[damien]

I used to play a pretty cool Star Wars derived strategic game. I cant remember what it was called, but it introduced characters with different abilities into play, and these characters (with help from special forces and spies and such) were the ones who performed intelligence activities.

Id like to see every ship have a captain, every fleet have an admiral, every world or system have a govenor or a general, and so on and so forth. If your ships have master computers then those would be AIs; treated as characters like any other.

You could infiltrate these characters onto other worlds to make contact with rebels or steal technologies or whatever.

I dont think you should be able to perform espionage on an empire you have no contact with. Intelligence is something like trade, and linked to trade - its potential grows with contact and time.