Spies are overnerfed

[Voker57]

Since the change to spies efficiency they have been made mostly useless. At best you can achieve rough knowledge of enemy troop locations. This does not work well, as game lacks automatic ways of focusing the recon.

In multiplayer, it is critical to know where enemy SAMs, planes, and other long range weapons are. Now, without effective spies, this can be achieved only by tedious probing with recon planes every turn. This is not good gameplay and it's not possible to search everything, so this leads to random strikes and movements.

Unless better spying system is implemented, it should be reasonably possible to achieve 100 hex recon in every hex with spies only, to see every enemy unit. It is already bad enough that using tricks like attaching SAMs to other units it is possible to sometimes hide them from recon.

Additional recon will still be useful because it improves your odds in battles.

[LarkitsLaxen]

I'm just a lone voice, but I like the spy nerf! The omniscience we had before made it too difficult to pull of a surprise attack.

However, I do agree with the SAMs as my air recon tends to explode before they manage to even inform me which direction the SAMs are coming from

[Starfry]

So build recon planes and send them in there, that's what they're for

[Voker57]

So build recon planes and send them in there, that's what they're for

# Recon planes cost resources and manpower
# They don't work in non-hostile zones
# They only work in 3x3 radius, and will only gain meaningful recon if not shot down immediately
# Reconing the area every turn with recon planes is very tedious

[DeltaV112]

# Recon planes cost resources and manpower
# They don't work in non-hostile zones
# They only work in 3x3 radius, and will only gain meaningful recon if not shot down immediately
# Reconing the area every turn with recon planes is very tedious

If you don't like FoW as a mechanic, then get rid of that. Having FoW and spies that basically eliminate it for low input isn't worth doing. Otherwise, the answer should be to make other recon options better(more recon on recon units, allow them to recon past the first hex). And make air better at recon through AA and countering AA(A SEAD mission where the air unit attacks AA that attacks it would be good).

[Voker57]

# Recon planes cost resources and manpower
# They don't work in non-hostile zones
# They only work in 3x3 radius, and will only gain meaningful recon if not shot down immediately
# Reconing the area every turn with recon planes is very tedious

If you don't like FoW as a mechanic, then get rid of that. Having FoW and spies that basically eliminate it for low input isn't worth doing. Otherwise, the answer should be to make other recon options better(more recon on recon units, allow them to recon past the first hex). And make air better at recon through AA and countering AA(A SEAD mission where the air unit attacks AA that attacks it would be good).

I don't mind FoW, but there need to be tools to deal with it. Currently, you basically cannot eliminate FoW no matter how many resources you spend. Proper solution would be ability to focus spies on key areas or units, and/or improvements to air recon like you said. Until this is implemented, changes to spies should be rolled back to the point where with 10 spies embedded you should get 100 recon on all tiles (which is still far from perfect).

[solops]

Re OP: yes. Last game I did not use spies. Never assigned an intelligence director, either. Not worth the PP.

[DeltaV112]

If you don't like FoW as a mechanic, then get rid of that. Having FoW and spies that basically eliminate it for low input isn't worth doing. Otherwise, the answer should be to make other recon options better(more recon on recon units, allow them to recon past the first hex). And make air better at recon through AA and countering AA(A SEAD mission where the air unit attacks AA that attacks it would be good).

I don't mind FoW, but there need to be tools to deal with it. Currently, you basically cannot eliminate FoW no matter how many resources you spend. Proper solution would be ability to focus spies on key areas or units, and/or improvements to air recon like you said. Until this is implemented, changes to spies should be rolled back to the point where with 10 spies embedded you should get 100 recon on all tiles (which is still far from perfect).

You should never be able to eliminate FoW if FoW is meant to be a real part of the game. That's the point I'm making. Air recon is a tool that can unlike spies be countered with investment from the core parts of the game... spies are a peripheral resource(PP) that also doesn't have any strong counter mechanics. Same applies to ground recon units which cost normal resources and can be shot at.

If your take is that you should be able to see everything in a zone(basically a front) if desired, it's fundamentally that FoW should not exist as a mechanic. That's fine, but it's not worth having FoW if all you do is press a button a few times to get rid of it in the main way it matters(hiding units).

[Voker57]

You should never be able to eliminate FoW if FoW is meant to be a real part of the game. That's the point I'm making. Air recon is a tool that can unlike spies be countered with investment from the core parts of the game... spies are a peripheral resource(PP) that also doesn't have any strong counter mechanics. Same applies to ground recon units which cost normal resources and can be shot at.

If your take is that you should be able to see everything in a zone(basically a front) if desired, it's fundamentally that FoW should not exist as a mechanic. That's fine, but it's not worth having FoW if all you do is press a button a few times to get rid of it in the main way it matters(hiding units).

I meant not totally eliminate it, but to remove it from a part of map while spending some resources. My take is I should be able to see all units in a zone if decided if i spend some resources on it. Air recon is good to investigate specific areas in rare conditions but it is too tedious to use all the time and is not available if at peace.

[Elver]

I'd agree with DeltaV112 that you're still basically saying that you want to be able to turn off FoW when it affects you tactically. Taking spies back to where they were pre-nerf would do that even if the decision to let Governors' Covert Ops skill impact spy elimination was not also rolled back.

OTOH, Vic has said in the last few months that something they were thinking of doing after the DLC gets settled is do some work on recon, so there should be some changes coming this year...

[Soar_Slitherine]

Taking spies back to where they were pre-nerf would do that even if the decision to let Governors' Covert Ops skill impact spy elimination was not also rolled back.

Governor Covert Ops skill has always contributed to counterspying, that isn't new.

There were three aspects to the spy nerf. Firstly, there was a fix to a bug that was causing spies to generate way too many zone recon points compared to the intended design, which made it very cheap and easy to get 100 recon on every hex in a zone consistently.
Secondly, the zone recon threshold that used to give 100 recon on every hex now gives 10 instead, but going beyond that threshold gives 100 recon on an increasing proportion of random hexes in the zone.
Thirdly, maintaining spies was made harder the more spies you have in the zone. In combination with the second change, this probably makes it essentially impossible to maintain the "100 recon on every hex" tier with any consistency, at least without lucking into a supergenius spymaster.

I think the first and third changes were definitely warranted, as spying was way too easy before - because 100 recon per hex was cheap and a good spymaster made spies hardly ever die unless deliberately opposed using leaders with high Covert Ops skill (which only Autocracy regimes have good access to), it was even potentially possible to maintain recon on every unit across the entire planet at the same time without going very far out of your way.

The second change is more arguable, and I was a little surprised to see it right away given that due to the bug, the spy system in its originally intended form has never really been experienced by players. I'm still experimenting with the updated spying, so I don't have a strong opinion yet, but I will note that having 10 recon on a hex is useless if the landscape type of the hex grants hide points.

[Elver]

The third point must have been what confused me into thinking the governor-as-countermeasure was new.

It does seem a little odd that intel you're learning from spies as opposed to unit recon is affected by terrain. Yes, "spy" is very vague in this context and could represent someone producing 1st-hand intel, but the implication of how many individual spies it takes to produce intel on arbitrarily-large regions much more strong suggests they're stealing intel from the military or gov't, which shouldn't be as impacted by how good the terrain is at hiding their location. The problem, I suppose, is that if you've IDed a unit it can't ambush you... but the scale of a hex suggests that you might know a unit is operating in this general area but not be able to pinpoint its location to a tactically-useful degree. Which is to say, it feels like spies should be providing strategic recon rather than tactical recon, but right now both of those are represented by the same mechanics.

[GazBot]

Have to disagree with this....

Expecting to see all military units in zone 100% just makes no sense.....

Having the spies nerfed now opens up the game way more....you need multiple recon assets, you need to think about internal security and profile choice more, you need to think about Covert Ops skill for your director and I think zone governors....

I think you can actually gte 100% or near to it zone recon...you will just pay a lot and have limited duration before you need to massively reinvest in new the spies....

I would say more diversity in spy options, more granular control maybe more stratagem, perk, profile effect would be good,,,,Say a high autocracy profile means reduced cost for playing spy cards....say maybe even more powerfull spy cards for higher autocracy profiles and better counter espionage....maybe also differant perks for Heart and enforcement profiles...so may ways to enhance the system.....

also EW , ECM structures and units.....

Cheers

Gaz

[Laodie666]

I mean another idea could be adding more cards to the covert group such as infiltrate line of command, harder tests than spies but provide vision for units under a OHQ, while spies still only provide a vague overview of the zone.

[Voker57]

Have to disagree with this....

Expecting to see all military units in zone 100% just makes no sense.....

Having the spies nerfed now opens up the game way more....you need multiple recon assets, you need to think about internal security and profile choice more, you need to think about Covert Ops skill for your director and I think zone governors....

I think you can actually gte 100% or near to it zone recon...you will just pay a lot and have limited duration before you need to massively reinvest in new the spies....

I would say more diversity in spy options, more granular control maybe more stratagem, perk, profile effect would be good,,,,Say a high autocracy profile means reduced cost for playing spy cards....say maybe even more powerfull spy cards for higher autocracy profiles and better counter espionage....maybe also differant perks for Heart and enforcement profiles...so may ways to enhance the system.....

also EW , ECM structures and units.....

Cheers

Gaz

There is no way to do recon other than spies in the game, without terrible micromanagement and losing tens of recon plane subunits. Until better options are implemented, 100 recon by spying should stay.

[Thrake]

Why do you want to have 100 recon everywhere?

[Voker57]

Why do you want to have 100 recon everywhere?

100 recon provides good vision on a hex, while still not perfect and possible to improve with targeted recon.