Fwurg

[Brend]

I know that the FWURG rules were set out as a 'no secrets' thing, so with that in mind, I do have a question about the IC knowledge one world has about another.

I know that everything in the turn reports as considered public knowledge.

I also know that things like zone distribution and such are usually considered public knowledge. The idea here is that it can be observed by the easiest means: go there and look around.

So, how about trade deals? The negotiations and such in "To X: " or "<private>" threads is clearly not public knowledge. But how about the transfers and the actual flow of goods?

In my mind, these things are public knowledge due to being easily observed, and trade treaties being registered with the Ministry of Justice. Am I overstepping my bounds with regards to IC knowledge here?

(And what about Space Habitat/Outpost/Settlement sites?)

[Fedor]

I think trade deals are on so big a scale that any rudimentary intelligence operations will already uncover them. These are public knowledge imo.

I am unsure about outpost sites being public.

[Brend]

I am inclined to assume that surveyed colonization sites are also roughly known. Again, any rudimentary intelligence operation on the level of a galactic economy will be able to track the movement of all survey fleets. Even by only looking at the fleets movement you can already draw conclusions, and simply sending a ship to follow the fleets movements makes sure that the site discovery is known.

Unless someone strongly objects, I will be playing under the assumption that these sites are known. At elast, to governments of worlds.

[Elmer]

I think that trades are open information once they are in effect, as you can simply look in the tax and trade tool to see what goes in and what goes out. Often labelled with very descriptive headers. The location of the survey fleets should be public knowledge, but the actual scanned location don't have to be. So you can scan a location in sector (x -y), and everybody knows you have scanned there. But the sector is so big, the people don't know the actual site you have found.

That being said, if you make use of a third party to scan for you, nothing is stopping them from having the knowledge of the site as well.

I think a survey fleet is scanning too much locations to follow them and to find the same location that way. So you only know they have found a location, and you might have a list of possible sites, but you don't know the actual location they have found in my opinion.

[Brend]

I am not talking about OOC information, Elmer. The tax tool itself is OOC, so I can't use it to justify my senator knowing something on trade. I'm talking about IC information.

If you use the 'sites are private info' paradigm, the current surveying rules would mean that you have to do extra surveying in a sector without good reason. After all, you do not know that another world has the site you just found, so why would you continue surveying for another (Realspace) turns? You'll just 'claim' the same site as they did and not know that you just started a turf war :P