Spying changes

[Jora Sjacka]

No it is still a problem. People who has lets say 5 !! in spy skill, i cant take them, because of this.

And IF i send all of my spies, well, maybe i then make it, but if i ONCE do that with one of greater spy skill then me, ALL of my spies will be caught.
I used thousands and thousands on this, and now it is all wasted.

I'm REALLY REALLY mad!

[Psi Kiya Trist]

this setup still bugs me cause i sent 50 spys(yes fifty) and lost half of them and still didn't get any info...

what am i supposed to do?

send 100 spys at a time?

I'm PM the report to you Admin...

so you can show me how badly i lost...

[Harald Haarfagre]

Before covert capacity: spying wasn't so difficult, and my spy skill was good.

After covert capacity: spying is alost impossible, and my spy skill is very good and I'm ranked number three in covert capacity.

Pleas explain.

[Forum]

ok - maybe I should ask "How do you want spying/recon to work" ?
if someone with 10 spies, and 2 spy level spies on someone with level 7 and 50 spies, should it succeed?
what about 2 people with level 7, 200 spies each -- party 1 sends 50 spies into party 2. should it succeed?
someone with level 7, 200 spies, sends 2 into someone with level 5, 200 spies. should it succeed?

in almost every case where there was a loss, it was a significant loss where the number of spies sent were only a small % of the spies available, and the enemy had more or less equal (total) spy count/skills....(ie - they had 3 to 10x the total power at home as what was sent...)

if it is not "the stronger one wins" then how do you recommend it should work? Keep in mind, your defenses are now pretty hard to breach --- if you want to win easily, it means others get into your realm easily too....

to me it seems most fair to say "the stronger one wins", but I am not without ears

admin.

[Guest]

here are my two cents on the topic. i'll try to illustrate with an example

lets's say we have an attacker and a defender with each having 100 covert action be it through number of spies or spy skill or combination thereof.

in this case there is a 50/50 chance of success/failure. a failure would result in 50% loss of spies

an attacker with 10 covert against a defender with 100 covert would result in 9/91 percent chance success or failure with failure resulting in 91% loss of spies

an attacker with 100 and defender with 10 would the be 91/9 percent chance of success/failure with failure resulting in 9 percent loss.

basic formula is add the attacking covert and defending covert.
chance of success is attacking covert divided by the sum

in case of failure loss rate is defending covert divided by the sum.

with some tweaking i think this would provide fair results and it means that simply having better covert doesn't ensure 100% certainty of success which while i may be wrong seemed to be how the original method worked

thoughts?

[Psi Kiya Trist]

maybe if instead of calculating the total number of defensive spys, only a fraction, cause it's not like you're invading an entire covert section of their base, you're just going for their military data, which could be leaked by an officer in a bar, in which case the spy wouldn't even have to enter the base, just be in the bar like sitting next to the officer...

so like spys sent compared to a fraction of total spys dependant on something(maybe spy lvl differance or fortification lvl...) with a random amout added to either side, to represent accidents that happen in real life.

well, those are some of my ideas,
have fun with them

Psi Kiya Trist

[Forum]

ok - everybody has convinced me.
I'll make a higher success rate, based on <not decided yet> for RECON only...
sabotage still needs the full force
give me a day to think on it... or suggest (or vote for others') ideas...

[the3rdlibra]

ok - everybody has convinced me.
I'll make a higher success rate, based on <not decided yet> for RECON only...
sabotage still needs the full force
give me a day to think on it... or suggest (or vote for others') ideas...

well if that was not EXACTLY (almost to the word) what i said should be done while talking with the Brainiac this morning i believe that RECON should yeild higher success from smaller excursions, as is reflective in real life situations.. however certainly sabotage missions are a much bigger task and require a much bigger force.

-=StE=- i wont be trying it anytime soon though, i'm farming heheh.

[SGC_Replicators]

it is a 100% fail

no matter what it seems too me and these dam spys cost too dam much when u start losing 100%

like some1 said said 1 man missions and leav it to chance

[Harald Haarfagre]

when you asked me "How do you want spying/recon to work" I thought about it, beliving it was easy. But soon I realised it was a realy difficult question. Now I have thought about it for a day and I have some ideas. I'm not saying they're good ideas, but the are ideas though, and her they are:

There should be some kind of spy-wepons. And if your spies were cought
under a mision they would start fighting. If you win your spies will get
away, and you will get information about the enemy. If you loose, you
will loose spies based on the defenders number of spies. I was
thinking something like this:
If you send 10 spies, loose, and the defener have 100 spies, you will loose 1 spy. (10%)
If you send 10 spies, loose, and the defender have 500 spies, you will loose 5 spies. (50%)
If you send 10 spies, loose, and the defender have 1000 spies, you will loose 10 spies.(100%)

You only devide the defenders number of spies with 10 and then put a % behind the answer to determine how many percent spies the attacker will loose if he/her is cought and defeated.

If you think this sounds like it could work send me a message, and I will explane som of the thoughts I have about spy-weapons and the defenders strength.

Thank you for asking, even though I think it was more like an angry question you didn't acctualy belived I would answer. Thank you.

Cincerely Harald Haarfagre.

( I PM-ed this to Forum, but thought you guys might wanted to take a look at my ideas to.)

[Jack Oneill]

ya, I lost 8+ of them in one night. I was prety ticked off at that moment, then I decided to just keep them around my base for thwarting other people's attempt's which seems to work farely well. I decided to stop sending in my people on literial suicide missions mostly because it cost's too much and I get negliable rewords back. Basicially have your spy's be more powerfull, in season 3 a Goa'uld contiginet of 8 mannaged to tag all but one of the Tollan Ion Cannon's prior to them invadeing the Toallans. Perhap's a function like this could be implemented in which the players would gain a serious tactical advantage by sending in a small force first to tag defencive weapon's for targeting by more powerfull weapon's.

[the3rdlibra]

i'm pretty much satisfied that Forum has it right, including THIS little chestnut...

That realm has had so much covert activity against them recently that even your intelligence sources know about some of it! They are surely ready and waiting for additional operations - your Intelligence Officer warns you strongly against proceeding, and you are compelled to agree...for now....

-=StE=- just do the math guys, always Recon first and don't ignore your report, every part of the report tells you part of the equation that is why it is there, do you think Forum have nothing better to do all day than implement aspects of the game that are useless?

[justbegladnow]

Personally, I think the problem is less with the rate than with the arithmetic progression of spy power. A simple summing of power works fine with troops, as everyone instinctively understands that 200 soldiers are roughly twice as good as 100. However, for spying, such really isn't the case. The marginal benefit of the nth+1 spy should be less than the nth, for a number of reasons. First, more spies should be more chances for being seen. Second, having more people on a task like downloading data does not seem perhaps truly efficent, while the 2nd one can cover the door while the first one hacks the computer etc what does the 70th do?

2nd, it makes sense from a game balance perspective. It's important to realize that no matter the spy power one has, he gets exactly the same benefit from a particular mission with perfect success: Perfect data on one person. However, to accomplish this task requires more risk at higher levels as the proportion one needs to send on a spy mission is the same (since you still need to overcome the whole of your opponent's spy force, which presumably increases proportionately to yours). At the same time, however, sending the whole of your force becomes more and more dangerous as losing one mission will drop you farther. So, the more spies people have, the smaller proportion of them they are likely to use on a mission, while the enemy still uses the whole of his or her force. Thus it is not surprising that none can spy at high levels.

Thus, I propose that the smaller the number of spies on a mission, the more effective each should be, and this gradiant should be steep, possibly even to the point that after a certain number, no improvement is made. However, this is for balance and for realism. Of course, there must be a balance that encourages people to send more than one, as well, so perhaps a larger group of spies has a greater chance of surviving a failed mission (since they would possibly be able to fight it off), while the sole to'kra spy or whatever should still be able to operate undetected for months.

justbegladnow

Forum
Site Admin


Joined: 30 Jan 2005
Posts: 146

Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 2:52 pm Post subject:

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ok - everybody has convinced me.
I'll make a higher success rate, based on <not decided yet> for RECON only...
sabotage still needs the full force
give me a day to think on it... or suggest (or vote for others') ideas...

[the3rdlibra]

for recon i completely agree, but not sabotage.

-=StE=-

[compmage]

for recon i completely agree, but not sabotage.

-=StE=-

That reminds me, perhaps we could add some sabotage weapons for your spies.