Increase Spy Training Limit

[lightside]

So currently spy's take way way to long to rebuild compared to the other military options(literally weeks compared to days). This combined with how easy it is to kill spy's and it makes it physically impossible to rebuild spy's once you have been zeroed in wars, even while in a long beige time. While I do agree spy's should have a longer rebuild time compared to more conventional military, they should still take far less time to build then what they currently are at.

So I would like to suggest the following rebuild rates

Base rate: 5 (changes base rebuild time from 25 days to 10 days) 

with IA: 7 (changes rebuild time from 20 to 8.5 days)

with spy sat: 9(changes rebuild time from 15 to 6.6 days)

With these changes it will still be possible to zero someone on spys. However it will also be possible to rebuild them in a reasonable amount of time.

[katashimon13]

how bout 3 4 and 5 xP

rawr

[lightside]

52 minutes ago, katashimon13 said:

how bout 3 4 and 5 xP

rawr

That would be a step in the right direction. But it would still take weeks to refill with that amount which is too long in my opinion.

[katashimon13]

and how are the kill ratios of low count spies affected then?

rawr

[Wendell]

On 6/1/2020 at 4:06 PM, lightside said:

So currently spy's take way way to long to rebuild compared to the other military options(literally weeks compared to days). This combined with how easy it is to kill spy's and it makes it physically impossible to rebuild spy's once you have been zeroed in wars, even while in a long beige time. While I do agree spy's should have a longer rebuild time compared to more conventional military, they should still take far less time to build then what they currently are at.

So I would like to suggest the following rebuild rates

Base rate: 5 (changes base rebuild time from 25 days to 10 days) 

with IA: 7 (changes rebuild time from 20 to 8.5 days)

with spy sat: 9(changes rebuild time from 15 to 6.6 days)

With these changes it will still be possible to zero someone on spys. However it will also be possible to rebuild them in a reasonable amount of time.

Too bad you aren't Prefontaine then Alex would have implemented this on the last update. We should just change the name of this subforum to "Prefontaine'a game suggestions" then Alex would actually pay attention.

[dtc justice]

If it takes 6 days to re max spies, then using spies become completely useless. The purpose of spying is you wipe their spies so you have free reign to spy military.

[Lury]

On 6/5/2020 at 8:30 AM, katashimon13 said:

and how are the kill ratios of low count spies affected then?

rawr

rawr? 

rawr

[KingGhost]

Yeah no, what DTC said, winning the spy war is arguably pretty hard and the whole point of winning it is to provide an advantage this isn’t even a needed change tbh.

Also what is the point in making a poll if you’re going to make it bias by having it have “Yes” or “No (input something negative that no one would say)”

[Kamala Khan]

This would make the spy war impossible to win, because you would constantly have to spend all your slots on keeping your opponents’ spies zeroed and would have no free slots to actually spy away military with. And spies aren’t some overpowered game breaking mechanic where they can turn the tide of a war or something all on their own, they just help around the edges.

[lightside]

3 hours ago, MCMaster-095 said:

This would make the spy war impossible to win, because you would constantly have to spend all your slots on keeping your opponents’ spies zeroed and would have no free slots to actually spy away military with. And spies aren’t some overpowered game breaking mechanic where they can turn the tide of a war or something all on their own, they just help around the edges.

Nope not at all. Spy kills should stay the same. It is already easy to quickly zero someone in spy's. In fact its faster to zero spy's then any other maxed military. Reducing the rebuild time from 25 days to a week wont effect that. So this wont be a problem at all and you will still be bale to use other operations. If someone has a long beige time they should be able to rebuild alot of them and that seems fair to me.

[Menace]

On 6/7/2020 at 5:30 PM, dtc justice said:

If it takes 6 days to re max spies, then using spies become completely useless. The purpose of spying is you wipe their spies so you have free reign to spy military.

Can you explain why it would make spies useless? I can see how it would make it more difficult organizing to hold an opponents spies down, rather than wiping out spies at the start of a conflict and then not worrying about it for a while. However, a day to wipe out spies and 6 days to rebuild with the associated projects is not unreasonable. This is a slower rebuild time than every unit in the game, giving multiple days to spy military while an opponent rebuilds spies.

[lightside]

2 hours ago, Menace said:

Can you explain why it would make spies useless? I can see how it would make it more difficult organizing to hold an opponents spies down, rather than wiping out spies at the start of a conflict and then not worrying about it for a while. However, a day to wipe out spies and 6 days to rebuild with the associated projects is not unreasonable. This is a slower rebuild time than every unit in the game, giving multiple days to spy military while an opponent rebuilds spies.

Completely agree with this

[Azaghul]

I like the fact that there is one area of warfare that takes a while to build back up from.

It adds depth to the war system.

[TRM]

4 hours ago, Menace said:

Can you explain why it would make spies useless? I can see how it would make it more difficult organizing to hold an opponents spies down, rather than wiping out spies at the start of a conflict and then not worrying about it for a while. However, a day to wipe out spies and 6 days to rebuild with the associated projects is not unreasonable. This is a slower rebuild time than every unit in the game, giving multiple days to spy military while an opponent rebuilds spies.

Let's be fair. It takes more money to jill spies, than the spies are worth, or at least that was the case last global. I may be out of touch atm. 

Either way, if you spend most of ur time spying spies, there will be very little respite from that to spy units, and that's to add on to the fight that using spies as a team is already hard enough. Why make it harder? 

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

4 hours ago, Menace said:

Can you explain why it would make spies useless? I can see how it would make it more difficult organizing to hold an opponents spies down, rather than wiping out spies at the start of a conflict and then not worrying about it for a while. However, a day to wipe out spies and 6 days to rebuild with the associated projects is not unreasonable. This is a slower rebuild time than every unit in the game, giving multiple days to spy military while an opponent rebuilds spies.

Sure, just ignore that someone has to be below 30 spies for any sort of military ops to be conceivable, and below 20 for best results.

Congratulations, 2/3 of the time is now used suppressing spies, making the already weedy influence of military sabotage ops completely pointless.

Why do people who clearly don't know how to run or operate milcom or wars always so insistent on knowing what needs changing?

Edit: as example since you're so obviously unaware of how to run a spy campaign, your entire premise assumes the spying starts on a daychange and is successful. This is optimal but not always the case, and the opponent will usually be down to around 10-15 spies after it. Add in the 9 for that day, up to 24, daychange comes again, 2/3 ops used to kill spies, he builds 9, is back up to around 15 or so, daychange, military ops, builds over 20, then spy killing again.

1-2-3-4-5, 15 ops in 5 days including the opening right before DC, 10 of these killing spies. That's if you get the OPTIMAL case scenario. 

If you don't, and say start spying after DC, he'll be back up to around 35 when DC hits again.  he'll be at around 20ish area, build 10 more, over 20, the 3rd day is therefore more spy killing. Finally zeroed, day 4 is military ops, but day 5 he's getting around 20 again, so your milcom has spies killed to slow it down. 

12/15 ops are now killing spies. 3/4 of all operations are JUST maintaining spy supremacy, so much time infact that it's kinda pointless to bother.

 

Edited June 10, 2020 by Akuryo

[Menace]

Lets take two people with all the spy projects, with the greatest amount of spy building and killing. I've found that people with the projects often kill around 20 spies per attack. In the initial attack, say 1 is ineffective or fails or perhaps the other nation rebuilds. That means that it will require about 3-5 attacks to zero a nations spies . After that point, around a spy attack about every two days will be enough to hold down their spies. For these nations, that is about 25% of their spy attacks.  If you look at 3 days, maybe only one spy attack can be used to attack another military unit. If you look at it in 5 days most attacks will be required to keep their spies down, perhaps 75-80% as you said. However, alliances do not fight wars against each other for 5 days. For a longer period of time, the amount of spy vs spy attacks compared to spy vs other military unit will decrease approaching nearer to 25%. Even under the current system, the first few initial 3-4 spy attacks are usually against spies. In the first two days of fighting, 100% of spy attacks are used to eliminate spies. Spies must be useless...

Yes, it will be more difficult to win and keep spy supremacy as you called it, that is the entire point of this suggestion. 

Edited June 10, 2020 by Menace

[Arawra]

2 hours ago, Menace said:

Lets take two people with all the spy projects, with the greatest amount of spy building and killing. I've found that people with the projects often kill around 20 spies per attack. In the initial attack, say 1 is ineffective or fails or perhaps the other nation rebuilds. That means that it will require about 3-5 attacks to zero a nations spies . After that point, around a spy attack about every two days will be enough to hold down their spies. For these nations, that is about 25% of their spy attacks.

Only responding to this portion because I didn't understand the rest of what you wrote:

I don't think you're accounting for the underdog position of being outnumbered in a war where every 2 days you might need to dedicate both your spy operations to keep someone's spies below 20, giving you essentially 1 day in between to sabotage military.

Winning the spy war is one of the few ways an underdog can gain a significant advantage, but if you tweak the spy rebuild/kill numbers too much, it becomes more tedious to maintain, much less of an advantage, and adds more expense (sending 60 spies to assassinate > sending 30 to sabotage, cost-wise) to, in this case, the underdog whom is already at such an enormous economic loss. If you lose the spy war as an underdog however, the disadvantage isn't as strong because the underdog will not have military to sabotage aside from mostly soldiers, in fact there is more of a disadvantage simply in not having the ability to sabotage the enemies' military.

Point being, spies in its current form serve as an excellent mechanic to underdogs, giving them a slight advantage and method of fighting back, which is especially important with the new war changes added. The advantage provided is fairly balanced since it does not change the outcome of the overlying war and the amount of time and work that gets put in; it takes tons of coordination to first, win the spy war, and continued coordination to keep the enemies' spies killed, much more coordination than the loser of the spy war reminding their members to build spies daily.

Edited June 10, 2020 by Hime-sama
fixes