An idea to balance out tech

[Phoenix-D]

"And what's with poisoning the population? Maybe this seems horrific to a human player -- but does it really dent production? Ditto for destroying one facility or damageing conditions or planet value."

Yes, it does. It also makes planets easier to invade/kill off. Knocking out one facility can be critical if that facility is, say, a Robotroid Factory. Conditions doesn't do a whole lot, but the hurt from planet value drops should be obvious- less of that resource can be produced there.

Phoenix-D

[jimbob]

And of course the loss of population will have a more profound effect in mods like Proportions.

[Fyron]

Trust me, the pop-killing intel project can really screw over colony worlds. It kills a few 100 million at a time (IIRC). This can be used, in conjunction with cargo bombs, to prevent those colonies from ever having any population.

[DavidG]

Yup I think sadly intel is useless in SE4. Well it can be fun for a bit early on but it seems that it quickly becomes useless as races get defenses which seem impossible to breach. I would like to have any intell project have at least a certain minimum chance of succeding. Intell defense should just reduce the percentage chance of a project succeding. Getting back to my idea is it acutually possible to mod the game so that you could run an Espionage project and have a gauraneted chance of success? I'm thinking if you could remove counter intel and basically all the projects except Tech Espionage. But will this mean the tech espionage would always work or can you set the percentage chance that it will work. ie say 10 or 20% chance of sucess?

[DavidG]

PS yes when Pop killing tech reduces a planet to 0 that is nasty!

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Arkcon:

Anyway, some of the current intelligence projects really seem uninteresting to me. Late in the game, cargo destruction really doesn't make much of a dent in the massed weapon platforms, for instance.

And what's with poisoning the population? Maybe this seems horrific to a human player -- but does it really dent production? Ditto for destroying one facility or damageing conditions or planet value.

Some people want more complicated intelligence, then a wise person pointed out -- if you want that, take out the ships and planets and call the game Intelligence Wars

Complicated isn't quite the right word. It's not that people want a more 'complicated' system with more micromanagement. It's that they want a better one. Subtle might be a better word. More sophisticated. Better adapted to the game world.

Your observations above are perfect examples of the crude level of interface between intel and the rest of the game. Would a saboteur of even average intelligence use the exact same sort of explosives or other destructive device against all of stored Satellites, Troop mechs, and Weapon Platforms? Shouldn't mines go up together in one big BOOM when sabotaged? Instead only as many get destroyed as the initial damage can account for, just like with troops. If the nature of the attack is to 'interfere with maintenance' rather than plant a bomb, then it ought to have some way of affecting large numbers of units even when the damage total of the units increases in the late game. But it doesn't. It's the same old trick from day one till the end of the game.

The other intel attacks suffer from the same trouble. Poisoning the population is the same attack regardless of the size of the colony. Shouldn't it be possible for the population to recognize that something is wrong after a certain amount of time and find the source of the trouble? In that case, only a certain proportion of the population should be poisoned, not a fixed number. A certain number of people would eat the poisoned food, for example, and then the civil government would put the clues together and find the source. Larger colonies would have more people eating on whatever regular schedule your race eats on, so it would be possible to do more damage at once, while smaller colonies would have fewer people eating on the schedule and the same amount of time to find the source (assuming the same level of 'cleverness' in hiding it) would result in fewer people being poisoned.

This is the problem with the intel system. It's not 'lack of complication' but lack of sophistication that annoys people. Our wonderful 'edumacation' system doesn't do a very good job of teaching us the subtle shades of word meaning these days...

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by DavidG:
Yup I think sadly intel is useless in SE4. Well it can be fun for a bit early on but it seems that it quickly becomes useless as races get defenses which seem impossible to breach. I would like to have any intell project have at least a certain minimum chance of succeding. Intell defense should just reduce the percentage chance of a project succeding. Getting back to my idea is it acutually possible to mod the game so that you could run an Espionage project and have a gauraneted chance of success? I'm thinking if you could remove counter intel and basically all the projects except Tech Espionage. But will this mean the tech espionage would always work or can you set the percentage chance that it will work. ie say 10 or 20% chance of sucess?

This is another aspect of the 'sophistication' problem. Attacks are calculated on a fairly simple 'point total vs. point total' basis. There is no factoring in the type of culture/society/government you have defending, nor the ability of agents from the attacker to figure out the culture and move around in it. Also, you can start intel attacks instantly once contact is established. Ridiculous. It should take months or years to establish an intelligence network in a newly contacted empire before any major projects can begin. The amount of time you have invested in building a foundation intel network is completely over-looked in the SE IV system. There should be a special 'Build Intel Network' project that you have to use on each and every target empire in order to even have the ability to stage intel projects within them.