Destroy Defending Tanks (Max 50) = $200,000 + (1 x enemy nation strength)

I think that raising the caps would be a good idea. However, I don't think that the caps should be based upon nation strength, or at least, not nation strength alone. The strength of a nation has little to do with the potency of their spy networks. Look at Israel and Cuba in RL. Both are small, but both have very capable services. Perhaps what would be a better tack would be to have it be based upon the number of intel agency improvements as well as the CIA wonder first and foremost, and then be based upon your number of spies, and then be based upon nation strength.

Alternatively, you could just uncap the number of spies someone is allowed to have and then have spy attacks be based upon spy versus spy, as well as the improvement/wonder/gov't type modifiers.

But those alreayd play a part in whether the action will already suceed or fail.

IMO it just needs to be based on how many tanks you have.

Maybe just up to 10% of your tanks...

But those alreayd play a part in whether the action will already suceed or fail.

IMO it just needs to be based on how many tanks you have.

Maybe just up to 10% of your tanks...

I specifically devised the formula to make certain that you didn't get to the point you couldn't get rid of all of one's tanks. If you have a straight % you could get rid of them for infinity and never truly get rid of the last one.

Jack, I understand that the number of intel agencies and such already play into the overall calculations. What I am suggesting is that the calculations be revised to affect caps on things like tanks destroyed.

Also the idea of destroying a percentage of your tanks flies in the face of reason. If I have 15K tanks, and you manage to get off a spy attack. Why is it that you could destroy 1,500 of them when if I had only 1,000 tanks, you could only destroy 100? That doesn't work too well for me. I like sheer numbers, not percentages.

Count Rupert, while that may be more realistic, it would involve a lot more programing for little gain. CN isn't 100% realistic. If it were, well nukes wouldn't be flying all the time.

The limits do need to be changed. Even when the spy ops first came out, I never considered using the Cruise Missile or Tank ops.

Your formula doesn't seem bad, but I think it's lacking some logical basis for it.

The perfect answer would be to make tech scale with spies against cruise missiles & tanks.

Slightly radical, but how about each nation has a limit of 2 outgoing spy ops per nation per day, but once a spy is caught (whether successful or not) then that nation cannot be spied on again by that nation that day and the attacking nations odds of success are reduced by, say, 20% for total failure, 10% for success but caught, for the next 7 days.

You're all gonna hate this aren't you...

I think that we should be allowed to do 2 spy ops per nation that we are at war with per day. Outside of opponents upon which we have declared war, we should be limited to 2 total spy ops.

increasing the slots does not address the issue at hand. Current caps make some spy ops useless when they might not be so. Increasing the number of slots is a separate issue, one I support, but one that increasing their number would not address the issue at hand here.

Lots of spy ops are pointless though. For instance, changing a nation's desired religion? Who cares?

Destroying nukes is inherently more useful than destroying tanks, it doesn't matter how many you kill. You can only buy one nuke a day, they're time-limited; you can buy as many tanks as you want, up to the max, instantly. If you could keep on spying out nukes until you failed on one, you'd be doing it until either the target ran out or you failed on one.

+1 Halflinger. We cannot uncork spy ops for this reason alone. However, I think that the idea of letting nations be targeted by many spy attacks per day as useful, so long as each attempt lowered the chance of success, and there was no way to figure out how many spy attempts had been made against said nation.

You should have 2 base spy operations, then for every war declared (with the first as an exception) you should have 2 more.

So basically it would be:

Peace time: 2 total spy operations
1st war declared: 2 total spy operations
2nd war declared: 4 total spy operations
3rd war declared: 6 total spy operations
4th war declared: 8 total spy operations
5th war declared: 10 total spy operations
6th war declared: 12 total spy operations

However, this could lead to abuse by a nation declaring on three targets and using all of the spy operations on one single target. To combat this I suggest we compartmentalize the slots. So you can only use 2 spy operations per target.

* Incite Government Propaganda (New government randomly chosen, anarchy an option) = $100,000 + (3 x enemy nation strength)
* Incite Religious Propaganda (New desired religion randomly chosen) = $100,000 + (3 x enemy nation strength)
* Change DEFCON Level (New level randomly chosen) = $150,000 + (5 x enemy nation strength)
* Change Threat Level (New level randomly chosen) = $150,000 + (1 x enemy nation strength)
* Gather Intelligence (See money reserves, non-secret trade partners, etc...) = $200,000 + (1 x enemy nation strength)
* Destroy Defending Tanks (Max 25%) = $200,000 + (1 x enemy nation strength)
* Destroy Cruise Missiles (Max 25%) = $200,000 + (1 x enemy nation strength)
* Assassinate Enemy Spies (Max 10%) = $250,000 + (2 x enemy nation strength)
* Steal Money Reserves (Max 5%) = $300,000 + (5 x enemy nation strength)
* Steal Technology (Max 5*techbonus) = $300,000 + (2 x enemy nation strength)
* Destroy Nuclear Weapons (Max 1) = $500,000 + (15 x enemy nation strength)
* Destroy Infrastructure (Max 10*techbonus) = $500,000 + (5 x enemy nation strength)

Please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please

Spies - Spies are secret agents in the game that have the ability to spy, harass, perform sabotage, and engage in acts of terror against other nations without having to declare war. Spies cost $10,000 each to purchase and all nations start out with a limit of 50 spies plus 100 x Intelligence Agencies (+250 with CIA wonder). Nations can conduct up to two attacking spy operations per day (+1 per active war) and nations can be attacked in up to two spy operations per day. Nations may only spy on nations within their strength ranking unless the target nation is currently at war with the spy attacker. Aside from being killed during a mission and from assassination, spies are also vulnerable to defeat alerts where up to 5 spies can be killed. Spy Operations have four possible results based on the results of the calculations of the operation odds . These results include 1) Mission success and not caught 2) Mission success but identity revealed 3) Mission failure but not caught 4) Mission failure and identity revealed. The following spy operations are available in the game:

* Destroy Cruise Missiles (Max 5) = $10,000 + (1 x enemy nation strength)
* Destroy Defending Tanks (Max 10%) = $10,000 + (2 x enemy nation strength)
* Destroy Land (Max 10) = $10,000 + (3 x enemy nation strength)
* Incite Government Propaganda (New desired government randomly chosen) = $10,000 + (3 x enemy nation strength) [Defender required to collect taxes to change]
* Incite Religious Propaganda (New desired religion randomly chosen) = $10,000 + (3 x enemy nation strength) [Defender required to collect taxes to change]
* Change Threat Level (New level randomly chosen) = $15,000 + (1 x enemy nation strength) [Defender required to collect taxes to change]
* Change DEFCON Level (New level randomly chosen) = $15,000 + (5 x enemy nation strength)
* Freeze DEFCON Level = $15,000 + (5 x enemy nation strength) [Defender required to collect taxes to change]
* Gather Intelligence (See money reserves, non-secret trade partners, etc...) = $20,000 + (2 x enemy nation strength)
* Assassinate Enemy Spies (Max 20) = $25,000 + (2 x enemy nation strength)
* Destroy Technology (Max 10) = $30,000 + (2 x enemy nation strength)
* Sabotage IRS Proficiency (New tax rate randomly produced, 1-5% lower than old tax rate) = $10,000 + (20 x enemy nation strength x enemy number of days inactive) [Defender required to collect taxes to change]
* Destroy Money Reserves (Max 5% or 1 Million) = $30,000 + (15 x enemy nation strength)
* Destroy Infrastructure (Max 10) = $50,000 + (5 x enemy nation strength)
* Destroy Nuclear Weapons (Max 1) = $50,000 + (15 x enemy nation strength)

Spy operation odds are determined by the following formulas:

* Attacking spies chances of success are determined by (number of spies) + (technology level / 20)
* The defending nation's counter intelligence systems are determined by (number of spies) + (technology level / 20) + (land total / 70). Threat level modifiers are also taken into account for the defender.

If your spies are exposed during a spy operation a summary of the spy attack will be sent to the defender via private message with your ruler name revealed as the sender of the message. A summary of the operation will also be added to the "Exposed Spy Operations Across the Globe" screen for all nations to view. If your spies are not exposed during a spy operation a summary of the spy attack will still be sent to the defender via private message however the sender of the message will appear as "Unknown Sender" and your spy operation will not be displayed in the "Exposed Spy Operations Across the Globe" screen.

Spy operations are stored in the game for a period of 30 days. You may review your spy operation results by clicking the 'Spy Operations' link on the left navigation menu. This screen will detail the spy operations where you were the aggressor in the spy operation. This screen does not detail spy operations that you have defended against. Nations that are in Anarchy may conduct spy operations at double the spy operation cost.

Nations can conduct up to two attacking spy operations per day (+1 per active war) and nations can be attacked in up to two spy operations per day.

* Freeze DEFCON Level = $150,000 + (5 x enemy nation strength X enemy number of days inactive) [Defender required to collect taxes to change]

My only feedback on this topic is that great care should be taken that warfare doesn't become simply a matter of who's got the best spy odds. Much of what I've seen in the most recent update makes me concerned that spy ops will consist of a whole laundry list of things that spies (or even Special Ops) do not do in RL (not even in their day dreams in boring meetings at Langley, VA) and it will unbalance the game.

Putting aside the realism aspect for the moment, please feel free to expand on the rest.

We're trying to take every care in this, which is why pretty much all SBox topics on spies have been looked over, and feedback is being taken on in threads such as this. I'm crunching numbers on a daily basis to try and ensure the new ops are balanced.

Are your main concerns the new spy ops? the new caps? something else? as I said feel free to expand, the more input and data we have to go on will hopefully ensure this update goes smoothly.

6-30-2009
- Coming in two weeks (on or after July 14, 2009) spy operations will receive a significant update. A summary of changes is as follows:

1. Three new spy operations, Freeze Defcon Level, Sabotage IRS Proficiency, and Destroy Land will been added.

2. The spy operations of Incite Government Propaganda, Incite Religious Propaganda, Sabotage IRS Proficiency, Change Threat Level, and Freeze DEFCON Level will require the defender to collect taxes before changing the individual settings that these spy operations effect. Given these upgrades in damage for these spy operations the only spy operation that will be available to peace mode nations will be the Gather Intelligence spy operation.

3. Destroy Defending Tanks will destroy 10% of tanks rather than a flat limit of 50 and Destroy Technology, Destroy Infrastructure, and Destroy Money Reserves will have their caps increased.

4. Nations will start each new day at midnight update with 2 attacking and 2 defending spy slots plus 1 attacking spy slot per active war that can be used only against their war opponents. Nations will continue to only receive two defending spy operations against them per day.

Putting aside the problems I have with realism with any sort of DEFCON manipulation (high to low at least when already at war), 'Freeze DEFCON Level' radically changes how nations try to survive nuclear war. The standard tactic is to stay at DEFCON 1 and avoid collection in nuclear anarchy. It is part of why many nations maintain significant warchests (once free of war they can take the remainder of their warchest rebuild a bit of infrastructure and collect). Now, one lucky roll of the dice by your enemy and you are effectively hamstrung. We're talking about something that will potentially cost larger nations tens of millions of dollars and much of their rebuilding funds. That seems overly harsh.

I have a similar complaint about 'Sabotage IRS Proficiency' (against putting the realism of such a thing aside), though with a basement of 20%, it isn't nearly as harsh.

'Destroy Land' will affect everything from defensive strength, to the ability to conduct naval operations ("no navy, no problem, I'll just spy away his land until he can't hurt me"), to the ability to conduct/resist spy operations and perhaps even hurt collections. The potential for abuse if this attack kills too much land too quickly is just too far reaching.

It's not clear here if the new attacks will be available to nations wanting to perform spy operations against a nation in Peace Mode. If so, I would strongly protest the move.

I honestly never understood why 'Destroy Defending Tanks' was even a spy attack option. Making it more powerful only makes it more...odd. Be that as it may, not knowing what the specific caps are makes me very leery what such attacks will do. Indeed, I could see someone deciding it was a better tactic to leave all their troops and tanks on defense and instead use spies to attack and inflict damage against an enemy instead in offensive action. That changes the game in a rather negative way to me.

This one I don't so much object to save for this: nukes will be disappearing at a much higher rate during wars. For example, let's say I'm in 1 offensive war and 2 defensive wars. I will be able to conduct 2+3=5 spy operations. Where before I might try once or twice to spy away nukes, and would likely spread my attacks among the nations I'm at war with, now I can put 2 attacks each on 2 nations and still have a third attack to play with elsewhere. Now expand the number of nations at war to a couple hundred on each side with interlocking conflicts and barring cash flow problems, nations are much more routinely getting hit with two spy attacks than was previously the case.

I understand the objective--create more opportunities for a greater variety of spy attacks to take place. I would argue that what's more likely is that the 2-3 that give the max effectiveness (like destroying nukes) will just be performed more often.

* Steal Money Reserves (Max 5%) = $300,000 + (5 x enemy nation strength)