(01-15-2022, 11:08 PM)martianant Wrote: Everyone keeps talking about how to fix the problem with weird over complicated solutions like "Safe space" or "civilized space" and a bunch of NPC empires that would end up introducing weirdness mechanics wise.
The bottom line is combat and war need to be fixed. War needs to take longer. It should have some kind of lead up period, so the defender can rally allies/friends. It needs to take time to actually take a system, so the defender and friends can field a fleet. There can be no epic battle stories if the battles take play within hours while everyone else is offline.
If people can live near by other people and not fear total destruction while they are asleep, if they can have some kind of guarantee that the friends they live near by could actually help defend them, then they would probably live near each other! We don't need to have an artificial reason for a civilized space to exist. And I don't want to speak for Haxus, but I feel like he would rather see this kind of space develop organically by players with player empires interacting.
Yes, this is exactly what Staines and I were talking about. And somewhat the topic of my old idea thread that I linked to.
You want to conquer a solar system, you park a big warship in the solar system and give it the order to siege. The ship will defend its area and broadcast propaganda on the Hail channel. Cities in the solar system (regardless of owner) will then start requesting help on the Friend channel. Once the solar system has been under siege this way for a week or so, the solar system enters a "contested" state that allow the attacker to invade, capture or bombard the cities.
Defender thereby have a whole week to try and stop the sieging ship with whatever means. Be it attacking it directly, requesting help from neighbors to deal with it, or even negotiate peace with the attacker. This would slow down war a lot, but I am not sure that we have ever wanted war in Hazeron to be super fast.
The time needed to siege a solar system is a little hard to decide on. Maybe basing it on the amount of population in the solar system and/or capital statuses of the cities.
I am not sure how this would work with the noncombatant system. You should probably be able to siege a system even if the owner(s) are offline, but then even once the solar system has been contested the attacker likely has to wait for them to come online to proceed with the attack.
The Idea thread isn't long, but I like not having all my ideas only mentioned in forgettable update threads.
So, here: (Idea thread) Conquest of Solar Systems
(01-15-2022, 11:08 PM)martianant Wrote: I also think having 20 galaxies is way too much. Especially given the player counts. One galaxy is plenty of space, and if there was ever a case where it wasn't then adding another galaxy would be pretty easy.
I don't have much to say on the topic of universe size. I am sure that the problem will fix itself as more reasons for player interaction and cooperation are implemented. The biggest issue we seem to have with multiple galaxies is the weird rush to get there first, and then those players get bored once they are too far from other players.
I will however say that it is easier to expand the universe later than it is to reduce it.