Intelligence mission ideas?

[TheScoob]

First of all, let me say: Kudos to the new game! I am currently digging it and looking forward to how much better it will get with time and added love and attention. I'll be a happy lad as some of the old species start working their way into this new version to help flesh out the game with new flavor and different interactions to be had and try to deal with and am looking forward to sinking many an hour into this over the years to come.

Now, on to my ideas that bring me to this post.

I like the idea of at the very least a good bit of help with automation for some of the character management. There seem to be quite a few more characters that you'll wind up having to deal with over the course of the game as opposed to the first one, and the added automation would seem to be a good helper tool. Granted, I am not a game dev nor a coder whatsoever, so I have no idea how feasable it would be to add said ideas in. Also, some of these ideas may have been bandied about over the course of development, so forgive me if I'm rehashing things already brought up.

I think it would be of benefit to have a box to tick after you discover new factions (reversible obviously) as to whether to allow intelligence missions or not. So, as you discover factions A B C D you can pick and choose which to allow missions against. For instance you'd like to cultivate a relationship with faction B, so no missions against them. Another possibility would be faction D isn't one you'd normally court, but they're aggressive and you share a border, so you skip missions against them just to avoid angering them (as long as possible).

Ideally if you could piggy back onto the above idea, would be a level of granular choices if you DO allow missions against a faction. Will you allow all missions, will you allow sabatoge, the stealing of tech, assassinations? So a tick of a box to allow or not each of the types of mission? An even bigger ask would be- if you allow stealing of tech, could you narrow it down to scope per faction (i.e. can we focus on weapon tech from faction A; sensors, construction, and engines from factions B and C)?

Just some thoughts I'd had as I sip my evening scotch. Again, cheers and thanks to the great start of the new game and can't wait to see what you come along with in the future!

[AKicebear]

I think this is partly addressed by your stance towards the AI empires - e.g. conquer, neutral, befriend, etc. This setting is on auto by default but can be turned to manual and selected on per empire basis. I like to at least turn the current focus of my attention to manual...

Agree it would be nice to have more granularity here with respect to intelligence missions. And perhaps some way to prioritize what types of techs to steal, for those AI that are valid targets.