HOI4 Dev Diary - Operatives and Missions

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Hi everyone, today it's time to continue talking about espionage. We will be covering the stars and main resource - the Operatives.

Operatives are a new character type just like Admirals and Generals. But instead of leading armies of fleets they are used for 3 things. Defence of the homeland against foreign operatives, Missions and Operations (topic of its own diary).

Recruitment
Operatives are recruited from you Agency. The max amount you can have is dependent on the number of agency upgrades you have as well as if you are spy master or not. A spy master get access to a lot more operatives, depending on the size of their faction. A non spy master can still do things, but is a lot more limited due to this.

When recruiting you get to pick from 3 recruits (upgrades can increase this)

Operatives start as recruits but can become full agents by gaining experience which will improve their abilities. There are various traits that can be gained when active as well as being possible from the start. Some are acquired from upgrades such as commando training in the agency. Sadly I didn't have art ready for traits, but here are a few examples we have:
Tough - will give up less intel if captured
Natural Orator - increased ability when it comes to diplomatic missions and creating collaboration regimes
Seducer - bonuses to missions and operations that require a soft touch (or whatever the enemy may be into)
Commando - bonuses to operations that require combat or stealthy infiltration
Double Agent - a turned enemy agent will have bonuses to operate in their country of origin
Master Interrogator - Increases the capture chance of enemy operatives when working on counter intelligence.
As well as a bunch of other....

Operatives also have (at least one) nationality and will have a bonus to operating in their homeland. The Agency has some upgrades like Localized Training Centers that increases the chance of picking up agents that can pass as locals in foreign (including you enemies) nationalities. This is a mechanic that will be benefiting the Allies as operatives from German occupied areas can be recruited and sent back on missions where they will blend in easily.

Missions
Operatives can perform various missions on the map. The strength and impact of a mission generally depends on the size and strength of a network (more on those below).

Counter intelligence - The default mission of an agent not doing anything else is to run Counter Intelligence in their home nation. This boosts the Counter Intelligence value for your nation and helps counter enemy spies.

Build Network - The Operative will build a network of contacts in an area. Several operatives can help out either to expand the reach of the network or to build it faster. Networks have various passive effects:

• Reduction of naval invasion penalty
• Countering enemy dig in or planning bonus
• Faster division planning when entering a network (based on the first enemy state on the path)
• Improve intel advantage in combat locally (25%) (based on the intel ledger’s intel rework)
• Gives static intel on the nation based on nation level strength. You will only get naval intel if the network encompasses ports, rest are even.

Networks target cities (VPs of particular size) and spread over an area. They can link up multiple operative's networks into larger ones. Here is an example of the British agents cooperating vs a single operative

Here you can also notice "Sparrow" as the selected operative. Operatives have codenames of course (I had a lot of fun picking out swedish codenames)...

Quiet Network - If you do not plan to make use a network right away you can place it in quiet mode. It will no longer give effects, but risk that any of your operatives are caught is now very tiny while still maintaining it. Perfect if you have prepared a large network for a future invasion, for example.

Boost Ideology - This replaces the old diplo action as now your operatives will be able to affect the ideology of a target nation

Propaganda - This mission is used to hurt a target nation stability and war support

Root Out Resistance - Helps fight resistance

Control Trade - Influence trade opinion by boosting yours and reducing enemies to give you a bigger piece of the the resources up for trade. If multiple nations are involved they cancel each other out, but it still limit 3rd parties.

Diplomatic Pressure - Makes AI to want to accept only your faction, requires human players to have a higher tension/opinion level for joining other factions. If multiple nation’s Operatives are involved they cancel each other out, but it still limit 3rd parties. This can be pretty neat if you are competing with AI nations over where you want someone to join, as well as in multiplayer.

Defense
Operatives on counter-intelligence as mentioned above will help defend your nation together with the agencies base counter-intel value.

This value affects how easily enemy agents can be discovered and stopped as well as how difficult it is to perform operations in your nation (see future diary). In this example there is a base value of 2 and the operatives add 3 together for a total of 5.

When an operative is discovered several things can happen:
Forced Underground or Injured - The operative had to abandon their work and lay low to avoid being captured. Any mission including networks will be on hold during this and networks will start to decay if no other agent is there
Captured - An operative captured by the enemy will be leaking intelligence to them and will eventually be killed (unless rescued). Operatives assigned suicide pills can also minimize the intel leaks here. Operatives who are caught also have a direct impact on their network as people working with them are assumed to have been captured along with them.

Killed - In rare cases operatives may be killed in action leaving one of your slots empty where you will need to recruit a replacement.

The defensive game is mostly a passive affair for the defender as we were cautious of creating required micro, and by having a solid defense and capturing enemy operatives you might actually benefit a bit from the intel gathered on your enemies.

Thats it for this week. See you again next week!

Spoiler

Rejected Titles: CLASSIFIED

 

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I think spy-master mechanic is a bad choise. Change my mind.
(I hate when game gets designed with multiplayer in mind)

well in single player you can just be spymaster?

 

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Now that influencing ideology in a country is no longer just a passive Political Power cost, but requires an operator, will it be stronger then?

We havent balanced stuff at all yet, but probably yeah in the case of you not running into a lot of defense

I suspect that's going to be an Operation where you'll be able to funnel some infantry equipment to them.

yup. Missions are "free" in that they only cost the Operatives time while operations are the stuff that costs.

This is some crazy stuff. I like the depth of choice. I just hope it doesnt become too focused on the operatives and instead there are mode broad sweeping intelligence things you can do like codebreaking and such. Also, wasn't intelligence going to tie into recon at some point?

We will cover intelligence and codebreaking later on

 

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If your agent is captured, exaclty WHAT information is he leaking to the enemy?

varying kinds. atm I think its primarily military and civilian intel, but that might change when we balance.

 

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How is an operative rescued? Is it through a mission by other operatives?
Would be cool as a diplomatic option to swap captured operatives.

How is the rescue missions done? do you need the enemies to surrender or do you rescue them randomly when taking land from opponent? or is it a mission you send operators to do?

Its an operation. a thing we havent really talked about yet. Will be in a future diary.

This sounds like it could be incredibly powerful in MP if multiple people gang on germany for example. It will cripple production massively.

We have tried to build the system with this in mind as games where you can stack spies are seldom fun
- non-spy masters are likely going to sit on 2 spies if they try to do this, and you will need both to make a dent as Propaganda requires a big network to have good effect and the other spy is doing the actual propaganda work. Getting 2 spies will require industrial investment too so its not free.
- the mission itself is stacking penalized if multiple nations do it
- defense is not stacking penalized and is as effective no matter how many attackers there is. So in this case germany would be capturing and gaining intel from spies who put a lot of effort into something that wouldn't be a lot stronger than a single big nations effort.

I think it can be good in combination with other strategies but I think its a situation that resource wise very much benefits the defender side (e.g Germany)

So do ideologies get boosts/nerfs to their Espionage abilities? How is fascist-monarchist incompetence at Intel gathering/democratic adeptness at infiltration/communist proliferation of sympathizers going to be simulated?

The plan is to use ai strategy plans to have nations focus on different stuff

perhaps this is talked about earlier, operatives really really should have a (partially or completely) invisible loyalty value that is random for each unit. This will make you guess weather they double crossing you or not. Perhaps some traits like "xenophobic", or "super nationalistic", or just "loyal" would help us to know they are less likely to double cross but it could always be an option. Also make getting caught(before we know it) a loyalty check to see if they turn coat right away and so it never looks like they switched. Just a thought.

Thats pushing it into ck territory and HOI has always been a game where you can trust and rely on stuff you see so imo it wouldnt really fit into hoi4.

I don't really feel like that's a good excuse, I think its because they want the Soviet survival dependent on the Allied landings, which I don't agree with.
Let me remind that by the time the Allies landed in Europe, the USSR had already neutered Germany's offensive capabilities and pushed them back significantly.
Imo the Soviets should have at least a fair chance of survival and to form a stalemate without the allied landings.

Yes we want the soviets to depend on allied help to survive. Without that there is no reason for the allies to do anything in the game which doesnt make for a good game. And it is a game, not just a railroaded simulation. From a historical perspective I think the soviets would have been able to handle things, but it would have taken a lot longer and been a lot bloodier.

Straight pipes are for reserved for code breakers. Spies smoke filterless cigarettes.

the pipes might be guns tho

 

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@podcat still no answer to how voluntary boosting will work? That's extremely important. Is it only possible with agents now, who could get killed or captured by your friends? How is positive voluntary boosting going to work? There are two different types...not just offensive involuntary boosting.

yeah we havent got a solution but we have been discussing it. Maybe just a game setting for it because its not really intended gameplay

If I don't care at all about the Spies side of the game (missions, operatives, etc) will there be a way to let the AI handle it, maybe setting some guidelines on where it should focus the efforts?

Thanks,

You can just put a little into defense and leave it to an ally to be spymaster