Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone

[Gelatinous Cube]

I don't know how you could think they are an eye-sore. The borders are wind up with a lot of straight edges, sweeping curves, and a generally tie-dye look. Much more fun to look at than empty space.

But.. I suppose there is no accounting for taste!

[Malevolence]

My personal feelings aside about how the sphere is actually calculated, I think looking at the issue from a purely military standpoint is a bit off.  It's not, in my mind, the eastern front. I think it has more to do with hegemony. The idea of a sphere of influence comes from an extension of power (coercive, institutional, ideological) and not specifically a military frontline like an "Eastern Front".

The United States doesn't occupy Canada, Mexico, Central America or South America, but I think U.S. power is certainly felt there.  Someone coined the term "Finlandization" once a while back.  For example, some years back (2008) Russian warships decided to make a port call and conduct a brief naval exercise with Venezuela.  I think we can all agree the U.S. and Russia are on fairly good terms, however, I think you might also be surprised (even alarmed) at the U.S. Navy's reception and escort of the Russian ships... an event that was eventually down-played and not repeated by either nation.

I also think this why scaling with the size of the map is wholly justified. On a large map, if the sphere's don't cover more than the "center" system then what's the point of a sphere at all? Are you simply influencing empty space?

NOTE: as of the latest patch I'm testing, you can ignore the sphere in terms of colonization if you are at war with the faction. I personally never liked the actual game rule restrictions given the spheres, and expressed an interest in more of a consequence-based reaction.

[Cauldyth]

So far, at least in Huge/Huge/EvenClusters games, I like the size of the spheres. Cool tip about the halos when the spheres aren't explicitly shown, I didn't know about that!

[BletchleyGeek]

What Solops shows in his screenshot looks to me actually awesome (not so much the graphics themselves, but its meaning).

Man, you're sitting on top of a beautiful powder keg. I wonder what kind of conflagration would come out of that situation. Evokes world politics on July 1914

[ASHBERY76]

Borders are working much better now and gameplay elements like mining rights have meaning.

[Bingeling]

This is the galaxy map of my somewhat mature game in the year 2840. It was started in beta 1, and is converted to beta 2.

It starts looking like a rather expensive painting, and I think some of this would not have been possible if all the game was in the latest beta. If you look at the far right edge, I got my default blue little area. The upper of those is the a spice colony, and I was able to colonize it just outside the range of the colony SW of it (which is now also blue). You can easily see how much the range of influence of that large colony has been buffed since then, as the current sphere is easily twice that radius.

Some empires have rather nice areas. My blue zenox. The right brown gizureans. And the upper left camouflage green Atuuk. Some are more shattered like the powerful red Dhayut and the northern-ish large, purple Naxxillians. And the left edge Ackadrians never left their home region and got a cozy little empire.

A long lasting share of system is in the yellow area, where the Dhayut got a colony in the secodnary gizurean home system. It manages to just make a tiny red blob in a sea of yellow.

[solops]

ORIGINAL: Gelatinous Cube

I don't know how you could think they are an eye-sore. The borders are wind up with a lot of straight edges, sweeping curves, and a generally tie-dye look. Much more fun to look at than empty space.

But.. I suppose there is no accounting for taste!

My objection to the current SOI has nothing to do with visual effect. I think it is absurd for the SoI to cover such huge regions of space beween scattered systems. It would be like ALL of the oceans of earth being claimed instead of a 3-mile limit. I think that the SoI should include a modest sphere around each colonised system, resulting in isolated islands and a few large globs where colonised systems are clustered. ESPECIALLY on a 15x15 map where colonies are sparse. I went to a bigger map hoping for this result but the blasted SoI seems to scale up, foiling my desire. I know that others like it the way it is. I think those that do are just fighting a land war in space, but fine for them if that is what they want. I don't. I'll play EUIII for that. In DW I'd like this feature scaled back, or even better, supply sliders in the game set-up so that we can each choose the potential magnitude of the Spheres of Influence.

[Bingeling]

I hazard a guess that the range is a simple parameter stored in some class. Like for research speed, any other parameters like these would benefit from being exposed to the user in some advanced galaxy settings at game start. The research slider is brilliant - some preset levels, and the ability to set a fully customized value if you want even slower.

[Baleur]

But that screenshot is also of a galaxy with very few stars, it will always look scattered as empires travel far to find colonies.

But another thing great about the "halos", you can even see what empire a system belongs to BEFORE you discovered their closest colony!
And if you turn ON the system overlay without having discovered their colony, the system you previously saw in their halo color is now appearing as a normal neutral system.
In many ways having that overlay turned off actually gives you More info, although in a more scattered plop by plop basis.

[cmdrnarrain]

I think it looks great.  It tells you exactly what you need to know at a half second glance.   This game needs as many user interaction enhancements as it can get.   If you don't like it turn it off. 
 
 
 

[Cauldyth]

I think the analogy to land war and 3-mile naval limits is an incorrect one. In the real world, the 3-mile limit prevents ships from entering that zone. In DW, the spheres do not prevent enemy ships from entering, so they aren't equivalent to having a 3-mile limit which has been extended to cover the entire ocean.

War in space is essentially island-hopping. The space between islands (planets) is wide open to anyone, at any time. All the spheres of influence are doing is saying that if you own one island (planet) in a group of islands (planets), you own all of them. You don't need to colonize every single island (planet) in the group.

The way this mechanic is represented visually is what seems to be causing the annoyance with some people. Because the space between the planets is being painted with your colour, it's making it look like you own that space. You do not. That space is open to any ship, from any empire, at any time, without treaty or diplomatic implications. You have claims to planets, not to open space, and that's handled appropriately by the game mechanics. It's just the representation, where open space is being painted with your empire's colour, that's misleading.

I suggest turning off the spheres, and using the halos. Those represent the true mechanics at work, and also agree with the reality of navies in real life.

[solops]

ORIGINAL: Cauldyth

I think the analogy to land war and 3-mile naval limits is an incorrect one. In the real world, the 3-mile limit prevents ships from entering that zone. In DW, the spheres do not prevent enemy ships from entering, so they aren't equivalent to having a 3-mile limit which has been extended to cover the entire ocean.

War in space is essentially island-hopping. The space between islands (planets) is wide open to anyone, at any time. All the spheres of influence are doing is saying that if you own one island (planet) in a group of islands (planets), you own all of them. You don't need to colonize every single island (planet) in the group.

The way this mechanic is represented visually is what seems to be causing the annoyance with some people. Because the space between the planets is being painted with your colour, it's making it look like you own that space. You do not. That space is open to any ship, from any empire, at any time, without treaty or diplomatic implications. You have claims to planets, not to open space, and that's handled appropriately by the game mechanics. It's just the representation, where open space is being painted with your empire's colour, that's misleading.

I suggest turning off the spheres, and using the halos. Those represent the true mechanics at work, and also agree with the reality of navies in real life.

Island hopping, yes, exactly. But the SoI is not just saying you own that island, it is also claiming too vast a region around it and that is my objection. It IS claiming you own that space. And a claim on some space around a system is reasonable. This is not just a visual representation. It has very real potential diplomatic effects. Thank goodness these spheres are "soft" and one can still cross them with some negative effects (as it should be). But the spheres are just too blasted big. THAT is the problem. The areas that are claimed by factions, areas that cause negative diplomatic effects, are too large as currently calculated.

[Grotius]

I guess my initial reaction to the screenshot was: looks great to me!

Also, the analogy to a 3-mile territorial sea is outdated. These days it's a 12-mile territorial sea, another 12-mile contiguous zone, and a 200-mile "exclusive economic zone" (EEZ). A "legal map" of the world does look more like the screenshot from the OP's game, especially in places like East Asia, where Japan claims 200-mile EEZs stemming from rocks in the middle of nowhere. Admittedly there are still "high seas" of no-man's-land on real Earth, but they're much smaller than they used to be, and the "sphere of influence bubbles" have expanded dramatically.

[MasterChief]

ORIGINAL: Grotius

I guess my initial reaction to the screenshot was: looks great to me!

Also, the analogy to a 3-mile territorial sea is outdated. These days it's a 12-mile territorial sea, another 12-mile contiguous zone, and a 200-mile "exclusive economic zone" (EEZ). A "legal map" of the world does look more like the screenshot from the OP's game, especially in places like East Asia, where Japan claims 200-mile EEZs stemming from rocks in the middle of nowhere. Admittedly there are still "high seas" of no-man's-land on real Earth, but they're much smaller than the used to be, and the "sphere of influence bubbles" have expanded dramatically.

Good point... I've been a part of patrolling those zones both domesticaly and for our allies. The Black Sea, since the end of the Cold War, is also a very interesting area of contention with Romanian, Bulgarian, Ukraine, Russian, Georgian and Turkish "spheres" of influence running over the top of each other.

[solops]

3 mile, 20 miles or 200 miles...It is still all relatively small given the size of the ocean. In interstellar space the distances are unimaginably vast. The spheres should be smaller. I often wonder how the AI even knows when someone is there to object to, since even improved long-range scanners don't begin to cover it all.

[solops]

ORIGINAL: MasterChief

Good point... I've been a part of patrolling those zones both domesticaly and for our allies. The Black Sea, since the end of the Cold War, is also a very interesting area of contention with Romanian, Bulgarian, Ukraine, Russian, Georgian and Turkish "spheres" of influence running over the top of each other.

Yeah, south of the Philippines oil companies have to pay fees to the Philippines, China and Vietnam on each well because they all claim the oil as theirs. Triple duplicate fees on each barrel! Sort of inhibits development. Not to mention the rigs China has seized and put missiles on.

[MasterChief]

ORIGINAL: solops

3 mile, 20 miles or 200 miles...It is still all relatively small given the size of the ocean. In interstellar space the distances are unimaginably vast. The spheres should be smaller. I often wonder how the AI even knows when someone is there to object to, since even improved long-range scanners don't begin to cover it all.

Ok, I have to agree with your observation in regards to monitoring borders.

As a real world example, the US Cavalry had this problem in the early days of westward expansion. Due to treaties with the major Native American tribes, several areas were off limits to settlers and prospectors. However, the area was just too vast for the cavalry to enforce and border violations, on both sides, were rampant. Similar to your observation, whole mining communities were set up and were even expanding without the US government knowing about them.

[solops]

Like I suggested earlier, please give us some SoI magnitude sliders in the game set-up. Then everyone can have the perfect game...as they see it.

[Nedrear]

ORIGINAL: solops

Like I suggested earlier, please give us some SoI magnitude sliders in the game set-up. Then everyone can have the perfect game...as they see it.

Well no objection...

Something between Normal (now) and none... we don't need to increase it...

[malkuth74]

Me personally I delt with 2 years of having your way no borders.. Now we have them.. If you magically get your way I will hunt you down and make you play Barbie and the Horse PC game for the rest of your life.

And if the devs listen to this, they will now be regulated to Making Barbie and the Horse PC II for you can play the expansion.

Enough said.