Espionage Report
An espionage report (often shortened to espio report) contains information about a specific target planet that can, for example, be used to simulate a battle.
Obtaining an Espionage Report
To obtain an espionage report, you must send one or more espionage probes with the order "Espionage" to an enemy target. These are conveniently quite fast and cheap, which makes a loss less painful in case of a battle.
In the message menu, espionage reports can be set to display only partially â they then appear as single-line messages that lead to the actual espionage report via a popup window, which nonetheless does not differ from the form shown below.
Structure of an Espionage Report
An espionage report ideally looks something like this (values are fictional!):
What Do You See When?
With every espionage action, you always see the resources on the planet, hints about activity within the last hour, and the percentage chance of counter-espionage detection.
However, the report doesn't automatically contain all information down to the research levels. To learn more about the target, either a higher Espionage Technology level or more espionage probes are needed. If you have an espionage technology level at least three levels higher than your opponent, you always see everything. If your own espionage technology level isn't enough to see what you want, you can simply make up for the missing levels by sending more probes. To make up for a lower level, you need the square of the level difference in probes. To then see more than just the resources, an additional 1 to 2 probes per block are needed.
Specifically, the following formula applies for the number of probes needed:
Resources = 1 probe Activity = 1 probe Fleet = MAX( (opponent's espionage tech - own espionage tech) * ABS(opponent's espionage tech - own espionage tech) + 2 ; 1 ) Defense = MAX( (opponent's espionage tech - own espionage tech) * ABS(opponent's espionage tech - own espionage tech) + 3 ; 1 ) Buildings = MAX( (opponent's espionage tech - own espionage tech) * ABS(opponent's espionage tech - own espionage tech) + 5 ; 1 ) Research = MAX( (opponent's espionage tech - own espionage tech) * ABS(opponent's espionage tech - own espionage tech) + 7 ; 1 )
| colspan="20" Probes needed for espionage reports | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| rowspan="2" visible block |
colspan="19" Probes needed at a difference between opponent's and own espionage tech level of | ||||||||||||||||||
| -15 | -14 | -13 | -12 | -11 | -10 | -9 | -8 | -7 | -6 | -5 | -4 | -3 | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3+ | |
| Resources | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Activity | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Fleet | 227 | 198 | 171 | 146 | 123 | 102 | 83 | 66 | 51 | 38 | 27 | 18 | 11 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Defense | 228 | 199 | 172 | 147 | 124 | 103 | 84 | 67 | 52 | 39 | 28 | 19 | 12 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Buildings | 230 | 201 | 174 | 149 | 126 | 105 | 86 | 69 | 54 | 41 | 30 | 21 | 14 | 9 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| Research | 232 | 203 | 176 | 151 | 128 | 107 | 88 | 71 | 56 | 43 | 32 | 23 | 16 | 11 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 1 |
WARNING: The more probes you send, the higher the probability of a battle occurring!
What Can No Longer Be Seen?
For a certain period, so-called "atmospheric anomalies" used to be shown in older OGame versions. These anomalies gave a hint as to whether a fleet was active on the scanned planet, or even whether the owner of the planet themselves was active. Later on, only the asterisk in the galaxy view was shown again, as before.
In more recent OGame redesign versions, this feature was reintroduced.
Counter-Espionage
Counter-espionage determines whether the espionage probes have to fight the ships or defense installations stationed on the target planet.
Counter-espionage can be calculated as follows: A counter-espionage chance is randomly calculated between 0 and (number of espionage probes / 4) * (Espionage Technology of the victim / Espionage Technology of the spy). However, the exact formula is kept secret, so a completely accurate formula cannot be established. The formula given here does not include the increase in detection chance from stationed ships.
The counter-espionage chance is capped at 100%.
If an espionage probe is not detected despite a 100% detection chance, or is detected despite a 0% chance, this is a rounding error. For example, at a nominal 100% chance the real detection chance might actually be 99.8%, meaning that every 500th espionage probe goes undetected. Decimal values aren't shown; they're rounded up or down in the espionage report.
Simplified Summary:
The detection chance increases with:
- Size of the fleet at the target, including solar satellites and espionage probes. (Defense doesn't factor in here)
- Using more espionage probes for the espionage action
- High espionage technology level of the target
- Low espionage technology level of the spy
What the Opponent Sees
Regardless of whether the espionage probes were "detected", the spied-on player always receives a notification of where they were spied on from. In the event of a battle, they also receive the combat report.
Adapted and cleaned up from owiki.de (GNU Free Documentation License 1.3), a general OGame community wiki â the conceptual explanation applies generally, but specific numbers/formulas may differ from the pr0game source code and are not verified.