Is the intelligence in SE(?) ok?

[President_Elect_Shang]

How does this idea strike you all? It is a sort of recombination of ideas posted.

Chance for succesfully defending against an intel attack should be developed into the advanced traits Category so that you can pick one based on how you perceive your race. This would allow moders to tinker with the numbers for new races added after release of SE5. It would also allow for variations amongst species. For example you may be able to bribe a dirty human official into leading a planet into rebellion but you wouldn’t have it easy trying to get a hive minded queen to do the same thing. I don’t want to start throwing out percentages right now; anyway if Aaron likes the idea we would only need to develop guidelines for the base races that would be included in SE5 such as the Eee. This selectable advanced traits option would serve as the chance to counter an intel attack and thus you could remove the counter intel Category from the Intelligence screen. Follow me?

[ December 18, 2003, 02:10: Message edited by: President Elect Shang ]

[Q]

Personally I don't like the idea to drop counter intel at all. And for me the ability to store counter intel points was actually an improvement of SE IV compared to SE III. However I like the idea of a racial characteristic (more than a racial trait) where you can alter the success rate of enemy intel projects in the game setup pretty much like the defensiveness characteristic works for combat. And if the ability "Change Bad Intelligence Chance - System" is fixed as promised in the next patch we will have many possibilities to modify the intel actions already in SE IV.

[President_Elect_Shang]

I didn’t mean to say that the storage of intel points should be dropped. If you drop the counter intel projects because you have different selectable levels of “counter intel defense”, for lack of a better name, than that equates to focusing on offensive intel projects. Also Q I am not sure what you mean by racial (species) characteristics as opposed to racial (species) traits, could you please expand on this concept for me?

[Q]

Originally posted by President Elect Shang:
Also Q I am not sure what you mean by racial (species) characteristics as opposed to racial (species) traits, could you please expand on this concept for me?

A racial trait you pick or you don't. It's all or nothing. A racial characteristic can be raised or lowered by 1% intervals and starts at 100%. This gives you much more variety than one or two fixed racial traits.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Right, I guess I had a mind blank, actually no, I was thinking of the chocolate covered cherries I was making at the time. I would prefer to see it introduced as a species trait. As the game stands now Intelligence is a species characteristic, but it is very generic. I see what you are saying though, that it should be split into categories (right) like intel-defense, intel-offense for example. I think this may (or may not) complicate things more. It is an idea worth exploring though.

Do enough of us here like both points that we can safely split into two paradigms and discuss the pros and cons?

Paradigm 1) Intelligence as a species characteristic.

Paradigm 2) Intelligence as a species trait.

[rdouglass]

How about both?

Using a model you've been discussing, maybe treat Intel like combat bonuses; each empire gets trait, characteristic, and training / experience values. Subtract total "Offensive" from "Defensive" (or vice versa) and that is the "percent chance of sucess".

Oversimplified, but sounds feasible to me....anyone else?

EDIT: Isn't that how "Chance to Hit" is calc'ed now??? Without using any Talisman-like features, that should always provide a chance to suceed AS WELL AS a chance to fail.

[ December 18, 2003, 17:50: Message edited by: rdouglass ]

[President_Elect_Shang]

I follow what you are saying and it too is a good idea. I see two problems with this though.

1) Modding: Anyone who wanted to select an intelligence trait would be doing so for not. Another player could simply select higher bonuses in the intelligence species section. Consider that you can’t guess how your opponent divided up his bonus points for characteristics, but who amongst us does not know the advantages that are provided by the traits natural merchants or lucky. Do you see what I am getting at? If you select the trait lucky your opponent can’t raise anything in the characteristics area to make you unlucky. Thus I decided to split the ideas into the two paradigms below; they really can not coexist without some major tinkering with the game mechanics.

2) The second problem I see is that it would really be redundant. If you make the intel into a characteristic and get full customization than you would not have an incentive to waste points picking a trait that provides the same or similar bonuses. Of course I need not point out that you can easily cap the amount for points that can be spent but still.

This [number 2] leads to another point. If the characteristic is customizable why have the trait which you can’t customize. I prefer the former over the latter because it will allow modders to have more [AI] control over the races they create. Also I really think that too much control, which characteristics selection could provide is a bad thing. Limiting it would be easier than having Aaron lay it in the code (un-modable) and it would help to flesh out the species identity RP wise. Not that characteristics don’t do the same thing already. Given this I will admit that there are holes in my idea. Still if you can mod in new offensive-intel projects you would not be able to mod in counter-intel projects if counter-intel is a characteristic. Man is this long.