matching spy traits with mission types

[dostillevi]

Anyone know which spy traits correlate to improved success on what missions? I must be missing something because it seems like it should be obvious, but I'm stuck wondering what, for example, a high covops skill does? A few of them are obvious like counter-intel and assassination, but others.. I have no idea.

[Stormy Fairweather]

The computer knows... but it doesn't seem to take it into consideration at all. Sending my high sabatoge guys on espianoge missions, and vice versa.

The help file tells you which traits affect which mission types. Maybe it was the shadows mod guide. Look in the 'manuals' sub folder.

[dostillevi]

I guess the ones I'm most uncertain about are concealment and psyops. The manual says which traits affect which skills, but it doesn't seem to say how the skills affect the various intelligence missions (unless I'm still missing that somewhere).

[Trev_lite]

i think that concealment helps all missions by making the spy be less likely to be caught (not sure how that affects the success prob).
psyops stands for psychological operations and matched with the missions of incite rebellion and revolution.

[Starke]

IIRC on the Espionage page of the Galactopedia it lists which skill is used for *most* mission types, although I think the table is missing a couple.

[Ralzakark]

dostilleve, I think you are mixing up terms.

The manual does not say which traits affect which skills - that is shown in game, per agent with that trait.

Traits affect skills, adding or subtracting to the agent's skill. The percentage skill shown for each agent includes the effect from the trait.

Pages 73-74 of the manual say which skill is used in which mission.

[mSterian]

Go to the Characters screen.
Select an intelligence agent.
There on the right you'll have a link to Galactopedia about spy missions.
You'll find there every skill for what mission it's used for.

[Shark7]

I control my spy missions manually, I do a far better job of not getting them captured than the AI does, so I actually have gotten spies up to over 100 in their skills.

[Fenrisfil]

The AI is dumb. Always control your spies manually. It's not like it needs your constant attention.

Anyway, from what I gather: Sabotage affects missions to sabotage contsruction and blow up bases; Assassination affects um...yeah assassination; Espionage affects technology theft; Psi ops affect revolution and rebellion missions; and concealment affects deep cover (and as far as I can tell nothing else).

For me, by far the most useful are espionage and sabotage. Assassination and revolution are very high risk and so require very high skills to be worth the risk while rebellion missions never seem to result in anything other than a very short lived refusal to pay taxes and I only use those missions to reveal the stats of a new spy (because hitting small colonies are so low risk even a Johnny English quality spy can pull them off in 1-3 months). As a result the only skills I really care about on my spies are espionage, sabotage and counter-espionage.

[dostillevi]

Thanks mSterian, that's what I was missing!

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Fenrisfil

The AI is dumb. Always control your spies manually. It's not like it needs your constant attention.

Anyway, from what I gather: Sabotage affects missions to sabotage contsruction and blow up bases; Assassination affects um...yeah assassination; Espionage affects technology theft; Psi ops affect revolution and rebellion missions; and concealment affects deep cover (and as far as I can tell nothing else).

For me, by far the most useful are espionage and sabotage. Assassination and revolution are very high risk and so require very high skills to be worth the risk while rebellion missions never seem to result in anything other than a very short lived refusal to pay taxes and I only use those missions to reveal the stats of a new spy (because hitting small colonies are so low risk even a Johnny English quality spy can pull them off in 1-3 months). As a result the only skills I really care about on my spies are espionage, sabotage and counter-espionage.

Actually concealment affects all missions as a modifier. Try a steal research mission with 2 spies both at the same espionage level but different concealment levels, the one with higher concealment will have better odds.

[Starke]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: Fenrisfil

The AI is dumb. Always control your spies manually. It's not like it needs your constant attention.

Anyway, from what I gather: Sabotage affects missions to sabotage contsruction and blow up bases; Assassination affects um...yeah assassination; Espionage affects technology theft; Psi ops affect revolution and rebellion missions; and concealment affects deep cover (and as far as I can tell nothing else).

For me, by far the most useful are espionage and sabotage. Assassination and revolution are very high risk and so require very high skills to be worth the risk while rebellion missions never seem to result in anything other than a very short lived refusal to pay taxes and I only use those missions to reveal the stats of a new spy (because hitting small colonies are so low risk even a Johnny English quality spy can pull them off in 1-3 months). As a result the only skills I really care about on my spies are espionage, sabotage and counter-espionage.

Actually concealment affects all missions as a modifier. Try a steal research mission with 2 spies both at the same espionage level but different concealment levels, the one with higher concealment will have better odds.

Wow, that's good to know. Might explain why my normally-boss Haakonish spy in the Pirates and Research thread was having issues - he had negative Concealment IIRC.

[Fenrisfil]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Actually concealment affects all missions as a modifier. Try a steal research mission with 2 spies both at the same espionage level but different concealment levels, the one with higher concealment will have better odds.

After testing I would have to add some clarification to that conclusion.

Concealment modifies the main skill used rather than your overall chance to succeed. With two spies with 0 espionage skill, concealment made no difference whatsoever when attempting the same mission (that is with 35% concealment vs 0 Concealment). So, I would conclude also that when dealing with either low levels of the key skill in question or low levels of concealment it is of limited use. However an agent with a high key skill level will benefit from any positive amount of concealment, while an agent with a very high concealment should be noticeable better at anything he is also skilled in. A high concealment level however will not help the agent one bit if he has zero skill at the whatever it is he is attempting.


Of course that could well be what you meant, but I read it to mean it modified your overall chance so thought I should add clarification. If a character only has concealment as a skill then he is next to useless (unless he's going deep undercover).
On a side note, I suspect concealment may make agents harder to be captured too, but this is more problematic to test.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Fenrisfil

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Actually concealment affects all missions as a modifier. Try a steal research mission with 2 spies both at the same espionage level but different concealment levels, the one with higher concealment will have better odds.

After testing I would have to add some clarification to that conclusion.

Concealment modifies the main skill used rather than your overall chance to succeed. With two spies with 0 espionage skill, concealment made no difference whatsoever when attempting the same mission (that is with 35% concealment vs 0 Concealment). So, I would conclude also that when dealing with either low levels of the key skill in question or low levels of concealment it is of limited use. However an agent with a high key skill level will benefit from any positive amount of concealment, while an agent with a very high concealment should be noticeable better at anything he is also skilled in. A high concealment level however will not help the agent one bit if he has zero skill at the whatever it is he is attempting.


Of course that could well be what you meant, but I read it to mean it modified your overall chance so thought I should add clarification. If a character only has concealment as a skill then he is next to useless (unless he's going deep undercover).
On a side note, I suspect concealment may make agents harder to be captured too, but this is more problematic to test.

Sounds right to me. I just knew that having a high concealment skill helped in missions, and knew it acted as a modifier just not sure exactly how. Seems your little test may have revealed how it works.