I think the hiring thing is somewhat outside the existing mechanics and as you mentioned, very confusing. Something more appropriate might be:

While a spy is in your possession you are notified of all players' specialist hires. If your spy is captured you are able to see 75% of the sonar range of outpost at which the spy is held.

Alternatively I could see the spy either seeing all potential hires for enemy queens (though I have no idea what that would look like on the map) or being able to see what outposts have specialists stationed(maybe only promoted specialists?). This would make it a great promotion from the intelligence officer whose usefulness diminishes after the first few days.

pgroot wrote:I think the hiring thing is somewhat outside the existing mechanics and as you mentioned, very confusing. Something more appropriate might be:

While a spy is in your possession you are notified of all players' specialist hires. If your spy is captured you are able to see 75% of the sonar range of outpost at which the spy is held.

Alternatively I could see the spy either seeing all potential hires for enemy queens (though I have no idea what that would look like on the map) or being able to see what outposts have specialists stationed(maybe only promoted specialists?). This would make it a great promotion from the intelligence officer whose usefulness diminishes after the first few days.

That is actually a good alternative! I like this one a lot, because now it's less profitable for enemies to capture and outpost with spy (unless they have a hypnotist), because then you can see their stuff. Also adds a mechanic for captured specialists, which I like.

SHADOW
The specialists on the sub are hidden to everyone. However, they can see the Shadow.
Symbol-Cape
Text-"Some things are never meant to be revealed"

PROMOTES to ILLUSIONIST?
Global/LOCAL:Number of drillers are hidden & Specialists are hidden
Based on Deception

Reverend elder PROMOTION-PACIFIST
Local: Enemy specialists do not act
Player's specialists DO Act

OR
Enemy specialists go to nearest friendly outpost when they reach 25%/50% of the Pacifist's sonar range

DRILLER
Local:Neptunium is mined 50% faster
promotes to MINER
Global:Neptunium is not lost from a mine being taken

ELECTRICIAN
Provides energy equal to the drillers on the outpost/50% of sonar range

square wrote:SHADOW
The specialists on the sub are hidden to everyone. However, they can see the Shadow.
Symbol-Cape
Text-"Some things are never meant to be revealed"

PROMOTES to ILLUSIONIST?
Global/LOCAL:Number of drillers are hidden & Specialists are hidden
Based on Deception

Reverend elder PROMOTION-PACIFIST
Local: Enemy specialists do not act
Player's specialists DO Act

OR
Enemy specialists go to nearest friendly outpost when they reach 25%/50% of the Pacifist's sonar range

DRILLER
Local:Neptunium is mined 50% faster
promotes to MINER
Global:Neptunium is not lost from a mine being taken

ELECTRICIAN
Provides energy equal to the drillers on the outpost/50% of sonar range

The shadow is alright, but the illusionist is wayyy to OP. Instead it should disguise itself as a shadow to others but to you it will look like the illusionist. There should be no notifications that you have promoted and the illusionist. It should hide 10 drillers on each sub. You might think it becomes worthless after your enemy is attacked by one of your subs, but you can send many subs with anywhere between 0 to 10 drillers on them and they will all show up as 0, so your enemy has to prepare as if all of them were 10 if he/she wants to sucessfully keep the outpost. Also, I don't know how this would work, but I believe you would have to also show how many drillers you have at each outpost as if you did send 0 on each sub, because otherwise your opponent would just be able to work it out. Also it shouldn't hide specialists.

and MINER is too OP as well...
the whole game is based on the 20% loss when a mine is taken so that you can time your attacks to prevent your enemies from winning. Without that....well it would be way too hard. Maybe a miner should reduce the cost of mines by 50%, not stacking.

Deleted post

Another idea, a specialist called the Observer. The observer specialist (not the player) will have his own sonar range, even while on a sub, and will record everything it sees. The player gets this intel on a 12-hour time delay, so it updates what the time machine shows when you scroll into the past.

This means you're getting a lot of useful intel, but it's slightly out of date.

blanc wrote:but the time machine won't give you specific numbers, simply tells you whether or not you win

you can simply work it out if you trail and error by halves. There will be a number for which you will win and one less for which you will lose.

moldavi wrote:Another idea, a specialist called the Observer. The observer specialist (not the player) will have his own sonar range, even while on a sub, and will record everything it sees. The player gets this intel on a 12-hour time delay, so it updates what the time machine shows when you scroll into the past.

This means you're getting a lot of useful intel, but it's slightly out of date.

I'm not too sure I understand what you mean here....
Also, there could be other ideas such as:
Increases all your subs' sonar radius by 25% of standard sonar range. Stacks.
or maybe:
Is able to give you sonar information for that outpost even when captured. (so you can just send this to an enemy outpost, and the only way to get rid of it would be to assassinate or martyr the observer

The idea here is that intel is valuable, and many specialists already give immediate intel. No specialists give any data about what happened in the past though.

A simpler variant of what I said before: a specialist that, when hired, modifies your time machine to see the entire map from when it was hired, to about 12 hours ago.

moldavi wrote:The idea here is that intel is valuable, and many specialists already give immediate intel. No specialists give any data about what happened in the past though.

A simpler variant of what I said before: a specialist that, when hired, modifies your time machine to see the entire map from when it was hired, to about 12 hours ago.

I feel like thats too OP. Although you wouldn't be able to know exactly where the things are now, you can't move all that much in 12 hours