As part of my drive to remove some of the worst excesses of uber-sabotage, I want to make troops effectively immune without preventing sabotage ops against GenCores etc. and characters.

 

The theory here is that it's one thing to destroy a facility, capture an individual or even sabotage a ship, but entirely another for a couple of people to manage to kill tens of thousands of troops.

 

So, does anyone understand how sabotage works?

 

My reading of the lucararts Gameplay Hints on the official site is that all unfoiled actions take your_stats - enemy_stats and then compare that to some sort of hardcoded success table. The key question then is what genetrates the enemy_stats for the enemy troops? I have a sneaking suspicion that that is hardcoded as well, although I'm hoping it's related to Defence Rating or Bomb Defence.

Err.. well for starters the regiment detection rating plays a huge part. If you want to play around with this theory I suggest starting a game with all of your regiment detection ratings at about 30 or 40; and you will quickly learn the importance of the Sullust Regimet in the original settings; and the power of Regiments with high detection ratings in anything else.

 

Defense and bombardment appear to have nothing to do with missions going on around them. Defense counters system assualts against the planet they're on, and bombarment against the Capital ships above them 'unleashing hell.'

 

BTW; If you want a regiment completely imume to bombardment, set it's bombardment defense to 10. The AI simply isn'nt programed to bother.

 

Detection rating is seriously important!

Thanks - that's pretty much what I feared. The problem is that if I raise the detection rating of a regiment, I bet that foils most of the other missions just as effectively as it foils troop sabotage.

 

I think you're right though. I'll:

 

1) Increase troop detection ratings:

 

ALL.........IMP

AF...35.....IF...40

AA...30.....IA...35

SR...35.....ST..50

MC..50....WD..15

WR..20....DT..60

 

2) Set all characters back to 100% of their combat stats (previously @50%).

3) Then set my command characters to 25% of combat and espionage stats. This will make them very vulnerable if not supported by troops and will reduce the number of characters moving around the galaxy sabbing stuff.

4) Maybe increase spec ops troops const & maint by x3 and maybe improve their stats by 50-100%. Fewer running around but at least they'll have a better chance with the new detection ratings than otherwise.

 

It's a shame really. None of this would be necessary (for me ) if you had to launch spec-ops actions from a planet rather than being able to park everyone in orbit and do it from there, or if sabotage missions took a lot longer than they do.

Dammit - it isn't working. Labansat @ ~95/95 and 1 Imp commando decoy managed to destroy 2 Alliance Army units with 30 detection each.

 

One thing I did notice. Elsewhere, 3 spec-ops characters (1 main, 2 decoy) were having trouble with an espionage mission being foiled at a planet that only had 1 Alliance Fleet regiment (35 detection). They failed 3 times and only when I took Vader and four others (2/3) in did I get my espionage mission. I was expecting Luke and a bunch of others to be there, but it was just the Fleet regiment. When I sent the original 3 (1/2) to sab the regiment, they did it first time.

 

All this makes me think that maybe regiments have espionage & combat values of X hardcoded and they use this to resist sabotage. I'll have to test it some more (come here Alliance Army regiment, I promise I won't hurt you ).

Errr... largely untested advice here, but up the detection ratings of fighter squadrons a little as well...perhaps even Capital ships...but be careful; most missions will fail with the presance of capital ships in a system anyway, set it to high and even Jedi's will end up in a box.