Feedback Requested: Espionage

[Ranadiel]

Random thought I had for a an espionage option would be to manipulate war exhaustion. Fluff for the idea is an espionage empire providing support to anti-war citizens either financially or by providing them with evidence showing the "true" state of the war, which could be entirely a fabrication by the espionage empire. Since war exhaustion is meant to be public perception of the war, just makes sense to me that it is something espionage empire would try and manipulate.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

For things like spawning pirates or damaging starbases I'd rather they were prepared and then sat ready as an ability you can activate when you need to, if at all. If sabotage starbase actually was worth something (i.e. a buff to completely shut down a starbase for 30 days) then you could prepare it with the fluff being that your agents are working to upload a virus into the target station. Once ready you just sit on it, and if there comes a time where you have to attack that starbase then you trigger the virus.

Suddenly, the personal communication devices of all the starbase's officers all received a strange signal at the same time, approximately 2 seconds before said devices lost their structural cohesion in a manner that was rather fatal within a distance of one standard appendage length unit...

 

[M@ni@c]

My answer when the form asked what the pain points are:

Espionage has two main problems.

1) It requires Influence. There are better things to spend your limited reserve of Influence on, so espionage falls by the wayside. Solutions could be make Espionage/Covert Ops its own yield type, or remove any yield requirements. Meaning Intel and the opportunity cost of using one of your limited in numbers Envoys, are the only costs.

2) With one exception, there are only espionage operations which hurt other players. The only exception, the one that benefits you as a player, is Steal Technology. No surprise then, Steal Technology is the only operation worth using.
There should be more beneficial operations.
An example of what NOT to do: for instance "Siphon Funds": steal energy credits from another empire. It might be fun if you are the initiator, but if you are the victim of such an operation, it sucks.
How it could be done better: allow an Envoy to be stationed at a rival planet. On that planet, you can give it the mission Siphon Funds, which has a continuous effect:
-1 energy from Technician jobs on the local planet, but +2 energy per Technician goes to the envoy owner. So similar to how jobs on overlord holdings function.

This is a better and more fun implementation, because it allows counterplay: as the victim you could either redirect the planet economy to other jobs than Technician, or you could place one of your Envoys on the planet for counterespionage. This would remove the negative effects for the victim/defending player, and the energy gain for the offensive player would be reduced: from +2 to +1 energy per Technician. The reason to still give a positive effect to the offensive player, is to prevent a need for constant pingponging of envoys as soon as a counterespionage operation has started.

 

[Archael90]

My answer when the form asked what the pain points are:

Espionage has two main problems.

1) It requires Influence. There are better things to spend your limited reserve of Influence on, so espionage falls by the wayside. Solutions could be make Espionage/Covert Ops its own yield type, or remove any yield requirements. Meaning Intel and the opportunity cost of using one of your limited in numbers Envoys, are the only costs.

2) With one exception, there are only espionage operations which hurt other players. The only exception, the one that benefits you as a player, is Steal Technology. No surprise then, Steal Technology is the only operation worth using.
There should be more beneficial operations.
An example of what NOT to do: for instance "Siphon Funds": steal energy credits from another empire. It might be fun if you are the initiator, but if you are the victim of such an operation, it sucks.
How it could be done better: allow an Envoy to be stationed at a rival planet. On that planet, you can give it the mission Siphon Funds, which has a continuous effect:
-1 energy from Technician jobs on the local planet, but +2 energy per Technician goes to the envoy owner. So similar to how jobs on overlord holdings function.

This is a better and more fun implementation, because it allows counterplay: as the victim you could either redirect the planet economy to other jobs than Technician, or you could place one of your Envoys on the planet for counterespionage. This would remove the negative effects for the victim/defending player, and the energy gain for the offensive player would be reduced: from +2 to +1 energy per Technician. The reason to still give a positive effect to the offensive player, is to prevent a need for constant pingponging of envoys as soon as a counterespionage operation has started.

There could be much more operation.
Like forcing two empires to like eachother.
Making other empire war exhaustion goes up.
reducing targeting of all enemy ships for some time.
Lure spaceborn creatures to other empire.
Force empire to take some refugees.
Steal some pops from other empire.

There could be a species trait that grants intel of empire there lives in to thier original empire, and maybe infiltration?

 

[Archael90]

Also I dont understand assets category. Like... Why we need sabotage/technology asset where subterfure/technology is more than enough.

 

[yellowTeeth]

One operation idea.
With espionage, I like to be able to "save" my species who become slaves in a target empire and secretly migrate them to my capital.
Pop is really important.

 

[Buladelu]

It's so hard to make an interesting espionage system in a single-player strategy game.

In my opinion spycraft is at its best when it's fire and forget with random results. I am not that big of a Master of Orion 2 fan, but it had the right idea about that. You can send spies and they do bad stuff for the enemy. More spies and more bonuses from tech - and they do more bad stuff. But you can't quantify it. In a grand strategy like Stellaris it could be abstracted, we can pretend our spies do a lot of minor things in the background.

Grant us different areas of infiltration (e.g. administration, military and research). Allow us send diplomats as spies and tell them to raise these parameters focusing on one area on the other. Let the "equilibrium" level be defined by relative codebreaking/encoding and diplomat stats. Allow diplomats to find assets bumping the equilibrium (at energy price). Make "idle" diplomats work on counterintelligence, meaning lower infiltration equilibrium for all enemy spies. Give some character traits additional modifiers to specific areas equilibrium when they're rulers or in council.

I would remove all the "active" espionage acitvities, maybe leave some of them to random events, providing rare opportunities, or reactive moments (e.g. if the compromised empire starts war against you and you can spend your "administrative infiltration" to bump their war weariness, or starts to build a megastructure allowing you to interfere to slow it down, stuff like that. Spend energy and current infiltration level to do something nasty.). Instead, allow the infiltration levels to give bonuses and penalties depending on the area. Mostly bonuses to the spying side so that it wouldn't be too annoying. E.g. administration early infiltration allows you to speed up relations improvement/harm against the target empire and provide cheaper claims, then see their territory and "leech" some of their diplomatic influence, and on the max level allow you to steal some of their energy. Military might give some minor bonuses to your evasion, bombardment effectiveness and land troop morale. Research infiltration might work as a one-sided involuntary research agreement, and at max level maybe leech research directly. Another idea would be to make espionage benefits depend on your ethics. Could be readable and clear to the player if there are only a couple bonuses like that and they are high level enough. E.g. pacifists will penalize enemies with additional war weariness when fighting their own country, xenophiles might get a minor global happiness bonus from high level infiltration, and so on.

Something like that would solve a couple of issues for me:
1. Finicky nature of the current system. It's relatively complex compared to what it does, you have to click a lot of buttons and remember a lot of things to get relatively minor use out of the current system. This one could be fire and forget, and have the complexity and micromanagement requirement appropriate for the rewards.
2. Narrative. It's against Stellaris nature for the ruler to spend their time on extremely granular and minor decisions of espionage. It would feel more appropriate if you get a constant modifier signifing a constant invisible war in the background, with some rare reactive events that suddenly make espionage more important and make you glad you spent your resources on it or regret not doing so.
3. Make it more connected to the systems in general, providing more interesting decisions, but keeping it relatively unimportant for your own experience. Most of counterintelligence will ensure that the other empires don't get bonuses rather than that you are safe from irritating negative events.

 

[TSBasilisk]

After seeing diplomacy mentioned as well, sketching out a framework that might apply to both:

Add new tabs in the Council window which go to a Diplomatic Corps and Spy Corps respectively. A leader can be assigned as a pseudo-councillor. Their empire wide buffs don't apply, but they do influence their post - a Scientist spymaster would have better code breaking while an Admiral would be better with military targeted operations. However, certain Civics or Traditions could make this also act as a full or reduced Councillor position, like taking Shadow Council for a spymaster.

The DCorps has Envoys while the SCorps has Agents, which function like the current Assets - pseudo-Leaders with bonuses for specific operations. Assets can still be recruited as well.

Each Corps generates points which are used for defense and offense. The DCorps can spend points to reduce the impact of scandals while the SCorps spends points to counter infiltration. These points are also used to support Diplomatic or Spy missions, which are trackable on the page. Any mission requires an attached Envoy/Agent to commence.

-

Aside from that rough sketch, I like the idea of having hidden enclaves on enemy worlds. Stealing or assassinating Leaders is also a fun idea.

I want Bond moments. Add some Spy fic flavor, because as-is the system is bland. Make me cover for my agent who just blew up a planet's moon to stop a Colossus test fire or send a squad to hunt down the amnesiac Jason Blorg.

Pie in the sky dream: Rogue Spy organization crisis. A shadow organization which causes internal problems, instigated wars, and undermines your Spy Corps. You have to find their hidden bases and capture their agents to locate their hidden headquarters and launch a daring raid. Preferably spearheaded by an Agent if you want to capture a special reward.

 

[Comari]

I haven't read through every single thing here, but I remember there was an old contention that making Espionage too good could make the player the target of endless operations, and make the game a slog. Now ordinarily it is possible to be the target of multiple wars, but usually this doesn't happen due to diplomacy. If it does, there is the presence of the physical space of the map itself to act as a bottleneck. Enemy fleets take a long time to get through space, giving the player the chance to react, and they travel through choke points in the hyperlanes, once again making for a possibility of defense from attacks.

My one thing to add, if it hasn't been already, is that espionage could have the exact same kind of bottlenecks implemented. Just as a xenophile or pacifist player prefers peace and never fighting to war, and player strategy involves avoiding aggression rather than engaging, players should have the ability to try to avoid being targeted by espionage altogether. If they are, there should be bottlenecks and counterplay to prevent excessive damage from operations sinking the player's economy.

I think an easy example could be, upon the completion of a successful operation against an empire, security of that empire is naturally bolstered, preventing any more operations from succeeding for a time, perhaps delaying or putting other operations on hold. By doing this, the player is not barraged by negative effects, but instead may suffer one every once in awhile if they ignore diplomacy and espionage defense completely.

 

[PositiveGamer]

Form filled

In short - I find the system still feels like it's tacked on and I'd rather the current system be further integrated with other core systems of the game that players spend greater amounts of their time looking at.

Some ideas:

• Have espionage be a core available action for one of the council positions - and you can set them a general direction (progress intel gathering on rivals, counter-intel on rivals, intel gathering on own population etc)
  
  
• Create a non-insignificant modifier to home fleets in home space (because they know the 'geography' better) that offensive espionage can reduce. Maybe the capital sector bonus is even larger? Maybe as the game progresses from early, mid to late game, this bonus becomes relatively less important.
  
  
• Have espionage be tied to corvettes and set them to be the designated scout class once they are intentionally re-balanced to become obsolete in battles with the introduction of Destroyers.
  
  • For example, an automated military scout order could be available to mono-corvette cloaked fleets, that has them scout enemy space reducing the home bonus modifier in each scouted system.
  • note - if that sounds too micro-heavy, alternatively each fleet could have a % requirement for corvettes, who while useless themselves mitigate a negative 'flying blind' modifier for fleets they are a part of.
  • sidenote: while this is the role of envision for corvettes in the mid to late game, I think other alternative use cases should be found for every shiptype bar battleships, who once unlocked become the sole 'ship of the line' class for battles. e.g. other roles could cover things like: supply & support (via negative modifiers if fleets are unbalanced) / bombardment & station siege / ground assault assist / anti-strike craft etc
    
• Rather than assigning envoys manually to a bunch of systems, envoys allocation could be consolidated to occur at the councillor level (in this case to your Minister of Intelligence)
  
  Each councillor type would in turn have a usage case for them, maybe more than one. Just makes the whole keeping track of envoys easier as the Espionage UI just adds another buried location you might find them.
  
  Also, bit tangential, but on envoys:
  
  • they could possibly become a resource type acquired from administrative buildings - so they end up kinda representing directors of departments - departments that report to a given councillor - and as a choice of you investing in government administration.
    
    
  • additional sidenote: I've always found it strange that admin buildings are discouraged from being built on Capitals (no Capital designator type buffs Unity)
    
• This was mentioned already, but agreed, that holdings as a mechanic should probably be expanded / integrated to include some form of espionage building. Maybe you literally build embassies via holdings?

 

[daniel060]

I feel obliged to bring up my old espionage thread from back before espionage existed. Some of players' desires expressed then have been included, some have not, and some have . . . questionable implementation.

My biggest problem with espionage as it is now, is that it costs influence. When I'm trying to claim systems and build hyperlanes, I simply don't have enough around to spare for espionage. And given how scarce envoys are, I think that committing an envoy to espionage is cost enough. I wouldn't mind a higher energy cost, or needing to have a science ship or troop transport in orbit to do certain operation, but why would political influence within my empire be needed to influence a pre-FTL within my own borders?

 

[methegrate]

I agree with the other posters who say that they generally just ignore the espionage system. I just leave it alone and have never noticed the lack.

Tl;dr: My suggestion is to rework espionage so that the entire system is positive-benefit to the player rather than negative-benefit to the target. You would still target other empires. However rather than generating a loss or harm to that empire, you would receive an equivalent boost to your own empire. For example, "cripple starbase" would give you a temporary bonus when attacking that base rather than shutting down the unit.

This would allow the best version of espionage, in which small empires use it to punch above their weight, while mitigating the biggest problem with espionage, in which it sucks to have random things just happen to you on the receiving end. More importantly, it would make it easier to solve many of the other issues with espionage. Once this doesn't feel like a griefing system for the target, you can make espionage missions stronger and less random, which in turn would allow an empire to build a strategy around this over the long term.

***


Long version: Personally, I think espionage doesn't work in Stellaris suffers from the same two problems as espionage in every other strategy game. Specifically, in a game about long-term planning and strategy, it's not fun to suffer sudden, random losses. With an espionage mechanic, missions that are fun to use against someone else are not fun if they're used against you.

This comes up in virtually every strategy game ever. On the attacking end, it's fun to shut down an enemy starbase and storm across the border. On the receiving end, it's a borderline rage-quit to get a pop-up announcing that you lost a dice roll and now your defenses are worthless.

Most games try to solve this by making the espionage missions weaker and the odds of them succeeding longer. The idea is that the target won't be too mad because random events don't happen that often, and it's not that bad when they do. The problem is that this doesn't address the core issue. It's never fun to spend hours building something, only to have it zapped because of a random roll of the dice that you didn't even know was happening.

Take warfare by contrast. In a good strategy game, it's still fun to lose a war because you got to engage with interesting, creative systems while trying to win that war. It's not fun to lose an espionage mission because there was no engagement. The attacking player had fun, because they got to plan for, build up and launch the mission. The target player, though, just got a notification that their leader is now dead. Womp womp.

This problem makes it hard to do pretty much any other fixes. If you make espionage more fun and powerful for spy players, you make it more unpleasant for target players. If you make espionage less unpleasant for target players, you make it less fun for spy players. And honestly, "less unpleasant" should never be the goal anyway.

My suggestion for fixing this is to switch the results of espionage from negative to positive. For any given espionage mission, instead of causing harm to the target player, the attacker should receive an equivalent boost or bonus. Say I want to cripple a starbase or fleet. Instead of actually destroying/disabling those units, I should get a temporary boost against them. This still gives the other player a chance to respond, but it's a positive interaction (I get something) rather than a negative one (you lose something).

This would, of course, be implemented differently in different areas. If I want to sabotage a trade deal, I should get extra points when negotiating with the parties, for example. If I want to assassinate an admiral, I should get proportional bonuses against those fleets or systems in question.

It would be more difficult to do this in some areas than others, based on how the game works. I think this mostly reflects areas where players conflict and interact, though. This would be easy for warfare, but we would need to think about how players directly compete with each other in areas like economics, diplomacy, culture, etc. to figure out what a boost or bonus would look like. I would argue that this is a feature, not a bug, though. In some areas, there is no competition. Eliminating those espionage missions is good, because they basically just amount to griefing. (I have nothing to gain, but you still lose.) In other areas, we can find or introduce competition, which can only make the game better and deeper. (I should be able to put "break this trade agreement" on the table in negotiations for example.)

Regardless, I think this is where I would start. Make espionage about generating positive results for the player and eliminate negative results for the target. Doing this would then make it easier to solve a lot of the other issues that plague espionage as a mechanic. Once you don't have the random griefing problem, you can make espionage missions more powerful and structured, which in turn can make playing espionage a strategy rather than a series of gambles.

 

[fourteenfour]

Go look at Master of Orion series, they did it far better than what you tried and fixing the tech tree and how techs are acquired would be go hand in hand with a better espionage system. The number one issue I have found is that it reuses leaders I have other needs for and that it takes forever to see any results.

it was so boring I thought the feature was a typo

 

[Hunk Rawanda]

Hello Stellaris Community!

We hope you’ve all had a great holiday season so far! We’ve collected some excellent feedback so far, with over 8000 responses to the two feedback forms to date.

If you want to leave some feedback on Pirates and Crime, there’s still time! The form will be active until next Monday, after which we will close responses.

The topic for this week’s feedback form is Espionage. We’ve often talked about an espionage rework, and know that many of you find espionage rather lackluster outside of certain circumstances. So here’s your chance to let us know what you think!

Here’s what Eladrin said in Dev Diary #364:

So, do you think espionage is deserving of a rework? What would you like to see in a reworked espionage system? What do you like about the current Espionage system?

Answer all these questions and more on this week’s Feedback Form: Espionage!

We hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday season, and we’ll be back with our last feedback form next week, after which we will return to our regular Dev Diary schedule.

1st thing envoy should scale with the size of the starting empires. Playing a massive game and still getting 4 envoys by mid to late game vs playing a tiny game and getting 4 envoys doesn't make sense. Trading Intel seems like a possibility. Better and more useful sabotage actions. Although on that part it's gotta be balanced. Some games like the early civilization games spies could do so much damage it was ridiculous. Because they are the mist similar what works in hoi4 and ck2&3 and utilize that to help spark new ideas.

 

[Casko]

1st thing envoy should scale with the size of the starting empires. Playing a massive game and still getting 4 envoys by mid to late game vs playing a tiny game and getting 4 envoys doesn't make sense.

Funny thing is... that 90% of the envoys are locked behind DLC due to "First Contact" and the observation posts. Meaning you can get a total of 5.5 envoys (no really. 5 and a half where is the other half of evoy Blorg blorgson at????) last time I checked from observing primitives if you happen to luck into getting one or two of them in your borders.

 

[Letharion]

1st thing envoy should scale with the size of the starting empires. Playing a massive game and still getting 4 envoys by mid to late game vs playing a tiny game and getting 4 envoys doesn't make sense. Trading Intel seems like a possibility. Better and more useful sabotage actions. Although on that part it's gotta be balanced. Some games like the early civilization games spies could do so much damage it was ridiculous. Because they are the mist similar what works in hoi4 and ck2&3 and utilize that to help spark new ideas.

One more reason we should get rid of envoys for mundane tasks, which should just be be cost item for an empire and therefore can be handled on a larger scale without any problems by larger empires. Essential operations, on the other hand, should require a leader, and these should be as rare as before - of course with the possibility of increasing the number of leaders at least partly in line with the additional demand. Since basic leaders are not part of a DLC, such a division should not cause any difficulties.

 

[FibreglassSam]

I know espionage as it exists gets a lot of gripes and a lot of players don't use it. Personally, I'm a fan, and have had a huge amount of fun and experience using it. Like others, I agree it needs some work, but the system itself isn't a complete throw-out. I'll provide some more detail, below, but be warned, this will be a long post.

Current Use Cases
- Tech draw manipulation
The strongest current use case for espionage is to facilitate rushing particular techs. Due to the way that advancing tech levels draws more cards into the pool of potential techs, high research empires currently shoot themselves in the foot when tech-rushing, as they increase their draw pool even as they draw towards their desired tech. Steal technology requires a little time and thought investment and the payoff is one or two tech cards that are revealed mostly researched, but incomplete. Most importantly, this adds the card as an extra research option and removes it from the draw, allowing the player much more control over what tech tiers will be in the next draw.

Pros/cons: This use case helps us to take the edge off the sometimes very annoying randomness to the tech, and mirrors real world actors. This showcases, for me, how espionage should be working across the board.

- Scouting
Currently, the only way to scout opponent's closed borders in the early game is through espionage. This puts a reasonable and realistic limiter on players who want to bum-rush an early neighbor, and helps to maintain some mystery in the galaxy for late game. Particularly strong is the fact that your knowledge of an empire's key facts can be stagnant if you have scouted them previously, which interacts interestingly with their encryption level. In the early game, this is much more impactful, as having no data on a system prevents your combat ships from jumping in, which promotes thoughtful gameplay. In the late game, the same mechanic allows us to see, and therefore counter, our opponents' ship layouts.

Pros/cons: For the most fundamental use of espionage, this is one that I find doesn't impact the game enough. The issues are that the benefits land at super early game or unreasonably high levels of espionage (ship layouts). Scouting before conflict is definitely something the player should have to do, but the first tier of sensors alleviates the hard lock against players jumping into systems, and most players will send a doom-stack of many fleets, so strategic positioning and knowledge of enemy movements is not something that Stellaris does. Universally good weapons, like disruptor spam further draw away from the intended specialism vs counter style in combat.

- Political Manipulation
Influencing other empires is another current usage scenario, but doesn't see a very strong practical impact, currently, due the randomness of the action and how empires currently block together and form unassailable friendships.

Desired Use Cases
- Better Political Manipulation
Greater influence over the political game is the main need for espionage in the future. Formation of unassailable federations or vassal clusters shrinks down diversity in the galaxy from the late early game and draws up permanent political borders, which cannot be crossed outside of war. The favour system, whilst unbalanced due to lack of AI interaction with the system, was a starting point which allowed us to tweak the decision-making for other factions in a meaningful and sometimes very powerful way. Previously, using espionage to obtain favours was valuable, and a similar mechanic in the future, that the AI can also use, will become impactful.

Similarly, more capability to sour or improve relationships between empires of our choice would be impactful. However, all of these capabilities need to also be something the AI can engage with, else the player will not be challenged.

- Useful Sabotage
More impactful sabotage is needed, to encourage espionage usage around war and military disruption. Currently, AIs have to cheat to a ridiculous extent and planting a pirate camp in a trade empire will have no noticeable impact on their ability to generate ships or fight wards. I have no idea if AI factions patrol trade routes, but most of the time, AI's will generate their own pirates and comfortably ignore them, so for the most difficult Operation, generating piracy feels particularly worthless. Sabotaging a star-base is a good one, but the fact that you only damage one module and can only undertake one operation at a time prevents this from being useful, as you will still need a massive fleet.

A peripheral change, allowing conquering factions to build, restructure or enhance captured star-bases during a war would make sabotage more viable, if it were also able to affect more modules. For example, a weaker empire with strong espionage could sabotage a fortress star-base on the border in order to win a difficult batter, and then could repair or enhance the star-base and could use that to bunker down, preventing re-capture. This kind of strategic interplay is what we should be seeing.

- Theft
Resource diversion is not something that espionage does at the moment, which leaves highly spy-focused factions at the wrong end of opportunity cost. A way to use espionage to offset the weaker economy, by allowing the stealing of resources, is necessary to enable factions to offset not making economically sound tech, tradition and influence investments. Currently, spying costs influence, which makes sense. Spies being able to steal influence if their operation is successful would make espionage more niche, in that subtle and spying empires become more 'influential'. However, basic resource theft is appealing.

Other Changes
- Influence cost
Currently, influence is the most carefully guarded resource in the game. Even the most profitable use of spying currently is in direct competition with establishing a new star-base, and the more diplomatic an empire is, the less they can afford to spy. This fits the Romulan Star Empire, but is antithetical to how real world politics and espionage interact.

- Envoys
Whilst it has some thematic place, the choice between diplomacy or espionage is currently deepened by the dual use of Envoys, who are too rare to split between the two. As an alternative, instead of allocating an envoy to diplomacy and one to a spy network, we could use the same envoy - i.e. an envoy harming or improving relations also enables a spy network to form. This makes real world sense, as it requires engagement in the local political system to insert spies.

Making Envoys into a proper leader type, with its own cap, could also add fun ways to improve espionage involvement, through use of leader traits.

- Frequency/multiple operations
Currently, we are limited as to how many and how frequent our operations are against a specific empire. This can make sense in the case of steal technology, gain intel and acquire asset, but prevents operations that affect faction relationships or have a military impact from being useful. An empire that can afford it should be able to spark piracy across multiple zones in an empire, sabotage multiple star-bases, or attack a faction's reputation on multiple fronts.

TLDR
The system as is has promise, and already has more use than players give it credit for, but to improve its relevancy, the costs need to be more manageable, the outcomes stronger and playing without engaging with the system needs to have more drawbacks in terms of intel.

 

[Florian20]

Hello,
First, the Leaders should have a separately Tree, with unique Perks, and Leaderperks. They should have a espy leader, the Leader become a New Research Section for New eSpy interactions. The subordinated have three Sections, eHackers that can collect Informations from other Empires and do empire wide eSabotage. Somethink like, discover Fleets and ships from the other empire and unhide there strenght, so without eSpy you can't see weher and how strengh there fleets are, until they Fly in to attack. Other thoughts are, eSpy out Relationships and unhide other undiscoverd Empires bevor, they can notice the Player. ESpy Research and other Empire thinks. On the eSabotage side, i think about somethink like eDesinformations positiv and negativ Influence of the empire to other empire relations or to the Player empire, to maybe destroy relationships and agreements with them. For the second Section the defense, espy's can prevent, stop or discover eSpionage Actions from other empires aginst the Empire or a Planet and on the Offensive side they can place eDesinformations about the thinks ehackers can dicover, like showing the fleet stronger or weaker or Not to Show the actuall moving after another empire discoverd the fleet position for a time periode.
The third Piece are the eagents that can send with a coverd ship, that is Not Shown on the map but if a Player/empire see it in a solarsystem it can be discoverd and stoping the eagent from the other empire. The agents can eSabotage Stations(-Outcome, -Effects), Megastructures (-Buildtime, -Outcome, -Effects), .... or landing on a Planet and eSabotage this by actions, like stealing, -Output,.... and a New covert to other empire by eSpionage system.

I would love to see a rework from the Espionage system

 

[RabbaDooDabba]

I want to be able to name my secret service and I wish for some spy vs. spy action. Let my agents stumble upon other factions spies that are doing operations on the same third party.

 

[Mister X-X]

The espionage in the game is simply broken! The spy must be built according to this system: High Empires must be strong in espionage! Wide empires must be strong in leadership but weak in espionage! Wide empires have more corruption as an example! Finally add Spy Leaders with the Spies and Anti-Spies specializations with unique upgrades and perks! Hidden First Contact ! Add the Planet Stations Disguise to the game! Make Russa with the origin of Espionage !!!!!!!