Spy Network Collapses when Secret Service Council is created

[canezar]

Hello. New to the game and was playing a PBEM game the other day, v1.26f2.

Had just picked up my Secret Service Council on the previous go and logged into my daily turn to see that I had lost 10 of my 30 deployed spies, representing a significant loss of PP investment without any warning. It felt bad, and I am wondering if this is intended or not. Had only lost 3 spies over 19 turns previously.

Given that I cannot (as I understand it) assign a leader to the position for a whole turn, my thought was that it applied my missing director penalty even though I had a perfectly functional leader managing the spies the previous turn. It could certainly represent a change in management and a recall for the spies in the field, but I'd like to think they express some level of competency.

I was unable to determine if this also created a window of vulnerability allowing my opponents to infiltrate spies into my territory at a lower difficulty. If not intended, consider this a bug report. If intended, perhaps a warning could be added about the impact?

Also, is there no way to appoint leaders ahead of schedule? Kind of annoyed that I need to leave seats vacant for a cabinet shuffle when I - as the leader of my regime - know a turn in advance who is going to be moving into positions. Could we flag successors for positions, even if only for higher prestige moves? I had an advisor who could have easily hopped into the open seat I made on my Military Council when I shifted the leader there to Secret Service.

Game is fun, thanks for giving this a read.