Aliens' happiness types - Page 2

geoschmo · #11 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 · #12 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 · #13 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.

Rollo · #14 July 11th, 2002, 05:58 PM

posted by Baron Munchausen: "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?"

I just tested this. Added another message to the ship bomb. The split between the two Messages seems to be 50/50. Of course the image that is shown is always the same. Sometimes the sentence "we suspect the [empire] for this [adjective] act." was added. I reckon this showed up in one out three or four cases.

There are some good ideas in this thread. I like the idea of intel ops that seems to be a natural event. Some extra projects could be added like "Ship Bomb (natural)" or "Food Contamination (natural)". These projects would be more costly, but attempt to blame it on Mother Nature. Of course, corresponding natural events must be added. The player using the intel project still runs the risk of the "we suspect..." sentence though. Now if the event.txt allowed something like [%randomempire] that would be great

. You could make an event that puts the blame on a random player

.

Hmm, I am considering a little overhaul on the intelprojects and events in DevnullMod. Any takers? Geo?

Rollo

edit: I was offline typing. so my post isn't completely up tp date. Baron, the "we suspect.." addition is still working.

[ July 11, 2002, 17:03: Message edited by: Rollo ]

Baron Munchausen · #15 July 11th, 2002, 08:30 PM

No, not RANDOM. That's not good. It might blame you anyway, and it might blame the victim.

We want a special intel project called 'Frame' or 'Spoof' that takes another intel project and tries to setup clues to make it look like another empire did it. The cost should be 50000 or so, PLUS the cost of that other project. If it fails then your victim gets a message not only that you did it, but that you tried to frame someone else, and WHO you were trying to frame.

[ July 11, 2002, 19:30: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

geoschmo · #16 July 11th, 2002, 08:40 PM

I seem to recall seeing something called "Blamed Sabotage", but I can't find it now. Was that in SEIII maybe?

Geo

Rollo · #17 July 11th, 2002, 08:52 PM

I think you misunderstood what I wanted to do with the randomness. I was calling for randomness in the events. So could make an event that said "Our ship blew up in the xyz system. We suspect the [%randomempire] for this act." This way not all the suspicions would be correct. If you make good pairs of intel ops and events that match the same text, it could work. Sometimes something bad just happens and your paranoid hardliners want to blame it on someone

.

The issue of blamed or framed sabotage is a different one and I agree with what you said in your post.

Rollo

[ July 11, 2002, 19:53: Message edited by: Rollo ]

Baron Munchausen · #18 July 11th, 2002, 09:04 PM

Ah... Well, it's true that more message functions in events would be useful for creating paranoia, yeah.

Given that the 'We suspect...' message only appears about 1/3 of the time anyway I think that simply using events with the same target titles and descriptions as certain intel projects will do the trick. You'll then be paranoid about the ones where you DON'T get the 'We suspect...' message.