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I was wondering how other players use spy's.

I would say I haven't utilised them as best as I could.

Being a noob there was so much to organise I picked up on their power a little late.

My best steal was the Teekan's Galaxy Map.

This tidied up my explored systems and found lots of ice colonies for my Ugnari's.

I spy on the minor powers who have alot less military strength than me.

I've now been stealing techs from the Hive??? yellow's.

I was initally stealing fighter/bomber tech but now have moved onto biggies like desert colonization.

I was succesful in stealing desert colonization but only got about 30% of the tech, I thought I would get it all.

Is it best to steal the race specific tech's? getting some powerul weapons early would be a boost. I also like the Dhayut's warp drives. The Hakoonish mega density fuel cell sounds good, but they're the no.2 empire on my doorstep, I dont wanna provoke them.

Does anyone have a kind of training program where they start off on the easy missions to gain agent experience?

My top agent is now 400 experience, so he goes chasing massive projects.

Anybody have lots of experience at provoking colony rebellions?

Some random feedback on this.
400 is the cap, you'll not get higher than this.
Spies are also imbalanced as you can indeed train them very fast (the easiest is 1y steal tech job, then the rest of 6 and 3 months tech steal iirc ) and then use them on important stuff like maps or inflitration / undercover.
Once there you can quite easily incite rebellions but since this is imbalanced I don't use it much.
I don't remember being able to steal entire techs, only research progress for your own reasearch.

My main targets with spying is map information and deep cover.

So I generally start fresh spies with stealing some territory map, as I seem to notice this is the easiest mission. Once they get a bit better, they may go for galaxy maps. Otherwise just spam easy missions, I can have spies standing in lines to steal my enemy's territory map...

Once they are quite clever (decent deep cover chance), they usually sit idle on defense until I need them deployed somewhere.

So I mostly train and deep cover, but aim for map info early on.

I like to use mine for Counter Intel to keep the Lessor Races at bay[8|]

ORIGINAL: Data

I don't remember being able to steal entire techs, only research progress for your own reasearch.

You are correct, they only steal progress in a tech not the full tech.

I have research cost set at 600K.

My spies a number of times stole enough progress on desert colonisation that it was fully researched at no cost.

I do think spy missions should have a cost though. Apart from agent maintenance.

Costs would be bribes etc.

ORIGINAL: Data

Spies are also imbalanced as you can indeed train them very fast (the easiest is 1y steal tech job, then the rest of 6 and 3 months tech steal iirc )

I've found that sabotaging construction is the best way to train spies. Just make sure the targets are not highly populated planets. Targetting low population planets and spaceports has a much higher success rate.

Trust me, I'm a Romulan.[;)]

After further analysis I can now say...

Spies do steal an entire tech.

I got the Mega Density fuel cell tech from the Haakonish, the best fuel cell in the game!

The Race specific techs are well worth stealing.

Good find, you monster cookie [:)]
Also, totally trusting the romulans on spy training methodology Igard [;)]

Second game I've tried this.

Quite early in the game in send a spy to steal an empires galaxy map.

This empire must be at the other end of the galaxy and be a weakling.

Both times the galaxy was 99% explored.

Then all of the potential colonies are available to you depending on your current colonisation tech.

I then retrofit my explorers to explorer/cruiser gunships with long range scanner for pirate smashing purposes.

Or observation explorers with a LR scanner to check troop strength at enemy colonies for the upcoming war.

Both versions of explorer have at least 600 fuel. Refuelling them is no problem from a Resupply ship.

ORIGINAL: cookie monster

After further analysis I can now say...

Spies do steal an entire tech.

I got the Mega Density fuel cell tech from the Haakonish, the best fuel cell in the game!

The Race specific techs are well worth stealing.

That's wrong.

You get progress - the amount seems to be based on the relative research levels of yours and the target empire, along with a random element. You can get it all at once, but that's quite unlikely and situational.

Fair enough.

I only sent one spy to the Haakonish and got the entire fuel tech.

It took multiple spy's to get desert colonisation from the Ackdarian's with a manual set research cost of 600K. Each spy only stole progress.

It's good that we need to work hard for every bit of info but stealing that tech with one spy....wow. Did it have such an easy time stealing other tech from the Haakonish? Actually, how much time did he need to steal the entire fuel tech?

The Haakonish were my neighbour and a powerhouse, so I sent my 400 skill spy on a one year mission to steal the fuel tech.

I never sent them to the Haakonish to steal ''common'' techs cos it may have lead to war

The missions were mainly sent against the galaxies weaklings were I was stealing progress

Eventually I ran out of techs to steal from the weaklings so I moved onto stealing from the Ancient Guardians

The game is on hold till my new desktop arrives, my laptop's 2GB with shared video memory can no longer load the 1400 star galaxy.

We need servers, DW is a big place [:)]

I've been stealing techs from the Ancient Guardians. They seem to be very advanced at least level 6 tech. Does anyone know what tech level they are? I heard someone mention they are auto level 7.

I am getting 95% success probability on tech steals with them on a one year mission with a 400 skill spy. The spys are only stealing progress on Ice colonisation at 600K research level.

How many spy could the Ancient Guardians have on counter espionage? They have only one colony.. surely they have therefore very few spys.

To steal the racial techs I only get 90% probab.. this has lost me two spys already. Previously they have stolen racial techs in one mission but now as they get more expensive they are only stealing progress on the advanced Kiadian ECM tech for example.

The Dhayhut hyperdrive and the Haakonish fuel tank are my best steals so far. The Kiadian Ghost ECM etc seems quite good. The Ikurro damage control repair bot seems abit useless, the ship is in pretty dire straights if a repair bot is needed. Would perhaps only be useful on large units such as large space ports,Capitals and Resupply.

Well, my involvement in spying comes to checking up on the progress of the AI, and directing deep cover missions where I need them. The AI itself seems to do and AWESOME job with spying, depending on my government and race of course. I get enemy tech every few months or so, and most of my research comes from my enemies, at least in the Pestulon AAR, in which the researching ability of my pirates is minimal. I also seem to be getting a lot of "super area weapon" tech in many games, which doesn't do much for me, probably more functional in ROTS.

So, all in all, I don't find spying overpowered, and it's actually a cool feature of the game. It'd be cool if they add even more spying missions in the future, like assassinate leader, capture enemy spy and gently "convince" him to join our cause and be a double agent, incite revolution and/or government change, steal ship and stuff like that.

Cheers 

If you are technologically advanced, and only research what you want... It is quite logical that you receive the tech you skipped from spy missions and ship retirement.

I like to use mine for Counter Intel to keep the Lessor Races at bay

Same here.

But the system seems more rich than other similar games.

Spying is overpowered to me in that it seems far too easy to get spies up to high levels with little to keep you from being successful.  I'm not positive but I believe the main issue is simply that the AI doesn't have enough spies on counter spying missions.  Either that or the counter spying isn't as productive as it should be and the enemy is constantly spying on me without me knowing.  Although I think it's most likely the former as I catch spies every now and then yet rarely get my spies caught.  At one point I had a particular race catch two of my spies almost immediately, so that seems to validate that (they must have had a spy or two on counter spying).  So, this is one of those aspects I'd like to see addressed in the near future.

In my current game, I have 3 spies at level 400 with a few others in the 200 range.  I use the higher level ones for deep cover or tech stealing.   The lower ones are always going around sabotaging, stealing, and counter spying.

This sounds familiar....I suspect all of us take this approach.