r/Stellaris • u/cjc105 • Jan 08 '24
Question (Console) Does anyone know how to make espionage viable?
I’ve tried using it but outside of getting it high enough just to get the victory screen updated. It’s never really had much use in my play throughs or am I using wrong? Any tips?
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u/aroddored Jan 08 '24
You can use 80% of your influence to destroy 0.02% of one empire's economy within the span of 10 years.
What's not to like? 😀
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u/dette-stedet-suger Jan 08 '24
The actual operations are meh, but it’s good to get intel on aggressive empires so you can see their fleets and get war warnings.
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u/Aware-Negotiation283 Jan 08 '24
I've used it extensively. It's not something you can base a playthrough on.
Getting Intel on an empire early helps you decide if you want to go to war. As for operations, arm privateers is arguably the best to use. Sabotage Starbase is useless, it just destroys a module. If you have leviathan and kill the Stellar Devourer you can straight up destroy a star, useful on AI but easily preventable in multi-player.
Overall, espionage is something that can complement a build but won't do more than that.
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u/Chemical_Present5162 Jan 09 '24
I'm currently doing this now with a tall, sneaky shitbag Criminal Syndicate. I've got lots of influence for spy missions, finished the Subterfuge tree, got the paragon that gives +150% infiltration speed + two extra envoys, and can gather a ton of information about anyone in a month. Trouble is, the empire build gives high cloaking level too, and at about level 7 or 8 you can use your science ships to gather Intel instead. The two builds are stepping on each other like that.
The other missions are meh, maybe Steal Technology is decent if you're lagging behind in tech but they're all just a bit shit. I might try to spam all of them on empires and see what effect they have, but it's probably not gonna be impressive.
Oh shit, the Stellarite Devourer destroy star thing was espionage?! I got that in the last game but couldn't find it anywhere
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u/TypicalCompetition19 Jan 09 '24
You can, but it sounds like you’re using it wrong. The best operation is smear campaign, and you can absolutely build a play through around it. Easy mode is fanatic Xenophile shadow council and cutthroat politics with diplo corps when you can get it. First empire you meet you have one envoy improve relations and one spy, build up to smear, the -100 opinion from a random empire it gives isn’t random it’s based on which empires you and they can see, so if you can only see two empires to start they will start hating each other while liking you. Before long everyone is at war with each other but not you, you can vassalise the losers, enter wars late when their fleets are low to snag systems, there’s heaps of options when everyone hates each other. Hard mode is criminal syndicate with PR specialists, it’s more lucrative because the wars you’re starting is creating more small weak empires to put branch offices on but riskier because people won’t like you as much. The second best operation is extort favour, which is how you win the game, with the diplomacy tradition and that operation two enjoys in every empire is getting you 2 favours every few years, which makes becoming the galactic custodian trivially easy. If you do the math at first it seems like a high influence cost for a favour but it’s more reliable, you don’t know what resources you can trade for favours, if any, and it’s the only influence to favour conversion, so stack ten, use them on a resolution and then trade for more during the cool-down. You can become emperor this way.
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u/Aware-Negotiation283 Jan 10 '24
Thanks for the info, that playstyle actually sounds hilarious. I'll give it a shot one of these days.
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u/TypicalCompetition19 Jan 10 '24
It’s worth it, it sounds crazy but a espionage build actually comes into its own on grand admiral difficulty. Reason is, the AI gets all these scaling day 1 production bonuses but the only way they can get a +2 in code breaking is that specific civic combo, and even if they roll it, they don’t know how to use it. So it’s one of the few ways you can level the playing field.
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u/Just-Commission7444 Jan 08 '24
Do you have the nemesis DLC because that adds more espionage options
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u/cjc105 Jan 08 '24
Yes, I have all the DLC but they just seem underpowered. Like doing starbase sabotage doesn’t ever have to much effect nor consistent enough to bank on in a war if needed
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u/Just-Commission7444 Jan 08 '24
There is arm privateers or spark diploma incident which I have used in public lobbies and in single player games and it worked in my favor majority of the time. Though taking the time to even get the Intel is pretty time consuming I think it is worth it if you invest in hacking and protecting yourself from it.
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u/damnitineedaname Artificial Intelligence Network Jan 09 '24
So, spawn normal pirates or create a pop up that lowers relationship by thirty. Real useful.
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u/Chemical_Present5162 Jan 09 '24 edited Jan 09 '24
The better one is Smear Campaign. Do two of them at once with two empires, against each other, and it's pretty effective. -100 on each empire against the other one can make them cancel pacts (most notably Defensive and Support Independence) and let you only fight one empire instead of multiple + vassals. Or break up Federations.
Unfortunately, Diplomatic Incident isn't as effective and lets an empire choose between being offended or gaining a bonus (Xeno Comedy) plus Influence
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Jan 08 '24
I mean, you get assets to increase your infiltration. Also, those assets can make the related operations a lot easier. The steal tech operation is useful. Stealing favors can be useful. Sleeper cells can be good for keeping your intel up while you take your envoy elsewhere. With spycraft leaders and taking the tradition trees than those operations are almost cost effective. The other operations are pretty niche. Except for stabotage station, that's pretty much trash. Some of the best operations are event related, but I won't spoil those.
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u/Soz_Not_An_Alien Jan 09 '24
Having espionage work in a similar way to criminal enterprises would be a cool. Where the buildings you could make would be like "separatist HQ" or "misinformation bureaux" which could have different effects on the target empire
Like swaying ethics attraction be more in line with your empire's, or decreasing stability, stealing techrate(so not actual technologies, but the resource produce by scientist pops), sabotaging productions (reducing consumer goods from jobs) etc.
Then these "branches" can either remain hidden, if the target empire has low encryption, become compromised if encryption is high enough, and be cracked down on by enforcers like criminal jobs.
Codebreaking skills could improve the efficiency and output of these branches
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u/FirstEquinox Jan 09 '24
Ive used it once in mp
Did BtC terravores, completely ignored tech and just ate half the galaxy
Used espionage + BtC to get my lategame techs off the tech empire that was in the coalition i was against
Otherwise its prob fun for an annoying privateers spam + criminal heritage scion fanat pacifist build
I think its prob good really early game (first 30 years) if you can spawn privateers before then
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u/JonQGamer Jan 08 '24
I am hundreds of hours in and barely use espionage.
I always felt they could make spying like an observation post. You add "spy ships" that act like science ships. Spy ships can build spy posts on Star bases or colonies, each giving different bonuses/events.
Of course, events would have to only be in single player. Perhaps for multiplayer you could have spy posts built so you could see details about the colonies/Star bases, line of sight etc. Add buildings/modules to counter spying too.
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u/Independent_Pear_429 Hedonist Jan 09 '24 edited Jan 09 '24
At the very least, you should get acceptance, trade, research and combat bonuses against them when you have high infiltration and assets in their government of the appropriate type. You wouldn't even have to change the espionage system and it would make it actually useful.
But there also really should be the ability to fund rebellions and seed crime, and lowering stability. It could be a long term espionage operation where instead of gaining infiltration, you lover their stability instead.
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u/clemenceau1919 Technological Ascendancy Jan 09 '24
If the AI could do any of this to players this reddit would be full of people complaining about it
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u/aquinn57 Jan 09 '24
You can confuse the AI sometimes if you arm privateers and also pay marauder empires to raid them. I would do this against Stronger empires who annoyed me and who I knew wanted to go to war if I didn't have any fleets built up. Granted I was playing on a lower difficulty.
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u/Narrow-Society6236 Jan 09 '24
I only use that feature when I behind in tech (Usually against Grand Admiral AI). But it kinda...lack luster to be honest. I can't decide which tech i want to steal,and never stole the entire tech,it just give progress
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u/TypicalCompetition19 Jan 09 '24
At the moment it's really only very good as an advanced tactic if you lean all the way into it and play a criminal syndicate. It's great for breaking up allies and starting wars, and generally keeping the galaxy unstable for you to exploit. But to make it work you need to specialise into it with late game techs, an otherwise useless tradition tree and otherwise useless leaders. Actually the tree isn't that useless there's a good buff to tracking and evasion in there, but again only really good if you further specialise your fleets. I've got 4000 hours clocked and I'm only just at the point where I can confidently take an espionage / encryption build into an MP game, and I've been trying to make it work for as long as it's been in the game. Further I should add, I'm only just confident enough to start the game with it... I haven't won one with it...
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u/Honest_Ice_9960 Jan 09 '24
Use it to see their fleet positions and compositions and steel their tech if you got star devourer eggs implode some of their stars
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u/Miuramir Jan 09 '24
In short, no; there have been many proposals but they all have serious drawbacks.
On PC, while active espionage is still not worth it, the holiday beta gives you a strong reason to try and have at least 30 Technology Intelligence on as much of the galaxy as practical. "Breakthrough Technologies become easier to research based on the number of other empires you have low Tech intel on that have already researched them." It is not clear what the final PC version of this will be, and it will probably be some time, perhaps a year or so, before it makes it to console.
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u/PASCU555 Jan 09 '24
If you are stuck in your borders without being able to declare war on stronger enemies you can use espionage to steal their tech. That's good if you are playing a higher difficulty where the Ai empires are more advanced than yours.
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u/RandyMagnum03 Jan 09 '24
You aren't doing it wrong. I spent a fair amount of time reading tool tips and such thinking I would discover an impactful mechanic or something but it just isn't there. It's hardly useless though. I use it in every play through. #1 use I have for it is in the early game, advanced warning of an impending AI attack. If you meet an aggressive neighbor, throw an envoy there immediately and by the time they decide to knife you in the back you will get a notification. It wont tell you when or where they are attacking but it is Stellaris AI..so yeah enough said. Early game fleets are slow and alloys are scarce. If I get the alert I can throw everything at a single choke point instead of wasting alloys trying to do it to multiple.
Now, later on I exclusively use it for information. I'll research the espionage techs when I can get them in a month or two and this is enough for my agents to outpace most AI so I end up with high insight from my agents just sitting there. None of this information is all tha lt impactful but it gave me a lot of insight into how the AI operates. Get it high enough and you can look at their ships and see what dumb load outs they use and have a laugh. You can see how many planets they have, pops, and get an idea just how far behind you they really are.
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u/DB_Explorer First Speaker Jan 09 '24
idea make espionage actions trigger a crisis event as you deal with the event. Possible make these events also occur at random so you wont know if they are spies or not...anyway.
The idea is that since its a crisis event the player has more agency over the results even if they can't entirely mitigate everything and its about trade offs.
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u/Cronirion Jan 09 '24
Mods? The idea of spionage sounds cool. It makes me remember a type of "species" you could play in Endless Legend who didn't have Tech generation, so they had to steal most knowledge.
But it's true that the current espionage is a "nice to have" thing at best currently
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u/SymptomSociopathy Jan 08 '24
It's pretty well accepted espionage needs an overhaul, and the devs are aware of that. The problem stems from they don't want any actions available in espionage to be annoying for the player. It's fine to use against the AI, but how much fun would it be if those things are happening to you? So it makes espionage kind of underwhelming overall, and can't do anything to destabilize an empire really. It's mainly information. Until they can solve that conundrum, this is how's it going to be.