Roid destryoing covops?
 

Is there a point to it, other than completing quests? Seems fairly stupid to deilberately destroy roids when the entire point of the game is stealing/keeping roids.

It makes sense to a point with the new quests/rewards, but given the size of the player base, does it equal out?

I'm playing an obvious planet so fire away. This has been on my mind for a few rounds.

Yes I've had roids blown up, and yes I'm scratching my head about it. I'm now looking at it differently though.

As per usual, I'm once again paging mz to this thread.

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

You don't have to page me, I read everything. :P

In my mind, there have always been 4 distinct categories of ways to interact with other planets in Planetarion. Scanning to gather information, attacking to improve your planet, defending to protect your friends, and cov opping to hurt your enemies. The last few years, the waters have gotten a bit muddier, with Warp Core Sabotage stealing ships for a while, and Security and Network Defection stealing guards and agents, respectively. In addition to those, Bank-System Hacking and Structure Killers have always been the odd ones out, but by and large the interaction types I outlined above hold.

Given that, I think roid destruction is a fine cov op, in principle.

That said, I agree that destroying roids is not as good for your planet as stealing them: the amounts involved are negligible and the alert cooldown period stops repeated attempts, so not even a dedicated cov op team could seriously harm another alliance. Considering the general dislike of cov ops, though, I don't really see how we could improve the situation: either it's good enough to use, and everyone will hate it, or it isn't, and no one will use it.

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

The covert ops are horrible, until u can gain something decent from blocking them.

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

I like the idea, but I can already see people signing up planets to constantly fail cov ops on their friends with.

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

Was thinking about something more useful, like being able to Inc scan or AU scan a planet without having the research, or without having enough amps vs the targets dists....or maybe getting a 'real time' news scan.

Just a thought.

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

I think covops is more than fixable than the broken ass thing that currently exists.

Just need to agree that it is a playable style rather than an afterthought.

Normal

Ampwhore

Distwhore

Covoper

These should be the main areas of play, but they need balance. The other 3 should be support playstyles to 'Normal'.

Personally i would leave ampwhoring as is. Because its wider area of scanning is a specialist requirement a 300 amp cap is enough. 300 amps would grant a raise to Infrastructure allowing 301 constructions*

For distwhoring i would change it slightly. For 200 and 300 distorters i would raise the Infrastructure cap by 1 to 201 and then 302. This way a truly dedicated distwhore can be immune to scans and build 1 factory. I think this should be a decent reward for dedicating ones self to something so completely *

*it should be possible to hit 300 amps/dists (plus the extras) in a round.

Covoper is where the overhaul is needed.

A)Covoper calc is needed. To tell success rates based on info given. Pasting in a P scan could give back all possible alerts + chance of success.

B) The covops need to be more punishing.

Exploding Fist should kill more roids per hit. Or maybe a percentage?

Information Blackout could disable the ability to scan for X amount of ticks.

Bank hacking should be put back how it was.

Warp Drive should be put back how it was.

C) Stealth achievable should be 100. Alert should cap at 99. Someone who is dedicated to their craft should be able to perform it.

If it was ever genuinely revamped then serious thought could be put in...

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

Or be able to disrupt dists for x amount of ticks...or amps

Good post Kaiba.

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

Detect, close.

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

I like the idea of a cov op calc (though you need a development scans as well).

Everything else in your post hinges on one assumption: "we like cov ops and want it to be useful". I mean, I agree with that, but a lot of people don't.

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

I think that revolves round the fact for a lot of people its hard to comprhend (lack of calc) so they would rather it didnt exist. Spies and sabteurs are an essential element of all great strategy games. Deep down i hope after the success of the quests overhaul that Appoco might get s twinge about covops, which is a bit of an elephant in the room.

After the zeros are fixed though. They must take priority! FIX THEM!!!

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

My biggest gripe with covert operations has always been that the majority of them are destructive only. Blowing up roids is the perfect example; you gain nothing but a little bit of XP - worse yet, you blow up the things you're able to capture! Stealing asteroids with a covert op doesn't make much sense, so the very least that could be done is not making it available to everyone for free: make it require a (low cost) Research, or swap it with the guard converting operation.

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

Yeah I agree, stealing Guards or smth should be start up Covop.

Ive had a lot of new players who are slightly inactive getting discouraged from getting their roids destroyed. Sure you can reason that they should've gotten guards in the first place but can atleast make it so that the covopping doesnt hit the core of their growth.

I've seen new/idle planets going from 200 to 0 roids in a very short time, would rather have that happen with agents/guards or even research progress rather then roids.

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

I agree, guard/agent stealing is even less useful than roid destruction. Research progress is far more important than either, though, definitely shouldn't start with that.

Re: Roid destryoing covops?
 

Agreed.

Stealing roids/ships is obviously out...blowing up ships I guess is moderately useful.

I'd still be interested to see new options for covops though. The "instant gratification" factor is too appealing to be ignored.