SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post

[Atrocities]

I like my old idea of limited range scanners and sensors that can only see a sector around the ship on level one and 5 sectors by level 5.

Planets sensors arrays and or scanners would have a greater range of 5 to start out to 10.

This way a ship passing through a system may or may not see all the ships or planets in that system. They would have to EXPLORE the system.

[tesco samoa]

Some good ideas here... I would like to run this thread for 2 weeks and then send in the ideas... See the reply and run it again for 2 weeks... for fine tuning.

[Stone Mill]

tecso- Thanks for your work on this.

If you have an open ear listening on the development front, I would also like to know if we could take the same initiative with the topic of intelligence.

Do you think you can ask how the intelligence model will work?

That is the one area of this truly stellar game... that most recognize as disappointing.

I can volunteer to start up a second thread and collect all the great ideas previously posted regarding what we think could be contributed to an excellent intel model.

Or has this been done? or is it a waste of time?

[Suicide Junkie]

What would be nice is if each component had a visibility rating... two actually. One for intact and one for destroyed.

The visibility rating and the cloaking/sensors modifiers would determine how far away you need to be to identify the component.
Components which fail the visibility check would be fogged out.
Two ideas for destroyed components:
1) Destroyed components are easier to spot, but show up as the classic unidentifiable "broken" icons.
2) Destroyed components are harder to spot, but will be identifiable broken parts when they are spotted.
Perhaps even both ways could be done.
Note: Identifiable means when you right click, you can see what the component was before it got destroyed.

This would handle the silhouette idea, and you could intentionally make your ships similar in design to confuse the enemy.
"Hull size matches. Engine locations match. Active electronics match. That's all I can see from here, but it looks like their big minesweeper, captain!"
"Move to attack"
"Oh, no! There are antiproton beams where the sweepers should have been! We're all gonna die!"

-----

IMO, you should never see the enemy ship or class names unless you do an intel op, or the enemy chooses to show it, by painting the name in big letters on the hull or broadcasting it at every encounter like ST Federation ships enjoy doing
(checkbox per ship, and a racial trait/penalty which would force it to be checked for every ship)

Each ship could be tagged with your own personal name and suspected class independent of what others call it. So as you figure out what components are on the ship during your approach, you can provisionally assign a class designation.
If the enemy dosen't take the "Military Blabbermouths" racial penalty above, then you would lose that info when the ship leaves your maximum detection range.
The info you've collected would still be saved under a "missing enemy ships" list, and if you come into contact with the ship again, you could copy the stats back.

This could backfire for you if the enemy plays a shell game with cloaking and decloaking ships, or does quick retrofits. You will need to get close enough (or have a powerful enough scanner ship) to match up enough components to be confindent in your assignment of who's who .

-----

A "Homing beacon" component would be cool. Activated when your ship is captured by enemies, it will give you full stats on the ship so you can follow and try to recover it.
It would be integrated deeply into the hull, and only removable by retrofitting. Perhaps never removable.

If they were never removable, you could use the captured ship to provide misinformation about where your fleets are gathering.

[tesco samoa]

Stone Mill Great Idea. As it ties in with this area. But if the Intel thread gets too bothersome then break it down.

Go ahead and run with it.

If you want I can send in the email when were done. Or you can. Your choice.

One of my goals here is to keep things open ended... as I do not want to tell MM what the game should be... ( Thats what mods are for ) Just offer suggestions for areas that can be modded and or turned on or off

Intel will be interesting.

[Stone Mill]

Thanks Buddy, I'll get to work on it. I'll start a thread when I get my ducks in a row.

[spoon]

A lot of these ideas are neat, but I wonder if their impact on micromanagement would be too much? Having imperfect views of systems would mean having to play all the movement logs every turn to see if any ships crossed through your unfogged area of each system. (though I suppose something could be put in place where you could be notified with a message in the Turn Log, or something). Limited scanning range would mean having to go and park ships/drop sats all over the place.

That said, as long as it is optional, sure, go nuts. But I wouldn't want to see a lot of features that increase micromanagement beyond the level already present in the game.

[ May 07, 2004, 18:47: Message edited by: spoon ]

[spoon]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Each ship could be tagged with your own personal name and suspected class independent of what others call it.

This would be a great feature, if just to eliminate the effectiveness of the annoying tactic of naming ships things like __..()((.

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

...the "Military Blabbermouths" racial penalty...

Heh.

[Will]

Originally posted by spoon:
A lot of these ideas are neat, but I wonder if their impact on micromanagement would be too much? Having imperfect views of systems would mean having to play all the movement logs every turn to see if any ships crossed through your unfogged area of each system. (though I suppose something could be put in place where you could be notified with a message in the Turn Log, or something). Limited scanning range would mean having to go and park ships/drop sats all over the place.

That said, as long as it is optional, sure, go nuts. But I wouldn't want to see a lot of features that increase micromanagement beyond the level already present in the game.

Simple. Have a toggle switch that draws a colored dotted line for the observed path of ships in the system. Select the sector with the paths, and you can pick one for more information on that particular ship/fleet that passed through. Have options to filter out based on various factors (eg. show only fleets of X ships, show only ships of X size AND Y weapon strength, hide ships greater than X size AND smaller than Y size -- show ships with Space Yard).

I think with the levels of fog, the biggest problem isn't going to be controlling the micromanagement, but making it so the AI isn't completely crippled by it.

[Suicide Junkie]

I guess its going a little off topic, but it is about obfuscating plagues and intel projects...

For intel and plagues, it would be nice if it were planet and ship-based as well.

Spies should be something like a unit, possibly just a counter, though.
It would cost a lot of intel points to create a spy on an enemy world directly, but only a few to train one at home. Large populations should make it easier to find good and willing spies for your side, except for homeworlds, perhaps.

The difficulty of infiltrating spies from a ship to the surface should also depend on the population size.

The potential actions of spies on a planet should depend entirely on the facilities present. Sabotage would be limited to what is produced by the local facilities.
On a planet with research centers, the theft and sabotage of technology would be enabled.
On a planet with a spaceyard, tracking devices could be implanted into ships under construction. (They would reveal position and status of the ship to the spying empire)
On a planet with a resupply depot, ship bombs could be planted on passing ships.
And etc.

- The facility definition should probably specify which intel projects they make the planet vulnerable to.
- Some intel projects, like anti-population and unit storage info/sabotage would be specified as facility-independent.

The acutal spy projects should cost no intel points at all, but instead carry a significant chance of the spy being thwarted, a moderate chance of the spy being killed in the attempt, and a small chance of the spy being captured and interrogated to reveal who sent him.
Only when you run out of spies do you have to spend points to train more.

Intel points could be spent on maintenace, though, and would reduce the chance of the spies being discovered by counter intel projects.

-----

Plagues:
Each plague should have:
1) A specific incubation time.
- From 1 game turn to a year or more.
Short incubation times mean the plague is noticed early, and gives the player lots of time to halt ships and prevent it from spreading to other planets.
- After arriving at a planet, the plague will spread but not cause any effects until the incubation time has passed.
- After the incubation time has passed on the first infected planet, the disease will be discovered by the afflicted race. After discovery, all medical facilities and components across the empire will start to counter the plague, even planets still in the incubation stage.
2) A virulence rating.
- How many more people contract the plague each turn that it Lasts. Both a maximum % increase, and a maximum count increase.
3) A deadliness rating, separate values for each race in the game.
- The common cold may be rampant on earth, but causes mere discomfort and lowers happiness a bit.
When the Amonkrie visit and contract the plague, they could start dying after only 1 turn.
- Out of the infected population, specify what % will be incapacitated, and what % will die. The remaining amount are carriers of the disease, but not hurt significantly by it.
The effective population for use in production and research points is reduced by the number of incapacitated people.

Higher level plagues would have longer incubation times, spread faster and be deadly to more than one race.
Low level plagues would show their effects right away, not spread to many people, and be deadly to at most one race.

Multiple plague bombs would infect more people initially. Enough hits would overwhelm the medical facilities.

Note: The incapacitated % could very well be more than 100%.
At 300%, it means for each infected person, two uninfected people are forced to stop working in order to care for them!
A high level plague like that which incapacitates the population very quickly, but dosen't kill, would be perfect for just before a ground invasion. After which you go and cure the people.

-----

For medical bays and facilities.
Medical facilities on the planet could subtract from the virulence of any plague, while curing a set number each turn.
Medical components in orbit would probably just cure a set number.
Any ships in the same sector as a medical bay would be cured of the plague if the plague has been discovered already

If the medics get there early, the # cured per turn may exceed the new infection rates, and the plague would slowly be eliminated. Otherwise, the medics will only be able to slow the progress of the disease until more help arrives in the form of extra medical ships and facilities.

When a plague is discovered, a new research area could open up, and allow the player to study better cures.
Each level researched could add some amount to the cure rate and virulence reduction of the specific plague.
If dynamically generated, the tech area name should probably be "[planetname] plague of [gamedate]" or some variation on the theme.

[ May 07, 2004, 21:11: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]