What I would love to see - Spies

[euclid]

Those of you familiar with Haegemonia - Legion of Iron will know what I'm going to suggest for X4: A spy system. Depending on the level/skill of a spy he will have certain abilities and success chances:

He will fly a small special ship without any weaponry but with a stealth ability and strong shields. He can steal credits, blueprint/schematics/research data, rig (sub)systems of ships/stations for destruction, detect enemy spies, infiltrate stations and ships (to assist in boarding/station takeover by destroying defenses from the inside), gather intel on sectors/factions like fleet strength, overall budget, personnel level etc..

What do you think?

Cheers Euclid

[Hector0x]

Sounds like the kind of things the player did in XR. Npcs don't seem to be capable of the required behavior. Delegate that smalltalk tough

So a cloaked agent should be able to ninja you too?

[Alan Phipps]

That all sounds like something the player could be hired to do and perhaps somewhat along the lines of this thread. (Or just on behalf of the player's faction.)

I suspect that incoming espionage threats to the Player assets would be more simulated and subject to conditional RNG than actually played by the AI. (eg Your Defence Officer detects a security breach due to his skill levels and a dice roll.)

[Morkonan]

Those of you familiar with Haegemonia - Legion of Iron will know what I'm going to suggest for X4: A spy system. Depending on the level/skill of a spy he will have certain abilities and success chances:...

What do you think?

Well... There's nothing that can destroy a game or be as completely unbalancing as a "Spy System."

So many games have introduced or re-introduced spy systems that have failed, horribly, that it's a common trope - Spies kill gameplay.

However, that being said, in X3TC, one already has a sort of "spy" system in the form of satellites and scouts. I am not completely opposed to it, but it has to be done right and can not be very powerful.

On "Stealing Tech" - No. Just no. Consider that the player can, presumably, create spies fairly easily. It's a game mechanic that is expected to be used by the player, so it's going to be accessible, right?

And, this is where many games fail - They make spies "a dime a dozen" and the player, if they're so inclined, can flood the game with them, crippling economies, stealing tech instead of researching it, circumvent other game mechanics, since spies are supposed to be sneaky and allow the player new ways to skirt around the game's "laws"... etc.

So, no Tech Stealing, at least not directly. AT BEST, if there was to be such a spy system, the spy could only "steal" the opportunity for a player to research a tech tree that might, only might, give them a way to research something that would otherwise require much more research.

In other words - Spy systems only work well when spies are not powerful "one-shot", "I Win", buttons. They should not be capable of easily doing things like stealing the plans to the equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Sure, such a thing is really dramatic and surprising "in real life." But, in a computer game, that sort of mechanic can cause very carefully constructed balance issues and mechanics to fall apart as soon as a player can press the deceptively powerful "Send Spy" button.

Examples of a bad, overly powerful, spy mechanic and their "Good" counterparts:

Tech -

(BAD)Send spy with a good chance to steal otherwise unobtainable powerful technology.

(Good) Send spy with a small chance of allowing the player to significantly increase their research of a specific alien technology or with an even smaller chance of opening up a new research tree, that must still be researched, perhaps with a small penalty due to the fact the player isn't of that race.

Intel -

(Bad) Send spy that permanently reveals the map for an area.

(Good) Send spy that can temporarily reveal a map for an area or that could remain in an area to reveal the map, but has a chance of being "caught." (For an X game specific example, a spy that places a clandestine satellite that will reveal the sector, within a certain radius, until or unless it is detected by a hostile race.)

Sabotage - (A popular use of spies in games)

(Bad) Send spy that destroys an entire facility or other critical game asset.

(Good) Send spy that can reduce research progress for an enemy or that can damage certain types of industrial facilities. (Critical alien facilities wouldn't be subject to this unless the spy was of the same race and could easily infiltrate that sort of heavily guarded facility, for instance.)

There are caveats to introducing spies to a game that go beyond just the mechanics. If they're too weak, the player complains and never uses them, anyway, so any development costs there were wasted. If they're too strong, the player complains about the game using them against the player or that it "breaks" their own enjoyment of the game because it makes other gameplay trivial.

(Players can blame MoO2 and Civilization games for not only introducing the concept of Spy assets, but for really abusing the heck out of them, turning them into game-mechanic-nuclear-weapons...)

[RAVEN.myst]

One possible way to mitigate the deus ex machina problem with spies might be *serious* repercussions when they are caught. In real life, espionage is always treated as far from trivial - national-secrets-level is often a treason charge, in many countries carrying the death penalty, while even corporate espionage is treated seriously. But that's not the full extent of busted espionage consequences, it only affects the spy him/herself - however, the sponsoring party, if implicated, typically loses tremendous political capital or credibility in some (or all!) other way. Thus, having the spy be unmasked and traced back to the player should result in serious reputation/relationship damage, and possibly trade embargoes and such (revocation of licenses and special trade concessions, treaties, access to technology or services, etc.), perhaps asset seizure, even if the relationship hasn't been plunged into actual hostilities.

However, this poses yet another problem: how to determine when the spy has been caught. If it is done via RNG, then... well, need I even continue? So that's pretty much out (most likely the player would then simply reload the latest safe game save, and wait for it to resolve again, unless it's secretly determined at start of mission - in which case it would become dangerously swingy and as Morkonan pointed out, would become an underused feature that was nothing more than a waste of development resources.)

On the other hand, any skill-based determination of success/failure/critical failure (discovery) would then swing to the other side - the player simply overprepares to the point where failure is impossible. Also not ideal, though at least with this approach the costs in both time and resources could be made to scale up to such a point that it might balance against the intended gain.

[Morkonan]

One possible way to mitigate the deus ex machina problem with spies might be *serious* repercussions when they are caught. ...

And, you've stumbled onto another problem with spy mechanics.

"So, OK, we goofted. Now, spies are too darn powerful! What are we going to do about that?", said the developer.

"Oh, I know! We'll make them suffer really severely if their spies are caught! See how that works? Anything that powerful must have an equally dangerous possibility in regards to the consequences when they're used! I AM BRILLIANT.", said the intern.

"Uh, OK. So, if they're really, really, powerful and we've structured the game to not only include them, but allow the player to plan for using them, but if they're so very dangerous to use, with such drastic consequence, then the player might never use them or only use them once. We spent weeks on polishing and balancing a system that the player won't use or will only ever use at the very end of their game, with very few meaningful results at that point."

"Uh. Well, I'm not getting paid, so you get what you paid for.", quips the intern.



It's very difficult to balance "powerful spies" with an equally "powerful punishment" for using them. So, the player sends a spy to steal tech. If that spy is caught, then the AI likely declares war. Or, if the player has a very close relationship with the faction, "high rep", then they might just get a reputation hit. But, if they had that close a relationship, why couldn't they get help in developing technologies instead of stealing from their ally? And, if that then means they'll only ever use spies against true enemies that they can't use an alternative ally/rep system to help boost their own research, then spies will only be used sparingly, against true enemies, generally just before the player goes to war with them and that's usually only in games that are matured, so it'll be hours of gameplay before they dare to hit the "send spy" button, since the consequences are so grave if those spies get caught..

To avoid this sort of slippery-slope, spies have to be either limited in what they can do, weak in terms of overall strategy (but maybe of a stronger tactical advantage) or they have only a small effect, much weaker than other mechanics. That sort of spy mechanic doesn't run the risk of overpowering other gameplay with a "send spy" button that can radically change the strategic situation.

Tactics vs strategy. The best "spy" mechanics, in terms of actual gameplay and significance, are when spies are more of a tactical use, in my opinion. Perhaps, though, a spy could have a much weaker strategic use. I think that if there is any sort of spy mechanic, which I don't really think is necessary, but whatever... then their use has to be more tactically significant, but less strategically important. One can't "win the game" with spies. But, during the course of play, a couple of spies in key locations may have helped the player by furnishing some sort of tactical advantage


Note: I really don't think the X game is suitable for a "spy mechanic." In trying to figure out how such a thing could be implemented, I keep coming up with "the player can already do that." If the player already has assets that are equivalent to a "spy", there's no point in having a spy mechanic for its own sake.