7. Espionage, counter-intelligence and sabotage

Espionage is what you can see; Counter-Intelligence is what you can hide. They are deliberately separate trades – you should not have to buy a telescope to get curtains.

A probe reads a world's fleet, defences and garrison only if its owner's Espionage beats your Counter-Intelligence. From level one of Counter-Intelligence you have a chance of being told a probe came; once you clearly out-spy the sender you can shoot it down before it reports, and the sender gets a loss notice and no telemetry at all. With none at all you are wide open, and you never find out.

Sabotage requires Covert Operations and is flown on Probes. It burns a stockpile or browns out a grid rather than taking anything. The victim is always told what happened and what it cost, but a name appears in the report only when their Counter-Intelligence out-ranks the saboteur's Covert Operations. The world goes on alert afterwards, and anything else sent at it for the next few hours is caught on the way in.