Why do my spies fail so much?

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Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 3:23:28 AM

FerretStyle

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So I tried playing as a Ketarov empire today, thinking I would be a spymaster with their nifty intelligence bonus. Didn't quite work out that way, and rather quickly I had the other three empires I'd run across thinking rather poorly of me.

Despite having 85% or better success chance listed on the agent screen, missions were failing at a rate of 30-50% and in some cases (like stealing galaxy maps) 3 out of 4 times were failures.

Is there something I'm missing? Cause the success chance that's given can't be real based on my experience with it. After several hours of play and always having 3-4 agents active I failed more missions than I succeeded and lost countless agents.

Though it was a learning experience. What I learned, unfortunately, was that spying doesn't seem to be worth the effort or the money (unless you want other empires to hate you).

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RE: Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 4:08:59 AM

concern

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Your observations seem to mirror my own experiences. I can only guess that your wonderfully high success chances are being offset by your opponents counter-intelligence, of which you would have no visibility. So it does sort of make sense that an 85% probabilty can be reduced significantly in practice.

I also agree with you that intelligence seems to be a waste of investment. I used to have 10 spies active until I realised that my missions were failing too often; now I keep a small contingent for counter-intelligence and eschew the use of active intelligence missions. The hit on your reputation is just too significant to be offset by the minor benefit of the mission. Unless you are playing a belligerent empire, I can't see intelligence missions being practical.

(in reply to FerretStyle)

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RE: Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 4:54:41 AM

Wade1000

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That makes sense and might be a good game play element to prevent empires being overun by sabotage. Occasional espionage successes by empires unconcerned with immediate reputation seems balanced.

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RE: Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 5:30:08 AM

JonathanStrange

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Although I agree with the plausibility of why the success rate is so low I'd still like to know or see how espionage is calculated/influenced/determined.

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RE: Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 5:31:06 AM

Fishman

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The thing with espionage is that the AI is pretty much immune to all of them, whereas the one overpowered mission that the AI can use against YOU is spammed over and over and over until it works because it cost next to nothing. The only real reason to bother with more than the occasional act of spying is to pick really easy, cakewalk missions to train your spies on.

(in reply to Wade1000)

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RE: Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 5:46:54 AM

DigitalPhoenix

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quote:

ORIGINAL: concern

Your observations seem to mirror my own experiences. I can only guess that your wonderfully high success chances are being offset by your opponents counter-intelligence, of which you would have no visibility. So it does sort of make sense that an 85% probabilty can be reduced significantly in practice.

I also agree with you that intelligence seems to be a waste of investment. I used to have 10 spies active until I realised that my missions were failing too often; now I keep a small contingent for counter-intelligence and eschew the use of active intelligence missions. The hit on your reputation is just too significant to be offset by the minor benefit of the mission. Unless you are playing a belligerent empire, I can't see intelligence missions being practical.

same here

this is why i rarely use spies anymore for fear of reputation hits . the spies i send out on missions were above 100 skill , and only sent out on missions greater than 90% success rate over a year and still they all fail . ><

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RE: Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 6:17:22 AM

Fishman

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Your problem is sending them on lengthy missions. The longer they hang around, the more likely they will be caught. Send them on short, high success rate missions, like sabotaging some crap construction no one really cares about anyway, the kind that's easy to do because it involves renting a truck and crashing it through some factory, then fleeing the country before they catch you, that have a 90+% success rate even for the shortest duration. They'll be back with some fresh skills before you notice, and then you can send them again, or when they have skilled up enough, you can put them on safe counterintelligence duty.

(in reply to DigitalPhoenix)

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RE: Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 6:46:14 AM

forsaken1111

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Fishman

Your problem is sending them on lengthy missions. The longer they hang around, the more likely they will be caught. Send them on short, high success rate missions, like sabotaging some crap construction no one really cares about anyway, the kind that's easy to do because it involves renting a truck and crashing it through some factory, then fleeing the country before they catch you, that have a 90+% success rate even for the shortest duration. They'll be back with some fresh skills before you notice, and then you can send them again, or when they have skilled up enough, you can put them on safe counterintelligence duty.

What are you basing this statement on? There is no indication that a longer duration mission increases the chance to be caught. In fact the game indicates the exact opposite, that longer duration missions increase the success chance considerably.

Have you actually tested this, or is this the way you assume it works 'because it makes sense'?

I would think longer duration missions have a much lower chance of being discovered. Which would you suspect more, the guy who just hopped the border last month and rented a truck without valid ID or the foreign exchange student who has been attending university on the planet for over a year?

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RE: Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 7:16:21 AM

Fishman

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quote:

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111
What are you basing this statement on? There is no indication that a longer duration mission increases the chance to be caught. In fact the game indicates the exact opposite, that longer duration missions increase the success chance considerably.

Empirical results. Yes, it is true that longer duration missions increase your chance of success, as displayed, considerably....if it wasn't already very high. HOWEVER, there is a caveat: Those chances do not include the effects of counterspying, which is what gets you busted. The longer you are deployed, the more chances they have to bust you.

quote:

Have you actually tested this, or is this the way you assume it works 'because it makes sense'?

Yup. Short duration missions with 90+% success ratings pretty much succeed at their listed value most of the time, long duration missions with those same 90% success ratings get busted. They don't even fail at completion, they bust.

quote:

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111
I would think longer duration missions have a much lower chance of being discovered. Which would you suspect more, the guy who just hopped the border last month and rented a truck without valid ID or the foreign exchange student who has been attending university on the planet for over a year?

Both are pretty suspicious, and honestly, the suspiciousness of an individual is unchanged by how long they've been there not being suspicious. In fact, their failure to do anything suspicious is very suspicious. You clearly don't think like a spy. While we might not be able to arrest them because they haven't done anything apparently wrong, WE ARE WATCHING THEM. They will make a mistake sooner or later, and we will be ON THEM like SWARM OF ANGRY BEES. The longer an agent is preparing his attack, the more chances he has to make a mistake and the more time we have to act on that mistake. If a guy rents a truck and drives it through a manufacturing plant, your window for stopping him is pretty short. If the guy's sitting there in his dorm room with maps of these manufacturing plants drawn up and hanging from his wall, SOMEONE may catch him before he is ready to launch.

(in reply to forsaken1111)

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RE: Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 12:38:59 PM

Joram

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My experiences don't reflect yours but with that said, my guess is that the percentages don't take into account the enemy's counter-intelligence efforts. How could it unless you knew exactly what agents he had. So I'm guessing the enemy just has strong counter-intelligence. While I don't do a lot of espionage, I try to give my agents 'practice' by stealing basic things from the smallest empires. This helps boost their rating when they succeed.

(in reply to Fishman)

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RE: Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 1:27:35 PM

Fishman

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

My experiences don't reflect yours but with that said, my guess is that the percentages don't take into account the enemy's counter-intelligence efforts.

That is not a guess, that is a known fact documented in the game and the manual, so no, the percentages disregard counterintelligence. In the ABSENCE of counterintelligence, those percentages are accurate and your experiences will reflect that. Weak counterintelligence may not distort the results you expect too much. However, the usual sign of counterintelligence disruption is missions that terminate in failure prematurely: When you catch a spy, it mentions how you caught him preparing for the mission. As far as I can tell, counterintelligence apparently works in "pulses", where each pulse, counterintelligence may catch a deployed spy. Therefore, the longer a spy remains deployed, the more likely he is caught. You must therefore balance the failure of a mission due to insufficient prep time with the possibility of being caught while prepping.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

While I don't do a lot of espionage, I try to give my agents 'practice' by stealing basic things from the smallest empires. This helps boost their rating when they succeed.

Stealing things is the hard way to train. Most steals require a good prep time in order to have good odds. Petty construction sabotage, on the other hand, is easy to do both in the game, and in real life. Therefore, a good agent can practice with petty vandalism, which often can achieve 70-90+% odds depending on how good your agents come out of the box (Ketarov +50% agents can succeed over 90% of the time), and since you neither know nor care what is being sabotaged, as empire construction is basically an amorphous blob where anything destroyed or set back goes largely unnoticed most of the time, you just pick whatever is easy and go for it. You're unlikely to be caught, and your agents gain a bit of XP. It's a training exercise. Even if the agent somehow fails, as long as he survives, he gains XP anyway. And if he gets killed, meh, who cares? The AI will hire another noob for you to train in short order (don't hire agents manually, they don't gain the +skill bonus).

(in reply to Joram)

Post #: 11

RE: Why do my spies fail so much? - 4/13/2010 7:06:35 PM

Wade1000

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