Intelligence -- How does it work

Wait a little bit. You have to deplete his accumulated defense intel points first... and that could take a while if he's been defending a lot longer than you were attacking!
(Balance Mod has a different intel system)

It would be faster to build a small (expendable) ship or drone with high cloaking and high scanners (and sensors). Then just send it in. The AI usually stops researching sensors at lvl 1. Your scanners will be able to scan the tech on enemy ships and you can see his sensors tech level.

Is cloak working?

SEV, more than a feeling.

Yes it works fine.

Now can someone please explain the current stock intelligence system?

As far as I have gathered, stock intelligence works sort of like this:

Empires produce defense points, and add it to their current amount. This amount persists across all turns, and only decreases as a result of attack.

Empires produce attack points, reducing the target's defense points. When all of the target's defense is gone, attacks begin to occur. Most attacks only cost about 5k points IIRC, so a lot of attacks can occur.

This is only the general structure. I've seen attacks attempted, and rarely succeeded, even when the target's defense points could not have been depleted, so there may be more to it than what I've described. Perhaps unnamed knows more.

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Cloak does work. The AI just doesn't know how to handle it.

~Myrath

I looked at the intelligece script. Each empire has a comulative defense intel or (def) and attack versus perticular empire (atk). Every attack successfull or not knocks down pts from either empire. The problem is that intel events are cheap pts wise(1000-4000) and defense gets a 50% reduction to attack costs. To make maters worse; you need to finish attack pts on one ennemy before next ennemy's can take effect. I am not 100% sure of this. The Bigger problem is the low # of attacks possible. You can have something like 4-12 attacks per turn max. Those attacks can be blocked and still count as attacks. So if ennemy has decent basic intel to cover those attacks every turn or the points lost from (def); all your extra intell points are saved for next turn and so forth. That means after 20-40K defenseive intel; Nothing will go through from one bigger more powerful empire even if it had 1 million pts.

I see couple of flaws:

1) The # of attacks per turn should be limited by attack pts not attacks types. That is currently 2 per similar attack. I increased that to 20 and hope to try it out soon.
2) The costs of projects are way too low. I raised most of the prices esspecially planet rebilion / plauges / tech stealing. Most sabotage prices are in the 3-4000 range. Espionage 2-3000.
3) I made attacks cost the defese more points unit than before stupid ratio of 2:1. The ratio know i variabble with # of attempts. It start at 1:1 then increases to 1:3 by 20th attempt. After that it stabalises at 1:3 the rest of the way.
4) I am thinking of making the attack costs per attack varriable as well. Any idea of such a function please let me know. I want to be liniar since the code requires stupid "long" #s. I am thinking after 10th attempt; each attack cost increases to 1:1.5 to max of 1:2 after 25 attempts, Is that good an reasonable??
5) I added some of the sabotage from ships & nases -- planets -- empire wide together. So that the choices are atleast 5-6 per sabotage and 3-4 for espionage. That should theoratically make minuim attack attempts (provided atk pts exist) to 60-100 attempts per turn. Is it too much; probably if all atacks do damage. Don't forget attacks now cost more pts after # 10. Anyone with better solution let me know?

I am working on modifying it now. I will keep you updated. I will probably need someone to test it as well.

Thy Reaper, what you said is also my understanding of the stock intel system. Defensive points are added and carried from turn to turn. They are subtracted by offensive attacks. So if the defensive points have been building up a while then it may take a while to burn through those and start getting successful intel attacks.

-Unnamed