Intel Missions

[andstrauss]

After purchased, Intel points can be assigned to a planet or be on the Military Pool.
When conducting Intel missions from planet X, can I use Intel points from the military pool to improve the success?

That makes the help of other planets in the mission, useless. But it seems very hard to frontier worlds (with low census) be able to make any mission attempt with less than 50% chance of failure.

Cheers,

[mwaschak]

That makes the help of other planets in the mission, useless. But it seems very hard to frontier worlds (with low census) be able to make any mission attempt with less than 50% chance of failure.

That is by design. We figured that a real Intel mission, be advanced battle planning or some other abstract of Intel, would be much easier to coordinate from a sophisticated system. I have some ideas I am testing in an alternative Intel system, but I am afraid that rule variant is not quite ready for primetime.

As always, VBAM is modular. Feel free to adjust, tweak, and replace as needed .

-Jay

[Tyrel Lohr]

In your example, the Intel points assigned to a planet are Defensive Intel; missions launched against another fleet or system are Offensive missions, and are paid for out of the Military Intel Pool. A planet with a Census of 5 could have 5 Defensive Intel assigned AND spend up to 5 Intel from the Military Intel Pool on offensive missions.

I don't particularly care for the offensive Intel point implementation in VBAM. I like the concept, but there needs to be a way to increase the maximum Intel a system can project for offensive missions.

I tried a bandaid approach to the problem with the Listening Post facility I introduced in the Companion, but I am now of the belief that it would make more sense to introduce a new unit ability called Intelligence. Units (ground or space) with the Intelligence ability would increase their system or colony's maximum offensive Intel allowance by an amount equal to their total Intelligence ratings. For example, if I have a Census 2 border system I could move two Intelligence (1) spy cruisers into the system which would allow me to spend up to 2 + 1 + 1 = 4 Intel points on offensive Intel missions from the system (with points coming from the Military Intel Pool).