Espiocracy News

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:

• 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:


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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

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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According to Allen Dulles, the longest-serving CIA director, espionage is not for archbishops. Is it for gamers, though?

Espiocracy is first and foremost the Cold War game. Focus on espionage stems from trends characteristic of this period:

• frequent government changes (leading to inevitable frustration if you're a government as well)
  
• significantly influential individuals (who don't take kindly player overriding their decisions)
  
• decolonization, coups, revolutions, civil wars, and other asymmetric episodes
  
• scarce role of actual military conquest
  

The last point is especially important for grand strategy gameplay. How do we expand if there is widespread military stalemate, rare wars are heavily constrained by international pressure, and many minor countries are locked out of interesting actions for 50 years? Naturally, you move the center of gravity towards espionage, since this is the golden era of subversion! We could even ask a question: can espionage take the lead from warfare and preserve the satisfaction of conquering the world? This is where we start today.

As a whole, espionage system in the game is composed of three parts: Actors (DD#6), Contacts & Targets (DD#7), and Operations. Whereas the first two are fairly universal, the last one is real espionage-espionage part with many features around it, which we'll explore in the next few dev diaries.

Transcript: the last third consists of regular espionage (example: following people), strategic materials (example: war plans), major operations (example: assassinations), counterintelligence (example: capturing spies)

We kick off with the most low-level part of spying: regular espionage. In a single sentence, it is a fabric permeating all other systems - constant background activity, direct connection to the game world, gateway to launching operations with surgical precision.

[h2]Tactical Intelligence[/h2]

Tactical intelligence sits at the heart of this darkness - it covers standard intelligence materials, which do not rise to the strategic level (duh!), such as recruiting secretaries, photographing locations, following people, understanding local culture, and so on. These informations are obtained in large quantities and their contents do not really interest the supreme spymaster, but are nonetheless essential foundation of more exciting operations.

Tactical intelligence serves as an abstraction of basic espionage to 0-100 parameter ascribed to all countries and all actors. Zero represents no intelligence gathered, whereas one hundred is perfect and total infiltration. In development, special attention is paid to the actual click-by-click use of tactical intelligence. Instead of (negative) knowledge tax known from espionage systems in other games, here it plays mostly the role of (positive) discovery mechanism: providing extra actionable information, figuring out what an actor plans to do, uncovering well-guarded secrets, enabling additional but not obvious (usually: risky) operations, unleashing interesting events, improving outcomes of advanced operations, assisting counterintelligence, and so on. The game will be clear about possible uses of tactical intelligence - for instance, discoverable positions on the future agenda of an actor are crossed out instead of being just hidden from the interface:

Transcript: crossed out lines in "future activity" section

Acquisition of tactical intelligence is integrated with the system of contacts and targets. On the one hand, you can do your thing and prioritize valuable targets in broad strokes. If you target a whole country, your spies acquire tactical intelligence on the country itself and many actors inside. On the other hand, you can buy this information via contacts with other intelligence agencies, or even enter inverse agreement in which you spy on behalf of another agency in exchange for resources.

Tactical intelligence is dynamic sum of components, which can decay and are connected to game events. For instance, opposite player can hit bull's-eye operation and dramatically increase their tactical intelligence about you as the ingame actor, but you can fight back by spending resources to reorganize internally, burn blown covers, and outdate (lower) the level of tactical intelligence in the enemy hands. Similar embedding accompanies country-level tactical intelligence, where common history and in-game events such as postwar chaos influence the results of regular espionage:

Transcript: components of example tactical intelligence level - +5.0 neighbouring country, -16.9 historic (expires in 4.6y), -20.0 postwar (expires in 2.7y)

[h2]Local Infrastructure[/h2]

In addition to tactical intelligence, regular espionage on the level of entire countries is expanded by long-term investments: recruited people, listening devices (bugs), and infrastructure. The first two will be number-based and roughly follow historical trends - for instance, in 1946 CIA had 125 agents in Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany - whereas the latter will let you to build with espiocratic twist.

Above all, you're controlling embassies, which play primary supporting role for espionage activity. They can be expanded in size (to the limit set by bilateral agreements), improved in security, expanded with consulates in other population centers, and most importantly - they can host stations, which are special cells carrying out intensive espionage in the whole region. These states within states are much more demanding in terms of resources and, therefore, remain jewels in the worldwide infrastructure, with just a few for small intel agencies and no more than a few dozen for superpowers. To invoke declassified data, CIA had 47 intelligence stations in 1952.

In addition to overt diplomatic infrastructure (which can also include, among others, onsite SIGINT installations), you can also establish covert buildings and non-physical structures, such as:

• safehouses
  
• courier rings
  
• cover organizations
  
• illegal spies
  
• sleeper networks
  
• stay-behind armies
  

The third category of local structures includes special projects, taken straight out of history and fiction. They combine high risk, high cost, high gain, and interesting events. As an example, they include a counterpart of operation Gold - a tunnel from West to East Berlin built to eavesdrop on Soviet phone lines:

Transcript: drawing of the tunnel, photo of preserved part of the tunnel, photo of journalists taking photos inside the tunnel Credit for the last photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-37695-0051 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

All buildings are more than bonuses and maluses and enrich gameplay mainly by offering meaningful decisions. For instance, top operatives can be posted to stations to conduct regular espionage there, higher number of consulates increases chances of defections and walk-ins, stay-behind armies are actively used in wars, and so on.

[h2]World Conquest[/h2]

Ultimately, this low-level espionage will be represented on the map as one of the symbols of progress. Fully leaning into the nature of espionage means that you're not limited to front-like warfare - instead, you can focus on any place in the world, build on the hostile ground, constantly work behind the lines.

In some situations, it will be a literal conquest, comparable almost to 4X games, where postwar voids and weak local institutions of newly established countries tempt you to throw in all the resources and become the undercover puppet master of a country.

This is also the most down to the ground but already significant battlefield between players. For instance, the use of infrastructure in uncovered operation may expose it to the opposite player, loss of these structures, permanent scaling down of embassy size, deficits in tactical intelligence, lower the ability to conduct advanced operations in this country, or even lead to loss of life...

"In December 1975, the chief of the CIA station in Athens was gunned down on his doorstep by three members of the 17 November Group, a far-left urban guerrilla terrorist organization after his cover as a member of the CIA was publicized"

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

After tactical intelligence matters, the next dev diary will dive into "Strategic Materials" - see you on November 26th!

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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"Hectic atmosphere of flaps and crises is normal for direct espionage unit" - Chief of CIA station in Berlin, 1948

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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There's no spy fiction without sharp characters. Espiocracy, as a character-driven game, leans into this trope and places operatives behind most actions of the player. Operatives are closer to George Smiley than to James Bond - hard workers in the background rather than stars stealing the show, but they won't shy away from rare flashes of entertaining story arcs that we all cherish in spy genre.

[h2]Grand Level[/h2]

Operatives - also known as operators, officers, agents, spies* - are employees of intelligence services in the game. Agencies commonly have hundreds of them and the largest ones (CIA, KGB) can sport tens of thousands. To preserve grand level of the strategy, player interacts only with a group of the most valuable (top) operatives.



Primarily, they exert positive influence: improve outcomes of operations, enrich intelligence collection in a particular country, mentor other operatives, and so on.

Details of their activity depend on the position in two-dimensional map of intelligence expertise, from technological to human intelligence, and from counterintelligence to foreign espionage. This system represents design principle typical for Espiocracy - simple enough to understand at a glance, complex enough to allow emergent strategic situations. Here, by gardening proper roster of top operatives you can steer the agency into the direction of technological surveillance behemoth or into empire of human manipulation.

As the game is focused on interaction with external world, there is no micromanagement of internal affairs. Operatives are fairly autonomous, don't require constant stream of orders, and do their thing wherever they have been posted.

[h2]Interaction[/h2]

Operatives directly perform operations - from infiltration to assassination - which will be covered in a separate dev diary. It suffices to say that their involvement follows macromanagement and autonomy, for instance instead of skill paths, characters grow by doing (or fall into alcoholism after too many murders...).

Operatives can seek new opportunities and bring them to the table if they are interesting enough:



They rarely cause problems, but this game couldn't be called Espiocracy without this (rare) negative event:



[h2]Depth[/h2]

Depth dominates over breadth. There are multiple parameters instead of +X% traits. The actual traits are rare and cover exceptional attributes - such as PTSD.



These parameters are shaped by the world, grounded in events as they happened in the history (before 1946) and in the game (since 1946). If player's country is engaged in a war, you can expect that some veterans will end up as operatives and years later shore up in the group at the top. Local historical tidbits - such as names from the epoch or levels of illiteracy - are further increasing authenticity of characters.

Top operatives form a loose team. They socially interact and can form subgroups. There is synergy effect in like-minded group, but their efficiency can quickly get stale if kept without influx of different perspectives. Moreover, their views matter not only individually but also en masse, where for instance anti-Asian group of top operatives can hinder alliance with an agency from Asia.

Operatives are persistent over many years, also beyond the service. After leaving, they live in the world, either keeping low profile or becoming an influential actor who, say, writes books about espionage like Ian Fleming or... becomes the president like Vladimir Putin.

[h2]Behind The Scenes[/h2]

System of operatives went through many significant iterations. This dev diary presents elements that are well-tested, but it's certainly nowhere near final version.

It turns out that controllable human-like characters are pretty hard to get right in a strategy game. Extent of player's agency, required attention, detail of actions, positive and negative contributions, level of influence on the game world - all of these aspects amount to an intricate subject.

One of the largest - and most surprising - factors that requires subtle balance is... pre-gameplay player's perception. One of the early prototypes leaned more heavily into characters and led to the game being seen as "X-COM clone". Too large focus on management can quickly push the game into vicinity of tycoons. Too many numbers and sRPG players expect the attributes of this genre. As Espiocracy is, first and foremost, historical grand strategy game, the design of operatives aims to strike balance right between fun but not central and important enough.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]

All screenshots are obviously early work, as can be inferred from the lack of icons.

The next dev diary "Units" will be posted on November 12th.

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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* - Meaning of terms "agent" and "spy" can vary widely. There are circles which use them to stress the difference between recruited foreign individuals and own operatives employed by the intelligence service. However, it remains semantically controversial, since, for instance, FBI employees are called agents and some services refer to their director as the top spy.

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"What do you think spies are? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and indians to brighten their rotten lives" - John le Carré

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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Intelligence agencies in Espiocracy are closely intertwined with contacts & targets. To summarize previous DD#7 about the system one sentence, actors can be contacted to pursue semi-diplomatic actions and/or targeted to unlock more offensive operations. All players - humans and AIs - are actors too, embedded in the living world of multipolar interactions.

[h2]Contacts[/h2]

As the name of the game suggests, espionage-focused actors have much broader decision space than all the other entities. This is especially prominent in interactions between the intelligence agencies...



...which are elevated to the level worthy of a grand strategy, including alliances, puppet organizations, arch-enemies, and challenging negotiations. The latter case plays an especially important role in inter-agency interactions (watch out for the "early work in progress" screenshot!):



Here, players can tailor their offers and needs, achieve many shades of win-win situations, resolve conflicts, or even attempt to deceive each other. Visible on the screenshot aresnal of negotiable subjects is granularized: for instance, non-aggression deal can range from just a promise (which can be broken, especially between human players) all the way to passing an act which locks particular offensive actions behind game rules.

[h2]Targets[/h2]

While contacts with intelligence agencies have to be established and developed (and the trust can be dramatically lost), targeting is much simpler - all known agencies are targeted by default. This is natural state for the whole world, as everyone wants to know what all the other agencies are doing.

The process of targeting assists counterintelligence and leads, among others, to the salt of the espionage earth: capturing spies.



However, even the worst situations can be partially salvaged using contacts:



In addition to counterintelligence, targeting other agencies actually improves counter-counterintelligence:



For instance, in this country the knowledge about comings and goings of local intelligence services is lowering the risk associated with operations on the ground.

[h2]World[/h2]

In Espiocracy, you will play as the whole espiocratic apparatus of your country. For the USA it means controlling CIA and NSA and (part of) FBI, for the USSR it's both KGB and GRU, and so on. Every country has a single - to borrow the term from espionage jargon - intelligence community.

Differences between them are the backbone of replayability. They flow not only from self-explanatory differences between countries, but also from the structure of intelligence community:



They are not set in stone. Change of the structure is a historically-inspired mechanism of recovery, where - after a revolution, large change of political climate, or just too heavy burden of internal issues - player can start from (predominantly) carte blanche. Speaking of internal issues, does the game simulate competition between agencies, so common in the real world? The answer is: partially, to not divert attention from the grand level of strategy, but to still cover the case of 9/11 which severity has been attributed to the poor communication between FBI and CIA.

[h2]Internal Management[/h2]

Design philosophy of careful balance between macromanagement and micromanagement is reflected in the internal management of intelligence agencies. Player don't set up an exquisite order of battle - it can be more closely compared to a city builder, where the main resource is staff, and buildings are agencies with sections.

Let's preface this with a word about game's economy. It isn't the most exciting design in the history of games, so it suffices to cover it in a single paragraph (and is subject to further balancing and iterations). In every fiscal year, general budget is determined as a percentage of national budget, where percentage is determined by three equal stats of: minimized threat, acquired strategic intelligence, and relations with country's leader. Since it is a government entity and not a tycoon, player doesn't directly operate on that figure, and instead receives number of positions available to fill, along with some operational and black budget (more on the last two in later dev diaries).



General pool of available staff numbers can be distributed between agencies, defining for instance the weight put on human intelligence versus signals intelligence. Level below, sections standard for espionage agencies but not necessarily intuitive for laymen (such as analysis or planning sections) are automated and assumed. The building fun instead happens in the richness of optional task-oriented sections, taken straight out of the rich history of espionage:

• Direct Action (a.k.a. proffessional assassins, such as Mossad's kidon)
  
• Forgery & Disinformation
  
• Embassy Burglary
  
• Illegals
  
• Honeypots
  
• Poison Laboratory
  
• High-Altitude Reconnaissance
  
• Paramilitary Training
  
• Small Military Units
  
• and more
  

Ability to establish specific sections depends on local law - it's hard to imagine military unit in hands of CIA (well, at least before the era of drones), whereas East German Stasi expanded its Dzerzhinsky Regiment to the size of a division. That doesn't however mean that agencies in the liberal part of the world are toothless, as they can excel in other areas, such as cooperation with free market economy leading to technological feats such as U-2 airplane.



All agencies and sections are manned by operatives. At the end of the day, every command is carried out by them - not by abstract bureaucracy. This will be the topic of the next dev diary.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]
"Operatives" dev diary will be posted on October 29th.

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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"It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries" - Allen Dulles

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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Note: Mechanics described below were updated in 22nd dev diary "Contacts & Targets 2.0".

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In a few comments, Espiocracy has been compared to the 80s game Balance of Power.

Transcript: World map with areas divided to peaceful, terrorist, under guerilla wars and under civil wars.

This classic strategy came out when the Cold War was still in full swing. However, it was criticized in a scientific publication for misrepresenting the history (more here). It was reasonable objection - the game simplified American-Soviet conflict to attacks and coercion, reducing constructive actions (such as negotiations) or treating them even as destructive (such as financial aid). In the real world, Cold War was not only about Cuban Crisis and coups, but also (mainly?) about the clash between two economic systems where all the other countries were tempted by economic miracles.

This critique could be reverberated when reviewing espionage systems in game designs. Power of destructive operations is rarely balanced with constructive actions, despite the latter constituting the majority of espionage work IRL.

Analysis of espionage systems shouldn't stop at the balance. Spying has been represented as a largely random endeavor, with no anticipation nor plans, limited (mana-based or time-based) preparation, almost non-existent counterintelligence, surprising lack of interaction, and worst of all - lack of real strategic decisions. Game designers shouldn't be (fiercely) blamed for that state, since espionage is typically an afterthought in games focused on other topics. But I wouldn't have that excuse in the game called Espiocracy!

[h2]TLDR[/h2]
Novel espionage system proposed by Espiocracy introduces long-term gameplay, large constructive possibilities, and series of connected strategic decisions. 1/3 part has been already described in the previous dev diary (Actors).

Transcript: Pie chart divided to three parts: actors, contacts and targets (as a one part), and the last part not described yet.

The second third, in short, is a collection of long-term connections: player can target or contact (or both) the actors, investing resources over longer periods of time.

[h2]Targets[/h2]

Let's start with targets, since they are closer to the popular understanding of espionage.

Targets represent surveillance, research, team following the actor, operatives recruiting people close to the actor. The word "target" frequents military dictionaries and can be immediately understood by invoking CIA actions after 9/11 where Osama Bin Laden became the absolute top target on their list.

Long-term targeting leads to the acquisition of knowledge (tactical intelligence) which in turn unlocks various operation types and improves their outcomes. Intuitively, long-term surveillance of the target enables successful attack. But it's not (only) a waiting game - during targeting, opportunities arise, events give the player ability to interact, there are more and less risky approaches.

To streamline the experience, not only actors are targeted but also countries. You can prioritize targeting USSR as a whole country over targeting Joseph Stalin, leading to long-term acquisition of country-wide sources that will outlive the Man of Steel.

Limited number of targets and importance of their ordering (more on that at the end) leads to a multitude of strategies: covering countries or covering specific threatening actors, targeting opposite intelligence agencies, turtling by targeting many actors inside own country, focusing on proxy wars, meddling in relations between superpowers, choosing between threats to ideology and to the country, or even being a gun for hire (targeting on behalf of another agency).

[h2]Contacts[/h2]

Contacts are the missing constructive side of espionage which - as far as I'm aware - hasn't been really represented in strategy games featuring spying. This fact on its own is surprising, given that many real-world intelligence agencies have formalized notion of intelligence contacts, and that any good spy book (whether it's le Carre or Mitrokhin) teaches you that spying revolves around contacts.

Contacts represent long-term relation between the player and actors: establishment of communication channel (non-trivial - contact attempt can be rejected), meetings, trust, exchange of information, and various direct interactions. They are implied to be covert, which means that you can contact both friends and foes. In fact, the latter was one of the main inspirations for the design: allegedly, British intelligence services contacted Islamic extremist organizations in the UK and struck a deal in which they promised them freedom of operation in exchange for not endangering British interests and citizens. In Espiocracy, you'll be able to do exactly that.

And many more things:

• support financially, technologically, by passing intelligence materials, by lending operatives
  
• protect in terms of physical and counterintelligence security
  
• smuggle people and weapons, arm organizations
  
• use contacts in operations to improve outcomes and lower risks
  
• escalate or deescalate conflicts
  
• threaten, make ultimatums, enforce rules
  
• influence or even control actions of the actor
  

Similarly to targets, long-term engagement leads to acquisition of the key parameter (trust) which unlocks more intimate actions. However, here this development is even more reliant on explicit decisions - there are certain barriers, which can be crossed only after the player decides to engage more heavily, back the actor in a specific conflict, or cross some boundary in relations. And, as the name of the parameter suggests, trust can be not only acquired but also lost.

Overall, contacts are a long-term game of multipolar diplomacy, where betting on the right horses can provide hefty returns. For instance, a political actor can be groomed - supported, protected, trusted - and reach high-ranking position or even become the leader of a country (maybe even own country ). You can also expect the classic dilemma of status quo, where it may be actually better to avoid elimination of a well-known enemy - contacted, targeted, predictable - because that could allow a new unknown enemy to enter the stage, requiring new expenses and operations.

To top it off, contacts are fully interactive on both receiving ends - there are opportunities and responsibilities, you can expect that some contacts will tip you off about upcoming events, attempt to exploit you, ask for help in times of troubles, or even propose participation in morally and legally doubtful endeavors. Actors can also attempt to establish contact with you on their own (this will be however fully configurable, on the spectrum from completely inaccessible to encouraging walk-ins in embassies).

[h2]The List[/h2]

All contacts and targets of an agency build a list. The order is critical - top target will receive most resources and most attention of the personnel - and serves as a handy way to abstract away micromanagement. Number of possible contacts and targets is determined by the number of operatives, with targets requiring more resources (as constant surveillance requires obviously more attention than rare one-to-one meetings).

The existence of such lists in every agency provides an obvious counterintelligence mechanic. The list can be approximated externally or directly acquired as intelligence material, and then used for direct counter-operations - such as reverting a known contact into double agent, or preparing an ambush in case a known target is attacked.

Contact & target system provides one more, even stronger case for counterintelligence. Since these actions are carried out by intelligence agencies, they can be contacted directly to sort out the matters. Even at the peak of the Cold War, KGB and CIA maintained communication channel. One can also think about more complex interaction between agencies - such as joint operations, training, sharing intelligence and technology, borrowing resources, signing armistices, or even purposefully deceiving the opposite side.

[h2]Final Remarks[/h2]
The topic of intelligence agencies will be further explored in the next dev diary, to be posted on October 15th.

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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"In a war of machines, the human element is, in the long run, more important than the machines themselves" - William Donovan