Covert Ops

[DeadMan]

Any chance of this not being in PA in the future?

I deleted my planet after haveing been cov oped for 72 hours straight. I had no buildings left at all.

It is not fun and make me feel like quitting PA cos there is no way back when all your buildings have been cov oped. When I tried rebuilding they were back the next tick and removed it again.

[SYMM]

You could have avoided it if you'd set Security as top prio and built lots of security-centre-things....

[xtothez]

Security as engineering's first priority will make you pretty much immune to the Havoc mission. You can then rebuild easily.

[DeadMan]

Didn't help much setting security at first.
I actually had 2 security centers built after setting at first. Those 2 got blown up too.

[DrNick152]

I haven't had a single successful covert op against me and I had several that I attempted that went very well.

However I got hammered by ships but you don't see me saying they should take ships out oif the game!

Its all about how you play, just learn from yourt mistakes and deal with it.

[Appocomaster]

Covert ops are a way of getting back at otherwise unreachable people. some 3-4 big players hit a little galaxy, and in return the little galaxy covert ops them over and over in return. they can either take it or change the priority, costing them resources

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by DeadMan

Didn't help much setting security at first.
I actually had 2 security centers built after setting at first. Those 2 got blown up too.

Spinner said you become "immune" with 1st priority security and 30% security centres. did you build the 2 security centres with nothing left? or did you have like 10 other constructions as well? If the people hitting you were proper covert op specialising planets, then they'd have pretty high stealth rates and be hard to stop without the 30%. the construction % is more important than the priority setting, i think, as constructions just stop covert ops (as far as i know) whereas changing priority increases alert and stealth. If you had 30% security centres and you had priorty first, e-mail spinner about it

[DeadMan]

had 3 maybe 4 finance centers and 4 research stations

I've never taken Spinner on what he says. Ill use the word "bug" in lack of other words.

[Appocomaster]

it's still possible then, you only had 20% security centres or so. they must have had like 100+ stealth rating but they can still get through. and of course when they killed 1 security centre, then it made it easier...

[Ripur]

They should make SCs un-opable.

[Copie]

/me giggles

[Lοki]

There are already that many threads about cov ops, I'll just write my comments here. It appears so that many people think cov ops have become nearly useless. The best thing to do with them is to knock out buildings, especially wave amps/disorters. Stealing money often costs more than what you get back. Destroying ships costs more than building them. You can reduce a target's stealth, but in return your stealth will drop too. AND the alertness of your target will raise as well. So is that beneficial? Covert operations should have another system I think. Perhaps we should raise stealth after doing a cov op (if it succeeds), instead of dropping it. Would make sense. If you do it more often, you get more experienced spies. Then things like stealing resources would become useful. I think people should be rewarded at least a bit for doing cov ops. But giving ppl xp will cause people who try to win just by doing cov ops.

In this case, we should also think of something to balance it. Perhaps that alertness should raise a bit more than it already does when someone cov ops you succesfully. And I would also be in favour of some new cov ops. Things that actually benefit you. Not too much, but in a way you damage your opponent more than yourself.

~ Dark Link

[Dotatrix]

That cov op page makes me wonder why somebody has allready cov opped over 500 times..

What's the point in that ?

[Smudge]

Xp

[Dotatrix]

sure they get xp, but what's the point if u dont have any ships

[noah02]

Originally Posted by DeadMan

I deleted my planet after haveing been cov oped for 72 hours straight. I had no buildings left at all.

Where is the delete button? I cant seem to find it :/

[Lοki]

Originally Posted by Dark Link

There are already that many threads about cov ops, I'll just write my comments here. It appears so that many people think cov ops have become nearly useless. The best thing to do with them is to knock out buildings, especially wave amps/disorters. Stealing money often costs more than what you get back. Destroying ships costs more than building them. You can reduce a target's stealth, but in return your stealth will drop too. AND the alertness of your target will raise as well. So is that beneficial? Covert operations should have another system I think. Perhaps we should raise stealth after doing a cov op (if it succeeds), instead of dropping it. Would make sense. If you do it more often, you get more experienced spies. Then things like stealing resources would become useful. I think people should be rewarded at least a bit for doing cov ops. But giving ppl xp will cause people who try to win just by doing cov ops.

In this case, we should also think of something to balance it. Perhaps that alertness should raise a bit more than it already does when someone cov ops you succesfully. And I would also be in favour of some new cov ops. Things that actually benefit you. Not too much, but in a way you damage your opponent more than yourself.

~ Dark Link

The next time somebody gives a reaction to this topic, please don't complain about how bad the system is or ask where the delete button is located. (just let your account die I guess). Complaining won't get us any further, but responding to the above suggestion maybe will.

[A Mighty Fist]

Originally Posted by Dark Link

There are already that many threads about cov ops, I'll just write my comments here. It appears so that many people think cov ops have become nearly useless. The best thing to do with them is to knock out buildings, especially wave amps/disorters. Stealing money often costs more than what you get back. Destroying ships costs more than building them. You can reduce a target's stealth, but in return your stealth will drop too. AND the alertness of your target will raise as well. So is that beneficial? Covert operations should have another system I think. Perhaps we should raise stealth after doing a cov op (if it succeeds), instead of dropping it. Would make sense. If you do it more often, you get more experienced spies. Then things like stealing resources would become useful. I think people should be rewarded at least a bit for doing cov ops. But giving ppl xp will cause people who try to win just by doing cov ops.

In this case, we should also think of something to balance it. Perhaps that alertness should raise a bit more than it already does when someone cov ops you succesfully. And I would also be in favour of some new cov ops. Things that actually benefit you. Not too much, but in a way you damage your opponent more than yourself.

~ Dark Link

I tend to agree, covert ops is often a useless thing unless your wanting to just blow up things and annoy the other person. Often stealing resources costs you more to do and blowing up roids is pointless as stealing the roid is more of a use then removing YOUR source of xp and resources when you steal it.

Blowing up a ship is useful and the destroying of structures is handy... but often taking it to the extreme which started this thread is perhaps airing on the side of grieving and in a sense farming... after all you don't attack the same target for roids over and over again because it isn't allowed by PA.

Personally i would like to see the covert ops used more for intelligence gathering with perhaps the building destruction being more specific like ship factories, and destorters being primary targets. If you could plant a spy who could give you fleet locations or some kind of ship count (at a high cost to the person doing the spying) you have something useful and another area within which people can specialise. Yes scanners can do some of this but i'm referring to the make up of a fleet and the locations they are currently in one intel gathering exercise.

If the expense is high but the gain worth it, you may find people specialising more in that given area, an advantage in one place but a cost to another for any planet undertaking such.

[Appocomaster]

the resource-stealing covert op is used by scan/covert op planets (although less this round). Those who use it properly actually get a big benefit from it, and some people (YoureDoomed?) used it to good effect a couple of rounds ago. The idea about covert opping is keeping your value small if you're going to profit from stealing resources, and hit big people who have neglected to build security centres to any large degree and have a lot of stockpiled resources.
Covert ops does need to be redone, to some extent (the XP benefits could be raised slightly, for example, and the formulae need to be reworked, I think.)
My proposed formulae were:

Security/ Covert Ops:
Stealth = 85/95
Alert = 60.

When a covert op happens, firstly stealth is updated.
New Stealth = Old Stealth - 5 - $int(# of agents * 0.5)
Successful Covert Ops when: New Stealth + rand(1,30) - target_alert - target_security_engineering - % sec security centres
where "% sec security centres" is the % of security centres in constructions, maxed at 20%*
*could be changed to 30%
Stealth recovery = 1 + security_engineering_setting (+3/+2/+1)

[Ron7684]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

When a covert op happens, firstly stealth is updated.
New Stealth = Old Stealth - 5 - $int(# of agents * 0.5)
Successful Covert Ops when: New Stealth + rand(1,30) - target_alert - target_security_engineering - % sec security centres
where "% sec security centres" is the % of security centres in constructions, maxed at 20%*
*could be changed to 30%
Stealth recovery = 1 + security_engineering_setting (+3/+2/+1)

its a good idea but theres a problem. if i use 5 agents:

New stealth = 88 = 95-5-2
88+15=[ 103 - 100 ]=-60-20(2nd pri)-20(% sc)

notice that on average random numbers. Theres still a +3 point sucess rate. This would make covert ops very easy to perform and to be immune, the defender would need.


88+30=[ 118 - 120 ]=-60-30-28
First priority and 28% sec centres to be immune. Isnt that a bit harsh? Its a good idea if we want more action in the game as top stockpiling planets. People in 6:10 have over 300M each res. Would have to sacrifice their mining as top pri for security. But it also means smaller planets will get randomly bashed because they dont want to waste top pri on mining. Its a good idea, but the values need tweaking.
overall though, i like. Just needs to be a bit easier to be immune as with covert ops theres no fine line between bashing and immune. Although a formula where there is would be nice. Anyone figure that out, i honestly cba atm.

[Ron7684]

Originally Posted by Appocomaster

the XP benefits could be raised slightly

I say raise the xp benefits on all cov ops but res hacking. I pull a 5 agent res hack every tick and this would make planets just gain free XP (aside to the already free resources from it)