Shipyards outside of your ZOC?

That could be game-breaking in some specific circumstances. At least in GC2, I always ran a very heavy influence game, to the point where someone colonizing a planet near me would not even get a zone of control, so they wouldn't ever be able to build anything from that planet. Constructor spam, maybe, but that's it.  Minor civs would have to be exempt from this, since they can't generate a ZOC or fight back against anyone else's.

Extreme endgame, there is literally NO area outside my ZOC - the entire Immense map is colored a homogeneous greyish tan if I turn on the influence map. Not that any of the AIs are in a position to build anything at that point, but even if they were they wouldn't be able to.

Based on my look through the game-files, there are going to be open/closed border-treaties. There are also going to be relation-penalties for having ships and starbases within the ZOC of a race you don't have open borders with, and another one for having large fleets near another race's worlds or starbases. Due to this, it's very likely that the other race will soon declare war on you for your transgression.

That was my understanding. However, I agree with Peregrin - creating a shipyard in (or moving one into) an place where you don't have open borders, should be an IMMEDIATE act of war. No time delay, and should get you a big negative modifier with other Civs, too.

On the other hand, I see nothing inherently wrong with being able to set up a shipyard in ENEMY territory (i.e. someone you're already at war with), because that's just smart logistics.

The problem I see with that is, that borders change. One turn my starport is within neutral territory. The next turn, the borders of a race expand, for some reason, and encompass my starport. I'd be quite pissed, if that race suddenly declares war on me, and everyone starts hating me, for something I had no control over.

I guess  influence starbases would be needed as borders change and get closer to your borders,... or the neutral borders start edging away.

I guarantee that before the game is released the mechanics will change. I'm sure the devs will have to do some major tweaking to the mechanics for balance.

I like the idea of creating a starport near your enemy so I would like it to stay in. But lets factor in that there will be a loss of resources to build ships that far away from your planets. They may even add in a penalty if the starport is not in your territory.

I'm sure once its done, the longrange starbase won't be a crazy OP option. In fact, my guess is it will be the opposite. It will be nerfed so heavily that it will likely be something you do for fun (or humiliation!!), or something you do as a cleanup effort to take out a race you have basically already beaten.

I think this is a good idea: a penalty above and beyond the distance penalty for not in your territory/in enemy territory, especially given the precedent of being able to build starbases is enemy territory. I guess I can see being able to build a fleet in enemy territory as long as it is inefficient.

He did mention a penalty for starbases that were over 6 tiles away from a planet

im not sure if the details have been worked out yet but I believe the shipyard has 1 hp and no defenses. As-well I believe they said anymore then 6 tiles away from a "sponsor" planet causes a reduction to the resources delivered to the shipyard

if you have the resources to protect a shipyard as well as the manufacturing output to get a reasonable amount of production from a shipyard in enemy territory then its to late for the other civ anyway.

on the other hand we saw resource lines from sponsor to shipyard in the dev stream shouldent another civ be able to disrupt those lines?

plop a military ship on top of one and it stops the flow of resources.

drop a freighter on top of one and it siphons off an amount of resources equal to x credits per turn.

place a special harvester unit over a line and it redirects it to one of your shipyards

the last two would depend on how the resource's are transferred in game terms as well as some level of stealth/espionage ability 

Things of this nature are a large part of why I dislike the use of influence to determine national boundaries and would much rather have a fixed limit, like say having everything within three tiles of a colony belong to the colony's owner. Just because my nation has enough influence to paint half the galaxy blue doesn't mean that my nation's territory encompasses that half of the galaxy, particularly if we're talking about things like another faction's homeworld being under my faction's influence.

Beyond that, I strenuously object to the idea that building a base in another faction's zone of influence should be an instant declaration of war offense, regardless of whether you have open borders or not. Especially given how variable influence borders can be - you can have all the influence borders be nice and neat, and then suddenly you get that event that increases the influence of all the other nations and now suddenly you have a couple dozen colonies under foreign influence, and since you had starbases and shipyards around those areas you're at war with all your neighbors? No thanks. Tensions, perhaps, but let's be real for a moment - if a faction has colonies in an area before anyone else spreads influence over those worlds, and later those colonies come under the influence of some foreign party, it's not the colony owner who is committing an overt act of aggression or violating some other faction's territory, and the same goes for preexisting starbases and shipyards.

Influence boundaries are such a crappy mechanic for representing national territory that I'm rather disappointed that this seems to be what Stardock intends. Just because I have a class 20 planet with 15 billion people and a dozen or so Cultural Exchange Centers on it 10 parsecs north of here with two or three Influence Starbases to further boost the influence doesn't mean that that colony that you established on the class 10 planet 5 turns before I found that class 20 is in "my" space regardless of whether or not I've managed to push your influence away from your colony.

I kind of like the fixed limit except for if there are 2 planets within 2 tiles of each other say earth and mars

and looking at earth and mars let’s say I’m playing humans and haven’t colonized mars for some reason or another and you come along and colonize it should i just give up half of my ZOC just because you took a planet right next to mine?

i disagree if i have closed borders with you meaning "Hey you kids Git off my lawn" and you build a star base in my ZOC that is declaration of war in my terms... in fact simply sending that constructor across my boundary after I’ve said stay out i consider declaration of war let alone something as aggressive as building a base inside my ZOC

now having open borders i would accept as allowing ships and constructors through but would still be declaration of war unless you had a further treaty, that said you could build bases this would apply to shipyards as well since they appear to have two modes a move mode and a build mode you could move a shipyard through my space however if you changed to build mode would count as a declaration of war

pre-existing structures should not count IMO they were built before the ZOC expansion and it’s the act of constructing a base i see as aggressive

however further attempts to upgrade it while it’s in my territory might require some discussion

I agree here for the most part unfortunately a lot of people me included would like to see some kind of growth mechanic and the influence as a natural border is probably fairly easy to code essentially just a check of whose influence is highest

i would like to make influence a more "invisible mechanic" or at least less predominant 

here are my thoughts on a different system

each tile has a boundary value,

boundary value is calculated by influence and the presence/passage of military ships through/around the tile

once you reach a certain threshold you can put a claim in on the tile

anyone else who has reached a certain threshold can either dispute or post a counter claim

at the end of every game year (or whenever the U.P. if it’s still in the game meets) all claims and disputes will be discussed

there should be a maximum number of tiles you can claim per year so that you don’t just max influence and claim them all in a rush year

influence itself should be partially limited by boundary’s as in it starts to drop off at about 2-3 tiles away from your border. with the exception of along established trade routes this would cause your borders to expand faster along trade routes then just outward in general which makes sense in my opinion

Influence boundaries are not national territory. They are where your culture has spread in a rough sense. Inhabitants in these areas tend to follow your ideas of thinking and generally tend to follow the social trend of that society (who has influence). The only real national boundaries in GalCiv are the planets themselves.

If you feel that entering your zone of influence as a declaration of war, then declare war on that individual. Otherwise, If they enter your borders and you don't declare war, then obviously you didn't legitimately control that area. There doesn't need to be a game mechanic that says these are my borders and you shall not enter them unless you declare war first. What needs to happen with diplomacy here is that a message is given to you saying a ship has entered our zone of influence. Allow us to give an ultimatum to the AI saying leave within 1 turn or we shall declare war on you. This is reasonably how diplomacy works. It would be nice to set up diplomatic stances, like closed borders would imply to other countries that if any ship enters my "territory" then I will declare war on you. A simple pop-up saying, do you wish to declare war for this encroachment or negotiate a peaceful resolution.

Here are stances I would like to have when dealing with diplomacy.

Open Boundary Stance - I don't care what ships you bring in... don't disturb my planets. (No notifications)

Neutral Boundary Stance - Only peaceful trade ships with no weapons... (You are warned when military vessels are entering your territory)

Closed Boundary Stance - If it flies in my territory then I will test my new missiles on its hulls. That's after I've eaten the crew.... (You declare war on any ship entering your territory from that faction)

Simple bonuses on these things are implied... Open Boundary bonus to trade income, Neutral no bonus, Close Boundary reduced unrest on planets.

I have to say Influence makes intuitive sense to me.  We can (and will) argue about balance mechanisms, but the concept works.  The space you can control enough to claim and tax is yours.  The physics of star travel makes those borders very porous, but they still have economic and political effect.  I like that the boundaries exist and that they are so porous, it is part of the gameplay and character of GalCiv I enjoy.

If Mars was within your 'territory,' then there's a clear violation and a valid cause for a declaration of war. If Mars was not within your 'territory,' then there are three obvious ways of resolving this:

1. Territory could be handed out on a first-come, first-serve basis - colonies stake territorial claims in order of age, with the oldest colonies going first and the younger colonies picking from the leftovers.

2. Territory represents the 'do not send warships closer than here, and don't colonize anything within this limit of my stuff,' in which case there's a kind of 'demilitarized zone' that gets created in the overlapping territory - no one can station warships, construct starbases, or found colonies in the overlapped area, but the boundaries of the space where you can say 'get out of my territory' have not changed.

3. Border shifts to be equidistant from colonies; if there are an odd number of tiles, perhaps the center tile is a 'demilitarized zone' or is considered 'international space,' or perhaps the larger/older colony gets it.

Regardless of how the game handled it, though, as long as it's consistent and relatively fair it doesn't really matter.

This is exactly what I object to - areas of influence are not zones of control or national territory, especially since influence in Galactic Civilizations is cultural influence rather than military or economic influence. No kind of influence gives me the right to dictate what other nations do within their sovereign territory or in international space. Military or economic influence may give me the power to do so, but cultural influence does not; cultural influence may be used as a basis for intervening militarily or economically to 'protect the interests of the <insert culture adjective here> people found within <insert state or region here>,' but I'd point out that that particular excuse tends to be used mostly by people with expansionist aims rather than the best interests of the people within whatever region is being considered, and fairly often is used with little regard for the interests of the peoples whose interests are supposedly being protected.

As far as the empty space thing goes - tax what? And I don't recall there being any tax income that I received from foreign colonies within my area of influence unless I approved one of those objectionable United Planets resolutions about forcing other states to pay a tax for colonies under foreign influence. If you want me to pay a tax on colonies I have inside your influence boundaries, then you'd best be able to coerce payments from me because cultural influence has nothing at all to do with who has the right to tax the region.

I do remember some sort of a revenue from sectors I controlled, but I don't remember the mechanics of it. Was it tourism?

Yes, it's tourism.

Personally I always found that an "Influence Victory" was too easy and ended the game before I was ready to stop playing, I always disabled it at game start-up.  I had to resort to building cultural starbases in games to halt and reverse the cultural growth of other races.

The thing this thread seems to miss, is that starbases were frequently used just to expand the travel distance for discovery and trade benefits.  Okay, if the United Planets Forum passed the resolution you had to pay the tax on the starbase, but it was generally worth it to reach and trade with the race that is beyond the race's "territory" in which the starbase is built.  And yes, the only non-aggressive starbase to build, out of a range of 3 types, was an Influence starbase. 

Personally I'd like to see the whole Influence mechanic scrapped and the Trading system overhauled and enhanced, at least enough so that the above objective could be achieved with a *Trading Starbase* [built from constructors of course).  Then you could , say, trade with planets within a radius of X, Y or Z hexes dependent upon Galaxy/Universe size as well as using it as a stepping-stone to other races.

Also If we're having Starports built in the solar system of the planet, the corollary is that we no longer can or have to build a Starport on the planetary surface in the planetary management screen.  The implication is that you have one already built near your homeworld and that you have to build one in every solar system that you colonize.  Do the Dev's realise that where a solar system has more than 1 inhabitable planet they could be colonized by 2 races so leading to there being 2 starports being built [1 for each race] ?  If *Influence* is retained then that would lead to War pretty much inevitably and it's not a far-fetched scenario.

The purpose of influencer starbases is to cause cultural insurrection. This makes it very aggressive, in my opinion. The only starbase that doesn't has a negative effect on other races is the economy one.

No, you don't have to build one in each star system. You could just send the production of several planets to a starport you have already build somewhere else.

while you don't have to build one per starsystem the current suggested reduction in resources delivered to starport ( anything more then 6 tiles) suggests that one star port per solar system will be the most effecient ( unless you happen to have 2 solar systems really close together 

You hit the nail on the head. Influence needs to be based on trade rather than being spread through nonsensical "influence starbases". My proposal would be to make influence a purely planetary value and eliminate sector influence, but allow this planetary cultural influence to be spread through foreign trade routes. To get the fullest out of this we would have to add citizen culture, citizenship (loyalty), and race to planets, which could be used to enable other mechanics as well that would make the game far more immersive and realistic.

So nice to be right for once Wer900.  Please expand on your ideas of *citizen culture/loyalty/race* so that I can understand them better and explain how *influence* being planetary based, will travel along trade routes or what effect you are seeking to achieve.

My idea of *Trading Starbases* needs enhancing by being able to upgrade them with Constructors and Technology that enables them to expand their reach to trade with additional solar systems and expand the range of travel for other ships whatever the size of the game universe.

Then again, why not make them Multi-purpose  starbases, because if your trading with surrounding planets you're also going to need to conduct at least some basic form of Diplomacy, and I think it is utter foolishness if you can't enhance Starbases and Starports with at least some level of Defensive Weaponry if not the full ability to turn them into an antagonistic Military Outpost if, during the normal game progression, that area of Space becomes Hostile for any number of reasons.  It's just sound Economics not to duplicate a space installation from scratch, when you could just add the necessary module(s) to an existing item of Space infrastructure.

Is anyone with me and up for this ?

In comment on Reply#18 Guanathor, yes I concede that I may have it wrong about Influence starbases not being aggressive, but, in terms of GC2's Twilight, building an Economic Starbase out in the middle of nowhere just to get a partial use [being able to increase trade revenue when a tradeship is within its area of effect] is a wasted opportunity because you're not going to need any of the Economic enhancement modules for increasing production/wealth/science output for a non-existent nearby planet, yet you're gonna want to add all the defensive Military modules to protect this investment, so it becomes a very costly investment for a very limited payback. 

Although this does ignore any Strategic significance of such a Starbase, if a non-combatative Starbase can have any Strategic value.

About only having One Starport, the one you start with near your Homeworld; regardless of losing production or not via interstallar distances, Throughout GC2 you had to have a Starport on a planet for it to connect its resources or perhaps it was just to additionalize your area of territorial influence by having the Starbase built.  Presumably this is no longer a requirement of the game, you colonize a world, so building/acquiring its Capital City and there you go.  So why in release 0.02 alpha are we still putting old-fashioned "GC2"-type Starports on the planets we colonize ?  I know it's early days yet but it's very confusing.  Who knows, I don't think the Dev's have decided yet whether to keep  and re-purpose these old-fashioned "Starports" as production-relay centres to channel the new Starport production requirements.

It makes more sense to me to have the new Starports able to add production capacity modules and any other useful module as necessary.  IMHO this would need a planetary based, localized, old-fashioned-type Starport facility just to produce local Constructors to launch them with resources to use on the Inter-Stallar-Starport for building its Module-improvements and towards building Inter-stellar Craft of all types, rather than an easier, "quick-fix" game mechanic of the indeterminate "Channelling" of production capacity to the Inter-stellar Space-Construction-Depot.  This would also mean re=establishing the twin output system of 1 production-queue for Planetary improvements and the other production queue solely to build sub-inter-stellar resource Constructors and troop ferries to equip Inter-stellar ships with crews and Inter-stellar Invaders with troops.  Okay, Much more Realistic but a little heavy on the micro-management side perhaps otherwise how can you object ?

I don't like the "single-output" production Queue, it's too much of a break with the old system of production which worked well.  Along with adopting "Hexes", it's just too much of a SidMeierism copycat influence from Civ5 [well all the Civiliation Series really, as they all have single production queues].  Hopefully people will listen and support my ideas so that I will end up with a game I enjoy playing rather than having a dead albatross into which I have sunk my money and never play.  I'm sure everyone feels the same way about their suggestions though and the Devs will end up doing what can be afforded to be done.

Sure, but you're not pissing off your neighbours either. Unlike military and influencer starbases, economic starbases are completely non-threatening. You can even build them within the territory of other races without fear of repercussions. That's very useful, if you want good relations with your neighbours.

Why would you do that? From mid-game on, starbase defences in GalCiv 2 were a complete waste of resources. You're better off sending a fleet of warships, if you absolutely have to protect that starbase.

Are you sure, that you are not thinking of Space Empires or another game? The only purpose of the starport in GalCiv 2 was to enable a planet to build ships.

Maybe a dev will answer this, but here are two reasons I could think of:

1. the devs wanted to first see our reactions to the single-queue mechanic.

2. the shipyard-mechanic is a new design-idea (it was first mentioned here, and a rough concept was added at the start of April to the Founder's Vault), and the devs hadn't had time to implement it for the start of the alpha.

The dual-queue is already going to return. It's one of the big points of the new shipyard-mechanic.

I agree that it makes sense to have 1 star Base  serving multiple functions possibly have each star bar able to build most modules with a few specialization modules that can't be built at the same time. But how do you justify loading all these military modules on your friendly star base

as for the second point I would hope that star bases are better balanced into the mid to late game this in gc 3 

I would like to see shipyards be required to be within a fixed distance of a player-owned structure - either a planet or a starbase.

I would also like to see a "residential and recreation" module that would be required to support 1 shipyard or 5 mining operations.  You then have a line from the mine/shipyard that represents where those people go to rest, recreate, and procreate and then - for shipyards - lines of supply from participating supply worlds and mines.

Aside from the supply aspects the R&R module could be a - albeit likely small - source of revenue.

It would also be cool for starbases to act in a similar manner to shipyards.  They would have their own production queue and supply planets and be able to build modules without having to send a constructor out.

I would maybe also enforce a concept of patrolled supply lines such that the lines drawn between a planet (or resource) and its target yard/base could only go through your territory (and other friendly territory with the proper agreements) - not neutral territory.  Isolated bases (yards would still require a nearby support base) could still be supplied by constructors.  Taking it a little further auto-supply could be forced to go directly to bases only and then the bases would supply their attached yards (a planet would have an implied base - maybe physically realized on the map).  Planets would simply indicate the split for home vs base and then each base would split between itself (for modules) and yard(s) [which brings up how do resources get divided in a one planet - multiple yards scenario].  The bases would then have storage for unused materials - and warehouse modules with which to store them.  Capturing a starbase would capture some or all of the warehoused material.  

You can build a constructor module which simply stores a fixed amount of production if you wanted to re-allocate.  I would prefer also that using a constructor to offload production does not consume the constructor - but that it would have to go to a shipyard to refill - either from inventory or in lieu of ship production.  The material cost of the ship would not have to be recovered.  During actual construction only the material cost would be required but the ship could remain to fill up or be immediately sent elsewhere to obtain resources.

I dislike the implied ability to "material rush" that this allows but it isn't any different than the "money rush" feature already present.  I do not know whether adding a separate "time to build" metric for everything would be beneficial but I think it should be considered - even if only addressing the "money rush" mechanic.

--David Johnston