New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

I propose a new CovOp to do no damage, but to simply return tactical data including (but not limited to)

• Current Gov't Type (and if in Anarchy: how many ticks remain)
• Current Base Fleet behaviour (Run & Hide, or Stay & Fight)
• A full overview of fleets (full ship list & count for each fleet) and their statuses (home, defending, attacking, or returning)

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

This is more a scan than a covert op (information gathering = scan)

There used to be a scan called a military scan similar to your last request (though in its most recent form the information about co-ords and status were removed).

The Anarchy thing is pretty much shown in the user feed, where anyone entering / exiting anarchy is listed.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

So a cov-op that provides mil scan basically?

I like that idea.

There is a worry though that cov-ops become so useful that immunity is a must, everyone becomes immune and cov-ops are redundant.

Hmm, as someone who hates cov-ops, thats appealing!

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

The appeal here is that it's information that, as a wave, would spoil the strategic element of the game therefore needs to be harder to obtain.

I didn't know this :/

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

I think that there is a good balance making this a cov op rather than a scan... here is why

1. Its easier to be immune to cov ops than to dist whore to block this info.
2. this would make this info easier to obtain early to mid game but relatively not obtainable end game. Because you can change government doesnt mean that the early game intel is going to be accurate late game.

The Idea is worthy of testing.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Story-wise, it could fit. Game mechanic wise not quite.

Maybe make some covops easier than others? Spying easier than stealing easier than blowing up? Still not sure it belongs in covops, but maybe.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Now there has been a discussion about removing covops totally or if they could be simplified.
Untill we have come to a conclusion on this, adding onto covops is for me a waste of time.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

I do like cov ops when it envolves stealing stuff, and I've played cov ops in the past when there was a tactical advantage.

I've haven't heard anyone coming up with an alternative to scrapping cov ops and coming up with a replacement entertainment outside of attacks.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

If they cant come up with some easier solution to cov-opping, scrapping will be the best thing to simplify the game.
Lets face it, after xx-amount of rounds, they havnt come up with one cov-op calculator, or any reasonable explaination of the feature(wich a New player would understand), Whole in Whole cov-op is just around now to hold back the top planets a little bit due to having to invest in Security.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean they did a poor job of explaining it.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Can say I have had the need to use a cov op calculator and just used the formula on the manual page.

BB if you can come up with something that can replace cov ops that adds to the game inbetween attacks I will be all ears.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Cov op calculator? How would that work? You gather intel to correctly calc targets alert? (Population, Population... )

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Who said i dont understand it?
The whole idea of cov-opping actively is meaningless, it takes too much effort to scan planets, and find out what kind of Resources they have, or go for ship stealing and hope they have fleet home.
PA is wide enough as it is with all this menus u got ingame now, back 13 years, if you remeber, it was way more easy.
Im sure all you PaX/PaN lovers enjoy all these new features, and a lot of em i enjoy too, but we are moving further and further away from the basic of the game, wich is the important thing.
Cov-Op was a BIG mistake to introduce to planetarion in the form it was introduced, imho, back to my orignal reply, why cant we just have a poll ingame wether to remove cov ops for each round?
Put it into the quest tree, if 51% of the member base is against it by say pt72, it will be disabled for the whole round.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Because that's a terrible idea.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

It's a shame, BB, because I agree with part of your post, that you had to add those last two lines.

We should definitely seek to refine what makes Planetarion Planetarion, but that doesn't mean we need to discard everything we've added since PAX. A lot of the additions and changes have been for the better. I bet if we reverted back to round 5ish conditions right now, many people would find PA unplayable.

Covert ops specifically, though, have improved a lot with the last few changes (bar Anarchy covop, yuck). They changed them away from pesky side quests you do to annoy others and more towards something that benefits your planet. They should be centered around either stealing or gaining an advantage, not around meaningless destruction.

But where your post went south is having the community choose where to take the game. Ignoring the fact that you want to disable a strategy 3 days into a round where people could have dedicated their setup to it, you really want to make game design choices based on what the majority of people want? Just take a look at the Suggestion forums and see how many idiotic things we'd have in the game if we let people vote. Game design isn't a democracy.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Its impossibole to determine what is "best" for the game.
My views are very very very radical, and the PA crew seems to be more intersted in comforting the few that still hang on to this game instead of looking at the long term perspective.
Small tags, small BPs, small gals, mass exiling, more and more advance game play, and less players.
All these things got a negative and a positive impact on the game, and it can be very hard to weighten them up against each other.
Cov-op how ever, i have a very very very very big hunch that 99% of the cov ops come from 1% of the univers, and its a feature most people CBA to use or learn.
Sadly there is no stats on this afaik, but its just a big guess.
So is it a feature wich adds something to the game for the majority of the community?
And is it a feature wich will attract new players to stay?
If not, why is it still there, and why do people want to keep making small changes to it now and then, hoping that it will be a great addition to the game planetarion?
Its very little communication and team play in cov-oping, wich in itself means its very alienated from the rest of the game.
Why on earth should the PA crew be wasting its time on something wich just aint adding much to the game.
Im pretty sure Spinner will say something along the lines that, looking back at it now, it was a mistake to introduce in the first Place.
How can find out if people actualy want this feature? If not a poll

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

BB isnt that far off with this post. A small percentage of veteran players even know how to cov-op effectively. I only learned because a friend had the time to show me this past winter round. Outside of that i had no idea how many agents to use for max return, what the formula was to calculate it etc.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

If you're not willing to look it up in the manual (which is where all the information you claim had no idea of actually is), then how can you blame PA team of not explaining it properly?

The current size of bps/galaxies is the only size that works for the current amount of players. If you increase it, you get bigger galaxies which become harder and harder to hit. Top galaxies should not need four alliances hitting them to actually lose roids.

Small tags is something I'm divided about; in theory I agree with large/limitless tag size. But I've seen first hand in Pl@netia what happens when you hit a certain ratio of total_planets:alliance_limit - every good player flocked to one alliance and they dominated the game up until almost all players had left. I don't really see why the limit should go above 10% of the active universe, though.

Exiling is a much more complicated matter, and if you think that PA team isn't aware of its issues then you're naive. But feel free to come up with a fix that doesn't have more cons than pros.

As for the covert ops numbers; there are 100 planets with at least 35 covert ops done, so it's safe to say a large amount at least gets some enjoyment out of it. Out of the 15841 operations in the top 100, 4227 were from the top 10 operative planets, which comes up to 26.7%. Not exactly the 99%/1% you were dreaming up, right?

This pretty much sums up any post by you, you draw these big conclusions based on what limited information you have available to you, not even trying to look at it from a different perspective or asking for more information. Which is very human of you, it just means I have a hard time taking anything you say seriously even when you do make some valid points.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

BB Cov ops provide another playing experience that people can choose. Just like Scans, Just like sk's just like ANYTHING else in this game. If someone is not one to like the "standard" attack/defend then why should WE be the ones to limit how much fun they have. Attacking and stealing your roids and your ships is something that is equally if not more harmful then a cov-opper stealing 200 of you 250,000 ships, or stealing 250k of each resource of your 50m you have sitting idle on your planet. All Cov ops are defendable with the right level of competance. Hell the Game even tells you that hiring more guards or building more Security Centers will increase your alert.

Honestly I wish to see Cov-ops stronger, but in order to do that you'd have to fix the Galaxy Fund as I feel that its already too strong as it, maybe limit the $$$ donation from 50m to 25m and increase the duration, that way its not AS impactful to one planet, and cov-opper that is capable is able to benifit his galaxy rather than just feeding one player at a time.

As for not understanding Cov ops, I would love to see a calculator out there to figure it all out, but its also kinda fun having to do the calculations yourself.

But BB just remember removing parts of the game will only mean LESS people playing the game.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Watching one monkey poking another monkey with a stick...
Don't correct flawed logic, with flawed logic. Decreasing galfund limit and increasing duration will make a cov oper benefit his galaxy more? Quite the opposite!

And removing parts of the game will make us loose more people? On what do you base that statement? Have planetarion had anything removed that made players leave yet? (Yes we've had things removed over the years, highly doubt any of those removals made people quit.)

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Covopping to get Government Information makes more login in the sense that it puts a much needed focus into covopping.

As for everyone being immune...Everything has a cost.
Just make immunity more expensive than it is or change how covopp makes an impact on the game

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Thank You for actually commenting on my original post instead of just going with the current conversation about the pros and cons of scrapping CovOps completely.
On that note we need CovOps to help even the playing field - especially with Xan which is one of two races which don't have any Steal-type or EMP-type ships, or with Terr which has nothing special at all.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

i would like to see security guards and agents become one, so if you decide to covop and fail you lose some of your alert rating as well.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Besides stealth / alert, Races has NOTHING to do with covert ops. Every race has the same options, don't put ship stats into the logic of why you want CovOps to change.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

Race has nothing to do with Alert either.

Re: New Military/Gov't Spies CovOp
 

And you forgot to include stealth regen.

But 33% ain't bad.