I just read SD is planning for an espionage upgrade in v2.0 of GCII. So i just feel free to open a thread for suggestions for a new spying system. Just my personal wishlist how the new espionage might look like
I know that it is only a patch. So the possibilities might be limited by the amount of work the programmers might invest into it. I will try to give my suggestions in a way that can be easily realized in the game. (I am not a programmer though, having not a real idea of what is possible technically and how complicated the modifications would be)
The first thing that bothers me a bit, that the espionage is very symbolic and boring in its execution - its just putting little icons on buildings to disable them and to replace them if removed. Out of a roleplaying view it is not very elegant. I think you have already thought over this and thats the reason you plan to improve it.
I do not say that the possibility to disable planetary improvements should necessarily go - that may be kept as one option of espionage. But in my opinion espionage should be more complex. Waht should be kept is the ability to steal techs. That is good and should stay. But i would appreciate this to be modified a bit. It would be cool if one specifically had to spy research buildings for getting techs. Maybe it could be modified a bit to "stealing" research points in addition. By this means we could expand the espionage thing a bit - by having the occupied building deciding which area exactly is affected by the spy. For example economy buildings may affect your trade with them and boost your trade outcome. Maybe spies could be able to"steal" trade income from trade of an enemy race with another enemy races
Or spying farms may seriously affect their soldiering (besides capping their pop - which btw should be done more realistic - i do not really know how the actual model looks like but overpopulated, fast starving population would be cool if farms are sabotaged.) Influence buildings spied should get you a diplomatic bonus towards this particular race (besides inflicting their influence rating as well), because you are spying their political infrastructure. Really cool would be the possibility to affect their politics by this way. I do not know if AI is set up with the same elections as the player but maybe your spies really could affect the votings so you can diminish their political bonuses by election manipulation. The same might happen to you by enemy spies. There should be the possibility to affect starports as well. Ships built there might be less functional or faulty. Maybe you could insert the option for spies to agitate already revolting planets to flip over more quickly. Or the possibility to mobilize more citizens for information warfare (okay i admit, this is done by spying morale buildings already - but a bit more feedback would be nice, a little window with text would do the trick to give it another, more plastic feel)
Now to the point how spionage should be treated by the enemies. I think there should be a small possibilty (depending on your espionage rating) that a spy can get nullified and be recognized as belonging to you. That should impact diplomatic relations to this particular race and a few text boxes could do a lot for the roleplay-feeling i miss a bit in spying.
I believe all this can be made without really big changes to the code (as stated before not a programmer, so no guarantee for this), only by modifying a few attributes associated with spying. This of course will put up some questions about balance - but i am sure there are people out there who like to give their suggestions to aid you if it is not perfect in the beginning.
If espionage were tuned optically as well that would just bring it to the edge. Really great would be new espionage screens that enable to do the things mentioned above in an extra menu for espionage. In my dreams also a few video sequences are added. Okay, that goes far and i do absolutely understand if this goes too far for an update.
To the others - i would like to hear your personal suggestions how espionage should be improved, maybe the devs can get some good ideas here.
