So I've been thinking about espionage in Stellaris for a while, and I thought I'd share some of the ideas I'd dreamt up about it. I'm aware this isn't going to be exactly a 'new' topic, but I think some of my ideas are. I'll end up being long-winded as I try to explain my ideas, so consider yourself warned.
So, first off, it's always seemed to me that a lack of espionage in the game was a glaring omission. Not because I'm some spy/ninja fanboy, but instead because it's almost in the game the already! I'm talking about overthrowing non space-faring civilizations via Covert Infiltration through an observation post. If you can do something like that to a pre-FTL species, why isn't something similar possible for FTL species? Just makes sense you should be able to, no?
So firstly, Physical Spying. This is the most basic starting point I could think of, and it would all start with a tech like "Covert Stellar Mechanics" or whatever flashy name grabs you. This tech would open up access to a special covert ship type separate from the others. This is explained by the ship requiring an extensive suite of sensors coupled with light and radar refraction systems and an advanced heat-sink system. This makes the ship effectively 'cloaked' and allows it to ignore closed borders, but prevents it from using any weapons and only limited shielding. Cloaked warfleets are not deemed feasible because stealth systems require too much space and power to also fit warfare systems. In future tech, an advanced system will be available that allows 'gravitic masking', until then, empires using gravitic sensors can still see your ships (though you may not know that).
A secondary tech for physical spying is also researchable, and it would give access to Spy Satellites. These would be deployable stealth devices that work similar to an observation post, but don't require you to deploy them around any specific planets (unnecessary risk of exposure, after all), just in the star system itself. Spy satellites would collect basic information about the species, rough data on detected components of ship designs, and very limited data on government. But most importantly, it would give you (over time) a comprehensive profile on what the aliens look, move, and act like via intercepted transmissions and entertainment broadcasts. After x years, you'd have enough data on the aliens to move on to the next phase of espionage...
Social Spying. After enough physical spying has been successfully done, it's now possible to alter a brave volunteer (or obedient slave) physically to resemble the alien species and begin infiltration. A lot of factors would go into this, such as how deep into enemy territory are you attempting to plant your operative. An agent on a frontier planet would actually have a higher risk of detection once planted, since the pops out here are likely to be most on edge with alien occurrences and on the look out for something odd, but a lower risk of detection during actual insertion. Closer to core worlds or the home world, the opposite applies; much harder to plant the agent, but once planted they are much less likely to get noticed, because people aren't as worried about aliens just appearing. Also, planet population would play a roll in success. The more populated it is, the easier it is to blend in with everyone else. Lower population = easier to detect. The presence of a spy device (ship or sat) in the system would greatly reduce detection risk as well, with the reduction scaling based on how long that system has been being spied on.
Over time, you'll learn a lot more about their society, eventually learning up-to-date info on their government ethnics/authority/civics, details on foreign relations, etc. In addition, the agent will slowly build of a complete biological profile over time. If/Once completed, it will allow the preparation of Advanced Spies, persons modified biologically to be a near perfect infiltrator of the target race. This will allow them to do the next phase in espionage...
Empire Espionage. This is where the more influential aspects of espionage occur. At this stage, you can have agents attempt to acquire technology from alien empires, divert energy resources, influence internal factions, incite riots (provided happiness and other conditions are met), political disruption (influence votes, at higher levels even get an agent elected as leader (I'd leave it up to the devs what happens at that point for balancing sake)), terrorize the population (reduction to happiness that grows severe over enough time), and engage in acts of sabotage (ships in orbit, ships under construction, planetary buildings, space ports/stations/defensive platforms, and in extremes, full planetary contamination via radioactive/bio-warfare). There could also be an overall spy information level for each empire, perhaps, and once your spy level is at a sufficient level (say... 70% of the max), you gain a complete view of their territory (not an active view, however. That would only be available at 100%).
So that's it for the actual spying, but I'd be lax if I didn't have at least a few ideas on how to combat it. And I do. First is the simplest part: Detection. This is done early on in the physical spying stage by either having sufficiently advanced tech, or as a matter of chance based on multiple variables (like how deep inside the enemy empire the spy ship/satellite is, how much (if any) counter espionage the empire is engaged in, any spying oriented civics/traits, etc). The best way to improve detection from a defensive viewpoint is via Counter-Espionage. This would be a very early tech learned or a default tech everyone starts with. It could be used domestically as a means of trying to control internal factions and sweep for dissenters, with an escalating chance of detecting spy efforts from hostile empires based on how long you've been doing counter-espionage efforts on your planet. The more planets doing it in a system, the more likely spy devices in the system will be found. This could be something as simple as a planetary edict, in fact.
But upon detection, it seems fair to give the empire/player under attack a chance to have a little fun with espionage, too. So once you've detected a foreign empire spying on you, you get two choices: Misinformation and Exposure. The exposure route would be pretty simple and straightforward. You seize the offending item (spy ship/satellite/personnel) and confront the offender. There is a severe diplomatic penalty between the two races and a modifier towards other races as well (the target empire's allies will dislike you, their enemies will like you, and others will react based on how they operate, such as democracies will frown on it while dictatorships would approve of it, etc). You're given the option to return what was seized or keep it, for a further impact on your relationship. Or, you will have the chance to reverse-engineer any devices seized, or study the offending race if you seized an agent (the agent won't live through the interoga-, I mean study, however). And if all that still just wasn't enough, you're able to declare war with no diplomatic penalties with any of the un-involved empires.
Misinformation, on the hand, will give you a few options to play with your would-be spying neighbors. Firstly, it will allow you to mislead their spies on information like fleet strength and tech levels. You can use this both ways. Misinform them that you have giant death armada hiding in a nebula and that you've developed the devastating wave-motion gun for your ships, and make your opponent think you're too powerful to mess with. Or do the opposite, misinform them that you have a tiny half-dead fleet limping through the stars, armed only spitwads and obscene gestures, and trick them into launching an attack that will allow you to ravage their fleet, all without being the warmonger yourself (and maybe teach them a lesson along the way). It will also allow you to give misinformation about your government, civics, leaders, biology, etc., making all their future spying attempts all but certain to fail, or simply to trick them into thinking they're dealing with pacifists when you're actually a military junta.
For defending advanced levels of spy infiltration, there would be some increasing options available with their own pros and cons. Edicts or civics that infringe on personal freedoms for the sake of spy hunting being the most common (aka lower happiness, higher spy detection). Personally, I somewhat like the idea of your empire shifting from a democratic one to a more dictatorial one, simply because of a nasty encounter with a spying race. But, for people that don't like that idea, there would also be some very expensive to produce and maintain counter-espionage specialists that you can 'build' in place army units. These units would be worthless in army combat (aka a 'wasted' army slot), but provide a powerful counter-espionage bonus for that planet while they remain. But they should be extremely expensive to maintain and cause a penalty to happiness on that planet, both to discourage players from mass-producing them, but also from a RP perspective as actively hunting for foreign spies that are biologically altered to better fit in is an expensive and invasive business.
I realize this already presumes a lot on the game end of things. A lot would need to be reworked to make a number of these ideas even feasible, such as changing how much info is just known to you about other races, tweaking how much you know based on relationships (closed borders w/ bad relations means you probably don't even know basic details of their government, for example), borders/zone of control, along with a lot of tech tweaks and whatnot, and I'm not a programmer so I don't know how practical of any of my ideas here actually are. But, that's the bulk of what I thought espionage could work like and how it could be fun, useful, and applied in a semi-practical and semi-realistic way.
TL;DR? Spying could be fun! Yaaaay!
So, first off, it's always seemed to me that a lack of espionage in the game was a glaring omission. Not because I'm some spy/ninja fanboy, but instead because it's almost in the game the already! I'm talking about overthrowing non space-faring civilizations via Covert Infiltration through an observation post. If you can do something like that to a pre-FTL species, why isn't something similar possible for FTL species? Just makes sense you should be able to, no?
So firstly, Physical Spying. This is the most basic starting point I could think of, and it would all start with a tech like "Covert Stellar Mechanics" or whatever flashy name grabs you. This tech would open up access to a special covert ship type separate from the others. This is explained by the ship requiring an extensive suite of sensors coupled with light and radar refraction systems and an advanced heat-sink system. This makes the ship effectively 'cloaked' and allows it to ignore closed borders, but prevents it from using any weapons and only limited shielding. Cloaked warfleets are not deemed feasible because stealth systems require too much space and power to also fit warfare systems. In future tech, an advanced system will be available that allows 'gravitic masking', until then, empires using gravitic sensors can still see your ships (though you may not know that).
A secondary tech for physical spying is also researchable, and it would give access to Spy Satellites. These would be deployable stealth devices that work similar to an observation post, but don't require you to deploy them around any specific planets (unnecessary risk of exposure, after all), just in the star system itself. Spy satellites would collect basic information about the species, rough data on detected components of ship designs, and very limited data on government. But most importantly, it would give you (over time) a comprehensive profile on what the aliens look, move, and act like via intercepted transmissions and entertainment broadcasts. After x years, you'd have enough data on the aliens to move on to the next phase of espionage...
Social Spying. After enough physical spying has been successfully done, it's now possible to alter a brave volunteer (or obedient slave) physically to resemble the alien species and begin infiltration. A lot of factors would go into this, such as how deep into enemy territory are you attempting to plant your operative. An agent on a frontier planet would actually have a higher risk of detection once planted, since the pops out here are likely to be most on edge with alien occurrences and on the look out for something odd, but a lower risk of detection during actual insertion. Closer to core worlds or the home world, the opposite applies; much harder to plant the agent, but once planted they are much less likely to get noticed, because people aren't as worried about aliens just appearing. Also, planet population would play a roll in success. The more populated it is, the easier it is to blend in with everyone else. Lower population = easier to detect. The presence of a spy device (ship or sat) in the system would greatly reduce detection risk as well, with the reduction scaling based on how long that system has been being spied on.
Over time, you'll learn a lot more about their society, eventually learning up-to-date info on their government ethnics/authority/civics, details on foreign relations, etc. In addition, the agent will slowly build of a complete biological profile over time. If/Once completed, it will allow the preparation of Advanced Spies, persons modified biologically to be a near perfect infiltrator of the target race. This will allow them to do the next phase in espionage...
Empire Espionage. This is where the more influential aspects of espionage occur. At this stage, you can have agents attempt to acquire technology from alien empires, divert energy resources, influence internal factions, incite riots (provided happiness and other conditions are met), political disruption (influence votes, at higher levels even get an agent elected as leader (I'd leave it up to the devs what happens at that point for balancing sake)), terrorize the population (reduction to happiness that grows severe over enough time), and engage in acts of sabotage (ships in orbit, ships under construction, planetary buildings, space ports/stations/defensive platforms, and in extremes, full planetary contamination via radioactive/bio-warfare). There could also be an overall spy information level for each empire, perhaps, and once your spy level is at a sufficient level (say... 70% of the max), you gain a complete view of their territory (not an active view, however. That would only be available at 100%).
So that's it for the actual spying, but I'd be lax if I didn't have at least a few ideas on how to combat it. And I do. First is the simplest part: Detection. This is done early on in the physical spying stage by either having sufficiently advanced tech, or as a matter of chance based on multiple variables (like how deep inside the enemy empire the spy ship/satellite is, how much (if any) counter espionage the empire is engaged in, any spying oriented civics/traits, etc). The best way to improve detection from a defensive viewpoint is via Counter-Espionage. This would be a very early tech learned or a default tech everyone starts with. It could be used domestically as a means of trying to control internal factions and sweep for dissenters, with an escalating chance of detecting spy efforts from hostile empires based on how long you've been doing counter-espionage efforts on your planet. The more planets doing it in a system, the more likely spy devices in the system will be found. This could be something as simple as a planetary edict, in fact.
But upon detection, it seems fair to give the empire/player under attack a chance to have a little fun with espionage, too. So once you've detected a foreign empire spying on you, you get two choices: Misinformation and Exposure. The exposure route would be pretty simple and straightforward. You seize the offending item (spy ship/satellite/personnel) and confront the offender. There is a severe diplomatic penalty between the two races and a modifier towards other races as well (the target empire's allies will dislike you, their enemies will like you, and others will react based on how they operate, such as democracies will frown on it while dictatorships would approve of it, etc). You're given the option to return what was seized or keep it, for a further impact on your relationship. Or, you will have the chance to reverse-engineer any devices seized, or study the offending race if you seized an agent (the agent won't live through the interoga-, I mean study, however). And if all that still just wasn't enough, you're able to declare war with no diplomatic penalties with any of the un-involved empires.
Misinformation, on the hand, will give you a few options to play with your would-be spying neighbors. Firstly, it will allow you to mislead their spies on information like fleet strength and tech levels. You can use this both ways. Misinform them that you have giant death armada hiding in a nebula and that you've developed the devastating wave-motion gun for your ships, and make your opponent think you're too powerful to mess with. Or do the opposite, misinform them that you have a tiny half-dead fleet limping through the stars, armed only spitwads and obscene gestures, and trick them into launching an attack that will allow you to ravage their fleet, all without being the warmonger yourself (and maybe teach them a lesson along the way). It will also allow you to give misinformation about your government, civics, leaders, biology, etc., making all their future spying attempts all but certain to fail, or simply to trick them into thinking they're dealing with pacifists when you're actually a military junta.
For defending advanced levels of spy infiltration, there would be some increasing options available with their own pros and cons. Edicts or civics that infringe on personal freedoms for the sake of spy hunting being the most common (aka lower happiness, higher spy detection). Personally, I somewhat like the idea of your empire shifting from a democratic one to a more dictatorial one, simply because of a nasty encounter with a spying race. But, for people that don't like that idea, there would also be some very expensive to produce and maintain counter-espionage specialists that you can 'build' in place army units. These units would be worthless in army combat (aka a 'wasted' army slot), but provide a powerful counter-espionage bonus for that planet while they remain. But they should be extremely expensive to maintain and cause a penalty to happiness on that planet, both to discourage players from mass-producing them, but also from a RP perspective as actively hunting for foreign spies that are biologically altered to better fit in is an expensive and invasive business.
I realize this already presumes a lot on the game end of things. A lot would need to be reworked to make a number of these ideas even feasible, such as changing how much info is just known to you about other races, tweaking how much you know based on relationships (closed borders w/ bad relations means you probably don't even know basic details of their government, for example), borders/zone of control, along with a lot of tech tweaks and whatnot, and I'm not a programmer so I don't know how practical of any of my ideas here actually are. But, that's the bulk of what I thought espionage could work like and how it could be fun, useful, and applied in a semi-practical and semi-realistic way.
TL;DR? Spying could be fun! Yaaaay!
Last edited:
