RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (Full Version)

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taltamir -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/7/2010 1:15:43 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

I disagree with you completely Fishman, any armed ship should be considered military.  Think of your home, would it make a difference to you if a person came in with one gun or twenty.  Not me, I would be just as dead either way.


BS argument... you want a real world analogy? Imagine you are the united states... and: 1. The Canadian army crosses the border in US soil. 2. American truck drivers bringing trade goods are armed with a pistol

The two are completely different.



Joram -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/7/2010 2:06:28 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

I disagree with you completely Fishman, any armed ship should be considered military.  Think of your home, would it make a difference to you if a person came in with one gun or twenty.  Not me, I would be just as dead either way.


BS argument... you want a real world analogy? Imagine you are the united states... and: 1. The Canadian army crosses the border in US soil. 2. American truck drivers bringing trade goods are armed with a pistol

The two are completely different.
You misunderstand the point then. However, if you like your own analogy, it's wrong too. A trucker bringing a firearm into Mexico would be arrested and vice-versa. I am less sure about Canada but if allowed that would only be because we have treaties in place.



VarekRaith -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/7/2010 3:50:01 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

I disagree with you completely Fishman, any armed ship should be considered military.  Think of your home, would it make a difference to you if a person came in with one gun or twenty.  Not me, I would be just as dead either way.


BS argument... you want a real world analogy? Imagine you are the united states... and: 1. The Canadian army crosses the border in US soil. 2. American truck drivers bringing trade goods are armed with a pistol

The two are completely different.


Number 2 would be more accurately worded as such, 2. American truck drivers bringing trade goods are armed with a 120MM turret. [;)] I don't object to the pilots carrying laser pistols, it's the anti ship weaponry that would concern my empire's advisers. [:'(]



Gertjan -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/7/2010 8:59:37 PM)

I think that with a free trade agreement and/or defense pact, the AI should not be concerned with foreign military ships in their space. IMHO tHis should be addressed soon. I have already pointed this out right from the release of the game (see also the suggestions thread). I am patient as the devs have shown to do things rather quickly, however at some point this can no longer wait [;)]



thiosk -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/7/2010 9:49:59 PM)

They went to all the trouble of creating ai scripts that would automatically escort passenger ships and the like.

It is the navy's responsibility to protect merchant vessels.

When visiting foreign empires, it is the responsibility of THEIR navy to protect your vessels. (if this is not coded, it should be!)

Most current merchant ships are unable to protect themselves from pirates, and rely on simply escaping or outrunning them, as the last thing you want are rocket propelled grenades slamming into you on an unarmored merchant ship.

Merchant vessels in DW are not so squishy that a single shot will disable them, and they usually seem to get away when less-technologically advanced empires fire on them.

Japan won't let you visit their country and carry a handgun around to protect yourself, so why would the zenox?

I second the notion that a defensive pact should enable you to fly military craft through allied systems.



taltamir -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/7/2010 11:16:02 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

I disagree with you completely Fishman, any armed ship should be considered military.  Think of your home, would it make a difference to you if a person came in with one gun or twenty.  Not me, I would be just as dead either way.


BS argument... you want a real world analogy? Imagine you are the united states... and: 1. The Canadian army crosses the border in US soil. 2. American truck drivers bringing trade goods are armed with a pistol

The two are completely different.
You misunderstand the point then. However, if you like your own analogy, it's wrong too. A trucker bringing a firearm into Mexico would be arrested and vice-versa. I am less sure about Canada but if allowed that would only be because we have treaties in place.



he would be arrested... but mexico wouldn't tell the USA to "stop sending your army into our territories"... they would realize its a trucker with a pistol and not an armed invasion.



taltamir -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/7/2010 11:17:46 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: VarekRaith

quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

I disagree with you completely Fishman, any armed ship should be considered military.  Think of your home, would it make a difference to you if a person came in with one gun or twenty.  Not me, I would be just as dead either way.


BS argument... you want a real world analogy? Imagine you are the united states... and: 1. The Canadian army crosses the border in US soil. 2. American truck drivers bringing trade goods are armed with a pistol

The two are completely different.


Number 2 would be more accurately worded as such, 2. American truck drivers bringing trade goods are armed with a 120MM turret. [;)] I don't object to the pilots carrying laser pistols, it's the anti ship weaponry that would concern my empire's advisers. [:'(]



Here a ship analogy is better... an american private transport ship armed with 120MM turret. If piracy and lawlessness were a big issue they wouldn't have a problem with it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_merchantman



taltamir -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/7/2010 11:23:14 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joram

I disagree with you completely Fishman, any armed ship should be considered military.  Think of your home, would it make a difference to you if a person came in with one gun or twenty.  Not me, I would be just as dead either way.


BS argument... you want a real world analogy? Imagine you are the united states... and: 1. The Canadian army crosses the border in US soil. 2. American truck drivers bringing trade goods are armed with a pistol

The two are completely different.
You misunderstand the point then. However, if you like your own analogy, it's wrong too. A trucker bringing a firearm into Mexico would be arrested and vice-versa. I am less sure about Canada but if allowed that would only be because we have treaties in place.



he would be arrested... but mexico wouldn't tell the USA to "stop sending your army into our territories"... they would realize its a trucker with a pistol and not an armed invasion.


this is sensible... it also has to do with costs... having armed merchants is unsustainable compared to an armed military escort. The AI should protect ANY merchants in its territory as long as they are not at war with you (in which case your merchants shouldn't go there in the first place... and I mean that their AI should be modified to not enter hostile systems; or deprioritize it at least). And in your systems your military should defend them... putting weapons on all your merchants should hurt your economy... that is, random merchant ship purchases should be limited by "private sector funds" for ships. And related to the profits they turn... that means btw that some upgrades (EX: faster engines) pay for themselves, since faster engines = more profit... but this might be a PITA to code and will exacerbate the already bad RAM issues the game has... so a less ram intensive way is to simply forbid the design of merchant ships with guns... Later on, when a 64bit version is released it might be plausible to allow systems with more ram to do it as the first method described. simply resulting in an increased cost and profits being calculated naturally and so on and so forth... it will require a lot more effort of coding and running extra code that they might want to.

EDIT: another solution would be to abstract the costs and profits rather then keep track of them. This is commonly what happens in such games (Aka, a merchant provides X profit per second, if it dies you lose Y money; X = A*B*C where A you calculate once at its creation based on its design (A is decreased by armaments, improved by engines, etc etc), and B is a variable based on the trade route it is doing and C is empire bonuses and status)



Pipewrench -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/7/2010 11:24:06 PM)

some points....

private freight transport is never armed when crossing borders and is frowned upon as gangster style rum running. Go ahead and rent a u-haul and produce a gun at any border crossing and see what happens.

The point of the military is to professionally fight crime(pirates) and enemies of the state. Attacks are made politically with the empire in mind and without this you would have the wild wild west....instant over-reactions,unstable captains and merchants becoming pirates themselfs.

Are you seriously going to give your empires military tech to the private sector for them to use and sell to others? If you only offer a lower tech then who is to say another empire upgrades first and gives that secret to the private sector who's going to sell to the highest bidder. It would be a tech race upgrade to protect lower tech merchants against pirates who have the next generation systems. Merchants after all are only profiting by distributing cargo and if another empire is using the same design but shipping more cargo because they rely on the military and go unarmed they should have a lower cost and a higher profit....they will undercut your sales....

One last thing, arming the transport fleets who are shipping for a profit would not change anything as that exploit could be countered by pirates just upgunning their systems because they do not need the cargo space. They could just have a pirate freighter sitting back waiting for the gunship to disable the armed merchant.

I respect both sides of the coin but I feel the system is fine as is. If the private sector needs protection...build a bigger military.






taltamir -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/7/2010 11:36:12 PM)

you raise a good point about the loss of tech... giving it to transports is highly risky... Even if they don't sell the tech, they could easily be captured and the tech reverse engineered.

In regards to armed transports crossing borders, it happened IRL with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_merchantman



Resan -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/8/2010 12:22:28 AM)

Imoh the AI having a fuss over armed freighters should stay. As other has said, it's your job to keep the private fleet safe.

But we do need some system, that makes escort wait outside of the aliens territory while the freighter does its thing.

I have also had the AI giving a fuss over armed mining stations (I think...) I've always armed my mining stations to fight of pirates. Then the AI took a colony in a system I had mining stations, and started bugging me about military forces. Could find any military and I don't arm my freighters.

Not sure if I agree with that or not, but a bit of a problem when there are no in game way to remove a trading station.

So maybe just go for planetary level shielding or something on mining bases [:)]



taltamir -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/8/2010 12:32:10 AM)

if the AI makes a fuss about it, at least it can refer to it as "armed civilians" rather then "military"... and there should be an option to not allow the AI to let armed civilians into other empire territory (just like there is an option to not allow the AI to colonize / mine in other empire's territory)



elliotg -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/8/2010 1:34:31 AM)

Thanks for all of these comments on this issue everyone. I can understand how annoying those repeated warning messages and the affect on your reputation must be.

I'll give some more thought to this, but probably a simple fix would be to reduce the level of offense taken by other empires when private ships with weapons enter their systems.

Also, note that freighters will not trade with other empire's that you are at war with or have trade sanctions against. However some freighters may have already been on their way to those empires before war broke out, so once they arrive they'll stop, and then probably run away when they see the enemy.

Freighters will actually trade with any empire that you're not at war with or have trade sanctions against - not just empires that you have a free trade agreement with.



Fishman -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/8/2010 5:39:55 AM)

The simplest fix would be to eliminate the problem entirely, since the player cannot do anything about it, and there are hundreds of the damn things, all completely uncontrollable. A more complex fix would involve deals about armed freighters and restricting them from entering. Another would be to make it so a free trade deal becomes an actual requirement for freighters to enter alien space at all: Otherwise what's the point of the deal? If no deal is needed to trade, what purpose does this deal serve? Merely "reducing" the effect won't really help, since there is no way to actually STOP the freighters. Also, there's the problem with offensitivity over auto-escorts. Honestly, the AI should be less concerned about the presence of military ships, and more offended by the presence of colony ships attempting to take over their space.



taltamir -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/8/2010 6:00:52 AM)

the free trade deal gives you both a 10% boost to income... i don't know what its 10% of... but thats what it is.

I agree with you that a better way would be that trade agreement make it so that you can send traders in the first place.



Fishman -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/8/2010 7:48:29 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir this is sensible... it also has to do with costs... having armed merchants is unsustainable compared to an armed military escort.
Are you joking? Having armed merchantmen is FAR cheaper than an armed military escort! There are several points. 1. There are HUNDREDS of merchant cruisers flying about. Assigning an escort to each of them involves building several hundred battlecruisers and attaching them to each one individually, then making sure they REMAIN attached. 2. Several hundred battlecruisers costs WAY more than simply taking the battlecruisers' GUNS and stapling them onto the merchant cruisers. 3. When you do this, the private sector pays for this, at no cost to the Imperial budget. Some of them occasionally seem to decide not to purchase these armed designs, opting for the unarmed default designs. Natural selection quickly resolves these cases. Space is a tough place where wimps eat flaming plasma death.

The sustainability of armed merchantmen has already been empirically proven based on the fact that people have DONE it, and this is why this issue has come up. In comparison, equipping each merchantman with an escort battlecruiser not only fails to solve the problem at all, but is logistically infeasible in terms of both player time and cost.



deanco2 -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/8/2010 8:12:21 AM)

This seems intended on the part of the developer.

There are warnings if a ship design is not correct.  It would be trivial to add a warning, 'this design cannot equip weapons' as we have a similar warning about the military ship class if you try to take all the weapons off.

In terms of how that affects relations, that's another kettle of fish I won't get into as I go the traditional 'military escort' route.

But it does seem like intended design.



taltamir -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/8/2010 7:53:03 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Fishman

quote:

ORIGINAL: taltamir this is sensible... it also has to do with costs... having armed merchants is unsustainable compared to an armed military escort.
Are you joking? Having armed merchantmen is FAR cheaper than an armed military escort! There are several points. 1. There are HUNDREDS of merchant cruisers flying about. Assigning an escort to each of them involves building several hundred battlecruisers and attaching them to each one individually, then making sure they REMAIN attached. 2. Several hundred battlecruisers costs WAY more than simply taking the battlecruisers' GUNS and stapling them onto the merchant cruisers. 3. When you do this, the private sector pays for this, at no cost to the Imperial budget. Some of them occasionally seem to decide not to purchase these armed designs, opting for the unarmed default designs. Natural selection quickly resolves these cases. Space is a tough place where wimps eat flaming plasma death.

The sustainability of armed merchantmen has already been empirically proven based on the fact that people have DONE it, and this is why this issue has come up. In comparison, equipping each merchantman with an escort battlecruiser not only fails to solve the problem at all, but is logistically infeasible in terms of both player time and cost.


I meant in the context of the game, I am the one quoting how armed merchantmen worked in real life and is proven to be real and functional.

However, it SHOULD be more expensive... Why in the world would you assign ESCORTS to every ship? you have warp engines that let you respond to any pirate activities in the system instantly, and any pirate activity in nearby system is effectively instant at higher warp tech levels. If 3 nearby star systems have 50 merchant ships between them, plonking a gun on each is cheaper than assigning a full escort to each (50 escort)... but 6 gunboats (2 in each system, attack any hostile that enters the system, if a larger force arrives the 4 ships from the neighboring systems warp in as well) are cheaper then 50 guns and FAR more effective (since those ships are built for war)... that was my point... it is cheaper to have unarmed merchant in a SECURE area, but ONLY if it is secure. Also extra cost of merchant ships SHOULDN'T be free as it costs the merchants money. if it is in the game then that is a mis-implementation...

there are several issues here: 1. Pirates should not blow up ships, they should plunder them. 2. Pirates should never attack star-bases, there is NOTHING for them to gain 3. If pirates attack a mining station, it should be to plunder, not destroy it. 4. The AI should not be "escorting" ships but securing systems... since I have never seen a deep space battle via hyperspace intercept it seems that combat is only plausible in systems... so you need to secure merchants in systems, and in their destination... this means proactively engaging pirates (or enemy empires) as they enter your systems. 5. Armed merchants should cost more and thus produce less income.

However, until that is all implemented putting a few guns on your merchants is by far the best tactic, but it has the downside of making all the other empires furious at you.



Interesting -> RE: "We will not tolerate the presence of your forces in our territory. " (4/9/2010 12:01:32 AM)

Thanks Elliot.






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