Shadowe

Friday the 20th was my 24th day inactive. I collected shortly before the server turnover but caught the "Cybernations is busy" message on the way out. Logging back in today my nation ([url=http://www.cybernations.net/nation_drill_display.asp?Nation_ID=290260]Gehenna[/url]) was deleted, did my collection fail to go through due to server load? I've been playing CN since launch, the only time I haven't was when the NPO ordered me to delete my nation and quit playing before Admin stepped in and said that was inappropriate. It would be pretty annoying to have been done in by a simple busy signal.

All trade offers, whether submitted to you by others or to you by them, take up a trade slot.

Solved, getting that man some glasses so he can see what he's typing.

Friend of mine is trying to register a nation for the email crhobbs1@yahoo.com but isn't recieving his confirmation message.

Just now I collected taxes and payed bills, and then came out of peace mode, and now it says I haven't payed my bills but my money reserves show the amount I had after paying bills the first time. Feature or bug?

Do you have any idea how many people avoid these forums like the plague? As many people as are usually online, the vast majority of people in CN still hate coming here to the point they probably don't even have an account. That's why I still think there isn't going to be an accurate measure of opinion until this is actually put into the game and starts getting used. This is a LOT like the Mercy from supcom. Sure you think it's a cool idea at first, but then you realise it's a homing missile that's faster than any anti-air unit in the game and capable of killing the strongest units in the entire game with just a few of them for cost on par than some of the game's starter units. This espionage system is the same thing. It's an insanely unbalanced way of attacking anybody without them having any real possibility of defending from it short of seriously damaging their growth in order to defend against something that may or may not ever hit them, regardless of whether they are in peace mode or not. Frankly that's insane. It's bad enough that peace mode has such crazy penalties associated with it and there isn't any true nation-freezing vacation mode, but now they can be attacked despite being in peace mode. Any feature which upsets the balance of a game to the extent that everything revolves around it and it's usage is pretty much a textbook case of failed balancing.

Yeah, this is going to be ugly when people start reporting it as bugs that they've lost millions of dollars worth of stuff and can't do anything about it and have no idea what happened.

There's just a few of us posting in this thread, the real answer will come with how people react when this actually gets added in. Personally I think this is going to end like a cross between Dynamic Weapon Pricing from VALVe and the Mercy from GPG.

Imho this is still horribly unbalanced and largely ridiculous. Instead of individuals lets call it a cell since a lot of these operations would require more than one person to complete, and lets make it more expensive but at the same time more USEFUL. It takes 3 updates and 500K to train a cell, and 500K a day to maintain deployment. Border walls improvement increase chances of being caught while infiltrating an enemy nation up to 25% and 10% while exiting an enemy nation. While deployed you get to see all the information that a nation's owner sees and can undertake risky operations. If your spies are caught the other nation has a chance to do with them as they wish. * Troop movements (same effect as altering defcon level)= $1,500,000 * Sabotage Defending Tanks = $500,000 (Defending tanks at 50% effectiveness for 1 update) * Sabotage Cruise Missiles = $800,000 (Intelligence on where to fire sabotaged, 50% effectiveness for 3 updates) * Counter-intelligence = New effect of the intelligence agency improvement, with all 5 enemy spies have up to a 25% greater chance of being caught and 10% chance of failing outright * Sabotage technology = $1,000,000 (Aircraft at 50% effectiveness for 2 updates) * Sabotage nuclear weapons = $5,000,000 (Nukes have 30% possibility of failing to create a fission reaction (2.5x cruise missile, no riots)) If caught during a war spies may be executed publically without trial for +50% infantry bonus (zealotry) and -2 happiness to the enemy nation If caught without war being declared spies may either be executed publically without trial for -3.5 happiness to the enemy nation as an event OR put on trial for +4 happiness as an event In either case it is assumed the spy is interrogated and anything that spy did is negated if caught in the act or half as effective if not caught in the act. Something like this makes them actually USEFUL during or before a war or cold war, makes having them deployed useful but not without risk, and the operations are genuinely damaging to the other guy without being absurdly overpowered and without the possibility of backfiring like a real undercover operation. This is the sort of thing I can imagine a nation actually using undercover operatives for rather than employing them as overglorified jehovas witnesses.

Going in order. What on earth could spies do to make people want a different government and whats the point when you take into account the national wonder that negates government desire? Since when has international espionage had ANY effect on what god people want to worship? And this one ALSO has a national wonder attached to it. How could spies possibly change the defcon level of a nation? That's even less believable than changing peoples government desires. These are spies, not Special Forces. They don't go around carrying anti armor weaponry, they gather information. Again these are spies, not special forces. How could they possibly destroy a cruise missile? These things are huge and stored in very secure areas. This is the most ridiculous option of them all. Not only is it totally implausible but it's absolutely unbalanced for it's price. If you know who the enemy spies are then how can they spy on you to begin with? it doesn't make any sense. Destroy money? The economy doesn't work that way. If I went out and robbed 200 banks and burned it all no money would be lost. This is almost as bad as the nukes, I don't see how a spy could do anything without millions of dollars of equipment for balance reasons. Destroy technology... stealing if they are more advanced I could understand but again this is still hideously unbalanced for the price. Hey, stealing, here it is. Buuuut why would you have destruction as an option when you can just steal it? Still horribly unbalanced for the price. Overall this idea is a failure imho. Excluding the absurd options of changing religion, government, and defcon levels most of the stuff I would expect Special Forces teams to take millions of dollars of equipment and training to accomplish as it has NOTHING to do with spies and everything to do with outright military action, but even ignoring that this is still hideously unbalanced for how much it costs. For a few thousand dollars I could cost someone millions of dollars in damage with no worry of repercussions, and god help them if they are in peace mode because chances are they will be hit so hard by both peace mode AND the "spies" that they won't ever recover without tons of outside help. It's horribly unbalanced, negates the 35 million dollar national wonders, defeats the whole point of peace mode, and even within itself is inconsistent with it's own concept and the counter is most likely going to be superfluous at best and harmful to the user at worst. I just cannot see how ANY of this could possibly be balanced unless it took a variable amount of time for each operation to complete, it took a significant amount of time and money to train and equip spies, operations were at least twice as expensive as this, and having spies had the risk of blowback with your population. Something along the lines of -5 to -10 happiness and riots for getting caught. My suggestion is to scrap the idea in it's current form and have spies work like they really do, with information. Troop movements, positions, amounts, that sort of thing. Percentage modifies for your success rate, effectiveness of long range attacks like bombers and cruise missiles raised since you have precise targetting information and know where the defenses are. Give each nation a low maximum limit of intelligence agents and have them deployed either abroad or domestically for the purposes of information gathering or spreading misinformation. That would put some skill and choice into the equation instead of making it the Mercy Guides Missile of cybernations (supreme commander players will get that).