TC01
Deity
I'm currently on break and have been working on 1.9 in some branches on github, which I've been thinking of as "the Espionage Update". This will probably mostly be a new-content update.
I intend to post a beta over the next few days with a new playable civilization (Interstellar Intelligence, colloquially called "the Watchers"-- it roughly follows the proposal by Imp Knoedel in this thread with some adaptations) and spy units. I've disabled the "destroy building/project" spy missions until I either add a Python callback of some sort for espionage missions or something, but otherwise they seem to work.
I also re-enabled the No Espionage gameoption and added a new No Spies gameoption, where espionage can still be made but where spy units cannot be trained.
However, I have been considering the following slightly different-than-BTS design for espionage units: instead of making them invisible to all units, make them only as invisible as a stealth cruiser. Then also give them a small power so they can defend themselves if attacked, but I also made them defend only (for obvious reasons).
I've also thought of a potential further refinement for the way stealth/cloaking works right now. Currently in Final Frontier, cloaking is somewhat binary-- ships are invisible or they are not. This is even true with the Cloaking Devices mod but that allows ships to toggle their invisibility.
What if we changed that, by making invisibility something that got better as you upgraded your units from normal -> delta -> omega? So instead of only having one INVISIBLE_STEALTH group we could have INVISLBLE_STEALTH_I, INVISIBLE_STEALTH_II, INVISIBLE_STEALTH_III. There appears to be support for multiple InvisibleInfos, but I *don't* think there's support for having them encapsulate each other-- i.e. having STEALTH_II obsolete STEALTH_I. (I could be wrong, though).
In my build, spies are currently available at the start of the Expansion Era, so they would likely start with STEALTH_II.
Any thoughts about these ideas? The tiers-of-espionage feature likely won't make it into the 1.9 beta I'm planning to release, but if I decide to do it, it would make it into 1.9 proper. Other features likely to make their way into 1.9 include a couple of espionage-focused wonders and probably some fixes and under-the-hood improvements.
I intend to post a beta over the next few days with a new playable civilization (Interstellar Intelligence, colloquially called "the Watchers"-- it roughly follows the proposal by Imp Knoedel in this thread with some adaptations) and spy units. I've disabled the "destroy building/project" spy missions until I either add a Python callback of some sort for espionage missions or something, but otherwise they seem to work.
I also re-enabled the No Espionage gameoption and added a new No Spies gameoption, where espionage can still be made but where spy units cannot be trained.
However, I have been considering the following slightly different-than-BTS design for espionage units: instead of making them invisible to all units, make them only as invisible as a stealth cruiser. Then also give them a small power so they can defend themselves if attacked, but I also made them defend only (for obvious reasons).
I've also thought of a potential further refinement for the way stealth/cloaking works right now. Currently in Final Frontier, cloaking is somewhat binary-- ships are invisible or they are not. This is even true with the Cloaking Devices mod but that allows ships to toggle their invisibility.
What if we changed that, by making invisibility something that got better as you upgraded your units from normal -> delta -> omega? So instead of only having one INVISIBLE_STEALTH group we could have INVISLBLE_STEALTH_I, INVISIBLE_STEALTH_II, INVISIBLE_STEALTH_III. There appears to be support for multiple InvisibleInfos, but I *don't* think there's support for having them encapsulate each other-- i.e. having STEALTH_II obsolete STEALTH_I. (I could be wrong, though).
In my build, spies are currently available at the start of the Expansion Era, so they would likely start with STEALTH_II.
Any thoughts about these ideas? The tiers-of-espionage feature likely won't make it into the 1.9 beta I'm planning to release, but if I decide to do it, it would make it into 1.9 proper. Other features likely to make their way into 1.9 include a couple of espionage-focused wonders and probably some fixes and under-the-hood improvements.
