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 Post subject: New spies...
PostPosted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 7:59 pm 
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We are going to be adding two new spies to the beta game. You will notice the change when you see two new job selections appear when you check your spies. :)

Sector Defence Sabotage

This spy will try to cause Sector Defense Fighters and Mines that are controlled by the planet to destroy themselves. It will always be a small amount to keep the owner from noticing they are going down over time. The amount of SD that is destroyed will be dependant upon the Cloak of the spy and the Sensors of the planet.

Tech Level Sabotage

This spy will try and cause damage to a planets tech levels. If the spy can cause damage it will only be to one tech level at a time and only a very small number of levels (1-10). The number of levels that are damaged will depend upon the Cloak of the spy and the Sensors of the planet. The ability of the spy to damage tech levels is very rare.

Both spies will notify their owner when they have damaged something, what they damaged and how much they damaged it in the Spy Logs.

We have noticed players are finally using spies more by sneaking in past sector defenses they can't take out using their Stealth and then loading planets up with spies. So we figured we would give everyone a couple of new spies to work with.



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 8:23 pm 
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We figured it might be best to mention something about spies that most people probably know nothing about.

Everyone knows you can select the jobs you want your spy to do but I gather most people think that once a spy picks a job that is the only job he will do from that point on. If you thought that then you would be right but for only three of the jobs.

If you have selected one or all of the following:

    * Sabotage all planet production
    * Interest Stealer
    * Birth Decreaser

and the spy eventually picks one of those jobs then that is the ONLY job the spy will perform from that point. It will never try to do anything else.

If you have selected one or all of the following:

    * Steal Credits
    * Sabotage Torpedoes
    * Sabotage Fighters
    * Capture Planet
    * (New) Sabotage Sector Defense
    * (New) Sabotage Tech Levels


then the spy will try to do ALL of the things you selected. If you have selected Steal Credits and Sabotage Torpedoes then the spy will always try to do both of them. One time it might actually steal credits from the planet. The next time it might destroy some of the torpedoes on the planet. In all honesty you would be better off just turning on all of these selections. It will give you more chances to actually do something to the planet. The only drawback is if the spy performs one of the actions you selected it will not perform anything else that round. The spy will have to wait until the next chance it has to do something. So the spy is limited to performing one nasty thing at a time.

I, personally, am glad to see more people using spies. They have been getting the short shaft for sometime. About the only thing people have used them for is to stick on planets they own so if the planet is taken they might get a spy on the enemy players ship. But since the SD has become a little more expensive or harder to tackle more people have been resorting to sneaking spies onto enemy planets. :bigthumb:



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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri Jun 23, 2006 7:01 am 
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Neongreen wrote:
I'd like to give PJ a round of teh applause for such awesome stuff! I've been working with spies as a prominent aspect of my gameplay and I love to see them improved.

One does wonder though, can't spies can experience from their actions, making them harder to kill? Same with diggies? Currently spies and diggies are just throw away numbers on a chart.

:cheers:



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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Nov 26, 2006 5:26 pm 
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Adding more spy roles is a good start - but Spies really do need a serious bump in functionality.

I have also been doing some thinking. The art of spying in AAT has taken a serious drop off as of late. I have been mulling over several ideas but the biggest change is this:

No Bounty Range

There should be NO bounty range for placing spies on a planet; but spies will ONLY attempt to report data and commit espionage on planets that are in the bounty range.

This allows people to get spies onto lower level planets which will then HOP off onto the lower level players ship who then unknowingly becomes your agent for spreading your network of deciet and destruction.

I want to say again - WHILE your spy is on ship or a planet that is under bounty range he will NOT be able to report any data other than where he is (planet name only). This will allow for you, the larger player, to know your spies are still alive but NOT where until they get to a planet or ship that is in your bounty range.

Sleeper Cells
Furthermore, this allows for you to plant - Sleeper Cells. That fast rising star of the galaxy might not be in your bounty range yet... but plant a few spies on his planets and when he finally does grow into your range, the Sleeper Cells come online and start to report the data!


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 6:45 pm 
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Also!

If you manage to get a spy onto a ship, the spy sends back the real space sector name where he entered into a SG sector.

Talk about an incentive to get some spies out there!!


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 2:34 pm 
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q_mech wrote:
I've got a better idea - how about you just make them a little harder to kill so that they last longer? There's not a lot of impetus to placing spies if they are all gone the next day.

Besides, that will make people clean their ships and planets more often.


We had actually found a bug toward the end of the game where spys were not staying on the planets like they should have, SInce that time that has been fixed and we will continue to monitor it as I was doing some active testing durring the end of the game when we discovered that issue. So it should be MUCH better now :)


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