Cowabunga!

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Q:
Baron some question about your new intel projects (plague, planet or star destruction):
Can you target them to a specific planet or system or is the location random?
Are the planetary and system gravitational shields ineffective, as I suspect, or give they protection against the destruction of the planet or the sun by your intel projects?
And would you post your new intel projects? I would like very much to use them in my games.

The plague project, which I've titled 'Biological Warfare', lets you choose a planet just like any other planet sabotage project. I figured it would. I haven't tried planet or star destruction yet. Wasn't intending to, actually, but I'm sure someone will now. That's why I posted. We need more researching of this part of the game.

I'm still thinking of releasing my stuff. Guess I'll have to do it some day. Then we can have 'Munchausen Mod' games on PBW...

[ July 15, 2002, 19:04: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Q:
One more thing:
The AI can handle plagues, if you give them a population transport design with a medical bay in it!
So I think you could use the plague intel project without being unfair against an AI empire. More important seems to me that the plague level is not too high, otherwise the entire population is dead before the ship with the medical bay arrives.
And I like the idea to link these projects to the tech levels of the corresponding weapons. So you still have to research quite a lot before you can use them and IMO these super intel projects should be expensive, very very expensive!

No, the AI is not smart enough to send a medical bay equipped ship even when it has them.

As far as the cost, yes, I've setup the 'biological warfare' projects to require both Intel level 3 and the corresponding level of biological weapons. All five levels. Like I said, this is intended for human-only games where you're going to be smart enough to research all levels of medical tech and deploy ships with the bays.

The question of intel points cost is an interesting one because of how counter-intel works. When you make an intel project cost more you are making it somewhat harder to pull off, but you are ALSO making it harder to stop! And I wonder if the extra difficulty of stopping an expensive project makes it worthwhile to assign a huge cost to the plague intel projects. You might be making them more effective rather than less. If they cost more than 100000, for example, level 1 counter-intel can't stop them.

[ July 15, 2002, 19:02: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
No, the AI is not smart enough to send a medical bay equipped ship even when it has them.

I think what he meant was you design your transports with medical bays. All of them. Then the AI goes about happily moving populations around and one time happens to cure a plague by accident. Not very efficent, but I believe it would work. But it would have to be a very slow plague.

Geoschmo

[Q]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
No, the AI is not smart enough to send a medical bay equipped ship even when it has them.

I think what he meant was you design your transports with medical bays. All of them. Then the AI goes about happily moving populations around and one time happens to cure a plague by accident. Not very efficent, but I believe it would work. But it would have to be a very slow plague.

Geoschmo

---

I cannot exclude that this happened by chance, but I saw the AI move population transports that had medical bays straight to his colonies I infected shortly before with plague bombs.

[jimbob]

Baron M: Great discovery on the Intel/Events connection!

The question of intel points cost is an interesting one because of how counter-intel works. When you make an intel project cost more you are making it somewhat harder to pull off, but you are ALSO making it harder to stop! And I wonder if the extra difficulty of stopping an expensive project makes it worthwhile to assign a huge cost to the plague intel projects. You might be making them more effective rather than less. If they cost more than 100000, for example, level 1 counter-intel can't stop them.

Perhaps by pushing the intel projects up the tech tree you can make the projects "cost more" in research cost rather than making them cost a great deal to produce. The equivalent would be the "suitcase nuke" where the real cost was borne out in the Manhattan project, where-as the cost of the actual device is "cheap" in comparison to the research costs. If the device is then always cheap, it will be fairly easy to block with counter-intelligence. You'd have to catch your opponent sleeping to get one through...

My .02 $Cdn

[ July 16, 2002, 00:13: Message edited by: jimbob ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Well, this is another behavior I've never seen. Hmm... what could make the AI send repair ships and medical bay ships for one person's game but not another? Aren't those options hard coded?

[Will]

Originally posted by Q:
I cannot exclude that this happened by chance, but I saw the AI move population transports that had medical bays straight to his colonies I infected shortly before with plague bombs.

Could be that the AI was attempting to drop population on the planet...