Spy ship IDEA

While I like the ideal of controlling the spy ship, as we did in Hegemonia legions of Iron, I found them over powering. A single spy ship could destroy 4 battleship, and any number of fortress. Also I see a problem with stealing technolgy, as the technolgy of each faction is so different. But the stealing technolgy, could work, if it was like the command and conquer red alert 2 way, in which you got a new type of uint, that use technolgy form both sides.

But I like the ideal, of spy ship. What I think that they should real do, is upgrade the scout ships into spy ships, and allow us to set up spy mission, that the spy ship would carrier out auto pilot.

I think this game does scream for some degree of espionage but I have to wonder how cross-race technology theft would work. I suppose I could see it for the basics like weapon and health upgrades but I don't think they should be able to swipe superweapons and things of that nature.

Personally, my vision of spy ships involves essentially 'attaching' them to enemy worlds and selecting one of a variety of more subtle tasks for them to perform. For example:

- Credit/Resource siphoning.
- Enhanced allegiance loss per-second from culture.
- Infrastructure sabotage.
- Slowed production.
- Increased intelligence - Planet income, production queues for local shipyards, rally points, etc.
- Bonuses/penalties to nearby friendly/enemy ships.

Since the effects are, for the most part, subtle (outside of the sabotage realm), there's a good chance you'd be able to get something done with your agents before getting caught. I think something like this would add an interesting new layer to the game (especially if cultural effects came into play) which is entirely too combat-centric at the moment.

My cat ran away when it saw the typo: Spay ships run kitty, run...


You could make the spy ships indestructible, and/or make the icon that represents them very hard to see, so no one knows it's there...

Although I don't have as much interest in Sins as, say, a month ago, I find this a pretty interesting topic. I don't have any illusions that a) including a spy ship would drastically improve the game, or that it will be included. However, as an idea, here's what I think:

I) The ultimate spy ship would be one that DOES NOT trip the "We Are Being Attacked!" message when it enters enemy space. The scout does a good job of being a spy ship as it is, but it trades stealth for speed, and offensive utility for helplessness. So...

II) The ultimate spy ship would have hidden functions, rather like the Q-Ships from WWII, or if you prefer the "phasmid" (specifically from the "Master and Commander" movie, but you see this tactic a lot in Patrick O'Brian's books). It would look innocent, like a contructor, a trade ship, or a basic colony ship, but it could "transform" into a heavy-weapon carrier. In this guise, it could carry LRMs, or a nice beam weapon, or planetary bombs, sneak in, and start to attack without immediately setting off the alarm. I actually would not envision this as a fast vehicle at all, but rather slow. It trades speed for stealth, and apparent helplessness for a hidden, focussed attack.

I think, that what Tewelvefields is saying is the same, as what I'm saying. The scout ship in the game, is there to gather data, and a spy ship would do the same as well as some spy like functions. That why I said, it sdould be more of an upgrade.

Here are my ideals, for spy missions for the TEC( I have yet to come up with any for the other factions).

1. Build pirate king: This is were your spy ship goes to a pirate base, and if the pirate attack, is against any one other the you, then you can use this abilitie. What this abilitie does, is turn your spy ship, into a pirate version of an level 1 capital ship for the TEC faction. The pirate king, can not gain exp, so will be at level one, no matter how many ship that it destroy. The pirate king, also lets you control which planet gets attacked, by the pirate group, but only the planets, of the faction that has the highest bounty can be selected. The reason, for this upgrade, is that the pirate faction when it attacks is very easy to stop, with the right planetary defense system. Also the TEC can win most of the pirate bounty wars.

2. Q-ship: which is an upgrade to TEC's Insurgency. Which allows you to have more conrtol on when the insurgency happends, as well as the ships in the fleet. What I have seen is that Insurgencey, hit the same worlds, that the pirate attacks normally do. This means that there is all ways a defense system to counter a pirate raid. Pirate raid fleets, normally have a lot of ship, form 15-50 I think. While a insurgency strike force has only 6! Which means that they are all ready countered, by the same system that counters the pirates.

I think spy ships are a great idea.But i'm worried if the player will spend most of the time with spy ships and will make it harder for other players and not really fun too play. Unless it's single player.    (:( 

If the spyship is classified as a tradeship, then your trading partners won't attack it, and you will have more of an incentive to make trade agreements!!!

How do you implement it so that you DONT get attacked (to be fair, you have no weapons on SPY ship), AND make it so you see the planet that the tradeship is in???

I looked at the tradeport entity file, and since it spawns it's own ships, that's how the tradeship is immune to being noticed, but those ships don't let you see what is in the gravity well...


Still, if it were invincible with no weapons, this should be close...

Maybe the tradeship uses an ability like the PSI spying ability???

Great idea invincible but no weapons that sounds genus!!!!!!!!  

Unless this ship is uncontrollable by the player, has no utilities whatsoever, and can't give the player information about the zones in which it's traveling (meaning, it's a useless lump akin to the rocks in the background), then making it invincible is both a strange and generally bad idea.

homefleet I think transforming would be a lttile too much.

Defining the spy's role is most important

You might prefer a spy to sit on an enemy's home planet and not be detected, or to conduct sabotage, or do what the Jedi do and destroy entire enemy fleets singlehandedly (which is a terrible idea since you could just build a hundred of them and win the game)

So the spy should somehow support your empire as a whole directly... How the spy does this is the real question...

yep