Other empire colonizes same system as you, then war. WAD?

[Korvus77]

I've had this a couple of times. First of all my mistake for taking over some colonies waaaay too far from the core of my empire. Pulled a Civ and played way too late. [>:]

However I had two incidents where another empire established a colony in the same system, guess they already had these queued up? Next thing I know I have a -66 hit in relations with them and war soon follows. I take over the offending colonies and settle the war.

However at this point I have a dubious reputation and the ball is rolling to being the bad boy of the galaxy despite paying regular tributes, trade pacts, etc. [:-]

Which brings up another point. If someone is pissed I won't trade resources with them, why would they rebuff my trade pact attempts?

Thanks for putting up with my silly thread, cheers.

[Duckfang]

I've never had races colonise in my systems, but I suspect if they think they can bully you into letting them do it they'll go ahead and try it, depending on how reckless and aggressive they are.

And the other races are pissed you're not trading a very rare resource with them. There's a seperate option to allow that to be traded with each race individually.

[Wade1000]

The AI empires are trying to win also.

If one empire, maybe yours, has advantages then they might try to weaken you or view you negatively. If you do any of the numerous actions that lower reputation then most other empires will also view you negatively.
Also, the top faction in a game, or in real life, is often viewed negatively by other factions.

But, it does seem like Distant Worlds might need some adjustments on reputation factors due to various actions.

[Korvus77]

Will look for the other trade option, hadn't noticed it before. Not really complaining about the rest of the faction hits as I find them to be fine. Just the "Hey I colonized in your system now I'm mad at you for being here." [:D] I'm figuring my exploration ships stopping at any convenient gas station and pissing everyone off will be fixed in the next patch.

This game is pretty sweet. If only the sequel could use a tactical game engine ala total wars and license Homeworld 1 for battle sequence that would be nice. I find ships scaled as large as moons or planets disconcerting. [X(]

thanks all.

[Wade1000]

Yes. The talk is that many of these types of concerns are being addressed.
 
I like imagining my ships as lareg as moons... or bigger. That could explain why there is so few of them in a massive space civilization. I f you want to imagine the ships as smaller then think of them as above the solar system plane, thus closer to your view. You could also just consider their size as an abstraction.

[Korvus77]

Oh I know it's an abstraction. Just laugh at the jumbled pile of ships above my main building planets. I'm a bit of an organization freak and feel like I'm herding cats when it comes to ships in this game. As I get used to the system I'm sure this will reduce.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Wade1000
That could explain why there is so few of them in a massive space civilization.

You have FEW ships? Surely you jest. As of this moment, I apparently have about 800 merchant ships. In comparison, the real-world USA has about 450-ish. So, the number of merchant ships appears to be not too unreasonable, when you consider the circumstances.

[Wade1000]

I figure that a huge space civilization would have thousands or millions of various service and military ships. Thus, hundreds in a game like this seems an abstraction to me. Thus, I like to imagine the ships as very massive, nearly like they are portrayed.
 
(450 OCEAN ships of a nation on a planet does not compare to how many SPACE ships a huge space civilization might have.)

[JonathanStrange]

Colonizing: An AI empire colonizes a planet in the same solar system as you or vice versa? It seems appropriate for the colonizing AI to negatively judge a rival for being nearby; whether or not the rival was there first. When an empire looks to expand, it would likely consider nearby planets and colonies - an AI would be working as designed to regard that as a potential threat even if relations are good and even if the AI were the newcomer.

The War: The actual damage to one's reputation would seem to be a result of who declared war (or worse, who sneak attacked) and how the colonies were taken (did one bombard the civilian pop?). I think the AI's take such things into account when cranking out their numbers. (Someone probably knows the gory "hit to reputation details"). Probably also a large expansive empire may gain a bad rep just for being large and in charge.

[Korvus77]

I just invaded the planets in the same system as mine. I may have thrown some rocks down the gravity wells of systems I went to visit. How was I supposed to know the occupied planets would be the end station? *whistles innocently*