Espionage: What Should It DO?

[daniel060]

There's been a lot of talk about adding an espionage system to the game. I also agree that it feels wrong for technologically advanced, spacefaring civilizations to have no way to influence each other covertly. There are many mechanical ways to implement espionage, but instead of argue about which one's better, I'd like to come up with the actions that any good espionage system would allow a player to take. In no particular order, I want to:

• Steal map data (because it makes zero sense that belligerent empires would just share that with you)
• Steal resources and/or ships
• Tap into an active sensor link
• Steal technology (or progress toward a tech)
• Sabotage planetary buildings and/or spaceports
• Sow discontent (reduce happiness among pops)
• Agitate for liberty among conquered/enslaved pops
• Agitate for ethics shifts (probably using the faction system)
• Influence elections
• Plant false information about my empire's fleet positions/strength and/or outpost strength
• Introduce computer viruses that disable or damage enemy ships/outposts
• Assassinate/kidnap enemy leaders
• Recruit/plant a spy loyal to my empire among another empire's leader pool
• Support crime on a planet/empire
• Incite wars between two neighboring empires
• Perform counterespionage against all this

I think that being able to conduct asymmetrical warfare against a superior foe would help ameliorate the doomstack problem. And some of these would even be useful against allies. I've been in situations where I knew this one empire would join our federation if only they weren't such fanatical egalitarians . . . a little covert ethics nudge, and problem solved! And think of the possibilities of planting a spy in a rival's leader pool, then getting that leader elected to rule that empire.

Not all of these things should be easy; in fact, some of them should be really, really hard to pull off--even achievement-worthy. Long-term aspirations can be fun.

What cool, nefarious, devious tricks have I missed here? What would YOU like to be able to do with an espionage system?

 

[Tamwin5]

You're quite right, I didn't. Derp.

Sector-based defence is a good idea. It allows a gradient of complexity over the early game - you start with one head of counterintelligence, who deals with core sector and empire-level threats, and then once you start having other sectors you have to assign counterintelligence agents to handle those. With the limit on the number of characters you can have in your employ, it could become an interesting resource-allocation decision.

Do you see the network level as being an expendable resource that you build up and then burn to carry out operations, or something that lasts unless you get unlucky? I prefer the first option - it prevents you from spamming higher-level operations once you've got a high network level. Higher-level networks could also have higher risk of detection or infiltration by counterespionage agents, so building up for something big would have a greater element of risk to it than going for little wins.

Substituting assets of various kinds (say, military, economic, cultural, and scientific) for the more abstract network level stat, with different operations needing to burn different kinds of asset, as in the RPS article, would also allow the defender some options - they could order their counterespionage officer to focus on detecting assets of one category or another. Then there could be various kinds of counterespionage assets, which they could positively use to expose elements of hostile operations. They might cultivate a mole in an enemy network, for example, which lets them know everything that enemy's up to in that sector until the mole is exposed, giving the defending player an interesting choice - do they let an operation through, so as not to lose their mole, or use it and lose it?

The risk of this sort of system is that it could spiral in complexity indefinitely - the trick, I guess, is making it simple enough that it fits into the rest of the game, without sacrificing the back-and-forth aspect of it. I think encouraging having multiple networks isn't a great idea for this reason - it'd be more easily manageable for players to have just 1-4 galaxy-wide at any given time, depending how much of their character allowance they dedicate to espionage, with each network only operative if you have a spy character assigned to it.

It's also important that players can't just win at spying by throwing resources at the problem - the system should act as an anti-snowballing measure, as larger empires become more vulnerable without gaining a significant offensive advantage from their size and wealth. So, for example, additional network levels or assets might be produced automatically by the spy characters over time, according to their level, skills, and any helpful civics/techs/traditions/perks you might have, rather than being purchaseable for resources.

There is no cap on the number of leaders any more. That changed in 2.2, iirc. Now they just cost upkeep (which does scale with empire size).

Personally, I see Network as being a long term investment. while a simple network could probably be established in roughly a year, a high level one would take multiple decades of building up. Your network is your "stake" in the gamble, along with the leader heading it. Since many of the actions for influencing how well an operation goes is based on the defender, it makes operations inertly risky. You might get to a point in an operation where you have to decide if it's worth the gamble of sacrificing your leader or your network for the chance of success.

I actually did consider spamming operations in my balancing. Being victim of a covert operation gives you a modifier that makes other operations against you harder for a while, as your people are more alert. This both stops one empire from spamming operations as easily, but also prevents (or lessens) an entire federation or galaxy from targeting one empire and just drowning them in covert ops (genocidals also have an intrinsic resistance to being infiltrated, for obvious lore reasons).

The different espionage resource system, while interesting, isn't right for stellaris. Instead, I think a priority policy would be interesting. This would give a flat (like -1 or -0.5) malus to any operation targeting the thing in question.

• Leaders: -1 to Leader operations. Our leaders direct and guide our empire. We must take every precaution to protect them.
• Technology: -1 to Tech operations. If we do not take steps to maintain our advantages, we will quickly lose that edge.
• Diplomacy: -1 to diplomatic interference. Allowing our enemies to poison our relationships will soon leave us alone in a hostile universe.
• Population: -1 to population swaying. We have pledged to protect our people from outside threats. We will not betray that promise.
• Prevention: -0.5 to Network construction. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The authoritarian and Egalitarian factions should also have factions demands to protect leaders or populations respectively. Xenophile should want diplomacy protection, Materialists tech protection, and xenophobes prevention. They will like having their interest protected, and depending on what is being focused on instead, potentially be unhappy: egalitarians really don't like your leaders being given disproportionate protection, but would be fine with preventative measures.

One of the potential problems is that Spy Networks can only be lowered by an operation failing. Thinking about this though, that isn't really a problem, as spy networks are only used for operations. Ideally, I would also like something like a listening post be able to be be shut down by active intervention, rather than just being a 10 year timer. I think the way to do this would actually be a special project for a diplomat. In order to start this project though, you would need to be aware of the existence of thing thing in question, which would require either the operation have 90% cover blown when passing, or the edict that reveals ongoing operations.

 

[Narva]

There is no cap on the number of leaders any more. That changed in 2.2, iirc. Now they just cost upkeep (which does scale with empire size).

Huh. That... kind of makes sense, I guess? Idk. The leader system is a mess at the moment anyway.

I actually did consider spamming operations in my balancing. Being victim of a covert operation gives you a modifier that makes other operations against you harder for a while, as your people are more alert. This both stops one empire from spamming operations as easily, but also prevents (or lessens) an entire federation or galaxy from targeting one empire and just drowning them in covert ops (genocidals also have an intrinsic resistance to being infiltrated, for obvious lore reasons).

Good point. My suggestion wouldn't handle dogpiling as well as yours.

The different espionage resource system, while interesting, isn't right for stellaris. Instead, I think a priority policy would be interesting. This would give a flat (like -1 or -0.5) malus to any operation targeting the thing in question.

• Leaders: -1 to Leader operations. Our leaders direct and guide our empire. We must take every precaution to protect them.
• Technology: -1 to Tech operations. If we do not take steps to maintain our advantages, we will quickly lose that edge.
• Diplomacy: -1 to diplomatic interference. Allowing our enemies to poison our relationships will soon leave us alone in a hostile universe.
• Population: -1 to population swaying. We have pledged to protect our people from outside threats. We will not betray that promise.
• Prevention: -0.5 to Network construction. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The authoritarian and Egalitarian factions should also have factions demands to protect leaders or populations respectively. Xenophile should want diplomacy protection, Materialists tech protection, and xenophobes prevention. They will like having their interest protected, and depending on what is being focused on instead, potentially be unhappy: egalitarians really don't like your leaders being given disproportionate protection, but would be fine with preventative measures.

One of the potential problems is that Spy Networks can only be lowered by an operation failing. Thinking about this though, that isn't really a problem, as spy networks are only used for operations. Ideally, I would also like something like a listening post be able to be be shut down by active intervention, rather than just being a 10 year timer. I think the way to do this would actually be a special project for a diplomat. In order to start this project though, you would need to be aware of the existence of thing thing in question, which would require either the operation have 90% cover blown when passing, or the edict that reveals ongoing operations.

I think the key to making espionage defence interesting lies in interactions between spies and Factions. If you can go 'hmm, that Faction's behaving suspiciously', assign a counterspy to investigate, uncover a plot between the Faction and an alien empire, and use it to whack down the Faction, that feels good, for exactly the same reason discovering a CKII character you don't like is plotting something and using that to imprison them feels good. The key to that, in turn, is that there are intermediate stages between the 'attacking' faction's initial action and the successful outcome of that action: they (let's say) bribe the Faction, then the Faction gets up to monkey business, then the monkey business succeeds. In step 2, the defender can, by paying attention and actively responding, throw a spanner in the works, without being straight-up informed that X empire is doing Y operation. They can have choices - just shut it down, or risk letting it carry on to find out who's behind it? Not to mention the interrogate-ransom-kill decisions you mention above. To make more direct empire-to-empire covert ops stuff work well, I would give it that layer of indirection: have the aggressor act indirectly, through entities that are actively engaged in doing stuff within the target empire anyway. Factions, if Factions do that; characters, if they are updated to do stuff. If war is wrestling, espionage should be tennis, with intermediaries like that acting as the ball.

(This is something Stellaris already does, to a certain extent, with the ability to hire Marauders to raid other empires. Being able to place spies within Marauder clans, to keep tabs on who is hiring or has previously hired them to hit who, would be an interesting use of an espionage system.)

 

[littlemikkey]

There's been a lot of talk about adding an espionage system to the game. I also agree that it feels wrong for technologically advanced, spacefaring civilizations to have no way to influence each other covertly. There are many mechanical ways to implement espionage, but instead of argue about which one's better, I'd like to come up with the actions that any good espionage system would allow a player to take. In no particular order, I want to:

• Steal map data (because it makes zero sense that belligerent empires would just share that with you)
• Steal resources and/or ships
• Tap into an active sensor link
• Steal technology (or progress toward a tech)
• Sabotage planetary buildings and/or spaceports
• Sow discontent (reduce happiness among pops)
• Agitate for liberty among conquered/enslaved pops
• Agitate for ethics shifts (probably using the faction system)
• Influence elections
• Plant false information about my empire's fleet positions/strength and/or outpost strength
• Introduce computer viruses that disable or damage enemy ships/outposts
• Assassinate/kidnap enemy leaders
• Recruit/plant a spy loyal to my empire among another empire's leader pool
• Support crime on a planet/empire
• Incite wars between two neighboring empires
• Perform counterespionage against all this

I think that being able to conduct asymmetrical warfare against a superior foe would help ameliorate the doomstack problem. And some of these would even be useful against allies. I've been in situations where I knew this one empire would join our federation if only they weren't such fanatical egalitarians . . . a little covert ethics nudge, and problem solved! And think of the possibilities of planting a spy in a rival's leader pool, then getting that leader elected to rule that empire.

Not all of these things should be easy; in fact, some of them should be really, really hard to pull off--even achievement-worthy. Long-term aspirations can be fun.

What cool, nefarious, devious tricks have I missed here? What would YOU like to be able to do with an espionage system?

I agree to this totally. Then there should be that you can learn, what weapons others have, and their fleet size, but not to make life too easy, the information could be false. So it is up to player, does he belive it or not

 

[Tamwin5]

Huh. That... kind of makes sense, I guess? Idk. The leader system is a mess at the moment anyway.

Good point. My suggestion wouldn't handle dogpiling as well as yours.

I think the key to making espionage defence interesting lies in interactions between spies and Factions. If you can go 'hmm, that Faction's behaving suspiciously', assign a counterspy to investigate, uncover a plot between the Faction and an alien empire, and use it to whack down the Faction, that feels good, for exactly the same reason discovering a CKII character you don't like is plotting something and using that to imprison them feels good. The key to that, in turn, is that there are intermediate stages between the 'attacking' faction's initial action and the successful outcome of that action: they (let's say) bribe the Faction, then the Faction gets up to monkey business, then the monkey business succeeds. In step 2, the defender can, by paying attention and actively responding, throw a spanner in the works, without being straight-up informed that X empire is doing Y operation. They can have choices - just shut it down, or risk letting it carry on to find out who's behind it? Not to mention the interrogate-ransom-kill decisions you mention above. To make more direct empire-to-empire covert ops stuff work well, I would give it that layer of indirection: have the aggressor act indirectly, through entities that are actively engaged in doing stuff within the target empire anyway. Factions, if Factions do that; characters, if they are updated to do stuff. If war is wrestling, espionage should be tennis, with intermediaries like that acting as the ball.

(This is something Stellaris already does, to a certain extent, with the ability to hire Marauders to raid other empires. Being able to place spies within Marauder clans, to keep tabs on who is hiring or has previously hired them to hit who, would be an interesting use of an espionage system.)

Involving Factions would require factions to be expanded significantly. A full Politics update. Similarly, leaders could use an update, where individual leaders have ethics and a happiness/contentment/loyalty meter. That way you can only espionage and recruit unhappy leaders, and leaders would only head a faction who has their ethics.

The way I made counter-espionage interesting is that most of the events, options, and choices are for the defender. Your agents have detected someone attempting to spread materialist ideals on one of your planets. Do you trust in your intelligence agents being competent enough to stop it? Or do you take preventative action that will lower the happiness of your citizens? Should your Agent try to stop the Fallen Empire Assassin? It's a game of bluff and counter bluff, where the attacker deals cards face down and the defender chooses which ones to pay attention to. While I imagine there probably would be events added for both sides, the core base has no RNG at all. The attacker needs to commit to an operation not knowing the reaction of the defender, while the defender must react to an unknown threat.

For interfering with diplomatic negotiations, would the spy be attacking against the Core sector counter-espionage agent? Or against the diplomat running the negotiation? Using espionage to interfere with a diplomatic deal (between two other empires) being done would be available when the defender is neutral or working together to get that deal signed. This interference wouldn't happen as a direct decrease in progress or increase in tension, but rather by firing the events that can happen naturally. When you are messing with a deal you are doing diplomacy with, you would be able to counteract some of the effects of them being hostile: stealing documents they were hiding and such.

With the espionage system, I think that criminal Megacorps would be changed so they need to use covert operations to establish branch offices. They would also be able to use covert operations to increase crime, which would be a nice buff.

 

[Narva]

Involving Factions would require factions to be expanded significantly. A full Politics update. Similarly, leaders could use an update, where individual leaders have ethics and a happiness/contentment/loyalty meter. That way you can only espionage and recruit unhappy leaders, and leaders would only head a faction who has their ethics.

Damn right!

The way I made counter-espionage interesting is that most of the events, options, and choices are for the defender. Your agents have detected someone attempting to spread materialist ideals on one of your planets. Do you trust in your intelligence agents being competent enough to stop it? Or do you take preventative action that will lower the happiness of your citizens? Should your Agent try to stop the Fallen Empire Assassin? It's a game of bluff and counter bluff, where the attacker deals cards face down and the defender chooses which ones to pay attention to. While I imagine there probably would be events added for both sides, the core base has no RNG at all. The attacker needs to commit to an operation not knowing the reaction of the defender, while the defender must react to an unknown threat.

The problem I see with a bluff/counterbluff game is that there's not enough information transfer between the two sides - it can get frustrating because you're shooting in the dark. I think it's like how first contact ought to be - everything you do ought to give you an information payoff that sets up your next dilemma. How that works in detail is another matter.

For interfering with diplomatic negotiations, would the spy be attacking against the Core sector counter-espionage agent? Or against the diplomat running the negotiation? Using espionage to interfere with a diplomatic deal (between two other empires) being done would be available when the defender is neutral or working together to get that deal signed. This interference wouldn't happen as a direct decrease in progress or increase in tension, but rather by firing the events that can happen naturally. When you are messing with a deal you are doing diplomacy with, you would be able to counteract some of the effects of them being hostile: stealing documents they were hiding and such.

Perhaps the venue of the talks would provide the counterintelligence agent - on, let's say, a diplomatic enclave. A place where humans and aliens can work out their differences peacefully. Humans and aliens, wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal... all alone in the night...

In gameplay terms, the venue of ongoing talks might be something that could be bid for or agreed on - so either the side that pays the most Influence for the venue gets to be host, with accompanying benefits, or the sides can agree on a neutral venue, if one is available, to avoid bidding wars over it. Getting a third party to host would also curry favour with them, and being galactically trusted as an honest broker (hosting successful negotiations that don't get underhandedly messed with) could aid an empire's reputation more generally, opening up what you might call a Babylon 5 playstyle, especially if the host could make positive interventions in negotiations in order to reach a position both sides might be happy with. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

With the espionage system, I think that criminal Megacorps would be changed so they need to use covert operations to establish branch offices. They would also be able to use covert operations to increase crime, which would be a nice buff.

Definitely.

 

[daniel060]

Involving Factions would require factions to be expanded significantly. A full Politics update. Similarly, leaders could use an update.

A factions/leaders update sounds like a GREAT idea . . . right after they fix diplomacy and espionage.

 

[daniel060]

I agree to this totally. Then there should be that you can learn, what weapons others have, and their fleet size, but not to make life too easy, the information could be false. So it is up to player, does he belive it or not

Feeding false information to an enemy empire would be a wonderful element to incorporate into counter espionage.

 

[safe-keeper]

In no particular order, I want to:

• Steal technology (or progress toward a tech)

You can already do this. Declare war, destroy ships, pilfer enemy debris.

 

[daniel060]

You can already do this. Declare war, destroy ships, pilfer enemy debris.

Yeah, but I want to do it WITHOUT declaring war and risking my ships. Against, say, an opponent who's stronger than I am. Even if there's a risk of being discovered, a risk is better than the certainty of war in many situations.

 

[Spaceception]

Yeah, but I want to do it WITHOUT declaring war and risking my ships. Against, say, an opponent who's stronger than I am. Even if there's a risk of being discovered, a risk is better than the certainty of war in many situations.

And right now, you can only do that against an FE as a psionic. Being able to do it to other empires, as any empire type would be very nice. But I think it should be deeper than throwing a die, and waiting for the outcome. I'm not sure how I'd do it though.

 

[safe-keeper]

You can already do it against enemies stronger than you. In fact, it's often the only way to survive against crisis fleets. It's also a proven sci-fi trope (defeating the aliens by using their own technology against them), and it fits the established gameplay model of Stellaris.

You also already receive a research bonus from being near more advanced empires, if I'm not mistaken.

The rare event where you steal a tech from the brain of some FE alien is interesting, but I wouldn't want it as a part of regular gameplay.

 

[daniel060]

You can already do it against enemies stronger than you.

Sure, if you enjoy suicidal wars. I personally don't. The idea is to use espionage to give yourself a leg up before the war starts.

And end-game crises are a different ballgame (by design).

 

[Tamwin5]

You can already do this. Declare war, destroy ships, pilfer enemy debris.

That only works for military techs. Having a way to steal other techs would be nice.

 

[Acheron]

What about installing a spy on an enemy ship, you get periodical information on the ships location, even out of sensor range?

 

[Crazy_Monkey]

In my opinion OP is mostly right about things.
What i would include, would be some rl references to stuff, what happened during the cold war. I personally suggest a mechanic, which allows you to recruit spies as leaders and send them into the enemy territory to build up a network.
Gene tailoring should be a requirement ("or just for the lulz send them with cheap masks etc.") and a special project, which needs some society research to genemod or patch up your spy.
Upon arrival he should be able to recruit spies from local criminals and bribed officials. The size of the network should decide, what is possible and how high the chances are to succeed. The spying itself should be a short event chain with different choices and outcomes, some wacky ones included. (I remember a story about a cold war spy, who just walked through the front door, got the secret documents and walked out, or how a friend of a former german chanccelor turned out to be a soviet spy etc.)
To counter a spy you can also use your spy on the planet to build a counter spy network with some events when encountering an enemy spy. It should have some different outcomes, including the enemy or your spy becoming a double agent. And getting information about the enemy and or giving the enemy false information.

 

[safe-keeper]

That only works for military techs. Having a way to steal other techs would be nice.

Fair point. If you ask me, capturing planets should yield a significant tech boost the same way as reverse-engineering salvage, perhaps even with planetary decisions and/or special projects for that planet to reap even more tech benefits. Heck, if you capture a planet with significantly more advanced tech, you could even get a Foundation-esque situation where you've got your hands on all this advanced technology, but you don't understand how it works, so at least until you perform some special project or start to catch up in tech, you might get penalties or even a low chance of buildings that stop working.

Of course, open borders and trade as well as migration treaties/having pops from your species on other planets should also give you some added intel and tech insight if they don't already.

As for event chains, I like that a lot better than the "plant a spy" suggestion. I prefer the idea of spy networks, but... I just had an idea. What about having spy networks, and then instead of the idea of individual spies that you send to other planets, you have a kind of leader of the spy network, who can be assigned to different networks, level up over time, and have various skills like the other characters in the game? A kind of "intelligence agency director" that oversees the intel/espionage you do against, say, one or more empires, or in some geographic area?

I had an idea earlier about a Star Wars-esque event chain where you can sabotage a certain station to make it drop its shields at some specific moment, for example, or steal the plans to some Titan or Citadel to give your ships a significant attack bonus against it, and rare events like that I suppose could add to gameplay. Maybe you could have a kind of "spy mana" that very slowly ticks up, like with gene editing points you slowly accumulate, that you can spend on various interesting and well-written story arcs. With the other power being able to counteract the threat like you can with subterfuge in CK2, of course.

I still think I prefer Hearts of Iron IV's way of handling intel/espionage, except the system is really shallow at the moment, though: your decryption advantage and radar stations give you intel on number of divisions the enemy has in total (the better your intel, the more precise the number will be, like 45-56 instead of 1-98), and what kinds of divisions are in which province.

Edit: what could be just as interesting would be being able to spy on your own empire. Especially if at some point in the future sectors gain more autonomy, but also of course doing things like infiltrating rebel groups on some planet with low stability, or some unhappy faction. I'm re-reading my way through the Harry Potter series, and got the idea that sending a kind of Dolores Umbridge type character to keep tabs on some government or faction or whatever would be big fun, even if it was just a story arc or something and not an actual character.

 

[Tamwin5]

Fair point. If you ask me, capturing planets should yield a significant tech boost the same way as reverse-engineering salvage, perhaps even with planetary decisions and/or special projects for that planet to reap even more tech benefits. Heck, if you capture a planet with significantly more advanced tech, you could even get a Foundation-esque situation where you've got your hands on all this advanced technology, but you don't understand how it works, so at least until you perform some special project or start to catch up in tech, you might get penalties or even a low chance of buildings that stop working.

Of course, open borders and trade as well as migration treaties/having pops from your species on other planets should also give you some added intel and tech insight if they don't already.

As for event chains, I like that a lot better than the "plant a spy" suggestion. I prefer the idea of spy networks, but... I just had an idea. What about having spy networks, and then instead of the idea of individual spies that you send to other planets, you have a kind of leader of the spy network, who can be assigned to different networks, level up over time, and have various skills like the other characters in the game? A kind of "intelligence agency director" that oversees the intel/espionage you do against, say, one or more empires, or in some geographic area?

I had an idea earlier about a Star Wars-esque event chain where you can sabotage a certain station to make it drop its shields at some specific moment, for example, or steal the plans to some Titan or Citadel to give your ships a significant attack bonus against it, and rare events like that I suppose could add to gameplay. Maybe you could have a kind of "spy mana" that very slowly ticks up, like with gene editing points you slowly accumulate, that you can spend on various interesting and well-written story arcs. With the other power being able to counteract the threat like you can with subterfuge in CK2, of course.

I still think I prefer Hearts of Iron IV's way of handling intel/espionage, except the system is really shallow at the moment, though: your decryption advantage and radar stations give you intel on number of divisions the enemy has in total (the better your intel, the more precise the number will be, like 45-56 instead of 1-98), and what kinds of divisions are in which province.

Edit: what could be just as interesting would be being able to spy on your own empire. Especially if at some point in the future sectors gain more autonomy, but also of course doing things like infiltrating rebel groups on some planet with low stability, or some unhappy faction. I'm re-reading my way through the Harry Potter series, and got the idea that sending a kind of Dolores Umbridge type character to keep tabs on some government or faction or whatever would be big fun, even if it was just a story arc or something and not an actual character.

My system of spy networks would require that a new diplomat/spy leader be assigned to them. I don't think I decided on whether it would be one spy position per enemy empire, or one spy position per enemy sector, but I'm liking the second one. If you really want to lean heavily into espionage, you can have multiple agents working simultaneously.

 

[daniel060]

Fair point. If you ask me, capturing planets should yield a significant tech boost the same way as reverse-engineering salvage, perhaps even with planetary decisions and/or special projects for that planet to reap even more tech benefits. Heck, if you capture a planet with significantly more advanced tech, you could even get a Foundation-esque situation where you've got your hands on all this advanced technology, but you don't understand how it works, so at least until you perform some special project or start to catch up in tech, you might get penalties or even a low chance of buildings that stop working.

I like this idea, but would this happen the instant your armies conquer the planet, or only once you take control of it in a peace deal? Or would there just be a timer that would start counting down till a number of months after the occupation began? (Wars, as we all know, can go on for a very long time.) Capturing a planet and holding it till you can close a tech gap would be an interesting strategy.

 

[Tamwin5]

I like this idea, but would this happen the instant your armies conquer the planet, or only once you take control of it in a peace deal? Or would there just be a timer that would start counting down till a number of months after the occupation began? (Wars, as we all know, can go on for a very long time.) Capturing a planet and holding it till you can close a tech gap would be an interesting strategy.

I imagine it would appear as a special project in orbit, requiring you have control of the planet. I think there should be 2 options, one allowing you to get the +20% (or 40% or 60%) bonus on that planet that tech difference would grant, or give you the tech option ad some progress.

 

[Spaceception]

I just got an idea, and skimmed this, but has anyone talked about buying/selling intel about others?

If you don't have the resources or tech to do so, but would like to know more about another Empire (maybe a distant Rival that doesn't share borders, but there's a friendly Empire who does), you could buy certain intel, or hire them to collect it for you for a price.

Similarly, if you have access to this, you could offer to sell it via a mechanic like secretive diplomacy or something like that.

You could also work with other Empires to joint-collect intel before a war, like in the case of a purifier or general jerk to the galaxy.

EDIT And ALSO, you could threaten to sell intel to the galaxy. And you could either call their bluff, or buy it so they don't.