I am suggesting this to add another layer to the game. This could lead to people supporting others secretly with a means to uncover the treachery leading to future conflict in the game and keeping the game interesting.

Secret aid

Only 2 slots could be used for secret aid.
If secret aid is sent a max of 3 mill per slot with 15% is lost in the transaction.


Uncovering Secret Aid

Secret aid can be uncovered but it is very costly and extremely difficult.
A minimum of 500 spies is required.
The monetary cost is 15 mill + (20 x enemy ns)
Instead of the normal spy chance modifiers success and failure would be flat rates.

If you are spying on a receiving nation aid.
2% chance of uncovering aid received and who it was sent by.
2% chance of uncovering aid was received but a random nation will be identified as the sender (Reasoning for this is to insure people use other efforts to ensure that their spies have not obtained bad info.)
96% chance for complete failure you lose half your spies and you are revealed.

If you are spying on a sending nation
25% chance of uncovering the transaction
75% chance of failure you are revealed and you lose half your spies


Public Aid

The amount of aid sent through a public transaction would be 5 mill the max amount of tech would remain 50. This would allow young nations to obtain more for their tech and would allow them to grow more quickly and close the gap with older nations more.



I know the cost for uncovering the secret aid is high with a very low success rate. I am suggesting this as a money sink and also to make it difficult to uncover. The false positives are there to add another level of suspense to the game. Even spies irl sometimes are given false info to uncover them or they just make mistakes.

Im interested to see what the community thinks of this idea. Approved for discussion.

Now the IDEA, isn't necessarily a bad one. Secret aid is a possibility and would be interesting. It has been discussed before. However, having only a 2 percent chance of success and even worse a 2 percent chance of getting FALSE INFORMATION! Also having to pay 15 million + is way, way to much to pay. And of course having a 96% chance of losing half your spies. Even if you have only the minimum, you would be losing 25 million plus the 15 million you paid to do the spying in the first place. This is absolutly rediculous. At that cost nobody would EVER do it, at least not at the costs and odds that you are presenting here.

Yeah, numbers are a too extreme.

As has been discussed many, many times before, make it work on the normal spy odds, but the odds are based on the senders spies/tech/land... You wouldn't get your spy odds until you selected 'spy secret aid'... at that point it would give you the approx spy odds and the cost, and you could choose to go ahead with the spy op.

This way the sender can ensure they have high enough spy defence to risk sending it if they desire.

Cost of the spy op should be maybe 1-2million + 15 x Senders NS (Round this value to the nearest 100,000 so ppl can't reverse engineer the senders NS).

As for increasing the aid cap itself, only via fix of the FAC wonder, for which I think Syzygy has had some good ideas in the past.

Aye, I think Syzygy is the only one thus far that has actually made not only a revamp for aid, but for the FAC as well. Now if only we could actually get Kevin onto this like we all are (over 20 freakn topics on aid change man!!!). 3 million is just to low. Come on!

Secret aid is still as good an idea as it was last time. However, your numbers are highly biased imo. I believe what was agreed on last time was that a 100% tax is levied (so sending you $3m costs me $6m). I also see no particular reason to modify the spy odds, although I agree that it should be an expensive op if it is permitted at all, otherwise the feature is useless.

(Actually the whole spy system needs an extra feature: difficulty of operation, which scales the defender's odds. This should then be a 'hard op' along with destroying nukes.)

Secret aid is a good idea for making the game more interesting. It would allow for effective guerilla wars and interesting political transactions.

I see no need, however, to penalize secret aid by adding costs or reducing slots. It would make the system a forgotten tool.

Secret aid defnately should cost more... otherwise everyone would just send aid secretly... At the current aid limits it is not going to bankrupt nations to cost them $6mill to send $3mill...

If aid could be secret for a % fee, I would send almost all aid as such. Sledding a nation or 10? Secretize it to make it harder for the rogue thieves to mess it up.

The bad part? Never knowing if your people have free slots. Perhaps if you do add secret aid, make an aid slot counter like your trades have, so you can see how many slots they've used.

I full support the idea of secret aid however in some fashion.

We could have it be so that the recipient of aid still had a notification, but the sender was secret.

http://www.cybernations.net/game_update_log.asp

So the mechanism is already in place? Great!

The thing is, what will it appear as? Secret aid? If two nations have secret aid appearing, a smart person can add two and two.

Yeah I believe that is why it was removed...

From memory it appeard on the aid screen of both sender and reciever but just had '??????' in place of each line of details.

So unless there were hundreds of secret aid packages world wide, it'd be possible to track them down.

I guess this is why admin took it back out, to think more about how to display it/whether to display it, he's just never come to an all round good idea on it I guess.

----

Long story short, the FAC should give a 7th aid slot that can only be used for secret aid, costs twice as much to send, and does not appear on either the sender or recievers aid slot screen in any way.

7th? But, yes, I think having an extra slot reserved for secret aid would be a good way to make it work.

Well most people wouldn't go near a FAC unless they had both a FM and a DRA, which means they already have 6... so a 7th slot that can only be used for secret aid and has no bearing on the other 6...

Secret aid wouldn't be a useful idea if it required a number of improvements and wonders to get it. I would stick with the single extra slot.

secret aid begs for other things to be secret in the game. Personally, I think all aid should be secret by default and that you would have to use spy operations to reveal who is getting aid. I also think that you should not be able to tell if a nation has open aid slots or not, they just can't accept it (like the way you get can get more than 5 trade offers at once, you just can't accept). This would be necessary to prevent people offering aid to see if someone had free slots or whatever. It would require some coordination on tech deals, but that's a small price to pay.

I think the most important use of secret aid would be the allowance of effective rebel groups and partisans to spring up. True guerrilla wars and fringe movements can't succeed if there are no different tactics for them to use.

I agree with this, but that might be more trouble to implement now than its worth.

For the Secret aid question, perhaps make that aid hidden on the senders side, similar to the way the CIA wonder is hidden from view from all but the owner.

The receiver should have something like "Secret Aid" and "???" or something in the details, but the senders screen, or at least that particular aid slot.

May not be a popular idea: require both sender and receiver to be on the same (color) team to send or receive secret aid for lower secret aid fees.

Secret tech transaction costs $1,000,000. Money requires 50% increase in funds to send. Soldiers have no extra fee. You wouldn't calculate yourself the amount needed to send the aid secretly - it would do it when you go to confirm aid offer. You check a tick box on the Offer Foreign Aid screen declaring you want it to be sent in secret. There would be a disclaimer that says secret aid has additional fees, and when you go to click confirm aid offer, it adds up in total the cost.

Sending secret aid to off-team members would be twice as much: $2,000,000 for any amount of tech, 100% increase in money.

Federal Aid Commission wonder reduces fee 50% for both team & non-team secret aid transactions by the sender. Does not require receiver to have the FAC, however if both have the FAC, the amount of money to be send may be increased as well.

Same team: 3M requires 1.5M additional. Tech requires 1M additional. (4.5M requires 1.125M additional, tech requires 0.5M additional with FAC).
Off team: 3M requires 3M additional. Tech requires 2M additional. (4.5M requires 2.25M additional, tech requires 1M additional with FAC).

Secret aid transaction do not show up on public or alliance aid screens. Receiver sees a ????? on their private aid transaction screen. Sender sees obviously both his/her name and the name of who they sent the aid to. A new spy operation to reveal the sender is added, when successful (only someone else can spy on the person who received secret aid, they can not spy on themselves) the aid transaction details are revealed and appear on the public/alliance aid screens.

Perhaps require #(1-5) Intelligence Agency improvements to be able to send secret aid. Perhaps 3.

screw extra payment for secret aid. Just make it all secret.

i still think this is a great idea.

Seriously. Then just have it as a medium difficulty spy op to uncover it. Edit: FAC giving a 7th aid slot is also something I would like... with DRA being a requirement of course - along with another wonder such as Great University or stock market. Reason being, that much aid requiring high educational standards/a healthy stock market.

I like this idea, just like in real life you can't tell which country is aiding another. I also think secret aid shouldn't cost extra to send.

Im confused.... why would you want secret aid? I can see a few small times it would be interesting... but I cant see a big impact, unless someone with lots of money wanted to fund Vox......

That's exactly the idea. It would allow supporters of a group to move ahead and actually do something to support a cause they believe in. Or maybe one guy has a friend that's getting a beat-down in a war, and you want to send them some aid, but don't want to get involved. Secret aid, baby!

There's still a chance that you could get caught through spy operations, however. That's why I like the extra charge for sending secret aid. I also like that the odds are so difficult for the spy ops.

Someone mentioned discounts for secret aiding within a team. That's a good idea, too.

Someone also suggested that the secret aid would only show up on the aid screen of the recipient and only the sender could see it on their foreign aid screen. This would work good, but it needs to be able to be uncovered by spying on both the sender and recipient.

I liked the idea of secret aid only being able to be discovered if you spy on the sender. That is one of the main reasons for the such low success rates on spying on the receiver and the reason for the spy on sender stats are more reasonable. I have to actually agree about the cost being to high after thinking about it.

Making the aid system operate like the currently hidden/secret trading system could offer some ideas.

A simple spy maneuver reveals currently hidden trade partners that are not marked as secret trades. Nations with secret trading partners forfeit the +1 happiness bonus. Make all aid hidden, and perhaps only 1 or 2 million can be sent secretly. All regular aid transactions would be hidden by default but could be revealed with a simple "gather intelligence" spy operation.

This also could prove interesting to the nation who is considering sending secret aid:

Do I trust that someone will not "gather intelligence" on my nation and aid some forbidden nations the full 3 million, or do I play it real safe and only aid 1 or 2million that cannot be discovered in a spy op?

I don't really see any opposition to this idea...

I think this should continue to be discussed. In the real world large developed nations (would be alliances in this game) often aid small factions which are in opposition to their enemies (such as FAN or Vox, for example). This is kind of the basis of proxy wars. Large factions want to do damage to their enemies, but cannot risk the PR damage openly supporting these wars would do. Secret aid would allow that to happen, and would add an entirely new dimension to the game. Seeing as how things are somewhat boring right now, this has the potential to make things a little more interesting, and fun.

Last time secret aid was implemented it failed because there was absolutely no counter to such a major development. This time around drawbacks are being suggested, such as increased cost for less payout, and a counter is being implemented.

Of course chances are you wouldn't know some nations are being secretly aided until you see their increased ability to fight, and you'd have to make guesses on which alliances to conduct intelligence on. To see if they are aiding that is. Adds some work to it, which is good. Another dimension to the game, which requires some thinking instead of just pressing buttons with little to no thought.

Really, this is quite a good suggestion I think.

I like the idea of secret aid, as well as the ability to uncover it via spying. It adds a new dimension to the game. I disagree, though, about making it so costly or unlikely to succeed. By definition, secret aid would not be sent by people who openly support the person they're aiding. This would make these spy operations very hit-or-miss and probably rarely used, since the spying nation would have some explaining to do should they be caught and no secret aid be found. Plus, again going back to this hit or miss nature, it would be impossible to do this on a massive scale, regardless of cost (such as scanning an entire alliance for secret aid. For that reason, I don't see the need for the high cost. I do agree with it requiring a lot of spies though, to prevent mass-scanning.

-Bama

I wish to reiterate my position of just making all aid hidden by default at no extra cost. I think that in order to uncover the aid that you have to either spy it from them (at great cost) or go to war with them and then spy it from them (at reduced cost).

Wouldn't this make keeping track of aid by alliances very difficult? tech scammers and donation scammers would be rife because no-one would ever know they had been sent money, or how much, except the person who's screen it is on, and ppl could dummy up screen shots of that.

I have to agree with that. It would be a headache, and alliances would be unable to check if any of their members are multing until it is too late.

Ill always love the idea of secret aid, and that spy op sounds good too.

I wonder why secret aid was taken out of the game shortly after it was implemented last year. Was it because it was hard to implement, or what?

I think this is one of those *must have* suggestions, and I don't think anyone who has the health of the game at heart would not support this suggestion.

http://www.cybernations.net/game_update_log.asp

The aid package showed up on the 'display foreign aid offers across the globe' with ????? in replace of the nation sender, the date may have also been replaced by ?????, but these appear in date order on that screen so even if the date wasn't displayed (can't remember) You'd know the rough time.

So, basically, too much info was given and it would be too easy to track down the sender, unless there were thousands and thousands of sercret aid offers across the globe... because it would be possible to just scan a few hudred possible suspects aid pages until you found one of them who had sent secret aid, and then you could possibly match up rough times and other details etc...

tl;dr
Secret aid should use an extra 'secret' aid slot only available with the FAC and not display on anyones aid screen.

I disagree with the issue of tech scamming etc. Just because aid would be secret by default doesn't mean there's no way of discovering it without spying... Simply add a box that when clicked, displays it publicly. This will allow all to view your 3mil to some random say... TDO tech seller.

Ok, so what if the techis then sent back secretly and the buyer claims it hasn't been? Add an option that allows aid to become public after the fact.

Edit: Oh, and the multi issue. That's a moderation aspect, alliances don't really play a part in it.

I'd like to add my voice to the chorus asking for the return of this very cool feature. It would open up a whole new side of the game and make for some very compelling political scenarios as well.

Agreeing with mister E_S here.

Bolded for emphasis. It shouldnt display anywhere that can be traced on an aid screen. My 2 cents on this are furthering the premise off the need for an FAC. If we tie it into a wonder that makes it a bit harder to obtain the ability. Im not completely sold on this, as new nations really wont have the ability to perform the operation. So for balance purposes, advantage to the older developed nations.

However if we could increase the cost of the FAC (I dont know too 100k? as an arbitrary number) then that might be a reasonable counterbalance. I think tying into a developed wonder is a good idea but then we are excluding a large portion of the players from having the ability to use the function. I support secret aid i think it has a lot of potential for enhancing the game but should secret aid be exclusive to those who can afford the wonder?

If the ability to discover it is linked to spy strength then I think we have a resonable solution. My questions arent really rhetorical I guess I would like someone to articulate a position for and against it being tied into a wonder and that wonder cost being increased.

I endorse the idea in general, but have some suggested changes.



This was something that already implemented in the game but quietly withdrawn for reasons I was never aware of soon after. With the inclusion of spies, the CIA wonder and the Federal Aid Commission wonder, since it is an idea who's time as come.



The limit on the number of slots that can be used for secret aid is a nice idea and I endorse it. A better limit however would be $1.5 mill cash/25 tech/1,000 soldiers.

One further point. It could be argued that sending secret aid at all should be a spy operation. I tend to agree. It could be given odds similar to those for to changing DEFCON level, with modifications. Clearly the receiving nation wouldn't be resisting, so some fixed default value would be used instead of the receiving nation's values in the odds computations (this also means the more spies/better tech/etc. you have, the better the odds for success, which is logical). Whether such aid would be restricted to only nations in the range of the sender or could be sent to all nations is an admin call, but I would strongly recommend making it so that clandestine aid could be sent to anyone (history is full of examples of big countries providing secret aid to small ones after all). If successful, then the aid goes through undetected. 'Successful but detected' means of course the aid goes through but is visible in the aid slots of the receiving/aiding nation. Utter failure would result in the aid being lost (plane crashes, money gets diverted by thieves, etc.), with the sending nation would be free to try again.

As a bonus to those nations that have Federal Aid Commission, the amount they can send clandestinely to ALL nations would be doubled (the standard $3 mill cash/50 tech/2,000 soldiers). This has the bonus of making the FAC wonder much more relevant in game.




While it should be possible to uncover Secret Aid (either by spying on the receiver or giver), but not using this formula--it is far too complex. I would instead use a formula based upon the existing odds for destroying weapons of mass destruction, etc.

There also exists the question of whether sanctions by Senators would cut off clandestine aid. Historically, sanctions have been less than effective at eliminating such aid (and resulted in many hours of international debate), but if it gives Admin less headaches in implementation, then by all means things could work differently here.


5 mill isn't a bad idea. I endorse this.

I don't know about that. Seems to me like it would eventually be found out then--the spy cost isn't a problem to an alliance of any size whatsoever. You might as well not have the feature at that point.

I would suggest that secret aid could be uncovered, EXCEPT for 1 slot that you gain by use of a FAC. It would give 1 extra slot that could ONLY be used for secret aid, and be untraceable. Limit that slot to 2 million cash only. No tech, no soldiers. Nothing but cash.

people, you're making this too complicated, just let all aid be secret and be done with it.

I still like this idea. Maybe only 2-3 secrete aid slots, one gained with a FAC. And the only way to discover it is to spy the sender. Shouldn't be much more complicated than that.

Secret aid would be a great feature

So I was spying on some random nation because I can, and I noticed a new line...

Secret Aid Sent To: None

Will we finally be seeing this feature in CN?

I'm afraid you found something you shouldn't have...