Espionage Seems Useless

[LustHogg]

Is it just me, or is espionage fairly useless? Great, I can blow up a starbase module. I wanted to be able to destabilize empires. Does it get any better?

[Ryika]

Yes, it's very weak and mot operations aren't worth the energy you spend on them.

[box]

Seems like a missed opportunity. Then again itd be quite overpowered in the hands of a human player if they weren't so tepid in powers.

[Bloodartist]

It seems similar to galactic community in that its cool that its there, but it doesnt really do anything special. Its existence is symbolic.

Maybe one possibility could be to gather intel on foreign empires trade routes, which could be used to disrupt said routes - using your fleets or maybe espionage even. For as long as stuff is just "numbers on a spreadsheet" it fails to feel meaningful.

I totally love the fog of war, new first contacts and lack of intel though.

[tathen]

yeah espionage is kind of dull, and alot of the galactic community stuff should just be policies & edicts

[Rialm]

Escrito originalmente por Bloodartist:

I totally love the fog of war and lack of intel though.

This is the only good thing about espionage. Apart from that, it would be nice something more complex.

[Gary]

The cost of operations is pretty insignificant if you're using mods like Gigastructures. You end up with so many resources that you can't use them all. Once you've got multiple Dyson spheres up and running you don't even notice the cost.

What I find annoying is that you need envoys to use the system. If you're playing on a large galaxy with a lot of other empires it gets very annoying very fast. There just aren't enough ways to increase your number of envoys.

My empire is hundreds of billions strong and there is no easy way to recruit more than 8? That's just silly.

I've been looking for a console command to increase the number but no luck yet.

[Prowl]

Well in the current beta patch the cost of operations is very trivial now.

[Terijian]

yeah its kinda useless lol. I have fun doing it though =)

but yeah you are def right, im expecting/hoping for them to expand on it in the future

[VoiD]

The intel part is alright, but nothing else, too clicky, not much of an effect

[Sea Base]

Escrito originalmente por LustHogg:

I wanted to be able to destabilize empires.

You can. Just stack up the relations debuffs and you can break up federations and keep your enemies in a state of war while you build up.

[RodHull]

Escrito originalmente por Gary:

What I find annoying is that you need envoys to use the system.

This x 10

[Zorlond]

I get the feeling that espionage is simply there to cover for a new AI cheat that lets it get free tech upgrades. "Oh yeah, the AI just stole tech from the player" is what the devs would say. Never mind that the AI never researches encryption/decryption so all the espionage should be hell-difficulty...

[Ryika]

Escrito originalmente por Zorlond:

I get the feeling that espionage is simply there to cover for a new AI cheat that lets it get free tech upgrades. "Oh yeah, the AI just stole tech from the player" is what the devs would say. Never mind that the AI never researches encryption/decryption so all the espionage should be hell-difficulty...

You tried, and failed, to come up with a good theory.

[Radene]

The problem with espionage is that it always feels "tacked on", I've not seen a single strategy game that had an "integrated", for lack of a better word, espionage system unless espionage itself was the game's central theme.

The problem is that espionage as a concept is all about subtlety, deception, and unpredictability. While you can put such a concept into a computer game, most people will simply not be able to handle it, because they don't really think it's "important". Just build the bigger and better army, right?

So to make it "important" would make most people rage about how they're "forced to play with a system they don't want to play with"; while leaving it more of an optional flavor thing will make most people (ironically, mostly the same ones) rage about how "it doesn't do anything".

[Razor Feather]

The starbase one is entierly pointless for sure. You end up paying far more than the cost of the module upfront, and then there is a long delay, and you can only even try it when you've already invested a lot of envoy time. If it could seriously weaken a starbase of your choosing, then it could be worthwhile. The ability to harm relations and steal techs however has a lot more value, and force collecting favors can also be valuable.

There are real limits on how potent an espionage system can be though without just being *awful* to deal with as the defender. Stuff like "Surprise! You're ecnumopolis rebelled!" and other high power, direct offensive options tend to just lead to frustration and anyone who gets ahead being dogpiled by spies. The whole point of espionage stuff after all is that you don't tend to alert the defender much, which makes adding meaningful counterplay that isn't "Spam anti spy buildings absolutely everywhere" tricky.