I don't get espionage

[A2ch0n]

you need a counter espionage system, something as simple as stacking envoys ala federation envoys to increase encryption while they are active.

That’s why I proposed the ‘stackable envoys boosts encryption’ method of defence. There’s no whack-a-mole, just if you are getting operations happen against you, switch to defence and put envoys into your encryption. Makes operations less likely to succeed.

This is not a good idea if espionage should have some impact. Especially if a specialization in espionage mean, that you aren't that strong in warfare (most likely you don't even want to). A agressive military player would most likely stack all envoys in counter espionage and become complete immune to espionage actions. That should never be the deal, because warfare already beat diplomacy (you can declare war even if your standing is exceptional).

So espionage should definitely be the counter part to warfare and that makes neccessary that you can't perfektly defend against it if you're a warfare player. I prefer a rock, paper scissors principal here. Warfare -> Diplo -> Espionage -> Warfare. if you do multiple things of that you can be partial good in multiple things, but not perfekt. That would be kinda fair and encuorage different playstyles for different players. Everyone they way he likes.

 

[guiskj]

I would prefer an espionage system with teeth.

There are ways that the devs can combat the problem of the player being ganked by the AI or other players. Here are some ideas:

1. Block the AI from targeting the Player when another AI is already doing so
2. Block an AI from repetitively targeting the player (gather intel operation excluded)
3. Make being in the receiving end of espionage FUN, or at least rewarding. Give the attacked empire a counter-bonus for being the target. This can be anything from a temporary boost to Encryption, some free claims, etc. This way, both Empires get something out of it.
4. Give the player the ability to engage in counterintelligence and disinformation, giving false info back to other empires.

 

[Brael]

It's a waste of time, honestly. Hopefully they're flesh it out more in upcoming patches.

It feels like all they did was take features away and then put it behind a cumbersome UI to reaccess it selectively on specific empires.

Definitely not a fan of the new system.

 

[Echo Candor One]

I have never seen an espionage system "with teeth" in a 4X game that was actually fun t play, because whatever enjoyment I get from damaging the enemy is countered by playing constant whack-a-mole with their spies causing damage in my own empire. It just ends up being a micromanagement hassle. It's impossible to balance that well, or at least I've never seen it done well in another game. So I'm not surprised the devs haven't gone more in that direction here.

IMO, the only espionage that's actually enjoyable in games like this is the passive kind, gathering intel, and that can certainly be improved in Stellaris. It's not as frustrating dealing with enemy agents if all they're doing is gathering intel on your empire.

My friends and I tried a mod that adds some beefed up espionage actions to the game. We ended up quitting to play without the mod because one of the actions was to lower stability and incite a rebellion. There was no defense against this that we could find and it wasn't fun for the player doing it or the player being a victim.

That said, I think the current system has a lot of potential.

Operations that would be worthwhile IMO:

Bribe a leader. If you get a specific leader as an asset, you can see anything they are working on.

Sabotage a base. Change to increased damage buff versus that starbase for X years, or decreased damage dealt for X years. Destroying a building slot is never useful for the attacker.

Steal tech is already very nice, but I'd love a notification about when it's ready to launch again, and make it clearer that assets can give you a tech boost or decrease the enemy tech rate.

Sabotage a fleet. A specific fleet (or X number of ships perhaps?) gets a combat malus for X years. Make it require a military asset.

Beneficial random events from having a spymaster posted. Since we can already find other players' 'cargo ships' and gain influence or minerals from them without them ever realizing it via an anamoly, let similar things happen via the spymaster. Boosts of influence, trade value. or science from events would make it worthwhile compared to increasing or decreasing relations / sitting in the federation / sitting in the galactic community.

More Spy v Spy operations. Let us have a defensive spy and some neat Spy vs Spy events.

 

[SurrealGoblin]

I think a good way of balancing the problem of ai’s spamming espionage actions and making things less fun is to make it so that espionage actions have multiplicative effects calculated after all other modifiers, rather than effects in their own right.
So you could have potentially powerful actions increasing crime/ethics drift/ piracy or promoting rebel groups (if rebel groups ever exist) but the impact would be dependent on how bad the problem already was.
The degree of the effect would accrue over time so that you have time to respond (to things you would need to respond to anyway)
Intel would be useful for determining what makes sense to do.
Special actions (like arm privateers) could be event like thinks that have a chance of happening when the thing in question reaches a certain threshold or they could remain as they are but use e.g the amount of piracy rather than the degree of intel

 

[methegrate]

I have never seen an espionage system "with teeth" in a 4X game that was actually fun t play, because whatever enjoyment I get from damaging the enemy is countered by playing constant whack-a-mole with their spies causing damage in my own empire. It just ends up being a micromanagement hassle. It's impossible to balance that well, or at least I've never seen it done well in another game. So I'm not surprised the devs haven't gone more in that direction here.

IMO, the only espionage that's actually enjoyable in games like this is the passive kind, gathering intel, and that can certainly be improved in Stellaris. It's not as frustrating dealing with enemy agents if all they're doing is gathering intel on your empire.

This, right here. Espionage never, ever works in 4X games for exactly this reason.

Personally, I wish they had emphasized positive effects more than negative ones.

An espionage system that let you boost your own economy, for example, or that helped you make deals with AI empires would have been far easier to build up than the usual bag of dirty tricks system that 4X games always reach for. I've seen a few board games that take that approach, where the espionage-oriented factions get powers like copying special powers from other factions or boosting their own income by a percentage of a targeted player's.

Something like that might work. I target an enemy empire for "Steal Technology" and boost my own research by a percentage of theirs. Or "Industrial Espionage" boosts my own alloy production as I use their trade secrets in my factories. Or "Bribe Leaders" could let me duplicate a civic or ethic bonus for a while. It would give you a way of stealing strength from another player without the infuriating cycle of "Sabotage-Rebuild," "Assassinate-Rehire," "Steal Tech-Ignore."

Although that said, I'm actually here for the intelligence part of espionage. I think the reason that struggles has more to do with the weakness of some of Stellaris' other mechanics.

Knowing the layout of an enemy's defenses should be a big deal, but the game's geography largely pre-defines where you have to fight anyway. It's not like finding their key anchorages or shipyards will let me reach those systems any faster, and knowing that there's a citadel at that chokepoint doesn't change the fact that I have to go through it. Knowing how they've built their ships could be useful, but a balanced fleet is almost always the right choice for any battle anyway. Knowing their diplomatic ties could be essential to geopolitics, but there's no way to interfere with other empires' diplomacy and little to bargain over even if there were.

People have complained elsewhere that Stellaris gives you lots of options but relatively few actual choices. I would argue that's what really undermines the intelligence aspect of espionage. When it comes to other empires, there are few choices beyond war and peace. So you can't use that new information no matter how much of it you get.

 

[Tetranet]

It's unfortunate that when Nemesis was developed the team wasn't daring enough. The sentiment that a given operation might feel really bad when on the receiving end made the current selection too stale and too low impact to matter.

Indeed, having your megastructure sabotaged or a leader assasinated can feel bad but that's the entire point. Otherwise it's completely forgettable and I say this as someone who really likes these indirect approaches as spamming military fleets and conquering gets old fast.

 

[A2ch0n]

Personally, I wish they had emphasized positive effects more than negative ones.

The deal of espionage actions is in first line to block someone else from doing what is normaly done. That should be the main part. It's a kind of "control" playstile where you assure to stay on top because the others can't perform normal (or at least not optimal). The side effect are like you describe, you get some bonuses on top. More tech? Of course! You copy a pattern (and most likely destroy the rest of their work to get a lead). More resources for your empire? Of course! You steal them from your target! Better relations or deals you want? It's called Blackmail (kinda exist with the extort favor operation).

Al those improvements for your empire should exist via espionage, but always in expense of your target. That's the core of espionage and what players that like espionage really want.

The main reason some players don't want a powerful espionage system is because it's seen as a threat to the own preferred playstile. Suddenly warfare (or tech rush or economy rush or whatever) has a counterpart or even some options to stop it if you can't adapt. It should be able to prevent wars even before started, maybe because of a collapse of infrastructure or missing resources. Espionage is a cloak and dagger game and you have to plan ahead and should not get caught. Most of the time it is disrupting against the target and that how it should be!

It's the same with criminal syndicates. Some people (like me) love the idea behind it and that the main part of it is strengthen yourself in expense of your "customers". And some others hate it to the ground.

Stellaris is (and ever was) a game where worlds collide and many players with many different playstiles and preferences exist. And all of those should be represented. It's not about make one mechanik on it's own stronger than any other. The goal should be a equal representation. That include warfare, diplomacy, espionage, economy, science and everything in between. But in case of this topic: A good espionage system (and what makes it good) should be decided by those that want to play it and not by those that don't.

 

[methegrate]

The main reason some players don't want a powerful espionage system is because it's seen as a threat to the own preferred playstile. Suddenly warfare (or tech rush or economy rush or whatever) has a counterpart or even some options to stop it if you can't adapt. It should be able to prevent wars even before started, maybe because of a collapse of infrastructure or missing resources. Espionage is a cloak and dagger game and you have to plan ahead and should not get caught. Most of the time it is disrupting against the target and that how it should be!

Certainly narratively I think you're right that the idea behind espionage is that it attacks or undermines the other empire. And in theory, I absolutely love your RPS idea above of Warfare > Diplomacy > Espionage > Warfare. (Personally I would reverse it. I would have warfare defeated by alliances, which can be undermined by espionage, which can be defeated by a direct assault. But both are great options.)

I think where I would disagree with you is this quoted part.

I'm sure that a few people don't want mechanics that undermine their playstyle, but by and large I don't see that as a major complaint. I think the reason players don't enjoy powerful espionage systems is that they tend to feel like uncontrollable trolling.

Generally speaking, 4x games deal with espionage through an RNG. You have ways to increase or decrease your odds of winning an operation, then you launch it and see if it works. For the person who launches the operation that's lots of fun. You get narratively clever new ways of disrupting other players' strategies.

However the player on the receiving end doesn't participate in any of this. They can set up some passive defenses, but there's no give-and-take when someone launches an espionage mission at you. You just get a periodic pop up window that says something happened.

This is frustrating enough when it's a periodic building sabotage or tech theft. Being on the receiving end of a powerful espionage system, though, is incredibly frustrating. You can watch your entire strategy get blown up because you lost an invisible die roll. It feels more like trolling than strategy gaming.

That's the balance, and no 4X game that I've ever played has managed to strike it. In theory I think you're right that espionage is about asymmetric warfare and attacking the enemy empire. In practice, however, I've never seen a 4X game build a powerful espionage system that doesn't feel like an infuriating "You Lose" button that pops up at random.

Personally, I've always wanted to see the espionage as essentially a "decision maximization" system. I feel like the right goal for espionage should be that it lets an empire make far better decisions, and so achieve much better results, than an empire without good intelligence. Essentially "punching above their weight." You should be able to design and swiftly retrofit a fleet that's tailor-made to counter theirs. You should be able to piggyback off your opponents' advantages.

And as far as offensive operations, I would give espionage operations designed to capitalize on an opponent's mistakes. For example, I would give players a high-cooldown ability to evade the defenses in a single system ("Blind the Sensors") or turn a single FTL inhibitor on its owner. Players should know better than to stack all of their defenses in a single system or put their fleet in a single doomstack, so an espionage system that capitalizes on those mistakes is one that you can plan ahead for. But even that still might not work. Like I said, I've never seen it done successfully.

 

[hart30]

If u want u can search for "meaninful spy operations" in the steam workshop. There i buffed most operations to a point that they can be considered worth it, without being annoying.
For example i made it at least possible to break up a federation and it is has more impact to damage relations between 2 empires.

 

[A2ch0n]

However the player on the receiving end doesn't participate in any of this. They can set up some passive defenses, but there's no give-and-take when someone launches an espionage mission at you.

What do you think should be active defenses? In my player group i'm of course the player with the most extensive use of espionage. And i know, that the other ones would put everything in defense so i can't do anything anymore if possible. Even if this would be at cost of theyr own operations it wouldn't matter to them. The result would be that i never could play the way i liked. And if no rng mechanik would be involved (what i for myself really would like!) it would be the same. Everyone block all operations and i would be forced to play the way they do (in most cases war focused) instead of via versa. And if enough specialization options (like an aditional AP or something) would exist that give me a clear advantage, it would change nothing. It's only more deterministic and you would know long before that you win or not.

The only option here would maybe to bring all defensive options in par with the offensive ones. Meaning you could only be good in defense, if you're strong in offense (most likely because of the intel in the target empire). I'm ok with that, but many players simply want to ignore offensive espionage and it would be wrong to force them.
So i think, the rock, paper, scissors mechanic is maybe the best solution. But all of this is of course theoretical.

You can watch your entire strategy get blown up because you lost an invisible die roll. It feels more like trolling than strategy gaming.

I think it's not trolling if you prepare your actions. Don't forget that most espionage actions (in any szenario) need some time for preparation and you have to plan far ahead and collect as many intel as possible to react in time. If you do so, it's well earned if you get the edge. It's a kind of warfare on it's own, but a subtle one.

turn a single FTL inhibitor on its owner

That would be a fun one! But only if you would either exactly know when an attack is imminent or if multiple operations per empire would be a thing. Anyways a good idea from you.

 

[Tetranet]

Crisis Beacon is currently only available while a crisis is present.


We considered having "sabotage megastructure", but it fell awry of the similar problems as "assassination" - incredibly unpleasant, even if it's just delaying your (already long) constuction.


Keep building up that spy network.

I found the quote where devs state that they felt more serious operations would be too strong. It's a shame, I would have loved the aforementioned in the game.

 

[Aepdneds]

I have never seen an espionage system "with teeth" in a 4X game that was actually fun t play, because whatever enjoyment I get from damaging the enemy is countered by playing constant whack-a-mole with their spies causing damage in my own empire. It just ends up being a micromanagement hassle. It's impossible to balance that well, or at least I've never seen it done well in another game. So I'm not surprised the devs haven't gone more in that direction here.

The one in Imperium Galactica 2 was quiet nice, all your spies are characters with different stats.

Sadly I can't find a good video showing the system, only two short clips about it below, one from a speedrun.

Edit: there are some more scenes in the speedrun

 

[Mastikator]

It's unfortunate that when Nemesis was developed the team wasn't daring enough. The sentiment that a given operation might feel really bad when on the receiving end made the current selection too stale and too low impact to matter.

Indeed, having your megastructure sabotaged or a leader assasinated can feel bad but that's the entire point. Otherwise it's completely forgettable and I say this as someone who really likes these indirect approaches as spamming military fleets and conquering gets old fast.

I think the answer to "it can feel bad" is that you need to have some kind of active defense. Speifically one that isn't just "tech more" or "take this civic in particular". IMO espionage should also be linked to crime and stability, a society with lots of crime or poor stability is easier to infiltrate. Instead its related to sprawl and bureaucracy which seem weird. How are bureaucrats related to espionage?

Having envoys be spy masters was also probably not the most amazing idea ever, it limits you between espionage and diplomacy. These are two non-war activities and should not be in competition. I'd rather have us train spy teams and assign them to defense (system or sector) or offense (empire -> empire sector -> empire system). I'd like to have more non-military type units.

 

[Ch4rybde]

Sabotage a base. Change to increased damage buff versus that starbase for X years, or decreased damage dealt for X years. Destroying a building slot is never useful for the attacker.

The problem with starbase sabotage is that it is too hard to make any use of the malus. Even if it does something (because desactivate temporarly a module is useless), it nearly impossible to have your fleet ariving at the good moment.
I think the best fix here would be to allow the player to decide when he want the starbase to be sabotaged. For exemple if the operation is a full success, it will create an invisible trigger wich will activate as soon your fleet engage the base.
In term of gameplay and immersion it would be fun, imagine someone attack your Citadel when sudenly you have a pop up telling you the defense systems have been sabotaged by a remote bomb or a info virus which was implemented in the base since an unknow amount of time, making your defence work at half of it's current capacity. From the attacker perspective it would add more deep in the war system, allowing him to weaken his target and so limit his fleet losses.
I know star base are currently pretty weak in middle and end game, and so easely overhelm, but if they where boosted a little such mechanic would be very interresing.

 

[Hunnuli]

I have never seen an espionage system "with teeth" in a 4X game that was actually fun t play, because whatever enjoyment I get from damaging the enemy is countered by playing constant whack-a-mole with their spies causing damage in my own empire. It just ends up being a micromanagement hassle. It's impossible to balance that well, or at least I've never seen it done well in another game. So I'm not surprised the devs haven't gone more in that direction here.

IMO, the only espionage that's actually enjoyable in games like this is the passive kind, gathering intel, and that can certainly be improved in Stellaris. It's not as frustrating dealing with enemy agents if all they're doing is gathering intel on your empire.

This is a good point. However, a lot of times the frustration I get from the espionage systems isn't strictly on a per mission problem, but rather that the player can quickly become target numero uno and just get swamped with spy actions as all of the AI's focus all their spy power on you. Which is overwhelming.

In my post I brought up the idea of an operation to fund crime. One on one this might be annoying but it would be easily enough manageable by using enforcers. So the payoff of the envoy and time and resources spent is that the enemy has to dedicate some pops to controlling their crime rather than doing some other job and probably some kind of reward to make it tempting for you to want to be in charge of the crime network. One on one this can be balanced. But what if 30 AI's all target you with a crime fund operation? If the effects are allowed to stack the player would be completely and utterly crushed by the overwhelming numbers. So what should happen is if you try to fund crime on Sol III but someone else is already doing so you should get a pop up saying 'an unknown entity has already deeply infiltrated the criminal element on Sol III, if we wish to exert control over Sol III's crime network we will first have to deal with this entity'. This way the effect never stacks to the heavens and it also introduces the ability for spy empires to do 'unseen battle' with other spy nations for control of that sort of stuff. As for why you want to be in control, the easiest is letting you gain a small percentage of the target world's income per turn. You get to select which income type. This should be appropriation of 'excess' so as to avoid drawing untoward attention(in other words it doesn't decrease that income for the enemy world, it just gives you a small bonus based on that world's income). And for the fund etho drift operation I suggested the reward could be gaining some of the influence that faction generates for the enemy empire. Thus you want to be the one in control and will fight the other spymasters for that position. And since the potential damage is capped you can effecitvely ignore the system and just count the effects as a 'tax' that you can easily take into account for.

 

[Critical Ethics]

With espionage there's stuff that's fun to do but not fun to have done to you. Delaying an opponent's dyson sphere is fun but getting your own sphere chain delayed by AI is not.

Espionage is by its nature often invisible until it goes off, which can make it feel cheesey and cheap and random. If someone sends a bunch of spaceships to blow up your starbase you can understand what it cost them and feel like you could have stopped it if things had gone differently. If the starbase blows up "out of nowhere" then even if there was a bunch of buildup to it that was even more effort than assembling a death fleet, from your perspective it may as well be an RNG event.

Espionage defence can also be very boring. You're spending resources to make less things happen, and since you don't have those resources you have less resources to make other things not happen. Assigning those resources is also pretty boring. If you build up a big fleet or a bunch of starbases to discourage attacks you have a bunch of starbases and fleets to look at and maybe send off to attack some leviathans or neighbours. If you build up your espionage defence usually all you have is a bigger espionage defence.

Despite all of this I really like espionage. One "easy" way to mitigate a lot of problems is to have different rules for AI vs AI, AI vs Player, Player vs AI, and Player vs Player. Player vs AI can include stuff like delaying megastructures, sabotaging research, outright stealing resources etc, because you can't annoy the AI. AI vs Player needs to be stuff that's unobtrusive when spammed, like copying techs or grabbing intel, or fun to be on the receiving end of, like event chains you can assign counter-spies to or stuff that interacts with fun mechanics, or artificially limited from being spammed vs a player. Player vs Player is fiddly and AI vs AI can be whatever who cares.

Another good tweak is greater visibility of espionage networks and operations. Major operations that target a player could generate a counter-operation window you can assign an envoy to with different results depending on your relative espionage strengths. There could be a mechanism (intel related? Assigning envoys to defence?) to determine who currently has networks in your empire without hugely boosting your encryption, so rather than random stuff happens vs nothing happens, instead you have a mixed bag of stuff happens apparently randomly because you invested nothing in defence vs you can see who is targeting you but can do nothing about it (apart from go to war) vs you can see operations coming but maybe not from who and can choose how to mitigate them vs stuff just doesn't happen because your entire empire is an information black hole.

 

[grommile]

In term of gameplay and immersion it would be fun, imagine someone attack your Citadel when sudenly you have a pop up telling you the defense systems have been sabotaged by a remote bomb or a info virus which was implemented in the base since an unknow amount of time,

"Oh yet another game designer who doesn't understand that giving the AI a magic 'make the player eat s***' button isn't fun."

And the nature of covert sabotage is that it is indistinguishable, for the victim, from a magic 'make the player eat s***' button.

 

[methegrate]

What do you think should be active defenses? In my player group i'm of course the player with the most extensive use of espionage. And i know, that the other ones would put everything in defense so i can't do anything anymore if possible. Even if this would be at cost of theyr own operations it wouldn't matter to them. The result would be that i never could play the way i liked. And if no rng mechanik would be involved (what i for myself really would like!) it would be the same. Everyone block all operations and i would be forced to play the way they do (in most cases war focused) instead of via versa. And if enough specialization options (like an aditional AP or something) would exist that give me a clear advantage, it would change nothing. It's only more deterministic and you would know long before that you win or not.

The only option here would maybe to bring all defensive options in par with the offensive ones. Meaning you could only be good in defense, if you're strong in offense (most likely because of the intel in the target empire). I'm ok with that, but many players simply want to ignore offensive espionage and it would be wrong to force them.
So i think, the rock, paper, scissors mechanic is maybe the best solution. But all of this is of course theoretical.


I think it's not trolling if you prepare your actions. Don't forget that most espionage actions (in any szenario) need some time for preparation and you have to plan far ahead and collect as many intel as possible to react in time. If you do so, it's well earned if you get the edge. It's a kind of warfare on it's own, but a subtle one.


That would be a fun one! But only if you would either exactly know when an attack is imminent or if multiple operations per empire would be a thing. Anyways a good idea from you.

I think @Critical Ethics ethics put it better than I did. I definitely agree that from the attacker's point of view it isn't random trolling. You did all that preparation, allocated all the resources, launched all the early actions, etc. But the defender doesn't see any of that. As s/he put it very well, from the pov of the defender espionage is "invisible until it goes off." You see maybe one or two early actions, then a big thing suddenly detonates in the middle of your game.

As (again) @Critical Ethics ethics put it well, defending against espionage is also entirely passive. You're just dedicating resources to preventing things from happening. And even there the weighted-RNG mechanic of espionage is out of context with the rest of a strategy game. There's nothing wrong with an edge of randomness to a game like Stellaris (it can be essential). But losing a big box strategy game because you lost a bet you didn't even make is jarring.

On top of all that the attacker always gets an advantage in espionage. Since this is a weighted RNG, if you launch enough missions eventually one of them will succeed. And for the attacker a failed espionage mission has no consequences beyond a few lost resources. So there's no reason an attacker can't launch one invisible attack after another until one of them finally succeeds through sheer random chance.

Ultimately I think this is why I'm so skeptical of strong espionage operations in 4X games. They're a lot of fun for the player using them, but that player is the only one who gets much gameplay out of the mechanic. By contrast when I defend against an invasion, or even lose one, it's interactive. I fight the attacking enemy and can try to fight the war better than they do in order to win. When I defend against espionage, I all I get is a pop up saying that I just lost a game I didn't even know I was playing. When I prepare for a warfare, I get game pieces I can move, strategize around, build in my empire, and even use in other contexts. Preparing for espionage is more like a tax. Those resources simply disappear without creating any new options or gameplay.

I'm not sure how to fix that. My concern is that active espionage defense would essentially grind the game to a halt. If you have to drop everything else you're doing every time someone wants to launch a mission against you it would get tedious, plus that would kind of defeat the whole "covert" part of espionage.

 

[methegrate]

Add thought... If I were building espionage (or an espionage mod) I think my overall philosophy would be "seizing opportunities," not "dirty tricks." I think I would focus on three areas:

- Intelligence: Build the game mechanics so that players can use better information to make better decisions, then use espionage to give them that information.

For example, making it possible to give someone a better offer than their current trade deals so that you can steal commercial/research/defensive pacts from other empires. Or making movement somewhat easier so that you can capitalize on learning the hidden locations of their shipyards, trade ports and anchorages.

Or, right now a balanced fleet generally beats all others. Tweak ships so that there really is no such thing as a balanced fleet, so that by learning the enemy's ship schematics I can crush them with a fleet half their size.

- Attacker benefits. Strategically, getting a benefit is the same as causing equivalent amount of harm without the trolling feel.

Let me siphon trade, research and production so that my espionage empire grows and thrives by stealing the work of others. Instead of sabotaging things, give me an entire set of operations that let me target specific planets and star bases for infiltration, boosting my income by X% of the target's production. Co-Opt Labs might give me a percentage of a planet's research, while Cut A Deal might give me a percentage of all trade passing through a starbase.

This could even add room for some more sophisticated defense gameplay. Players could get leaders that are better at counterintelligence, or some planetary decisions on the subject, so they can decide which parts of their empire make for the most tempting targets.

- Mistakes. Build the few negative operations around capitalizing on an opponent's mistakes, so that espionage attacks still connect with strategic decisions.

I'd keep some offensive-style operations, but I would design them around taking advantage of an opponent's mistakes or giving already-failing systems a nudge over the edge. The ideal operation would be largely meaningless in most contexts, but potentially critical when used exactly right.

For example, like we mentioned above, maybe an operation that lets you flip on an enemy's FTL inhibitor for 10 critical days. Or another that lets you shave 5 points off a planet's stability. These are meaningless on their own, but if I make the mistake of stacking all my ships in one system or letting a planet get too close to rebellion these operations could be devastating.

As the attacker it would give you a powerful tool, because everybody makes mistakes. The key is just being patient and observant enough to seize the opportunity when it arises (which is where good intelligence comes in). As the defender, I would still be able to see the strategic decisions I made which left me vulnerable to that attack.

Idk... I think that's where I would take it, personally. But again, this is all just speculation. If it was that easy to do I suspect someone would have already done this right in at least one 4X game somewhere.