More expensive Intelligence projects

[Fyron]

If you made offensive projects cost something like 10x as much, then they might have a chance of breaching it.

Making intel centers more productive actually makes CI more powerful because each additional point gives the defender 4 or 5 points of CI, but the attacker only gets 1 point of offensive.

[spoon]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
[qb]That will make CI even more over-whelming than it is now. 12 full CI III are nearly impossible to breach. CI IV or V would be impossible.

12 full CI 3 should be near-impossible to breach. If you want to spend that many points on defense and forgo any intel attacks, you deserve a little peace of mind.

Would CI IV and up still be impossible to breach if higher-tech offensive attacks and CI depleters were more expensive?

I suspect the depleters won't make much difference in most games, since the increase in cost only comes into play when you are generating insane amounts of intel. Otherwise it is usually sufficient to bleed with PPP or Tech-Stealing. However, having higher levels of CI available helps the defender a lot more than having high-costed attacks.

Would they be impossible if both attacker and defender had access to 17 additional levels of Intelligence Centers (raising Intelligence Point generation by 100 points each)?

Possibly, if the CI levels stop increasing before the IntelCenters stop. If you can only go up to CI5, a defensive intel player might stop there, where as an attacking intel player might research higher up the tree and therefore generate more points with higher level Intel Centers.

But all else being equal, generating more points only benefits the defender, since his points are multiplied by the CI project.

[Soulfisher]

Is it the "Effect Amount" listed in the IntelProjects.txt file for the CI projects that determines how much of a bonus to defensive points you get?

If so, suppose I gave CI 1 and CI 2 an Effect Amount of 1, gave CI 3, CI 4, and CI 5 an Effect Amount of 2, and gave CI 6 through CI 10 an Effect Amount of 3. Perhaps by extending the Effect Amount like this (or leaving it at 1 for all CI for that matter), CI can be increased in value (how much it stores) without becoming "ultimate" in defense. Would this be desirable to players (given offensive techs were extended/made more expensive)? I understand giving the defender more than a 3x point bonus to CI is way too much.

[Q]

Originally posted by Soulfisher:
Is it the "Effect Amount" listed in the IntelProjects.txt file for the CI projects that determines how much of a bonus to defensive points you get?

If so, suppose I gave CI 1 and CI 2 an Effect Amount of 1, gave CI 3, CI 4, and CI 5 an Effect Amount of 2, and gave CI 6 through CI 10 an Effect Amount of 3. Perhaps by extending the Effect Amount like this (or leaving it at 1 for all CI for that matter), CI can be increased in value (how much it stores) without becoming "ultimate" in defense. Would this be desirable to players (given offensive techs were extended/made more expensive)? I understand giving the defender more than a 3x point bonus to CI is way too much.

You are right.
IMO counter-intel is far too effective in standard SE IV and I reduced the effect amount for all CI projects to 1. Don't forget in the settings.txt file "Intelligence Defense Modifier Percent", which I reduced to 50. I don't like too much to discuss about "realistic" in a game like SE IV, but isn't it much more difficult to block sabotage than to create one? I believe we all learned in the Last two years that this is indeed so.
Anyway with the modification above intel becomes quite an interesting option to attack an enemy.

[Soulfisher]

Originally posted by Q:
You are right.
IMO counter-intel is far too effective in standard SE IV and I reduced the effect amount for all CI projects to 1. Don't forget in the settings.txt file "Intelligence Defense Modifier Percent", which I reduced to 50. I don't like too much to discuss about "realistic" in a game like SE IV, but isn't it much more difficult to block sabotage than to create one? I believe we all learned in the Last two years that this is indeed so.
Anyway with the modification above intel becomes quite an interesting option to attack an enemy.

What affect do both of these have? If "Intelligence Defense Modifier Percent" := 120 and "Effect Amount" := 2, then does this CI project get 240% of stored points to spend on defense?

[Q]

Originally posted by Soulfisher:
What affect do both of these have? If "Intelligence Defense Modifier Percent" := 120 and "Effect Amount" := 2, then does this CI project get 240% of stored points to spend on defense?

Correct.

[Soulfisher]

Thanks Q.