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# System prepended metadata

title: Espionage

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# Espionage

## Conducting Espionage

In KSPRP One, each nation is capable of conducting espionage and scouting. This is important because, by default, the only things you TRULY know about your enemy is the size of their population and location of population centers. How many troops they have, where their fleet is, where their nuclear centrifuge is, etc constitute metaknowledge unless made explicit, but more importantly, these places cannot be targetted directly unless their location is known. This may prove inconvenient if you're trying to orchestrate a first strike to disable your enemy's assets before they can respond, whether it be nuclear or conventional.

The first major way to conduct espionage is through Spies. Spies represent not an individual spy, but an entire network of agents, informants and saboteurs working under them. These Spies have a physical location - generally an enemy (or own, see counterespionage) city. Each year, a spy can be moved only once, resetting their progress.

Every country has one free spy they can assign with no cost. Every spy above that costs 2 IP. This cost is reduce to 1.5 IP in enemy countries (for democratic countries) or in your own country or allied countries (for authoritarian countries). Additional free spies may be gained through certain technologies and buildings.

Once a spy is in a city, they begin building their network. The network grows at a slow pace, reaching its maximum size after 10 years if no other events occur. This pace can be sped up through various operations, although operations risk the network being at least partially discovered, which may have dire consequences.

## Operations

A spy may undertake various operations, such as getting agents in the administration, recruiting enemy spies as double agents, sabotaging enemy buildings or projects. The likelihood of success and the likelihood of being discovered is modified by the size of the spy network and the difficulty of the operation.

When spies are deployed in socialist nations, additional IP can be deployed in a project to increase the likelihood of success (representing weapons and the like), while in capitalist nations this IP can be spent to decrease the chance of discovery (representing bribes). In pragmatic countries, both can be undertaken at double the cost. Certain operations have an extra base cost to them, depending on their complexity.

Once an operation is undertaken, the difficulty of the next operation in the year is increased. This increase stacks, such that extreme espionage activity can be extremely risky if you need to move quickly.

## Opportunities

Your intelligence agencies do not entirely rely on you queuing operations. By assigning some additional IP to a spy, certain operations can be undertaken automatically with a certain chance. These operations are called opportunities and represent the compartmentalization in organizations like the KGB, CIA, etc. You can blacklist certain operations if they're too aggressive vs your diplomatic stance with that country (although it does not ENTIRELY stop your agents from doing something unplanned, if they're your rival). It is *generally* cheaper, safer and more likely to succeed to act on an opportune operation. In roleplay terms, this is what happens when loose lips sink ships. A nuclear shipment is going through an unsecured area, someone let loose their uncle works at a company testing the latest in bipedal tank technology.

Some opportunities may have a chance for the player to cancel an operation they do not deem truly opportune.

The primary reason to let your agencies work on their own is so they can passively find out what your enemy is working on - this might even be the only way to truly discover their newest superweapon before it's too late for you to react.

## Counterespionage

Opportunities lead to the natural way for counterespionage. By creating your own operation, you can spread false information leading to false opportunities and false information for your enemy. In particular, false opportunities can lead to your enemy blundering part of their spy network. That nuclear shipment wasn't a nuclear shipment - your spies were ambushed when they tried to blow it up. The bipedal tanks aren't real - their REAL project wasn't discovered thanks to the misdirection.

If your enemy has spies far too well entrenched, and your own spies are all double agents, there's always a solution. By enacting a **PURGE**, you can slide your country temporarily towards authoritarianism (if it isn't already there) and quickly destroy all spies over the course of few years, depending on the gravity of the purge. **PURGES** unfortunately have the negative side effect of reducing your military effectiveness, increasing the cost of technology, and reducing the economic productivity of your country.

## Revealing Targets
Targets are revealed in an area around the city your spies are based in. The area represents the dependent zones of a city, not necessarily a strict radius. If something would be under the purview of a different major city, you're going to need a spy there. By exception, the capital city can reveal targets everywhere in the country, but with a far lower likelihood.

## Tech Espionage
Espionage allows you to "steal" researched cards (initially, an additional 50% cost is applied, but this may be reduced with more espionage). Not only that, but certain cards have "counter" cards assigned to them. In such cases, revealing an enemy has researched (if not developed) something powerful - for example, potent ballistic shields - may cause you to permanently reveal one of its counters at normal cost - for example, hypersonic missiles.

## Formenting Change
Particularly targetted towards AI nations, formenting change is a way to change the ideology of an AI nation. There are two ways to forment change - violently and peacefully. Violently formenting change is particularly effective against authoritarian regimes, but may be quite expensive. It does not mean you intervene militarily - although during violent change, any country intervening militarily will not trigger the AI nation's military buffs, since the country is no longer unified enough to fight a foreign invader. Violent change is an open invitation for a proxy war. Steps in violent change might not be announced to the person who has swayed the AI nation, if they do not have an espionage presence.

Peaceful change however is more effective in more democratic countries. This represents your country using its soft power and connections to influence and corrupt the politics of your target. Peaceful change however is always announced to the person who swayed the AI country, meaning they're more likely to intervene and take steps to stabilize their sways.

Whichever way it is done, formenting change is a multistep process. Violently you may start by recruiting dissidents, funding paramilitary (or military, depending on your RP) movements, training them and finally shipping weapons and supporting their coup. Peacefully, you would be recruiting potential candidates, funding their campaigns, corrupting key officials, and finally guiding their constitutional coup to completion. At the end, if no one intervenes, the country will be the same ideology as you in at least one axis, meaning you can sway them at no cost. Swaying them to your own ideology may take two coups.