Pinned Spies: What are your thoughts?

    This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy.

    • Spies: What are your thoughts?

      In light of recent Discord discussions, I've compiled a list of these ideas which were brought up, I encourage you all to discuss
      • Reward to players for Spies which are caught with counter-ops
      • If one spy is caught, the rest of the spies found in that City have a chance to be caught
      • Homeland spies and foreign spies should have different prices, and potentially upkeep costs
      • Should have upkeep costs relative to the mission that they are on, potentially using other resources
      Dorado Games
      Conflict Of Nations

    • As spies are right now they're more of a money sink to me; considering how rng heavy they tend to be and their cost
      Catching a spy definitly should reward the player catching them rather then punish the player who used them; for example per captured spy you gain like 10% morale in the city

      Yak wrote:

      If one spy is caught, the rest of the spies found in that City have a chance to be caught
      seems a bit too drastic to me; i'd rather have knowledge instead how many/what foreign spies are exactly in that city; potentially a captured spy could reveal some sort of intel about the capital city of a player?

      Yak wrote:

      Homeland spies and foreign spies should have different prices, and potentially upkeep costs
      Homeland spies could do maybe a bit more than just capturing bad guys; something along the lines of spreading propaganda to increase morale in your own cities could be interesting but homeland spies already have the advantage of having a insanly cheap upkeep cost with 250$/day; regular spies like intel or sabotage depend to much on chance to hit for example the right building for the upkeep they cost an option to maybe prioritize buildings/sorts of intel would be nice
      About upkeep i'd love if it was calculated the same way as regular upkeep; by directly having an impact on the players money income rather than just needing X amount of cash to pay at daychange


      Yak wrote:

      Should have upkeep costs relative to the mission that they are on, potentially using other resources
      Then spies need to be more reliable/consistent :D


      An interesting idea could be having different Tiers of spies
      for example:
      T1 10k
      T2 20k and 250 rare
      T3 50k and 500 rare

      of course you still would be able to give them the different jobs like spy, sabotage, spreading dissent but this would make just spamming spies less effective while offering players who invest more into spies better results
      I am The Baseline for opinions

      The post was edited 1 time, last by Teburu ().

    • Imo, the spies are a bit unbalanced at the moment.

      Intelligence: They are incredibly easy to use, equally as effective in any city or province. You can hide them in a remote hostile province and yet they are able to gather a lot of information: messages (op in public), ressources and research. On top of that, if you place the intelligence agents in a war zone, they can reveal the local forces. And since its a war zone, you can except a player to have the bulk of his army in that war zone. Thus you get to know with what kind of tools your enemy is playing with. Even if the enemy knows what you are doing, it is impossible to stop these intelligence agents with counter-ops due to the sheer amount of provinces where one could place intelligence agents.

      Corruption/Sabotage: Both agents have visible and significant impact. You want to place them in important cities. If you know the enemy struggles with electronics, you can put a corrruption agent into his electronics city. If you want to prevent your adversary from building stealth aircrafts, you can place sabotage agents into his city with airfield5. However, there is one drawback: In a somewhat equal matchip, if you can afford agents, so does the enemy. And just like you, the enemy himself knows the weakpoints of his country. He will want to place several(depending on his budget) counter-ops agents in his key cities/provinces to protect vital infrastructure/production. This makes it impossible to use corruption or sabotage agents. The few key cities where its worth to use the agents are filled with unlimited(?) counter-ops while you are limited to 3(?) agents.



      Here are some suggestions:

      A) "Reward to players for Spies which are caught with counter-ops". Absolutely not needed, seeing the enemy has just lost 10k$ and you disrupted his plans is reward enough. In supremacy agents could switch side after being caught, which is nice and not too impactful (small change of getting a free agent). At most they can have a small chance to provide some nation info like an intelligence agent would do, which is realistic.

      B) Open up the playing field: Remove the cap of spies. If you really want to destroy that one airfield in that province (because it is of strategic importance to the enemy) with spies before the outbreak of war, but the owner of the airfield has put 5 counter-ops in there, you are powerless. Due to the low cap of agents, you simply cannot do something there. If a player wants to invest 1.000.000$$ into destroying that airfield, he should be allowed to do so. The owner of the airfield can allocate many counter ops as well. This doesn't make things unbalanced because overwhelming the counter-ops with sheer numbers is something extremely costly and likely a one time thing.
      Of course: Each additional agent added has an even higher chance to get caught. And each additional agent added has a lower chance to do his job (though the overall average missions completed will increase the more agents there are). Think of exponential growth.

      C) Limit intelligence agents. Revealing local forces still works anywhere. Research(it should be clearer what a player is researching, only seeing the symbol and level is not enough) and ressource/market informations are only available in core cities. Reading messages and location of spies is only possible in capitals (or in all core cities to reduce complexity and make spies less difficult to understand). This will make intelligence agents much less op and if you want to gain crucial informations, you must be willing to take risks where your agents are likely to get caught. This also opens up a lot of counterplay: You don't want your nations information stolen? Put counter-ops in your core cities! You don't want your enemy to reveal local forces? Put counter-ops in the provinces where your army is.

      D) Knowing the location of offensive spies rarely matters. You can expect any good player to change the position of his offensive agents every day. If you found out another player has an agent in your city X, you have a hard time catching this agent because he already moved cities.

      D1) There is a lock of spies: 1h before day change you cannot change offensive spies. 1h before day change, you might get a report where enemy spies likely are, and likely aren't. (of course only if you have intelligence agents and they completed their mission succssfully), the report offers more details and better accuracy the more successfull the ingelligence agents were. Such report could look like this:
      No espionage activity in homeland city 1, homeland city 3.
      High espionage activity detected in capital city.
      Low chance of espionage activity in homeland city 2, homeland city 3.
      Many counter-ops active in (enemy) city 10.
      Little to no counter-ops active in (enemy) city 11, city 13.

      D2) As the hostile spies are uncovered(you get a list of agents at daychange, current state), your own spies have a higher chance of success (on the same daychange). Your offensive agents have a better chance of circumventing counter-ops (reduces the effect of counter-ops) and your own counter-ops have a better chance to catch revealed enemy spies.

      E) "Homeland spies and foreign spies should have different prices, and potentially upkeep costs". I think this only makes the game unesseccary more complex without adding much to the game. In fact, this only restricts the player as certain agents can't do certain jobs anymore.

      F) "Should have upkeep costs relative to the mission that they are on, potentially using other resources". This is already true as missions cost different amount of money at daychange. However we could add "empowered" agents:
      Intelligence: Consume extra 500 electronics at daychange.
      Corruption: Consume extra 500 supplies and 500 components at day change.
      Sabotage: Consume extra 250 rare materials at day change.
      These empowered agents have a higher chance of success and lower chance of getting caught AND/OR their successfull missions are more impactful. (example: more morale dropped than usually)
      Ressources are chosen in a way that these costs are relevant throughout midgame, that these empowered agents aren't free.

      G) Is it possible that idle agents and counter-ops have the same costs at day change? While counter-ops should be more expensivee than idle agents.
    • about upkeep
      its funny on day change in nation bank account near zero upkeep for salary spy 200 000 one hours later by income in nation acount grow money so who giv salary for spy ...

      so if you are online in midnight salary for spy is zero ... for mission .. just start next day with zero on bank ...

      this is some like discusion about market just dump on game mechanismus .. no need change we after used for Cheating ..

      and by the way one thing diplomacy be wery wery better have long term posibility status not like change status 5 per day

      The post was edited 1 time, last by Andilek7319 ().

    • I would like to see spies gain EXP and rank up, maybe having their own tiny skill tree, with each branch focusing on, say, counter-intelligence, or sabotage/infiltration, or "people skills" - incite revolt, reduce morale, etc.

      Most importantly, I feel, is giving weight/meaning/purpose to homeland counter-intelligence. Placing one spy in a province/city should significantly reduce chances of enemy mission success. Placing more should make enemy operations harder as the number of homeland defenders increase. Those homeland defenders should also have a spill effect, helping to cover adjacent tiles to a lesser effect; perhaps a skill that can be upgraded as spy levels up.
      "Any of you *uckin' pricks move, and I'll execute every mother*uckin' last one of ya!" - Honey Bunny
    • I like spies just being about money, and I like the RNG factor with Sabotaging and Corruption as I think selective sabotaging and corruption would be to OP. However, having the option to give your agents their mission could be more interesting and realistic. I would balance it by giving each option different ''chances'' of success.
      i.e
      Sabotage building: 20% chance with 1 agent, 33% chance with 2 agents, 50% chance with 3 agents. Successful missions result in 1 level being destroyed (level 4 to level 3) - with level 1 buildings being destroyed.
      Delay mobilisation/construction: 40% chance, 60% chance, 85% chance.

      Destroy resources: 35%, 50%, 68%.
      Reduce Morale: 50%, 70%, 90%.

      Then the same for intelligence:
      Locate foreign spies, nearby units, reveal player resources etc. etc.
      -I would make it so intelligence agents in provinces have less chance of success for all intel missions besides troop revealing as intel agents in provinces are already a bit OP.
      -I would also make it that non-homeland cities are of a lower chance to gain intel (or more info is gained in a successful homeland city spy) as this would encourage player interaction to spy homeland cities for a greater chance at intel, or take the safer option of not being discovered with the occupied city option.

      You could even remove the 3 agent cap and use a mathematical formula that increases the percentage, so the more agents you add, the higher the probability of success, but each extra agent adds a smaller percentage of success. (as well as more agents results in higher mission cost).

      Then for counter-ops agent, each agent reduces the chance of foreign agent success in the region. Again, each extra agent results in ''diminishing'' returns. You could also add the option for counter-ops to ''focus'' on certain missions. i.e sabotage missions or corruption missions, which gives them a say 20% buff in stopping said actions.

      Each ''chance of capture'' is independent of each enemy agent, so you can still capture all enemy agents, or only some if the enemy has a stack of say 3.

      The above option I think is the way to go, it'll just require balancing as time goes on.



      One thing I would like to see changed is when your spies are caught.

      I don't like how your spies still seem to get caught, even though the enemy has no agents in counter-ops. I think it should be nearly impossible for your spies to be caught, unless your opponent has counter-op agents.

      Also, a fix for when your spies are uncovered to be from a certain player in the news feed/notifications should be reduced as this information should be hard to be dis-closed. (I think it should just be removed).
      Captured spies die before they give out information.

      I say this as when you have 2 powerful nations, agent actions against each other should be encouraged. But its not possible with the current way the game operates because even after one wave of agents, the other player knows about the agent actions from said player and war just breaks out, there's no possibility for cold-wars involving agents.

      I would engineer it that the only way to discover enemy agents is to spy on them to locate their enemy agent locations, then you can approach the other player saying you know they have been using agents against you, thus encouraging diplomacy.


      I hope to see the agent window revamped as it's still under-whelming. I believe my changes will make agents a fun and strategic option.

      The post was edited 2 times, last by Gen. Grievous ().

    • I like the way spies are. Because I hate them. ;)
      Sabotage Spies are to me so called revenge units. If someone is loosing badly he buys spies with his last money and just damages whatever he can in my country.

      My Hitlist of things I really dont need as a convnetional warlord (I hate to search the whole map an hunt them down)

      1. submarines:
      2. Stealth
      ----
      So I use them for Intelligence -ecause I usually need the money for building troops and operate on the market.

      It would help a lot if Intelligence spies would reveal exactly what is researched (not the Icon - which unless its a tier upgrade doenst really help) and when the research is finished.#
      And when those intelligence information would be mapped to the correct country and not displayed several times: forum.conflictnations.com/inde…d/7576-espionage-problem/
      @Dorado If you Close the Forum and move everything to Discord you will lose my Feedback for sure.
    • Sabotage spies can have huge impact, delaying production of high tier units or wrecking an airfield and grounding hostile airplanes.

      One of the strongest spies can be recon combined with long range radar.

      I don't really like the fact, that spies do not cooperate, so that every spy could be trying to do the same stuff, which is sometimes pretty pointless.

      Though less an issue in CoN because of the limited amount of spies per province.


      In regards of you Hitlist:
      Special Forces remain my favs, subs are just to expensive, only usefull in late game when you probably have more rare than you need.

      Stealth ASF would be nice, if you could set them on passive stance.
    • I was pretty disapointed by Special Forces. They are nice to clear up and see if a target i worth a rocket. But in a fight they are useless.

      I had 4 special forces lvl 3 and they attacked 5 grounded bombers in a city returning from a run...after 1h all my special ops where gone....no other planes involved...
      @Dorado If you Close the Forum and move everything to Discord you will lose my Feedback for sure.
    • i´m not sure if the ground combat value is calculated correctly for grounded planes,... i noticed similar in older games,
      landed planes are incredibly strong ;)
      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      Dorado Games
      DE - Team Lead
      Conflict of Nations




      "That was not me, it was already broken!"
    • i liked your ideas gen grevious until you said Also, a fix for when your spies are uncovered to be from a certain player in the news feed/notifications should be reduced as this information should be hard to be dis-closed. (I think it should just be removed).
      Captured spies die before they give out information because of a recent bug i couldnt read my intel box so i had to rely on the news for captured spies
      • hello
    • Fereyd wrote:

      i´m not sure if the ground combat value is calculated correctly for grounded planes,... i noticed similar in older games,
      landed planes are incredibly strong ;)
      i hope this gets analyzed...or its the typical: its not a bug, its a feature...well at least they should fight with the fight values for grounded airplanes displayed. This way you can expect and calculate whats happenes if you attack. Mean to put in the real value and nnot something like 1,5 off, 3 def...and then they kill a 20 HP SpecialOps every 15 min.
      @Dorado If you Close the Forum and move everything to Discord you will lose my Feedback for sure.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by kurtvonstein ().

    • 1 not needed, counter-espionage is already way to easy, I see no reason why to reward it
      2 as above
      3 not bad idea, alto again: it would make external intelligence even harder
      4 as above

      Better think about how to make intelligence more profitable, it's already difficult and low rewarding in a long run against player who aren't totally green. And even those who are green, they learn after one or two turns of massive intelligence action - after they start placing even one CI spy in a city, it's pointless to try sabotage. gathering intel about armies looks better, but as pointed out by others - it's matter of luck to get intel about units, and not that worthless all other information you don't want.
      Another thing, as far I'm aware - one can't gather messages from coalition channel, that's something you should change without any doubts (if as I say, I'm correct about it) and of course already mentioned weird technology intel.
    • Ah, I created a topic but maybe someone here can answer it - I have had several games where someone (something?) puts an agent in and it snags ALL of my cash at day changeover; but this doesn't show up in my intel or CoN News report. And I don't think I've ever figured out how it stops, either - it just does as I up my counterintel.

      How does one set up their own spies to do this?
      When the going gets weird, the weird go pro - Hunter S Thompson
    • I think INTEL lacks also something else and it's worth to mention here.

      The fact that I can just move a mouse somewhere over hostile territory and see... 'Aha... Naval base l4 here! And Airport l5 there!' - Is an extreme waste of 'Intel'/'Recon' potential, lowers the cost of information and limits possibilities to surprise opponents badly. Infrastructure should be shown only as symbolic basic structure icons and '?' instead of level indicator (or be hidden completely like labs). Players should spread Intel widely or be feared about what's behind The Iron Curtain.
      Display Spoiler

      ***

      "We rarely recognize how wonderful it is that a person can traverse an entire lifetime without making a single really serious mistake — like putting a fork in one's eye or using a window instead of a door."
      - Marvin Lee Minsky

      ***



    • maybe 30 year ago you could do this however we got the internet whitch would give us that same information now some could say this isnt based completely on how it works real world the devs have said this them selves but i rhink even they would to agree to leave it like it is that for that reason alone.
      • hello

      The post was edited 1 time, last by ross222 ().

    • If so, argument that 30 years ago and The Internet isn't incontestable. Quick reference : First - con maps in most cases beginning with techs from '70 or earlier. Second - I can't find any concrete info in the web about Chinese strategic infrastructure. Anyone think they just share info like this with you (specially that they have their own 'Matrix' , and the world seem to go that way too :) )? Third - The Internet can be used to get information or spread disinformation.
      Display Spoiler

      ***

      "We rarely recognize how wonderful it is that a person can traverse an entire lifetime without making a single really serious mistake — like putting a fork in one's eye or using a window instead of a door."
      - Marvin Lee Minsky

      ***