Planet Outposts

[Simulation01]

ORIGINAL: lancer

G'day,

Not sure about this.

If you look at the history of the age of colonisation here on Earth (European powers spreading throughout the world) there aren't many examples of countries gaining territory without actually colonising it.

Australia is a good example of this. The Dutch and Portuguese planted their flags in the sand over a hundred years before the British arrived.

The British were the first to colonise it and thus gained ownership. The colonisation effort - the First Fleet - was the biggest logistical exercise ever undertaken in its day and very nearly didn't succeed.

Don't want to ram a history lesson down peoples throats here but it highlights a few points that might be relevant to DW.

Ownership of territory goes to those that colonise it, not to those who claim it is in their sphere of influence, got there first, etc.

You want it, you colonise it.

If you missed out and you still want it, then you have to fight for it.

That's how it worked - and continues to work - here on Earth. In the vastly more open geography of space I'd imagine these trends would only be accentuated.

Overall I think that CodeForce have got it about right. Colonisation itself is a big, difficult exercise. It grants ownership.

On the topic of borders consider what borders countries today are able to enforce.

Three miles out to sea off your coastline and the airspace above your land. Certain countries attempt more but they only do so with the threat of force.

Carving out big chunks of space with artificial borders and declaring that everything within is mine is on par with America declaring the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans as government property, subject to taxation and customs control.

Cheers,
Lancer

Colonization also occurs in stages. The whole of Australia and America were not colonized at the same time. It happened in stages...usually with a small colonay/outpost that later was expanded on.

[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.

[Simulation01]

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 have always liked the way borders were done in the Civilization series by Sid Meier. Also, the Galactic Civilizations way was interesting as well. I think that some combination of the two is needed.

In the modern world...a nations borders extend...I think...some 200 miles from their shores. Something like that should be done in space. Your borders should extend some distance from your systems..If they overlap..then they should merge to form one contiguous border.

If your borders and another empires overlap..those areas where they overlap would be 'disputed' areas and ships from either empire could enter that area..however relations between you would suffer ( this could be the basis for creating demilitarized zones treaties ).

Commercial vessels from any race should be able to pass through borders with no problems unless you have an embargo against the empire they belong to.

Military vessels should be able to pass through if they are not part of a fleet or maybe if they don't exceed a certain number. More and or fleets should be able to pass through if you have some sort of military access, mutual assistance, or treaty of alliance.

Or you could have it set so that if you don't have some form of non-aggression treat then those empires ships can move through your space at will....if you signed a treaty with them...then those ships would not be able to violate your borders without signing some other treaty or by breaking the non-aggression treaty ( you would not have to go to war...simply break the treaty ).


It may be that in order to make the concept of borders function correctly....the concept and implementation of Faster than light travel will have to be modified and or the spacing of star systems as well. I for one already think this needs to be tweaked. Right now we have maps that are the same size simply more or less crowded.


Edit:

Also, concerning the idea of outposts. If we cannot have outposts...then what about the ability to blockade or quarantine a planet that is not colonized. I stated it once already...but this would work similar to the way you set up a blockade now...you hover over it with your mouse till the little road construction/blocked sign appears...then the ships patrol and will not allow any other ships to approach. this would negate the need for outposts.

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: lancer

Ownership of territory goes to those that colonise it, not to those who claim it is in their sphere of influence, got there first, etc.

You want it, you colonise it.

If you missed out and you still want it, then you have to fight for it.

Overall I think that CodeForce have got it about right. Colonisation itself is a big, difficult exercise. It grants ownership.

Cheers,
Lancer

I must concur with the above excerpt from Lancer concerning this. The way I see it, if you have
a game that is 1400 stars, 22 empires, any number of independent races (that may become empires
of their own) plus the knowledge that you can design ships (and bases) better than your AI opponents,
I'd just rather not see the game become that complicated. From my experience, that level of
complication could seriously damage the game. Just my two blocks of Gold-Pressed Latinum worth.
[&:]

[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.

[tornnight]

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 like this idea. Simple but makes sense. Very much like the Civilization games.

[ASHBERY76]

4X games with tidy borders ala MOO2,imperium galactica 2 tend to have very small ship range for the early to mid stage.In DW you can colonize everwhere from early game.

[Simulation01]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

4X games with tidy borders ala MOO2,imperium galactica 2 tend to have very small ship range for the early to mid stage.In DW you can colonize everwhere from early game.

Which I think is the source of a lot of our problems. The ranges really have to be addressed.

[elmo3]

ORIGINAL: tornnight

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 like this idea. Simple but makes sense. Very much like the Civilization games.

I'll disagree. If I want that I'll go play Civ. DW is different and I hope it stays different and true to the original design. The last thing we need is a Civ or Galactic Civ clone.

[forsaken1111]

ORIGINAL: elmo3

Why would troops on a planet or moon have any real influence on what is happening in space around them?  Those troops would exert no influence or authority over anything other than the rock they occupy.  IMHO this is not the way to go with the design.

The troops wouldn't have an effect on anything in space. They WOULD prevent a colony ship from establishing a colony, which was the entire point I believe. You 'claim' the planet for the empire and land a few troops to establish a military presence, maybe patrol it with some escort ships. This is a 'soft' claim, it has no effect on anything aside from preventing an enemy from dropping a colony there. They could easily bombard your troops to death, or drop their own to fight over the planet, and it would cost you maintenance to maintain this unsupported outpost.

[forsaken1111]

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"

[WoodMan]

"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 [:D]

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 [:@]

[forsaken1111]

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 [:D]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[WoodMan]

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).

[forsaken1111]

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.

[Duckfang]

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.

[forsaken1111]

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.

[elmo3]

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.

[forsaken1111]

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.

[elmo3]

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.