Borders

Im sure this is being discussed somewhere I just didnt find it.

I would like to see borders, I have actually posted this in another thread but this one is for borders only.

The problem is how do you dictate borders?

Well borders being your sphere of influence wouldnt work as it would give you a giant radius around your colonies to warn you of the impending attack, borders will have to be seperate from your influence area. Lets say borders are a tech, a tech that involves a branch from sensors, you see your sensors are basicly going to monitor your borders. Makes sense to me that you develop two types of sensors, regular sensors, and stationary sensors. Regular sensors we already have, stationary sensors are placed on a planet, or on a station and define a border boundry to detect incursions. You can even build a galactic project along these lines that allows you to automatically extend borders to areas around your stations and planets.

Now why would you do this, well simple, advanced warning, and keep other player NPC or other from going into your space and colinizing planets you just havnt gotten to yet. Takes a little of the rush away and allows for more strategic development decisions and more techs.

Now they only ships that can cross a border are freighters, this being said you can arm a freighter but its 1hp and inability to attack ships at a planet makes it pretty much useless except for doing some recon. Then if you see a freighter exploring your area, you can shoot him and hope they were planning for war, or maybe he was just looking for a good planet to trade with....ooops oh well.

The other option here is a logistical branch to keep people from spanning large areas with stations to lock up a section of the map. In this case you have a logistical branch that grants you control of sectors, the sectors are contained within your influence range, and the sector containing a planet is free, but any sector with no colony costs logistical points to control and they have to be within a portion of your influence area. This would allow you to plug holes between clusters but not draw lines across the map quickly as the logistics of controlling empty sectors would be to great in large number. Sectors shared by two planets of different races split the sector evenly in regards to there location, much like influence lines work.

Anything else, feel free to aid or tear it apart but there it is.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

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Kryo, old hand volunteers, does this question belong in the same demi-limbo as carriers and multiplayer? I hope not, but if so, I'd like to have my hopes dashed directly and promptly.

@AngryPrarieDog: Your tech tree approach to the question seems very plausible to this non-coder. But I suspect that's because I have no serious idea about the effort required to train the AIs to handle such a serious map parameter.

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LOL G. W. I never said I wanted to code it, I am an engineer, if its real I can try and build it, but coding.....no way leave that up to the pro's.

However, the AI actually shouldnt be that hard to work with, especially since the map is tiled. Just like flying to a planet it would simply warn the npc that going into this tile would start a war. Probably not that simple but I dont think it would be a mountain to overcome. The general principal is already in place, just needs another modifier in the right location.

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In principle borders must be defensible and defended. It does me no good to claim a border that I do not have the ability to defend--my claim lacks substance.

A good example is the old 3-mile territorial waters boundary which came about because in the 17th through 18th centuries land fortifications could only hurl a cannon ball out to 3 miles. Beyond that any territorial claims had not substance or support.

I think a borders concept could be included in the next version or expansion beyond the current one. My concept would give each civ the ability to set borders and negotiate them.

Any opposing civ without transit rights that does cross your borders does so at his own risk. That is if you blow it out of space within your borders, it become a "border incident" and not a declaration of war. Border incidents can cause diplomatic repercussions (trade embargo, etc.), but not directly result in war being declared unless a separate declaration of war is made.

However, if you've claimed borders that are indefensible, other civs can recognize it and go in with impunity, knowing that you don't have the ability to do much about it.

Something along the tech tree in terms of "border outposts/starbases" may be useful in this arrangement. That is starbases with an offensive punch that can reach out a few parsecs and defend a border incursion.

Well, that's my 2bc worth.

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Thats exactly the idea Turtullian, I was thinking about the old cannon range when I drew this up, the thing about that is you could use starbases to expand your border, this in my opinion could be used inproperly though to make dividing lines and generally screw up transit as a whole. Imagine that an NPC gets a resource in between two of your planets and now to fly from one planet to the next you have to plot a course around that planet and so on. The reason why I would say make it a logistical requirement is because you couldnt just camp areas with starbases, and on top of that it would make influence conquest a little more difficult than building stations all over the place.

The draw on logistics to control a sector of space you dont have a planet in would be say 3 pts, but if you place a station in that sector it would go down to say 2 or 1 pt. This would warrent the station for defensive purposes and logistical purposes, but still not allow you to zone off half the map for your own use.

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