Spies and the use of.

[Vortan]

OR, says Vortan smoothly hijacking the thread back ...

You could implement my proposed system where the by the way EFF adjustment is removed. Punishment is wasting a spy. Bad enough.

[TBert]

I would use sabotage missile, but for it to be useful you'd either have to specifically make a NAP that ends between the attack phase and spy phase of a certain turn, which would be... new and unusual, and I've never done anything new and unusual. Ever.

Hmm...

[Vortan]

Except post your photo! What ever will baby look like

[TBert]

i am not sure but i think i may of spied on you in fun in the sun. If so i am extremly sorry.

dragonette

I love it! People are writing entire responses between the time I click 'post reply' and the time I hit 'submit'. I haven't been in an active thread like this in a while.

It's no matter Dragonette, I still won, just a lesson learned. And even if somebody nap-broke in Back to Roots, I had already lost the game with a few orders errors (oh, and Calidus's armies), so no bitterness either way.

[TBert]

Except post your photo! What ever will baby look like

I know, who actually uses their real photo on the Internet. You can see wifey at http://www.thetabberts.com, although she is now 9 months pregnant instead of 7 months. She'd kill me if I took a new picture of her anyways.

So anyways... something about spies?

[Saladin]

Tbert you're looking better every year.

So Bryk, when are you going to post the infamous Britney tapes?

[Dragonette]

dont start on about those britany tapes again please i beg u

[Vortan]

SPIES! ....

[Vortan]

OY, that was supposed to be in RED and enormous. Why are my font thingies not working?

[korexus]

Well the sabotage options are too weak right now. They never get used, so we should bolster them a bit and make them a more viable option.

Sorry, I have to take issue with this one. Have you actulally used the sabotage option under the new system? Did you even notice that it had changed? It was useful but underated before, it's actually a very good option now. The fact that people don't use it isn't a reason to make it stronger still!

Yes, i know that it has changed. Though i haven't used it yet, mainly because the chance to do so is very small. As you first have to find the missiles. Then when you do you have to hope that they do not get used. Which is unlikely. The gain is also quite small with only 2 missiles destroyed in a succesful attempt per spy. And above all the chance of success is small. Even if you have 99% EFF you only have a 59% chance of success. And with the chance of a 2% EFF loss with a failure that's to low a success procentage to try it.

So yes the fact that nobody uses it means that the option is no good.

I would suggest either increasing the chance of success and/or increase the number of missiles destroyed.

No, the fact that nobody (really?!) uses it just means that people don't think.

Spies cost the same amount of resources to make as missiles, a 60% chance of destroying two missiles with one spy means that it takes fewer workers to knock out your opponent's bombs than to make an equivalent stock yourself.

A lot of the time, you'll find yourself fighting over a bottleneck. Now whenever I do that, I tend to find that both players stock up their end of the bottle neck with missiles and bomb any armies which may be around to hell. Eventually one person gets lucky and has some armies left over, then the actual fight can begin.

Sabotage missiles lets you destroy all the missiles that could be fired next turn, allowing you to leave your armies in position to go on a rampage, which is nice.

Long story short, I used it very effectively even before it was upgraded. Maybe that was because few other people did and so it wasn't expected, but it really is a nice option and, once more, if you don't like the numbers, they are GM editable. (I think I may add that to my sig...)

Now sabotage DEFENSE on the other hand is a whole other story...


korexus.

[trewqh]

Tbert you're looking better every year.

You're just getting used to it. It's been the same photo for like 3 years.

[TBert]

I was actually 20 in that picture. 19? I can't remember. It was at least 3 or 4 years ago.

[Saladin]

Sorry, I have to take issue with this one. Have you actulally used the sabotage option under the new system? Did you even notice that it had changed? It was useful but underated before, it's actually a very good option now. The fact that people don't use it isn't a reason to make it stronger still!

Spies cost the same amount of resources to make as missiles, a 60% chance of destroying two missiles with one spy means that it takes fewer workers to knock out your opponent's bombs than to make an equivalent stock yourself.

A lot of the time, you'll find yourself fighting over a bottleneck.

Really? Than you're not playing it right if you limit yourself to just a bottleneck.

As you said spies cost the same amount of resources as missiles. But if you choose to try and take out missiles and you get lucky enough to actually find a province that has missiles and even luckier that the other player leaves those missiles in that province for you to sabotage. Then you only have a 59% chance at best of success. Which means that only 3 out of 5 will succeed. Taking out a massive 4 missiles. But only dropping the EFF of the other player 2% and only increasing your own EFF by 5% at best. Compare this to regular spying that will give you 6% EFF drop for your opponent and 10% EFF increase to you.

You must be the only player to use the sabotage missiles option and i bet you only use it once or twice per game at best. And it wouldn't surprise me if you don't even get to use it in some games.

[korexus]

A lot of the time, you'll find yourself fighting over a bottleneck.

Really? Than you're not playing it right if you limit yourself to just a bottleneck.

Bottlencks are good, at least they are if your strategy is better than your opponent. I like them.

As you said spies cost the same amount of resources as missiles. But if you choose to try and take out missiles and you get lucky enough to actually find a province that has missiles and even luckier that the other player leaves those missiles in that province for you to sabotage. Then you only have a 59% chance at best of success. Which means that only 3 out of 5 will succeed. Taking out a massive 4 missiles. But only dropping the EFF of the other player 2% and only increasing your own EFF by 5% at best. Compare this to regular spying that will give you 6% EFF drop for your opponent and 10% EFF increase to you.

Yes, unless you don't use the sab missile option for EFF and (shock, horror) use it to destroy missiles!

If you're fighting over a bottle neck you know where the opponent's missiles are. If he doesn't leave them there then you are happy anyway as he can't blow up your armies. To re-run the numbers in a way that makes sense:

A full province making missiles will produce 31 missiles.
A full province making spies will produce 31 spies. Short range at full EFF they have a 79% chance to succede in the mission, This will destroy an average of 31 * 2 * 79 / 100 = 49 missiles. You can split them into 1 to 5 orders depending on how much you like taking risks.

Bottom line, it takes three full provinces of workers to fill a single province with missiles, but only two to empty it, leaving 125 workers in hand over what your opponent has.

If you're only using 5 wokers a turn for sab missiles then of course it's not working very well. That's still not a reason to up the power though. If I only put 20 workers on TEC each turn I'll never get any decent benefits, but we shouldn't up it's strength just because of that.

You must be the only player to use the sabotage missiles option and i bet you only use it once or twice per game at best. And it wouldn't surprise me if you don't even get to use it in some games.

If I am, it doesn't bother me. It gives me an egde over the competition. And yes, there are many games when I don't use it. But there are also many games when I don't use +LEV or +TEC. Having different options makes the game more interesting. If sabotage missiles was always the best option then it would be far too strong.[/i]

[Saladin]

As you say yourself if you have the perfect situation that only comes along once every 100 turns than the sabotage option works really well.

And seeing that you don't even use it all that much, it's clear that the option is useless most of the time and doesn't add anything to the game, which is a shame as it surely can be of more use. The same goes for DEF. Now that really never gets used when actually it can be a good thing, but again the 'pay out' is too low and the chance of success is too low as well.

I don't really see the problem with fixing these.

[trewqh]

So do you think that making sab-mis order destroy more MIS would encourage people to invest their worker time and movement orders in producing spies and moving them around when there's no bottleneck?

Because I think that making spies able to destroy more MIS would not increase the number of situations in a game when sab-mis seems like a viable option. Moreover, if sab-mis is too strong then it makes bottlenecks boring, because there's no point in placing MIS in provinces at a bottleneck if they're that easy to destroy and simply seeing who has stronger armies is boring because it does not involve any tactics.

[korexus]

Sal, I am only going to say this one more time. If you don't like the numbers, they are GM editable. You can edit them in my games and then come back with numbers, I'm not going to change the engine on your (or anyone elses) gut feeling.

trewqh, you don't need to use the movement orders. - Sabotage can be done long range now. Admittedly, you have a better chance short range, but even at long range spies can take out more missiles than the equivalent amount of workers can make.

trewqh is right about the usage. Upping the numbers would not make sab missile useful in more situations (though it may look like that as people might actually start using it) it would just make spies yet more powerful as people wouldn't need to invest many workers into making them. A slight change to the setup might be more fun, whereby spies steal missiles instead of destroying them. Although this might aggravate the problems with the OOP...


Chris.

[trewqh]

trewqh, you don't need to use the movement orders. - Sabotage can be done long range now. Admittedly, you have a better chance short range, but even at long range spies can take out more missiles than the equivalent amount of workers can make.

I keep forgetting about that!!!

Hey! That means sab-mis is a great option! Just take one turn to make a backup of 20-30 spies and use them once you spy out a MIS factory where you think your opponent won't have enough movement orders to move the MIS away.

Thanks korexus!

[Saladin]

we're not talking about an engine change. It's only the already editable settings that would be changed.

The constant saying that a gm can change this to their liking is of course a bogus reason.

What use is it if the only games that will use any improvements are games that you have to GM yourself and can't play in then.

And what numbers? The number of rounds and players that do not use the option?

Anyhow, let me just hold back my anger for now.

However i am going to re-instate the WSC as the main decision making institution as it has always been. So the players get to make the decisions and not just one person.

[Dragonette]

OY, that was supposed to be in RED and enormous. Why are my font thingies not working?

u proberbly didnt highlight it before giving it things to do

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!