More Espionage Options

from Sins Forums

Hi, Loving the Envoys. Thou I wish they could take the planet with their Undermine ability :)

I have thought about other Espionage options. Since Undermine is really only effective if you spam the cruisers, some different targeted abilities that a single cruiser can perform would be good.

Work Visas: Use at enemy planets with good populations, Yous tart handing out Work Visas to the local population. This will cause the planet population to drop and cause them to resettle on a planet in your empire that has space for more population!

Union Negotiations: This ability allows your Envoy to become a mediary between the faction and local union of space miners. This willc ause severe reduction in Metal/Crystal production at this planet! (Very evil if they only have like 1 Ice planet for example and you reduce their production there)

Trade Tarrifs: Using your Diplomatic influence, you cause the local government to increase fees on trade ships passing the sector. This results in signifficant drop of tradeport revenue in the target gravwell!

Also to note, the "Skilled Diplomats" Is still in Civic tree, will it be moved to the Diplomavy Tree?

8,016 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

good ideas, let me add:

classical sabotage: has a chance to kill enemy ships or structures. should come at a price, eg. resource price, drop of relations, temp. loss of immunity, whatever.

rebellion: changes planet ownership. only works when allegiance is below 10 or even 5 or at zero. it means you can weaken it with culture/ envoys and then have them take the whole thing over.

sabotage defenses: lowers planet health ie. infrastructure.

also, I thought about using envoys as counter intelligence also. sort of like researching the option and the get the ability to expel  enemy envoys (only works in own territory, units are not killed, but forced out/automatically jumped back), perhaps also at a price as above. alternatively, they could locally give you the ability to lift immunity.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

sabotage: all ships created at this planet have a slower passive regeneration rate, or some other nerf.

corruption: planetary improvements cost so and so more, or can be removed. can you imagine if you could spend some credits to erase someones population upgrades without them knowing. abruptly they are losing money without even knowing!

These arent that great, but im bored at work.

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

We have a couple of neat ideas in mind for additional abilities along these lines. Stay tuned over the next few weeks for more info.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Awesome!

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Id also like to add that we need some race specific diplomacy and espionage options. As of now they are all the same. Im assuming this will change

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

We'll be adding more race specific diplomacy tech following weeks.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

What if the TEC Envoy ship had a expanded version of armitice that stopped all hostility if one of your wells comes under attack? I mean that what diplomats do they stop conflicts. The cool down time would be enormous something like fifteen minutes. Also the unit cost would be huge so each faction could have no more than two per team.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

The counter-envoy option suggested by Shadowhal seems useful, as does the option to lower planet health because of spying on defences.  Envoys were more often a means of promoting trade with their hosts, rather than suppressing trade with other empires... perhaps the ships could also have some element of a trade port? 

What changes to trade have been made?  Options like the game being faster, the AI having a larger scale of production cheat and the pirates having more ships seem far inferior to better maps, better AI tactics and pirates more oriented to stealth and commerce raiding? 

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

indeed, diplomatic envoys and sabotage crews are just not the same. hm, I would have an idea for this also. maybe there could be two separate ships, one for the peaceful things like embassies in this case and one for the nastier stuff. that second one will have to be either cloaked or disguised of course. hw: cataclysms mimic was a nice idea in that respect, though it might be a bit hard to fool a good player with it. still, though, appearing in the disguise of your enemy's ally as some trade ships or scouts sounds like fun.

another idea maybe for peaceful ai use: an exchange programm that enables members of the species to work and live in the other's territory. gives boost to culture rate ( gameplaywise I'd prefer max. allegiance, but you can hardly justify than with any logic) or research or sth. needs to be refreshed every 20 minutes.

embargo (thought that sort of overlaps with the sova's ability): it could slower military research. think of today's UN embargo vs. Iran which does not exactly make it easier for them to research their stuff. or it could lower construction rates, incraese cost, ... but again, pretty similar to sova stuff.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

I wouldn't mind if the envoy cruser had some kind of function similar to the frigate (planet destroyer) ships.

Instead of destroying the planet infrastructure and removing the population, the population and "before-player controled" infrastructure becomes yours.

(Instead of the population being totally destroyed and the "tax" income base gone, the tax base/population gradually shifts to yours so that you are getting paid until the enemy "tax base population" goes to 0, then you have 100% control of the planet). You wouldn't have to colognise or upgrade since the population and infrastructre built by the previous player are already there.