Stealing research from pirates is still too easy!

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Tanaka
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Stealing research from pirates is still too easy!

Post by Tanaka »

Year after year after year I can steal all the research I want with this guy and pretty much with whatever agent I get every game I play. I always set to one year completion. Its always around 80% chance of succeeding and never fails. This race has no espionage bonuses. This is early game and he will only get better and better! Why not at least decrease the amount of research you can steal? Say 10% of tech stolen instead of getting whole tech? Other than stealing maps all the other agent missions are pretty difficult at 20% to 40% chance. I think tech stealing should have the same difficulty. When you are playing a slow tech game it really speeds things up being so easy.

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Skasski
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Skasski »

Maybe the problem is not that stealing research is too easy, but that other missions are too hard? Completely shutting down the intelligence game just because a race does not have bonuses could dull down the game. The problem could be the following:

Stealing research provides a direct bonus to your empire, many other missions (eg Sabotage) only provide a malus to one other empire and thus an indirect bonus to all others including your own. Of course this depends on the number of empires in the galxy: in a galaxy with two empires sabotage missions have a different effect on the distribution of power than in a galaxy with 20 empires. Of course the same is true for stealing research, but here your empire always gets the full advantage and all others a disadvantage.

Then again, it might also be both. Perhaps stealing research is too rewarding while other missions are too hard.

On a different "Steal Research" topic: I wonder how changing the mission to- or even adding a new "Steal Research Clues: acquire informations that initiate crash research" would affect the game.
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Evan85
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Evan85 »

Hmm... In my spy heavy games I found that sending my agents on 78% missions every year results in quicky running out of operatives.

I think your guy is just really lucky. Unless you of course save-load a lot for missions. Anyways, I recently tried to tech-race the cat-guys with Ketaros. In the early game, even yearly steals gave me an edge. Kitties were better, but I surpassed other civilizations.

In the mid-game, I had two agents remaining with 40%+ espionage. They could relably steal techs in 3 months, but they still weren't enough to keep up with the Zenox. As I see, the increasing research-costs of high level techs mitigate the effect of corporate espionage well enough.


All and all, I think nefring espionage would render this asset meaningless for races that has no bonuses on it. Map-stealing is good, but it only saves a few explorers.



I'd also love to see some numbers on how much chance a regular Empire has to raise a 20%+ espionage agent in it's first 20-30 years. Without excessive saving and loading, I usually just lose all of them, even when targetting the dumbest people with the easiest missions.
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Flinkebeinchen
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Flinkebeinchen »

I guess the target Empire has a character like a Scientist with "Foreign Spy".
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Tanaka
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Tanaka »

ORIGINAL: Skasski

Maybe the problem is not that stealing research is too easy, but that other missions are too hard? Completely shutting down the intelligence game just because a race does not have bonuses could dull down the game. The problem could be the following:

Stealing research provides a direct bonus to your empire, many other missions (eg Sabotage) only provide a malus to one other empire and thus an indirect bonus to all others including your own. Of course this depends on the number of empires in the galxy: in a galaxy with two empires sabotage missions have a different effect on the distribution of power than in a galaxy with 20 empires. Of course the same is true for stealing research, but here your empire always gets the full advantage and all others a disadvantage.

Then again, it might also be both. Perhaps stealing research is too rewarding while other missions are too hard.

On a different "Steal Research" topic: I wonder how changing the mission to- or even adding a new "Steal Research Clues: acquire informations that initiate crash research" would affect the game.

Oh I definitely don't think blowing up bases should be easier. But I agree I am always going to go with the steal research choice because it is so much easier and more rewarding. I think being able to steal percentages of tech would be a better process if its going to be easy to do.
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Tanaka
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Tanaka »

ORIGINAL: Evan85

Hmm... In my spy heavy games I found that sending my agents on 78% missions every year results in quicky running out of operatives.

I think your guy is just really lucky. Unless you of course save-load a lot for missions. Anyways, I recently tried to tech-race the cat-guys with Ketaros. In the early game, even yearly steals gave me an edge. Kitties were better, but I surpassed other civilizations.

In the mid-game, I had two agents remaining with 40%+ espionage. They could relably steal techs in 3 months, but they still weren't enough to keep up with the Zenox. As I see, the increasing research-costs of high level techs mitigate the effect of corporate espionage well enough.


All and all, I think nefring espionage would render this asset meaningless for races that has no bonuses on it. Map-stealing is good, but it only saves a few explorers.



I'd also love to see some numbers on how much chance a regular Empire has to raise a 20%+ espionage agent in it's first 20-30 years. Without excessive saving and loading, I usually just lose all of them, even when targetting the dumbest people with the easiest missions.

Well I don't really think he is lucky when most of my games it has been this way. I don't know maybe early game the pirates have no counter operatives to ever affect me. Thats usually who I steal from. No I don't save - reload to get tech or save agent although I hope its not a random thing to prevent players from doing this. Strange you lose so many Im always so successful with mine [&:]
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Hikikomori
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Hikikomori »

I don't see the problem.

I played with Paratis lately, and i got a lot of spies, but taking missions like that would cost me more that i would get over the years. And i got maybe 25% of a research, if the tier was low enough. And most empires wouldn't get me the 90% success rate for a year i aimed for.

Not all that overpowered for my taste. But i am not that experienced with gaming that particular system yet either.
Tech trading is where the money is. Got to stop doing that, but i probably will keep it on for the ai anyway.
spiralaxis
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by spiralaxis »

Tanaka: What difficulty, mods, patch version? My experience echoes that above: anything under 83% borders on a suicide mission in my experience. I believe smarter/+spying races are much more dangerous. What's the intelligence of your race?
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Tanaka
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Tanaka »

ORIGINAL: spiralaxis

Tanaka: What difficulty, mods, patch version? My experience echoes that above: anything under 83% borders on a suicide mission in my experience. I believe smarter/+spying races are much more dangerous. What's the intelligence of your race?

Normal difficulty. Standard custom game. Extended mod. Keskudon race. Very Expensive Tech. Current patch 1.9.5.7.

Is there a bug in the race or something? As I almost always play them. Anyone else play this race with same results?
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tjhkkr
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by tjhkkr »

No, I am having the exact opposite problem, even under 1.9.5.7...
I am loosing agents like nothing flat... I used 5 agents, all with 90% or better chance... all five of them were lost...
And I was stealing a map... a map should be easy... just sneak aboard an Empire's freighter and get the map...
[:D] I am thinking intelligence gathering could use some strengthening...
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Tanaka
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Tanaka »

ORIGINAL: tjhkkr

No, I am having the exact opposite problem, even under 1.9.5.7...
I am loosing agents like nothing flat... I used 5 agents, all with 90% or better chance... all five of them were lost...
And I was stealing a map... a map should be easy... just sneak aboard an Empire's freighter and get the map...
[:D] I am thinking intelligence gathering could use some strengthening...

Hmm strange what race are you playing? Are you going after pirates or races? Were you going after one or many enemies? Maybe going against a powerful counter agent?
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Evan85
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Evan85 »

Maybe it's just the Keskudons - as I recon they are very intelligent.

Or just plain statistical oddity. I recon a sluken agent of mine, that got a minuses in all stats, and +5 sabotage. So I kept sending him on suicide 3 month sabotages and 1 year destroy assignments to various races (with about success chance of 35-50%). Thought that provoking a war is still better than just dismissing him. He kept succeeding more than a dozen times, until he got a trait that allowed him to retire as a counterintelligence agent. Lucky ant.

The rng has it's favorites.
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feelotraveller
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by feelotraveller »

My experience is the same as Tanaka's and (to a degree) tjhkkr's. A high stakes crapshoot, as I put it elsewhere.

I have been playing Kiadian's (so no racial spy bonus...) recently and with a spy with +20 espionage I will steal something like 1500k worth of tech. (I play 999k tech games, so that's more than a complete level 1 tech each steal, and about 75%+ of a level 2 tech.) By the time that spy reaches 50+ espionage they are stealing well in excess of 2000k a mission.

Where my experience correlates with tj's is that my spies are more likely to be killed/captured than to fail or be detected whilst stealing.

My recommendation is that spies should steal less per mission and be less likely to be killed, but also be much more likely to fail or to be detected.

My other suggestion is to open the spying mechanic (along with the diplomacy mechanic...) up to modders.
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Tanaka
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Tanaka »

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller

My experience is the same as Tanaka's and (to a degree) tjhkkr's. A high stakes crapshoot, as I put it elsewhere.

I have been playing Kiadian's (so no racial spy bonus...) recently and with a spy with +20 espionage I will steal something like 1500k worth of tech. (I play 999k tech games, so that's more than a complete level 1 tech each steal, and about 75%+ of a level 2 tech.) By the time that spy reaches 50+ espionage they are stealing well in excess of 2000k a mission.

Where my experience correlates with tj's is that my spies are more likely to be killed/captured than to fail or be detected whilst stealing.

My recommendation is that spies should steal less per mission and be less likely to be killed, but also be much more likely to fail or to be detected.

My other suggestion is to open the spying mechanic (along with the diplomacy mechanic...) up to modders.

Funny Im still stealing away each year but occasionally I fail or am detected but never killed. I actually restarted my game and am getting the exact same results as proof here is my new agent:



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Tanaka
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Tanaka »

Well I don't know why but now that Ive pretty much stole everything from the pirates there are finally a few techs left that now have 50% chance to steal. Finally first time Ive seen that! I will not be risking my agent this time!



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Nanaki
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Nanaki »

I noticed that all of your 'steal tech' missions are against pirates. I have noticed that pirates are a lot easier targets in terms of intelligence missions than empires for some reason. Infact, now I consider legendary pirates a blessing because they tend to have an obnoxious amount of technology and no espionage defenses whatsoever.
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Tanaka
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Tanaka »

ORIGINAL: Nanaki

I noticed that all of your 'steal tech' missions are against pirates. I have noticed that pirates are a lot easier targets in terms of intelligence missions than empires for some reason. Infact, now I consider legendary pirates a blessing because they tend to have an obnoxious amount of technology and no espionage defenses whatsoever.

Yep I just steal from pirates because who cares if they get mad they are always mad and it is so easy. Im assuming a part of the reason for that is they never have any counter espionage agents to defend with?
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Flinkebeinchen
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Flinkebeinchen »

From my experiences if you have a Spy with High Concealment even if the odds are very low he doesn't get killed.
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Tanaka
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Tanaka »

Yep Im noticing when I spy on standard empires now I am losing my agents so it must just be that pirates spying defenses are too weak early game! Updated thread title!
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Hikikomori
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RE: Stealing research is still too easy!

Post by Hikikomori »

My spies always get themselves executed. [8|]
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