combined some of the thoughts in the other spy threads, and added some of my own thoughts ;)

new "sabotage oil rig" - causes a bunch of turns of lower cash for cleanup based on how many oil rigs the defender has, and cuts 1/4th of oil production (so only produce 75% of what you would), cannot be stacked though

new "construction site sabotage" - each success kills one CS

modify Sabotage Intelligence - i dont think anyone uses it, i actually never have... how many spies does it actually kill off?
i also think that fails, should still kill some spies, just not as many. kinda like a GS, with troops on troops, just spies on spies. if success, you lose barely anything and on a fail, they still lose some.

also:
Espionage Sending your agents into opposing research labs, this operation is the only one that physically benefits you. If successful, you will capture a small portion of your opponent's technology points.
-- this isnt true, as raid food stores and oil both benefit you too, so the wording is wrong

Bomb Banks - should take money too, just like oil and food raids


should all successful spy ops kill off some of the enemy spies?

i think first of all they need too increase the effectiveness of certain offensive ops by quite a bit

yea the effectiveness of some of these is pretty limited....

given that our target demographic is puter gamers
given that modern warfare is waged in cyberspace

REPLACE the OBSOLETE SPY OPS WITH HYPER-MODERN CYBER WAR OPS

cyber war will be a great improvement because the gamers can identify with hackers who cause havoc. Gamers can readily assume the role of techies at a keyboard whereas they can not envision themselves as skulkers in the wormwood

CYBER WAR OPS might include
-taking control of missile guidance systems to hit wrong targets
-redirecting bombing runs to unintended victims
-stealing research
-crashing the internet
-hacking the banking system
-causing oil or chemical leaks( i like LLaar's idea to keep game current)
-crashing the electrical grid
-causing a revolution from one government to another
-briefly assuming control over target's turns

cyber ops should be at a minimum three times more destructive than current spy ops otherwise hacking will be useless and unrewarding; not the inducement that draws new players to a computer game

countries would have to build puter networks and do puter research to fend off the cyber crazies just like in the old days u had to have your own spies; u couldn't just ignore them because they are so pitifully inept, so painfully putrid

the anti-spy contingent has argued that spies are unfair, not true-to-life and not reflective of modern warfare: this argument has prevailed mightily on this site. By contrast, hackers are imminent, real-life threats whose inclusion in the game is fair.


create cyber war ops with stronger more dynamic consequences for failing to hire enough geeks

spies are so disrespected on this site
replace them with bespectacled techs

should be an easy switch
drop spies, change a few ops, empower the invader and boom we have an enhancement directed squarely at our target audience

You might wonder why not just add cyberwar? why replace spies with cyberwar? I do not think the netters would stand for having to build both a spy network and a puter defense




does anyone know of a war game where you hack into the opponent's military chain of command?

i would love to play such a game

i don't think successful spy ops necessarily need to kill enemy spies, my biggest problem is losing thousands of spies on a failed op and having your target lose nothing at all. even if they lost 1% of the amount you lose that would be better than it is now. your spies were detected and 3,000 were killed, but managed to kill 300 members of your enemy's spy network. perhaps spy tech could influence this as well. if you have tons of spy tech a failed enemy op you will lose 1%, if you have none you would lose 3% of their losses.

lincoln, i really like the redirect missle/BR idea. perhaps it could be more like "disrupt communication" and affect any harmful "attacks" a country commits. this would give wallers a (fun) tool to use. it could redirect harmful attacks to a range of countries near the targets NW (so as not to be interrupted by GDI or NW limitations) and be cured like bioterrorism, a certain percentage each turn, perhaps military tech would influence the "curing" of it.

edit: harmful ATTACKS, not ops

W
i love that idea. It would be fun if you could redirect the attacks of someone who was trying to kill you. Also perhaps u could stop bottom feeding which is one of the biggest complaints in this game by giving the target the possibilty of redirecting the attacks




i agree obviously that spy ops are too weak and too prone to failure as currently formulated

netters hate spies because they cant identify with lowlifes who creep around in the dead of night

they should be able to empathize with skilled IT guys who drive armed ruffians to their knees

hmmm

interesting idea

i think that that would make FS's even more powerful again if you could say redirect all the missiles of a clan (without them knowing or otherwise), and then make your FS... as they wouldn't be able to missile you back.

and netters don't hate spies for any reason other than that 1 spy == 6 turrets in expenses; and i'd rather have 6M turrets than 1M spies...

I like these ideas.

I would say make defensive spy losses with some formula like

MIN(.03,.03*(defender_spies/offender_spies-.025))

so that you have to have at least 1/40 their spies to do them any harm, and even then losses would be small... the closer to their size you are the better it is...

I don't know exactly how the Utopian spy system works, but I do know they get(/got) to choose how many spies to send on an operation. Maybe that sort of system would make more sense if implemented properly. You would only lose a fraction of the spies you sent... some times more spies are better, some times fewer are better... maybe ops could be quite devastating and proportional to spies sent, but all the spies are executed if caught.

Also, as far as the cyber-warfare ideas, maybe those could be implemented and spy tech could become spy defense (or some better name) tech... for example you have a percentage chance of your hackers being able to redirect missiles or whatever equivalent ops exist...

I don't see why a defender should lose spies, unless you're attacking their spies...

I guess it depends how you consider spy defense to work. Are spies defended by other spies, or by police? Would one spy ever confront another? Is there any hand to hand combat going on here?

very interesting ideas

redirecting enemy attacks is very interesting, yet would make an FS even more powerful which is unfortunate, since it sounds pretty cool

I was thinking like a tech that was convolved with SPAL to turn things back. Sort of like if a spy op failed there would be a % chance the attack is turned on them. This clearly wouldn't make sense for everything... but redirecting missiles back on the launcher, or a random ally might work. Obviously there would have to be more than just missiles for this to be viable (especially with SDI)

as far as making FS more powerful..the clan that is being attacked could also be using this operation to disrupt kill runs and make the enemy waste turns fixing the communication error or risk hitting random countries.

who knows, it might be a mess but interesting none the less. it could be relatively easy to cure in general and even easier with spy tech, so maybe you spend 1-5 turns to cure it generally.

as far as spies dying, it seems to make sense to me that even though you're not attack enemy spies, the defenders spy network doesn't just exist outside of it's country, also internally to prevent spy ops...how did someone discover and kill my 3,000 spies? can some civilians die then instead of enemy spies? idk.. :)

misdirecting attackers from the one breaker in a chat could derail an entire kill run

that might be a bit too powerful. more so than demo'ing the breaker

as for the missile thing... would it just derail the next X missiles, or just affect missiles the next 5 turns? and what if they dont send any missiles, then the op did nothing

If people like the general idea then the power can be balanced ;P

yeah when those missiles end up landing on your allies' territory, they might not be too happy

making your missiles only hit countries in clans that aren't warring the clan you're warring though... that could be interesting

politics would necessitate more people going to war, since if they keep netting they'll just get hit with random missiles

or the misdirection would make you only hit other countries in your own tag

that'd be less of an FA nightmare lol... imagine on a country of someone you didnt like that wasnt in war "oops i swear they misdirected my nukes, i sent those 30 nuclear missiles at them not you!"

lol
yes clans would retal per policy on redirected strikes and the oh i didnt meant it defense would not work

another thought i have had for a long time as long as we are dealing with spies

remember on the old servers the news was always just a little bit wrong?
for example if u LGed 300 acres it would report in the news u LGed 286 acres
2 suggestions
1) let high SPAL countries send out phony press releases
even though B never got hit they could send out
A ss B grabbed 600 acres if they did that six times they would apparently be deep into dr and immune to attack

2) if the target country would win the spy op
send the spying country disinformation
for example instead of saying oops u lost say ur spies were successful and report
400000 turrets when target really only has 100000

so, do spy ops work yet?

no

i ssume mazooka's point is that since spies are weak for a reason it seems foolish to waste time dreaming up new powers for them when the admins clearly wish spies did not exist at all

good point mazooka
brevity is the soul of wit
nice post