Feedback Requested: Espionage

[DrFranknfurter]

I hope Espionage gets a bit of love... a couple of highlights from the form if anyone wants to discuss ideas and issues:

Spoiler: What is bad about espioange?

It takes about a dozen clicks to get anything done:
Click an empire icon, switch to espionage, click the drop down, filter by infiltration progress so your spies are at the top of the long list and slowly go down the list checking each one to see what you can and cannot do:
1. No pop-ups for cooldowns expired, idle envoys, infiltration at current maximum etc.
2. No ability to prepare to launch an operation before the cooldown has expired and the correct infiltration level has been reached, so you always launch years later than you could have.
3. Performing operations at the minimum infiltration level often wastes the influence cost as operation events require spending additional infiltration progress to pass or cancel the operation and start again hoping not to get the same event.
4. Operation results are very random in outcomes, with some operations having a 0% chance of actually doing what you would like to be able to happen, like breaking apart an enemy federation, getting a vassal to fight its overlord, getting an empire to break commercial pacts with someone else, or making an empire allow you into a federation despite their reservations about you (gaining favours to try to overcome a -quadrillion penalty from distance or from not having the same war policy).
5. Everything is unlocked from the start, so there is no sense of progress when playing as a spy race. (Getting new assets doesn't unlock new operations, getting better techs, traditions or Ascension perks doesn't unlock new operations or operation events either).
6. Relative codebreaking / encryption is capped so it quickly becomes pointless to keep gaining additional sources as it will not improve anything, no extra infiltration progress, infiltration cap etc. making codebreaking feel worthless when your empire is built trying to stack it.
7. Operations get more expensive the higher your infiltration level, so recovering from an operation takes longer and longer the closer you get to 100... so it's easier to do more operations the worse you are at spying which feels idiotic.
8. Fallen Empires are completely immune to spying instead of being a risky source of loot
9. All crisis empires are immune to espionage
10. All neutral creatures are immune to espionage
11. Ship designs can only be seen with enough intel/infiltration progress, so all empires immune to spying cannot be inspected to help you counter-design your fleets (so old players who remember all the components have an advantage over newer players who can't be bothered to check the wiki - at the very least completing situations should give ship details for neutral critters).
12. Pre-FTL spying is so terrible I forgot it existed until just now, the last time I tried it half the things I wanted to do were unavailable when the whole point is you're doing underhanded things off-the-books and in secret and so shouldn't be prevented from doing so due to your official interference policy

Spoiler: How could espionage be improved?

Start by making it fun to go all-in:
1. Assets that unlock new features (if I have a spy in their economy I want to see their income and stockpiles, if I have a tech spy I want to see what they're researching, if I have a diplomatic spy I want to see what the AI intends to do next and have a way to push them in a different direction etc.)
2. Operations to forge and break bonds (to join/merge/break federations and alliances)
3. Fallen Empire operations that let you steal ships, techs, specimens, leaders etc.
4. Crisis operations that let you learn more about their motives, history, ship designs and plans
5. Lots of ways to mess with Pre-FTL empires for fun and profit
6. Mililtary benefits for spying on an empire, having military assets and higher military intel (shield and armour penetration against them, shield and armour hardening against them, bonus damage, more/reduced disengagement chances, etc.)

UI changes:
1. Allow planning operations before you are ready and able to launch them (so you can plop in a spy and get them to perform an aquire asset mission when that is available, or steal tech when it's off cooldown)
2. Add some indication that you are at current max infiltration, cooldowns have expired or that you have unassigned envoys (with potential places you could assign them so it doesn't warn you before you meet any empires).
3. Add working tooltips that show, for example "17 months before we will be able to see ship details"
4. Show the actual cost of an operation, -15 infiltration levels can actually mean: "lose full fleet vision for the next 20 years". I want the game designers to be able to see this and to understand what the numbers they code actually mean, I hope it makes the costs of future operations less frustrating and silly.

 

[Letharion]

It may not be the most elegant way, but a lot of preparatory work has already been done on the suggestion forum. Therefore, I allow myself to quote myself:

Since this topic comes up again and again, I would like to link to a few threads that outline important requirements for a meaningful review of espionage activities. In my opinion, the leadership restructuring has laid a foundation to build on. In order for the possible espionage activities to be useful, the costs must be reasonable.

Therefore, in a second step, the envoys would have to be culled or merged with the other leaders, which would significantly reduce their number. Essential actions would then require the involvement of a leader, but with simple actions you might be able to do without it. This would also apply to diplomacy, which should be revised in parallel.

In addition, other conditions may be required, as suggested here and there, be it local presence through stealth spy ships or an appropriately upgraded embassy/spy department in the respective empire.

At the same time, every empire should also have the opportunity to defend itself through active counter-espionage or even counter-espionage, for which leaders can also be appointed.

Since leaders are a valuable resource and there is a risk of temporary (MIA) or permanent (KIA) loss if actions fail, the actions could be equally effective if successful.

 

[MantleMetalCat]

What if military espionage allowed you to install electronic countermeasure systems as a ship compenent. Said systems give you higher evasion rates and maybe tracking of missiles against empires based upon what intel level you have against them. Maybe some extra attack bonuses from special events.

Maximum additional bonuses from espionage should probably in place if this is done. Maybe become higher w/ higher tech levels.



Use buildings/districts to set up the maximum cap for espionage network size.

Then, a set of policy decisions to focus on outward espionage, balanced, or inward defense.

This would make it favorable to spy on an empire that you plan to go to war with. Or need to defend against. Maybe don't make it more difficult against gestalts, or have a tech that reads patterns in gestalt actions to lredict behaviour based upon long distance analysis to even it out.

You might even be able to tie it into piracy and crime. Piracy is just rouge cells of your own people and internal intelligence can counteract that. Espionage might even be able to create piracy in enemy empires.

The espionage buildings might be able to double as crime suppression. Merge the two roles together so that it feels natural to build up your intelligence, lower crime, ect at the cost of building slots.

A cool option would be making the players make decisions w/ roleplay weight that kinda of defines how they veiw or where they want to take their empire in regard to internal intelligence. Like frostpunk.

 

[Wise Strategist]

- Slightly Less Random Technology Stealing: Make it less random and allow us to choose which techs to aim for from a selection of 3 possible techs the target empire has that I don’t. Also allow things like dark matter tech and psi techs to be among the options.

- Add a new council position, Spymaster: Instead of needing to assign envoys as spies, I much rather appoint a single leader to oversee all spy operations. This would require a slight change in the system. Rather than apply an envoy to gather intel, allow me to toggle a gather intel option, that will operate and gather intelligence like envoys currently do, but at the cost of unity or energy credits.

- Leader assassination: Allow us to assassinate leaders creating a period of chaos we can exploit before invading.

- Expansion Through Subversion: Through the use of carefully planted diplomats and the right choices, let us make like the Tau of WH40K and use “diplomacy” to convince a planet to peacefully join our empire. This could also be a good tactic for Criminal Syndicates, who could obtain new world through building up crime on a planet and the using their control of the planet’s underworld to take control of it.

- Better ability to Ruin Friendships: It would nice be if the ability to hurt relations between two empires was less random, and we could actually hand pick which two empires we want to cause diplomatic strife between.

- Make Cloaking more militarily valuable: I've found that cloaking can be rendered useless once the AI has technology that decloak your ships. This make doing things like striking deep into an enemy's territory, difficult if not impossible without jump drives or a quantum catapult. So to solve this and allow for more strategic and tactical game play I have the following suggestions:

- Special Combat Stance for Cloaked Ships: Give ships with cloaking capabilities a new combat stance, Ambush. This stance would have such fleet automatically enable their cloaking, and attack and ambush enemy fleets that get close whenever their following another fleet or just setting by at a station.

- Reduce Cloak cool down: Add technologies that can reduce the cooldown for cloaking.

- Add Sensor Hacking: Make it possible to use espionage operations to hack enemy sensors for a time, allowing your cloaked ships to move through enemy without fear of being decloaked, and reveal the types of station a star base is. No longer would your territory be completely impenetrable, if you don't have some measure of defenses around your key stations you could be in a world of trouble. This would make cloaked fleets more valuable and worth investing in as they can now strike deep into an enemy system aiming straight for their shipyard(s) or their home system, wreaking havoc on their economy.

- Add Gateway Hacking: Make it possible for gateways to be hacked allowing your fleets to move through gateways your enemy controls as if they're unlocked L-gates or wormholes. This should also include relays allow your fleets to make use of your enemies own relay networks. Additionally, building gateways and hyper relays everywhere becomes a risk. Yes having a gateway at your home system makes trade easier, but them being hackable would also risk putting your home system in grave danger.

- Pre-FTL Interactions: Please boost the amount of tech progress you can give pre-FTLs through espionage.

~ It would also be nice if some events where reworked into situations. For example, the one with the rogue scientist, could have multiple options for dealing with them beside military force. Such as meeting with and strengthening any remain resistant forces to his reign or using infiltration to subvert his efforts and annex the planet.

 

[Nudeldifudel]

I think one of the biggest things is to not be afraid of making spy networks to powerful because it would be annoying for the player to be attacked with, just have a counter espionage option where you can have a "spy network" in your own empire which works against and stops enemy spy networks in your empire, or some other form of way to put resources into stopping other empires from spying on you, and doing damaging things. That way you can have your cake and eat it too, if you don't wanna counter espionage you don't habe to, but the option is there if you wanna be save and don't deal with annoying assassinations or sabotaged starbases etc etc. Because having espionage actually be powerful and impactful opens up a whole nother play style, an espionage based empire. And more playstyles is always great.

 

[Zaacplot300]

To put it bluntly, espionage is worthless trash. It is incredibly expensive, takes a long time to do things, and the things it does are extremely situational at best or just straight-up pointless at worst. Operations need some teeth. Instead of like -25 opinion towards a random trash empire or the deletion of a single hydroponics farm from a starbase; let us assassinate non-ruler leaders or destroy buildings or districts. Hell, maybe let us go full-on supervillain and change a planet's class with an ecological disaster. We've already got a (very rare and hard to use) operation that lets you destroy an entire system so there's no reason not to add anything less than that if there is appropriate counter-play.

 

[Entomon]

Espionage operations solely for hiveminds would be great like for example being able to make genestealers from warhammer 40k

 

[Snyder]

I’m at work, so I’ll make this brief. The majority of spy operations are NOT worth the investment of time or resources.

I think it should be possible to severely cripple another empire with just spy operations. Right now the majority of them are just mild annoyances.

That Stellarite devourer spy operation that can kill another empire’s Sun. THAT is an example of how I would like every spy operation to feel. Impactful.

It doesn’t have to be as powerful as killing an entire star, but it should be impactful. We should be more able to assassinate specific leaders, destroy entire starbases or at least be able to drop their shields entirely. We should be able to target specific buildings on enemy words, etc.

 

[grommile]

Any system that is worth using, but is not usable by the computer players, is a Win Harder button in single-player.

Any system that is insufferably annoying when used by the computer player is also liable to be insufferably annoying when used by other humans in multiplayer.

The recurring problem with covert sabotage* mechanics – at least in quasi-symmetrical state-level strategy games as opposed to games about running a covert operations agency or playing a covert operative – is that the power threshold for "worth the player's time to use" is, generally speaking, higher than the power threshold for "insufferably annoying to have it used against you".

* as opposed to the broader category of "covert ops in general" that also includes "detecting ship movements", "copying technology", and so forth.

 

[rubert]

Gather information and acquire asset have been pretty much the only operations I use with any regularity and that is before sensors render them mostly moot on gauging if I should go to war or prepare for one (if the enemy is empire is larger).

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

System-level thoughts:

• Intelligence on other empires should offer appropriate bonuses against them: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-should-provide-bonuses-against-them.1609406/
  • Intelligence should be important for all empires, even if they don't use operations (or the Nemesis DLC). It only makes sense that if you know their weaknesses, you can exploit them in your regular interactions with the other empire. This would also have the benefit of making the gameplay choices more similar between vanilla and Nemesis, making it easier to balance the intelligence/operations system overall.
  • Government intelligence could boost attempts to influence them, such as diplomatic actions
  • Diplomacy intelligence could boost attempts to oppose them in the Galactic Community
  • Economy intelligence could boost your share of the value of commercial pacts
  • Technology intelligence could boost your share of research agreements, research speed in technologies researches by the other empire, or technology gains from scavenging debris
  • Military intelligence could boost bombardment damage, ship damage, evasion, tracking, combat width (i-e- number of your units available for attacking their number of frontline units)
• Operations could be done using a vessel (science vessel or envoy ship), that can be cloaked, rather than the gameplay focusing on clicking through menues.
  • This would add some important limitations to the operations system.
    • Operations can now only be performed if the target can be physically reached. An unreachable target cannot be targeted.
    • Travel time also becomes an important constraint for the use of operations.
    • It is now possible to defend against operations by investing heavily into detection. If the operatives cannot avoid detection, they cannot do their job.
  • Edit: embassies could potentially bypass this restriction for the capital world (in which case the envoy managing the spy network would be the envoy used for the operation, and the conditions below could apply - i.e. the difficulty level could be higher than anywhere else, several options may be unavailable or suboptimal, and so on).
  • This approach allows different worlds to have different difficulty levels (and rewards) depending on whether they are the empire capital, a sector world, or a frontier world. Other unique local circumstances could also influence potential actions and outcomes:
    • Socioeconomic composition,
    • planetary economy (research worlds are better targets for technology espionage),
    • known leader presence (assassination - if you know the location of the leader),
    • crime levels,
    • local crime and unrest (rebels and criminals that would love to get their hands on more firepower),
    • presence of deep space black site, and so on.
  • The Nemesis DLC would need to unlock the ability to use a cloaked science/envoy ship, as well as the cloaking and detection technologies.
    • This would not really duplicate gameplay features between Nemesis and First Contact, since the latter does not include cloaked operations vessels and would also retain exclusivity for the gameplay features it currently has. The two features would just happen to use and unlock the same technologies.
    • Cloaking should have been paired with espionage/operations to begin with. They are fundamentally connected.
  • While this would technically mean some new micromanagement, it would not feel like it; the interaction and movement on the galactic map would make it feel like a part of playing the game, the local conditions would vary from place to place and time to time (rather than repeatedly navigating the same multi-click menues the exact same way, over an over ad nauseam).
• To the extent that Stellaris keeps relatively weak operations that require repetition to get anywhere, it should be possible to automate repetition of those operations (thereby eliminating a ton of micromanagement that only serves to reconfirm a decision we have already made): https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...c-repetition-of-espionage-operations.1484974/
• Following a rework of operations, they should no longer cost Influence (normally). In my opinion, Influence should be limited to representing "territorial influence" while envoys handle diplomatic influence. Operations cannot usually compete with other uses of Influence, which offer much greater value for the Influence points spent.

Tweak thoughts:

• Isolationist diplomatic stance should give +1 encryption, -1 codebreaking: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...uld-give-1-encryption-1-codebreaking.1506977/
• It should be possible to defend against bonuses to base intelligence, and keep others' intelligence on you at 0 (at least in theory): https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ble-to-keep-others-intel-on-you-at-0.1602961/
  • When trying to play as a secretive, isolationist empire that nobody really knows anything about, it is incredibly frustrating that other empires get free intelligence on you and you can do nothing to stop it.
• Deep space black sites should slow down hostile infiltration: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...d-slow-down-hostile-spy-infiltration.1534544/
• Shadow Council, Police State should give +1 encryption: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/shadow-council-should-add-1-encryption.1535835/
  • There is currently no regular civic that gives +1 encryption.
  • Shadow Council can be dropped if it is made an origin instead, as per below.
• Edit: the "Bureau of Espionage" edict could be moved to the Subterfuge tradition tree. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...age-to-the-subterfuge-tradition-tree.1535587/
  
  • If the edict is moved to the opener of the tradition tree, it might become a tempting first pick for some empires; the edict offers +1 envoy, which would be very useful for understanding xenos in first contacts and winning more Influence rewards. Subterfuge would become more pronounced as an alternative to Diplomacy, where the opener currently offers an edict that grants +1 envoy.

Espionage should have a direct benefit / feature to Shadow Council civic imo ( if it is to stay as a civic, I don't know if it should ).

Shadow Council does not match the dictionary definition of "civic". It is not something that permeates society, but rather is hidden from it. It would make a lot of sense as a societal origin. Some civilizations enjoy a prosperous unification, others achieve a new world order via the machinations of their illuminati.

It also always irked me that it takes just 40 Government Intelligence to discover the Shadow Council (civic), especially when none of that information ever makes it back to the Shadow Council empire. Even if the two empires have completely open borders, migration access, and share intelligence. Eventually everyone in the galaxy knows about the Shadow Council, except for their own population. Shadow Councils should guard their secret very jealously, because discovery can mean the end of their secret rule. As long as their secret is not discovered, they should appear to be a regular Prosperous Unification empire. Perhaps there could be a special operation to expose the illuminati, triggering a dangerous situation with great loss of stability and multiple potential outcomes (discredit conspiracy theories, switch to Imperial, abandon Shadow Council, secession of systems, and so on).

 

[MantleMetalCat]

- Slightly Less Random Technology Stealing: Make it less random and allow us to choose which techs to aim for from a selection of 3 possible techs the target empire has that I don’t. Also allow things like dark matter tech and psi techs to be among the options.

- Add a new council position, Spymaster: Instead of needing to assign envoys as spies, I much rather appoint a single leader to oversee all spy operations. This would require a slight change in the system. Rather than apply an envoy to gather intel, allow me to toggle a gather intel option, that will operate and gather intelligence like envoys currently do, but at the cost of unity or energy credits.

- Leader assassination: Allow us to assassinate leaders creating a period of chaos we can exploit before invading.

- Expansion Through Subversion: Through the use of carefully planted diplomats and the right choices, let us make like the Tau of WH40K and use “diplomacy” to convince a planet to peacefully join our empire. This could also be a good tactic for Criminal Syndicates, who could obtain new world through building crime on a planet and the using through control of the planet’s underworld to quietly take control of it.

- Better ability to Ruin Friendships: It would nice be if the ability to hurt relations between two empires was less random, and we could actually hand pick which two empires we want to cause diplomatic strife between.

- Make Cloaking more militarily valuable: I've found that cloaking can be rendered useless once the AI has technology that decloak your ships. This make doing things like striking deep into an enemy's territory, difficult if not impossible without jump drives or a quantum catapult. So to solve this and allow for more strategic and tactical game play I have the following suggestions:

- Special Combat Stance for Cloaked Ships: Give ships with cloaking capabilities a new combat stance, Ambush. This stance would have such fleet automatically enable their cloaking, and attack and ambush enemy fleets that get close whenever their flooring another fleet or just setting by at a station.

- Reduce Cloak cool down: Add technologies that can reduce the cooldown for cloaking.

- Add Sensor Hacking: Make it possible to use espionage operations to hack enemy sensors for a time, allowing your cloaked ships to move through enemy without fear of being decloaked, and reveal the types of station a star base is. No longer would your territory be completely impenetrable, if you don't have some measure of defenses around your key stations you could be in a world of trouble. This would make cloaked fleets more valuable and worth investing in as they can now strike deep into an enemy system aiming straight for their shipyard(s) or their home system, wreaking havoc on their economy.

- Add Gateway Hacking: Make it possible for gateways to be hacked allowing your fleets to move through gateways your enemy controls as if they're unlocked L-gates or wormholes. This should also include relays allow your fleets to make use of you enemies own relay networks. Additionally, building gateways and hyper relays everywhere becomes a risk. Yes having a gateway at your home system makes trade easier, but them being hackable would also risk putting your home system in grave danger.

- Pre-FTL Interactions: Please boost the amount of tech progress you can give pre-FTLs through espionage.

~ It would also be nice if some events where reworked in situations. For example, the one with the rogue scientist, could have multiple options for dealing with beside military force. Such as meeting with and strengthening any remain resistant forces to his reign or using infiltration to subvert his efforts and annex the planet.

Are you able to see the detection level of diffrerent areas in an enemy empire right now?

 

[emattosalves]

There are many nice sugestions in this topic, but one that i want to sugest is some one like arming rebel/slaves and other groups inside other players planets. A full uprising may happen easily on planets with low stability or with high number of unhappy pops. Also, to explore the themes likes xenomorph infestation (genestealer cults, alien cults, shroud/warp and whatever thing that silently convert people in abominations....), maybe the option to, clandestine infiltrate xenomorph specimens in a word and they start to reproduce-converting pops into armies for a full take over when the player so desire or when they are discovered. It will be nice to initiate a war and in the middle of it your enemy dont realize that many of his word were secretly infested and the xenomorphs reveal thenselfes and initate a planetary war. That would be cool!

 

[Kataclyszm]

I, honestly, think just scrap it. There's way too much danger of making Espionage 'the only thing worth doing'. I know that's gonna get me a lot of red Xs from people who still, for some reason, see promise in espionage, but that's my feedback.

 

[grommile]

That would be cool!

Until three AIs do it to you at once, three games in a row.

 

[GrandEurypterid]

I think the biggest flaw with it is that there's no feeling of progression. For most builds, you get some increase in Things Being Done over time- space storms rack up planetary buffs and resilience, ascensions unlock new ways to build your pops, navies get bigger and more diverse, planets ascend, new sectors are added, and so on. Espionage doesn't really have that.

I think for Espionage, to get that same feeling of progression, you could potentially frame it as being to Tall what vassals are to Wide. Alternatively, it could work more like a Mafia than a series of operations. Possibly stealing Leverage from Vicky 3. Something like-

-You get Leverage over empires in various ways.
-Unlike Victoria 3, where it's mostly just power balancing between the great players, in Stellaris it's something that exists in a state of tension between you and other nearby players. 'Espionage', then, is the game of getting more influence than you otherwise would, to burn in politics, trade, or passive advantages over a specific enemy (similar to how spy networks in EU4 boost siege ability).
-Spy networks, however they work, are effectively equivalent to a Megacorp's outposts rather than being like a leader. You invest resources into a location, and those resources build up a semi-permanent power base. Rather than immediate, direct economic advantages, they work to get Influence over another nation, which will bias deals like research pacts in your favour.
-Espionage is the consequence of leaving leftover Influence- the spyer is advantaged either way, but if you allow them influence it will simply be that you get the short stick of a mutually beneficial deal, while with no deal they can burn influence on recurring or semi-passive Operations and Situations to- say- give their war allies buffs against your stations or to tracking (think Edict Fund). Counterplay is to either limit influence or counterbalance influence- a small spy empire might have disproportionate influence, but it might only break even against an empire with closed borders, a bunch of bordering xenophiles with a strong diplomatic corps, or the trade empire that provides half their economy in their trade deals.

 

[great lakes]

1st, more for people who want to force AI empires to do things - such actions need to also work against players. I wouldn't want my federation broken up without having anything I could do about it, but I could see adversaries making it more costly to maintain diplomatic arrangements.

more to the point, I think a lot of operations could be done as adversarial situations, with both sides able to make choices once the defender becomes aware of the op. both sides could see benefits or problems depending on the situation's progress - though I'm assuming two empires can share a situation.

whatever happens, my two notes are that nontrivial operations need counterplay, and there is already enough to think about, so systems need to be easy to understand or worth it.

lastly, why is there no operation fortitude? being able to spawn fake fleets to misdirect seems like a cool dynamic of play.

 

[brantodb01]

take a page of of HoI4s book and focus on intel.
Intel should be the primary benefit for engaging in espionage.
A player should feel like they need to get intel on other civs and since they already have a spy network they engage in espionage actions on the side

 

[Tim_Ward]

Espionage Issues:

1) No counterplay, or even any interactions at all on the defensive side of things. There's no way to counter another empire's infiltration of your empire, there's not even a way to tell who has a spy network in your empire, or what level it's at, etc.
2) Operations have weak effects - self explanatory, everyone's been over this a dozen times.
3) Operations mostly have RNG effects, and this is bad. "But it's more exciting if the player doesn't know-" no, stop it. Go straight to game dev gaol. To the limited extent people even use operations, it's probably because it's part of some strategy, they don't want to keep having to do the same operation over and over again to get the effect they want. Even if operations had powerful effects this would most likely still stop people using them. Also, it's silly. The US/Israel didn't launch the stuxnet operation against Iran by infecting computers at random and then hoping one of them was connected to the nuclear program. Or just make a virus then release onto a random computer in a random country then hope the target was iran and also the computer was connected to the iranian nuclear program, and also that virus destroyed centrifuges and didn't, e.g. download 3000 physics or whatever. If there are operations which have a particular target (like acquire asset, spark diplomatic incident, smear campaign etc) and multiple possible effects, the player should always been able to select what that target will be and what the effect will be.
4) Doesn't interact with the political mechanics at all. I understand the political mechanics are quite limited as of right now, but it would be fun if we could use espionage to manipulate the internal politics of other empires - major historical precedent there.
5) There are IMHO too few operations.

Good things about espionage:

1) Starting out not knowing anything about empires then finding out about them through intel is a genuinely cool interaction which should be expanded upon, but the player should be able to target the process a bit more (see above point about operations)
2) At some point, the feature was added where, at a certain intel level you get advanced warning if an AI empire is about to attack you. This is another fantastic idea (and AFAIK, completely unique in 4x games) and is probably more useful than all of the operations combined. This should also be expended, for example, perhaps at higher intel levels we could know if an AI is planning war against another empire.

Suggestions:

1) In expanding operations and make them more impactful, don't make espionage just about blowing random things up. This has been done in other 4x games and it's rarely fun to be on the receiving end.
2) Make an espionage screen where I can go on it and look at all my spy networks in one place rather than having to click around all the various diplomacy screens
3) Make a dossier type page where it shows you all the information you have acquired about a given empire through your spying. Fleet power, number of works, pop breakdown, leaders etc. Also any information acquired about AI intentions should be here.

 

[Idle America]

Just gonna leave this here...