Merging spy system with scout system

Not sure I've fully understood your suggestion. But in any case they have so far said spying won't be in the initial game but rather an expansion. 

Really? No espionage in the base game? Do you have a link to that for me?

Seems like a big feature to cut out, many games have done that recently and i don't think its been well received in general.

Espionage was one of the weaker systems in GalCiv II.  Unless it's handled correctly I don't think it's needed.

It was mentioned by Paul Boyer in this podcast.

Thanks

Yeah, espionage's problem for me was when I'd spend money and time getting spies and placing them, and then ending up getting to share a certain number of research items with other races anyway - which is, IIRC, after a UI vote. I wasn't sure also how effective the "steal a technology" gig was, either - that is, your spies actually doing what they're paid for as opposed to the Random Event.

What I'd really like to see with the espionage is an ability to undermine relationships between two other races without directly asking them to stop being buddies, which is all you can do at present in GC2. IE:

Instead of just the dialogue option of asking the Drengin, say, to break their relations with the Terran, being able to create a diplomatic incident - or even a small military one - that hurts the Drengin and makes them think it was the Terran. That ruins - or at least puts strain on - their relationship and (if the Drengin and Terran weren't on the best of diplomatic terms with you beforehand, obviously not near "at war" levels, but far from friends) is something you could exploit...

I see Spy training as the way to implement this - training spies to act as "Deep cover" if you like, acting as a Terran doing something/launching some kind of attack on the Drengin. Or even a spy who when trained, has the ability to recruit from other races?

Maybe too complicated and and obviously not exciting for those who want to kill the enemy by kicking ass and chewing bubblegum but for me it'd add a level of deviousness to espionage.

How about actions resulting from those espionage actions 

ie we have evidence that the drengin recently assassinated their allies ( alterrens in this case ) political leader and implicated the Toriens. This was in order to declare war on the toriens 

we could bring this evidence to light and declare war on the drengin improving our relationship with the toriens 

we could sell the evidence to the drengin improving our relationship with them and making a profit. 

We could bury the evidence and declare war on the toriens ( your personel stock of torien kabobs is Running low) improving our relationship with the alterrans

androshalfor, I like like like that idea...

I mean, I'm playing the game anyway but it'd be the cherry on top for me if something like this was implemented. Rigging UP votes would also be interesting...IE Spies knowing that in, say 15 turns there will be a vote on sharing resources from a newly discovered asteroid field/bunch of destroyed planets and we heavy the Drengin to vote that our civilization gets the lion's share of the resources and offer nice toys to the Alterians so they vote the same way. And if other UP races figure out that you rigged the vote, that obviously has consequences in terms of trade, diplomacy etc.

There's a lot of exotic stuff that can be done with a spying system, but i'd rather have the classic ones first like:

- steal maps

- sabotage starbase or ship

- steal tech of course (but i'll come back on this)

- raise unrest on planet

- steal credits

- disrupt production

- disrupt research

- and of course, counter espionage

all these are of course actions limited to your empire vs another one and nothing like framing empire B to be responsible of your own operations against empire A, but it would still be a nice basis for a spy system.

Regarding tech stealing, if it's implemented, i'd like it to be done the same way as it is done in Hearts of Iron: instead of stealing the tech and having it immediately operational, you get blueprints, you still have to develop the technology but you have bonuses on this research.

I think this blueprints idea should be adopted as well for diplomacy acquired technologies, with limits like not being able to trade a technology for which you only have the blueprints. Preventing tech brokering in GC2 was nice gameplay-wise, but it didn't feel realistic and i think the blueprints make more sense and can act as a mechanism to prevent tech trading mess.

Regarding spying actions towards relationships between 2 or more empires other than yours, i say this is the border between espionage and diplomacy. In reality, the difference between espionage and diplomacy is blurry on certain subjects: as an ambassador, you can get unofficial but reliable information or spread misinformation while as a spy, you can help a foreign country and have positive diplomatic feedbacks as a result.

However as it is a game, and to avoid too much complications, i think it's intuitive to consider that positive actions on relationships between 2 empires are part of diplomacy while negative ones are part of espionage. 

Negative actions, as said previously, could be framing, which translate in disrupt relationship, but we can imagine also things like breaking research/economic treaty or alliances. Forcing an empire to go to war with another should not be a single spying action but rather the consequence of many attempts at disrupting relations.

But whatever the possibilities, there should be a clear way for the player targeted by such actions to know what's happening and why (providing he has set in place a good counterespionage system, whatever it is) because there is nothing more frustrating in a game than unexplained changes in relationships.

I hope Stardock includes espionage; removing a feature from a previous game is a big no-no.

clearly not putting in espionage, especially when it was in the previous game, is a obvious ploy to divert negative attention in reviews from something else we don't know about yet to lack of espionage instead. It's like the it's better that people complain about the price then about missing features, but for when the game is released. 

In a unrelated topic, can somebody give me some advice on the best way to make a futuristic looking tin foil hat?

not sure there is an evil plot going on to hide the missing espionage system from the pure and naive players

I suppose it's more in the lines of money issues, planning issues, lack of detailed specifications, far too optimistic time estimations and generally speaking too big dreams for too little developper's hands. 

well, that doesn't mean developpers aren't evil, i mean they always complain about wanting to sleep, to eat, to be paid and some even about having family life or girlfriend meeting instead of working 24h/24 in the slave pit... err, i mean in their confortable office, how shameless!

Yes not much of an evil plot to hide the missing espionage system in the base game indeed, since they openly spoke about it in an interview and you’ll also notice no mention by them of an espionage system in the base game.

I suspect it’s really down to scope as they say; they have some great ideas for a complex espionage, system but unless they drop something else it would push the scope of the project too far and mean not being able to deliver to budget/timescales. So they’ve decided to say it for an expansion rather than implement a simple system now.

It’s there call really but I’m hardly surprised many players have come to expect an espionage system in this type of game as standard.

exactly, espionage is considered a standard nowadays. which is why they in my opinion would be better off putting in a shitty quickly put together placeholder espionage system in for the base game then none at all.

If i were new to the genre or on the fence about buying, it strikes me as better to watch a review and hear espionage is a weaker part of this game vs a rant about why a feature is missing. And those people aren't going to care about a promise to fix 1-2 years down the line.

then again.. i often turn espionage off if it's a bad system and i don't feel i can have a influence on defending myself from enemy espionage ^^

I sort of agree although I would use the term simple not necassarily a bad system and then replace it in the expansion with the more complex system they have in mind.

To be perfectly honest, I tend to find that most espionage systems, particularly ones which include one or more forms of sabotage, in games are more annoying than useful or fun, at least for me. GalCiv II had a particularly poor implementation of it (although thankfully one of the less annoying implementations, since you could essentially turn espionage off by building a Counter-Espionage Center on every planet, which wasn't that poor of an idea since it was a halfway decent morale structure, especially if you picked it up early or were playing a race with poor morale structures like the Yor and Iconians) due to its cost. If I turned espionage spending on, it could rapidly consume more of my income than my military, and quite frankly that was rather ridiculous; worse was that as soon as it gave me a new agent, the spending jumped fairly considerably, and wasn't something where it was particularly easy to tune the expenditures. I will not be disappointed in the least if GalCiv III never includes an espionage system outside of standard scouting.

could you please develop why you find it annoying?

Is it because of the features themselves which kind of "cheat" the regular rules (like stealing a tech instead of researching it normally)?

Or because of the usual increase in micromanagement generally involved?

Or something completely different?

And if there were to be a espionage feature, what would make it less annoying in your opinon?

I will agree with that. Its one of those subsystems that is often clumsy in many 4x games.

This is why I tried to plug espionage to the scout system.

I know, my first post is not very clear! (to much IF : THEN!! ) 

Basically, what I propose is to give the primordial role of a spy to scout ship. Which'is, in my opinion: Gather information.

So, ship build under the spy role (or scout role if you prefer) would have the command option to spy on a ship or a planet.

The AI would try to stay as close to the target with the minimal risk for it's safety.

Sensor range and speed would be essential for such a role, yet shear power could be your way.

(Yes, we see that Yor capital DATA collector ship... But what can we do about it...)

In mid game (or sooner) scout AI become useless.

With this option, they would remain pertinent.

With further expansion. all the sabotage ans steal tech option could be attached to this class of ship.

So you could directly issue one of your spy ship to land on a planet for it's mission.

Spy would not only be abstract.

Hope I cleared my thought!

Mr Kurt

In your idea would there be any active gameplay elements tied to the scout ship when setting up a mission on a planet or ship? Would it be cloaked by default? Would it have to avoid detection? How would you do this? How would countermeasures against such a ship work? Relying on superior sensor range is really not going to work. 

Basically how would you make this meaningfully different then just a visual version of "setting up surveillance it will take 3 turns".

Also what are your thoughts on Civ4BTS espionage system?

can't really find a good summary but this should give you a idea. text above 2nd screenshot and http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/espionage_guide.php

I was thinking simple for a spy to land on a planet, It would simply ignore orbiting ship. (spy trick!)

When spying around a planet in the galactic map.

Having more sensor than target's speed should make the difference. If the fastest warship orbiting a planet is 4 and your sensor are 6. that means even if they launch orbit to attack you, they wont reach you.

And having more speed than target's speed would just allow you to outmaneuver your enemies. (if it take 2-3 fleet to catch a spy, I think it's perfect.)

Finally having more sensor range than target's sensor range mean that you can spy on it and it cannot see you at all.

As for Civ4BTS, of course, invisible spy was great and it should be a great set of modules to research!

Sabotage in espionage comes across to me as "Oh, go fix this."  "Oh, go fix that."  A lot of what gets discussed is what you could do to others.  I hate being the endless target of minor attacks I can't do anything about other than repair, unless I want to start yet another war.  Part of this may be that I often play with lots of opponents and there is much mutual spying going on.  I have a friend who owns lots of rental properties.  His life seems to consist of nothing but notices of what is broken where.  I don't need that from spies.

Any active espionage system I have seen so far has been more bother than actual return, so I really only see being on the receiving end of espionage systems. 

I do use the effects of information type espionage, but that does not seem to be the discussion.  But the less annoying thing would be a budget I could allocate on information spying so I could decide how deep I could know my opponents when I wanted to check on them.