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Pirates should be constantly scouting the planets, and have the option of selling intel reports so that the players can have up-to-date-information about a planet.
A not owned planet where I have no ship scanning the area could have a button to perform the purchase. The older the info, the cheaper it would get.
what about an option to sell scouted intel reports on the black market?
harpo
Is it possible to program this in to a mod? It seems like something the devs. would have to do.
Better diplomatic ties with Pirates would be an interesting group of Diplomacy techs to research.
Perhaps having them attack specific targets being a high level tech, while having them ignore your ships if you're not their target but they're going through your system(s) a lower level tech.
Pirates are one of the more intereresting features to the game, so making them more manipulatable (is that a word?) would be cool.
I like this. It fits in well with the theme of a black market where information is bought and sold.
This is a really cool fluff idea, but I think it would sort of invalidate scouting... as well as devalue the phase space monitoring abilities the Vasari get, and finally, relegate the scout ships to being nothing more than mine-sweepers.
In short, I think this (while cool seeming) would be detrimental to the gameplay.
-Itharus
Detrimental? Maybe, if badly thought out.
Selling your own scouting info to the black market is already a good way to counter useless-ization of scouts.
Purchased info would also not be real-time, it would only refresh the information about the state of a gravwell as the pirates last seen it / bought it (from a selling faction).
Pirates/black market could also have 'bounty scout' mission:
Pirates request info about a gravwell. Players who click on 'accept mission' will be able to pick ONE scout of their own (if it's too hard to implement, it could be on all scouts). a skill would be enabled in it which works like the TEC gravwell probe skill, but occupies a difefrent skill slot. It's a pirate probe, so even if you are TEC you will se two button with seemingly the same skill, only it's not. The first to activate the skill on the target gravwell would get the bounty, the skill would then be disabled on all other scouts.
This is another incentive to keep scouts useable.
Maybe the information needs to be more specific? Also, scouts are already DIRT cheap... paying for this information would be priced... how?
I do like this idea, I just don't see how it could be well implemented - namely due to the research options the Vasari (phase lane) Advent (culture) and TEC (probes) get when it comes to gathering information.
I think that blanketly updating all information about a grav well via purchasing from the black market is wrong. What's needed is something more specific... unforunately, there's not much else. Culture can already be monitored. Phase space can already be monitored. Planets can be monitored over time if you're Advent or TEC already (probes and sacrificing a seeker - or advent cultural dominance).
Pretty much the only thing not available to anyone - is seeing an enemy's primary Trade Lane. Now that I could see buying for a small price, so that you know where to disrupt their Trade, but that's so minor that it's almost not worth implementing.
There's not even a point to knowing someone's construction queue, because if you slip in a scout, you can literally just zoom in and SEE the vessel that's under construction. Pirates could be useful sources of information if you can't GET a scout somewhere... but a scout w/ unfettered jump drives and any other upgrade they can get is going to be able to get around a hell of a lot better than a pirate scout.
As for selling YOUR scouting information to other empires? Good call, depending on how you set your price it could help or harm your relations to the buyer too. I just don't see the merits for Pirate based scouting when you consider how the pirates function in this game.
Also, the scouting bounty mission thing is pretty cool - as long as it's done with your own ships, as it could serve as a good means for improving relations. Perhaps one of the missions will be requested of you, or requested by you - while the other one is always offered by someone (as an item for sale, never as a request)
-Itharus
Its not like we have time to read reports on player activity - at least in multiplayer - and I ignore most of the voice notifications any way so more notifications ins't the answer. However by altering the "fog of war" we might be able to do exactly what you want to achieve. What if we treat the fog of war like a commodity? We can already share different vision classes with allies- why not sell the right to view those vision classes for so many resources per second with non allies? other players can pay you for access to your intel.
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