Getting Loads of Rep. As a Double Agent

[contributor]

In the game I'm playing now, I've discovered a new strategy that I haven't seen mentioned a lot on the forums. I call it the Double Agent strategy. There's a rumor about it, and it basically consists of spying on a planet that is involved in a spy war and then selling the records created right back to that planet. Doing this I've been getting huge rep bonuses with both factions and loads of xp points as well, especially if I can find somebody who is doubly or triply involved in a spy war but is not embargoed.

In one instance, Thulun was in three spy wars at a time and I must have spent years (6-7 trips to the planet surface to sell records and re-fuel) just camped out spying on their mining operation. In that time, I boosted my rep with all 4 factions by 400-800 and gained close to 300 xp, and I never even had to move my ship, just flew in and out of orbit. Even made a good bit of cash selling records. Not bad.

I'm not sure this will work all the time as I am playing as a spy and have a spy officer. I also have some rank and a death warrant (not sure this really matters) with every faction so I'm getting all the bonuses possible.

Has anybody else used this strategy? Hypothetically it could be a good way to gain rep with a faction that considers you a criminal, since it wouldn't involve actually flying into their space. That might not work though, because, without rank/death warrant, you might not gain enough rep spying to offset what you lose selling records against them. It's worth a try though.

[contributor]

As a follow-up to this. I was just able to use this strategy to recover my reputation with a faction in the very early stages of a game, when I had no rank or death warrant with the faction and was not playing as a spy and did not have a spy officer. I was a level 4 MO playing on Insane.

I accidentally sunk my rep with Thulun to -22 by not heeding a trade embargo. Early in the game I try to stay on pretty good terms with everybody and wanted to get this cleared up quickly, but they were in a trade embargo, spy war and solar war with the factions that I was really playing for.

The spy war was with DV and I had a rep of 10 with them and a rank of 1. So I went to Synd Core and started spying. My stealth was around 6 or 7 and my tactics were 5 or 6. After a few sessions of spying (and taking a few torps from DV warships in the tailpipe) and then carefully selling just enough records back to DV I was able to bring my rep with Thulun up to +3 and kept my DV rank at +8. I also had 30 some records that I went and sold to Chowder because they were not involved in any shenanigans, so I got a nice rep boost there as well. I'm sure that will come in handy when I get established and am ready to wreak havoc.

[shallowthought]

startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=log&action=display&thread=1895

[erikem]

Well it's a genera rule here that regardless of the difficulty level if you participate in a Solar war by blockading or Spy war by surveillancing and selling records you will get tons of XP (u need death warrant for this I think) and overall positive rep i.e. you get more combined rep than you lose.

Even if there are no wars at all you can spy on certain faction and then sell them back their records and will still have positive result.

10k mentioned in the quoted post is slightly higher than I achieved but is simply a matter of time.

[Cory Trese]

Nice post, thanks.

[martyparty]

I gave this Double Agent method a go, and it works well.

I'm wondering, however, why do I lose my Trade Permit when surrendering to military patrol ships, and only some of the time?

I'm starting with a Trade Permit, Death Warrant, rank level 2, and hundreds of positive reputation points in reserve.

[Cory Trese]

Feb 17, 2013 17:43:38 GMT -5 martyparty said:

I gave this Double Agent method a go, and it works well.

I'm wondering, however, why do I lose my Trade Permit when surrendering to military patrol ships, and only some of the time?

I'm starting with a Trade Permit, Death Warrant, rank level 2, and hundreds of positive reputation points in reserve.

Depends on the hostility matrix, conflicts and your cargo, the actions taken in the combat and how the encounter started.

[martyparty]

I hit the surrender button in the first encounter screen, where the encounter text even tells me I'm a ranking military officer and have nothing to fear from a warship of that faction. But then they take my Trade Permit, sometimes.

Some of the times when they DON'T take the permit, I do have records in the hold already, so the contents of my cargo hold doesn't seem to be the point of difference.

[Cory Trese]

Feb 17, 2013 19:26:13 GMT -5 martyparty said:

I hit the surrender button in the first encounter screen, where the encounter text even tells me I'm a ranking military officer and have nothing to fear from a warship of that faction. But then they take my Trade Permit, sometimes.

Some of the times when they DON'T take the permit, I do have records in the hold already, so the contents of my cargo hold doesn't seem to be the point of difference.

I'll poke around but with so few details it's tough. I could guess but it might not do any good and just take the conversation off track.

I am thinking it probably depends on how you got into the encounter screen, that is the first question I'll ask. Why did you have an encounter?

[martyparty]

I'm doing surveillance over a planet (maybe that makes a difference?) and it appears the local military forces noticed me loitering about and came to see what I was doing. I surrendered. They searched me, didn't take my records, but they took my trade permit.

[Cory Trese]

Feb 17, 2013 19:48:26 GMT -5 martyparty said:

I'm doing surveillance over a planet (maybe that makes a difference?) and it appears the local military forces noticed me loitering about and came to see what I was doing. I surrendered. They searched me, didn't take my records, but they took my trade permit.

Yeah, that's the issue. You're Spying on your allies and they don't like it.

That sets the PlayerWasHostile flag to true, which then does a roll:

(Intimidate* 2) + (BodyguardOfficer ? 5 : 0) < (SecurityRating * 2 + 1) + (Enemy.Tactics)

[Cory Trese]

and it looks like this PlayerWasHostile also encourages Military Ships to investigate your Contracts and if you're both Spying on and working against (depending on Alliances, Trade Wars, ect) them they might force you to roll Negotiation to keep your Trade Permit.

[contributor]

I've ran in to this a lot and wondered about the virtues of surrendering vs. running in this situation. Normally I run, though when I do that I still get penalized and will lose a trade permit or death warrant sometimes. What difference does it make if I just surrender (other than not taking an occasional torp in the tail pipe).

[martyparty]

There's no difference for this roll whether I was spying over a planet or a deep space square they own, is there?

[Cory Trese]

In Deep Space Security Rating is always a low value.