Romulan Intelligence Center

posted on January 25th, 2011, 9:42 pm

This isn't a bug report.

So, Kyuubi and I just played a game with a pair of newcomers on a map of their making.  Basically one of them took nirvana to the map editor and blew it up to 50k x 50k, absolutely huge.  Also it had 12 moons per player.

I'll let you guys decide if I'm an open-minded guy who likes to help noobs learn, or if I've got a mean streak and enjoy slaughtering them.  The two of us spammed mixed-tech frigates, burstfire leahvals, and cloak defiants out of 4 yards.  Each.  To be fair, the mass of fed torpedo turrets around the enemy's wormhole got their fair share of kills when we came to knock down the door.

But all this is beside the point!  What I'm really interested in is the Romulan Intelligence Center, which I used to great effect during the game.  I haven't really built them since they can no longer destroy cubes, but they can certainly snipe enemy miners; I probably got over 15 miner kills from that baby.

So as with all things that I get excited about, I want to know the exact mechanics behind it.  Would a dev mind telling me what the options for the Sabotage Agent are, and the chances of getting them?  I've noticed that when it ranks up it does tend to be more successful, also that its effect vs buildings is much weaker than against vessels.

I tried diving into the odfs to learn more about the IC, and was surprised to see that Helev's intelligence center takes roughly 60% as much experience as Mijural's to rank up.  I had no idea the difference was that large.

posted on January 25th, 2011, 9:54 pm

Personally I feel the Intelligence Center is under powered since the last couple of latest patches.  I rarely have ships blow up anymore.  In fact, I've seen a number of them take damage so low that it's arguable that I would have better spent the supplies cost on anything else.  I literally saw a destroyer take such minor damage that it healed from it within the time I was watching it (about 5 seconds).  This is what I'd call a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

I'd much rather see a random subsystem go offline on a ship for 30 seconds to 2 minutes instead.  Not sure if you can get a number of random off-times to work in that way, but it'd be a lot more beneficial to see a capitol ship's engines go off for 1 minute than minor damage it recovers from at a nearby yard (or repair ship!).  And it'd be great to even see a starbase's life support go off for potentially up to 2 minutes.  It might not be enough to clear it, but a player not paying attention could have his station get jumped sometime afterwards and find it quickly falling into Romulan hands.

posted on January 25th, 2011, 11:07 pm

Well, the chance is low but when the IC hits a subsystem, it knocks it out and the subsystem has to go through a repair cycle.  I would like to see better hits against structures (if the ability draws an offense-subsystem-destroy on a structure without weapons it should instead lower the shields)

As for its effectiveness, I was completely in agreement with you before the last few games.  The way you use the IC is you first rank it up as fast as possible, but once it's got a few bars you hotkey it and every few minutes you hit the button, see what you drew and if it's good you sabotage until it's dead.  Miner sniping can be very annoying when they're otherwise out of your reach.

It took me 3 sabotage agents in a row (total of 17 supply, 1500 energy from my double-gold IC) but I sniped a breen battleship prototype with it.    Pretty good considering the enemy could do nothing to stop it.

posted on January 25th, 2011, 11:15 pm

coudlnt they repair the proto?

posted on January 25th, 2011, 11:18 pm

The Intel center is great when you've got good luck, horrible when you dont.

Some matches I'll never destroy a single ship and it'll never rank up.

Some matches each target I hit with it takes high damage.

Prehaps give it differnt modes.

For example, a gather intel mode has random ships/stations give you their line of sights for a few seconds. Basicly the same as the current intel agent execpt it's a few seconds on a ship, then automaticly switches to another, with a counterbalance of it sucking up all of the stations power, lasting 3 mins, and delaying power regen starting for 2-3 more minutes. Prehaps at higher ranks have it show multiple objects lines of sight at once.

[Tryptic]

posted on January 25th, 2011, 11:33 pm

Last edited by Tryptic on January 25th, 2011, 11:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I hit the prototype again immediately after seeing the first effect.  He couldn't reach a repair yard in 7-8 seconds 

Which actually makes me wonder, if you click the ability 3 times fast will it apply all 3 to the target?  It's hard to test because the damage is random and you don't know if it failed one time or not.

posted on January 25th, 2011, 11:34 pm

I hit the prototype again immediately after seeing the first effect.  He couldn't reach a repair yard in 7-8 seconds 

then where the hell was his proto? it should have been next to his starbase not dying.

posted on January 25th, 2011, 11:37 pm

Keep in mind it doesn't give a notification you've been hit.  I don't think he saw the proto taking damage at all.

posted on January 26th, 2011, 2:38 am

The Intel center is great when you've got good luck, horrible when you dont.

Some matches I'll never destroy a single ship and it'll never rank up.

Some matches each target I hit with it takes high damage.

Prehaps give it differnt modes.

For example, a gather intel mode has random ships/stations give you their line of sights for a few seconds. Basicly the same as the current intel agent execpt it's a few seconds on a ship, then automaticly switches to another, with a counterbalance of it sucking up all of the stations power, lasting 3 mins, and delaying power regen starting for 2-3 more minutes. Prehaps at higher ranks have it show multiple objects lines of sight at once.

I disagree about modes. It makes no sense for all the spies to collectively have one mode, and would not work well.


I think it would be better to have a way of choosing what you want to get infiltrated (a class of ship/station, a category like prototypes, or specific ship/station but you only get a random list of names.) With an increased chance for what you wanted to be infiltrated.
This would make it quite a bit more powerful, so I think that it should get a significant delay after requesting a spy.

Aesthetic request: replace the energy supply with a trained spy supply. Or have both (energy used for special long range transporter.)


As for the main point of the thread, I think that info like that should be on the tooltip text so it doesn't have to be memorized. Just like the passive percents.

posted on January 26th, 2011, 3:01 am

Well, the chance is low but when the IC hits a subsystem, it knocks it out and the subsystem has to go through a repair cycle.

Not at all what I meant.  I was hoping for a prolonged disabled subsystem for the purpose of not being able to be fixed at all.  Thus why I mentioned repair ships being useless as well as yards.  The idea being of course, that Romulan agents would use special equipment to sabotage it so the system would be locked out by traditional repair attempts.  Only once the time limit expires does it return, as if the crew could eventually figure out a way around it, but only after so long.  The idea behind the equipment could be anything from a virus, to a special hack that locks them out of their own main computer.  You could perhaps even suggest some kind of radioactive equipment that was disabling the system and had to be found.  But I'll leave these things up to everyone else' imaginations.

posted on January 26th, 2011, 7:32 am

I disagree about modes. It makes no sense for all the spies to collectively have one mode, and would not work well.


I think it would be better to have a way of choosing what you want to get infiltrated (a class of ship/station, a category like prototypes, or specific ship/station but you only get a random list of names.) With an increased chance for what you wanted to be infiltrated.
This would make it quite a bit more powerful, so I think that it should get a significant delay after requesting a spy.

Aesthetic request: replace the energy supply with a trained spy supply. Or have both (energy used for special long range transporter.)


As for the main point of the thread, I think that info like that should be on the tooltip text so it doesn't have to be memorized. Just like the passive percents.

I actually like this. Have a basic vague choice of what size/type of target to hit and what not.