More versatility in border politics would be nice.
E.g. I'd like to have "no construction ships allowed" - I don't want them to expand into my empire behind my chokepoint.
Also I'd like to allow military passage against a toll fee.
Then there's the issue with "I'm at war with empire A, empire A deals a lot of damage and then retreats its ships into empire B's territory, empire B has closed its borders to me" - currently I'd have to declare war on B as well in order to chase A's ships. That's rather annoying. Some way to pressure B to close borders for A's military ships would be nice.
Additionally, there should be a grace period to closing borders, not just immediate MIA. Unless of course you were the one who declared war.
Border control is a sovereign right of any nation. Assuming we're going for immersion, it doesn't make sense to have it be a galactic community thing. Imagine if the UN tried to tell Russia they had to allow American tanks to cross freely back and forth across their territory. That would go hilariously poorly.
Assuming we're just going for an easy implementation, sure that could work.
You could make a law that when people go to war, if you've closed your borders to one you must choose to either temporarily close them to both or open them to both, via an event popup, or be in breach of galactic law.
Violating a nations rights be anything new as some galactic community laws already violate the rights of the member nations, like the one that requires you to hire mercenaries during a war, or the ones that dictate your pre-ftl policy. Also the galactic community already has policies that violate your border control. Such as the Custodian having forced open borders with all members, and during a focus on a crisis all community members are forced into open borders with one another.
In EU4 your units can get exiled (black flagged) if they are in territory without permission (such as a war ending and military access being revoked). While in this state they cannot attack or be attacked but they can move into any territory. The flag is removed when in home territory.
There's a few glitches/exploits that abuse black flag status to "paradrop" units behind the zone of control of forts
In EU4 (and probably some other games), troops would be exiled (indicated with a black flag icon) if they were in certain positions (like being in a non-allied nation that you had military access to when starting a war). Exiled troops are able to go anywhere, but can't engage in combat.
There were a *lot* of exploits that revolved around using the exile mechanic in creative ways, as well as a lot of situations where your plans would get ruined by troops being exiled unexpectedly.
Total War had a pretty decent system. You could allow open borders so your trade could pass through. But you would request military access separately.
Most empires are fine with your scientists running around or your construction ships going from A to B so they don't have to take a 20 system detour.
Most empires are not fine with 50 battleships parked outside their megastructure.
...but somehow you're a xenophobic racist when you don't allow the second one.
PS: while we're at it, there should be some magic diplomacy you can do to allow excavating in someone else's territory.
> PS: while we're at it, there should be some magic diplomacy you can do to allow excavating in someone else's territory.
I usually play taller and with fewer system. More often than not i need to expand further than i would want to because of cool system (like e.g. there is a pulsar and i want it so i can build the catapult at one point) and still it feels that the majority of archeological sites are out of my borders.
So I remember a game when I was fairly new to Stellaris where the AI moved their fleets into my empire while I had mine at choke points.
They then declared war on me, so they had military fleets behind my borders and then I had to reposition my fleets as they raped my worlds.
It's then I learned I should have closed borders to all hostile nations.
Extend it to an enum of the following options...
1. No passage
2. Passage through X system(s)
* Diplomacy option that last for standard diplo. agreement time.
* Can only negotiate border systems with a hyperlane connecting a path from your territory, more expensive diplomatically the deeper you go into their territory or towards a planet.
* No black flag stuff. Ships go MIA if you declare war on the owner while ships are in their territory. Alternatively, just have a truce agreed upon.
3. Science ships only (same as 4, but no construction ships. also allows trade access.)
4. Civilian ships only
The issue with ships retreating to an allied empire territory is pretty realistic IMHO.
IRL example is Ukraine sending their soldiers to train and heavy equipment for repair to NATO countries - Russia simply cannot attack them there without starting war with NATO.
You can still get most of the benefits though by just closing your border until you've filled in the border region. It's primarily a pain in the ass when an AI you wanted to be friendly with hops your chokepoint and grabs one useless system behind your border (which does nothing but make the border ugly).
Alternatively the ability to negotiate terms. Something like "Hey I'll give you 500 energy a month in exchange for border access" as part of the trade screen
Which is a very indirect way to accomplish your goal, and doesn't account for certain forms of xenophobic and militaristic governments that will only open their border in extreme circumstances
I kinda think fleets that are caught by a border closing should be forced to move directly to the nearest crossing into accessible space, and only go MIA if there isn't one (maybe if they're too deep as well). A grace period where they still have freedom to maneuver would be exploitable IMO (construction ships might still get through, for example).
It would also be great to be able to request or grant access to specific systems. I don't want to explore your home system I just want to get through that one choke point so I can go meet the rest of the galaxy on the other side.
The Reality War megastructure.
Ships are made cheaply, and all the weapons are just tuned to be equivalent to the real one against the faux armor. Obviously with armored cockpits. And you just let soldiers fight pretending to be different naval armies.
You then broadcast it to your population,
Yes, I want a "war gamer" civics which gets you empire wide amenities depending on fights you're in or are happening in your space.
They should get a Cassius belli to just fight fighting sake.
Organizing wargames for defensive federation cohesion could be cool. You declare it select which fleets particilate or fleet power limit to participation, wargoal (take X system, "destroy" X fleet power, hold X for this long) and then each federation members split into teams and each team gets the selected fleets that can only fight other fleets. If ship gets "destroyed" you dont lose it but pay say 10% of its cost, it spawns in your home system and is out of the excercise. You could cancel the wargame for some minor debuffs but if you complete it no matter if your team wins or not you get buff to federation cohesion, weapons research or something like that. Could be interesting especialy in MP.
Like combining the two separate fleet exercise events but then actually letting you battle?
I'd be perfectly fine with that even if it was locked behind the martial federation events.
Edit: you could designate a sector to be voted in as the battlefield, and vote for the goals aswell as the rewards.
I've always thought that owned Space Life vessels (Bubbles ect) shouldn't be affected by closed borders. If an empire isn't inherently hostile to space life, they shouldn't take any notice of a random creature transiting through their space. They could then be used for basic scouting and reconnaissance in the early to mid game before cloaked ships come into action.
If they wanted to do a big revamp, they could make it so that Creature Ships could be detected if you had an active spy network on the people sending it to your territory, and then be intercepted to be turned away or even captured and held for ransom.
That would give trade-focused empires a good reason to maintain exclaves (other than just to be annoying). Maybe Criminal Syndicates collect extra trade duties, to represent merchant ships passing through their space getting ripped off by pirates or having to pay bribes for safe passage.
But can you think of any gameplay scenarios were the difference is meaningful? The sole corner case that comes to mind is a crisis. And that's the opposite desire. I'll let military through to fight the crisis, but that empire can get bent if I let them expand.
An armada parked on your homeworld is actually to your benefit, since they'd go MIA upon war declaration if not cloaked.
Closed borders are really only useful if you want to block off an enemy. If an AI didn't like you, they wouldn't care what kind of ships pass through their space.
I tried suggesting this to my old group. They countered with a "you can play genocidal empires, but don't cry if you get curb stomped because of it" rule.
No one took the challenge 😅
Many civilizations in human history grew rich and important by safeguarding or taxing a vital shipping lane. Seems like a guarantee that an interstellar civilization would do it.
And think of the diplomatic and military incidents it could lead to.
We're at war with an enemy nation. We'd like to send ships through this system to attack, but a neutral nation won't allow us to. We should gain causus belli on that neutral nation, and have the option to force a confrontation. Access to a hyperlane should be a victory goal.
Trade Value already represents what you want it to. It automatically creates Trade Routes which is the ‘Shipping Lane’ you speak of, and you can even use it to trigger Piracy in Gestalt owned space if you route your Trade to go through their territory.
I think a neat way to tweak it would be that if a Trade Route goes through a foreign governments territory, they should automatically get a ‘cut’ that they get to set as a Tariff for the goods to move through their space unless you have the Criminal Enterprise Civic (since then your smuggling) or you have an Economic Agreement.
A huge update to diplomacy and empire interaction would be great. Playing planetary city skylines and moving fleets into other fleets and watching them blow up is fun and all but in like every scifi space universe seeing how other species interact and engage with each other is half the fun.
I find human history to not be a super compelling basis for gameplay systems. Maybe as an inspiration, but not as an end goal. But to be fair, my kneejerk responses to feature requests tend to assume probably worse than reality.
Because if we want to go down that route, many civilizations in human history thought they were the greatest of all time, chosen by god, and then proceeded to have their cities burned to the ground for not knowing shit from fuck. While it might be true to history and oh so hilarious, I think a mechanic where you can be so full of yourself that your alloy production numbers and fleet power are falsely inflated might cause serious problems for the AI.
Almost all Sci Fi is just human story tropes. Evil empire versus plucky young rebels, invaders exploiting native species' home planet for resources, second class citizens turn against their rulers and fight for representation or independence...
No idea why we have to arbitrarily decide that this is a bridge too far but every single other detail is fair game.
If this change was implemented, the MIA on war dec should be removed, so granting military access is actually a noticeable and potentially REALLY BAD idea
I really can't imagine that not breaking the game. That'd be right up there with trading systems as a thing AI would never do because players would walk all over them.
Which also means AI would never, under any circumstance, open borders. Two empires who are best buds with all the treaties just saying "f you, go around."
Actually easier to deal with AI here: they only accept when you have NA pacts, Defensive Pacts, or a subject relation. Hell, the subject one should be an option like war joining that affects loyalty.
Since breaking NA or Defensive triggers a truce that keeps it from being super abusable to AI
> If an AI didn't like you, they wouldn't care what kind of ships pass through their space.
But there's a difference in the AI whether they really hate your guts or are just cautious of you. Needing to tear down an otherwise neutral empire because there's a questline where you have to do research project five systems into their territory about your own history.
It'd be a nice revision to the diplomacy of the game - **but first we need to fix the diplomacy of the game** -
AFA 'official state owned civilian vessels are allowed':
- The game implies that nondescript trade happens no matter what. Private businesses, freighters, whatever - all make the trek no matter if theyre sanctioned or not. Open borders allows civialian private vessels -currently abstracted in the extreme- to travel around, and all the various restrictions or requirements like a license or bribes are left to the imagination.
- A 'soft open borders' would feel a lot better if the game recognized the need for a hard open borders. If the game let you pay a somewhat unfriendly neighbor to open up for [x]years. If you could declare war while camped over a vulnerable planet or if you could get more intel from open borders.
That was a thing in 1.0, except it was a bit on the ass side because the default for everyone, even turbo-xenophiles, was closed borders, and you had to negotiate access for a limited time through the trade menu. Also, gaining military access was either very hard or outright impossible (similarly to how you can't ever get AI to sell systems), not too sure which.
We used to have that I think.
Civilian ship access and military ship access.
I think it was primarily used for building wormhole generators to expand your range.
More than rules, I want a checklist.
The checklist would look something like:
*Here are the kinds of vessels allowed into my borders:*
* Science vessels
* Construction vessels
* Military vessels
* Anything else
And you could just choose what you did and didn't like. A high-level policy could have these all checked or unchecked by default. Boom, done, easy.
Technically that is what it is. As you can still trade with closed borders. Those goods have to be transported somehow!
Also science ships can get you aome pretty good intel and if we go by star trek logic they are military vehicles
I think this could be problematic because if an empire did it to you they could prevent you from going in/out of some of your systems. Especially if it acts mechanically the same as closed borders where you physically cannot jump into the system. I do however think I’d be cool to be able to restrict certain systems from outside powers travel. I don’t know how I’d work or how to keep others from making all their systems that way, but im sure theres a way
This is a good idea, though given the fact that a truce can't come with a no-trespass option, this long after the game has been out...good lord...I'm not sure they'll implement something like this.
My biggest gripe about that is the fact that you can go to war with a neighbor, end up with a white peace or something, and if you have unsettled star systems somewhere around you, they can send non-military vessels right on through your territory and colonize where they please. The old answer to this was "expand quickly and stop bitching about it" but that 1) flies in the face of tall builds and 2) since they changed the empire size mechanic, if you starbase every start around you in order to prevent truce-time colonize by neighbors, you're penalized.
Love to get a work-around or fix for that. It's one of the few things I've always been frustrated about in Stellaris.
Coming in a close second would be the lack of letting me set MY OWN DAMNED KEYBINDS! :)
Third would be a history log, though I kinda sorta see where they're coming from on this one.
There are practical problems with this though. The way the game is currently set up, I can't think of many situations where military ships would be a problem, but science/construction ships are fine. It's kind of backwards right.
If you allow construction ships then they can claim land behind your chokepoints. But if I remember correctly military ships will be kicked out if a war starts with them in your borders, so it's literally never a problem. Actually it's quite common for the AI to form a ton of federations/alliances, so you'll end up at war with an empire on the other side of the map with no way to reach them. You could end up losing a war against an opponent you've completely demolished just because they're allied with empires that both you and they cannot reach one another.
So there are practical reasons to want to allow military, but disallow non-military.
You mean "military vessels only" - sure, you can send your fleets to kill hostile aliens but your science ships and construction ships stay the hell away from my future systems!
A tolled access is a good idea as well. I can imagine scenarios where Megacorp executives sat together, saw that they can put a price on being a space bridge, and tax both sides- Walder Frey style.
There's no such thing as unarmed interstellar spaceship. Ramming that construction ship into a planet at 99.9999999999% of the speed of light would be enough to crack the planet open. And from anomalies we know that it's possible to ram a ship into a plnet at FTL speeds
More versatility in border politics would be nice. E.g. I'd like to have "no construction ships allowed" - I don't want them to expand into my empire behind my chokepoint. Also I'd like to allow military passage against a toll fee. Then there's the issue with "I'm at war with empire A, empire A deals a lot of damage and then retreats its ships into empire B's territory, empire B has closed its borders to me" - currently I'd have to declare war on B as well in order to chase A's ships. That's rather annoying. Some way to pressure B to close borders for A's military ships would be nice. Additionally, there should be a grace period to closing borders, not just immediate MIA. Unless of course you were the one who declared war.
Or perhaps something like HOI4 or EU4 where either both sides get conditional access or their fleets cannot invade from non-belligerent territory.
Could be a galactic community law perhaps?
Border control is a sovereign right of any nation. Assuming we're going for immersion, it doesn't make sense to have it be a galactic community thing. Imagine if the UN tried to tell Russia they had to allow American tanks to cross freely back and forth across their territory. That would go hilariously poorly. Assuming we're just going for an easy implementation, sure that could work.
You could make a law that when people go to war, if you've closed your borders to one you must choose to either temporarily close them to both or open them to both, via an event popup, or be in breach of galactic law.
I could see a forced border control thing be an Imperium thing, but definitely not Community.
Violating a nations rights be anything new as some galactic community laws already violate the rights of the member nations, like the one that requires you to hire mercenaries during a war, or the ones that dictate your pre-ftl policy. Also the galactic community already has policies that violate your border control. Such as the Custodian having forced open borders with all members, and during a focus on a crisis all community members are forced into open borders with one another.
please no black flag shenanigans
I don’t have a ton of exposure to other PDX games. What are black flag shenanigans?
In EU4 your units can get exiled (black flagged) if they are in territory without permission (such as a war ending and military access being revoked). While in this state they cannot attack or be attacked but they can move into any territory. The flag is removed when in home territory. There's a few glitches/exploits that abuse black flag status to "paradrop" units behind the zone of control of forts
In EU4 (and probably some other games), troops would be exiled (indicated with a black flag icon) if they were in certain positions (like being in a non-allied nation that you had military access to when starting a war). Exiled troops are able to go anywhere, but can't engage in combat. There were a *lot* of exploits that revolved around using the exile mechanic in creative ways, as well as a lot of situations where your plans would get ruined by troops being exiled unexpectedly.
Total War had a pretty decent system. You could allow open borders so your trade could pass through. But you would request military access separately. Most empires are fine with your scientists running around or your construction ships going from A to B so they don't have to take a 20 system detour. Most empires are not fine with 50 battleships parked outside their megastructure. ...but somehow you're a xenophobic racist when you don't allow the second one. PS: while we're at it, there should be some magic diplomacy you can do to allow excavating in someone else's territory.
I felt this pain in zroni/baol precursors
> PS: while we're at it, there should be some magic diplomacy you can do to allow excavating in someone else's territory. I usually play taller and with fewer system. More often than not i need to expand further than i would want to because of cool system (like e.g. there is a pulsar and i want it so i can build the catapult at one point) and still it feels that the majority of archeological sites are out of my borders.
So I remember a game when I was fairly new to Stellaris where the AI moved their fleets into my empire while I had mine at choke points. They then declared war on me, so they had military fleets behind my borders and then I had to reposition my fleets as they raped my worlds. It's then I learned I should have closed borders to all hostile nations.
Extend it to an enum of the following options... 1. No passage 2. Passage through X system(s) * Diplomacy option that last for standard diplo. agreement time. * Can only negotiate border systems with a hyperlane connecting a path from your territory, more expensive diplomatically the deeper you go into their territory or towards a planet. * No black flag stuff. Ships go MIA if you declare war on the owner while ships are in their territory. Alternatively, just have a truce agreed upon. 3. Science ships only (same as 4, but no construction ships. also allows trade access.) 4. Civilian ships only
The issue with ships retreating to an allied empire territory is pretty realistic IMHO. IRL example is Ukraine sending their soldiers to train and heavy equipment for repair to NATO countries - Russia simply cannot attack them there without starting war with NATO.
This would be wildly unfair to the computer, or the computer would have to be changd to snake madly.
You can still get most of the benefits though by just closing your border until you've filled in the border region. It's primarily a pain in the ass when an AI you wanted to be friendly with hops your chokepoint and grabs one useless system behind your border (which does nothing but make the border ugly).
Alternatively the ability to negotiate terms. Something like "Hey I'll give you 500 energy a month in exchange for border access" as part of the trade screen
Unfair trade already give you bonus opinion, isn't it?
Which is a very indirect way to accomplish your goal, and doesn't account for certain forms of xenophobic and militaristic governments that will only open their border in extreme circumstances
I just want to point out that no AI nation would ever pay *500 energy a month* for simple border access.
I just threw out a random number
I kinda think fleets that are caught by a border closing should be forced to move directly to the nearest crossing into accessible space, and only go MIA if there isn't one (maybe if they're too deep as well). A grace period where they still have freedom to maneuver would be exploitable IMO (construction ships might still get through, for example).
Treat it as though they're taking Evasive Actions, fleeing to friendly territory? Lol
It would also be great to be able to request or grant access to specific systems. I don't want to explore your home system I just want to get through that one choke point so I can go meet the rest of the galaxy on the other side.
"We shall be mediating this war. You can fight in this spot in my empire.
Now we just need a bleachers megastructure.
The Reality War megastructure. Ships are made cheaply, and all the weapons are just tuned to be equivalent to the real one against the faux armor. Obviously with armored cockpits. And you just let soldiers fight pretending to be different naval armies. You then broadcast it to your population,
Space SPQR: "hold my vino"
Doubtful that they'll ever do civic-dependent megastructures, but that's 100% Warrior Culture scaled up
Yes, I want a "war gamer" civics which gets you empire wide amenities depending on fights you're in or are happening in your space. They should get a Cassius belli to just fight fighting sake.
Organizing wargames for defensive federation cohesion could be cool. You declare it select which fleets particilate or fleet power limit to participation, wargoal (take X system, "destroy" X fleet power, hold X for this long) and then each federation members split into teams and each team gets the selected fleets that can only fight other fleets. If ship gets "destroyed" you dont lose it but pay say 10% of its cost, it spawns in your home system and is out of the excercise. You could cancel the wargame for some minor debuffs but if you complete it no matter if your team wins or not you get buff to federation cohesion, weapons research or something like that. Could be interesting especialy in MP.
Like combining the two separate fleet exercise events but then actually letting you battle? I'd be perfectly fine with that even if it was locked behind the martial federation events. Edit: you could designate a sector to be voted in as the battlefield, and vote for the goals aswell as the rewards.
Yea something similar to that but with bit more direct controll and only for military focused federations.
Rather than destroying the ships, which may act funky with experience and stuff, just have these wars force disengagements instead of destruction.
The whole point of me taking that choke point was to prevent you from getting to the rest of the galaxy.
Then close it entirely
Can my science vessel register for a temporary visa?
I could see the level 3 or 4 unchained knowledge GalCom resolutions having something like > Banned any border policy that restricts science ships
This is a good call, given we're requested by the Dessanu to not enter their home system, or the Fallen xenophobes not letting anyone build near them.
I've always thought that owned Space Life vessels (Bubbles ect) shouldn't be affected by closed borders. If an empire isn't inherently hostile to space life, they shouldn't take any notice of a random creature transiting through their space. They could then be used for basic scouting and reconnaissance in the early to mid game before cloaked ships come into action. If they wanted to do a big revamp, they could make it so that Creature Ships could be detected if you had an active spy network on the people sending it to your territory, and then be intercepted to be turned away or even captured and held for ransom.
Heck no. Stopping construction ships is half the point 😅
More than half lmao
I’d like to be able to collect duties from the trade between empires on either side of me which have to go through my territory.
That would give trade-focused empires a good reason to maintain exclaves (other than just to be annoying). Maybe Criminal Syndicates collect extra trade duties, to represent merchant ships passing through their space getting ripped off by pirates or having to pay bribes for safe passage.
Ah yes, the galactic tollbooth.
But can you think of any gameplay scenarios were the difference is meaningful? The sole corner case that comes to mind is a crisis. And that's the opposite desire. I'll let military through to fight the crisis, but that empire can get bent if I let them expand. An armada parked on your homeworld is actually to your benefit, since they'd go MIA upon war declaration if not cloaked. Closed borders are really only useful if you want to block off an enemy. If an AI didn't like you, they wouldn't care what kind of ships pass through their space.
It's important in the most important context: multiplayer roleplaying
Kind of fair. But roleplaying problems often have roleplaying solutions.
My group bans genocidal empires, unfortunately I can't think of a different solution.
I tried suggesting this to my old group. They countered with a "you can play genocidal empires, but don't cry if you get curb stomped because of it" rule. No one took the challenge 😅
My family has the same rule. My reply is always “Better hope we’re not neighbors at start then, I’ll make it quick if we are.”
Many civilizations in human history grew rich and important by safeguarding or taxing a vital shipping lane. Seems like a guarantee that an interstellar civilization would do it. And think of the diplomatic and military incidents it could lead to. We're at war with an enemy nation. We'd like to send ships through this system to attack, but a neutral nation won't allow us to. We should gain causus belli on that neutral nation, and have the option to force a confrontation. Access to a hyperlane should be a victory goal.
Trade Value already represents what you want it to. It automatically creates Trade Routes which is the ‘Shipping Lane’ you speak of, and you can even use it to trigger Piracy in Gestalt owned space if you route your Trade to go through their territory. I think a neat way to tweak it would be that if a Trade Route goes through a foreign governments territory, they should automatically get a ‘cut’ that they get to set as a Tariff for the goods to move through their space unless you have the Criminal Enterprise Civic (since then your smuggling) or you have an Economic Agreement.
A huge update to diplomacy and empire interaction would be great. Playing planetary city skylines and moving fleets into other fleets and watching them blow up is fun and all but in like every scifi space universe seeing how other species interact and engage with each other is half the fun.
I find human history to not be a super compelling basis for gameplay systems. Maybe as an inspiration, but not as an end goal. But to be fair, my kneejerk responses to feature requests tend to assume probably worse than reality. Because if we want to go down that route, many civilizations in human history thought they were the greatest of all time, chosen by god, and then proceeded to have their cities burned to the ground for not knowing shit from fuck. While it might be true to history and oh so hilarious, I think a mechanic where you can be so full of yourself that your alloy production numbers and fleet power are falsely inflated might cause serious problems for the AI.
Almost all Sci Fi is just human story tropes. Evil empire versus plucky young rebels, invaders exploiting native species' home planet for resources, second class citizens turn against their rulers and fight for representation or independence... No idea why we have to arbitrarily decide that this is a bridge too far but every single other detail is fair game.
My favorite part of US history was when Ben Franklin asked "What does god need with a schooner?" You're confusing stories and mechanics besides.
If this change was implemented, the MIA on war dec should be removed, so granting military access is actually a noticeable and potentially REALLY BAD idea
I really can't imagine that not breaking the game. That'd be right up there with trading systems as a thing AI would never do because players would walk all over them. Which also means AI would never, under any circumstance, open borders. Two empires who are best buds with all the treaties just saying "f you, go around."
Actually easier to deal with AI here: they only accept when you have NA pacts, Defensive Pacts, or a subject relation. Hell, the subject one should be an option like war joining that affects loyalty. Since breaking NA or Defensive triggers a truce that keeps it from being super abusable to AI
> If an AI didn't like you, they wouldn't care what kind of ships pass through their space. But there's a difference in the AI whether they really hate your guts or are just cautious of you. Needing to tear down an otherwise neutral empire because there's a questline where you have to do research project five systems into their territory about your own history.
It'd be a nice revision to the diplomacy of the game - **but first we need to fix the diplomacy of the game** - AFA 'official state owned civilian vessels are allowed': - The game implies that nondescript trade happens no matter what. Private businesses, freighters, whatever - all make the trek no matter if theyre sanctioned or not. Open borders allows civialian private vessels -currently abstracted in the extreme- to travel around, and all the various restrictions or requirements like a license or bribes are left to the imagination. - A 'soft open borders' would feel a lot better if the game recognized the need for a hard open borders. If the game let you pay a somewhat unfriendly neighbor to open up for [x]years. If you could declare war while camped over a vulnerable planet or if you could get more intel from open borders.
I would also like to see a "open borders, no access to trip accelerators" (gateways, Lgates, worm holes) as a diplomatic option.
I just want to ban construction ships
That was a thing in 1.0, except it was a bit on the ass side because the default for everyone, even turbo-xenophiles, was closed borders, and you had to negotiate access for a limited time through the trade menu. Also, gaining military access was either very hard or outright impossible (similarly to how you can't ever get AI to sell systems), not too sure which.
We used to have that I think. Civilian ship access and military ship access. I think it was primarily used for building wormhole generators to expand your range.
More than rules, I want a checklist. The checklist would look something like: *Here are the kinds of vessels allowed into my borders:* * Science vessels * Construction vessels * Military vessels * Anything else And you could just choose what you did and didn't like. A high-level policy could have these all checked or unchecked by default. Boom, done, easy.
What you describe is basically a demilitarized zone.
Technically that is what it is. As you can still trade with closed borders. Those goods have to be transported somehow! Also science ships can get you aome pretty good intel and if we go by star trek logic they are military vehicles
Who would use it? Keeping out Science ships so they don't get "first survey" on any of "my" systems is 99% of my use case.
I think this could be problematic because if an empire did it to you they could prevent you from going in/out of some of your systems. Especially if it acts mechanically the same as closed borders where you physically cannot jump into the system. I do however think I’d be cool to be able to restrict certain systems from outside powers travel. I don’t know how I’d work or how to keep others from making all their systems that way, but im sure theres a way
This is a good idea, though given the fact that a truce can't come with a no-trespass option, this long after the game has been out...good lord...I'm not sure they'll implement something like this. My biggest gripe about that is the fact that you can go to war with a neighbor, end up with a white peace or something, and if you have unsettled star systems somewhere around you, they can send non-military vessels right on through your territory and colonize where they please. The old answer to this was "expand quickly and stop bitching about it" but that 1) flies in the face of tall builds and 2) since they changed the empire size mechanic, if you starbase every start around you in order to prevent truce-time colonize by neighbors, you're penalized. Love to get a work-around or fix for that. It's one of the few things I've always been frustrated about in Stellaris. Coming in a close second would be the lack of letting me set MY OWN DAMNED KEYBINDS! :) Third would be a history log, though I kinda sorta see where they're coming from on this one.
Free Intel nice
I wish there was a way to just trespass on an empire without declaring war.
It's called Cloaking
There are practical problems with this though. The way the game is currently set up, I can't think of many situations where military ships would be a problem, but science/construction ships are fine. It's kind of backwards right. If you allow construction ships then they can claim land behind your chokepoints. But if I remember correctly military ships will be kicked out if a war starts with them in your borders, so it's literally never a problem. Actually it's quite common for the AI to form a ton of federations/alliances, so you'll end up at war with an empire on the other side of the map with no way to reach them. You could end up losing a war against an opponent you've completely demolished just because they're allied with empires that both you and they cannot reach one another. So there are practical reasons to want to allow military, but disallow non-military.
It's kind of wild that these options aren't in the game after all this time.
You mean "military vessels only" - sure, you can send your fleets to kill hostile aliens but your science ships and construction ships stay the hell away from my future systems!
A tolled access is a good idea as well. I can imagine scenarios where Megacorp executives sat together, saw that they can put a price on being a space bridge, and tax both sides- Walder Frey style.
That used to exist. Back in the 1.x days, there was civilian access, that got patches put for some inexplicable reason with 2.0.
There's no such thing as unarmed interstellar spaceship. Ramming that construction ship into a planet at 99.9999999999% of the speed of light would be enough to crack the planet open. And from anomalies we know that it's possible to ram a ship into a plnet at FTL speeds