Espionage & Sabotage(?) in Star Trek: Infinite

[PDX-Ruk]

Espionage & Sabotage(?) is a tricky part in a 4X game. Nemisis (DLC Stellaris) has done it so badly, that I quit playing Stellaris after 1800+ hours spent in the game. In my personal opinion, the whole mechanic have had zero impact in any way, shape or form during a war or peacetime.

"......and all it cost was the life of one Romulan senator, one criminal, and the self-respect of one Starfleet officer. I don't know about you, but I'd call that a bargain."


I loved it back then in BotF, as the Romulan Star Empire, you could easily play tall and bring chaos to all the major powers just by focusing your core worlds on producing intel. There was even the possibility to set your goals focused on diplomacy, economics, science or military, or even all at once.

I'm personally more interested in a state of "cold war" and play my mindgames with the major powers rather than just go out there and play the "blobbing game". Some schemes against minor powers for example, preventing them from joining the United Federations of Planets.


Can you tell us a little bit more about your plans in that regard, @PDX-Ruk ? Thank you sir

Ok, so we won't have a Dev Log on this topic (not enough Fridays left) so let me give you some high level insights on this.

Spycraft is about gaining benefits for you, and not so much about negatives for the others. For other players they are a nuisance for the people you spy on, not devastating. The Spies are in ships, so you have to select the planet they go to, and what operation you want them to perform. There are events and situations tied to this, so can grant better or worse outcomes based on how that works. Missions include the normal range of steel resources, get intel, cause problems etc.

If I had to give an analogy of what it feels close to, it would be Civs Spy System. The Spy is trained, have levels and are sent to cities to do operations, operations work depending on levels of spy, difficulty of mission and countermeasures put in place by the one you are spying on.

 

[PDX-Ruk]

Hmm...

So basically, something the majority of players can pretty much ignore if they don't fancy dealing with it? To be honest, I barely remember the mechanic in Civ 6, it has been a long time.

I thought spycraft would be a bigger focus for Romulans and Cardassians given their history? Is there many differences between those two and say, the Fed/Klingons for spying?

You get benefits if you want to use it, but as the Federation, I tend to set my spies to either find intel, or counterspy. I don't want to create a diplomatic incident. Cardassians and Romulans have more spies, but there I mostly use it for stealing resources. It provides a steady supply of income in whatever field I put them on.