New CI bug with v1.41 ?

[Puke]

i think there is a random chance of failure, possibly based on the level of the project. i have noticed projects sometimes fail against empires with 0 intel points. in one game on 1.19, ship bombs would almost always fail, but ground contamination would usually go through.

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)

[Slaughtermeyer]

How about the amount of damage caused from ship bombs? Is that randomly determined? If I want to destroy a ship, will targeting it with two simultaneous ship bomb missions do the trick?

[dogscoff]

QUOTE:
How about the amount of damage caused from ship bombs? Is that randomly determined? If I want to destroy a ship, will targeting it with two simultaneous ship bomb missions do the trick?
/QUOTE

I don't think it's randomised. Just as resource procurement gets you 10,000 + 10,000 + 10,000 every time, a ship bomb seems to do the same amount of damage every time. Not sure how much though, probably around 100 points.

You can use mulitple bombs on one target.

Oh, and if the target ship has armour, damage will be applied there first, but shields will be ignored.

Ship bombs are really good against smaller ships (<Cruiser) and enemies which use shields rather than armour. It is sometimes still worth hitting armoured craft though - If you have a cloaked lookout in a system and can watch the enemy fleets heading towrds your systems, you can target larger ships to tenderise them before combat. Stripping off that crystalline or organic armour can really mess up their combat strategies.

Engine damage doesn't damage a ship's engines either, BTW, it just wastes a few movement points.

My favourite sabotage though is still cargo maintenence problems - get rid of those weapons platforms and fighters before sending in the troop transporters=-)

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so Brain but, if you replace the P with an O, my name would be Oinky, wouldn't it?"

[Baron Munchausen]

There's still a bug in 1.41 that's been there from the beginning. The limit of 12 projects no matter how many points you have! If you get 3 or 4 enemies using intel attacks against you it's impossible to defend yourself even if you have more intel points than all of them combined. It's true that 1.41 seems to have worse defense effectiveness than previous Versions, but it was never possible to defend yourself properly against many opponents. Maybe a seperate list of counter-intel and 'other' projects would be a better way to organize intel. If you just increase the number of possible projects the problem gets worse.

[Q]

Baron you hit the same point I mailed several times to MM!
I really don't see why they abandoned the counter intelligence system of SE III. It was clear and easy. If you spend more points on defense than all your enemies together for attack you are protected, otherwise some of their projects will succeed.
The offensive intelligence however is much better in SE IV.

[This message has been edited by Q (edited 21 July 2001).]