Dev Diary #11 - Strategic Materials 💣
What's happening / TLDR: Developer diaries introduce details of Espiocracy - Cold War strategy game in which you play as an intelligence agency. You can catch up with the most important dev diary (The Vision) and find out more on Steam page.
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After straightforward tactical intelligence introduced in the previous dev diary (DD#10), today we explore a more exciting layer!
Strategic materials represent crème de la crème of the secret world in Espiocracy. They exist as independent items: blueprints, orders, plans, secrets, devices, or even scarce resources. Their acquisition opens opportunities and can rewrite history of entire countries. For you, as an intelligence agency, it's an almost capture-the-flag game, where you strive to obtain foreign materials while guarding your roster of state secrets.
[h2]Example Strategic Materials[/h2]
Military actors forge various kinds of war plans. This category includes defense and invasion plans against different countries, nuclear strike C&C, or even the date of the invasion. During a war, it extends to plans of battles, offensives, and counteroffensives. These materials provide indirect means of influencing warfare - for instance, if you fancy an invasion on a specific country, acquiring its defense plans gives you the ability to recommend the war. On the other hand, detecting incoming invasion can make a difference between survival and lost cause.
Stealing technology is a cliche for espionage in games. Here, it is diversified into blueprints and devices. Both strategic materials offer different gains and risks, which are not set in stone yet, and will depend on specific types of technology. For instance, acquiring blueprints of nuclear bombs (relatively simple devices in the early Cold War) is different than acquiring blueprints of airplanes (many systems, vast documentation). Moreover, internal capabilities play a role - rocket parts may be useless if there are no rocket scientists in your country.
An interesting strategic material is uranium ore. Some countries can just source it from their own (or controlled) territory with no special intelligence activities required. Others have to arrange a complex set of operations, akin to Mossad's Plumbat in which Israel obtained 200 tonnes of processed uranium from Congolese Shinkolobwe.
High-stakes actions performed by actors - including the player - can become secrets if their authors remain hidden. Assassinations, coups, substantial support, and other internationally relevant actions automatically become strategic materials known to co-conspirators, witnesses, and sometimes even remain independently in the form of a paper trail. These materials can be used for blackmail, elimination from public life (including imprisonment), igniting protests, causing diplomatic incidents, and so on.
[h2]Materials in the World[/h2]
Some materials are planted in the world by historical simulation (for instance: documents from the Nazi era) and geography (for instance: uranium). All the other strategic materials are directly created and managed by actors. Their dynamics are closely integrated with the in-game world - for instance, a military leader with an anti-Canadian view will naturally push to prepare an invasion plan against Canada. Once created, knowledge dynamics are pretty intricate: actors can temporarily access the material and become aware of it, the creator can resign and still remember the plan, other actors can cancel the plan or replace it with a new one, the previous actor may not be aware that his knowledge about the plan is obsolete, and so on.
Genrally, you are aware of all strategic materials belonging to your country. This allows you to intensify counterintelligence around actors with access to particular materials, spot possible breaches and react accordingly, or even engage in a double agent game. The latter is possible after discovering a spy, successfully turning them, and then providing fabricated strategic materials of your choice. Such an approach brings special gravitas to false intelligence: imagine feeding the enemy with false defense plans to lure them straight into one large ambush.
[h2]Acquiring[/h2]
The sheer existence of strategic materials is usually intuitive, but the details are not given away for free. You can safely assume that war plans are near military actors, but you'll need significant tactical investment to figure out if they include an attack plan on your country, which would elevate eventual acquisition operation to a completely different level of prospective gains.
Successful engagement with this meta-layer (information about information) enables the most straightforward operation type: stealing chosen strategic materials. Details of operations will be covered in the next dev diary. However, knowledge about materials is not required to obtain them. There are other methods, ranging from random to shotgun approaches:
[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]
UI is in the middle of rework - hence no screenshots.
The next dev diary "Operations" will be posted on December 10th.
If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
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"Documents can be forged, but the information is true" - Ahmed Sékou Touré, President of Guinea, about Soviet forgeries stating hostile intent of the USA
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After straightforward tactical intelligence introduced in the previous dev diary (DD#10), today we explore a more exciting layer!
Strategic materials represent crème de la crème of the secret world in Espiocracy. They exist as independent items: blueprints, orders, plans, secrets, devices, or even scarce resources. Their acquisition opens opportunities and can rewrite history of entire countries. For you, as an intelligence agency, it's an almost capture-the-flag game, where you strive to obtain foreign materials while guarding your roster of state secrets.
[h2]Example Strategic Materials[/h2]
Military actors forge various kinds of war plans. This category includes defense and invasion plans against different countries, nuclear strike C&C, or even the date of the invasion. During a war, it extends to plans of battles, offensives, and counteroffensives. These materials provide indirect means of influencing warfare - for instance, if you fancy an invasion on a specific country, acquiring its defense plans gives you the ability to recommend the war. On the other hand, detecting incoming invasion can make a difference between survival and lost cause.
Stealing technology is a cliche for espionage in games. Here, it is diversified into blueprints and devices. Both strategic materials offer different gains and risks, which are not set in stone yet, and will depend on specific types of technology. For instance, acquiring blueprints of nuclear bombs (relatively simple devices in the early Cold War) is different than acquiring blueprints of airplanes (many systems, vast documentation). Moreover, internal capabilities play a role - rocket parts may be useless if there are no rocket scientists in your country.
An interesting strategic material is uranium ore. Some countries can just source it from their own (or controlled) territory with no special intelligence activities required. Others have to arrange a complex set of operations, akin to Mossad's Plumbat in which Israel obtained 200 tonnes of processed uranium from Congolese Shinkolobwe.
High-stakes actions performed by actors - including the player - can become secrets if their authors remain hidden. Assassinations, coups, substantial support, and other internationally relevant actions automatically become strategic materials known to co-conspirators, witnesses, and sometimes even remain independently in the form of a paper trail. These materials can be used for blackmail, elimination from public life (including imprisonment), igniting protests, causing diplomatic incidents, and so on.
[h2]Materials in the World[/h2]
Some materials are planted in the world by historical simulation (for instance: documents from the Nazi era) and geography (for instance: uranium). All the other strategic materials are directly created and managed by actors. Their dynamics are closely integrated with the in-game world - for instance, a military leader with an anti-Canadian view will naturally push to prepare an invasion plan against Canada. Once created, knowledge dynamics are pretty intricate: actors can temporarily access the material and become aware of it, the creator can resign and still remember the plan, other actors can cancel the plan or replace it with a new one, the previous actor may not be aware that his knowledge about the plan is obsolete, and so on.
Genrally, you are aware of all strategic materials belonging to your country. This allows you to intensify counterintelligence around actors with access to particular materials, spot possible breaches and react accordingly, or even engage in a double agent game. The latter is possible after discovering a spy, successfully turning them, and then providing fabricated strategic materials of your choice. Such an approach brings special gravitas to false intelligence: imagine feeding the enemy with false defense plans to lure them straight into one large ambush.
[h2]Acquiring[/h2]
The sheer existence of strategic materials is usually intuitive, but the details are not given away for free. You can safely assume that war plans are near military actors, but you'll need significant tactical investment to figure out if they include an attack plan on your country, which would elevate eventual acquisition operation to a completely different level of prospective gains.
Successful engagement with this meta-layer (information about information) enables the most straightforward operation type: stealing chosen strategic materials. Details of operations will be covered in the next dev diary. However, knowledge about materials is not required to obtain them. There are other methods, ranging from random to shotgun approaches:
- Country-level regular espionage (very rare)
- Targeting actors with access to materials (rare)
- Contact with access to materials
- Breaking in, infiltration
- Kidnapping and interrogation
- Deals with other intelligence services
- Spoils of war
[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]
UI is in the middle of rework - hence no screenshots.
The next dev diary "Operations" will be posted on December 10th.
If you're not already wishlisting Espiocracy, consider doing it:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/
There is also a small community around Espiocracy:
---
"Documents can be forged, but the information is true" - Ahmed Sékou Touré, President of Guinea, about Soviet forgeries stating hostile intent of the USA