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[22:49] <AirMe> Some people and color spheres have enough issues finding trades

[22:49] <AirMe> this is just going to screw the unalinged or those with bad resources

[22:50] <AirMe> because now people are only going to want to trade within their alliances

Copied from a discussion on IRC in reference to a spy revealing ones trading partners.

Also I think that a major war is the wrong time to implement a major game change. But thats just my 2 cents.

Edited by AirMe
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On the whole cost based on attacker or defender, I would suggest it is based on the attacker. The attacker will be equiping and sending the spies so the cost is based on the resources they can provide (so it would be based on their strength). The defender nation is taken into account in the defensive formula with their factors of tech and land taken into account in the formula.

If we want to use a OOC example, the cost associated with the US spying, lets say, Nepal are similiar to the cost associated with spying on Venezuela. It is based on the resources the spying nation is providing, and fixed expedatures in terms of advanced structures and training the sending nation can provide, and would not very much depending on the spy victim. If you want to a modifier based on defender so that more advanced countries are more costly to attack, we could try that but it works both ways and makes it less costly for an advanced nation to attack a less advanced nation. Given they already have advantages in terms of resources and success rates, do we want to make it cheaper for them to do so.

Just trying something maybe we could use this:

(Defender tech x infrastructure) / (Attacker tech x infrastructure) to modify the existing costs (cost of action + modifier x nation strength)

So for instance a nation 25k strength with 3999.99 infra 400 tech attacking a 30k nation with 4999.99 infrastructure and 600 tech would result in the following (4999.99 x 600)= 2999994, (3999.99 x 400) = 1599996, 2999994/1599996 = 1.87. This modifier would be added to the existing costs so that for gather intelligence mission using this formula (Gather Intelligence (See money reserves) = $50,000 + (1 x nation strength) x [(Defender Infra x Defender Tech)/(Attacker Infra x Attacker Tech)]) It would be 50,000 + (1 x 25,000 x 1.87) = $96,750 or a 22% increase in cost over the formula using just fixed cost plus nation strength.

However if the advanced nation wanted to conduct a similar mission against its attacker, here is how it would work. Flipping the values results in this calculation 1599996/2999994 = .53 Using the gather intelligence mission again we have 50,000 + [(1 x 30,000) x .53] = $65,900. We are now making it cheaper for advanced contries to conduct operations when they already have so much cash to be able to afford it. Does it really make sense to factor it into the costs of the missions when we already take account the disparity of tech and strength between parties on the success rate?

well i want to question your analogy:

If nation X sends a spy to Peru to spy one some Government official, he would probably do a good job with some strategical maps, a cellphone and some standard equipment. He only needs basic stuff, because the technological level of Peru is just not high enough to detect even cheap equipment and the security systems are not higly advanced.

Now if you want to do the same mission against the Russian Kreml, you would obviously need Satellite Photos, a SatellitePhone, HighTech Equipment like LongRangeMicrophones, equipment to overcome several high-security systems, a lot of very detailed pre-mission intel, trustworthy sources/contacts and much much very expensive stuff more. I estimate that you can for 100,000$ get some Info from the Government of Peru, but a Mission to Infiltrate the Kreml and get some useful Information out would cost several Millions and the chance would be still very low.

However, i agree that your formula is not a bad idea, because it values BOTH nations, the training costs AND the mission difficulty.

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It's nice to see new features being added admin, thanks :)

The only problem I see with this is that it is largely irrelevant for large nations, due to the fixed caps on damages/losses.

If I'm a grossly high tech nation, I'm not going to lose any sleep over 5 tech. Perhaps rather than using a fixed cap, use a percentage (for all activities)?

My only other suggestion is the ability to STEAL money reserves like you can technology.

Edited by Antartica North
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It's nice to see new features being added admin, thanks :)

The only problem I see with this is that it is largely irrelevant for large nations, due to the fixed caps on damages/losses.

If I'm a grossly high tech nation, I'm not going to lose any sleep over 5 tech. Perhaps rather than using a fixed cap, use a percentage (for all activities)?

My only other suggestion is the ability to STEAL money reserves like you can technology.

I think you'll find that the majority of the large nations will appreciate the caps due to the extreme costs of things like tech and infras at their levels.

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Everything is grossly overpriced.

Destroy up to 5 infrastructure for $500,000 when I can use a cruise missiles w/satellites to destroy up to 20 for $15,000.00.

Steal 5 tech for $500,000 when I can get 50 tech from a tech deal for $1,000,000.

The investment for these actions are just way too high for there own good. Plus the fact that these actions can fail doesn't even justify the investment. Even in war time the money is better spent on giving aid to allies. Ideas like changing DEFCON levels and destroying nukes are worth the money but everything else needs reworking.

Edited by ArchSorcerer
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no one has mentioned in this thread yet:

the ability for spies to destroy a random improvement.

i think ideally you could break it down to two groups:

*destroy 1 random income improvement (banks, schools, etc): $500,000 + (5 x enemy nation strength)

*destroy 1 random military improvement (barracks, guerilla camps, etc): $300,000 + (2 x enemy nation strength)

you may say "well what's the point? improvements are cheap," but if the nation you performed these on were saving up for a few days of collection, or you were about to attack them with a HUGE deployement, it could really be worth it.

prices are just suggestions. and ideally, the improvement could not be rebuilt in a day or two.

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I am really looking forward to this improvement, as it stands right now from the about_topics.asp#Spies page looks perfect to me.

One thing I want to suggest is that you implement this as soon as you think its ready. Don't listen to everyone whining about the war and such, if anything this is the best time to throw it in there. Unpredictability is a fact of war, plus I really really want to try it out. :D

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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).

Just letting admin know i disagree with roughly everything you just said. All your complaints seem to be either 'its not an RL simulation!' and 'eeek that will hurt my nation!'.

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Maybe its better to pay a penalty for spying on a nation in Peace Mode and I think there should be a STEALING money or infra operation.

I was just about to say the same.

Because, what's the point if you succeed to destroy 1million, if a nation with huge infra earn 3mil a day. I'm just saying that the stealing part is so interesting.

If we could steal a nuke or infra or better, money.

max 1nuke

max 5-10infra

max 1mil money

If not, then I would want to know who would find it "more entertaining" to just destroy stuff?

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I see only references to a "threat level." Will it be replacing the defcon level?

No, they are both different systems. In real life they are linked somewhat, but one is not totally dependant on the other.

You could be at Severe threat level, like the UK currently is, but not have your military on full alert.

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While a bit whiny, I have to agree with a lot of what Shadow of Eternity said.

You can do most of this with war already at a fraction of the cost. Given that peaceable nations won't attempt these actions out of the random chance of discovery, that only leaves nations at war doing these things. You can do far more damage cheaper with regular armaments.

All I will be doing is loading up on the expensive spies and permanently keeping my protection level high simply to avoid being attacked this way. Simply another economy drain, imo.

Destroying the peace mode concept will cause players to leave the game as well. Besides its protection uses, it's the only "vacation mode" currently in the game. Thus players who never have RL short term commitments will keep playing for a long time. Anyone with a real job or serious school commitments will have no option other than leaving their nation at Defcon 1 and walking away hoping for the best while they deal with a multi-day real life issue. 2 days inactive in peace mode will be a shining beacon for rogues while you finish a job out of town or study for final exams. Do we really wish to lose players simply because they have to leave for a couple days?

Messing with Wonders is definitely a bad idea. They represent some of the last useful things a long term player can do. Again you face the prospect of losing long term players sooner because they have nothing left to buy that is of unassailable value.

If you think alliance tension is high now then expect this to exacerbate the situation further. Being caught spying would be a clear act of war on an alliance member. I can't begin to imagine the flurry of treaty revisions posted in OWF over this. Namely every treaty out there still being honored will have to be re-vamped. I predict perhaps hundreds of treaty revisions and postings simply to cover them all. Alliance Affairs board will look even more chaotic than it is today with massive war going on.

Shadow of Eternity comments on the end are worth serious consideration. Having spies affect conventional wars seems like a very sound idea. With every new iteration of the war system the alliances eventually figure out the best course of action in given situations. Adding more variables to the war mix would help achieve a new degree of randomness and kill the monotony of best course war actions.

Or we could spend the effort spent on this to repair numerous imbalanced aspects already in the game.......

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Warning: I know this going to be a bit flametory, but its really just the way I think about these new changes:

The game is quite bad on so many levels, that could so easily been fixed,.. but admin has no time for that.

Now this whole spy things, like we didn't have yet enough tools to harm others, there are soldiers, tanks, fighters, bombers, cms and nukes. Not to forget all the improvments that improve your military effectiveness.

But yet we cannot buy more than 20 infra in one click... too much programming to code? We cannot sort the team senators to vote for. We cannot have drawn statistics (there are packages where it is so easy to do with). We cannot even have summs of infra/tech/tanks for each alliances. etc. etc.

Heck! we might have even an *working* alliance system *in* the game, instead of this AA hack, yes AAs are just a quick hack to it. A system with levels of hierachy, where you *allow* people in or out. No more ghosts, no more ninja AA switching, just like any other at least medicore well done MMORPG handles guilds for example.

But no admin has time enough on hand, to create yet another weapon type...

Edited by fuzzycat
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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).

Have you not seen James Bond? :P

Spies during WW2 could go around with explosives and plant them places to blow stuff up...

Tanks - Easy, Strap some C4 to them. If there stored underground then blow the hanger up...

Nukes - Errr... Strap C4 to one in a Silo! Your a Spy FFS you can get in and out!

CM's - Same as nukes...

Infra - Blow up Bridges Roads ETC... Thats infrastructure!

Tech - Blow up that high Tech lab out back...

Change religion - Hard one...You certainly can influence people...

Change Goverment - Assasination, infulencing people.

Steal Tec - Remember that Tech lab? walk in and walk out with aload of new things =P

Defcon - Your a spy... Defcon is controled by a computer...

Destroy moneys - Computers... get into the mainframe and send it to someone (makes me wonder why you cant steal cash... thats more impossible)

& as for the hippies in Peace mode... Serves 'em right...

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For all the steal infra suggestions. How can you do this? Do you want to send in 10 spies and get them to carry back a few lamp posts or something? Ridiculous suggestion.

As for the destroying money reserves, I don't think this is even possible. Stealing money reserves is a much better and more realistic option.

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For all the steal infra suggestions. How can you do this? Do you want to send in 10 spies and get them to carry back a few lamp posts or something? Ridiculous suggestion.

As for the destroying money reserves, I don't think this is even possible. Stealing money reserves is a much better and more realistic option.

You're ridiculous comparing everything with real life issues. What ever makes the gameplay more fun, right? so why not steal more things, maybe not infra, but nuke would be interesting, so would money be. :)

Edited by las trace
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How easy would it be to code successful spy missions to cause random negative events? For instance - instead of destroying tanks/aircraft they could contaminate the fuel supplies waiting to go into them and then they would require a small (roughly $100 per tank $5,000 + $200xlevel) fee to repair them. However, those units would also be out of action for a set period of days

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After reading a little closer, it changes "desired" religion and gov't. If you have the wonders, it doesn't matter. If you don't then you won't be impacted that much, you lose the happiness penalty for a few days, which isn't a large deal. I have no problem with that.

DEFCON changing on the other hand, might need to be fixed. Randomly change it to ANY DEFCON (not just 4/5) would be fine.

Destroying cash reserves makes no sense. Stealing seems more sensible.

Question: Will # of spies be visible to other nations?

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I also think that spies should not be able to change Government or Religion. The same goes for changing DefCon status.

I like the idea of them destroying infra although as my nation is growing and infra is costing me more and more, it does seem like that would become very expensive.

I also feel that spies should not be put in place until after the current big war ends. If anything they will only prolong the war and instability.

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