Feedback Requested: Espionage

[Cherubyn]

Make it matter.

Is it annoying if your starbase explodes or a rebellion rises up? Yeah. But if espionage cant do that then it doesnt matter.

Players should be able to use AI to soften up targets or break alliances. That should be based on timing.

No rebellion will take a player out but a well timed one might swing a war.

Also: While spy networks are nice they are im its current form quite annoying to deal with. Others here suggested automation but I dont think thats entirely it. I think I would prefer that spies necome more important. The wild stuff would pretty much be locked behind very high level leaders so losing one would be punishing but by extentsion also a form of counterplay.

A empire focused on espionage would be able to train a quite a few and so a couple of spymastrmers will rise the ranks but less inclined empires would pretty much be unable to sustain such operations if at all.

In that way counter espionage would be a useful thing. Your opponent doesnt just get a new diplo dude. Instead he has to train up a new one to be able to do highly impactful ops.

One last thing I remembered. I once played a RTS called R.U.S.E which was heavily focused on deception. That I think is currently almost entirely missing. You can camoflage a fleet but you should also be able to use fake fleets, that fly around, weaken, disable opponents sensors, inflate/refuduce the assesment of relative military/economic/scientific power. Crazier stuff would include fake colonies or stuff like that.

Yeah these are my thoughts.

 

[Lorenerd11]

- 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.

Yeah, the techs you can get from ship debris should definitely be among the techs you can steal, and dark matter techs should definitely be among those.

 

[Letharion]

Yeah, the techs you can get from ship debris should definitely be among the techs you can steal, and dark matter techs should definitely be among those.

Not only those but all event-related techs you have the necessary (!) prerequisites. The higher the requirements were to discover them in the first place, the higher the difficulty of stealing them must naturally be.

 

[V-Metamorph]

Espionnage is terribad.
Because it is considered DLC content it was always doomed to a gruesome and irrelevant place.
Personnaly I love stellaris Nexus take on espionnage. They have a lot of thematic/on point espionnage actions and you have counter espionnage actions.

 

[RaptorCommander]

Please be inspired by the one from Dune Spice Wars.

There should be a number of agents that can be assigned to various things for benefits. So it is about opportunity cost.

Given the potential number of empires these assignments should be grouped up not empire specific. For example you can assign agents to 'allies' 'rivals' 'neturals' or galatic council members.

Intel should be able to be spent on specific actions that have temporary effects. With only so many able to be qued at any time.

There needs to be a few galactic wide categories to place agents too. Which provide resources in return. For example influence or rare materials.

An intell focused empire should be able to 'win' this will be harder in the stellaris environment to settle on. But is perhaps the least important. Perhaps the L-gates est can only be opened through agents and intell expenditure.

 

[Calvax]

Any rework of espionage should come alongside a rework of stealth and stealth detection. Even if you wanted to stealth for whatever reason, you mostly can't after a certain point in the game, stealth ability is far outpaced by stealth detection. Even empires that are far far weaker than me shut all stealth vessels down immediately.

Agreed with this. Stealth is something you can basically ignore and just use for science ships, though it would be nice if they didn't constantly fly into fallen empire territory when we know they can be detected there.

I feel the problem is that detection isn't diminished by range. You can easily set up one maxed detection station and have it cover swathes of your empire, or even all of it if you're playing tall. If detection decreased over a range there would be more strategy in placing detection. Doubly so if it wasn't the number of modules that determined detection strength.

 

[grommile]

If detection decreased over a range there would be more strategy in placing detection.

The robustness of that statement depends very heavily on the hyperlane density you're playing at

 

[Calvax]

The robustness of that statement depends very heavily on the hyperlane density you're playing at

For things like hyperlane density I play default which AIUI is what the devs balance and design around.

 

[Drullo321]

While I don't exactly how to improve the espionage system itself, here are the three simple reasons I don't use it (singleplayer only, no experience in MP):

- The influence for espionage is simple better invested elsewhere
- The usecase and effect of the offered missions is very minimal compared
- In comparison to the limited effect, the actual effort (both real time maintenance and ingame time to set everything up) is too high and not worth my time

And to add a little bit of insult to injury, i really dislike getting the corresponding council traits randomly at gamestart or levelup because they are basically a dead skill point.

Whatever new espionage system replaces the current one, please focus on following things

- Let it work more passively in the background that it won't interfere too much with everything else too much (information overload)
- Reduce whatever costs come with it, mainly influence.
- If players don't want to interact with espionage for whatever reasons, don't let initial leaders get a dead trait.

PS.: I think espionage as a system is hard to invent and balance at all, not only in Stellaris but in other games too. Either it is bad/useless/convoluted to be used (like in Endless Space 2) or too powerful in the hands of players (like in Civilization 4) that it is sometimes even banned in multiplayer.

 

[Toby-wan_Strife]

I'm a bit late, but I believe that espionage at the moment is very toothless. It hardly has any impact on the gameplay and can be ignored throughout the game. There are a few major espionage operations like consuming your enemy's star or lighting a crisis beacon, but those usually only occur very late in the game and require you to jump through a lot of hoops in order to actually do.

What I'd like to see is for espionage operations be more ethics driven. everyone should have the option to perform operations like assassinating crucial leaders, spreading misinformation, and arming crime lords on a planet to greatly increase crime, but I'd like to see espionage divided largely between authoritarians and egalitarians.

Egalitarians would get the option to spark a rebellion that would be nearly impossible to control. This would always target the planet(s) with the lowest stability, radicalize pops towards egalitarianism, and either allow you to annex the territory directly if said planet(s) directly border you, or create an ally empire and spark a war with the other empire even if you have a truce with them.

Authoritarians would have a similar operation, but slightly different. They would have the option to rig the election within oligarchic or democratic empires with their own leader and institute reforms that would either convert that empire into an ideological ally/puppet, or spark a civil war. This would involve one of your own leaders, but a special leader like Kai Sha works best. She would then approach the other empire as a special governor with powerful effects, for a price of course. That price is corruption and her being unable to leave the planet she is placed on. Planets under her control will find pops enslaved (which will greatly anger egalitarian and xenophilic factions), reduced consumer good upkeep, and lower happiness. Eventually when the election rolls around, instead of it being a normal election, it will be an event where the other empire will either choose one of their own leaders and spark a situation leading to either an outright civil war or the death of Kai Sha. If they choose the safer option, they will reform into being fanatic authoritarian and will have a +1000 opinion modifier with the empire that did the espionage operation.

 

[Ikael]

Since the weak points of the current espionage system have already been covered to death (weakness, irrelevance, annoying micro, not very roleplay friendly, etc), I am going to focus on how it might be improved.

I think there are 3 possible paths for it:

Option 1) Powerful operations against NPC factions

The path of least resistance: you don't need to change anything too substantial, you can live your shadow puppeteer fantasy, and you don't get to get annoyed by being the target of those operations since regular empires are exempt from them. Win-win, I say. Go hack the contingency, steal techs from fallen empires, infiltrate caravaneers, clone guardians, and massively profit from pre-FTL meddling (unlike the sad, sad rewards that said activity currently gives). If it gets too powerful, you can always gate those operations behind the Subterfuge finisher and call it a day.

Option 2) Internal politics, loyalty, and leader posts unlocking operations for your enemies

This is a way of moving away from the "spy blew up your ship" style of espionage, as well as avoiding a feeling of unfairness when getting targeted by enemy spies. Long story short, espionage would be more about exploiting your enemy's mistakes, rather than creating crises out of thin air (just as it happens in real life). Internal policies, leader council appointments, leader's loyalties, and angry factions would unlock operations for your rivals to perform (and vice versa). Legal AI would come with a risk of being the target of a robot uprising operation, planets with the "invasion shock" modifier would be susceptible to foreign-funded rebellions, low council legitimacy would get your empire open for coups, an angry xenophobic faction might offer to kill Xeno leaders, and so forth. It would be a much more "political" type of espionage, with clear counterplay (plus it would make internal politics much more of a calculated risk and less of a no-brainer "set and forget" policy).

Option 3) Espionage on the galaxy map via spyships

As other posters have suggested, creating "diplomatic" ships that could double as spy vessels could open the way for an exciting type of powerful (albeit local) operations. It could also be quite a good chance for retiring envoys altogether and giving officials a "field role" as ambassadors when parking their diplomatic ships into foreign embassies while moonlighting as spies when activating their cloaking fields.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Any rework of espionage should come alongside a rework of stealth and stealth detection. Even if you wanted to stealth for whatever reason, you mostly can't after a certain point in the game, stealth ability is far outpaced by stealth detection. Even empires that are far far weaker than me shut all stealth vessels down immediately.

Encryption/Codebreaking could factor into Cloaking/Detection?

 

[Taritu]

Honestly, the current system is so toothless that I find it only useful for getting pre-alerts when empires are going to declare war on me, and that only for a portion of the game. (Usually, later, I'm so powerful that no one will declare war.)

 

[yikerman]

IMO the two major issues on Espionage are:

- No meaningful outcome
- No counterplay

 

[exi123]

- Remove the envoy to start espionage (or set it free after the operation has left the build phase;
- Add a real cost to it (energy for example), scaling with the size of empires. Large empires with many pops should be easy to spy on;
- Spying operations should be easy accessable via empire diplomatic screen, like "Gather Intel on your neighbours for 25 EC per month" for example;
- They should be set and forget, with some events here and there.
- A dashboard of all operations I am currently financing...

 

[jayparadoritox]

I just got my third council member who has Shadow Broker and Spycraft traits, which brings me to a 90% reduction in operation costs. I expected it to be 100%, but turns out its hard-capped at 90% so there's always some influence cost.

There are a lot of unowned systems at the rear-end of my territory that I need to save influence for, so I'm going to claim those before I do any operations. But the point is, even with 90% free operations, I'm still not choosing espionage yet, because those little monthly yields from building more mining/research stations will result in a greater impact than operations can.

So if there's always a better choice than espionage when you have one, that means espionage is an endgame-only feature for when you've literally done everything else. But the closer you are to the endgame, the more likely you are to just get a piddly 1000 research points from its most powerful operation!

 

[SaberVS7]

I don't really have much to add, but my opinion (if it hasn't been said yet) is that Espionage should be broken-off from "Envoys", and instead be done by an "Agent" Leader-type that functions like other Leader Characters.

And a "Spymaster" Council Role (beyond just the Minister of State) exclusively for Agent characters if that's not already in the pool.

EDIT: I see both of these were mentioned earlier in the thread, so I guess this is my +1

 

[Minervo]

For me, the biggest flaw in espionage is the micromanagement. For example, if you want to gain favor from another empire through diplomatic action you just need to put one envoy increasing relation and then you will have a chance to gain a favor per month. On the other hand, to gain favor through espionage you need to constantly click operations to gain ONE favor and then wait for cooldown (or to have enough infiltration level) . Now, imagine that with 11 envoys/spies, each in one empire.

To resolve this, i propose that you only need to click the operation once and then you will have to pay an upkeep. For example, in the current system to steal 1 favor you need x infiltration and y energy and z influence. In a reworked espionage, the operation would cost an initial cost and then an upkeep of x energy/ z influence / y infiltration por month and then, your spy would have a change to gain favor each month, much like the diplomatic (personally, i think the chance to gain 1 favor should be higher than the diplomatic one). All espionages could be like this: imagine a new operation that harms the sublight speed/weapon strengh of military ships that will gain more power the more time is active (and it will increase in upkeep cost), so, for example, it would start at 20 energy / 0,1 influence / 1 infiltration upkeep, reducing enemy weapon strengh in 5% to 200 energy/ 1 influence / 10 infiltration upkeep at 25 reduced weapon strengh.


A system that i really like in the current espionage is the intel, however, i would love to have a way to deceit enemy empires to think that i am weaker/stronger than i really am. Imagine that i am stronger than an enemy empire, however, this empire has a defensive alliance with another empire and i couldn't win against the two together. It would be cool to have an operation that makes the enemy empire think that i am weaker than i really am and then this empire attack me and i am at war in a 1vs1. On the other hand, imagine i am neighbor to a stronger empire, an operation that makes the other empire think that i am stronger than i really am could also be nice.


The espionage tradition could have nodes that reduces operation upkeep and could have a finished bonus that allow to have two operation active in the same empire at the same time.

 

[Calvax]

For me, the biggest flaw in espionage is the micromanagement. For example, if you want to gain favor from another empire through diplomatic action you just need to put one envoy increasing relation and then you will have a chance to gain a favor per month. On the other hand, to gain favor through espionage you need to constantly click operations to gain ONE favor and then wait for cooldown (or to have enough infiltration level) . Now, imagine that with 11 envoys/spies, each in one empire.

To resolve this, i propose that you only need to click the operation once and then you will have to pay an upkeep. For example, in the current system to steal 1 favor you need x infiltration and y energy and z influence. In a reworked espionage, the operation would cost an initial cost and then an upkeep of x energy/ z influence / y infiltration por month and then, your spy would have a change to gain favor each month, much like the diplomatic (personally, i think the chance to gain 1 favor should be higher than the diplomatic one). All espionages could be like this: imagine a new operation that harms the sublight speed/weapon strengh of military ships that will gain more power the more time is active (and it will increase in upkeep cost), so, for example, it would start at 20 energy / 0,1 influence / 1 infiltration upkeep, reducing enemy weapon strengh in 5% to 200 energy/ 1 influence / 10 infiltration upkeep at 25 reduced weapon strengh.


A system that i really like in the current espionage is the intel, however, i would love to have a way to deceit enemy empires to think that i am weaker/stronger than i really am. Imagine that i am stronger than an enemy empire, however, this empire has a defensive alliance with another empire and i couldn't win against the two together. It would be cool to have an operation that makes the enemy empire think that i am weaker than i really am and then this empire attack me and i am at war in a 1vs1. On the other hand, imagine i am neighbor to a stronger empire, an operation that makes the other empire think that i am stronger than i really am could also be nice.


The espionage tradition could have nodes that reduces operation upkeep and could have a finished bonus that allow to have two operation active in the same empire at the same time.

Agreed, I put something like that in my feedback form though thinking on it more I could have expressed it better. To reduce the micromanagement (a big problem in a game that has become increasingly bloated with notifications) I'd like to see espionage separated into "ongoing" and "prepared" operations. For things like gaining favours, damaging relations, stealing technologies etc these could all be ongoing. They'd essentially just automatically start again once complete, and IMO you should be able to do multiple at once with an increasing cost/risk.

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.

 

[Letharion]

Agreed, I put something like that in my feedback form though thinking on it more I could have expressed it better. To reduce the micromanagement (a big problem in a game that has become increasingly bloated with notifications) I'd like to see espionage separated into "ongoing" and "prepared" operations. For things like gaining favours, damaging relations, stealing technologies etc these could all be ongoing. They'd essentially just automatically start again once complete, and IMO you should be able to do multiple at once with an increasing cost/risk.

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.

In my opinion this has to be done to diplomacy as well as espionage: "Simple", ongoing tasks should be avaiable without an envoy at place, but maybe with an associated cost or perhaps an investment/preparation (Build an embassy [Holding], expand it, aquire an asset, lay the foundation for a spy network). "Substantial" operations (and perhaps diplomatic deals) should require a fulfledged leader (new spy-type or task for any of the three existing types like governor job) to carry it out. Maybe the simple tasks could be also done better (more effective or with a bonus) when a leader is assigned optionally. That would reduce the micromanagement for the day to day business and deepen the experience (reward and risk) where it matters - and only if the player wants to engage with it. Counterintelligence should be similiar, a "ongoing" task profiting from the council or the (sector) governor, but optionally also some especially assigned to it, maybe with its own "countermeasures" at home.