Covert Action and spying

[lilith]

I've noticed this before, but the margin between my own and the opponents covert power was very little, so I dismissed my concerns.
However, now I had to discover that even with a large difference in covert power I don't get a result in 90% of the cases. This only happens with some players though.

Just now I spied someone with 800bil less covert action then me, it took me 11 times until I saw some of his stats.
And I'm not talking about the radom ??? somewhere, every single field was invisible to me. Like I said, 11 tries only to find out his covert was way below mine.
Also, it's not the first time this has happened to me, usually it's with more equal covert action though (ie 1.9tril vs 1.8tril = no results).

Thanks for looking into it

[GeneralChaos]

I know that feeling, ive spied guys that have had only 20mill covert, ( thats right 20 mill ) and ive had over 2trill and it still shows ??? surely the random function shouldn't be that random,

The worst are the guys with 0 covert agents and u get the ???, how can it hide stats if they have 0 covert agents.

[Borek]

I've noticed this before, but the margin between my own and the opponents covert power was very little, so I dismissed my concerns.
However, now I had to discover that even with a large difference in covert power I don't get a result in 90% of the cases. This only happens with some players though.

Just now I spied someone with 800bil less covert action then me, it took me 11 times until I saw some of his stats.
And I'm not talking about the radom ??? somewhere, every single field was invisible to me. Like I said, 11 tries only to find out his covert was way below mine.
Also, it's not the first time this has happened to me, usually it's with more equal covert action though (ie 1.9tril vs 1.8tril = no results).

Thanks for looking into it

well Alert level increases your covert power for the purposes of enemy recons and sabs, so they were probably on Critical, that is my 1st thought...

[Mathlord]

Yes critical can increase covert power by up to 70% which makes it much harder to spy people. So if you have less than say 1.8 times their covert power, that could explain it.

When they have tiny covert power would be something else however.

[lilith]

OK, fair enough, I thought Realm Alert only covered sabs.

If you do the math however, there is still something off:
1.9tril vs 1.1tril + critical is still 1.9tril vs 1.87tril. How come I had to spy 11 times to get a single result (result meaning I got 2 or 3 visible stats, not even close to the whole page)?

I agree with you, GeneralChaos, the random ??? is quite annoying, but I'm talking about a spy log without any kind of information.

[Borek]

OK, fair enough, I thought Realm Alert only covered sabs.

If you do the math however, there is still something off:
1.9tril vs 1.1tril + critical is still 1.9tril vs 1.87tril. How come I had to spy 11 times to get a single result (result meaning I got 2 or 3 visible stats, not even close to the whole page)?

I agree with you, GeneralChaos, the random ??? is quite annoying, but I'm talking about a spy log without any kind of information.

I believe critical alert actually double your covert for recon/sabs, the 70% is the amount of income you lose.

[Mystake]

i thought the same %'s applied to the covert boosts?

[lilith]

The levels represent a 10/20/40/70% increase in your alertness level, and a corrosponding decrease in your per turn income. Ontop of adding the stated percent to your covert score [...]

[Borek]

The levels represent a 10/20/40/70% increase in your alertness level, and a corrosponding decrease in your per turn income. Ontop of adding the stated percent to your covert score [...]

Yup, it says that, but from personal experience it certainly appears that critical alert level dbls it.