Espionage feats

penetration – either faster doorcutting or increased % for doorcut
eavesdrop – able to hear whispers to other people or in comlinks
cripple – increased % to blackjack
placemicrophone – allows you to add mic to a camera in room
credit magnet – higher % swipe (similar to sticky fingers)
mimic – works like ventriloquate[/quote:3gqtynlz]

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penetration – either faster doorcutting or increased % for doorcut
eavesdrop – able to hear whispers to other people or in comlinks
cripple – increased % to blackjack
placemicrophone – allows you to add mic to a camera in room
credit magnet – higher % swipe (similar to sticky fingers)
mimic – works like ventriloquate[/quote:eljeyn9l]
The problem with fleshing out the feat system is that the "three limit" gets really retarded, really quickly. If feats are going to be tied into a class, they should represent customization [b:eljeyn9l]of that class[/b:eljeyn9l]; make the "one per 50 levels" thing a constant. That is, if you have 150 combat and 150 science, you get 3 combat feats and 3 science feats.
This is assuming, of course, that the feats are actually fleshed out to the point that every class has more than 3 (which would be the eventual goal).
EDIT: I forgot to add that because of the general OP-ness of having characters able to have that many feats, there’d be a "feat tree" system, where in more advanced/better feats require that you have lower feats, e.g. "master communicator" requiring that "communicator" be taken first. I’ve also said this before, but a focus on feats (instead of the minor, optional, and supplementary role they play now) would also mean that feat trainers should be a bit easier to track down, especially for the lower/more common feats.

That all being said, "penetration," "cripple," and "eavesdrop" are good ideas; I’d lean towards making penetration affect speed because doorcut % is bullshit anyways (it can fail even at 100%). The placemicrophone feat shouldn’t be a feat; it should just be worked into cameras themselves. Maybe make it like makecomlink, where after a certain level your cameras automatically have microphones (thus placing the distinction on the making side of the skill, not on the placing side–is it really magically harder to place them if they’ve got a microphone? I think not).

Credit magnet is dumb because [b:eljeyn9l]swipe[/b:eljeyn9l] is dumb; it should do something other than a credits-only stealing.

Mimic would be interesting, but a direct copy of ventriloquate would be far too overpowered, I think; maybe make it an audio-only version of disguise, or something that allows you to impersonate people who’ve greeted you (over comms), or both (with the impersonation version being a higher level version, or some such, ala disguise/advanced disguise)?

I’ve had a few ideas of my own:

dead drop – stops "conceal" from showing a message to the room, possibly allowing the "drop" and "get" commands to be used without displaying messages, as well?

observe (working title) – allows "look <target>" and "watch <target>" to be used without displaying a message

dead drop – stops "conceal" from showing a message to the room, possibly allowing the "drop" and "get" commands to be used without displaying messages, as well?

observe (working title) – allows "look <target>" and "watch <target>" to be used without displaying a message[/quote:2c2k1a7e]

I like the idea of having mics in cameras. It would actually give clans a reason to post espionage agents on planets. "Oh my microphone is going off…let’s pull up the camera aaaand bingo!"

As for your ideas RJ, Dead Drop is pretty cool and works great with the idea of Espi’s. As for observe… well sneak already does that for "watch" according to the help file.

That’s an interesting idea. You could also have it function, like you said, with "look" and possibly "scan."

I know this is a feat listing, but I just had a random thought when thinking about sabotage. I think it would be kinda cool to have espionage agents who could sneak into a clan base and sabotage certain flagged rooms. You could tie it in with a new engineer or (depending on what was sabotaged) slicer skill that would restore the function of the room. Either that or the function of the room could be restored after a set amount of time has passed (maybe up to three real days?) and just nix the idea of new engie/slicer skills. There would have to be restrictions of course… something like not being able to do more than two or three flagged rooms per cooldown period.

Options:

Turbolift/Turbolift Landing: Sabotages turbolift functions. Would require using lifthack until the turbolift was repaired.

Workshop: Sabotages workbenches and tools in the workshop. Workshop would be unusable until repaired.

Garage: Sabotages garage functions. Garage would be unusable until repaired.

Locker: Severely damages the lockers. People would be unable to get their things from their lockers until repaired.

Broadcast: Damages the broadcasting center. Could possibly require using Networkhack until it is repaired, though this would really only affect those with diplomat/planet leader.

Alarm: This is what I like. Having an agent running in sabotaging the alarm system. This would disable all alarms in the base. You could also tie it in with a slicer’s security skill where they try to counter the effects of the sabotage to varying degrees of success…partial restoration, full restoration, or complete failure….giving them one, maybe two tries to counter the sabotage. This counter would be across the board meaning that if one slicer only partially succeeds or doesn’t succeed at all, another one won’t be able to come in and try also. If it isn’t dealt with, then after a set amount of time passes, then the alarm systems would repair themselves.

I thought about putting Hotels in here too….sabotaging the sleeping areas, but decided against it.

Walldo was actually trying to do this one a few months back, apparently it was hard to code and wouldn’t work or somesuch. The ability to hear people talking into their comlink was the idea, was pretty shnazzy and would still like to see it implemented. Personally i think if someone had a covering helmet on it shouldn’t broadcast a message saying they’re talking into a comlink but hey, thats a whole other ball park.

A copule of us were discussing this on osay and how it would be kinda neat to have a camera zoom in on a player. It would essentially be like doing "look player" but using monitor_camera.

Syntax: monitor_camera <camera number> zoom <player>

This would allow someone to "look" at a player without being in the same room as that player. There could possibly be a room echo that would go off saying something like "A camera swivels to focus on such and such." or something like that.[/quote:1e55rtpy]
I’m against camera feats in general. Camera functionality shouldn’t be expanded by feats, because your ability with a camera doesn’t magically give it a better lens or a microphone.
On the other hand, camera functionality [b:1e55rtpy]should[/b:1e55rtpy] be expanded by a tiered system to the "makecamera" skill, ala diagnose and makecomlink. As you level up, the cameras you make gain telephoto (zoom) lenses, microphones, et al.