Orbiting ships

Has it ever been considered to allow ships to orbit planets before colonization.

The reason I bring this up is I was reading the post about the expansion pack, where you have to develop the tech to colonize certain planets, and if other empires develop it first, they can colonize planets in your space that you can't.

So, why not allow you to move ships into orbit of unclaimed worlds.

Of course, it wouldn't be that simple, and that isn't just what the post is about. I'm talking a whole new feature.

Lets say you just discovered a class 25 planet, and you want it, but the closest planet with a spaceport, is too far away, but you just happen to have a few combat vessels in the sector. Why not have them secure the planet for later colonization instead of using these ships to destroy (and fight a war) you may not be ready for over the planet.

And their are several ways to help balance this as a gameplay issue. Just like a colony rush can bankrupt you if not planned right, have fleets in orbit of planets could do the same. It can easily be explained that colonies, while not haveing the ability to build ships with a space port, does have support facilities for ships (which can be assumed since colony construction expands the range of you ships) in orbit. Maintaining orbit over a gravity well could be costly. Especially considering all the debris that collects around planets.

So it increases costs to orbit uninhapited worlds. Pick a number thats fine, whatever works. Another is that a fleet of ships can't act as a fleet in orbit. So if the enemy does attack the planet, your ships would be forced to fight one at a time.

And on this note, something I would like to see is the ability to have friendly ships in orbit of friendly planets. If you are allied with a empire, your forces should be allowed to help defend planets themselves (ala Civ 4). And to prevent orbit from being full, preventing construction, allied ships are auto launched when production is completed.

This would lead to the final thing I wanted to say, but is not really related. The ability for allied ships to share a parsec, and enter battle together. This could either be played out as either a three way battle (which can only be done if two or more of the empires are allied) or the concept of a allied commander. I think the allied commander thing would be cool, all though I don't know how you could make the AI players use it well.

What I mean with the allied commander is that instead of gifting ships to a empire, you could grant command of ships to your ally for a certain amount of time, thus giving them quick military build up while saving them the need to actually build up a force themselves. Although, with something like this, I feel it should be far down the tech tree. Also, these ships may only be used against your enemies. So if your the Terrans, and you give the Torian command of some of your ships to use in your (you and the Torian) war against the Drengin, they can't command the Terran ships in their command to fight another non-hostile empire, like the Altarians.

I think this could add a new potential to the game. Grand battles between several allied empires.

I don't think something like that will be seen in GalCiv 2, but I hope its in the third one, but I want to see the orbit thing. Even if your ships are excluded from battles when orbiting allied planets, several options are availible. Like if you have ships orbiting a Torian colony, and the Drengin attack, you can be given the option to engage first or second, but both battles happen in the same turn (but the second battle isn't worth as much experience, and the attacker is given the option to withdraw between battles).

Darn it, I'm trying to wrap this up, but as you can see, this is something I've thought about, and I apoligise for the length (and the jumpiness) of my post, but this is something I had to get out in the forum.