Which techs are eligible to be stolen with "Steal Military Blueprints"

[Sbrubbles]

I was messing around with using spies as France (though this applies to any country) to see if I could reliably steal the tank tech from the germans that they research with the 2 year ahead bonus. My logic was that with spy planes and infiltration I had enough intel to see every tech they had and researched everything they had BUT the tank by the time the operation was done.

The issue is that after I launched the operation, I no longer had enough intel to see their research, so I didn't see the AI start research on some random support company tech. To my surprise, I got the tank anyway, and I loaded the save on the day before the operation completed a couple of time and noticed I always got the tank, never the support company.

My question is, are you unable to steal support company tech? Or maybe there some priority on which tech is stolen (aka, it's not random)?

 

[el nora]

You can steal only equipment techs or upgrade techs that you have the prerequisites for. So even if you didnt even have great war tanks, you could still steal medium tanks from Germany as that is an equipment tech. But in order to steal engineers 2 you must first have engineers 1, as that is an upgrade. If the randomly selected tech to steal is an upgrade that you do not have the prerequisites for, you will instead be given a +300% research speed boost in one of its categories in order to catch up.

There is increased weight to steal equipment. There is increased weight to steal more technologically advanced tech. Try it out. Give Germany a smattering of techs. You will get ahead of time equipment much more often than a simple uniform distribution would suggest that you should.

 

[Sbrubbles]

You can steal only equipment techs or upgrade techs that you have the prerequisites for. So even if you didnt even have great war tanks, you could still steal medium tanks from Germany as that is an equipment tech. But in order to steal engineers 2 you must first have engineers 1, as that is an upgrade. If the randomly selected tech to steal is an upgrade that you do not have the prerequisites for, you will instead be given a +300% research speed boost in one of its categories in order to catch up.

There is increased weight to steal equipment. There is increased weight to steal more technologically advanced tech. Try it out. Give Germany a smattering of techs. You will get ahead of time equipment much more often than a simple uniform distribution would suggest that you should.

Good suggestion. I figured out that my "reloading the save the day before" was leading me to some incorrect conclusions because it seems that which tech is stolen isn't decided in the day that the operation ends but out of some calculation based on which techs the other country has. In other words, even in a world where there are many techs available to be stolen, all of the same type, none of them ahead of time, if you reload the save the day before you'll always get the same one, BUT if you go to the target country and research a single tech, the game then rerolls which tech will be stolen. Testing with this in mind I found that indeed I was no longer getting the tank every time. I was getting the tank a reasonable ammount of times, but I'm too lazy to get a proper statistical sample.

I guess my conclusion is that reliably stealing 1941 medium tanks from germany right after they get it is a no-go. Maybe you could do it in MP with another player having spies in germany to constantly tell you which techs are being researched in the 200-odd days after you start the operation, so that you're guaranteed that the tank is the only missing tech. That seems like a lot of work though.

 

[Casko]

From what I've figured out on stealing tech.

when it comes to armor tech, the espionage prioritizes armored cars above else, if they are researched, or you lack the Interwar armored cars tech, after which it tends to focus most on Medium tanks. Though this might be because of the fact that light and heavy tank techs are limited in research options compared to medium tanks in vanilla.
for industry its mostly balanced, however if available, the refinery techs are prioritized slightly above others.
I've personally never found much use for Aviation tech stealing so I have no experience on them.
For navy tech, the game can more often give you a research boost to 1940 subs compared to anything else. and the stolen tech is only for hulls as far as I can see.