Intelligence - How it works in Balance Mod

Should I be getting hit that much, then? If my defense is 50,000 and there's a total of 120,000 against me, each of the ten races should have about 12,000 attack points. So the success percent should be like, 12000/(12000+100000+1000) = 11%.

Actually with the intelligence numbers so big, the cost of the project doesn't matter much. A 1000 IP project succeeds 10.6% and a 10000 IP succeeds 9.8%. But if they do the 1,000 IP projects, they get to do twelve of them so there's only a 26% chance they'll all fail -- 74% chance at least one will get through. So I should be getting hit by about seven cheap projects among the ten races, or less than that with a few expensive ones.

Seems like more than that is getting through. I'll have to write down which projects they're hitting me with and see how many and how expensive they are.

Do they get depleted, like BlueTemplar is saying? If I have 10,000 defense and they have 20,000 offense, and they launch a 10,000 IP project, the chance is
20000/(20000 + (2*10000) +10000) = 40%.
If a second empire launches another project of the same size, my 10,000 points are depleted and the chance is
20000/(20000 + (2*0) + 10000) = 66%.
That would explain a lot of hits.

My friend and I are playing a game of multiplayer with BM 1.09 and v1.44. Intel is a scary part of the game. If you wanted to, I think you could do better by ignoring research and building intel facilities on all your planets. You can steal your enemies ships -- his colony ships even, and start planets on his back lines. You can disrupt his trade and make him scrap all his ships to save maintenance.

We're afraid to use intel on each other too much because it works so well, we're afraid the other guy will use it on us. This last turn, I was attacking my friend near his home worlds in a successful campaign. He decided to "push the button" and attack my trade. I was afraid he'd try to steal my invasion fleet out from under me, so I had 140,000 intel on 100% defense. Call it 150,000 with Ethics. He put about 70,000 into Sabotage - Political.

He took out 30% trade routes with two of the major AIs! He cut my trade from over a million resources a turn to 700,000, just by moving a slider, when I had more intel than him and was on 100% defense. By comparison, if he had built enough ships to simultaneously destroy all my planets with resource facilities and all my mining ships, he would have taken about 360,000 resources.

I would go for scorched earth and attack his trade routes next turn, but I'm afraid. If he takes out the rest of my trade routes, I'll have an empire with 180,000 minerals production and 360,000 minerals in maintenance. I think I'll stay on defense until my trade is gone, and then when intelligence is the only working part of my empire I'll start killing his trade and taking his planets. It's sure easier to beat him that way than actually building ships.

He did it to me again the next turn. 60,000 intelligence on the offense against 140,000 on defense and he took away my trade with the Serghetti and the Rijjilhae. According to the formula in your link the odds of that are 50k/520k or 10% for the first attack, 30k/420k or 7% for the second attack, and I presume about the same for the third attack. He can't be that lucky.

This is as though I had twice as many frigates as him but I still couldn't keep him from getting through to my planet, because frigates are "leaky" on defense. I don't like it.

Next turn I told him to keep his intelligence on the same setting and I will try "counter-intelligence." I'll put all 140,000 into the focus area that cancels intelligence projects and see if I can cancel what he's doing to me that way. I'll report back on how it works.

On another note, is there any way to tell what your opponent's morale is so you can tell if the Steal Planet function will work? Long range scanners don't tell morale.

So it was letting everything through? That's really leaky! Kwok, I really appreciate your taking mercy on my plight and going back to look at your code. You don't have to apologize for anything -- I feel like I got to help beta test Balance Mod now. Giving the BM something back.

We don't need to go back in the turns. This is our second game of multiplayer and every turn we are getting burned by things that didn't work the way we assumed. If I could take back the last four turns, I'd be taking back the time I sent my second-biggest fleet to fiery death in a known minefield, headed by four CLOAKED minesweepers, and my friend would be taking back his sensor-sharing treaty with the AI that let me see every single one of his spy ships. The intel thing is just one more bump in the road.

You know, except for the trade treaty breaking, intel was surprisingly survivable considering that nothing was being blocked. We were playing through the ship stealing and the atmosphere bombing and everything else. I wonder if we'll end up modding it back to be somewhat leaky again just to keep things from getting too placid.