Idea for new kind of covert action

[Ripsaw]

OK, at the moment you can Recon your enemy or Sabotage him. Both of those (at least the way the logs appear) are based on quick actions (i.e. sneak in, gather info/plant bombs, sneak out) over a very brief period of time.

My idea is to have a new way to use covert: infiltration missions. This would be a long-term use of some of your spies, and would result in neither information nor destruction of enemy assets, but rather in theft of enemy assets (For instance, in the report: Your infiltrator stole a cargo ship full of {Naq or weapons} and has returned to you with the goods!) or could cause an uprising in your enemy's realm (Your infitration team caused such popular dissatisfaction in {enemy name}'s realm that the populace rose up against {enemy}! Although the revolt was swiftly put down, it still caused significant damage to the realm of {enemy}! (would cause damage to weapons, dead troops, and dead UU))

I'd think that you could only send in a few infiltrators per enemy realm, and they should stay there for at least a full day. In the "Theft" scenario, the infiltrator would (obviously) return alive, whereas in the "Revolt" scenario, maybe they should be killed in the fighting.

Going a bit deeper, maybe there should be a spy "super-unit" for this (an "Infiltrator"). When sending in an infiltration mission, you would need to specify number of infiltrators (I'd say max of 10 per realm), number of days in the enemy realm, and which type of mission they're on (Theft or Propoganda(revolt)). The defense against this type of mission would be the same as against a Recon or a Sabotage mission now (although catching a few infiltrators that take a lot longer to do their thing should be harder than catching a quick recon party or a person carrying a bomb...)

What does everyone think?

<edit to answer Emperor Martin's question>Leave the Covert levels alone, I think, but make a new unit (similar to the "Super" military units) that carries its own modifier on top of that (I think the super military is x2?). I would think that that would make this much easier to code in, as it wouldn't completely overhaul the covert system (again).

So, short answer, yes, based on current spy levels, not a new system</edit>

[Grand Admiral Martin]

its interesting, one of the better covert ideas ive read, i like it. would this power be based on spy levels but or on a new set?

[[SGC_ReplicÅtors]]

lol i like...reminds me of what parasites do...

[Ripsaw]

lol i like...reminds me of what parasites do...

Actually, the intent was to try to draw a parallel to real-life Intelligence operations...a lot of those are that kind of slow, work your way to a position of trust, then turn the tables type of thing.

OK, that sounds ungrateful. Sorry 'bout that, and thanks for the support.

[Artiglio]

with the revolt bit ... do you mean like it is in ascention?

[Stricken]

lol well the only thing i see wrong with this covert change is all the Powerful Players will lech all the resources off all of the n00bs with hardly any effort...thus unbalancing this game more than it already is

lol i beat you here Wolf359

[Wolf359]

lol well the only thing i see wrong with this covert change is all the Powerful Players will lech all the resources off all of the n00bs with hardly any effort...thus unbalancing this game more than it already is

lol i beat you here Wolf359

Haha! I've been in a meeting in Scotland all day!

Your point is true enough though - and, I hate to say it, but these kind of covert suggestions have been made before - although not for a long time.

[Tauriman77]

u guys may be right but like i said before, determain it by like how much UU some1 has, u cant base it on rank cause some1 may just drop in the ranks temporaily to get it upgraded but they cant temporaily get rid of UU. exept for 1 thing but im not giving any1 ideas incase this is implamented.



also, why dont u make it so its a new type of covert unit, not just any spie could do something like that, ud have to be specialy trained. and make it so it is determained by the current spy lvl or something. if its a whole new spy lvl then beggining players will have an even bigger disadvangtige.

[Wolf359]

Can't temporarily get rid of UU??? How about training them into spies/miners/attack/defence soldiers - and then untraining them again afterwards?

[Angelus Errare]

-this idea could work, the thing is, a definite limit has to be found, so that if a powerful player weakens themself, they still use it against a much weaker player. such as base it on the difference between army sizes, like someone with 500k total army, they can't touch anyone with and army size below 100k. or base it on spy levels, like someone with spy level 25, can't use this against someone with spy level 15. something like that. well, that's my two cents...~

[Ripsaw]

OK, let me think about this a little more, then I'll edit my original post...I think I can figure out how to balance this. Give me a few days...

[[ZerO]]

I hate to rain on your parade ripsaw, but this idea was introduced already sometime back... it came on the forums around the time when miners and assasins were getting ready to be introduced to the game, and it didnt go over well. I will try to find that thread so you can read it.

[Quina Quen]

Leave the Covert levels alone, I think, but make a new unit (similar to the "Super" military units) that carries its own modifier on top of that (I think the super military is x2?). I would think that that would make this much easier to code in, as it wouldn't completely overhaul the covert system (again).

And in short would be pretty much pointless. Supposing you implement 'Super Spies' that are twice as effective against your existing covert level (and it's multiplier), what's to say that buying twice as many normal spies wouldn't be cheaper? What would they cost, and how long before people work out which Spy is more cost effective overall, therefore making the other redundant, and pointless... like mercs *sighs*

[Ripsaw]

Leave the Covert levels alone, I think, but make a new unit (similar to the "Super" military units) that carries its own modifier on top of that (I think the super military is x2?). I would think that that would make this much easier to code in, as it wouldn't completely overhaul the covert system (again).

And in short would be pretty much pointless. Supposing you implement 'Super Spies' that are twice as effective against your existing covert level (and it's multiplier), what's to say that buying twice as many normal spies wouldn't be cheaper? What would they cost, and how long before people work out which Spy is more cost effective overall, therefore making the other redundant, and pointless... like mercs *sighs*

Let me handle the objection first, then I'll get into some refinements I thought of over the weekend.

Red XIII, if you had thoroughly read the first post, you would have seen that this new unit would only have one application. It would have no other use than for infiltration missions, something that your regular spies couldn't do. I guess I inadvertently misled a few people with the allusion to the "super" military units--I intended only to imply that they had to be trained from your existing spies.

As to the refinements/balancing ideas I had...

First off, this would require a new unit, the Infiltrator. Forget everything I said earlier about it being a super unit. It's simply a new unit, which is trained from your current corps of spies, and costing significantly (20-30 times) more than a regular spy unit. It contributes nothing to your covert stats or rank. Also, you would only be able to train a small fraction (say 1/100) of your spies into infiltrators (this is a small, elite group of operatives). This will serve to limit a powerful player "flooding" a bunch of other realms with infiltrators. The ability of an Infiltrator to sneak into an enemy realm would use the same setup as the current covert actions.

Secondly, there would be two types of Infiltration missions: Theft missions and Propaganda missions. Theft missions would invovlve thefts of naq or weapons from the enemy, and would only take place during transfers of those things (for example, a cargo ship full of weapons could 'disappear' on the way back from a strike mission, or a ship full of naq could 'disappear' while returning from the offsite storage). These would have to be relatively small amounts (say 10-20% of the naq or 5-10% of the weapons involved in the transfer would be stolen). In this case, the Infiltrator would return alive.

Proaganda missions involve formenting discontent and eventual revolt in the enemy realm. Successfully formenting a revolt would cause the enemy realm to suffer loss of UU, loss of defense troops, and some damage to defense weapons. This would be similar to being attacked (save for the dead UU), except that the attack is coming from within your realm. In this case, the Infiltrator would have a 50% chance of being killed in the fighting.

The success rate would have to be very small, say a base 1/100 chance. Each Infiltrator would have a separate 1/100 chance to succeed at its mission. Also, this would be a long-term use of the Infiltrator, where missions can last days of in-game time. Finally, there would be a limit on how many Inifiltrators you can send against a given realm (say 10 per enemy realm). Failure would result in the death of the Infiltrator.

On to balance factors: You have to figure that a small army (less powerful player) is going to be harder to infiltrate than a large one (more powerful player). Potential balancing factors include: Total Army Size, Total Power (since most powerful players who drop ranks to farm or raid do so by reducing one stat, not all of them), total spy levels, total UP, some combination of the above, or some other way to differentiate the more powerful from the less powerful. The calculation would look something like this:

Player A has {balancing factor value} of 1,000,000
Player B has {balancing factor value} of 10,000,000

ASSUMING that each could overcome the other's covert defense to get Infiltrators in in the first place, the chance of success would balance like this: Take the {balancing factor value} of the "defending" player and divide it by the {balancing factor value} of the "attacking" player, then multipy the base success rate by the result:

Each of Player A's Infiltrators would have a (10,000,000/1,000,000)*(1/100)=10/100=1/10 chance to succeed, while each of player B's Infiltrators would have a (1,000,000/10,000,000)*(1/100)=1/1000 chance to succeed. So, this would be great for the "little guy", whereas for the "big guys", it would be useful only against the people near you in power.

Thoughts? Comments?

[The Foo]

the whole thing is a bad idea, if it anit broke dont fix it, it is perfect the way it is cant u see that.


the foo