Actually, having Intel be more like the current ship-building system could be a viable alternative. Maybe even making research similar could be interesting (but that's another subject for another pondering).
Each Intelligence project would be like a ship design, in that you would decide what resources would be used into generating it. Would it be a lone spy with a hefty amount of financial and technological support (a la James Bond), or would it be like the Soviet method of three agents, each reporting on the other to ensure loyalty (and thus a much lesser chance of the agents being subverted by enemy counter-intelligence). What special rights do they have as spies (or counter-intelligence, for that matter). Some components for a project could adversely effect planetary, system, or empire-wide happiness levels in exchange for greater security of intelligence projects and against enemy intelligence projects. Some could even have negative effects on trade relations with other empires.
Ultimately, the intelligence of the empire would be a constant drain on the resources of the empire, rather than just a one-time cost. Also, each intelligence compound could only have a limited "sphere of influence". While individual components of a project might be able to increase the operation range of any project, there would be some sort of limitation on range. Barring that, at least have reliability decrease with range, or have it increase with proximity. It will be much easier to gain reliable intelligence on something closer to you than something farther away.
Intelligence compounds could still produce intelligence points, but these could be more akin to available agency personnel, rather than an arbitrary number. You would still need to fund the costs with minerals, organics, and radioactives (though it would be nice to have a nice catch-all "credits" as well, and have each resource have various market values or something).
The only real limit to any project would be the number of personnel you could use to put it together. Each personnel "point" would be a cost in a component of the project in addition to the mineral, organic, and radioactives (and maybe credits) cost of the project. If there are multiple compounds in the same system, you could potentially "borrow" personnel in order to increase project size (say, for a system-wide counterintelligence project). Using personnel from other systems would require a reduced rate to represent the difficulties of managing an interstellar intelligence network.
As for the construction of such projects, here is how I see it potentially working:
Each project would have an objective. This would be akin to the bridge/crew quarters/life support requirement. Possible objectives would include desired result, target, and methods used to obtain the objective. For example,
steal a [random] technology from the
Eee by
Bribery and
Subterfuge. Bribery would be potentially expensive, and you could put limits on how much your spies are allowed to spend on bribes, so that they don't bankrupt your empire getting you some worthless tech.
Also, like ships, each turn they would have an upkeep cost that you would need to pay, based on the components you used to construct the project. So having monstrous intel projects would be cost-prohibative for an empire that didn't have at least a decent income, though obviously cheaper than a massive fleet of ships.
As far as counter-intelligence is concerned, the same would be applicable. Desired outcome would be to catch or thwart anyone spying on you, either by tightening your security up and/or by feeding massive amounts of false information to enemy agents. You could also conduct assassinations of enemy intelligence operatives, either "passively" against those within your own territory, or actively attempting to hunt down the agents of a specific empire (or at least locating them so that you can glass the planet that they're working on). Death of your agents will, naturally, reduce your number of intelligence points. You could construct your projects to be somewhat redundant in this regard (essentially having "armor", to continue with the ship analogy), but after a time, you will need to replace your personnel.
Now, how would one do this? Well, I'm glad that you asked.
Recruitment centers. Recruitment centers for Intelligence, Research, Military, heck, even miners, engineers, traders, and so on. I'm not suggesting that we keep track of each person in your empire, but having recruitment centers on a planet would help towards a more realistic game, and really wouldn't add a whole lot of micromanagement. Just have each recruitment center be able to recruit a certain number (or percentage) of a planet's population into one of X many job pools (Construction Worker, Miner, Trader, Farmer, Research, Teacher, Space Force, Army, Intelligence, Entertainment, etc.) Each planet would have a certain number of each type, which could be shared evenly within a system. So you could shuffle a large number of miners to a mineral rich rock you've found, and so on. As your race reproduces, the youngsters will need to decide what career they would want to have, so the recruitment centers on a planet could gradually shift the balance to what you need more of. Also, populations could change jobs, so if you ran a draft, say, you could convert X non-military population into space force and army positions. You could also offer benefits to certain job types (Researchers, Teachers), taking a financial loss and turning it into a gain elsewhere.
Of course, people tend to go where the jobs are, so it should do little good to have recruitment centers when you have a surplus of possible applicants (sort of like having a total population cap on planets). As you improve your facilities, the number of jobs they can offer (and thus the number of population working at said facilities) should increase.
Best of all, if you know your enemy has one system which is a major source of their intelligence efforts, or maybe just one planet close to you which is pulling off a seriously damaging project, you can send it a fleet, attack the planet the project is on, and destroy the project itself (plus the people working on it). Think of it Hitler had bombed Benchley Park, and thus all the people working on decrypting engima and such. It could have been disasterous for the Allied Intelligence.
Now, as for time scale. As it is, intel projects take time to complete, based on the same idea as research. This is unrealistic. Instead, the projects would take time to be constructed. This would represent getting all the available resources into place, inserting agents, covert communication lines, and so on. Once a project is completed, it continues operation every turn until it is cancelled or destroyed. Different types of projects could potentially lose multiple personnel per turn, and thus be costly to have running constantly. Putting projects on hold would help stop the costs for a time (esentially similar to mothballing the project), but not prevent counter-intelligence retribution entirely, just as mothballed ships can still be destroyed in combat. The difference, however, would be that while on hold, the intelligence project would still tie up personnel (though you could go and "retrofit" the project dynamically so that you could regain some personnel for other projects if you so desired). The only way to completely regain all of your personell would be to scrap the project and make a whole new one.
Also, as successes increase, individual projects/personnel/facilities gain experience. Over time, there would be a gradual degradation of experience, representing older agents retiring and removing their experience from the availible pool, and new recruits joining to take their place (not the same as recruitment), or institutions losing effectiveness over time. If agents are lost, their experience is lost as well, and they would be replaced by a new recruit. The same system could be used for fleet experience, and even fighter/ground troop experience.
Anyway, that's my idea, and how I'd like to see intel, among other things, handled in SEV.
Plus, I think that it's somewhat workable even within SEIV with just a few (relatively minor in theory, but probably huge in practice) changes to the game.
Comments and/or suggestions are welcomed, of course.
[ March 20, 2003, 02:22: Message edited by: Hotfoot ]
Re: Thoughts on future of Intel
Hybrid Mode
