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It would be cool if AI empires sent messages of warning if players infringe on their territory with bases or colonies, and then would take diplomatic and or militant measures to rectify the situation. This is one of the few major exploits left in the game since the tech trade issue was dealt with during the Beta.

The value of stations should be proportional to the value/percentages of the resources they're mining. Likewise, a newly established colony should be worth a small fraction of a fully developed world. And if you're going to effect a diplomatic system to enforce boundaries, you definitely need to provide an opt out when the constructor/colony ship arrives and finds someone else there. Ideally, it would drop your ship out of warp the moment your scouts/sensors detected another race's claim (the way it does if you send a ship against a pirate base and the base is destroyed before it gets there).

As an aside, there really needs to be some persistence with scouting. If I scout a system and see stations present, they should remain "visible" in the fog of war after my ships have left. I couldn't tell you how many times I've sent constructors to scouted systems only to find fully functional stations already present. Unless they have prefab stations that just drop, there's often no way they could have been built in the time it took my constructor to arrive.


K

good points made. As a note, new colonies are only worth a fraction of fully developed ones, but they are still rated as quite valuable compared to a mining station or a low-level tech. The main issue isnt the value of new colonies, it is that players can exploit the AI with them. A player can exploit the AI empires by settling inside one of the AI empire's colonized systems (the AI currently doesnt take any immediate hostile action), and then sells said colony to that empire for mega-cash and prizes (tech, war, better relations, etc).

Ideally, colonizing or station-building inside another empire's territory should have harsh repercussions. There would be instantaneous political saber-rattling (angry message, temporary relations hit), and the AI wouldnt pay squat for said colony or station, it would just demand it in exchange for not starting a war (violent) or embargo (peaceful). If that demand isnt met, any player or AI should be able to attack and destroy/sieze the target without a reputation hit (like a "causus-belli" in the EU series, those games have great diplomacy and war resolution models).