Espionage is in!

[Lord Xaar]

[3] Espionage is in! If you place spies (characters of the Special Agent type) on another player's world, they may conduct espionage activities. Lifeform features, installations, presence of alien agents on the world, planet comparison to your homeworld, rank of leaders involed and much more factor in to the success chances. It is possible to lose your spies, gather valuable intelligence information, sabotage installations, assassinate enemy leaders and more. Alliance settings are ignored, so you can place spies on your ally's worlds and they will function normally (preparing to break that alliance...?). Be aware that this can cause trouble for your supposed ally.

 

 

It sounds like there will be a random chance of performing any one of these actions without being able to specify which actions to attempt. I may want to be able to conduct basic intelligence-gathering without trying to commit sabotage or assassination… Is there a mechanism planned to guide these activities?

 

It would be great to be able to place an agent on a world of an Empire you are at war with and have that agent attempt to create havoc. It seems reasonable that assassination or sabotage could have lower success rates since they are very risky activities. While simply placing an agent to observe lifeform features or scout installations might not be as risky. (Though that small, four-armed, feathered guy with the beak in the trench coat and fedora does look mighty suspicious now that you mention it…)

 

How about learning what tech the Empire has or is currently researching? What items are in stockpile in a pop group? Getting a NUD of one of their ships? (as someone suggested elsewhere – though this would be one of those hard tasks…)

 

Lastly, is any world with a target empire’s pop group (even a totally empty one) sufficient for gathering info?

 

 

Glad to see this and other changes!

 

 

-LX

[RTGPete]

Any of a variety of results are possible - some are more likely than others, as you surmised. As long as the agent is on the world, it doesn't matter what population group - the same holds true for agents who would rather not have your spies poking around...

[PhaseDragon]

I'm guessing that all those races who spent points on Shapeshifting will gain the most benefit from this new change.

[octagon999]

Pete,

 

May I assume that your own agents will try and detect and eliminate enemy agents?

[RTGPete]

I'm guessing that all those races who spent points on Shapeshifting will gain the most benefit from this new change.

Shapeshifting certainly is a nice espionage bonus

[RTGPete]

Pete,

 

May I assume that your own agents will try and detect and eliminate enemy agents?

Yes.

[General Miles Avatar]

I bet races with mental powers would also benefit especially those with with all the powers at max levels.

[Paradigm]

It would be nice if the sort of missions spies attempt were tied to the political rules. In the real world, even allied nations spy on each other to some level. But they don't generally risk outright sabotage and assassinations.

[Eldred]

Can you use spies on neutral PGs? I suppose that most of the possible results would be of little benefit, but it would be nice to know be able to learn something about the race - what they look like for instance

[ali-t-akua]

1. What are the orders that we can give our agents?

 

2. How do we move our agents? Is it like other characters? Do they move on ships or can we order them independently of the ships?

 

I dont have any targets or agents now but I want to make sure that I have some idea how to make use of them.

[Lord Xaar]

1. What are the orders that we can give our agents?

 

2. How do we move our agents? Is it like other characters? Do they move on ships or can we order them independently of the ships?

 

I dont have any targets or agents now but I want to make sure that I have some idea how to make use of them.

 

I don’t think there will be orders for them, we can’t give orders to any other character class… I’d see them working much like scientists or religious leaders in that we get a random bit of information from them:

 

“Field Agent Mulder discovers Empire xxx has 4th Generation Telekinetic abilities”

 

 

You’d have to assign them to a ship, move the ship to a world that has another Empire’s pop group on it, then assign that character to that world and wait. Hoping one of that Empire’s agents doesn’t catch you….

 

If we can’t issue orders for them, we still need a way to tell them whether they should be “hostile.” I think this could be linked to the PAP order easily. Say, if we have a PAP with Empire xxx then the percentage chance of successfully assassinating a leader or destroying installations is zero. We’d need to either not have a PAP, or be actively at war with a position to have agents take these actions. Alternatively, since some might think this is too inflexible, perhaps a second field could be added to the PAP order that governs what actions an agent may take against an Empire. It could be something simple like “hostile” and “non-hostile”, the former basically means the Agent will take any action at any time while the latter precludes a handful of the actions and should be the default setting.

 

One last thing, what happens if an Agent gets caught? Is it killed automatically? I think that should be tied to whether the Agent is hostile or not…. If hostile, then it is killed. If not, it is automatically deported off to its homeworld (I think this is a case where we could ignore how the Agent actually gets back to the HW, it takes a lot of effort to place an agent I’d imagine, and it would be a serious pain in the neck to have it suddenly moved back to the HW.) I think this adds some realism to the Agents… unless Pete wants to add prisons and prisoner exchanges! But that’s getting too far afield, IMO.

 

I think this can add some great color to the game, but I really think the “hostile” action thing needs to be addressed in some capacity.

 

 

-LX

[WKE235]

Great ... spies are in. Very useful for spying on your allies, when you can get ships to their HW's or colonies. But overall, pretty useless as is. By the time you are getting ships that you would risk carrying the spy on over a HW, the enemy is probably pretty well beaten, and overall, the spy is not going to provide much value.

 

What we need is a way to get spies deep into enemy territory to land on worlds, investigate WP's and colonies, etcetera... without having to fight their way through WP's. Until then, what is the use?

[Lord Xaar]

Great ... spies are in.  Very useful for spying on your allies, when you can get ships to their HW's or colonies.  But overall, pretty useless as is.  By the time you are getting ships that you would risk carrying the spy on over a HW, the enemy is probably pretty well beaten, and overall, the spy is not going to provide much value. 

 

What we need is a way to get spies deep into enemy territory to land on worlds, investigate WP's and colonies, etcetera... without having to fight their way through WP's.  Until then, what is the use?

Fair point.

 

There are always cloaking devices.... :lol:

 

 

No, you put it this way so it looks like there is going to have to be an order created so that we can target an Empire that we cannot reach with ships...

 

Maybe if you can land an agent their sucess rate is higher than using the order? After all, it's much easier to spy on your allies...

 

Sorry, I'm conjecturing again....

[WKE235]

Yes, an order of some type would work. It would be interesting to see if an order could be created that would remain balanced. For example, if you could simple target empire "X", then, you and all of your allies could all send spies to the same location trying to get information through sheer numbers. And they could do this even though they've never contacted or run into "X".

 

Also, the order could not be instantaneous. You could issue the order, and then the spy could be *in transit* for some turns (only the computer knows). Actually, the spy could even be lost *in transit* as well (silly spy, failed to answer with the correct password at a check point WP).

 

Yes, an order would be very nice to have.

 

HEY .. when are we going to see some results from religon? The archbishops are getting tired from kneeling all the time and seeing nothing happen. How many NSI corvettes and ships must I sacrifice upon the altar of battle to get noticed??

[Lord Xaar]

Yes, an order of some type would work.  It would be interesting to see if an order could be created that would remain balanced.  For example, if you could simple target empire "X", then, you and all of your allies could all send spies to the same location trying to get information through sheer numbers.  And they could do this even though they've never contacted or run into "X". 

If this was combined with a "contact list" -- in-game contact -- it could work. Only Empires that we have run into could be targetted with an Espionage order (SPY?) :lol: This would also be a nice place to list PAPs, which has been requested previously.

 

That would prevent the worst abuses (shadow empires submitting tons of SPY orders). Probably should be limited to a small number of attempts per target empire (maybe only one) per turn.