Terrorist Ops¶
Terrorist Ops send agents against a realm on another planet. You choose the operation, then how many agents to commit. The agents are spent when you send them, whatever they achieve, and the strike resolves on the target's planet once the packet reaches it — so the word comes back a day or more later.
New Realm Protection stops every operation: a sheltered realm takes nothing at all, and you cannot send any while your own realm is still sheltered.
What each operation does¶
The nine are not interchangeable. Each aims at one thing, and each agent that gets through takes its own bite:
- Send Spy — costs the target nothing. A spy that gets in brings home their land, offense, defense and gold, and the troopers, jets, turrets, tanks and military morale behind them. They are reported to you when the spy returns, and filed in the Spy Database, which keeps the last five reports on each realm and shows how much the last two differ. A spy sent before and after a strike therefore shows what the strike did. When you aim a strike at a realm you have a report on, its latest report is shown once you pick it.
- Bomb Intelligence — kills a few percent of their agents, which is what they defend and attack with.
- Demoralize — takes a seventh off military morale.
- Cause Dissensions — a few percent of their troopers desert.
- Bomb AirBases — burns a slice of their jets on the ground.
- Stir Emigrations — drives people out of the realm.
- Spread Propaganda — costs them popular support.
- Bomb Food Stores — the widest swing of the nine: it can take almost a third of what is in store, or almost nothing.
- Sabotage HQ — sets back their HeadQuarters by a fixed amount.
Picking one¶
Match the operation to what you plan next. Softening a realm before an interplanetary attack argues for the ones that thin what fights back — troopers, jets, morale. Grinding down a realm you cannot reach yet argues for the ones that cost it growth: food, people, support.
Getting through¶
Each agent is rolled for on its own, and the target's agents defend against it. The more agents your realm holds, the better each one's chance, but each one you add helps less. When both realms have the same number of agents, about two agents in five get through. A small chance either way does not depend on either side.
Committing more agents therefore does more damage on average, but it never makes one agent likelier to land. A Terrorist Prevention pact adds its partners' agents to the defense, and an Intelligence Alliance adds your partners' agents to yours.