Is anybody usefully using the intelligence feature??

[willgamer]

I can't seem to find a useful way to gain advantage from the hack vs. security plus intel overlay.

What as I missing???

[incbob]

The whole point of COMINT is, to a degree, remove some of the fog of war. As the USA I keep trying to break the Japanese codes, but have not had success.

[gwgardner]

At the risk of confusing you:

Buy COMINT units, deploy them where you need info on the enemy. Sometimes you do get more info.

You can also do as incbob does and try to crack the enemy code overall.

As I always say, learn by doing.

[willgamer]

ORIGINAL: gwgardner

At the risk of confusing you:

Buy COMINT units, deploy them where you need info on the enemy. Sometimes you do get more info.

You can also do as incbob does and try to crack the enemy code overall.

As I always say, learn by doing.

Hence my question... I've been doing, but I've never seen a useful result after crack code, deploy COMINT.

What are some useful results you've seen?

[YueJin]

I've had two uses for COMINT units in my Allied game. First to stick on enemy fleets near land hexes to get a better recon value on them which reduces the chance of them avoiding combat. Secondly to drop on potential invasion spots to make sure they're not held by an army instead of a division before committing to it. I successfully broke the Japanese codes once but the effects of that weren't really noticeable so I've just been buying COMINT for the most part.

[gwgardner]

I often use it when I spot an enemy fleet and want to know spcifically what ship types are in it. For the US, I watch Rabaul and Truk, see if COMINT can tell me if there are any carriers there. Similar for the Japanese, like trying to find out what type of defense force is at Port Moresby.

[Uxbridge]

The COMINT units are only active on the turn you deploy them, it seems?

[JWW]

Save comint 'units' and use them to get better info on enemy fleet composition when you need it. Always keep a stock of 2-3. Be careful not to accidentally deploy them when deploying new actual units. I always seem to have very little success code breaking. I assume it makes a difference, but it never seems to make a big different, and the comint units seem to be more helpful to me. BTW when playing the Allies it always seems the Brits are better at codebreaking than the US. And you can deploy both British and US comint units interchangeably.

[Uxbridge]

Gosh, incbob's video just told me that there's comint points for BOTH British and Americans. When I saw it used in a video pre-release, I stuck to the impression that it was a general thing, stocked in the upper bar of the diplomacy screen. Going from the UK screen to the USA screen, there was now 848 points waiting and the game took on a whole different flavor.

In fact, I was a little downhearted about the intelligence war being a bit pale, and all the time it was my own intelligence that was at fault.

[ncc1701e]

ORIGINAL: willgamer

Hence my question... I've been doing, but I've never seen a useful result after crack code, deploy COMINT.

What are some useful results you've seen?

I must admit I am asking myself the same question.

[eskuche]

It would be immensely helpful if we knew how recon points worked, at least roughly quantitatively. From my looking around, it seems that island hexes give off approximately 2 hexes of high, 2 of medium, and 2 of low rec, so 8 hexes or so out from shoreline is very low reconnaissance for hiding stuff.

[MorningDew]

I feel like the recon benefit should last into the next turn for the player - that would increase the usefulness.

[ago1000]

ORIGINAL: MorningDew

I feel like the recon benefit should last into the next turn for the player - that would increase the usefulness.

+1

[Uxbridge]

If the effect could be made to linger, why not making it a player choice.

1 COMINT drop on a hex = as of now.
2 COMINT drops on the same hex (twice the cost) = initial effect same as in case 1, but next turn the initial result stays with a drop of 1 level. Immediately upon that, a die roll (d6) is made. If the result of that roll is lower than the corrected level the effect will continue to linger into the third turn, with a new drop and check, until the die roll fails.

Handled like this, there's no need for any graphics change.

[Starstruck]

ORIGINAL: jwarrenw13

Save comint 'units' and use them to get better info on enemy fleet composition when you need it. Always keep a stock of 2-3. Be careful not to accidentally deploy them when deploying new actual units. I always seem to have very little success code breaking. I assume it makes a difference, but it never seems to make a big different, and the comint units seem to be more helpful to me. BTW when playing the Allies it always seems the Brits are better at codebreaking than the US. And you can deploy both British and US comint units interchangeably.

jwarrenw13 brings up a very good point about accidentally deploying COMINT units when deploying new actual units. I have done this several times by accidentally double clicking when deploying an actual unit (and not noticing the COMINT unit in the stack). Since they activate (and presumably provide information on your own units - i.e. San Diego) you can't go back and undeploy them. Since I don't seem to be the only one making this mistake, I am wondering if there is a way the deployment of COMINT units can be changed in a future update to avoid this problem?

[AlvaroSousa]

Currently with intlligence units you need to click deploy, the cursor changes and the map lights up green. I don't know how to better tell players what they clicked on than this. Adding a confirmation only adds more work for something that is already easy

As for search/spotting here is the table from the manual. This doesn't include the fleets individual detection level that gives you more information on the fleet. So you can have a fleet in VL recon level 1 - 1 for raider = 0 = 1% chance to detect but have scouted them enough times with planes that he is level 4 = 7% chance to detect between the map recon level, his mode, and his ID level.

The purpose of doing it all this way is so players DO NOT min-max results finding some optimal solution which would make the game boring and predictable. This is a game of incomplete information. It forces you to think abstractly and critically considering resources, positioning, supply, and information.