TMI on the trade screen

I did a search to see if this has been reported, and found nothing, but i apologize if it already has.

On the diplomatic screen, when viewing the other race's ships, if you right click on the ship, you get the full intelligence report for the ship, regardless of whether or not it has been visually spotted. This provides an exploit as one can very early on see what everyone is packing on their ships well before they could normally be seen.

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Not very realistic, Definitely should be fixed.

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If something is available to purchase, wouldn't you want to know what it has?

I do see where your coming from though. I'm not sure how you would take both your concerns and my first comment and meld the two.

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It would be tricky to fix that, without breaking something else. You have to know the value of what you're buying/trading, but it does also serve an espionage function that isn't very realistic.

If it was changed so the list only showed ships that were in range of your sensors, then it would limit trading opportunities on both sides. You wouldn't be able to trade or sell ships yourself, if the other faction didn't have the ships in their sensor range. I suppose you could intentionally move ships near an enemy planet or fleet if you want to trade them, but that just adds more micro to the game. It's a waste of time if the deal doesn't go through.

One possible fix might be to allow the player and the AI to select which ships to put in the trade pool, before opening the trade window. This could be done with a highlight function (shift-click or something) in the master ship list. It would let you show the more obsolete ships you're willing to trade, and block off your latest front-line ships. That would be mandatory if this was a multiplayer game, because the trade window is such a giveaway. But I'm not sure the AI could handle this. It would have to balance giving away strategic secrets vs. immediate needs for cash or tech trades. Aside from putting a higher price on valuable military tech, I haven't seen that level of sophistication in the trade window AI.

P.S. does anyone know if the AI uses player ship info exposed in the trade window, to make its decisions on what weapon/defenses to use as a counter? If it does, then maybe you'd want to avoid trading just before launching a major attack. I'm not sure it's that smart though.

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Just had an after-thought, why just have a problem with ships...what about techs and trade goods? If you know what weapon techs they have you have an avenue to build w/o looking at their ships.

Has anyone tried right-clicking on a planet in the trade window to see if you can get improvement intel there as well? It would only be consistent in the openness of the trade screen.

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I have tried clicking on a planet, and get no info, so IMHO, that's working fine.

I hadn't thought of the fact that one would want to know what they were getting if they were trying to trade/buy other ships. I've never tried to buy other ships before. I'm not sure what a good fix for that would be... although it might make sense that you'd have to have a certain degree of good relations to get access to that info... maybe something above neutral. I certainly can't picture a hostile or wary faction sharing ship intel with an enemy.

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Just had an after-thought, why just have a problem with ships...what about techs and trade goods? If you know what weapon techs they have you have an avenue to build w/o looking at their ships.

Yep, I use that as an early exploit, before I have ships anywhere near another faction's part of the map. But the trade window won't show a tech they have, that you also have. So it's not 100% reliable for knowing what the other faction is doing. As a practical matter, I usually have trade routes set up with all the races by the time I start building military ships, along with a few sensor scouts, and I can use them to scout out what weapon/defense branch the other side is building, if not the specific tech level.

I'm not sure what a good fix for that would be... although it might make sense that you'd have to have a certain degree of good relations to get access to that info... maybe something above neutral. I certainly can't picture a hostile or wary faction sharing ship intel with an enemy.

That would seem logical, but it wouldn't stop sneaky, unscrupulous behavior.

I've been known to be best buddies with a race, right up to the point when I stab them in the back with an invasion.

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Why should you have the right to know automatically what a ship has in the trade window?This would be an indirect way of making spying more valuable.It would be nice if you had to have spying at the highest level and a spy on their home planet before going into the trade screen to see it.
Also you could have a mini gambling trading event if you read the little message that gives you a hint of the difference in your diplomacy rating,ask for a ship of unknown value and tried to guess how powerful it was by the money and tech you had to offer for it!

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