Stealing technology automation...

[Jorgen_CAB]

This is a part of the game that I feel tedious... having to manually direct my spies and sort through the list of technologies to pick from. The Automation is just not worth using as it will just pick technologies I have NO interest in ever using or is not my priority right now.

I would suggest a rather easy way to guide the automation and this you would do from the research screen itself. Here you could right click on a technology and restrict a technology from automated spies to ever pick them and anything it relates with further up the tech tree. In the tech tree there would be a small symbol above each technology in the right upper corner of a crossed over spy symbol.

Now, when you have the spies automated you can simply use this to guide the spies to the technologies you want them to steal. If there is nothing for them to steal the game could notify you.

It would be far less micromanagement to check that there are technologies worth stealing once in a while that continually direct them every time they finish a mission.

I simply feel obligated to manually direct my spies or they are mostly wasted, or at least most of their time is wasted. Sure you can allow new spies to get easy to steal technology you don't want in order to train them, but that would be much less of a haste to manually do if you want to steal tech you don't need.

As an additional note... whenever a spy either fails to steal something or succeed bot don't get the tech and they manage to evade capture. Why not have an option in the notification to continue with the same mission?

[AKicebear]

I think there should be a global queue for espionage missions - like for mining locations, fleet attack targets - which you can either let the AI select itself, or disable AI so spies will only assign to missions you've opted into.

[Franky007]

@Jorgen_CAB: These are two great ideas, that should be easy to do.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think there should be a global queue for espionage missions - like for mining locations, fleet attack targets - which you can either let the AI select itself, or disable AI so spies will only assign to missions you've opted into.

I am not too keen on this idea as it is not optimal for hidden trees... it is better if you exclude from the tree so you don't have to go in there and update it too often. If you do it from the tech screen you also can just adjust it while you are there once in a while so it will take very little extra time from the player and it is also easily visible in the tech tree.

[AKicebear]

Right - but I want the global espionage queue to include ALL espionage missions possible, filtered by type and empire, and sortable (eg. by success chance).

Regarding hidden trees - isn't the same applicable to all tech theft? You may not see it on your tech tree, but do see the option in a list of other empire techs.

If a list of espionage missions is only on the tech screen, much of the functionality is lost - how do I compare chance of success across non tech espionage missions? Of course there is no reason a right click menu on the tech in the tech screen couldn't also queue/prioritize it as an espionage mission.

[Jorgen_CAB]

Right - but I want the global espionage queue to include ALL espionage missions possible, filtered by type and empire, and sortable (eg. by success chance).

Regarding hidden trees - isn't the same applicable to all tech theft? You may not see it on your tech tree, but do see the option in a list of other empire techs.

If a list of espionage missions is only on the tech screen, much of the functionality is lost - how do I compare chance of success across non tech espionage missions? Of course there is no reason a right click menu on the tech in the tech screen couldn't also queue/prioritize it as an espionage mission.

To me it just sound very tedious, way simpler to just deny it at some point and everything above it is automatically locked out. I really want to avoid lists and queues. I would not be very interested what the chances of stealing something is either at this point, that is up to the Ai to figure out with policies.

Just scrolling through tedious lists hurts my head all the time.

If it is in the tech screen you get an immediate overview of what you allowed the be stolen and the number of click you have to make during a game and at one time is way less. It also would be easier to implement as you don't need any additional interface added.

Having a priority list also is complicated as you don't know how difficult they are to steal... this is what the automation will do for you and there is some random on what will be stolen.

In general picking exactly what tech to steal also are a bit too efficient versus the AI, so I think it is a good middle ground to just tell the automation what tech not to steal but not really which tech to actually steal and leave that up to the AI.

What you are after is just a less tedious way to get around manual spy management. That is not what I'm after... I'm after guiding the automated spy policies so I can use them. I'm not interested in manual spy management of stealing technologies. They could probably add something that you suggest, but it would not solve my problem at all.