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Covert operations

Covert operations let you play a merc as a spy. A disguised merc can walk through enemy-held sectors in plain sight — dressed as a local civilian or as one of Deidranna's soldiers — and the enemy will simply ignore them, for as long as the disguise holds. From that position you can scout defenses, gather intel, sabotage installations, talk enemy soldiers into defecting, or garotte an officer and vanish before anyone notices the body.

The feature was written by community developer Flugente and entered the SVN trunk in r5529 (August 2012). It has been extended many times since — clothes items, the intel resource, spy assignments and turncoats all build on it — so this page describes the mechanics as they exist in current GitHub-era builds, with notes where older versions behave differently.

Requirements and switches

There is no single on/off setting for covert operations itself — the disguise mechanics are part of the game whenever the new trait system is active (Skill Traits: New on the new game screen). The related sub-features each have their own switch:

Setting File / section Default Controls
RESOURCE_INTEL Ja2_Options.INI, [Intel Settings] TRUE The intel resource: gathering intel with spies, the R.I.S. website, the black market.
COVERT_TURNCOATS Skills_Settings.INI, [Covert Ops] TRUE Whether spies can persuade enemy soldiers to become turncoats.
ASSASSINS_DISGUISED Ja2_Options.INI TRUE Kingpin's hitmen wear random clothes instead of their fixed look.
ENEMY_ASSASSINS Ja2_Options.INI FALSE The Queen sends disguised assassins that mix among your militia.

Play this with the new inventory

The enemy uncovers you by inspecting your equipment, and hiding gear relies on LBE items with the covert property. Flugente's own advice from the announcement: with the old inventory you cannot hide anything, so "really, just play with NIV".

The Covert Ops trait

Covert Ops is a major trait in the new trait system, selectable on the I.M.P. website (see skills & traits). Like other major traits it can be taken once or twice:

  • Without the trait a merc can still disguise — but only as a civilian, and they are automatically unmasked as soon as they come close to an enemy soldier.
  • One level (Covert Ops) additionally allows disguising as an enemy soldier and taking uniforms from corpses. Enemies that get close are still a serious risk.
  • Two levels (expert) lets a spy move right next to enemies without being recognized on proximity alone.

The trait also gives a large bonus to covert melee weapons (the garotte), reduces the AP cost of putting on a disguise, counts toward your "experience" when elite soldiers and officers try to see through a soldier disguise, and is by far the biggest factor in how safely a merc can hide and gather intel in enemy territory (see below).

Very few catalog mercs have the trait — when the intel feature landed, Flugente made Mouse a full spy and gave Raffi the covert trait. An I.M.P. merc built for it is the usual way to get a proper spy.

Putting on a disguise

Clothes in 1.13 are regular items: shirts and pants (defined in Data-1.13\TableData\Items\Clothes.xml). You put them on by dropping them onto the merc's silhouette in the inventory screen; any clothes previously worn in that slot are returned to you. When a merc wears both a shirt and pants, they become disguised: in an enemy uniform's colors you are disguised as a soldier, in anything else as a civilian. A small hat symbol next to the merc's portrait shows the disguise is active. Since r8215 the game automatically tests a fresh disguise and warns you if something about it looks suspicious.

Nobody hostile may watch you change — you only gain the covert property if no enemy sees you do it.

Civilian disguises

The Clothes item (a set of Arulcan civilian clothes) can be bought from Bobby Ray's and some local merchants, and applying it — like using any kit — disguises the merc as a civilian. You can also strip shirt and pants from almost any human corpse that is not too decayed. Civilian disguise works for every merc, trait or not.

Soldier uniforms

Uniforms come from dead soldiers. Click a corpse with a knife in your main hand to open the corpse menu — the same menu used for decapitating — and take the uniform. Restrictions:

  • If the body part a garment covers was damaged when the soldier died, the garment is ruined. Kill by headshot, throat cut or hand-to-hand if you want the uniform intact; bullets or stabs to the torso and legs ruin it.
  • The corpse must have the same body type as your merc — a female spy needs a female soldier's uniform.
  • Only mercs with the Covert Ops trait can disguise as soldiers at all.

Admin, regular and elite uniforms are distinct. Disguising as an elite lets you carry noticeably better gear before it looks suspicious (see below), while an admin's outfit allows almost nothing — but elites are also held to scrutiny by officers.

Managing a disguise

The action menu on Ctrl+. (listed in the hotkey reference) contains the disguise controls:

  • Check disguise — the merc judges their own cover and reports likely problems, such as too many or too good guns. It cannot foresee situational slips like fresh corpses nearby.
  • End disguise — the first click only removes the covert property (useful if you just want to dress your squad in custom colors without spy mechanics); a second click takes the clothes off into your inventory.

Disguise-related skills also appear in the tactical skills menu (A, Shift+4, or Alt + right-click), alongside Intel, Bandage, Spotter and the other support skills.

What blows your cover

The enemy periodically checks disguised mercs. The game prints a message whenever something about your cover attracts attention — and if you are uncovered, the message tells you what gave you away.

Regardless of disguise, you are uncovered if:

  • you attack anyone, plant bombs, pick locks or perform similar hostile acts in view of the enemy;
  • you are seen stealing;
  • an enemy checks you shortly after any suspicious action. Since r7514 every suspicious animation (or hidden act like arming a grenade in your inventory) starts a short timer — a few seconds and an AP allowance — during which any enemy test uncovers you;
  • you linger near a fresh corpse (corpses stay "fresh" for roughly 20 turns) — hide your bodies;
  • an enemy gets within COVERT_CLOSE_DETECTION_RANGE (10 tiles by default): he then inspects your equipment much more thoroughly.

Disguised as a civilian, additionally:

  • any visible weapon, armor or explosives;
  • wearing any camouflage;
  • carrying a backpack (civilians with military backpacks are suspicious — see the golf bag below);
  • behaving "uncivilian-like";
  • being in a restricted sector such as Orta — civilians are shot on sight there.

Disguised as a soldier, additionally:

  • pointing your gun at a "fellow" soldier;
  • being drunk;
  • getting close to enemies with only one level of the trait;
  • carrying equipment that is too good to be true. The maximum item coolness that passes inspection is roughly roundup(progress / 10) + modifier, where the modifier is 1 for admin, 2 for regular and 3 for elite uniforms — early in the campaign an M16 already gives you away;
  • carrying a suspicious number of weapons;
  • being within COVERT_CLOSE_DETECTION_RANGE_SOLDIER_CORPSE (5 tiles) of a fresh soldier corpse;
  • elite soldiers and officers: within COVERT_ELITES_UNCOVER_RADIUS (6 tiles), an elite who sees you can unmask a spy disguised as an admin or regular, and an officer can unmask any soldier disguise — if their experience level exceeds your level plus your covert trait level. Civilian disguises are immune to this check. Set the radius to 0 to disable it;
  • bleeding, but only if COVERT_DETECTEDIFBLEEDING is set to TRUE (default FALSE — the default was changed in r7179 so that stray friendly fire cannot blow your cover).

When you are uncovered, the merc automatically strips the disguise. In 2016 an alternative mode existed (COVERT_STRIPIFUNCOVERED = FALSE, automatic re-disguise after three turns unseen), but it never worked as intended and was deactivated in r8573 — the setting is still visible in Skills_Settings.INI, but commented out and marked "DEACTIVATED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE".

While your cover holds, the AI treats you as about as interesting as a rock — but it still hears the noise you make and comes to investigate, and on higher alert levels enemies will noticeably cling to a suspicious "civilian". Uncovered once, expect the sector to stay hot.

Hiding weapons and gear

Items can have a covert property (an item flag in Items.xml):

  • A covert LBE item hides everything inside it from enemy inspections — the classic example is the standard holster: a covert revolver holster hides any revolver in it.
  • A covert weapon or item is hidden inside any LBE gear, covert or not. When the feature landed, the PSM pistol, the dart gun and the C1 and C4 explosive charges carried the flag; item sets differ between builds and mods.
  • Whatever is in your hands is always visible — you wield it openly.

For civilians there is one dedicated smuggling item: since r8707 the vanilla Golf Clubs work as a heavy, limited-capacity backpack with the covert property, so a "golfer" can stroll past a checkpoint with a rifle in the bag, then open the zipper when the shooting starts. Regular backpacks make civilians suspicious.

What spies can do

Scout and give early warning

The least a spy can do is walk ahead of your squad through a defended town and mark positions, weak points and patrol routes — knowledge that survives when the assault squad arrives. A hidden spy in a sector also reports exact enemy troop counts, and one with the Scout trait detects troops in adjacent sectors too.

Hide and gather intel

With the intel feature (r8522, February 2018; RESOURCE_INTEL), disguised mercs can stay in enemy territory on two special assignments, Hide and Get Intel — assigned from the merc's assignment menu (right-click and hold on the merc's figure) while all of the following hold:

  • the merc is in tactical, in an enemy-occupied sector,
  • the merc is disguised, and the enemy is not aware of them (not after combat starts),
  • the merc is alone — no other mercs or militia in the sector.

You then leave the sector view and the merc stays embedded, and you can switch freely between hiding and actively collecting intel. There is a constant risk of discovery: it scales with how "advanced" the sector is (hiding in Meduna is far riskier than in Drassen), and is mostly determined by the covert trait (70%), with experience level and stealth making up the rest. Personality matters a little too — sociable mercs blend in better, cowards and the nervous do worse. Actively gathering intel doubles the risk, doing it in a soldier disguise multiplies it by five. Getting noticed costs you a 1–3 hour penalty during which nothing is gained; in extreme cases the spy is exposed — dropped into combat on the spot, disguise removed, alarm raised. Plan where you leave your spy accordingly.

Intel gained scales mainly with wisdom (50%), plus level and the covert, scout and snitch traits; a soldier disguise doubles the take. Hiding itself is the other reward: it is what finally lets a spy sleep and stay long-term inside a hostile town instead of commuting out every night.

Intel also comes from interrogating prisoners, from reading documents and hacking computers in enemy bases, from recruiting certain NPCs, and from selling photographs: give a merc a Camera (or the old Video Camera), photograph important NPCs or locations, and upload the shots to the R.I.S. website from the laptop for verification and an intel reward. Spend intel on the R.I.S. website (enemy positions for a map region, troop counts and movement, special information such as helicopter flight plans or the location of an imprisoned merc) or at the black market dealer in San Mona, who sells high-tech gear exclusively for intel. You get an email explaining all this when you earn your first intel.

Turn enemies into turncoats

Since r8811 (May 2020), a disguised spy can quietly persuade enemy soldiers to switch sides while the sector is not on alert (open the skills menu with the cursor over the target). Four approaches exist: plain persuasion (based on stats, traits, disguise and the target's class and rank), seduction (depends on looks and the target's inclinations), bribery with cash, or spending intel. Resources are consumed whether or not the attempt works, and prices rise steeply with campaign progress — cannon fodder in the northern swamps is cheap, blackshirts in Meduna are not.

Each attempt raises suspicion; after a few you must lay low for some hours. Successful converts keep fighting as normal enemies until you activate them, at which point they defect and become regular militia. Turncoats are remembered per sector — you can leave and return later — and a sector containing a turncoat shows exact troop counts and movement direction on the map, so a spy "tagging" groups on the roads to Meduna doubles as an early-warning network. Do not shoot your own converts: a turncoat hurt by you or your militia reneges on the deal.

Distract guards

Since r8528 a spy can pull a non-alerted enemy into a pointless conversation. While the chat lasts (until the spy moves or the alarm sounds), the guard neither moves nor looks around — worthless for a lone spy, invaluable when the rest of the infiltration team needs to slip past a doorway.

Kill quietly

Two items were added specifically for this trait:

  • The garotte is a covert melee weapon: low damage, but a chance to instantly kill a target that is unaware of you. The covert ops trait boosts it heavily (COVERT_MELEE_CTH_BONUS, COVERT_MELEE_INSTAKILL_BONUS), while alerted targets or ones that see you are almost impossible to garotte.
  • The dart gun with neurotoxin darts injects a lethal toxin: the victim drops dead a few turns later, with no alarm at the moment of the shot and no cure. Another dart resets the timer; tanks are immune. Watch your friendly fire.

A body is evidence — which brings us to:

Move the bodies

Corpses can be picked up (via the same knife-menu used for uniforms), carried — they occupy both hands and there is no carrying animation, the corpse is simply a very heavy item — and dropped somewhere dark. Since being seen near a fresh kill blows your cover, dragging victims out of sight is part of the job.

The enemy has spies too

Two INI switches give the covert mechanics to the other side. ASSASSINS_DISGUISED (default TRUE) dresses Kingpin's hitmen in random clothes so you cannot spot them by their fixed look. ENEMY_ASSASSINS (default FALSE) lets the Queen send covert assassins that mix among your own militia, using the covert ops trait against you; ASSASSIN_MINIMUM_PROGRESS (20), ASSASSIN_MINIMUM_MILITIA (10) and ASSASSIN_PROPABILITY_MODIFIER (100) control when and how often they appear.

INI reference

The trait is tuned in Skills_Settings.INI under [Covert Ops] (see the configuration overview for where these files live):

Setting Default Effect
COVERT_MELEE_CTH_BONUS 40 Bonus to CtH with covert melee weapons.
COVERT_MELEE_INSTAKILL_BONUS 35 Bonus chance to perform an instant kill with covert melee weapons.
COVERT_DISGUISE_PERCENT_AP_REDUCTION 20 AP reduction for the disguise action, in percent.
COVERT_CLOSE_DETECTION_RANGE 10 Enemies closer than this inspect your equipment much more thoroughly.
COVERT_CLOSE_DETECTION_RANGE_SOLDIER_CORPSE 5 Disguised as a soldier, you are caught if this close to a fresh corpse.
COVERT_ELITES_UNCOVER_RADIUS 6 Radius in which elites/officers can see through soldier disguises (0 disables).
COVERT_DETECTEDIFBLEEDING FALSE If TRUE, bleeding near the enemy blows your disguise.
COVERT_TURNCOATS TRUE Enable recruiting turncoats.
COVERT_TURNCOATS_SECTOR_ACTIVATION_REQUIRES_RADIOOPERATOR FALSE Activating all turncoats in a sector requires a radio operator.
COVERT_TURNCOATS_PLAYER_CONVINCTION_BONUS 0 Flat bonus (−100…100) to your rating when convincing turncoats.
COVERT_TURNCOATS_ACTIVATE_IN_AUTORESOLVE FALSE Turncoats automatically switch sides in autoresolve battles.

Related settings in Ja2_Options.INI: RESOURCE_INTEL, the assassin settings listed above, and DEFEAT_MODE — its value 2 only counts a lost battle as a defeat (with the morale and loyalty penalties) if at least one retreating merc was not covert, which suits spy-heavy campaigns.

Tips and limitations

  • Blowing up the control consoles of a SAM site while disguised disables it without a fight — but the army repairs (or retakes) sites over time, so expect to come back.
  • Combined with ENEMY_GENERALS (see the enemy roles settings in Ja2_Options.INI), spies get high-value targets: infiltrate a garrison town and assassinate the general the strategic AI relies on.
  • Recruitable NPCs the regime considers neutral start with a "free" cover: Iggy and Conrad even pass as soldiers when recruited. This initial cover cannot be regained once lost. Rescued civilians (EPCs like John and Mary) are treated as the civilians they are.
  • A spy in a boxing match ends the fight instantly (the opponent cannot find a hostile boxer) — drop the disguise first; enemies noticing this was fixed in r8481.
  • Story cutscenes ("Meanwhile…") and the overall campaign reaction of the Queen are not suppressed by staying covert.
  • Many veterans consider covert killing too strong in stock 1.13; sevenfm's alternative builds and mods such as 7609+AI rework the covert mechanics considerably, and mods like Vengeance Reloaded ship their own item sets — details on those differ from this page.

Questions

Corner cases (militia reactions to disguises, the exact current list of covert items, and similar) are not fully documented anywhere. The feature thread linked below is the place to read more or ask — Flugente and other developers answered questions there for over a decade.

Sources