Just sharing an interesting Idea I had for a new spy op: Ambush Trade Routes.

This op would destroy and steal a small portion of the target country's goods as they are on the way to market. Goods already on the market are unaffected. Tech on its way to market is not affected either. (We already have Commit Espionage)

Due to the small window of opportunity for this op, I'd also propose a tweak to the Market Spy op to also display if the target country's goods have made it to market yet, or if they are still en route.

I support the Market op changes. I think spies in this game should be vastly stronger for intelligence gathering and weaker in terms of the damage you can do.

For instace market spy should show all the times involved. Like when does that batch come back on hand, when does the goods reach the market(like you suggested).

The ambush op is just another nuke; its worthless in war but very good at ruining netters, with no counterplay. Game doesnt need more nukes, redesign the nuke instead so that it is good in war.

Ooh. That's a good point.

I'm not out to grief netters with this. Was thinking more along the lines of stymying opposing countries during buildups to war. But I can definitely see how dedicated netters could be adversely affected.

My suggestion to tweak Market Spy, though, I feel is at least a good step. ^.^

For sure. And to add to that you can do stuff like give extra information from certain ops or add new ops:

Defensive news spy: Gives the ingame defending news of a country. Also gives the current DR.
Defensive intel spy: Gives a complete workup of the ops the country has been subjected to all set, revealing the aggressor if the op failed. Also gives the current spy DR.
Offensive intel spy: Gives a complete workup of the ops the country has done all set with target and result included.

With all this strength added to the intel gathering spy ops no one can complain when CDs are weakened in the following way:

Instead of min(4%*Target_Troops,8%*Attacker_Troops) >>> min(3%*Target_Troops,3%*Attacker_Troops).

Then we buff the Attack intelligence network op slightly as well and we are golden.

I'm seriously liking the way you think on this.

I was also thinking maybe they should make 2 separate ops for Burning/Stealing Cash/Oil/Food like, make them 6 separate ops.

Bomb Banks
Raid Banks
Burn Oil Reserves
Raid Oil Reserves
Burn Food Stores
Raid Food Stores

Obviously destroying would yield more damage than stealing to keep from too much abuse.

The way those ops work has to do with stuff that happened in the past. Thats why solo servers have oil/food/cash stealing and tagged servers mostly burn those resources. I guess it could be balanced with certain adjustments.
But more or less if you make them balanced for war it makes them overpowered for using against netters who forget their stock on hand for a bit.

Ohh and also:

Spy on Military: Should be changed to give weapons tech %, and maybe even SDI, Warfare, medical? Could even show how many missiles on target?

Why should it be a supplementary op that you just have to do in some circumstances instead of a legit alternative to the regular spy? The only uses now are to see brigades PSed and current readiness which makes it a niche op that is only done in addition to the regular spy op.