ekolis
commented
7 months ago @cwombat169 had an interesting idea (correct me if I'm wrong about the details): intel points when earned would be allocated to specific empires like in SE5, but instead of going into a general pool, they'd be randomly assigned to various ships, bases, and colonies of that empire. Once enough points are saved up against a particular target, operations can be ordered against that target to spend those points, and the points would also grant a passive effect on that target once certain thresholds were met, such as learning of the existence of the object, stealing its sensor data, and that sort of thing. The passive effects could also be turned on and off; when they're on, the points are slowly drained, but while they're off, they'll slowly grow on their own.
On the UI side, the intel screen could then show a list of all (known) intel targets for each empire (maybe each empire gets its own tab like on the budget screen? maybe there could be a link between two two screens?) and there could also be an intel tab or screen accessible from an individual ship/base/planet that belongs to anyone that would allow you to check the accumulated intel points on that object and also conduct operations there.
We need to implement this feature. But I'm not sure how to do it - SE4's implementation was kind of flawed, and so was SE5's.