Spies are better than scientists in research

[lGSMl]

Spies stealing techs is madness right now.

With proper ambassador and spy perks you can achieve 100% success in 1 month missions to steal research. If you encounter ancient empire with advanced tech - you can literally get 5 new technologies per month for free.

1. Default difficulty for research stealing should be increased for all empires
2. Research stealing difficulty should correspond to tech level. 60k research tech should not be same difficulty as 300
3. Research stealing difficulty for old empires should have extra boost
4. Research stealing difficulty should be tied with diplomatic relation level, but should not change after mission was assigned. Stealing techs from +50 republican ally should be easier than stealing tech from -50 hostile hive mind.

Also there is a bug with spy automation - even with counter espionage ration set to 0% AI assigns most of spies to this activity.

[Webbco]

Don't try and get the devs to put a stop to my fun!

But yeah, it is a bit exploitative...

[lGSMl]

for me it is not even a fun - you either have to manually cheeze tech each month which is a big pita, or handicap yourself.

[Dudok22]

I think no mission should have 100% success rate ever. Sometimes s**t happens and even the most routine thing goes badly.
I think in the future overhauling how spies work would be nice. Imagine if your spy had to travel to the enemy station or had to hop on other empires freighters or passenger ships to get into enemy empire. Sending him to an independent colony that trades with your enemy so he can ride a civilian ship to infiltrate would be so cool.

[zgrssd]

I think difficulty should scale with how "cutting edge" it is for the target empire.

If it is the lastest chip manufacturing steps, the stuff is propably a secret (helpd by the company).

While for the 20 year old chips they put into space probes, you can propably find the specifications and some documentation about the manufacturing online.

[lGSMl]

I think no mission should have 100% success rate ever. Sometimes s**t happens and even the most routine thing goes badly.
I think in the future overhauling how spies work would be nice. Imagine if your spy had to travel to the enemy station or had to hop on other empires freighters or passenger ships to get into enemy empire. Sending him to an independent colony that trades with your enemy so he can ride a civilian ship to infiltrate would be so cool.

100% is misleading btw. Looks like it is 100% only for getting mission done, but spy still can be uncovered

[xHattix]

I think no mission should have 100% success rate ever. Sometimes s**t happens and even the most routine thing goes badly.
I think in the future overhauling how spies work would be nice. Imagine if your spy had to travel to the enemy station or had to hop on other empires freighters or passenger ships to get into enemy empire. Sending him to an independent colony that trades with your enemy so he can ride a civilian ship to infiltrate would be so cool.

The 100% success chance is a lie. Your spy can get uncovert or even captured with 100%. Had it happen several times now

[BTAxis]

Espionage is pretty OP at the moment, yes. No doubt there will be some balance changed down the road.

[zgrssd]

Espionage is pretty OP at the moment, yes. No doubt there will be some balance changed down the road.

I am not sure about it "being OP".

I have some where I easily got 100%. And others, were I could not even get past 50%.

[Jasebump]

Yeah, it's pretty OP in early game. You can focus on economy first, then steal all military tech from the first empire you meet allowing you to ramp up very very quickly.

Time for mission completion should be extended at the very least, max success chance should be capped at 95 % or something. Hard to say what factors into the spy mechanics currently, the entire mechanic is very intransparent.

[FlashXAron_slith]

Espionage is pretty OP at the moment, yes. No doubt there will be some balance changed down the road.

Spies are a joke in that game AGAIN
That same stupidity was already in DW1 , why could someone sit down and code the same bs into DW2 and don't change the values ... most of that spy calculation is pure senseless and unbalanced. Special that blow up things ... THE WHOLE STATION etc. and every 12 months another one ON THE other side of the galaxy and at last, the empires who are doing that in my game , have even NO MONEY and because of another bug also no Spacestation at all, themselves

Come on devs, you couldn't be serious ?

THAT IS NO FUN

Also reduce how many spies someone could have ...

I have 8 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but only 3 gov, 1 general, 1 admiral ???? Same distribution of leaders have the AI nations

[ASHBERY76]

It is far too easy.This needs a nerf.

[FlashXAron_slith]

It is far too easy.This needs a nerf.

A nerf is too few ...
the whole system is, like it is taken from a simple mobile game !
There is not any logic and any real influence at the outcome ... it is like the game RISK and even there is more strategy involved

The whole spy system should be overworked

1.) Fewer spies for all nations

2.) Counterspying should at least work and give you more often info about who is doing it

3.) Distance should matter. The greater the distance from the starting position, the longer it needs and more expensive

4.) Tasks should cost money depending what you are doing and how high counterespionage there is

5.) The same spy get reduced possibilities , when he do again missions against the same nation

etc. etc.
That is really cheap and lowest level, what has been coded here , not the standard what to expect from that game and for what it stands !
But as I said that bs is since DW1 ... shame on the devs FOR THAT PART, because it is a gamebreaker and design error ! Other things in the game have a lot higher standard

[Cauldyth]

I would like to see the more totalitarian forms of governments be more difficult to penetrate. An open society that allows the free movement of citizens of all species should be much easier to infiltrate than trying to slip a spy into a Boskaran Hive, or even a xenophobic dictatorship.

[zgrssd]

I would like to see the more totalitarian forms of governments be more difficult to penetrate. An open society that allows the free movement of citizens of all species should be much easier to infiltrate than trying to slip a spy into a Boskaran Hive, or even a xenophobic dictatorship.

????

That is already the case.
Democracyy: -20% counter Espionage
Hive Mind: +20% counter Espionage

And in practice I have difficulty of the same operation going from 100% to <20%, depending on the target.

[Erik Rutins]

It does look like something occasionally breaks in espionage. If you have a good save file that shows overwhelming spy activity, please zip it up and post it here, or e-mail it to me at erikr@matrixgames.com so that we can resolve this.

[lGSMl]

It does look like something occasionally breaks in espionage. If you have a good save file that shows overwhelming spy activity, please zip it up and post it here, or e-mail it to me at erikr@matrixgames.com so that we can resolve this.

this is save file where screenshots were taken from. Though I believe topic was hijacked - it is not about overwhelming spy activity, but rebalance of missions cost and success chance, especially for tech stealing. And also AI bug as per screenshots...

[Tanaka]

Yeah completely agree. With spies you don't even have to research anything. A lot of these same problems were in DWU. I used to turn pirates off because I could just exploit them for tech so easily. This game is so good in so many ways to offer a slower pace but spying ruins all of that and unfortunately you cannot turn them off...

[Menzoberranzan]

There does need to be some reworking of how spying functions.

The rate at which tech stealing happens, seems fine to me, but the amount of progress should be reduced (possibly as much as 50%).

Stealing territory maps seems to be a bit too difficult, while stealing the galaxy maps seems a little too easy.

The rate of success for destroying bases is way out of bounds. Even with reasonably high counter intelligence (one spy had +15, leader with +8, and an ambassador with +4-6 range on most likely target), I had a Hive Mind empire suffering a destroyed mining station about every 7-10 minutes. And never caught or detected anyone.

In addition, the player spies seem to be caught too easily while I have not caught a single AI spy in 70+ hours of game play.