I answered your question, you asked if I want to besiege every little world in a system, then claimed that only larger empires will be able to do this, I pointed out this will almost never happen. If someone actually puts a bubble on every random airless moon, not that anyone will ever do that as that is totally pointless, you ignore them and only attack the planets that matter, which are very rare things.
It is also not particularly over complicated, what it essentially amounts to is turning off all buildings under the shield while the city is under fire. You would probably also need to prevent spacecraft from firing while under the bubble, as was done to fix the giant jenga motherships.
Since you asked for problems with the system wide siege notion, I would point out your idea likely requires far more complicated rules to make work than a city shield. For instance, to address some specific points:
In the city shield case, you know you are under attack because the shield is continually being bombed, which is both loud and also an obvious light show. If I remember correctly, any buildings under a shield bubble are protected by the shield even if someone weasels under it and starts C4ing them. Shields also already block transporters and prevent enemies from walking through them. If you place buildings that poke through the shield to absorb hits, the damage also appears to apply to the shield.
Currently you can still run around inside a shield killing people, (by blasting the shield until it flicks out temporarily and then deploying an orbital Zensras to cleanse all life), however this would not be a problem if the shield was invulnerable for days. Its very clean and hard to exploit from a mechanics perspective. City shields are already very close to doing what I am suggesting.
This also gives the player a lot more they can do to influence the outcome of the siege. You would want to design your city to fit under the shield as much as possible, might park spacecraft under the shield to protect them from being destroyed overnight, and the size and strength of the shield bubble is already something you can change in the designer. With the system wide siege there isn't much player choice involved, its the exact same outcome (all of your ships and military buildings gone overnight) more or less no matter how you design your cities.
It is also not particularly over complicated, what it essentially amounts to is turning off all buildings under the shield while the city is under fire. You would probably also need to prevent spacecraft from firing while under the bubble, as was done to fix the giant jenga motherships.
Since you asked for problems with the system wide siege notion, I would point out your idea likely requires far more complicated rules to make work than a city shield. For instance, to address some specific points:
- Since destroying all military buildings is needed to initiate the siege, is the siege broken if someone manages to build a guard tower?
- Do military buildings hidden on the bottom of an insidious gas giants count against preventing a siege?
- What about hiding military buildings between the invulnerable civilian buildings, thereby making them almost or entirely impossible to destroy? (I seem to remember this happening before)
- Is it really particularly amusing for your notification that you are under attack to be that all of your military buildings and spacecraft are gone and there is constant hail spam every 30 seconds?
- Even if you did away with the originally proposed hail spam, how would people know they are still under attack? The enemy ships will be parked far away doing nothing.
In the city shield case, you know you are under attack because the shield is continually being bombed, which is both loud and also an obvious light show. If I remember correctly, any buildings under a shield bubble are protected by the shield even if someone weasels under it and starts C4ing them. Shields also already block transporters and prevent enemies from walking through them. If you place buildings that poke through the shield to absorb hits, the damage also appears to apply to the shield.
Currently you can still run around inside a shield killing people, (by blasting the shield until it flicks out temporarily and then deploying an orbital Zensras to cleanse all life), however this would not be a problem if the shield was invulnerable for days. Its very clean and hard to exploit from a mechanics perspective. City shields are already very close to doing what I am suggesting.
This also gives the player a lot more they can do to influence the outcome of the siege. You would want to design your city to fit under the shield as much as possible, might park spacecraft under the shield to protect them from being destroyed overnight, and the size and strength of the shield bubble is already something you can change in the designer. With the system wide siege there isn't much player choice involved, its the exact same outcome (all of your ships and military buildings gone overnight) more or less no matter how you design your cities.