Just asking.

Not really, don't change anything here, don't fix what isn't broken please.

I don't think so. The spy DR takes care of a lot of it, and you can certainly have wars with multiple people that may require that many ops.

That's helpful to know. I'm looking to add stealing tech back as a beneficial op that isn't blocked by GDI. It was a long time ago, but based on what people said the main issue was that a small country could target a large country for many days during the round and the larger country couldn't stop the tech stealing?

That's probably still true. During wars on alliance, people with 50+ SPAL would steal tech from bots and make as much tech a turn as outright techers on their acres. As a small country, getting 50 SPAL (or at least way higher than most players) is quite easy and it's quite expensive to prevent it (spy upkeeps in particular). Spies are already quite overpowered I think, and many of the top farming players are wary of grabbing someone who looks like they know how to use them, so this adds to their power (in a way I'd argue is probably too strong, unless you look for other balance like notably reducing spy upkeep or the amount pilfered).

The mechanic I'm considering is a full set country-to-country and spy op specific DR that reduces returns. So you could steal tech from the same country but as you do it more and more you'd get less gains. The goal is to still allow for quick types of retaliation or to allow for countries with lots of spies to steal a little bit from a lot of countries, but to prevent situations where a small country continually targets a large country with harmful spy ops. The new DR would apply to these ops:

Cause Dissensions
Bomb Airbases
Espionage
Bomb Buildings
Sabotage Intelligence
Bomb Banks
Raid Food Stores
Raid Oil Reserves

And not apply to these ops:

Stir Rebellions
Demoralize
Sabotage Missiles
BioTerrorism

I like this idea. But I would encourage you to go farther in limiting the damage of Bomb buildings in particular. It is overpowered compared to missiles and AB. AB is either successful or not based on total tanks. But If you through 35 bomb buildings at a country with similar SPAL there will be enough that get's through to significantly hurt the country getting hit. And, if I'm not mistaken, you will have even more buildings destroyed if you happen to have the same build ratio as the attacker...which seems to be an odd mechanic.

Nope, don't change this, people at the bottom are already at a disadvantage from top players, especially when they farm them, GDI protects people from harmful ops, don't break GDI and if you do .....well you took that gamble.

Oh man, I haven't run a solid tech thief in ages. That might be happening.

GDI currently prevents tech stealing. Countries can get hit and not be able to retal due to the humanitarians range restriction. That's part of the reason why I'm considering a mechanic like this.