Espionage is in!

[Locklyn]

Well in 2004 we were told that espionage was now "in and "working". From recent experimentation and discussions with Pete it would seem that this in fact not entirely so.

 

While you can deploy agents like any LC etc, there doesn't seem to be a working system set for reporting successes/failures/intelligence gained or such to you the Emperor of these undercover heroes, if they are doing anything at all.

 

So in fact there is no way to tell if there is actually anything going on at all, if espionage is working at all! And even if it did work there is no way of getting any information on it back to you as their sovereign.

 

Pete has told me that there are problems with the reporting system. Since players have reported on there not being any information returned from agents since way back when one could have hoped that this would have been adressed when this part of the game was finally implemented since actually having something shown on your turn is the fun of it all as well as helps with finding errors with the system. Black box happenings are hard to check and even less fun and fun is what we pay for.

 

So basically untill you hear otherwise, don't bother using Special Agents. Bummer if you are a cloak and dagger race

 

Ps. This may all be a ploy by all the SAs of the Universe to sit around all day drinking Pina Coladas and playing pool with each other instead of that dangerous bit about blowing things up. If they don't have to report anything it's a lot easier ds

 

/Locklyn

[Magus666]

Well, to be perfectly honest, espionage is only one of the things that seems to have been ignored, or at least given little or no priority. I've only been involved with SN for a short time, but I am getting a little frustrated with what I am seeing. Not frustrated enough to quit the game...yet...but it may get to that point. It appears that many important factors in the game are simply not working at all, or at such a level that they may as WELL not be working at all.

 

I know, I keep hearing that there are "more important" things that are being worked on, like getting naval combat straightened out. But IS this more important? Sure, its important to you if you have huge fleets out there actually engaging in battles...but how many major battles are really being fought each turn? There may be bugs in the combat system, but at least it works on the surface. Other things, which may be equally important to other players, apparently dont work at ALL.

 

Espionage, and Special Agents as mentioned, dont seem to do anything, and Cloaking devices for ships (a closely related topic) dont work. Religion and Religious leaders have no results. Diplomacy with neutrals is fairly pointless as it stands. And, since its nearly impossible to capture ships or cargo, the entire empire type of Piracy is useless. Entire concepts wither and die, or become just another empire building bigger ships, bigger colonies and bigger guns, because the basis of what would make them interesting and playable, simply isnt there.

 

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure the guys at RTG are working hard and doing their best to get things working. I just think that priorities might need to be shuffled a bit. Lets try to get important features at least working in BASIC form. Combat allready works...chase down the bugs and add improvements to that LATER.

[Hughestrog]

Religion and Religious leaders have no results. Diplomacy with neutrals is fairly pointless as it stands. And, since its nearly impossible to capture ships or cargo, the entire empire type of Piracy is useless.

 

Religion does work!

 

Typical response of a hive minded insect!

 

It works, and we generate favour with all the dieties (hedging our bets, just in case), we just don't know how much we generate, how we can use it, or what it does.

 

Diplomacy with Marines always works.

 

And piracy- well ship capture apparently can happen. It's just so difficult that it doesn't happen that often (and it's to stop players tech sharing). Perhaps a new research branch off 5th level Social Science to allow better capture of cargo or something, when used with the right form of attack?

[Magus666]

Religion and Religious leaders have no results. Diplomacy with neutrals is fairly pointless as it stands. And, since its nearly impossible to capture ships or cargo, the entire empire type of Piracy is useless.

 

Religion does work!

 

Typical response of a hive minded insect!

 

It works, and we generate favour with all the dieties (hedging our bets, just in case), we just don't know how much we generate, how we can use it, or what it does.

 

Diplomacy with Marines always works.

 

And piracy- well ship capture apparently can happen. It's just so difficult that it doesn't happen that often (and it's to stop players tech sharing). Perhaps a new research branch off 5th level Social Science to allow better capture of cargo or something, when used with the right form of attack?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well in that case, Religion works about as well as Espionage. It works! Really it does! We dont know how to use it, or what it does...but it works! Granted, the "favor of the Gods" should be a little more mysterious and harder to quantify than guns and armor. Still, the religious leaders should be more than willing to take credit for the occasional REALLY good exploration find or unexpected combat outcome. ("Look Great Leader! Our one ship held off the entire invading armada! It is the will of Insert Deity Here!")

 

Gunboat Diplomacy...cant argue there. That surely does work. But it does kinda make the diplomat type LCs pointless.

 

Certainly, it makes sense that capturing a ship would be much more difficult, and dangerous, than destroying one. Obviously, though, certain types of weapons were designed just for this type of action (Stunners, Grapples, etc.). Heavily laden and lightly armed Freighters become a PRIZE, not just floating space dust. Honestly, I dont see any reason why Piracy should take super advanced technology ("a branch of 5th level Social Science") to be effective...thats sorta like saying that to be effective Barbarians, you need really advanced ground tech. Advanced tech might make you BETTER at it, (especially against advanced opponents) but basically its really a simple concept.

 

As for the "problem" of tech sharing...what problem is it? One empire cant give a ship to another empire. But they CAN give them all the high tech COMPONENTS that they want, and let them put it together themselves. So, besides having to freighter all the parts around, what point is served? Honestly, I think "tech sharing" would be a great PLUS in the game. Its certainly a basic in both real world, and sci-fi, diplomacy and trade. For X tons of something, our people will teach your people to build Y. Not just parts, or ships, but the actual tech. It seems simple enough, just like a whole LOT of Research exploration hits. You still cant build it until you can research it (since even if someone gives you the blueprints, you cant make it til you can make the stuff that goes into it), but once you do, you have all those RPs allready. And it makes Espionage (STEALING technologies) more interesting too (just to get back to the original topic )

[hobknob]

I have seen at least one example of a spy actually contributing to something. However, it was during the course of a ground combat where his/her intelligence gathering skills were used to ferret out enemy movements and the like.

 

[TErnest]

I have seen at least one example of a spy actually contributing to something.  However, it was during the course of a ground combat where his/her intelligence gathering skills were used to ferret out enemy movements and the like.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

OK. This is new. Care to elaborate at all?

 

Being a telepathic, shapeshifting, race that has invested a fair amount into stealth, we find this... mildly... intersting.

[RTGPete]

Though I'd like to upgrade the current espionage and religious aspects of the game to provide much more detail (especially in espionage), to be pefectly honest those areas just aren't as crucial as other things. The very nature of the game is that massive production of starships, fortresses, industries and so forth tends to dominate a war. SNROTE is a monumentally huge game, and I'll do what I can to make it better....but not everything is as important as everything else

 

The good news is that you will see a huge upgrade on the naval combat end of things on this turn cycle. Complete details are revealed in the turn results.

[Locklyn]

Okay, first off: DOES ESPIONAGE WORK? Ie have you seen on turns effects of Special Agents that currently isn't shown because there is no reporting system? If it doesn't, what was all the hubba about a year + ago?

 

We've time and time before argued for reporting systems of features in the game, and time and time again once we've gotten them (FOBs, ANZ showing values etc etc) we've been able to show upon errors in the game engine which has helped improve the game and check for bugs that you would never have had the time to do. A win win situation.

 

After all these years of this being repeated I am having trouble with your statement on the turnsheets a year and a half ago saying that Espionage was now working if there in fact was no reporting system that could show that it worked? And more crucially how would players ENJOY the actions of their Special Agents when there was no feedback on the turn?

 

This is a part of the game which while not as crucial as combat has become in this WARgame than other aspects and features that were mistakenly represented as existing in the game in the the rules and on the boards when the game started, was a feature that some anticipated, not stressing it but once you told us it was fully implemented tingled the minds of many. Thinking it was working I seem to have wasted my orders and lost the anticipation of seeing enemy things being blown up, pesky alien leaders killed and general havoc being wrecked on enemy worlds.

 

All of us veteran players have been with you through the years and accepted with our continued finacial purchase of your service that while the game when launched wasn't what the rules were selling and that the game reality was far from it we've respected your hard work, fantastic vision and hoped that continuing to support the game would mean that it would one day grow into what the rules sell and even more beyond as your mind seems alive with all things sci-fi . With that in mind, I would have hoped that it was a lesson learned and that once you fixed things (they ARE fixes, not upgrades, as they were supposed to be in the game to start with) you had checked that they were working with player feedback and enjoyment in mind and that a reporting system has always been a priority for us so we can actually SEE that things are working and report it to you when they are not.

 

With that in mind and my rant at an end I do hope that you have a good turn processing with as little SNAFUs and gremlins (not even Gremloids) in the works as possible and that the rest of the weekend is restive and far away from pesty Swedes

 

 

Locklyn

[looker]

Does this mean processing is proceding well for a Friday evening release?

[RTGPete]

Locklyn,

 

I'll say it one more time. I'll make upgrades to the espionage system when I get to it. Combat is much more important and that's what I've focused on. That's all I will say on this subject.

[Locklyn]

Oh well, had hoped for a YES/NO answer at least on the running issue of "does it work at all, are they doing anything at all" but this all this evading the issue probably means no. Well then, another thing to not bother investing time in. Gotta build some more warships, some more colonies to harvest materials to build more warships to kill pesky enemies.

 

 

/Locklyn

[TErnest]

You have to hand it to Locklyn. He is nothing, if not consistent. And, I do not know about the rest of you, but that adds a certain amount of predictability and comfort to my Universe.

 

TErnest

[Octus Imperium]

You have to hand it to Locklyn.  He is nothing, if not consistent.  And, I do not know about the rest of you, but that adds a certain amount of predictability and comfort to my Universe. 

 

TErnest

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Perseveration, perhaps?

 

(Ducking and rolling.....)

 

Octus

[Prospective]

I can see both sides. I definitely agree with Locklyn in that it would add flavor to the game to have actual working espionage and that no mention is made that this feature doesn't work (in fact quite the opposite happened a number of turns ago). This can cause the uninitiated to design a race with espionage as its focus, only to find out that sorry, not working the way it's intended, for now you wasted your points.

 

On the other hand, I'm very interested to see what comes out in today's turns. I think that an expanded understanding of naval combat is much higher on the priority list than espionage and I hope that this lives up to what we've all been anticipating.

[Magus666]

I think that an expanded understanding of naval combat is much higher on the priority list than espionage

 

Unfortunately, I think it's just that attitude that is causing a perpetuation of the situation, and is just what I was talking about.

 

Mind you, I am not saying that anyone is WRONG here. It is perfectly reasonable for players who have spent lots of time, and lots of money, building large fleets of ships, to be concerned that combat works as well as possible. And RTG is, first and foremost, a business, so THEY are going to be working on whatever the players, their customers, are most concerned about.

 

The problem, as I see it, is that this causes a neverending cycle.

 

I want to make my empire weak in combat, but they are crafty, sneaky little buggers who are great at infiltration, assassination, and all the other arts of espionage. I want to build small, light, almost invisible cloaked ships that can sneak into other empires to do their dirty work. Can I? Well...no. Not right now. For NOW...build bigger and lots more ships.

 

My Empire is a theocracy. We raise generations of preists, and build vast complexes of shrines, temples and religious edifices. Our army and navy are small, but they are devout zealots and if we need to fight the unbelievers, we know that the gods will support our cause. Will they? Well...no. Not right now. For NOW...build bigger and lots more ships.

 

Arrr mateys! We be Pirates! We dont build much of our OWN, instead, plying the spaceways in ships that we've captured from others. We hide in the vast asteroid belts in small numbers and plunder lightly guarded freighters. Shall we drink to our success?? Well...no. Not right now. For NOW...build bigger and lots more ships.

 

Ok...so, for NOW...I build bigger and lots more ships. NOW...since Ive SPENT the time and money to build these fleets of warships, Im concerned about losing them to a random glitch in the combat system. Hey Pete? For NOW...I think that an expanded understanding of naval combat is much higher on the priority list than espionage...or religion....or piracy.

 

Well if thats what the players WANT...thats what RTG is going to do. And meanwhile...for NOW...until espionage, or religion, or piracy work...Ill just keep building bigger and lots more ships.

 

For NOW.

 

As Pete said

Though I'd like to upgrade the current espionage and religious aspects of the game to provide much more detail (especially in espionage), to be pefectly honest those areas just aren't as crucial as other things. The very nature of the game is that massive production of starships, fortresses, industries and so forth tends to dominate a war. SNROTE is a monumentally huge game, and I'll do what I can to make it better....but not everything is as important as everything else

 

Personally I disagree. Certainly, its true that those things DO dominate a straight up, toe to toe, shoot til one side is dead, war. What I disagree with is that this is the ESSENCE of what SN is all about. IS that all it is? A big wargame with some other elements for FLAVOR? Or is it SUPPOSED to be a game where the players can choose to be something OTHER than massive warmachines facing off against each other?

 

I think thats the question the PLAYERS need to ask themselves. DONT sit there and think "Well Ive got these huge fleets of ships, so I really need to be concerned about combat". Instead, really ask yourself what path you want to see this game take. Do you WANT it to be nothing more than a wargame? Or do you want to see it be more?