Feedback requested: Covert Ops

[Appocomaster]

So,
everyone's starting to get the hang of the new covert ops. As we're almost mid-round now, I wondered if anyone had any feedback they wanted to give around covert ops - or anything they wished to discuss.

One of the key things that I know has been raised is that the ship covert op should go by value rather than number of ships, and I think that I'd make that change for next round.

[Androme]

how about a cov op to reduce some score/value directly? or a cov op to temporarily block one's ability to scan? cov op to temporarily increase TT? cov op to put a block on a free fleet for a tick or 2? or increase prod time?

[Truhatred]

The new cov ops are great and actually make it useful to go cov op from beginning to end without just hacking resources. The problem I see currently is mostly with Warp Drive. This needs to be somewhat value based rather than #of ships per agent.

#agents(150 value + (trgt val/your val)10) [max: 300 value per agent]

Something like this would let people that choose to cov op from beginning get good ship steals to stregthen their fleet throughout the game. It also allows someone that cov ops for resources to get a good boost in ships when about to build.
This round i landed an attk with BS at tick 40 without hulls or any tt just from stealing 198 ter bs in 2 cov ops. it was quite a nice xp boost.

Anarchy is great and all but with more people going cov ops it will be very rare to be able to successfully op a good trgt for anarchy. Maybe change anarchy to only take 10 agents and just reduce the alert of the target by 20% and for 2 ticks and make it only useable every 12 ticks or so.(needs work but we need something to make it easier to op in future rounds)

Or just make it easier to figure out someones alert rating as its pretty impossible right now. You can figure out their govt usually but you can't ever see their population setting.

We will need something though to make it to where people can cov op players with high guards as most of the universe now has sec centers and guards. I have failed 10x the amount of covert ops as I have done in past 3 rounds.

[Nitros]

Overall I think the new cov'op is great and makes it worth your time spending time researching it.

[Benneh]

I quite like them, the ship cov op certainly adds some fun into fleets.

I'd absolutely love to see Resource hacking removed though. Woo I can stay small, cov op lots of resources then init high yay.
With so few players, i'd just like to see people actually playing from the start...

[Blue_Esper]

i can't stand ship stealing covop, only zik n etd should be able to steal, There should be a feature like run and hide for covop ship stealing so that anything in base is kept safe, else its unfair to zik n etd not being able to hit the base fleet

[Jibajav]

I do like the different types of covert ops that this round offers, however I had the thought of re-tooling covert ops to mimic the standard fleets:

-Security centers would produce your security guards, similar to how we purchase ships now. Another construction would be created for agents to be produced. The production points would be proportionate to the current race's stealth rating, meaning that zik and etd would have a large bonus, cath would have small bonus, and ter/xan no bonus.

- Trained agents or security guards can be sent on missions that take a short amount of time, depending on how many are sent. For example, 1-10 agents would take 1 tick to travel to the target for their mission, 11-20 agents would take 2 ticks, etc. Guards could be sent in defense in this way too, probably in increments of 100.

-Create 3 covert op "fleets", which I'll call squads, for agents/guards. Each would have it's own stealth/alert rating depending on the investment, explained in the next point. These squads would be designated upon creation to contain agents or guards only. It can only be changed if the squad gets wiped out on mission or all units in it are fired.

-Alert would be changed with something that can be invested in or researched. For simplicity I'll call it "strength". The idea is that you may have 5000 guards, but if they are poorly trained or have little strength, they won't stop many agents. In other words, 100 highly trained guards would be as effective as 1000 poorly trained guards.

This could be a research branch of 3-4 levels. Maybe each race starts with a base stealth/alert around 30 and each research raises the maximum. An example would be terrans max stealth starts at 30, first research bumps the max to 40, second bumps to 50, third to 65. All races starting alert would start at the same level and be bumped up after research. Upon completion of the research, resources can be invested to train and arm these units up to a specified maximum. For instance, before researching an investment of 10k of each resource would max the stealth/alert. After the next branch of research an investment of 100k of each resource would max it at that level and so on.

The amount of strength versus stealth would determine the outcome of the cov op, or at least provide a % chance of success.

The more guards that are added to a "fleet", the more the "strength" drops to reflect the need for training them. Same thing for the agents. When agents or guards are killed, the strength would remain the same until more are hired in that squad and the rating drops accordingly.

-Stealth would still have the same maximum for each race, but again would need to be invested in before it is raised to the maximum.

-Agents and security guards would no longer have wages per tick since it would take an investment to make them useful.

-A new scan would be created or the current scans tweaked to show the different squads/strength and estimated outcome of the cov op.

-Incoming scans would show what was coming at the target, jumpgates would show any pre-launched. Most likely would have to give this a different name to differentiate between standard ships instead of the generic "hostiles".

As always, I'm open to suggestion. I just would like covert ops to be more of an investment option instead of annoyance so that people could actually specialize in it to make a difference in the game. Perhaps with this new system, the outcome of each mission could be changed to make covert ops more impactful too.

[[JungleMuffin]]

I honestly think Covops are a blight on the game. I would like to see Covops removed from the game, because I feel they have a negative and lopsided impact on the game. For example:

-Have no need for defense, which results in lower social interaction, which is essentially a core principle of the game.

-Have an enhanced ability to attack planets of high value, which are not able to retaliate themselves

-Essentialy immune to attacks from fleets and covops in general.

-Reduce the "attackable player pool" of active PA players, which is extremely limited, and becoming moreso as each round progresses, unfortunately to the death of the game.

There is also the component of Covop planets being able to play high tier value planets, with relative ease. Although this may perhaps be countered by the restructured covop tech tree, which I am currently unfamiliar with.

Regardless, as a result of Revolution, I am sure the extremely buffed researched path which goes hand in hand with early game covop planets which transition into value, is still absolutely viable, again, without the the ability to counterplay.

I feel covops is extremely damaging to current PA play, because it affords the ability to play both high value while being uncounterable, while also restricting and reducing the social interactions which are core to the game.

I believe covops need an absolute overhaul, so that value plants have not only an ability to defend against them which is not in itself crippling to your chosen game style, but also counterplayable, so that they are not free to do whatever they chose, without any impact whatsoever.

But yeah, TLDR; covops are ****ed because u can do whatever the **** u want, and noone can touch you, and you can still be huge value while you do it. That's bullshit. Every other planet in the game has an avenue where planets can be "punished" or "retal'd" why doesn't covops?

Fix it.

[Blue_Esper]

I agree with all of JungleMuffin's points.

[Nitros]

Here's an idea to fix Jungle's problem.
Right now your stealth decreases when you do a cov'op. Why dont you add the reduction of alert with it aswell?
For example. For every succesful cov'op you lose 5 stealth and 3 alert. Ofcourse they will still go back up overtime. This way the person doing the cov'op can be more easily countered by other cov'ops.

[Papadoc]

buy guards?


To me the real issue is that cov ops like hacking resources and next round ship stealing will be value based. But in the wrong direction. The current system rewards you for having as little value as you can manage encouraging these planets to get small.

While bigger planets that are playing for "rank" cannot use these cov-ops as efficiently as the small-bies.

[Monroe]

To me Covert Ops are a "tax" on the value players in PA. What I mean by this is those who wish to play for value are forced to spend value in the form of guards/sec centers/population in order to prevent themselves from loosing even more value due to covert ops. The irony here (as Truhatred points out) is that the more powerful covert ops become the harder it becomes to use them as the cost benefit analysis for value players swings heavily in favor of protection from covert ops. So I strongly discourage making them stronger or a more central part of the game. PA is about fleet maneuvering and politics, not about individuals using covert ops.

I support the change that Appoco suggests at the beginning of the thread, and I support covert ops continued existence in the game as a tax on heavy value players. But I think innovation in PA needs to come on how politics and combat work, not how a few people "abuse" the system to their personal advantage.

[NirWana]

Just a wild idea about covops. It is fairly obvious that covop currently causes a large % of the players to avoid growing and getting roids. Basicly, the worse you play, the better you get at covop, this should change.
While you need more guards to protect you as you gain more roids, your agents should benefit from your size. It's easier to hide if there's plenty of roids/buildings/ships to hide in.
The bigger a planet, the more decoys (tourists, traders,... ) it has to hide agents, at the same time, a visitor from some small planet with hardly any development would stick out sooner. (how often did you see a tourist or merchant coming from ethiopia? The only kind of people you'll more often see from there are those you'll automaticly look closer in to (refugees, asylum seekers, etc )
That's an elaborate way of motivating higher roids/value should make for stronger agents. This would force covops to actually grow and become retalable.
At the same time, add the possibility for success yet getting caught. If you get caught, there is an interplanet incident and regardless the difference in size, the planet that caught you has 12 ticks to land on your planet.

[Blue_Esper]

Originally Posted by NirWana

If you get caught, there is an interplanet incident and regardless the difference in size, the planet that caught you has 12 ticks to land on your planet.

Why would a planet with 2k roids want to hit the covopper with 24 or so roids?

[TheoDD]

Im more down the line of where mz went with his post, but abit more extreme i guess. Cov ops is made for the underachievers and Jintao more or less.


Flaws:
You need to be extremly active for it to pay off.
You need to have no goals for your own planet, besides being a support planet.

Benefits:
Your galaxy might find you useful if you constant bank hack and push to fund.


Beyond that cov ops is a waste for the game imo. Just give people an excuse: "to do something else between ticks" and "annoy others for fun" or "im not playing properly, so may aswell try to randomly troll here and there"

From history page and resource stastic:

Covert Guards Metal 0
Covert Guards Crystal 0
Covert Guards Eonium 0

is this wages or the initial cost for hire? If it is the latter, then i strongly suggest you get wages as a stat there also!

[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by TheoDD

Im more down the line of where mz went with his post

What post?

[NirWana]

Originally Posted by Blue_Esper

Why would a planet with 2k roids want to hit the covopper with 24 or so roids?

Hence the suggestion that more roids and/or value makes stronger agents. More roids would make the covoper more interesting to hit, it would also make the covoper covopable.

[Blue_Esper]

but why would you covop someone with nothing to gain from?

[NirWana]

Blue_esper, obviously you're a nice guy. You only think of covops as a way for gaining something.
covops can be used to damage too.

The whole of my suggestion is to force covopers in a position where they stand to lose something. Right now, they have nothing to lose and nothing to be hurt with. Right now, covopers are essentially untouchable because they are non-players.
Your point is exactly what I am suggesting to change about covops : make it both possible and worthwhile to retaliate on covops: make them require certain buildings or value and make them require roids to become succesfull.

You need a ton of stuff to protect yourself against covop, but to be succesfull at it, all you need to do is be worthless in everything else. THAT is exactly what needs to be changed about it.
It needs to become possible to hurt a covoper and it needs to be possible to gain from hurting a covoper. No playing style should ever be untouchable.
Anyone going for roids, value, amps... all can be harmed by use of ships and by use of covops, except for the covops, they cannot be harmed at all and are immune to everything.
I'm repeating myself a lot, but again, immunity against everything should not be there for any player or any playing style.

[Blue_Esper]

What i am essentially saying is a planet with value and roids wants to gain from whatever actions made. a covop planet does not care about gains so much. So, specifically, what is your suggestion to make it worthwhile for a value/roid planet to hit a planet that is so small and crap?

[NirWana]

Originally Posted by Blue_Esper

a covop planet does not care about gains so much.

I'll try to make it as clear as possible...

situation now : 24 roids / value 100k does covop on 2400 roids /value 5 mil : auto succes (ignoring guards)

should be (for example) : 24 roids / value 100k does covop on 2400 roids /value 5 mil : 0 % chance of succes. (ignoring guards)
1000 roids / value 1 mil does covop on 2400 roids /value 5 mil : 50 % chance of succes. (ignoring guards)
2400 roids / value 5 mil does covop on 2400 roids /value 5 mil : 80 % chance of succes. (ignoring guards)

Honestly, I'm not interested in a covoper that has 0% chance of getting trough. However, 250 roids are interesting enough to get, even for a huge planet.

So again... my suggestion is force covops to be worthwhile to hit before they have a remote chance of being succesfull. if remaining worthless = no chance of succes, the covops won't remain worthless (or to use your words "small and crap" ) for long.


Another thing that would work fine is use the opposite of bashing rules. cannot covop on targets that are unable to hit you.

[TheoDD]

NO NO NO NO! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!


Oh please NirWana, i dont even know where to begin to comment.

How is a big planet expected to get all the techs he needs and still have time for cov op techs that are useful without disrupting a tech path he actually needs?

Your suggestion is just furthering unbalancing the shittyness and uselessness if thats a word for Cov ops.

[NirWana]

Originally Posted by TheoDD

Beyond that cov ops is a waste for the game imo. Just give people an excuse: "to do something else between ticks" and "annoy others for fun" or "im not playing properly, so may aswell try to randomly troll here and there"

More quote:
"How is a big planet expected to get all the techs he needs and still have time for cov op techs that are useful without disrupting a tech path he actually needs? "

He isn't. If covops tech doesn't fit in your strat now, it won't after my suggestion either.
What Will change though is how covops will be played. Covop players will have to figure a way to make their strat work for them, everyone else just plays as before, with that difference that now they'd be able to hurt the covop player back, if they want to. But like with all strats, everything depends on your own decisions.

[TheoDD]

* facepalms from your logic or mine * whatever seems reasonable to the readers

[NirWana]

Let's just say we both agree on the problem, we just disagree on the solution

[Judge]

Originally Posted by Blue_Esper

I agree with all of JungleMuffin's points.

Hardly surprising when the two of you share the same tub of lube

[Scott]

If a planet catches someone covoping them, they should get say.. 10% of that persons entire resource income (whether it's from roids/covoping/any constructions) for the next 24 hours or so. The covoper needs to be punished in some way, and retalling them isn't possible as they're always too low value.

[Scott]

In fact, scrap that idea, it'll get abused.

[Motti]

While reading the convo here with ideas to nerf/buf covop, ideas for those being covopped giving a fighting chance to retaliate and soforth,

I can but only think that the simple, and logic solution to the "cov op problem" is JUST BUY GUARDS! (or sec centres, or tweak population)

C'mon, so what if someone is playing it small, feeding galaxy or gimping someones planet, it is a active choice for that planet to do so. While it is also an active choice for whoever gets covopped to evaluate if the cost of hiring guards is higher then the cost of being covopped.

Simples pals - solution to a non problem.

It is not planet devastating to invest in guards, it is just one of those things you must perhaps priority, just like defence ships or whatnot.

[NirWana]

Originally Posted by Motti

While reading the convo here with ideas to nerf/buf covop, ideas for those being covopped giving a fighting chance to retaliate and soforth,

I can but only think that the simple, and logic solution to the "cov op problem" is JUST BUY GUARDS! (or sec centres, or tweak population)

C'mon, so what if someone is playing it small, feeding galaxy or gimping someones planet, it is a active choice for that planet to do so. While it is also an active choice for whoever gets covopped to evaluate if the cost of hiring guards is higher then the cost of being covopped.

Simples pals - solution to a non problem.

It is not planet devastating to invest in guards, it is just one of those things you must perhaps priority, just like defence ships or whatnot.

Or the really short version : you like playing covops the way it is now, pls don't change it.

It has been said multiple times before , right now you have defence against covops. Thank you for pointing out this obvious point that has already been pointed out several times before.

Also thank you for completely missing the point of what is currently wrong with covops.

[Patrikc]

Originally Posted by Motti

I can but only think that the simple, and logic solution to the "cov op problem" is JUST BUY GUARDS! (or sec centres, or tweak population)

That is not a solution, it is a band-aid fix to the problem. When someone has a leak in his basement's pipes, instead of fixing the actual problem what you're saying is "just get a bunch of buckets and haul the water out". Would it work? Sure. But it's not a solution. Covert ops are flawed design in two ways:

Firstly, they are one-way interaction. A covop planet is, generally speaking, immune to retaliation. Even if he gets caught, there rarely is any benefit to attack the covop planet, since Covert Ops encourage you to stay as small as possible.

Secondly, and I'm not sure how to call this, but your argument perfectly shows the issue: if everyone were to buy Guards, Covops would be completely useless. So, in a perfect world where everyone would follow your brilliant suggestion, we'd be left with a page that does nothing but drain the universe's resources. One might argue that it's an aspect of the game where you figure out how few guards you need to scare off hostile ops, personally I don't care for it.

If covert ops disappeared today, I would not enjoy Planetarion one bit less because of it, quite likely the opposite. That not saying I think it should be removed before exploring more options, and I think the last few changes were definitely an improvement, but to me they are and always will be a minor nuisance to the actual game.

[Zotnam]

Originally Posted by Patrikc

Secondly, and I'm not sure how to call this, but your argument perfectly shows the issue: if everyone were to buy Guards, Covops would be completely useless. So, in a perfect world where everyone would follow your brilliant suggestion, we'd be left with a page that does nothing but drain the universe's resources. One might argue that it's an aspect of the game where you figure out how few guards you need to scare off hostile ops, personally I don't care for it.

Nonsense. 90% of the universe is already immune or close enough to be too risky to cov op. What real cov oppers do, is feed on the bottom 10%, mostly inactive players, and redistribute those resources/ships to active players.

The resources stealing part of cov ops was already nerfed once, and the tech needed moved further back in the tree. While I have argued before that cov ops were too strong, we're probably at a pretty good place now because of a combination of less resources capped and less people to cov op. It would need a complete rework if we changed more now, because it's already pretty terrible to go any other race than cath for cov opping.

I like that the ship cov op has allowed non-dedicated cov oppers some fun, but it has also resulted in an increase of guards/sec centres in the universe. Personally though, I was hit with between 10 and 15 hostile cov ops this round, not really a lot. Generally you're fine with alert in the mid 70's to stop 20 man ops, if someone starts targeting you with 5 or 10 man hacks, use pop to defend against it.

[Truhatred]

Originally Posted by Patrikc

.....
If covert ops disappeared today, I would not enjoy Planetarion one bit less because of it, quite likely the opposite. That not saying I think it should be removed before exploring more options, and I think the last few changes were definitely an improvement, but to me they are and always will be a minor nuisance to the actual game.

I could say the same about dists/fc's/refinery's/cores

These are all things that if just went away people would be able to have an easier time figuring out what they want to build or research next.... Covert ops was finally changing the "Meta" or "Cookie cutter" aspect of the game. People were branching out and thinking "Whats better now a sec center or finance center?" "Should i research cores or cov ops?" No we just went back to the same ole game where there are about 10 cov oppers that farm the lowbies to feed their galaxy fund and the gal m8's full of resources while they are able to stay low and sit on the same amount of roids their gal m8's have(Eventually) without much danger of being attacked. If anything needs to be nerfed still its resource hacks. Not warp drive.
P scan reveals your resources so you know what you get with a hack. You never know if the person ur Warp Driving has their ships home or not. Or What ships they have home... You could potentially steal all ships that don't fit ur build and become wasted value. You also take more risks with warp drive because you are typically looking for certain ships. Ex. if i go cath CR I want to steal ZIK CR. Any ship that I steal thats fi/fr/de/bs is useless to me and I may as well salvage.
There are too many UNKNOWN variables that also hurt cov ops in general which is why u need to gain so much out of it when u are successful. You can't always see if someone just got hacked in the past 3 ticks to see if thier alert increased. You can't see if their population is set on security. You can't always see if their Nationalism. And the WORST Unknown of all.... I random a roll 1-20 which I never get to actually know what it was to see if my cov op is a success. I could hack someone with 70 stealth and roll a 20 when he has 85 alert . I win this time but only had a 25% chance to do it again(but I don't know that) So I will cov op again in a few ticks and fail. Now I have spent more resources than I have gained. Without taking away the useless ships i have.