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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 9:09:04 AM   
forsaken1111

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: nammafia

In Star Trek, all systems within a certain light years from a COLONIZED planets become exclusive zone for the race which lives there. This might be a good model for empire border.

I don't really see why this makes sense.

"I dropped 30m people on a planet so nobody else can have anything within 5 lightyears!"

What is really preventing them from landing? Political repercussions? What if they don't care and do it anyway? Do they get a bad reputation? What if that colony ship was on its way already before your colony appeared?

Let's say you discover the Loros fruit. It is a resource which is extremely valuable, but you do not yet know how to establish a long-term colony on a swamp planet. You could, and should, build a mining base there to harvest this resource, but if an enemy colony ship swoops in you have lost it unless you commit to military action. There is no negative impact on the other race for stealing this planet from you, your mining base is instantly dismantled (along with all of its harvested fruit!) which is a huge potential loss.

With an outpost system, you could establish a soft claim to the system and planet and prevent a single colony ship from depriving you of this extremely valuable resource without resorting to shooting down incoming colony ships and killing civilians. The troops would turn away the potential colony ship peacefully and that race would be forced to invade you, an act of war, if they wanted this resource.

It is a significant investment to protect something. You should not have to build an entire city and colony infrastructure just to protect a strategically valuable location. A military outpost would do quite well.

And they don't all have to be military! What if ordinary planets had research bonuses? Research outpost! What if ruins required xenoarcheology teams instead of instantly yielding their secrets to orbital exploration ships?

Find a planet with an ancient ruin, tell a construction ship to establish a research outpost there. Once it is built, civilian passenger ships bring in personnel and tourists (who could turn down seeing alien relics and ruins?). Tourists make money, personnel search and catalog the ruins. Once the ruin is 'searched' it gives you whatever the bonus was (positive or negative) and the research outpost can either be removed or could continue granting a small bonus. And it could be anything, even a small diplomacy bonus with a specific race due to increased understanding, which shows up on the diplomacy screen "You uncovered an important part of our racial heritage. +2"

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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 9:55:15 AM   
WoodMan


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quote:

"I dropped 30m people on a planet so nobody else can have anything within 5 lightyears!"


That not the idea, as I said before there is no physichal barrier to anyone taking anything within the borders.  Just a theoretical boundary, crossing into it with military ships would anger the AI depending on what race they are, Aggressive races would be more angry about it than Passive.  As for crossing, Reckless would be more likely to ignore borders than Cautious. 

Reasons this would be good:

a)At the moment a massive non-allied, but neutral fleet can come and refuel at your homeworld.  Can you imagine in RL going hey entire Russian fleet, come and sit in Portsmouth harbour fully armed and crewed, go ahead we don't mind

b)You can send an entire fleet to your targets homeworld while at peace with them and they won't mind, then you can declare war. 

c)In RL borders extend beyond cities, which are like the planets in a galactic civilization, Russia, USA, Brazil and most big countries have vast areas of wilderness.  You can't just go in start drilling oil/mining diamonds or something and when they complain say "Hey, theres not an American/Russian/Brazillian town within 5 miles of here".

On the other hand being able to set up outposts means you could ignore the whole expense of time and money they colonizing takes and just go claim half the galaxy with a wizzy explorer/troop transport, making the galaxy feel smaller, because you can claim the whole thing with a ship or two


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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 10:01:47 AM   
forsaken1111

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

a)At the moment a massive non-allied, but neutral fleet can come and refuel at your homeworld.  Can you imagine in RL going hey entire Russian fleet, come and sit in Portsmouth harbour fully armed and crewed, go ahead we don't mind
This is being addressed, in the next update I believe. Military ships will not be able to refuel at your colonies and stations unless you have a free trade or mutual defense/protectorate treaty, and there is a policy option to completely disallow it.

quote:

b)You can send an entire fleet to your targets homeworld while at peace with them and they won't mind, then you can declare war. 
Actually the AI will often get annoyed with this unless you are allies, and will demand you remove your military ships from their system.

quote:

c)In RL borders extend beyond cities, which are like the planets in a galactic civilization, Russia, USA, Brazil and most big countries have vast areas of wilderness.  You can't just go in start drilling oil/mining diamonds or something and when they complain say "Hey, theres not an American/Russian/Brazillian town within 5 miles of here".
And in RL we send troops and build military bases to protect assets which are not within our borders.

quote:

On the other hand being able to set up outposts means you could ignore the whole expense of time and money they colonizing takes and just go claim half the galaxy with a wizzy explorer/troop transport, making the galaxy feel smaller, because you can claim the whole thing with a ship or two
NO! Did you even read what I wrote? You're assuming that setting up an outpost is free and easy. Why don't you build a space port at every planet in the galaxy? Because it costs too much. Same with an outpost. It would cost money to set up and would take maintenance to maintain it. I'm not saying we should have a free, cheap way to gobble up the galaxy, and I don't know why people keep repeating that same idiotic argument over and over. AN OUTPOST WOULD BE AN EXPENSIVE UNDERTAKING requiring a construction ship and troops to set up, as well as costing an ongoing amount of maintenance. You would not be able to set one up on every planet, nor would you want to.

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Post #: 33
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 10:50:51 AM   
WoodMan


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quote:

NO! Did you even read what I wrote? You're assuming that setting up an outpost is free and easy. Why don't you build a space port at every planet in the galaxy? Because it costs too much. Same with an outpost. It would cost money to set up and would take maintenance to maintain it. I'm not saying we should have a free, cheap way to gobble up the galaxy, and I don't know why people keep repeating that same idiotic argument over and over. AN OUTPOST WOULD BE AN EXPENSIVE UNDERTAKING requiring a construction ship and troops to set up, as well as costing an ongoing amount of maintenance. You would not be able to set one up on every planet, nor would you want to.


Well arguing with you gets tedious fast as you assume that I don't read your posts or misunderstand them, and can't accept that I just disagree with you.  The colonization techs are there for a reason, to prevent you from being able to claim everything right off the bat.  If the outposts are expensive it still kind of makes the colony techs redundant as you can claim anything (but not everything) you want.  The most valuable sites in the galaxy are rare so you could likely afford even expensive outposts to claim anything thats worthwhile.

I'm not dismissing your idea of outposts completely out of hand, but let me explain my main gripe with DW, and you maybe will understand why I disagree with outposts, as they would only exacerbate this aspect of the game:  The empires are messy, I have colonies from other Empires smack in the middle of my own Empire, because they are able to colonize types of planets that I have not researched yet.  I'm not saying they shouldn't be able to do this, I'm saying there should be some kind of punishment for encroaching into my Empire like this.  The same would go for mining bases etc, I don't want them to be physically unable to do it, but I want them to face diplomatic repurcussions for doing so.  In the late game, the Empires become completely intwined and there is no distinction between where one ends and another starts, it gets confusing and it feels to me, unrealistic, but thats just a point of view, we've never had a galactic empire in real life so we can't really claim what is realistic and what is not.  Your idea of putting troops and an outpost on a planet is fine, it would even work alongside a territory system, but without a territory system it justs makes the go anywhere, claim anything without any consequences side of the game even more prominent.

I'm looking for new ways of raising tentions between Empires, a territory system and a resource scarcity slider in the game setup screen would be two great steps towards doing this.  There would be tensions over territory/borders and scarcity of resources can always lead to trouble (assuming the AI knows when to fight for them and when not to).


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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 10:58:10 AM   
forsaken1111

 

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Status: offline 		I assumed you didn't understand because you, and others, keep saying that you could use this system to 'claim the whole galaxy'. I agree, the empires are rather messy but I'm not sure how to fix that and that isn't the subject of this thread really.

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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 11:15:59 AM   
Duckfang

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

  Your idea of putting troops and an outpost on a planet is fine, it would even work alongside a territory system, but without a territory system it justs makes the go anywhere, claim anything without any consequences side of the game even more prominent.



Gotta agree with this. In my current game I've found myself with a neutral empire colonising half the stars in my cluster, making my empire look a right mess. :( If I wasn't busy in a war already I'd be tempted to kick them back to their own worlds.

As to the "realism" thing, I think it's reasonable to assume any space-faring race would still have territory that they consider their own, and wouldn't appreciate anyone setting up shop on their doorstep. Close or poorly-defined borders in the real world have always caused tensions and I see no reason that would change in space.

As WoodMan said, I don't think there should be a hard line actually -stopping- anyone from settling in "your" systems, but they should certainly face diplomatic repercussions.

Someone raised the point of the Dutch and French "claiming" Australia earlier, but the British colonising it anyway. I think the reason that was possible is that neither the Dutch or the French were in much of a position to do anything about it. The British did the same to their Portuguese allies in Africa, pushing them out of territory they'd already claimed.

While I like the idea of our planets projecting a sphere of influence, I'd like to add that perhaps we could "claim" planets near to our borders that have valuable resources? Or, for example, that World Annihilator wreckage. My idea for the implementation of this though is effectively what I've already been doing -- building a starbase on top of it and shooting anyone who comes close. I just want a way to automate that.

EDIT: Actually, perhaps the easiest way to implement that last thing would just be to give us a Relations screen where we check boxes to determine how our ships react to other empires. This would also solve the problem of neutrals refueling at your starbases -- you could check a box to prevent that.


< Message edited by Duckfang -- 12/21/2010 11:18:01 AM >

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Post #: 36
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 11:19:19 AM   
forsaken1111

 

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Status: offline 		I'm not opposed to a territory or political border system, I was just contributing to the idea that is the subject of this thread. I think both systems should be implemented.

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Post #: 37
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 11:28:15 AM   
elmo3

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: elliotg

Hi all. I tend to agree that some form of territory and borders would help the game, though I don't think 'claiming' planets as described in the post is a good way to do this.

Down the track we'll be looking further at this. I personally would prefer to see some kind of empire territory - I think this would make the game more understandable. Especially late-game the 'borders' can get pretty ragged and ill-defined. In ROTS the AI pays more attention to distance when evaluating targets, so it'll attack and colonize nearer planets, but still things can get fairly messy.

Of course, with a free-roaming space game like DW, territory is a pretty hard concept to enforce So any ideas on this are most welcome.


I like the current design and would definitely prefer "messy" over nice tidy borders. If you don't like that alien colony in the middle of "your empire" then demand they give it to you, trade for it, or take it by force. Space is immense and thinking you control that space around a colony just because you have boots on the ground makes no sense to me. If you want to control the space, then patrol it with ships and kick out those who encroach on it. Please don't turn DW into Civ or Galactic Civ (both fine games) with their pretty colored borders.

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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 11:40:02 AM   
forsaken1111

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: elmo3
I like the current design and would definitely prefer "messy" over nice tidy borders. If you don't like that alien colony in the middle of "your empire" then demand they give it to you, trade for it, or take it by force. Space is immense and thinking you control that space around a colony just because you have boots on the ground makes no sense to me. If you want to control the space, then patrol it with ships and kick out those who encroach on it. Please don't turn DW into Civ or Galactic Civ (both fine games) with their pretty colored borders.


So would you be opposed to an outpost system or just the empire borders? I don't mind a messy empire either really, if I don't like em there I just take it myself, but I would like a way to stake a claim without planting a colony.

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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 12:46:41 PM   
elmo3

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

So would you be opposed to an outpost system or just the empire borders? I don't mind a messy empire either really, if I don't like em there I just take it myself, but I would like a way to stake a claim without planting a colony.


It would depend on the mechanics. I can see where military boots on the ground could prevent a civilian colony ship from colonizing. But you should only be able to put an outpost where you can already colonize. So no running around claiming all the best planets/moons regardless of environment type. There should be a maintenance cost for the outpost. The outpost should not affect colonization of other planets/moons in the same system. The AI needs to be programmed to do this effectively too or else it should not be implemented.


_____________________________

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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 12:51:39 PM   
Aures

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111
Let's say you discover the Loros fruit. It is a resource which is extremely valuable, but you do not yet know how to establish a long-term colony on a swamp planet. You could, and should, build a mining base there to harvest this resource, but if an enemy colony ship swoops in you have lost it unless you commit to military action. There is no negative impact on the other race for stealing this planet from you, your mining base is instantly dismantled (along with all of its harvested fruit!) which is a huge potential loss.


That is really the heart of the issue for me (at least the non sphere of influence part of it, that has already been flagged as an area for improvement) and is not entirely sensible. I don't think there is any need for an extra outpost system, a base would function fine as an outpost if the game actually recognised it as giving some claim over where the base is sited. Bases already have all the characteristics you want for an outpost except for that recognition.

Colonizing a world with a mining base that belongs to another empire is an aggressive action and should be regarded as such. I don't like it when other empires do it to me and it is silly and cheap that other empires don't care when I do it to them. There are several ways of implementing this effect which I think would all work well together:

Colonization targets with another empire's base on it should be covered by the "Allow colonization and mining stations in other empires systems" tickbox. For the AI it wouldn't require any additional code since they already do or don't do this based on the empire's characteristics;

Colonizing a planet with another empire's base on it should lower the "Our past relations have been" value for diplomacy purposes. Note that it should not incur a reputation hit of any kind;

Colony ships attempting attempting to colonize a planet with another empire's base on it should be regarded as hostile targets and the base and any ships in the area should open fire on it automatically and without any rep hit (as if they had been directly attacked by the colony ship). This is basically what players already do manually to prevent their bases being colonized but would require some subtle coding. First, something needs to be put in place to prevent the AI repeatedly wasting colony ships against a target (classifying it the same way that colonies with a pirate/life form detected warning are handled would probably work). Second, empires should take account of their relationship with the other empire before attempting it (for players it is a non issue since it is up to them how they value their relationships with AI empires. AI empires would be more likely to try and trade for the base with a free trade agreement/mutual defense pact while taking account of their current feelings towards the other empire and their own empire characteristics). Third, there is the matter of what that should do to the "Our past relations have been" value (probably okay to leave the current code in place which would lower this value if the first two points are addressed properly). Finally, there is the matter of armed colony ships (assuming the default colony ship designs will always be unarmed it is a non issue for AI empires, players should have to manually tell the colony ship to attack with associated rep hit just as if it was a separate military ship.);

Colony ships en route to a planet with another empire's base should be able to show up just as if it were a fleet on an attack vector, giving forces in the area time to rally (if their sensor network is able to detect it and they are able to spare the ships) and making it much harder to pull this off successfully against an opponent that is properly set up.

I think that would allow the AI behaviour to be as flexible and as close to player behaviour as is possible while giving players an interesting dilemma to face. Do you declare war, attack the mining base without declaring war, trade for the mining base or try to take it with a heavily shielded colony ship and suffer the relationship hit?

The only other thing to consider is troops. It would be nice to be able to board ships and bases with troops and take them over but there are a couple of issues that make it quite a complicated improvement to consider. As it can be treated as a separate issue it is a matter for another day and I do not think it is as much of a priority as making bases have some kind of claim over planets.

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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 12:55:55 PM   
forsaken1111

 

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Status: offline 		That sounds like a fine way to implement it in the current system, but I would put some important requirements on what kind of base is required to 'claim' the planet in this case. If no lower limit is in place, you can design a micro starbase with nothing but the bare-bones systems and build them all over for almost no cost.

Perhaps a minimum size or cost? I don't know.

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Post #: 42
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 1:05:00 PM   
Webbco


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Status: offline 		Just an observation/thought... An outpost system would be more realistic (I use the term loosely ) than empire borders. Obviously the reality of space means that a galaxy map would not be spread out in a convenient 2 dimensional format. The game Homeworld gives a good example of the utilization of a 3D map, where an object (e.g. an enemy ship) that initially looks close to your own ships (using X and Y axes) is actually quite a distance when you apply the Z-axis (it can be confusing to pinpoint exact locations of objects).

DW obviously couldn't use this type of 3D map but it's worth thinking about. Maybe labelling the distances between 2 star systems on the galaxy map could be a good idea? So even if a star system appears close to your existing colonies, it might actually be quite far away (in terms of the Z axis).

Maybe trying to introduce 3D elements into a 2D game would be pointless...I'm thinking out loud a bit here

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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 1:06:49 PM   
forsaken1111

 

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Status: offline 		Webbco, I think that could get extremely confusing. Good thought, but I don't think DW is really built to handle it.

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Post #: 44
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 1:15:02 PM   
Aures

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

That sounds like a fine way to implement it in the current system, but I would put some important requirements on what kind of base is required to 'claim' the planet in this case. If no lower limit is in place, you can design a micro starbase with nothing but the bare-bones systems and build them all over for almost no cost.

Perhaps a minimum size or cost? I don't know.

Good point. I think a player putting a tiny base (doesn't apply to the AI since they use default designs) would be viable option and I don't see too much of an issue with it. It would have no ability to defend itself and would rely entirely on other ships coming to its aid. The ability to see a colony ship incoming would rely on your sensor network rather than any feature of the base anyway (and is something you already know about if you happened to look, it is just the actual notification to draw your attention to it that would be implemented). Maybe the size of the relationship hit should be linked to the base cost to make colonizing a planet with a smaller base a more attractive prospect?

I am not sure exactly how the rep hit that comes with launching an attack without declaring war works but maybe it is already linked to the size of the target that is taken out (or the number of times it is shot or something similar). In that case it would be easy and relatively painless for an AI to take out a tiny base and they should not think much of doing it even if they are relatively honorable and on good terms with you. It is not ideal but the player is already able to deny colonization targets to AI empires if they have the ships and sensor network to back it up, it just requires intense micromanagement. All the tiny base would do is remove the need to micromanage and prevent getting a rep hit from destroying the incoming colony ship.

I dislike arbitrary limits such as a minimum required base size but maybe that is the best solution in this case. The default mining bases are around 300 size (at starting tech in the game I just started, your results may vary) so a limit of 250 would probably be ok. It would also kind of make sense as far as having the ability to attack without a rep hit and getting a notification of an incoming ship goes.

EDIT: I have put a bit of thought into moving DW from 2 and tiny bit D to 2.5D but that is a topic for another thread (and maybe something to consider for DW2 somewhere down the track rather than any expansion of DW).

< Message edited by Aures -- 12/21/2010 1:16:55 PM >

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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 4:37:19 PM   
nammafia

 

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Status: offline 		The empire border should not prevent other empires from establishing their own colonies or mining platforms within your border; it will create political discourses, however. For instance, a xenophobia race/political system would be very annoyed at other empires operating near it, leading to hostile actions. A fleet of military ships can't just cross into your border without a warning.

The border will also help with visualization making late game a little easier to manage. This is really the reason I want some kind of delineation to help me enjoying the late game more.

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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 4:43:12 PM   
forsaken1111

 

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Status: offline 		Aures, I only brought up the starbase size thing because you can make a 'starbase' which is like size 50. :P

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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 5:27:13 PM   
Simulation01


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Status: offline 		I thought of a middle ground solution in a post earlier, but no one seems to have noticed it.  Why not add a button or command for you ships to blockade a potential colony?  They would fire on friend or foe that attempted to colonize the planet.


I still like the outpost idea.....  if you're worried about spamming the galaxy with them....well...that's an interesting fear since that is exactly what the AI is doing except with colony ships.  They spam the hell out of the entire galaxy!


If you introduced the idea of outposts, empire borders, and reduced the ranges of all ships in the game....I think it would make the game much more realistic.  If I were actually running and interstellar empire I would not want to found a colony a couple of light years....or in this case pixels away from my main rival unless I went in there with a fleet....however the AI does this across the galaxy.


I think one reason we are having colony spamming problems ( and this was an issue in the Civilization series as well ) is that the cost of building and maintaining a colony is too cheap.  In RL this would be an incredible undertaking...not just in terms of the logistics of moving the people..but of growing the colony and maintaining it.  Which brings me to another thought which I have not noticed in the game...maybe it's there....and that is the idea of plagues or diseases that would break out on your and AI colony's.  They would require you to maybe send a hospital ship and or quarantine the planet with ships ( but that is for another thread I think ).


Also, just a note but in RL the idea of Sovereignty( and empires territory ) is usually reinforced by the presence of a nations military.  Meaning that if a nation wishes to claim something....then that nation must make a claim and back it up with displays of sovereignty to make it more....ummm...legal.  As and example.....take the 'Northwestern passage'....this was a supposed route to the far east by way of a route to the north of Canada.  It however was not there due to being cut off by ice.  Today that ice is receding and the fabled passage is opening up.  The international community is claiming that it is in international waters, but Canada is claiming rights over the passage.  In order to do this Canada must send warships through the area to reinforce it's sovereignty in hopes of gaining ground in the courts.  This is also happening with some of it's northern most islands.....Canada must 'show the flag' or run the risk of having it's sovereignty diminished.

The point of that is that if the concept of an empire's territory is introduced....then Empire's should be able to make territorial claims close to it's borders ( ie this would be done by the player ) but these would be 'soft' claims that would have to be reinforced by the players military and would be in 'dispute' until a colony is established.  The presence of an outpost would help to hold the claim but would not solidify the claim...unless a sufficient amount of time has passed with a continuous military presence. 


Agggghhhhhhhh!!!  I can't think without a DR. Pepper!! 


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Post #: 48
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 6:14:32 PM   
forsaken1111

 

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Status: offline 		Interesting idea about 'growing' the colony: Shouldn't colonies use up strategic resources as well? Steel for new construction, for example. Hydrogen/Caslon for planetary power generation. Etc

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RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 6:25:00 PM   
Simulation01


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quote:

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

Interesting idea about 'growing' the colony: Shouldn't colonies use up strategic resources as well? Steel for new construction, for example. Hydrogen/Caslon for planetary power generation. Etc



I would think so.... I mean colony's...even between continents were no small feat and required continuous up front support in order to be successful...and even if it survived...it took a long time to become self sufficient.

IMHO ( really humble I respect the creators ), something has to be done about colony spamming..... Steps in that direction are: increased colony cost, Empire borders, Outposts/planetary blockades of some sort, plagues/diseases, Ship Range decreases ( ie fuel storage/usage ratio ), larger maps that have greater scales not just more stars ( ie stars that are farther apart ).

_____________________________

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Post #: 50
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 6:37:48 PM   
forsaken1111

 

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Status: offline 		If a colony took a constant supply of the more common strategic elements as well, then it would certainly make you think twice about colony spam.

In the current system I usually just mark every available planet above 75% quality for colonization and then I close the window and never think about it. Each of those will get a colony ship in turn, and each of those colonies will cost me nothing more than the cost of the initial colony ship.

A colony should COST money at the start until it is well established, rather than instantly being self sufficient. And yes, the disease outbreaks and such would give you incentive to send a medical ship or build medical facilities there.

(in reply to Simulation01)
Post #: 51
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 6:49:09 PM   
Simulation01


Posts: 540
Joined: 5/12/2010
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quote:

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

If a colony took a constant supply of the more common strategic elements as well, then it would certainly make you think twice about colony spam.

In the current system I usually just mark every available planet above 75% quality for colonization and then I close the window and never think about it. Each of those will get a colony ship in turn, and each of those colonies will cost me nothing more than the cost of the initial colony ship.

A colony should COST money at the start until it is well established, rather than instantly being self sufficient. And yes, the disease outbreaks and such would give you incentive to send a medical ship or build medical facilities there.



Indeed.

As for my plague/disease idea....the plague would spread quickly to other planets via commercial vessels if the infected planet(s) are not quarantined. Due to the nature of the private sector trading network...I can foresee that plagues would spread far to quickly to be contained...so a solution would be to make the spread or infection of a commercial ship based on a probability/chance...... there would be a chance that if a commercial ship visited an infected planet planet...it too would be infected and spread the plague/disease to other worlds.

Following the logic of random or environmental plagues ( ie some host organism from a new colony infects your ppl ) I would also like the ability to use plague bombs and or to use spies to spread plagues. Maybe even you could research race specific plagues...say you wanted to rid the universe of the nasty Dhayut Empire....well, there's a plague for that! LOL

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(in reply to forsaken1111)
Post #: 52
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/21/2010 7:02:54 PM   
J HG T


Posts: 1093
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From: Kiadia Prime
Status: offline 		Have to partly agree with Elmo3 here. Part of DWs charm for me is the way it handles the territory issue; Deep space is no-mans land and systems are owned by those who controls planets and have military forces there.

IF there will be somekind of territory system I still hope that it would keep the basic DW mechanics pretty much intact.

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Post #: 53
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/22/2010 1:29:31 AM   
Baleur


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Simulation01

I think we need a way to claim a planet without actually colonizing it. A warship should be able to create an outpost on any planet ( and type ) to claim it. They would use resources to maintain like a spacestation or something so you wouldn't want to build them everywhere, but it would allow you to lay claim to a planet before colonization and would prevent colonization by another empire.

Maybe....the way another empire could get around this is if they sent a colony ship that also had a troop transport module that had troops with it to take out the host outpost. I obviously want this, but what does everyone else think?


It would kinda nullify the entire slower colonization due to the colonization techs and such.
Sure you wouldnt be able to colonize faster, but planting a flag where the only counter is agression or direct war declarations is almost the same thing.

Thats one of the things that i didnt like about vanilla Galciv2 (before they added racial types and slow colonization tech), the entire early (and midgame on large maps) was just one rushy colony rush. Flag planting or citizen planting, same gameplay effect.

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Post #: 54
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/22/2010 1:35:58 AM   
Shark7


Posts: 7937
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From: The Big Nowhere
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: J HG T

Have to partly agree with Elmo3 here. Part of DWs charm for me is the way it handles the territory issue; Deep space is no-mans land and systems are owned by those who controls planets and have military forces there.

IF there will be somekind of territory system I still hope that it would keep the basic DW mechanics pretty much intact.


agree, I prefer DW the way it is in terms of 'territory'

Besides 'he who has the most guns owns the land' in DW, as it should be.

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Post #: 55
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/22/2010 5:02:05 AM   
Aures

 

Posts: 343
Joined: 9/13/2010
Status: offline 		I think we all agree that making something totally unavailable to another empire via a gameplay mechanic just because you say "this is mine" is not good, but I think we also agree that you should be well within your rights to defend something you have staked a legitimate claim to. Right now if you see another empire's colony ship heading into one of your systems (as determined by the game) and you shoot it you suffer a rep hit (unless you are at war with them). If you see their military forces in your systems you can demand they remove it but if they ignore the warning and you start shooting at them again it is you that suffers a rep hit. Your only option if you want to do something about them is to declare war (which also gives you a rep hit unless you use a sneaky tactic), there needs to be some kind of middle ground. In the real world shooting down an aircraft that has violated restricted airspace and ignored repeated warnings to withdraw is not considered murder. If it belongs to another nation state it is considered an act of aggression (or even war) by the nation the aircraft belongs to, not the nation whose airspace has been violated.

I think we can form a consensus that something isn't quite right with the current system even if we disagree about what kind of change will be needed to fix it. I like the general approach DW takes to not arbitrarily restricting actions but the consequences of some actions need to better incorporate the idea of justified self defense.

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Post #: 56
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/22/2010 5:16:19 AM   
forsaken1111

 

Posts: 281
Joined: 3/30/2010
Status: offline 		Not to mention you can also use these techniques to fleece the enemy. Spend 2000 to build a mining station in an enemy system, then sell it to them for 100,000+ or trade for technology. Drop a colony and its worth even more to them. I made a LOT of money 'helpfully' colonizing other people's systems and then selling them the colonies.

(in reply to Aures)
Post #: 57
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/22/2010 5:23:09 AM   
Aures

 

Posts: 343
Joined: 9/13/2010
Status: offline 		Works especially well with planets that are below 50% quality and have no (or no important) resources. For mining bases you can also set up crippled ones that will not extract any resources (eg gas mining station sans luxury extractor on a planet with no gas). I feel such tactics are a bit too cheap to bother with most of the time, but I have trouble denying myself any opportunity the game mechanics provide.

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Post #: 58
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/22/2010 5:24:48 AM   
Simulation01


Posts: 540
Joined: 5/12/2010
Status: offline 		What about the other idea of being able to blockade uncolonized worlds?  That would be a way to automate the process of stopping colonization as opposed to having to physically watch that system yourself.

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(in reply to Aures)
Post #: 59
RE: Planet Outposts - 12/22/2010 5:40:22 AM   
Aures

 

Posts: 343
Joined: 9/13/2010
Status: offline 		Interesting, but I'm not sure I like the idea of having to permanently assign military ships to guard some worthless ball of dirt I never want to colonise in one of my systems (or to constantly guard important mining bases from being colonised). As long as there are other options though this could be a nice option to have.

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Post #: 60
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