Espionage was a wasted opportunity

[Lorenerd11]

There's so many more fun things we could do with the espionage system, stealing relics, seizing ownership of another Megacorp's branch offices, maybe even stealing technology from fallen empires.

What we get instead is... extremely underwhelming, compared to the possibilities of what the espionage system could be.

 

[grommile]

Espionage systems in 4X games are useful (they get you information) and inoffensive, but also not particularly interesting.

Sabotage systems in 4X games tend towards an unfortunate situation where the effectiveness level at which they feel like they're worth spending any effort on is usually higher than the effectiveness level at which "the Espionage Empire is a priority one threat, to be genocided or belligerently befriended at the earliest opportunity" starts to look like the objectively correct strategy in almost all campaigns.

(This is partly because I am almost completely burned out on being on the receiving end of harassment-based gameplay. Completing Westernization in multiple EU3 campaigns will do that to you.)

 

[CaptinObvious]

I like how I didn't know if this was a HoI post or a Stellaris post and still went "yeah, when has there ever been a good espionage system in any video game?"

 

[Cry_Havok]

Espionage systems in 4X games are useful (they get you information) and inoffensive, but also not particularly interesting.

Sabotage systems in 4X games tend towards an unfortunate situation where the effectiveness level at which they feel like they're worth spending any effort on is usually higher than the effectiveness level at which "the Espionage Empire is a priority one threat, to be genocided or belligerently befriended at the earliest opportunity" starts to look like the objectively correct strategy in almost all campaigns.

(This is partly because I am almost completely burned out on being on the receiving end of harassment-based gameplay. Completing Westernization in multiple EU3 campaigns will do that to you.)

This is also why Criminal Megacorps are a nightmare. The overlap between "compelling gameplay for the criminal/espionage party" "crime/espionage being a manageable threat that matters but isn't overwhelming" and "crime/espionage being the most threatening target" basically doesn't exist.

 

[Methone]

Remember how, before Nemesis, people talked about how Espionage was hugely difficult to get right in 4x games and there was pretty much no way to balance 'fun to sabotage' with 'fun to be sabotaged' and other such concerns?

I remember.

 

[A2ch0n]

There's so many more fun things we could do with the espionage system, stealing relics, seizing ownership of another Megacorp's branch offices, maybe even stealing technology from fallen empires.

What we get instead is... extremely underwhelming, compared to the possibilities of what the espionage system could be.

I made about ten posts to the topic of usefullness of espionage and that it is actually far too weak. Especially the operations (beside the asset system what is great!) neet some real teeth and i made many suggestions for that. But for me it feels actually like fighting windmills.
My last suggestion was to make use of the upcoming situation system. Maybe here is a opportunity for some of the major abilities it should have like:

-Forment Unrest
-Change Ethics/Government
-Deactivate/Destroy Mega structures (destroy means the final stage that has to be rebuild)
-Break Federations
-Break Defense Pacts/Alliances and devide befriended empires
-Spark Wars

That ar only some examples. All existing operations beside gather information and aquire asset need a rework. The most important part are free target selection (full list, it's easily moddable so changes are technically no problem) and stacking modifiers. If my goal is to ruin the relations between two special empires then i want be able to do that. In the actual version it could be similar to: First try -80 penalty, Second -240, third -720 and so on. Just a example.

With the situation system two ways should be possible.

1) A new situation is created that allow you to set some goals depending on the operation and how good your espionage capabilities are compared to the target empire. The target can in best case mitigate a portion of the impact but not everything. This is for most existing operations the best way i guess.

2) Making use of a existing situation. Your target empire has some trouble, may it resource or crime problems and with enough intel you can detect those problems and make use the ongoing situation to your favor and your targets demise. They conquered some planets? Spread some kind of propaganda and make them rebell instant or form/manipulate certain factions to a government change. This are just some examples of course.

So yes espionage is actually really underwelming and even before it's annoucement it's was my personal goal to fight for this mechanic. Now i fight for improvements. I really love espionage and the more power it has the more happy i am.

But like i said. Actually it feels like fighting windmills...

P.S.: I should make a counter how many posts to espionage i already have made

 

[zZander56]

The best way to make espionage feel significant without making it atrocious to play against, in my opinion, would be to focus on giving positive outcomes to the one doing the espionage and leave out most negative outcomes for the targeted party.

Stealing research is a prime example of this. The attacker gets a nice bonus, and the victim doesn't lose anything. (Though the numbers should probably still change on that operation, as it is a bit underwhelming at the moment.)

You could expand this model to other types of operations. The "Sabotage Starbase" operation could give the attacker a damage bonus against the effected starbase, rather than destroy a module. This would allow the operation to be significant without annoying the offended by putting a negative number or statement on their screen.
"Arm Privateers" could give a percentage of the effected empire's trade value to the one using the operation without actually subtracting any value from the network as another example.

Focusing on positives for Espionage does take away from the fantasy of sabotage and subterfuge, but it takes a system that needs to be crippled for the sake of the game and gives it a purpose.

 

[A2ch0n]

The best way to make espionage feel significant without making it atrocious to play against, in my opinion, would be to focus on giving positive outcomes to the one doing the espionage and leave out most negative outcomes for the targeted party.

Stealing research is a prime example of this. The attacker gets a nice bonus, and the victim doesn't lose anything. (Though the numbers should probably still change on that operation, as it is a bit underwhelming at the moment.)

You could expand this model to other types of operations. The "Sabotage Starbase" operation could give the attacker a damage bonus against the effected starbase, rather than destroy a module. This would allow the operation to be significant without annoying the offended by putting a negative number or statement on their screen.
"Arm Privateers" could give a percentage of the effected empire's trade value to the one using the operation without actually subtracting any value from the network as another example.

Focusing on positives for Espionage does take away from the fantasy of sabotage and subterfuge, but it takes a system that needs to be crippled for the sake of the game and gives it a purpose.

That not the goal of espionage and sabotage. It's about harming the enemy without getting caught, maybe even blame others for it. It's the same with criminal heritage. The fun in it is to ruin opponets without going to war.

 

[zZander56]

That not the goal of espionage and sabotage. It's about harming the enemy without getting caught, maybe even blame others for it. It's the same with criminal heritage. The fun in it is to ruin opponets without going to war.

A strong sabotage system can't be implemented without ruining the game for those in the other end of it. Focusing on positive outcomes from operations allows them to be powerful without ruining the game.

 

[A2ch0n]

A strong sabotage system can't be implemented without ruining the game for those in the other end of it. Focusing on positive outcomes from operations allows them to be powerful without ruining the game.

But thats not what espionage/sabotage is meant for and even more not what players that like those systems want. Sadly, I think we will not find common ground here.

 

[Meneye]

The sabotage part of espionage systems has never went done well in any game, at least not to my knowledge, and is usually just incredibly annoying. I feel like I want some form of sabotage in game, but I can't think of any way to make it work. If you can find a way to include it without a thread popping up every week complaining about it, then I'd actually be really eager to hear about it.

As for espionage in general, the intel gathering bit we have for now is fine, but that and maybe steal technology seem to be the only good bits about it. I think we can lean more into the misdirection part of espionage, like creating fake ghost fleets or temporarily disabling an enemy's sensors in your space. Maybe even faking comparative fleet strength to make yourself seem stronger than you really are (provided that the other empire doesn't have enough intel on you to see how strong your fleet is in the galactic community. Which if you're playing espionage heavy they ideally won't).

 

[Ikael]

Yeah, espionage systems which include sabotage tend to suck big time, but that doesn't mean that espionage could be much, much more powerful in Stellaris, especially considering that the game has already some interesting political systems in place.

Using espionage to take an empire out of a federation, fostering independentists movements in rivals, rigging elections and galactic council votings, deposing leaders, causing a war between two foreign empires, industrial espionage, overlord uprisings, or helping empires to shift ethics towards your own would all be extremely interesting and powerful ways of employing espionage, certainly better than "random ship exploded". Add a way to defend yourself from these type of disruptions if you invest enough resources (unity, perhaps) and the whole "annoying" factor would be gone.

However, unless internal politics and leaders become relevant, interesting espionage will have to wait, I think.

 

[Pancakelord]

It's definitely a skeleton right now.

And having tested a few custom/modded Operations, it feels bad getting stuff thrown at you without heavy restrictions that invalidate the point of espionage; i.e. "instant action" (for lack of a good term) operations that hit you out of the blue feel bad. E.g. your ruler suddenly dies - it creates "CK2 ruler spontaneously dies" levels of frustration, without CK2's ability to bounce back almost overnight, if you're lucky/good.

I am curious to see how it could work with situations though. It would play more to Stellaris' event chains - It is it's one real unique point vs other 4xes.

• Rather than an Op to kill the ruler of a country, out of the blue - for the victim - frustratingly. The operation starts an event chain - the other country learns of a plot against their leader.
• You then have a tug-o-war,
  • with the instigator passively [based on spy network stats, if one side is a police state, has enigmatic AP etc] pushing it up to 100%(kill ruler & impose some humiliation-like debuff, escape without being discovered)
  • whilst the victim pushes it down to 0% (ruler saved, you learn who started it*, and get a reward),
  • or it times out (ruler saved, victim doesn't learn who did it, maybe a small debuff to encourage ending it sooner)
  • with some random events/choices firing (for the victim - and maybe instigator) each time the progress shifts, or every X periods.

*may carry diplomatic implications - be a sanctionable/denounceable affair.

The most important thing, on paper, is that the ruler's death cant come as a shock to you - there is a progress bar. As the joker once said:

It could still be frustrating without limits (e.g. only one ruler-kill plot at a time, and a lockout for all empires "their security is on high alert" if its recently completed), but perhaps fewer overall than you'd need with the spontaneous/warningless operations we currently have.

But if I can actually see a bar or timer telling me "do something or they're dead", tied together with a few narrative events/choices and a reward for foiling the plot/operation, I think that could be fun - even if I am on the receiving end. Particularly if there is a lockout to prevent spam/seeing the same events too frequently & the rewards are unusual - e.g. getting a Regicide CB, or free claims, against the people that killed your emperor.

We wont ultimately know if its a good solution to espionage operations, until 3.4 drops and someone tries it, though.

 

[great lakes]

It's definitely a skeleton right now.

And having tested a few custom/modded Operations, it feels bad getting stuff thrown at you without heavy restrictions that invalidate the point of espionage; i.e. "instant action" (for lack of a good term) operations that hit you out of the blue feel bad. E.g. your ruler suddenly dies - it creates "CK2 ruler spontaneously dies" levels of frustration, without CK2's ability to bounce back almost overnight, if you're lucky/good.

I am curious to see how it could work with situations though. It would play more to Stellaris' event chains - It is it's one real unique point vs other 4xes.

• Rather than an Op to kill the ruler of a country, out of the blue - for the victim - frustratingly. The operation starts an event chain - the other country learns of a plot against their leader.
• You then have a tug-o-war,
  • with the instigator passively [based on spy network stats, if one side is a police state, has enigmatic AP etc] pushing it up to 100%(kill ruler & impose some humiliation-like debuff, escape without being discovered)
  • whilst the victim pushes it down to 0% (ruler saved, you learn who started it*, and get a reward),
  • or it times out (ruler saved, victim doesn't learn who did it, maybe a small debuff to encourage ending it sooner)
  • with some random events/choices firing (for the victim - and maybe instigator) each time the progress shifts, or every X periods.

*may carry diplomatic implications - be a sanctionable/denounceable affair.

The most important thing, on paper, is that the ruler's death cant come as a shock to you - there is a progress bar. As the joker once said:

It could still be frustrating without limits (e.g. only one ruler-kill plot at a time, and a lockout for all empires "their security is on high alert" if its recently completed), but perhaps fewer overall than you'd need with the spontaneous/warningless operations we currently have.

But if I can actually see a bar or timer telling me "do something or they're dead", tied together with a few narrative events/choices and a reward for foiling the plot/operation, I think that could be fun - even if I am on the receiving end. Particularly if there is a lockout to prevent spam/seeing the same events too frequently & the rewards are unusual - e.g. getting a Regicide CB, or free claims, against the people that killed your emperor.

We wont ultimately know if its a good solution to espionage operations, until 3.4 drops and someone tries it, though.

the fundamental problem with sabotage is that the theming doesn't want the target to know the op is starting until to late, but game design needs the target to be able to respond somehow. from what we know, situations could be a good way to bridge the gap, with relative encryption playing a key role in how much notice the defender gets. other factors could be the defender's infiltration level and how much risk the defender takes. this would mean a fair chunk of operations would fail, and sometimes the defender would figure out who the attacker was. it would also help for allies to somehow cordenate their ops rather then operate separately. in any case, sabatoge should end up as an adjunct to core systems rather then a core system in it's own right.

 

[grommile]

The fun in it is to ruin opponets without going to war.

Unfortunately, that's not the fun people like me came here to be on the pointy end of.

The only way to make really satisfactory gameplay about covert sabotage in a broadly symmetric game (one where you're as likely to be the victim as to be the perpetrator) is to make it the entire point of the game, so that everyone is on the same page.

 

[SeraphAscending]

But thats not what espionage/sabotage is meant for and even more not what players that like those systems want. Sadly, I think we will not find common ground here.

There is a significant distinction to be made between realism and good game design.
Having your entire empire blow up and be crippled, because of unknown causes with little comeback potential is an absolute pain. It does not make a fun game, even if it realistic that an espionage-focussed empire should be able to do that.

Espionage systems are always the most controversial game mechanic in all 4x-like games. Mostly either toothless or just harassment that ruins the fun in the game, because they can't even make proper decisions to deal with the issue. It's just a sledgehammer to the face at random times. No decisions can be made to properly work against that which makes it very frustrating to play with this mechanic if you're on the other end.

 

[hart30]

You cannot even steal fe tech or other special tech from normal ai/other player. Meaning u are forced into war for special components and this is quite a bummer.

In general i tend to believe that espionage is still in a unfinished, buggy (crisis beacon) and imbalanced state with each operation having been nerved way too drastically. I am sure the custodians are currently looking at it and it will improve from patch to patch, while never reaching the point of becoming annoying.

I mean - even i managed to create a mod which slightly buffs most operations and none of them became annoying.

 

[SeraphAscending]

I am sure the custodians are currently looking at it and it will improve from patch to patch, while never reaching the point of becoming annoying.

I am also looking forward to those changes.
But especially stealing tech is very frustrating. it could be such a good non-harassing operation, but instead it's 30% of one random tech every 5 years - and at significant cost, too. I tried minmaxing stealing tech with this once. Permanently doing that with all envoys whenever possible with massively superior codebreaking, but i was still stuck behind the ai, because i didn't want to focus on tech buildings. That was very frustrating.

Maybe it should get an (additional) "siphoning research" modifier that gets you some research of the same category as the stolen tech proportional to the codebreaking - encription disparity and the target empires research output for those 5 years. Then it wouldn't have the ridiculous micro of manually restarting operations and (mentally) keeping track of those, but you'd still get more out of this.

(just to clarify, "siphoning research" should not subtract from the target empires output)

 

[Lorenerd11]

Sabotage systems in 4X games tend towards an unfortunate situation where the effectiveness level at which they feel like they're worth spending any effort on is usually higher than the effectiveness level at which "the Espionage Empire is a priority one threat, to be genocided or belligerently befriended at the earliest opportunity" starts to look like the objectively correct strategy in almost all campaigns.

(This is partly because I am almost completely burned out on being on the receiving end of harassment-based gameplay. Completing Westernization in multiple EU3 campaigns will do that to you.)

Unfortunately, that's not the fun people like me came here to be on the pointy end of.

The only way to make really satisfactory gameplay about covert sabotage in a broadly symmetric game (one where you're as likely to be the victim as to be the perpetrator) is to make it the entire point of the game, so that everyone is on the same page.

Espionage systems are always the most controversial game mechanic in all 4x-like games. Mostly either toothless or just harassment that ruins the fun in the game, because they can't even make proper decisions to deal with the issue. It's just a sledgehammer to the face at random times. No decisions can be made to properly work against that which makes it very frustrating to play with this mechanic if you're on the other end.

The ideas I gave – stealing fallen empire technology, stealing a relic, or snatching a handful (3-5) of branch offices, both of which the target empire woukdbe informed about, would be hardly game-ruining.

Also, relic theft, I imagine, would be the one circumstance where reclaiming the stolen relic could be made into a casus belli for the targeted empire, for up to 10 years. After that, you would have to use espionage yourself to steal the relic back.

 

[A2ch0n]

There is a significant distinction to be made between realism and good game design.
Having your entire empire blow up and be crippled, because of unknown causes with little comeback potential is an absolute pain. It does not make a fun game, even if it realistic that an espionage-focussed empire should be able to do that.

Espionage systems are always the most controversial game mechanic in all 4x-like games. Mostly either toothless or just harassment that ruins the fun in the game, because they can't even make proper decisions to deal with the issue. It's just a sledgehammer to the face at random times. No decisions can be made to properly work against that which makes it very frustrating to play with this mechanic if you're on the other end.

The controversity is well known for me. And i absolutely accept that many players are on the opposite side. But i for myself absolutely want an impactfull espionage system that allow me to puppetier other empires while smile into their face.
And one of the most important parts for a good espionage system is at least from my point of view that my opponent (be it AI or Player) can't play the usual way and cannot perfom optimal. In best case the target has so much todo with fixing internal and diplomatic problems that there is litte time to care about me or agressively expand. The same reason with criminal syndicates. I would call it a "control" playstyle. Maybe your familar with that term from other games.

In Stellaris the only funktioning part is intel and the exceptional cool asset system. And the worst things are those that look usefull (like smear campaing) but alsolutely don't work as intended. The impact is basically zero because of pre selected target and non stacking modifiers. And here i think the custodians will improve something over time. I really hope so at least.

With a look on the other systems like warfare and diplomacy, espionage had the short stick, then close to it diplomacy and warfare got the whole rest. With warfare you win always. And you can't do anything against it beside building fleet and going to war by yourself. Even good realtions don't block an empire from attacking you. Thats a shame! So one of my ideas a while ago was somthing like Rock, paper, scissors.

That means, Warfare beat diplomcy (by ignoring the terms), diplomacy beat espionage (by limiting espionage options against that target) and espionage beats warfare by blowing things up and block agressive play with distractions like internal uprising. Maybe thats still a thing for the custodians.

Actually my hope is like i said before in the situation system. Give it some power but let it take time. If you can manage your operation, your target should learn to fear that. Especially uprisings, federation and defense split ups and even spark a war should be really a thing. The sabotage operations should mainly focus against warfare specific assets (starbases, fleets and megastructrures) but really harm them. Like stoping a war before it even happens or if you are smart destroying those military in exactly that moment when the target declares war.

But i prayed my ideas over and over. It doesn't change anything. I will allways have more enemys than friends with those ideas...