Can you model spies?

[zook08]

I wanted to model spy units which are mostly invisible, have no combat abilities but can do 007 stuff, like blow bridges and paradrop. That's easy enough to set up, but I had to give them 0 ZOC points, or they would "paint", i.e. capture, the terrain and give their position away. Then I placed them beind the lines, in the editor, and ran the scenario. The problem turned out to be that they didn't paint anything, but I also could not move or even select them. They still belonged to me, but somehow the game seemed to assume that they were kinda hostile units at the same time, probably because they were in enemy territory.

Is there any way around this?

[Herode_2]

That's fun, I was just wandering about the same issue. And this one also : is it possible to simulate a spy/propagandist unit which will have no control on hexes but which could have a negative effect on
- production points on nearby cities (through sabotage actions)
- nearby units morale (but without having the demoralized units loose points, of course).

[tweber]

Units have to control hexes currently so a spy unit would not work.  You could implement espionage abstactly.  In WWII in Europe, I set up a random chance that Ultra would be broken and German U-boats would be more vulnerable.  You could do action cards that let you know how much pp, power points, supply need, or other key things an opponent has.  You could also let spies cause damage to certain hexes (see how partisans attack in the Russia 1941 scenario) or inflict readiness penalties on armies.  'Spy' action card could also temporarily reset recon rule variables giving a much better view of enemy dispositions.  There is quite alot you can do.

[zook08]

Yes, I have working sabotage (structural damage to cities) events now, with the chance being proportional to the number of spies you have.

That brings me to another question: what's the easiest way to have an event pick a random bridge in enemy territory?

[tweber]

A bridge is not a location or a land type so there are no checks that will detect it.  You could mark hexes nearby with slots and then check for the slot.  You could keep looping through the map until exactly 1 slot was detected then apply a lot of structural damage to the hex.  This will knock out all bridge on the adjacent hex sides.  The challenge of this is that you have to do this before the game starts so you cannot do this to bridges built in other locations.  In the end, it is probably better just to sabotage production centers.

[Nort]

Maybe the AI just thought they were out of supply, and you therefore could not move them ...

[mtvaill]

Perhaps you could pattern the spies after air units, with recon points and the ability to attack bridges and such, but without the chance for anti-air units to counterattack or for enemy air units to intercept.  That way they wouldn't have to control hexes, although they also wouldn't be able to remain behind enemy lines.