While we can nowadays do severalthings with our spies, I feel there is still room for improvement. There aren't all that many generals to kill, and sending spies into enemy sectors just to mine intel lacks a bit... je ne sais quoi... action.
This feature aims to improve that. The idea is simple: When disguised and the enemy isn't on alert, our spies influence enemy soldiers to secretly turn sides. They have several approaches for this:
the basic method is to use their recruitment value. This takes into account the stats, traits, personality, disguise and recruit rating of the merc, as well as the class, level, rank of the soldier as well as sector properties. Quite a few things influence this, really.
another method is to additionally use seduction. How effective this is heavily depends on how attractive a merc is, and how much an enemy is attracted to their gender.
we can also add a bit of money to sweeten the deal...
... or we can use some of our hard-earned intel to convince the soldier.
Doing so increases 'suspicion'. After a few attempts the game will inform us that we better lay low for a while, we will have to wait for a few hours before we continue. This is similar to the need to hide when blowing our cover while getting intel from enemies, as it is the same variable used.
Note that resources used will be consumed regardless of whether we are actually successful. Also note that we will need increasingly more money and intel as the game progresses. If you use this heavily I can see this becoming quite a moneysink
Let's just say that this will be a lot more difficult on higher game progressions. Convincing lowly paid cannon fodder in the North-eastern swamps to switch sides is easy. Convincing blackshirts in Meduna is an entirely different game.
We will display whether an enemy is secretly a turncoat by a small symbol next to them, from this feature (I recommend turning that on).
The turncoat count is stored in a sector, so we can leave and come back later, the turncoats will still be there (not on the exactly same soldier, but a soldier of the same class). This even works with moving groups as seen in the video. If a sector has a turncoat, we see an exact troop count on the map, as well as enemy group movement direction. It thus follows that you could get an early warning of enemy movement by embedding a spy on the roads to Meduna that 'tags' any group moving through.
Until turncoats are turned, they behave just like normal enemies. After activating them, they become standard militia. Note that if we or the militia hurt a turncoat, they renege on the deal and the property is lost. They might have decided to jump ship, but they are not okay with the player using them as target practice first.
There are a few ini variables in Skills_Settings.ini:
[Covert Ops]
...
; if set to TRUE, we can try to coax enemy soldiers to become turncoats. If successful, we can order turncoats to defect to the militia later.
COVERT_TURNCOATS = TRUE
; if set to TRUE, activating all turncoats within a sector requires a radio operator
COVERT_TURNCOATS_SECTOR_ACTIVATION_REQUIRES_RADIOOPERATOR = FALSE
; a bonus to the player's rating when convincing soldiers to become turncoats. Higher is better, values in [-100; 100], default 0.
COVERT_TURNCOATS_PLAYER_CONVINCTION_BONUS = 0
COVERT_TURNCOATS_SECTOR_ACTIVATION_REQUIRES_RADIOOPERATOR is mainly there in case someone wants that extra bit of realism and decides that activating all turncoats instantly is odd. COVERT_TURNCOATS_PLAYER_CONVINCTION_BONUS is an offset to our convinction rating, the higher the easier this thing becomes.
This has been added to the trunk in r8811 & GameDir r2525. Using the new exe without the new GameDir changes your phone to put up a restraining order.
[Updated on: Sat, 30 May 2020 03:13]
I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.
If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.
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