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Lets talk about spies.


Prefontaine
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Since we have some time before this current war ends and the re-works to spies are coming out I figured we could all have a chat about how things are currently slated. The original thread talked about a reserve type system for spies. Working with the dev group we've found some problems with the rough draft and have sought to overcome some things. First change is the easy change.

  • 20% reduction in casualties from spy vs spy attacks.

Lots of people think spies die too quickly. 20% is where we believe is a good place to start with reducing the death rates in addition to the main change that will allow everyone to be able to rebuild.

  • When spies are trained they are defaulted into an reserve status. 
  • Reserve spies do not add to your offensive or defensive capabilities, nor do they count towards score.
  • Reserve spies cannot be killed.
  • Reserve spies cost 1/3 the upkeep of active spies.
  • Spies may be moved from reserve to active duty at any time. When you move spies to active duty you must move all of your spies to active duty up to your maximum active spies.
  • Spies cannot move from active duty to reserves.
  • You can never have more active duty spies than your maximum spy count.
  • Active spies + reserve spies is less than or equal to your max spy count with the following bonus exceptions:
    • All players may hold an additional 5 spies above the max in reserve.
    • If you have a CIA project, you may hold an additional 5 spies (10) above the max in reserve.
    • If you have the spy satellite you may hold an additional 5 spies (15) above the max in reserve.
  • If you ever move more than 50% of your maximum spies from reserve to active, you gain 24 turns of espionage inexperience which prevents you from performing offensive spy attacks.

Lets talk about what some of this means, as it might be confusing in a few places. Lets start with the last bullet point. The Dev team thought it would unfair for alliances at war who won the spy war at first to have enemies be able to come out and flip the spy war on them with a coordinated coming out of reserve status. Thus if you're moving large numbers of spies out at once, they'll help you defensively but not offensively for a bit. I'm all ears on how many turns this should last for, 24 is far from a concrete number.

Next, why do you have to move all of your spies out at once? Well, without that part the more than 50% would be rendered useless. Just bring out smaller numbers a few times and be back to full. To give a couple examples of how this works with reserves:

  • You have 5 spies in active, no CIA, and have maxed out your reserve to 50. You move to active, 45 of your reserves are moved to bring you up to max and your additional 5 that can be above max in reserve, stay in reserve.
  • You have CIA and Spy Sat projects. You have 20 active spies and 52 spies in reserve. With those projects your max spies is 60, so when you move to active status you have 60 spies and 12 left in reserve. 
  • A more likely scenario, you have 0 active spies and 40 in reserves. You move to active status and all 40 are active.

Third, how totals are counted. You cannot have 50 spies active and 50 in reserve. Without CIA you max spies is 50. With CIA is 60. That means your total spies active and in reserve have to equal those numbers but you can hold 5 extra in reserve and then an additional 5 for CIA and Spy Sat.

  • A player with no spy projects can have 50 active and 5 reserve spies. Their active total can never be above 50.
  • A player with CIA can have 60 active and 10 reserves. Their active total can never be above 60
  • A player with CIA and Spy Sat can have 60 active and 15 reserves. Their active total can never be above 60
  • These players could have 55 reserves 0 active with no projects. 70 reserve 0 active with CIA. 75 reserve and 0 active with CIA and spy sat.

I open the floor to mockery of me. Also I did not proof read. 

Edited by Prefontaine
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Too complicated. I'm just as confused on why the total number of spies killed per op can't be limited, just like similar ops (tanks, soldiers, etc.). And why this solution was the best instead of an easy one.

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7 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

20% reduction in casualties from spy vs spy attacks.   This is not enough, it currently takes about 4 spy attacks to wipe out an opponents spies, by reducing it 20 percent it now takes 5 attacks.  Seeing as you can be spied 3 times a day, that still means you can be completely wiped out of spies over a single update.  So your reserve spy attack thing really makes no difference, when you unleash your new spies that took 12-15 days to build up can get wiped out again over the course of a single update, because they cant fight back.

You guys have made this so needlessly complicated, if you reduce the number of spies an attack can kill to around 5 or so, this basically gets rid of most of your problem.  This allows time for the aggrieved side to fight back, at a disadvantage yes, but they can fight back in a spy war.

Complicated doesn't mean bad. Also your system entirely fails to address the problem of being able to perpetually be able to pin someones spies down. The reserve system is primarily to allow for nations to be able to rebuild spies. Your method does nothing to address this. 

Edited by Prefontaine
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1 minute ago, Prefontaine said:

Complicated doesn't mean bad. Also your system entirely fails to address the problem of being able to perpetually be able to pin someones spies down. The reserve system is primarily to allow for nations to be able to rebuild spies. Your method does nothing to address this. 

So if perpetually pinning a person is a problem you are trying to solve, what is causing that to happen?  

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10 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

So if perpetually pinning a person is a problem you are trying to solve, what is causing that to happen?  

The fact that you cannot build more spies per day than you can lose, thus you can have a negative net spies per day. It doesn't matter if you could only lose 4 spies per day if you can only build 3 spies per day. You will eventually run out. There exists no number that makes spies worth while and makes it so a player cannot be pinned down with virtually no effort forever with spies without a spy rebuilding system that doesn't allow for those spies to be killed.

Also the system isn't actually complicated. You have units you can rebuild that can't be killed until you're able to use them. Really that's the core mechanic. It's very simple. The details are there to create some depth to it and prevent exploitation and diminishing the benefits of winning the spy war aspect of wars. Details like being able to build some extra spies. Not complicated. Not being able to do offensive spy attacks for a period of time after bringing large numbers of spies out of reserve. Not complicated. 

I expect suggestions that are more complicated than "hurr durr" to be met with confusion from Duelos, complaints that -this- is complicated from experienced players? Please. There can be some initial confusion on "wait how many spies can people have in reserve?" and "how does the moving out numbers actually work" which is why examples are given. 

Edited by Prefontaine
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I would propose 18 hours of spy inexperience instead; 24 hours gives the opponent one guaranteed day change to eliminate all the enemies' spies again. 18 hours gives enough time for opposing Milcoms to figure out their opponent has unreserved their spies. It also gives the side trying to take back the spy war an opportunity to do so, instead of making their spies near-completely vulnerable to a DC spy wipe. With 24 hours, the side trying to reclaim the spy war is essentially forced to unreserve at the prior DC in order to have any chance of fighting back in the following DC, and anyone that misses the bus is either, losing all their spies, or missing the opportunity to participate entirely.

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From the desk of the newest dev team member,

I, too, thought Reserves sounded overly complicated at first. But it is an interesting new "strategic" mechanic basically allowing coordinated "blitzes" with spies during a war. I ask that you all give it a chance and let it sink it, I think you'll agree it adds some cool depth.

 

I will say that I personally disagree on two key points here.

 

1. Reducing casualties by 20% is not going to be enough. RonnyD is correct, you can still lose your total spy count in a day.  

2. The 24 turn timer is too harsh of a "penalty." The purpose of the reserves mechanic is to allow flipping the spy war. Coordination should be enough of a "penalty" in this case, in my opinion.

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You asked for feedback, I am trying to help lead you thru a simple methodology on how to problem solve.  I am trying to help you get to the root of your problem and fix it, rather than put a band-aid on it.  The bandaid might make it better but ultimately not achieve what you are going for, because you still haven't correctly identified what your problem is. 

Ok digging deeper you are saying that the problem is that you can kill more spies than you can recruit every day,  I dont know that this is actually your problem, but ok lets go with that. Your solution is that you can have spies in reserve, to replace those that are killed.  You reduced spy kills by 20 percent, so that means in 3 spy attacks you can kill around 40 spies.  I am guessing your reserve would then be called on to max out your spies once again, so that you can counter...  But you have a provision in place that says if you pull more than 50 percent of your spies they cant attack for 24 hours.  So you replace the spies that got killed in one day, and then for the next two days, your new spies are defenseless, and will also get picked off.  So it seems like to me, that what your solution has done is delay the time it takes for your enemies to wipe out your spies?  Does that sound correct or am I missing something? 

I don't see how this solves the problem that you can kill more spies than you can recruit, or how it prevents you from being perpetually pinned.  Unless you are able to pull reserve spies in the middle of your opponent launching spy attacks, which while doable, is extremely difficult.

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1 hour ago, Prefontaine said:
  • If you ever move more than 50% of your maximum spies from reserve to active, you gain 24 turns of espionage inexperience which prevents you from performing offensive spy attacks.

Lets talk about what some of this means, as it might be confusing in a few places. Lets start with the last bullet point. The Dev team thought it would unfair for alliances at war who won the spy war at first to have enemies be able to come out and flip the spy war on them with a coordinated coming out of reserve status. 

Heavily disagree with this. First of all, if it can be flipped on you then you can also flip it in return later. What's unfair here? You win the spy war early and have the advantage of having more spies early lol. The aggressors in the opening blitz of a global wiping the opponents spies out at the beginning is pretty much the same situation as using the reserve mechanic to flip it. With this 24h cooldown the spies that just came out of reserve will just be wiped out again before the 24h are over never having been used meaningfully.

 

Other than that i'm pretty okay with the mechanic, though i'd also be okay with just a sufficient reduction in spy casualties.

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Dryad is also correct, assuming the attacking side wipes the defending side's spies, if the defending side is able to pull reserves and wipe out the attacking side, then the attacking side can do the exact same thing to the defending side, and the defending side is back at 0.  Then while the war continues, both sides will be building up spy reserves again, only to repeat the cycle in about 2 weeks.   That is just assuming you get rid of the 24 hour cooldown, if you don't, they will just get wiped out as dryad stated.

I will give you guys credit its a creative new game mechanic, it just doesn't solve your problem

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15 minutes ago, Dryad said:

Heavily disagree with this. First of all, if it can be flipped on you then you can also flip it in return later. What's unfair here? You win the spy war early and have the advantage of having more spies early lol. The aggressors in the opening blitz of a global wiping the opponents spies out at the beginning is pretty much the same situation as using the reserve mechanic to flip it. With this 24h cooldown the spies that just came out of reserve will just be wiped out again before the 24h are over never having been used meaningfully.

I don't disagree. There was a strong push for a clause to limit benefits for coordinated leaving of reserve status. If there's large push to not have the 24 hour clause, then I will happily revert it. That's why this has moved to the public phase of discussion.

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What is the point of having reserve spies?

Unless active spies can be protected during war by making them reserve why waste money by keeping spies who won’t do anything.

We can just recruit them before doing spy operations.

Why pay them 1/3 of upkeep if they will not even defend?

Edited by Roger
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Honestly I don't see the point of complicated work arounds when we can see the problem and just fix the problem directly . The first problem with spy's is that they insta die, reducing causality's helps with that but that is only half the problem. The other problem is that spy's take 20 days to rebuild. 4x longer then other military units. Halving that to 10-15 days depending on projects would help alot.

Also on a side note the spy sat project probably should be changed. It should provide an extra spy action instead of +50% damage like it is now. 

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I personally think this mechanic is excessively complicated. If I didn't plan on commenting, I would've skimmed through the wall of text and probably miss an important detail.

That being said, I agree with Ronny. Despite the numerous clauses, this seems like a band-aid fix to me. As the loosing side of this war I think you've underestimated the problems surrounding the spy mechanics. Spy-op is technically non-existent for me since they've already been massacred on day one. I suggest that you reduce spy vs spy casualty by +/- 50%, disable espionage to beige'd nation (there's been at least 3 nations trying to assassinate my "spies"), increase spy damage (maybe proportional to city count?), increase spy enlistment to 3, and 4 with IA.

Edited by Deus ex
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4 hours ago, Prefontaine said:

I don't disagree. There was a strong push for a clause to limit benefits for coordinated leaving of reserve status. If there's large push to not have the 24 hour clause, then I will happily revert it. That's why this has moved to the public phase of discussion.

It shouldn't even be included because it's pretty common knowledge that any good milcom department has their own spy tracking sheets and will see you within a couple hours at most of doing this and have you sprung on.

Furthermore, you should have a net negative of spies. If you don't, assassinating then becomes literally pointless. I'm struggling to figure out HOW that needs to be explained to ANYONE because it's one of the most obvious things I've ever seen, but somehow here we are.

20% reduction as SRD noted is not enough to really matter.

Complicated doesn't necessarily mean bad, no, but being overly complex while failing to achieve the stated goal is bad. The tiger was a good tank you might think. It was far too complex to achieve it's goal or slaughtering allied tanks in such numbers to send their advance to a crawl, because they just could not make enough of them.

What you have here is a Tiger Tank. Thankfully it appears to be a Henschel and not a Porsche, but regardless you're facing Sherman's and T-34s.

Lastly, Occam's Razor, the simplest solution is often the best. SRDs is the simplest, maybe tweak the number a bit higher imo, but regardless it is the simplest and achieves the objective with very little effort.

"It doesn't solve being pinned forever!" No it just takes so long to do under that, that should the enemy even actually pin you, they shouldn't be that far ahead. It's already known 1 spy can successfully assassinate against 60, its a much nicer gap here. Shocking that the Attacking party should have some sort of advantage, I know. Why would we want to encourage aggressive action?

Edited by Akuryo
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This is moreso intended to address a point some people have brought up:

I prefer a larger reduction in spy casualties over spy reserves due to the same reasons people have stated, it's a rather complicated solution that is fulfilling a purpose I don't think is  needed.

However, a couple of questions have been raised about the 24 turn clause: I don't see an issue with adjusting the time-slots to 18 hours, or even lower. The thought process behind introducing this was so that spying doesn't turn into an never-ending blitz back and forth. It's the main saving grace of reserves to begin with in my eyes:

If one side gets spy wiped, there is nothing stopping them from rebuilding all the way back up to full and then blitzing at their own discretion, at any time. Since a coordinated spy blitz almost singlehandedly sets the tone of the spy war up until people rebuild again, the side that just got wiped can blitz whenever they like (read: taking the enemy by surprise) and kill the enemies spies before there's much time to react. Especially since it's harder to organise spy 'counters' compared to conventional counters. (to the degree it can even be considered a counter to begin with)

Therefore, any alliance who's milcom department chose to put the modicum of effort it takes to organise that blitz, will be able to wipe their enemy for the most part. Up until their enemy rebuilds, blitzes at them and rinse repeat.

My thinking may be flawed somehow, but all that does is turn the spy game into a game of musical chairs.

Edited by Vemek
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22 minutes ago, Vemek said:

This is moreso intended to address a point some people have brought up:

I prefer a larger reduction in spy casualties over spy reserves due to the same reasons people have stated, it's a rather complicated solution that is fulfilling a purpose I don't think is  needed.

However, a couple of questions have been raised about the 24 turn clause: I don't see an issue with adjusting the time-slots to 18 hours, or even lower. However, the thought process behind introducing the clause was so that spying doesn't turn into an never-ending blitz back and forth. It's the main saving grace of reserves to begin with in my eyes:

If one side gets spy wiped, there is nothing stopping them from rebuilding all the way back up to full and then blitzing at their own discretion, at any time. Since a coordinated spy blitz almost singlehandedly sets the tone of the spy war up until people rebuild again, the side that just got wiped can blitz whenever they like (read: taking the enemy by surprise) and kill the enemies spies before there's much time to react. Especially since it's harder to organise spy 'counters' compared to conventional counters.

Therefore, any alliance who's milcom department chose to put the modicum of effort it takes to organise that blitz, will be able to wipe their enemy for the most part. Up until their enemy rebuilds, blitzes at them an rinse repeat.

My thinking may be flawed somehow, but all that does is turn the spy game into a game of musical chairs.

"Modicum of effort" looking at your nation here I'm gonna go ahead and guess you've never organized a blitz of any kind. Seeing as how I literally just did a few days ago I'll enlighten you.

So in CoTL we came out with you might've noticed the most wars of our whole group, hooray for us! On blitz day what happened is from about 30 minutes before update to about 3 hours after, there was constant, and I mean constant activity. There were a good 20 or so squad channels of 3 people each many with 3 targets stretching to fill out the target list, and because I was one of few people not in a raiding alliance with actual throwdown experience on the new mechanics I pushed ground leading heavily. This meant our wars were mismatched between air and ground leading and mismatched the pace at which things happened. 

The night before that I spent several hours analyzing our target list compared to our member list trying to min/max effective placement, while I did so I went through and not only began DMing and pinging people to see if they'd be around while also checking every single persons military and warchest, telling them to build units here and sending aid to reach a certain level there later that night I spent a good 2.5-3 hours with sketchy assigning people to targets, mixing his straightforward simple tier to tier approach with the tryhard min/maxing I'd been doing earlier. In part to this and my tactical insistence and inclination on ground units, our upper and upper mid tier in particular were extremely successful.

Mind you it wasn't actually by the time I went to bed, we'd just reached the low tiers by then.

And then FINALLY we get to the part where the spy sheet is running with locutus and as the battlements of our opponents are stormed and as we're all busy in milcom handling the many offensives one Milcom head is unavailable and VMd and the other peels off to handle the spies because he's pretty good with them.

 

This is all to say your "modicum of effort" sounds like a modicum of understanding. There are years old established alliances who couldn't swing as hard as this amalgamation of three near mortally wounded middle guys from NPOLT did, and it was all only possible, because of that modicum of effort. This is just the logistical problems of doing it let alone political risks.

Now maybe you still do think that is a modicum effort, I dunno, you tell me, is it? Does that, you think, deserve to have some sort of tangible advantage? Maybe not what it does now, but certainly something? Something actually meaningful that won't be a game of musical chairs making spies primarily about killing other spies constantly? At that point what's even the point of having them around unless you've got the OP spy sat.

Also with your limitation thing of TCW tried that we would see them within 2-4 hours and their dreams would be dashed across the ground. 

I'm probably gonna keep a link of this for everytime somebody says something that pretty much deletes the point of bothering to be the one to start things 

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17 minutes ago, Akuryo said:

-snip-

>mfw your best attempt at a proper response is to find a single exaggerated phrase and try to pick away at that.

I'm talking about a spy blitz. Not a full-scale one, perhaps spend a little more time making sure you stick to the topic and go swing your dick elsewhere friend. ;) 

17 minutes ago, Akuryo said:

Now maybe you still do think that is a modicum effort, I dunno, you tell me, is it? Does that, you think, deserve to have some sort of tangible advantage? Maybe not what it does now, but certainly something? Something actually meaningful that won't be a game of musical chairs making spies primarily about killing other spies constantly? At that point what's even the point of having them around unless you've got the OP spy sat.

Yes. Hence why I said that I preferred reducing spy casualties over spy reserves, both on the forums in that exact quote you posted as well as in the dev team. The entire point of the fricking 24 hour clause is to give meaning to organising such a blitz, so that your opponent cannot rebound endlessly without any problems.

Edited by Vemek
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5 hours ago, Akuryo said:

rant*

Akuryo,

Take it down like 15 notches, and if people think organizing a blitz is easy let them think that, even if that was not what he was referring to.  Also lets stay on topic, and discuss how the development team needs to go back to the drawing board on this spy thing because this change does not achieve what they were trying to achieve.

So Dev team, I think its safe to say, that we appreciate the effort here, but you aren't there yet, and still have a good amount of work to do.

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