[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.