Stellaris Dev Diary #194: Intel

[fabeto]

COME ON PARADOX, I KNOW YOU'VE been reading my suggestions

fabo's First Contact DLC

So 2 years is what it takes for you to implement good ideas? Alright have you checked my whining on the better ship fitting comparison with a board game thread?

When a board game has better ship fitting than stellaris

We got to think of something there also :/

 

[Vilcoyote]

Can't you use synonymes to make your text more elegant? Seeing "Intel" 25 times in 3 or 4 lines make the reading of DDs tiedious and uninteresting

 

[The Founder]

First off there is Intel, which is a value between 0 and 100. You have a current Intel value, and you have a “target” Intel value, up to which it can grow. You usually have an Intel floor, which is the lowest value it can be, depending on a couple of factors such as:

• Diplomatic Pacts (Research Agreements, Commercial Pacts etc.)
• Trust
• REDACTED (doesn’t look like anything to you)

Depending on things like diplomatic pacts, trust or other things, your Intel will grow over time.​

Will Sensor Coverage of Systems a lot of their Systems mater for this?
I am thinking of using using a Border Fortress with high powered Sensors System (plus maybe Enigmatic Design).
Or maybe even a Megastructure Sensor Array.

At the cost however of Border Friction (they are spying on us). I am thinking of "[vulcans have enough sensors here to tell] what every Andorian is having for breakfast. "

Information that you do not have details on may be obfuscated to varying degrees.

There are some things that you may be able to infer before being able to prove it - for example, if you find a pop with Gaia World Habitability, well... You've probably figured out what their origin is.

I feel like a certain level of disclosure is nessesary to get the full Dipmoatic power from any area.
Nobody will beleive that you should have 2000 Diplomacy Power from Fleet in the year 10 - unless you show at least some of your stuff.

Indeed, how much of your potential diplomatic power you can use might depend on how open you are about information in general. How Xenophile. How secretive.

 

[Calvax]

I feel like a certain level of disclosure is nessesary to get the full Dipmoatic power from any area.

Bit of a blue sky idea for a mechanic that’s a tweak to your point: it makes sense for diplo power to be based on what people *believe* about you. Doesn’t matter if you’ve only got ten red laser corvettes if everyone’s stale intel claims you have a hundred tachyon Lance battleships.

No idea if it would be fun though (seems like it would be confusing at best) if diplo power was calculated by the average of every GC member’s intel on you.

 

[Tamwin5]

Can't you use synonymes to make your text more elegant? Seeing "Intel" 25 times in 3 or 4 lines make the reading of DDs tiedious and uninteresting

The trouble is that "Intel" is the terminology for the mechanic and resource. Calling Intel Info would be like calling Minerals Stone, or Alloys Soap.

 

[Tamwin5]

I think it could be totally doable to have Diplo Weight be hidden unless you get, say, low diplomacy intel on them. You'd still know roughly where they are from how they rank in the galactic community, but they'd be a bit of a risk factor... and maybe they are a powerful empire in isolationist stance and so intentionally tanking their diplomatic weight, or weak one in cooperative stance with all their envoys sent to the community to boost them out of obscurity.

 

[Vilcoyote]

The diplo weight is already the addition of 4 values, if you don't disclose the detail, I don't see why you need to hide the overall value ( ok some people with awarness can find some exact value after a resolution is passed because of some + or - 20% in specific area)

 

[Lorenerd11]

I think it would be extremely cool to have the ability to hide that you are a fanatical purifier or a determined exterminator or slaver. This would not only allow for suprise attacks, but id like that for roleplay purposes aswell- especially in multiplayer.

Oh, yeah. While the personality type should probably be displayed by default since it's used for AI dialogue, I think there should definitely be an option to conceal it and pretend to be a different empire type.

It would probably be difficult to implement for AI though.

 

[diagrapher]

Looks good!

Will intel limit AI opinion modifiers so that e.g. if they don't know I'm a fanatic purifier they won't hold it against me? And will any level of intel be enough to let us see other countries' policies rather than having to deduce it from their personalities and ethics?

 

[Magnificent Genius]

Will enigmatic engineering effect intel gain? Because that would make it go from kinda nice to amazing.

 

[Tamwin5]

Will enigmatic engineering effect intel gain? Because that would make it go from kinda nice to amazing.

I very much hope so. I actually hope it loses the sensor range, mainly so that espionage benefits can be stronger.

 

[Mímisbrunnr]

@Devs

Given my race has accumulated enough intel, will i be able to find out where my 1st democratic leader vanished to after the first election? And, will it enable me to bring him back as a governor, scientist, admiral or the like?

More seriously, this is a very long-standing bug in vanilla that you guys [PDX] once fixed probably 1-2 years back, but then one of your updates accidentally un-fixed it and its been like this ever since.

Also, while on the subject of bugs, if you guys could try to issue a hotfix [or a 2.8.2 beta] to fix the now probably month+ old bug that means that you can't actually be in breach of galactic law even when you are supposed to be, that would be much appreciated, especially so we don't have this major bug last for further months until 2.9. Presumably if you compare any difference in the processing of galactic law breaches in 2.7.2 and 2.8/2.8.1 you'd be able to find some small change that causes his and revert it to fix it, though admittedly having programmed before there's probably some complication I haven't though of yet.

I don't want to my whole post talking about tangents with bugs, and I want to end on a positive note, so....

... the stuff in this new dev diary sounds really interesting and fun! I'm looking forward to seeing what you'll do with this going forward.

ADDENDUM:

Would it be possible for us to outright disclose our military strength [but not composition] to our enemy if we are convinced we are far stronger than them and want to intimidate them?

 

[Libertine Angel]

As many have said I think concealing your homeworld should be based on Ethics, with the friendly and outgoing societies being free with that information while the more hostile ones keep it secret. However, basing that purely on Ethics doesn't quite work for all cases, for example the wiki tells me Decadent Hierarchies can be formed from Xenophile ethics but their description says they're isolationist, so if revealing the homeworld were to be tied to xenophile ethics that would be contradictory, so perhaps there should be more to it, or maybe those contradictory outliers need an adjustment.
I also like the idea of a Secrecy policy that changes how easily other nations gain intel on you, but with a corresponding change to their Trust.

Espionage might also be a good way to make government types actually matter a little more - you can fairly easily corrupt a bunch of elected officials but it won't have a huge effect on the nation, but assassinating a monarch's heir can disrupt the entire power structure provided your agent's skilled enough to get past the Royal Guard.

 

[Jazzer02]

Would be really cool if there were some sort of spy ships that had increased sensor range so you could put them on the borders of empires and peer into them. As well adding some sort of invisibility screen to ships would be great as it add would add more flexibility to fleet combat as you could avoid flights or strike past their defenses. I'm really excited it's finally going to be here Espionage!!

 

[PLSKICKME]

Im looking forward to ways to decrease others intels on you.
Im a bit concerned about this DD. Lets say we are in a galaxy with only 2 empires, 1 small occupying like 30 starsystems, the rest, lets say 370 starsystem, is owned by the other empire. Having closed borders, no pacts ect, the small empire shouldnt know anything about planets/fleets outside of its sensor range, unless the small one once "saw" a planet. In this exapmle lets say the small one have active vision of 50 systems and 3 planets, and had other 200 systems and 10 planets within its sensor range for some time (because of a ship or spy drone whatever). So from 120 systems, the smaller empire should know nothing about, nor know their number, and know that the other empire has at least 3 planets with xy economy right now and had 10 other planets with zx economy z years ago. Also it seen 4 200k fleets at the same time but no longer sees it, it should assume, that the enemy had 800k power.

tl,dr: Espionage should show what the other has the very LEAST, while planets and fleets kept far away from others should be hidden. having a number bigger than x to know everything is dull, and since its espionage, players should make educated guesses about the other empires real power based on the DATA you received during espionage.

 

[Oscot]

This is an absurd boon to developp the array of weapons available in this game. Please paradox, in the name of everything that is spiritualist.

DO NOT MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY

this intel system will mean nothing if you know the newly discovered alien use tier 1 kinetic tier 1 laser.
It will also hardly be worth the effort if the Tech/Unity dichotomy remain the way it is.

Espionnage is great, don't get me wrong, but according to me the true bane of stellaris are the lack of engagement in the unity system and the lack of variety in space battles,

It's strange to see a post with so many votes where I can't even figure out what point you're making, so I feel compelled to ask: what in God's name point are you making?

'Cos on the face of it I would think that discovering that the aliens use T1 weaponry is very useful information, in the "It's free real estate" sense.

But it's possible you're making some sort of commentary on (a personal bugbear of mine) how the AI's universal use of mixed-munition fleets (to which there is no counter-strategy other than build moar ship) means that all intel is useless. Because currently in Stellaris, every enemy empire gets dealt with the same way: outproduce the enemy with generic fleets. An intel mechanic is completely pointless because it will never cause you to change your strategy, so why even bother investing in intel points?

Since you didn't make this point explicitly, I will: Paradox, there is no point in making an intel mechanic unless you simultaneously change up the AI's fleet loadout spec. Intel that doesn't help you win wars is kinda pointless, in order to win wars you need to win battles, and with the way combat works currently, intel can't help you win battles because AI ship loadouts are too generic to intelligently counter.

 

[Momento Mori]

Will you change how the Sentry Array works? Kinda destroys the whole point of all that

 

[safe-keeper]

Sounds great.

 

[G S Palmer]

The diplo weight is already the addition of 4 values, if you don't disclose the detail, I don't see why you need to hide the overall value ( ok some people with awarness can find some exact value after a resolution is passed because of some + or - 20% in specific area)

This, exactly. We don't need to see a breakdown of their exact diplo weight, but the tooltip could show us how diplo weight is currently being distributed (aka -20% weight from fleets due to GalCom Resolution X). Then, based on that, we could make a bit of an educated guess.

 

[Tamwin5]

Will you change how the Sentry Array works? Kinda destroys the whole point of all that

The Sentry Array is a megastructure. It should be super powerful, on the scale of a strategic coordination center and all the others. These mechanics are mostly for the early to late-mid game, once you hit late game you'll almost certainly know where other empires are and how they compare to you.