Perhaps Tech Stealing still needs a slight nerf?

[Kalisa]

I know its a single player game and if somethings alittle op and u dont like it just dont do it, but besides that for game balance it does still feel alittle too easy to steal techs from pirates since they are loaded with so much tech and have minimal defense against it, I started a prewarp game and pretty much the moment i found a pirate i had my spy effectivly stealing a whole tech every 2 years (since most level 1-2 techs get about 50% progress on theft) and i had about 90%+ chance constantly, going into level 2-3 techs this chance only dropped to about 60-70% since most my spies had around 10-20% buffs at this time.
The Enemy ai does not seem to take advantage of this at all as well so if we do, it gives us a substantial advantage with very little risk, perhaps just toning down what techs pirates have to steal? or drop the chance by another 10-15%, im sure theres lots of ways to balance this.

[Taritu]

Yeah, I've been doing the same thing. If it's not intended, it definitely needs a nerf. Even just making them have a lot less tech. Although it does get reasonably difficult at TL3, I noticed.

[mycasualgaming]

intelligent really depends on the empire you play - I guess you play as humans, and yes they are op

[BATTLEMODE]

The Humans seem to be way too effective at both espionage and counter espionage right now.

[Cornuthaum]

Right now the only real downside of humans is that their preferred planet type is incredibly rare, because their ships are great, their unique techs are super useful, their racial bonuses are good and their event chain is great. They have some things that aren't *good* (their Super Item is a maneuvering engine, which is completely worthless, and they don't have racial pop growth, which is the god-stat for any race) but otherwise they only have one real flaw.

[Conspiracy313]

Yeah I concur with this. The Zenox are OP as well. I had to self-impose not to steal tech from pirates or I would be in a winning position before tier 4 tech.

[mycasualgaming]

Imao Zenox should be the only race with spy-fy as humans have already boosted diplomacy skills

[FlashXAron ☕ (Alex)]

Agree , even I started with my mod, where I gave all civs 10 to 20% more counterespionage

The problem is, I myself only caught ONE !!!!!!!!! spy from the others ...
and I think I have now done around 100 times stealing and only got caught 10 times ...

1.) So first at all the pirates should only have tech 0-2 max and not all techs ...

2.) Counterspy for all civs should be increased to an additional 20% to 30%

3.) AND MOST IMPORTANT A LOT FEWER SPIES, if you only have 1-3 , you could only steal really needed techs ... but with that 8, which you really get fast, they are really too many

4.) Time your spy need , should really depend on the distance, from where he is stealing , as it is always 12 months , what is a joke, way too fast ! (To transfer a stupid found paper from a planet, ships would need 2-3 months, the transfer needs 20 years LOL , that is the opposit to that spies, I should have loaded it on a ship and do it myself )

[VoiD]

Yes, human payer here, that was my experience.

I tried manually controling spies, and I took some nice tech for basically no risk for quite a while, but after I had 3+ spies manually controlling them was no longer a possibility, so I set them all to auto.

Next thing I noticed I had all the techs from everyone else in the galaxy.

But yeah, espionage is hell to create in these games, you can take the Paradox approach like in HoI4 or Stellaris and make it so weak that it's more of a distraction than a feature, and only really do about 2 or 3 things in your entire game, and it won't even be that much of a gamechanger so it could be ignored.

Or

It can be like DW, where you can destroy an entire empire exploding dozens of their stations every year for free, and no risk, don't even need to be at war, destroy their leaders, their government, their colonies, get all the technology in the game for free and trivialize all the other mechanics.


It's very hard, and I don't even know if it's possible, to make a properly balanced espionage system.

[chronobomb]

Counter intelligence is broken. No matter how high you set it it sets 0 counteragents unless you do it manually. My guess is this bug is affecting the AI too. Fix the bug and you will probably fix the research stealing issue.

[Kalisa]

im actually surprised how good Zenox are starting out as well, espically with a technocracy goverment ontop of that 20% bonus to all research they get at their capital, that with amazing spies and they just skyrocket in tech so fast its crazy

[mycasualgaming]

I start to learn this game by playing the classic technocrats (Ackdarian) and my spies are that bad as the enemy spies catch them while they performing counter intelligence. LOL

[endoric]

my spys get more research done than my scientists and research labs for sure.

[shawn]

I think it must be a bug as the other spy activities are much more difficult even with seasoned spies. Experience from activities needs to develop them a bit more roundly. Certain stats are very hard to raise. My guys can steal the wings off flies mid-flight but try pushing over a glass vase or shorting out the microwave before lunch break, *BAM* to the clink! My best OP spook only ever got to 23% chance to blow up their base and deep cover was 8% if I recall. This guy was James Bond but he kept all the girls and all the cars. It would also be interesting to let them work as a team. There should probably be some recon missions ahead of time as well and a nice greasing of palms before you can really start working. What of all the alien races in my empire? I've never seen any of them pop up in my roster for any jobs. Come to think of it...there are no women. No wonder half my characters are drunks or addicts...

[Noob]

I have a mod where every race gets 110% counterespionage and I still can steal techs, it's beyond broken.

[placsie]

I'm hoping this gets a tweak this week or let us disable tech stealing all together.