The way espionage currently works in Dark Avatar, the player needs to manually place a spy on a planetary improvement. This selection allows him to to browse through every foreign planet on the map, regardless of whether its even in sensor range, and see a map of *exactly* what each colony has. This information is really only supposed to be available after you reach a rather high infiltration level with a particular civilization, and it really gives the player a strategic advantage he isn't supposed to have.

My suggestion is to replace the manual placement with an assignment screen where the player chooses what sort of enemy improvement the agent should infiltrate, and then the spy automatically chooses her own target. The player would still be able to see which enemy planets had active spies on them, but not necessarily the specific improvements they were afflicting.

Here's how it works:

1) Player enters the espionage tab and clicks "Place Agent."

2) New "Assignment" window pops up where Player selects the target race and the intended mission -- Manufacturing, Economic, Research, etc.

3) The game automatically places the spy in an appropriate enemy structure. The Agent icon would appear on the galaxy map as normal, and the name of the sabotaged structure would still be listed in the espionage screen, but Player would not be able to see the enemy colony screen until an appropriate espionage level was reached.

The auto-placement would be weighted to always select the most valuable structures first. For example, sending an agent out on an anti-scientific mission would automatically target the enemy Research Capital first. If none were available, she would then select a random available Discovery Sphere, then a random Invention Matrix, and so on down the line. Once placed, the agent would remain there until recalled as normal.

This system is an improvement because it not only removes the unintended "cheat" of using a single spy to browse through every colony in the galaxy, but it also removes a level of micromanagment by allowing the spy to automatically select the best available target. I don't know how feasible my suggestion is, but hopefully it can be considered.   

-Autistic Angel