Some more Ideas:

• Market Ban- Being able to ban someone from the Marketplace 
• Racial Tension- MInor Pops reduce approval.
• Isolationism- Outpost growth Reduction
• Diplomatic Scandal- Reduced Pressure on other Empires
• Academy Ban- No Acess to Acedemy, Heros don't level up, heros don't heal.

I would personally like to have some sort of Operations which I could "construct" and then stock up on up to a certain limit, kind of like Action cards from the board game Twilight Imperium, preferably using an Intrigue resource derived from Science like Manpower is from Food.

Some cool possible surprise effects could be:

- Wormhole Mines: Place at either end of a wormhole. Lasts X turns. Next fleet to pass through loses 40% of maximum health, to minimum of 1%.

- Black Ops Pirates: Instantly creates a fleet of fairly advanced medium ships (probably the bloody Mavros) which you control, but only last a few turns before vanishing

- Stolen Research: Steals a bit of Science from another empire

- All of the punishments for denying Basic Demands (Advanced Demands would be too strong likely)

- Bombings: Destroying a few random buildings

- Population Destruction: Killing a few random Pops

- Map Scrambling: Restore the Fog of War in a certain radius of a target system

- Cloaking: Temporarily hide a Fleet

- Radio Flare: Temporarily marking a Fleet so it is visible regardless of distance or location to all players

- Rebel Support: Funding an otherwise unpopular rebel group (causes the Rebel Fleet countdown to go; on an already Rebellious system, doubles the countdown rate)

All sorts of good things really. Basically take any "failure state" effect that players can normally avoid and provide a way to force it.

You should create an idea, so that others can vote for it. Let's show the devs, what we expect from the new gameplay mechanic. 

Most of the ideas above aren't espionage in my opinion. Corruption would fit more and therefore should involve pirates. But thats still a good direction! For example:

- altering diplomatic relationships by spreading "fake news"

- bribe local resistance in order to decreasing manpower on systems 

- increasing the effect of dust inflation for another faction by pumping high amounts of dust into their economy

- steal already researched techs from other factions

- decreasing movementpoints of ships in a fleet, by sabotage their engines (or let them get stucked to a system, due to complete engine failure)

I would like to see option for more intel on other factions. For example, 

- what kind of techs they already researched

- what are their current ship blueprints

- empire vision

- how are their heroes skilled

- let us put spies on systems/fleets for temporary vieson.

Don't forget about counter measures! That should be important too!

I fear we will hit up against the same issues that plague espionage in other 4x games. 

1) It can't be too effective otherwise people will use it to accomplish the things that they once did with fleets and research. So it will be reasonably bland.

2) It can't be intricate and complex because the AI cannot deal with systems that human brains can gradually understand, master and manipulate.

3) The new AI faction will likely be the weakest faction in the game because the AI will not know how to use espionage properly and it will be critical for the new faction

4) Personally I have seen this too many times before to get excited about it. Espionage is an exciting soundng concept that gets our blood pumping but inevitably fails in execution. I wish Amplitude would focus on something else honestly. How about some grand menaces and galaxy-threatening scenarios and enemies for the late game?

Slashman wrote:

I fear we will hit up against the same issues that plague espionage in other 4x games. 

1) It can't be too effective otherwise people will use it to accomplish the things that they once did with fleets and research. So it will be reasonably bland.

2) It can't be intricate and complex because the AI cannot deal with systems that human brains can gradually understand, master and manipulate.

3) The new AI faction will likely be the weakest faction in the game because the AI will not know how to use espionage properly and it will be critical for the new faction

4) Personally I have seen this too many times before to get excited about it. Espionage is an exciting soundng concept that gets our blood pumping but inevitably fails in execution. I wish Amplitude would focus on something else honestly. How about some grand menaces and galaxy-threatening scenarios and enemies for the late game?

Hmmmm, I thought the espionage system in EL was fairly well executed in the end. It didn't replace armies, it enhanced them with the loss of morale system. It was complex enough that you could inflict decent economic damage, either directly through spy actions, or indirectly through forcing roundups, but was simple enough that the AI could use it fairly well. Admittedly not as well as a player - but that's true of every single system in any game. If AI's were as good at that kind of decision making, they would be beat humans all the time. It's good enough that they don't make completely stupid mistakes. Forgotten are probably the weakest faction in EL, but that's mostly because of how tricky their units and science mechanics were, not because the spying mechanic was bad.

Outside of Amplitude, both Civ 4 and MoO had some pretty great espionage mechanics. You could run an entire 'spy economy' in Civ 4. It was tricky, but fun and effective, and it didn't outclass other types of economy, it was just an alternative.

As for what will be included, I imagine it will be a fairly similar fare to EL in terms of spy actions. Reducing fleet damage, reducing FIDSI, stealing tech, reducing manpower on system, etc.

I wouldn't mind seeing a mixture of the Morgawr and Forgotten factions from EL.

- black spotting

- catspaw (maybe)

- technology purchasing

also, it'd be interesting to see

- invisible explorer ships

The playstyle would revolve around getting to know the other empires' locations as fast as possible to start leeching stuff off of them.

WeLoveYou wrote:

Slashman wrote:

I fear we will hit up against the same issues that plague espionage in other 4x games. 

1) It can't be too effective otherwise people will use it to accomplish the things that they once did with fleets and research. So it will be reasonably bland.

2) It can't be intricate and complex because the AI cannot deal with systems that human brains can gradually understand, master and manipulate.

3) The new AI faction will likely be the weakest faction in the game because the AI will not know how to use espionage properly and it will be critical for the new faction

4) Personally I have seen this too many times before to get excited about it. Espionage is an exciting soundng concept that gets our blood pumping but inevitably fails in execution. I wish Amplitude would focus on something else honestly. How about some grand menaces and galaxy-threatening scenarios and enemies for the late game?

Hmmmm, I thought the espionage system in EL was fairly well executed in the end. It didn't replace armies, it enhanced them with the loss of morale system. It was complex enough that you could inflict decent economic damage, either directly through spy actions, or indirectly through forcing roundups, but was simple enough that the AI could use it fairly well. Admittedly not as well as a player - but that's true of every single system in any game. If AI's were as good at that kind of decision making, they would be beat humans all the time. It's good enough that they don't make completely stupid mistakes. Forgotten are probably the weakest faction in EL, but that's mostly because of how tricky their units and science mechanics were, not because the spying mechanic was bad.

Outside of Amplitude, both Civ 4 and MoO had some pretty great espionage mechanics. You could run an entire 'spy economy' in Civ 4. It was tricky, but fun and effective, and it didn't outclass other types of economy, it was just an alternative.

As for what will be included, I imagine it will be a fairly similar fare to EL in terms of spy actions. Reducing fleet damage, reducing FIDSI, stealing tech, reducing manpower on system, etc.

I found the spy system in EL to be entirely ignorable. If someone was using espionage against you, the easiest thing to do was to beat them up until it became a non-issue (and it never was a big issue unless the player was attempting to use it).

The AI basically did random nonsense with the system in EL just as they never used the Black Spot power to any meaningful effect. Also there was never any good counters to espionage. Just round-ups for the most part which often yielded nothing.

"It's good enough that they don't make completely stupid mistakes."

I wholeheartedly disagree on that. Every system that gets added that the AI fumbles with but humans can squeeze an advantaqge out of makes for extremely boring gameplay in the long run.  Guardians are a very good example of this. The frustrating times that the AI would build Guardians and then exclude them from combat, treating them like delicate support units instead of frontline powerhouses made me very frustrated. I watched a Cultist AI exclude its earth guardian from the combat to determine ownership of its single city while I was bringing  a fire guardian along with my own army.

Espionage is something to be used to 

a) Soften up the enemy for hostile military action 

b) Over time, make the enemy empire begin to crumble from within by subverting/manipulating the populace or its rulers

c) Swing diplomatic opinions in your favor for better deals

d) Steal wealth and information to strengrthen your own position.

We'll see what comes out of the G2G votes and makes it into the game. I just think espionage isn't a requirment for this game right now. I'm skeptical of how it will fit.