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My main intent is to slow down the ship's hyperdrive speed and increase the cost of colonization modules in an attempt to slow down empire expansion. I find that the expansion phase of the game is my favourite, but it's over too quickly with the AI empires expanding right up to my doorstep no sooner than a couple of game months.

Of course there are other things that could be done to limit empire expansion. I'd like to see some isolationist, unfriendly aliens who build a small but well defended empire but don't expand any further than their own territory. Also, most of us would like some sort of empire border or a claim system for planets to prevent other empires 'moving in' to the desert planet next door to their home system.

For now, though, I'm hoping to be able to mod some components with the new expansion. It might happen, it might not.

Also, most of us would like some sort of empire border or a claim system for planets to prevent other empires 'moving in' to the desert planet next door to their home system.

Not sure if I brought this up once before in a different thread, I can't remember but its something I thought of a while ago.  Colonies should have a sphere of influence around them, basically a circle on the map that appears as semi transparent colour of the Empire in question (this should be toggleable with a button on the UI, because it would get very annoying eventually being permenantly on the map, but a toggle to see the spheres of influence would be great.  The more aggressive the race the large the sphere of influence is.  Anyone who colonizes within someone else sphere of influence of builds mining bases, or has non allied military ships in someone elses sphere should lead to a - number in the diplomacy screen.  For example -5 your military ships tresspass in our territory, -8 your mining installations tresspass in our territory, -10 your colonies tresspass in our territory and so on.  It could also be applied to the dotted lines that represent major trade routes for the Empires, , but in this case rather than a sphere  just a much thicker line (again only viewable when toggled on), the more aggressive the race the thicker the line.

Aggressive or reckless races should care less about intruding on their neighbours territory, but passive and cautious races would avoid doing so.

I don't remember reading that before, WoodMan. It sounds like an ideal solution as it would still allow for certain aggressive races to cause mischief.

Slooooooow. Imagine true galactic expansion, and how slow it would have to be.

Upgrading your ships should be worth the cost, which it isn't if you develop a new weapon system two years down the line. Also consider ship construction speed. I once detected an enemy fleet on approach to one of my systems. I had time to construct a dozen escorts to aid the static defenses, and I had an easy victory. That simply shouldn't be possible! Warships are investments, major ones that take time to pay off. Look at World War 2: the naval aspect that war was fought for the most part with forces already extant at the outbreak of the conflict. The United States halted the Japanese advance with the same ships they already had; Essex class carriers and the like didn't show up until 1943. British wartime carriers took even longer to join in.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'd like my decisions to have far-reaching consequences. If my neighbor is spoiling for war and I ignore the signs, I should pay for that by getting steamrolled in a month, because any ships I order after war starts would still exist only as blueprints and raw materials by the time my kind is enslaved and sent to the spice mines.

Slowing DW down could be accomplished with a vastly expanded tech tree. More tech, especially when research is set to very slow, it simply takes longer to build the higher level techs. A really robust tech tree would have hyperdrives advancing 1000 per discovery, rather than 5k at a time.

something that would go a really, really long way in making the pace of the game feel good to me is having colonies cost income until they reach a certain level of development. it would make choosing colonies, defending them, and making shure they grow much, much more important, right now i feel like im just going down the list until no worlds remain to colonize


also, just to add a little bit to my previous post in this thread, here is a screenshot of the second world in the game i colonized, just a stones throw from my homeworld, since they are both moons of the gas giant

i was going to post a save file, to let others poke my game and see if i am just doing something wrong, but this forum does not support that so... currently in the game i have around 250 worlds or so, that troop transport hovering over the transport is 850 size (i found the red claw, twice. nice, but way powerful, topic for another thread)

Super Duper Ultra Trooper [:D]

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

Also, most of us would like some sort of empire border or a claim system for planets to prevent other empires 'moving in' to the desert planet next door to their home system.

Not sure if I brought this up once before in a different thread, I can't remember but its something I thought of a while ago.  Colonies should have a sphere of influence around them, basically a circle on the map that appears as semi transparent colour of the Empire in question (this should be toggleable with a button on the UI, because it would get very annoying eventually being permenantly on the map, but a toggle to see the spheres of influence would be great.  The more aggressive the race the large the sphere of influence is.  Anyone who colonizes within someone else sphere of influence of builds mining bases, or has non allied military ships in someone elses sphere should lead to a - number in the diplomacy screen.  For example -5 your military ships tresspass in our territory, -8 your mining installations tresspass in our territory, -10 your colonies tresspass in our territory and so on.  It could also be applied to the dotted lines that represent major trade routes for the Empires, , but in this case rather than a sphere  just a much thicker line (again only viewable when toggled on), the more aggressive the race the thicker the line.

Aggressive or reckless races should care less about intruding on their neighbours territory, but passive and cautious races would avoid doing so.

Aren't diplo relations already penalized for having stuff built in the same system together? Or something to that effect?

ORIGINAL: NefariousKoel

Aren't diplo relations already penalized for having stuff built in the same system together? Or something to that effect?

Yes that's true, but this is would prevent empires moving into a star system inside your empire's border or hypothetical border. Not just a planet inside one of your systems, but a system inside where you think you're empire has complete control.

Yeah, by sphere of influence I mean a bit bigger than a system.  The kind of size I'm thinking would in the dense clusters perhaps cover 4 or 5 nearby systems, but around the edge of the galaxy where they are further apart it might cover no extra systems at all.  The more aggressive the race, the larger the spheres.

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

Yeah, by sphere of influence I mean a bit bigger than a system. The kind of size I'm thinking would in the dense clusters perhaps cover 4 or 5 nearby systems, but around the edge of the galaxy where they are further apart it might cover no extra systems at all. The more aggressive the race, the larger the spheres.

I think that would work really well.

Depends:

I LOVE slow carefull expansion, but I really don't have time to play a lot of these games. So a good option for a faster paced game would be appreciated, but I am going to judge you based on the epicness of the epic paced version

A few hints though: The current game suffers from research speeding up during the game. Please try to fix this as well as you can. In the later part of the game I have a lot to do, and getting new tech thrown my way all the time, just makes it less interesting (and cumbersome to redesign ships based on it). Make sure the early research progresses better, so the player has a sense of improving in the early part of the game.

Also there is the traditional problem of tech trading. Consider making bought and sold tech handicapped in some way, and try to avoid one single factor, like population size or number of colonies making it possible to dominate all areas of the game. A few classic ideas: 1) Disallow tech-bartering, making it only possibly to sell tech you have researched yourself, not tech you have bought from others
2) Blueprints, bought or discovered tech comes in the form of blueprints. You still need to research the tech yourself, but having a blueprint speeds up the research a lot (and enables it for race or discoverable techs). 3) Split tech in two parts, the first being research, the second being application. The research part is the same for everyone, but application would scale with the size of your empire. This partly handicaps larger empires research speed in a more realistic fashion. 4) Tech spread. Let trading or open borders result in organic tech spread from more developed empires to less. For instance by adding research points each time a private ship docks that is more advanced than player it is docking at.