I once built a series of small ships, frigates I think, something I could build in one turn with SY-III, called "Cloak and Daggers." I would pick some nebula in each system I wanted to spy, load one cloaked satellite on each ship and zip it out at speed 13 (Propulsion Expert Trait) to do it's job. I think I had the spy network up and running from concept to completion in 6 turns.
Turin
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Aa Turam Empire
Geekdom is eternal... you will be assimilated... resistance is futile.
A+ Se GdY S++ Fr- C* Cs* Sf- Ai++ Au>M! M- Mp! S@ Ss+ R! Pw+ Fq++ Nd? Rp++ G++ Mm++ Bb-- L-- Tcp
'We, the weird, chasing the pointless, for no reason at all, have been finding out things that have no effect on anything important for at least a couple days and are now qualified to chase our tails to the merriment of all watching.'-Narf et al
"Of course, you don't want to be going about handing out immortality willy-nilly, that just wouldn't be responsible." -O'Shea