beta feedback:

1. New spy system isn't doing it for me. Seems now to be more complicated without improving gameplay. Information spying now requires anything fron 4-32 spies which is too expensive for what you get, and, at present, these spies have no mobility. I think the same thing could be achieved with much more simplicity, like simply placing a spy on a civ's capital will access civ info over time, placing a spy on a starport will access orbital fleet info etc etc. it may be that spies placed on certain tiles eg civ capital are 'embedded' and are harder to remove. I think the current system is cleaner than the beta, it just needs more subtlety.

2. planetary governors are similar to above. they worked in gc1, but in gc2 planets are simply more complicated and the governor doesn't feel like it can cope in its current form. the governor is placed to far down in the UI, and needs to come up at least one level. frankly, the ai does a good job of organising planets these days - i think it might be simpler just to click an 'independence' button that lets the ai take over for that planet, if that is possible.

3. constructor governors are cool and work fine.

keep up the good work

evil

I love having tech brokering off - it makes it fundamentally easier to work techs tactically if they don't go any further.

Spies definitely need to be removable - on one hand, it makes more sense to me that to have up to date data you have to have people working all the time, on the other hand, I got four analysts on a civ and lost them all when the civ surrendered to the Krynn. But other than that, I'm fundamentally happy with the spy system.

Planetary Governors definitely need a little more work, because as it stands, planets are so varied that the "wish list" just barely cuts it.

A. You should be able to save lists between games, associated with the tech tree it uses.

B. Ordering needs to be more intuitive;

C. You should have a 'default' initial governor based on planet size; set by the user - I may want a specific governor for planets below <=6 from 7-11, then from 12 to 17, 18 to 24, and above 24, or someone else might want something different,

D. it needs some very minor scripting functionality. I understand you don't want to do this, but I REALLY REALLY want it, because it needs to be able to do so things like "if planet has a +400% tile, go ahead and build a research center" and "First build four factories. Then upgrade them one by one until we have four industrial sectors. THEN build a starport, then spam the econ buildings, and don't build the xenofarm till last".

A-C shouldn't be hard I should think, and would make it more useful. D may be more than you want to do, but would make it incredibly useful.

Jonnan

Only loosing 4 spies to get up to Advanced intel for each race is too expensive?  I'm sure that if you had 8 opponents under the pre-2.0 system, you'd loose more than 32 spies in the process of gaining Advanced with all 8 races.

At first glance it is a shock to loose those spies and have no way to get them back (even on a race's demise), but trying to get those intel levels with all the other races in the game under the old system would lead to far FAR greater costs.

The only way you could maximize you bang for the buck on this would to have a little over 150 spies on hand to dump on a race all at once, then in the following week after fulfilling the 147 spy-week requirement to gain Advanced, pull them off to another race.  This swarm of spies would only loose you 2, maybe 3 per race....but you have just trained over 150 spies to do this....you'd be looking at something near 1,000,000bc to do this.  I was getting at least 560,000bc spent total to hit the 100th spy, with spies just beginning to cost 5-digits each.

In the end, if you loose 2 spies to each race, you still have lost 16 spies...half of that which one was squeemish about loosing under the 2.0 system.

This new system is FAR more economical for inteligence learning than before.  The only thing you loose is the time spent to hit those levels since you're capped at 4 spy-weeks a week, whereas in my 150 spy example, you could hit advanced in 1 week...but, gaining all those spies would cost more time than training 32 spies and hitting Advanced with 8 races.

The 2.0 spy system also sounds like it saves lots of *clicking*. Doing the 150-spy thing Loup describes means probably over 1,000 clicks, and that's assuming the rival civ even has 150 or so tiles vulnerable to spies.

Even if you get "realistic" about working to advanced in the old system, I'm OK with "burning" 4 spies to trade a few clicks for several hundred.

I would like it more if the requirements for reaching intel levels wasn't dependent on passive spies. That way, if you wanted to use them offensively, you could still gain information but obviously at a slower pace and at risk of being countered. I do remember, however, stealing tech even without advanced when i bombed a civilization with like 20+ spies at once.

Aye, it seems like tech stealing only happens on agressive spies.  I sat for years with Advanced on 2 races and never stole 1 tech.  I wanted to test out if agressive spies still gave intel...whenever that day I turn my home pc back on that is lol.

So does that mean you aren't ready to confirm or correct what Inforeceptor said about on-planet spies not helping you achieve an intel level?

I've never considered spy-based tech stealing anything to actively pursue because it is based on a tough dice roll, and it seems more "reasonable" to me that stealing a tech needs a field unit to complete the job. But I'll be a bit surprised to learn that a spy in the field cannot help the home office build the basic files.

I haven't tested it as of yet to see if they even give a reduced information or just none now.  I had it on my list of things to do since...gawd last weekend or such.  I didn't touch my computer at all this weekend or all of last week  .

When I sit down again to continue my spy costs, I'll give it a try in my current game since I didn't do anything for intel levels in that game.  I'll drop 5 on one race, 10 on the other and see if anything happens.  I still got another 25 or so spies (somewhere near another year to play) to go in that game so I should be able to say with good-enough certancy if agressive spies give any intel, even if diminished.

OK, I got home, tossed ALL 68 of my spies on 1 AI...ran that out for another 50 some rounds....I lost maybe a dozen spies, but no intel level gain.  I can now say...agressive spies give nothing toward intel levels.

Damn, Krynn's buildings bring them to 100% espionage...loosing up to 1/2 of my income towards spies was great!  I got my 100th spy in 1 week's time.  I think as the Iconian's I'll gtoss the krynn in the game, just so I can buy those techs and build the buildings lol.

I think my objection to losing 4 'analysts' is the simple 'it conflicts with my mental RPG image of what they're doing' - in my head, those four are the teams at langley going over deep space recon photos, looking at published data, and figuring how much of the latest edition of "Janes Fighting Starships" was paid for by the other sides intelligence agency.

Which of course means that when the empire collapses, you should be able to just retask those deep space probes and such, so I should be able to keep my investment in analysts - I'd actually be more comfortable with losing my agents in place "During the invasion of Dracha VII, we lost contact with our deep cover agent in the confusion . . . at this time all indications are that he never made it out . . ."

{G} - Jonnan

Per-zactly, except you left out that those home-based analysts also get data streams from field agents and other "resources," a share of whom are doing no sabotage. I can see how a given field spy might not add to the formal intel level as quickly as a unit "based at Langley," but surely they should contribute *something* if they are in place long enough?

Yeah, but most of those field agents are mook - level one characters that were going to die whe the alien hero looked at them funny anyway It's those level fifteen characters that are a lot of trouble for a galactic overlord to replace!

We need a Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers/Captain Proton Mod! The heck with those wusses the Drengin and the Korath, I wanna see a war between Emperor Ming the Merciless and Princess Ardala of Draconia (You *know* she's in charge - she's been slowly poisoning her dad's coffee for years- {G})

Jonnan

If the Arnorian style is in the Drad Lords style is too, I know there is a mod but it always messes up the races ex: the humans end up with the Thalans tchs and styles, so yes?

Depends on game style - i don't think i've even produced 32 spies in any game i've played. I think the beta does something for playing on immense, but it shouldn't 'penalise' what is likely to be 99% of games which will be on smaller maps. I liked having mobility. It gave me choices/risk assessment, made me value my spies - a lot of my gains were on the back of other espionage rings run by other races (i'll just plop my spy here on this useless facility while the ai burns it's spies on protecting it's valued real estate from sabotage from other races - the meek spy shall inherit the world!)

Just on a UI point - the planet governor selection is based on double clicking only, but the UI standard is to either doubleclick or click the arrows to transfer from one column to another? i think this should be consistent. unless, of course i've got it all wrong

evil

!

I'm working at it right now. X-Worlds has 'Interrogation, Abduction & Sabotage(s)' in the gutter.

But, i will be using *indirect* means rather than code_driven features compiled through design steps at SD HQ.