I play MOOII:BAA v1.31. I don't use spies much, but would like to use them defensively. According to the Manual, there are two types of spies: Agents and Counter-Agents. Agents are offensive (stealing tech, etc . . ) while Counter-Agents are defensive. You can't order a colony to produce an Agent or Counter-Agent, only a spy. How exactly do you set a spy to be a Counter-Agent?

If you make them and leave them, they will be counter spies. If you move them to another race, they will spy on them.

The manual is very confusing with it’s description of “Agents” for spying and “Counter-Agents” for defensive purposes. Forget all that, because the game simply uses “Spies” for spying and “Agents” for defensive use. When you train/produce a spy (only one generic type) at your colony, it is automatically placed into defensive duty as an “Agent”. You can see the newly trained defensive “Agent” by looking in the bottom-right of the Races Screen. Keep them here if their purpose is for empire-wide defensive measures. If you would like to assign that “Agent” to spying in a specific enemy empire, click on him or a group of them to “pick them up” then drop them in the box above the words “Hide-Espionage-Sabotage“ in the enemy empire you wish to spy on, your "Agent" has now become a "Spy". Also, remember to click on the spies mission “Hide-Espionage-Sabotage” you wish your “Spy or Spies” to perform in that empire.

That’s it, hope it helps. The manual is pretty good otherwise but the “Agents / Counter-Agents” thing always confusses new players.

Thanks, everybody! :goodjob:

IIRC, there's also a limit to the number of spies that you can have in any one empire. 63, to be exact. In other words, you can have 63 at home, 63 spying on the Klackons, 63 committing espionage against the Mrrshan,etc.

The limit for you is 63 or 64.

I just checked and since my last savegame was a UniTol race, I crancked out the spies and can confirm the limit is 63 for both Spying and Defensive Agents.

btw, never play a Unification Tolerant "single-player" game, even if you're a bad player you just can't lose! Sucks the fun right out of it!

For both, combined? It's been a while since I tested that, but I thought you could have 63 Defensive and more on offense. I am almost certain that I've had 63 at home and shuffled spies to other empires to make room for more. Maybe I just assumed you could have 63 in each empire.

I guess what I said before was a little confussing. The limit at home is 63 and you will no longer be able to produce spies. That is, unless you move some of them over to enemy empires. So you could have 63 at home AND still have 63 spies in EACH and every enemy empire, all at the same time.

That's what I thought. I remember testing it some time ago, maybe a couple of years, and I kept moving spies into other empires to make room for newly produced ones. I thought you could do that. Thanks for the clarification.

Here's another question:

Is it possible to upgrade Star Bases to Battle Stations and then upgrade those to Star Fortresses? Or do I need to build each one?

I guess that's 2 questions. Oops! :lol:

They can be upgraded all the way.

You can even upgrade straight from a Starbase to a Star Fortress. Upgrading also gives you a discount on the standard production-points (pp) required for construction.

Standard Costs:
---------------
Starbase = 400 pp
Battle Station = 1000 pp
Star Fortress = 2500 pp

Upgrading Costs:
----------------
Starbase -> Battle Station = 600 pp
Battle Station -> Star Fortress = 1500 pp
Star Base -> Star Fortress = 2100 pp

So it's subtracting the costs you've already spent, which makes sense since it is an upgrade.

OK. I hate to have to ask this, but . . . How do you upgrade? I've just always built the next-level space station without scrapping the lower-level one. Have I missed something huge all this time?

No that will do it. It is costing you less than it would if you did not have a star base or battlestation. IOW it looks like a build from scratch, but it is faster and cheaper.