Active vs. passive spying

...and hidden spies

Lots of great ideas being tossed around here about what the spying system should be. Here's my amalgam of them, with a few new ideas tossed in: Spies would have two settings, active and passive. Second, passive spies should be invisible until caught.

"Active" spies:
- When on other civ's planets, they behave like spies currently do, disabling or (preferably) diminishing the output of a building. If put on a planetary capital, they actively sow discontent, lowering morale and increasing your influence. Active spies are fully visible.
- When on your own planets, they behave as spies currently do, neutralizing agents.

"Passive" spies:
- When on other civ's planets, they simply spy. That means collecting intel and possibly stealing techs. The level of intel, as well as the likelihood of stealing techs, increases based on the number of passive spies acting against a civ and how long they've been there. The catch: passive spies are invisible to the civ that's being spied upon, unless they use passive spies to catch them.
- When on your own planets, they seek out other civ's passive spies. They're like your secret police. The more passive spies you place, the greater the liklihood of catching and neutralizing other civ's passive spies.

Is this possible within the current framework of DA? I don't know. Still, I'd like to hear what others think.



5,143 views 5 replies
Reply #1 Top
I like general categories: no micro-management, while it leaves choice.

Possibilities:
Spy / Counter-spy
Active / Passive
Clarify your stuff / Mess up theirs (false info, infiltrate...)
Low intensity / High intensity (violent, etc.)




Messing info can be as the Soviets faking advanced weaponry, feeding bad data or making it fuzzy.

Tsarist Russia is an examplary case of what spies were about. The top master spy had infiltrated insurrectionist, and they had infiltrated him. They did damage to their own camps for calculated advantages (false hints, info, delation, whattever), no know knew who was for who. Well... the tsar didn't give the guy his promotion and got trouble out of no-where. It seems that the spying had destabilized central power like this, and it couldn't get more messed up with this conspirational mess. Seems like the rebels got a point, even if the fuzziness made impossible to calculate how and where from.

Such is the value of clarifying your own info, or messing up theirs.






Reply #2 Top
FortyTwo, its rather possible really. The active spy portion is similar to the current system really. Leaving the passive aspect to be developed.

Not a bad idea. You should check out the other espionage threads, theres quite a few of them. What we really need is a dang sticky where they can all live in peace and harmony...with backstabbing!



And FuzzyMatrix...huh?
The top master spy had infiltrated insurrectionist, and they had infiltrated him.


Sounds rather messy.
Reply #3 Top
I would very much like to see something like FortyTwo's suggestion, or at least some other way to use spies to get similar intel to DL without needing to use so many of those expensive units.
Reply #4 Top
I would like spying go to more "general" direction too. Dano13 had a good system idea in this Thread

Worth reading in my mind.
Reply #5 Top
I think this is a really good idea, and could work really well along with Dano13's ideas.