Author Topic: Infiltrator Scout Reports  (Read 1568 times)

Eldargard

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Infiltrator Scout Reports
« Topic Start: July 24, 2014, 08:39:55 AM »
*Title*
Infiltrator Scout Reports

*Summary*
Infiltrators can glean additional information gathered in a scout report.

*Details*
* Whenever an infiltrator looks at a scout report they see an additional tab called "Security" or some such.
* This tab has a brief blurb describing how actively the region is patrolling and notices of police work being done.
* This tab also lists All Low Risk, Moderate Risk and High Risk infiltrator actions that could be performed.
* The message regarding patrols and the like on infiltrator action pages are removed.
* This tab appears on all scout reports viewed by an infiltrator
    * This is because the tab represents conclusions drawn by the infiltrator based on their infil skill and the details normally found in a report.

*Benefits*
Makes it easier for Infils to plan their actions but scouts can still be caught, information can be outdated and accuracy is based on infiltrator's skill level.

*Possible Downsides or Exploits*
Can't think of any now but will keep trying!

Indirik

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Re: Infiltrator Scout Reports
« Reply #1: July 24, 2014, 03:43:48 PM »
Do you mean whenever an infil looks at *any* scout report it appears? Even if the scout report is done by someone else? That would be awkward to explain or justify. Why would a scout report taken by some newb in Sir Temple contain information an infil in Al Arab could use to assess security conditions accurately enough to gauge the risk of breaking into the tax offices?  Seems pretty far fetched.

More reasonable would be that when an infil looks at one of their own scout reports they see the assessment. When they send it to someone else, that info is not included. That may have some technical limitations to it that may not necessarily be easy to address.

Having said that, this has some interesting possibilities, but I'm not sure how useful it would be. Do people randomly patrol the streets when they don't suspect that an active infil is in the region?
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Anaris

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Re: Infiltrator Scout Reports
« Reply #2: July 24, 2014, 03:54:45 PM »
Do you mean whenever an infil looks at *any* scout report it appears? Even if the scout report is done by someone else? That would be awkward to explain or justify. Why would a scout report taken by some newb in Sir Temple contain information an infil in Al Arab could use to assess security conditions accurately enough to gauge the risk of breaking into the tax offices?  Seems pretty far fetched.

It's also impossible to implement, since scout reports (like all scribe notes) literally just save the HTML that's generated when you actually conduct the scouting. If a hero gets the scout report, it won't have any infil-specific information—not when it's taken, and not ever.

Quote
More reasonable would be that when an infil looks at one of their own scout reports they see the assessment. When they send it to someone else, that info is not included. That may have some technical limitations to it that may not necessarily be easy to address.

For the same reason explained above, this is not practical.

Basically, either it goes on the scout report permanently, or it has to come from somewhere else.

Furthermore, this:
Quote
  * This is because the tab represents conclusions drawn by the infiltrator based on their infil skill and the details normally found in a report.

doesn't make a lick of sense.

If the information were coming from a scout that the infiltrator had sent out himself, with explicit instructions to look for this sort of thing, and grilled on the details when the scout got back, that would be one thing. But a scout report is just a piece of paper, saying exactly what you see on scout reports. There is no way short of outright magic that an infiltrator could look at that piece of paper and say, "Ah, their patrols are up! I'd better steer clear!" The best they could do is say, "Hm, that's a lot of troops there. I should be careful."

And even if the infiltrator were debriefing the scout himself, his infiltrator skill would not be able to have more than a very small effect on the level of detail he could glean, since it would be entirely based on the observations of the scout, not the infiltrator. And if scouts had infiltrator training, we could just have them get caught trying to rob tax offices, and avoid the infil himself ever taking the risk. (And no, we're not implementing that ;D )

All that said, I'm not opposed on principle to an infiltrator ability that allows him to assess the security level of the region he's in or a neighbouring region (with the latter being via a scout). It could even produce a scribe note. It just wouldn't be a scout report the way we normally think of them.
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