"Double Blind" piece movement - is it possible?

There are two main ways:

Have an independant moderator of some sort. A being who will go around and checks that your spy is indeed in this particular area, and then tell you what said spy sees. A computer would probably be relatively effective, although it wouldn't really be a board game - or a bored human, although that has it's own problems of persuading said human that they want to watch the players playing the game.

The second method is some mechanical method, whereby all pieces look identical, but putting some of them together yields some sort of information to the player. For example having something printed in ultra-violet ink, and all the spy units having a UV light attached to them, or some such. This way, fake spy actions can be carried out without revealing any information. This has problems with a high piece cost.

So, no - I can't think of a way to get it to work.

Hi and welcome. As you'll see, "wordiness" and post length are not problems here. If they were, I'd have gotten the boot long ago! Game issues are not solved by telegram-style brevity.*

A solution I came up with is something of the reverse of your idea of not knowing whether you're being spied on. Since having a "neutral party" (living or not) hold or pass along information as needed between the players isn't practical, and a mechanical system would make the game an excercise in maintaining that system, rather than playing the game, I'd suggest not backing away from the spying, and here's what I mean:

All units or fleets are represented by player-colored chips, which are identical on their backs, perhaps with an symbol on the back or something. True "spy units", whether mechanical or elite teams of specialists, are allowed to move almost at will to any location. Of course, having a unit just "jump" across the play area would be a dead givaway, so players would rarely do it, instead moving their spy units much like fleets or trading vessels.

Each spy unit would also provide a number of decoy chits, which allow a spy more units with which to clutter the movement patterns of the anonymous units.

But remember, your game in of huge scale. Presumably a fleet moving through space would pass any number of settlements, stations, satellites and probes of all types. The invading fleets wouldn't even attempt to scour these assets, since they'd know that to clear a region suach as any single empty (in game terms) hex would allow fighting forces to muster for a defense. Time enough for thorough extermination when all organized resistance is crushed.

So, to the mechanics of the idea:
When a player wishes to spy on another, they simply indicate an enemy chip, and optionally one of their own. The spied-on chip could be anywhere, even a hex without an enemy presence, and the friendly chip used (if any) could either be nearby (for spy units) or at some distance (such as special intel stations, etc.). Players then bid a certain ammount of resources. I'm assuming your game has resources, and this would tie intelligence efforts in with other military expenses.

If the player being spied on wishes to hide their units, they can bid resources to do so. This could represent anything from expensive jump-navigation techniques that avoid known outposts, to passive stealth technology and techniques. Bidding continues until one player wishes to stop, and their opponant gets their way, revealing or keeping hidden the scanned chit.

Now for the good part. If, after a scan, the spying player wishes to reveal (and, indeed, has any) spy units in the hex (or next to it, depending on scale), they only pay one-half of their bid, rounding down. Special "stealth" units could similarly cut the bid of hiding chits, but these would have to be revealed as well. A cloaking ship in the hex could do the trick, and this would only reveal the cloaking ship, not the cloaked fleet or units.

Thus you give the player's control over what they learn, depending on how badly they want to know it or hide information, add a few ship options (stealth, scanning, cloaks), and tie the entire thing to your resource model. It also gives players the mixed emotional bag of having a bunch of face-down units (good for feeling sneaky) and having the opponant be able to look at any of them whenever they feel up to paying the cost (lending the entire affair a paranoid tinge, which is always good).

Also, special anti-spying units (like modern ASW naval units) would be able to imediately destroy revealed spies, if the scanned player chooses to reveal this capability. Of course, anti-asw units could be put with the spy units...

Hope this helps!

*This post in telegram form:

WELCOME STOP LONG POSTS OK STOP RE GAME HAVE UNITS LOOK SAME STOP SPIES ARE EFFICIENT STOP OTHER UNITS CAN SPY STOP BIDDING DETERMINES SUCCESS OF SPYING STOP GOOD LUCK END

You could go an entirely different route as well. First of all, the tokens could be similar to checkers, but on one side there would be a printed sticker of the unit itself. That way there is emphasis on remembering your own pieces and keeping your forces to a size that you can manage.

Now for the spies. You sound like you want to utilize professional spies, but that isn't always a viable option, even in the real world. Sometimes the best spies are simply civilian informants, traitors, and passers-by. If you use that route, you simply need to be able to pay the fee for information. Of course, the further you are removed from your enemy, the harder the information will be to acquire, and thus it will be more expensive. If you want to go that route, you could simply have a pay-per-distance to your closest unit.

Granted this doesn't give you the double blind option that you were seeking, but sometimes concessions must be made for the sake of playability.

About the "Feldmachinck", it is a really cool idea. There might be other ways to implement the same concept, or make the machine more generic for various games. Finally a solution that can help for our hidden information problem ( I think it is the 3rd thread that talks about this kind of problem (^_^))

I just had a thought.

What if you had two vertical game boards (a la battleship), which faced away from eachother.

The pieces would stick to the board via velcro (makes noise, so no cheating), and each would have a swivelling magnet (like a compas, but stronger) on them.

During movement phases, you would separate the boards, and then stick your pieces how you want on your side.

After movement, you would then push the backs of the boards together (like sliding two battleship sets together so the backs touch). This would allow the magnets to pick up on the magnetic fields of your opponent's pieces. If suddently, one of your pieces points to an adjacent square (or hex), you both know that there is conflict (their piece would point as well), and you can take the fight to a sideboard.

Not sure how spying would fit in... but it could happen with some creative solution.