Arkopolis Engines - Espionage

Y'all know how much I am trying to avoid math in this game, so it is with a heavy heart that I make the suggestion below which include a math step. ;-)

Two Engines must be in adjacent hexes to attempt an espionage action. 

After the spy has exited the player's Engine the target player will tell him how many crew members are currently aboard the target Engine. 

Take the spy's espionage skill and subtract the number of crew currently on an target Engine.

If the number is less than 1 espionage is not possible and the Player's action for that round is finished

If the number is positive then that is the number the player must skill check to be successful.

If the skill check fails then the crew member retreats to the player's Engine and the Player's action for that round is finished.

If the skill check is successful then the player may take one Blueprint of his choice that is not currently being used or two resources of his choice from the target Player. The crew member returns to the Player's Engine with his booty and the Player's action for that round is finished. A Blueprint obtained through Espionage may be used on the next Action round.

Example: RED wants to sneak onto the BLUE engine. RED sends out a Spy with an Espionage skill of 5. As soon the Spy is out of his Engine, BLUE informs him that there are three crew members currently on his Engine. RED subtracts 3 from the Spy's Espionage skill of 5 to get a skill check score of 2. RED must roll 2 or less to break into BLUE's Engine. RED rolls a 1 and his Spy is successful. RED now gets to take one Blueprint from BLUE. BLUE's Gearsmith is using the Ironskin Blueprint so it is not available to steal. BLUE hands all of his other Blueprints to RED and RED chooses one and hands the rest back to BLUE. RED's spy now returns to his Engine with his prize. This maneuver has given RED a new Blueprint and he now knows which other Blueprints are held by BLUE.  

I have nothing against a sabotage mission, sounds like it could be useful. My only concern is allowing the spy to do too much oa single action round. He could steal resources, steal blueprints, cause hull damage, or damage an item on a hard point, bit not all of those things on a single action round.

A stealth maneuver like stealing blueprints or resources should be covered by the initial skill check.

If he wanted to damage the hull I'd require the initial espionage skill check and an additional skill check against engineering.

If he wanted to damage an item connected to a hard point then I'd want the initial espionage skill check and an invention skill check.

As for the crew to be considered when calculating the skill check, I intended it to be all the crew who is not outside the Engine, regardless of whether they are on an action slot or inthe player's hand.

BTW, I think we should use meeple tokens to indicate any crew members outside the Engines. I think this has been mentioned before, I just want to add my support to the idea. We can probably make or find a black animal meeple to use to represent any critter that is encountered.

Involving the target player in the Espionage...he already is involved in that the number of crew on the Engine is a vital part of determining the success of the mission. Perhaps there could be an "on watch" action that would count one crew member as two for the espionage calculation.

I can see a need arising for a collated and cross-referenced list of actions and how they can be accomplished. Perhaps organized by skill checks needed. The game is very flexible in my mind, almost an RPG in certain aspects, so we need to support that flexibility by being prepared to answer the question "How do I do XYZ?" no matter what XYZ actually is.

As for the critter meeple, I was just thinking in RPG terms again in wanting to. Have both sides of the combat as figurines on the table. Including one animal meeple per game wouldn't be too expensive. So, with that in mind, I'd say that the critter disappears back into the ruins after it has killed a crew member.