but that doesn't really make sense. You shouldn't have to look at all your facilities from turn to turn and see if one got destroyed, you should just be told if it happens. It would be kind of cool though if you could make it so the target doesn't know who planetdd the bomb, or if you could make them believe someone else planted the bomb.

And it would be neat if you could blow up a ship and disguise it as a natural occurance. I am not sure realisitcally how one would do that though.

How about an intel project that kills all the people on a new colony and destroys the colony. The only message the target gets it's, "Sire, we have lost contact with the colony on Olontra III. No other information is available at this time."

Geoschmo

Baron Munchausen · #3 July 11th, 2002, 04:43 PM

Convert scanning, either they scanned you covertly and so you didn't know, or you found out and they failed. I suppose that you could make the point that they could scan you and get the information off to their supervisors, but you discovered it too late to stop them. But that's splitting hairs.

But that's the point. You can set it up to report that you were scanned, or you can set it up to NOT report that you were scanned. It's 'all' or 'nothing'. See? There is no determination of success at the time of execution. This lack of variation within the game is what I am complaining about.

[ July 11, 2002, 15:44: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

geoschmo · #4 July 11th, 2002, 04:56 PM

No, I don't see exactly what you are saying. There is determination of sucess at the time of execution. That is what counter intel is for. No matter what the intel op is and no matter what the message is or isn't, if the operation fails due to counter intel the target race knows. Cause they get a message saying they defeated an intel opreation of such and such race. Of course it doesn't tell you what the operation is, and that might be a nice feature to add.

But what I thought you were asking for was not a determination of success or failure, but different Messages of a succesful operation.

Geo

geoschmo · #5 July 11th, 2002, 05:25 PM

But if what I am now thinking you are saying is correct I agree with you. I suggested it a while back but it would require a complete overhaul of the intel engine.

My idea was that instead of intel projects always suceeding unless there was suficent CI in which case they would always fail, that intel projects have a chance of sucess that was dependant on the operation, and the level of CI. More damaging projects would be harder to do (less chance of sucess), and take a minimum amount of time to acomplish. Throwing more points at the project wouldn't make it happen faster, as is the current system, but would increase the chance of sucsess up to a point. CI on the other hand would not guarantee failure of a project once a threshold was reached, but would decrease the chance of sucess depending on the amount of points spent on it. But every project no matter how many points you spend would have some chance of failing regardless of whether or not your enemy even had CI. And no matter how much CI you had the enemy would have a chance of "getting lucky" and sneaking one through.

Also with this system there could be "partial failures". Since a project has a fixed minimum amount of time to accomplish, a partial failure could set them back a few months and would reflect the agents having to go deep undercover or hide in safe houses. While a complete failure would remove all progress on the project and would reflect the operatives being captured, etc.

Also, I didn't think of this before, but since the projects have a fixed minimum amount of time to perform, these projects in progress should require a certain minimum maintenence in intel points, or they would go away, losing all progress up to that point. You could "put the operation on hold" so to speak, but you would still have to spend points to keep it avaialable, and the longer it's out the the more chance of being detected and thwarted.

Another thing I just thought of you could do with this system would be to turn the agents, as the British did in WWII. Keep them in place, but feeding misinformation to the enemy. The enemy would be spending point on the operation, thinking it was still working, but the points are being wasted because the agents are in control of the target empire. You could even give false Messages that facilities were blown up, or incorrect fleet information. That sort of thing.

Of course this is all a pipe dream. This would almost be a game in and of itself. "Intel Empires"

Geo

Baron Munchausen · #6 July 11th, 2002, 05:48 PM

Well, I had forgotten that there is an occasional 'We suspect the (name) empire of this act." appended to the message. -- I guess because I haven't seen it in ages. Maybe it's stopped working? So at least it used to be that you would occasionally see a clue of who committed a particular intel operation against you. Some creative editing of the Events.txt and Intelprojects.txt files to make many of them use the same text would indeed mask a lot of intel projects. I'll have to get into a deliberate intel war with someone and restrict counter-intel to see how the recognition message is working, or not, at this time.

Baron Munchausen · #7 July 11th, 2002, 05:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Another thing I just thought of you could do with this system would be to turn the agents, as the British did in WWII. Keep them in place, but feeding misinformation to the enemy. The enemy would be spending point on the operation, thinking it was still working, but the points are being wasted because the agents are in control of the target empire. You could even give false Messages that facilities were blown up, or incorrect fleet information. That sort of thing.

Of course this is all a pipe dream. This would almost be a game in and of itself. "Intel Empires"

Geo

Yes, this is 'disinformation' and I requested it a long time ago. You should be able to take control of someone else's intel project against you and send fake information.