Espionage

Espionage is the basis of every good attack. You send a fleet made up only of probes (Spy probe) on the Spying mission to a foreign planet or asteroid. On arrival you get a spy report, and then the probes fly home – unless they get shot down.

What the report shows

How much you see depends on how your Spy technology compares with the target's spy technology. Resources and buildings are the easiest to reveal. Fleet and defenses need a lead, and research needs an even bigger one. With high spy technology the report also tells you whether the defenses are dug in.

If you are behind on technology, you can make up for it with more probes. But be careful: the more probes you send, the higher the risk that they are detected and shot down.

Counter-espionage

When someone spies on you, you get a message with the planet they came from and the chance of counter-espionage. That chance grows with your own Spy technology and with the size of the fleet and defenses on the planet. If the probes are shot down, the spy gets a shoot-down notice instead of a report.

If you send probes to an uninhabited position, you get an analysis of the planet with its ecology status.

Useful extras

• Synth spy nodes: Nodes in the Synth network raise your success chance, lower the enemy's, let your probes spy unnoticed or hide part of your resources from enemy spies (Espionage nodes).
• Spy assistant: Shows you all members of an alliance and all planets of a player on their profile. The plus version can regularly spy on all of a player's planets at once (Assistants).