talking about spy ops.

when a country is in GDI, no one is supposed to be able to do any harmful special attacks against it right? no AB, GS, missiles, Bomb Sturctures, etc etc.

so why is it ppl can still do ops such as steal tech, bomb banks, steal food? shouldnt these ops only be available for use only to those that has broken GDI? they are harmful ops.

i got my tech stolen each day by 2 countries which i've never touched and i'm in GDI. (i was thinking they were working together but a mod checked and said they are legit). each day, i lose 6.7-7k tech * 15-20 op per country. lets calculate the harm they do and lets just take the smaller numbers.

6.5k (tech points) * 15 (steal tech ops) * 2 (countries) * 2k (price per tech point) + 6% (market comm)= $413,400,000.

not taking into consideration the cash per turn lost each turn you spend trying to replenish the tech that has been stolen.

$413,400,000 / (122+6%) * 0.5 = 1590000 nettworth.

they've been doing this for maybe a week or more? so 1590000 * 7 = 11,130,000 nettworth.

i'd say these are harmful ops, wouldnt you agree?

could we make it so that ppl cant use these ops on a country that has not broken GDI with them?

or is there a reason why it is such? i'd love to understand the reasoning behind if there is. because if there a solid reasoning to it, once understood, there wont be any complaints.

thanks

harmful ops are possible even if country is in gdi.

no, only the three that i've mentioned. you cant bomb structures, or diffuse missiles, cause dissensions, bomb jets, etc etc.

how would you retaliate someone 3-4 times larger than you if you can only do is spy, spy on allies, market/military spy? imo the only problem now is espionage ops are over powered and should either have lesser returns or harder to perform. a country stealing 6k tech/op is making about 13m excluding any production you have. that's equivalent to a 25k casher.

these 2 countries i'm talking about, i've not even touched them once since the start of the set.

so yea, they are not doing any sort of retaliation.

those ones are allowed because they're not "harmful" ops; ie they're not simply destructive, they provide a benefit to the person using them. but yah all non-intel spy ops are kind of too ez/overpowered

I would be ok with allowing the stealing ops to not be protected by GDI, _ONLY_ if their stealing power is severely diminished, OR if 1 grab on them is required to expose these 3 ops (as opposed to 2 grabs to open up GDI completely).

blid, i'd say 400m+ a day is destructive... lol

and i think xin's suggestion makes good sense.

Had a chat with qzjul.

Cliffnotes:
1) Being stolen tech daily is akin to being baited to war. Ignoring it is often the best move, because a t10 country is still going to finish t10 even with tech stolen. It is generally not a good move to give up a t10 finish on a solo server. What this boils down to is that the countries that finally realized they cannot finish t10 will then often enter war instead, hoping to avert any further tech stealing to countries that would still finish t10. See #269 on Primary.

2) The victim cannot do anything about tech stealing, other than going to war. You can put food on the market to counter food stealing, you can stock food to counter money stealing, but you can't do this for tech... I guess you can protect 1/4 of your tech...

3) All harmful ops other than the stealing ones are subjected to GDI. Assumed to be left like this so that spies are still needed to protect your country - but it isn't working when the stealing countries have over 100+ SPAL. Also, all top 50 countries have spies anyway, because spying on countries you grab is required to determine breaks.

If you build up sufficient spies to actually be a deterrent to tech stealing, then the spy upkeep becomes so much that it would actually have been better to just replace the stolen tech daily. You would have lost much more income building the indies, and keeping that portion of land as indies instead of (labs/farms/ent/bus).

4) Being tech stolen affects your t10 positioning of your finish. The degree of stealing is a matter of luck (or less luck if the stealing country knows who your country is).

5) Tech stealing is actually the correct netting move to any country (that isn't a casher) with sufficiently high SPAL because the tech stolen is worth more than just cashing the turn (and that you take the risk of war). This is also a conundrum that also needs to be resolved - the amount stolen is just too much. This is true even for a t10 country stealing from another t10 country (case in point, #132 is stealing tech on Primary).


All the above is why tech stealing is a problem. To h2orich, I would be ok if tech stealing was only limited to people you have grabbed at least once, so they can still "retal" by stealing. But to be stolen by countries you never offended before, daily, is a problem, particularly because of #5.

#5 is the one that isn't even necessarily true. people get warred for tech stealing, including frmo countries that could finish top 5. in those cases, tech stealing was certainly not the ideal netting move.
it's not destroyed, it's merely shifted. as it has a beneficial result for the country performing the op it was not seen as a "war" op. i do have a problem with how it works as present, just sayin'

Well, risk vs reward, right?

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