Needless to say, attempting this should involve variables involving tech (cloaking, scanners, etc), espionage (it's useful to know how the enemy operates and what to look for), obvious things such as distance from planets, longevity of trespass, and interference from other ship traffic, asteroids, nebulae, etc.

and.... good ol' fashioned chance.

If one invests enough, one should also be able to possibly pass as being someone else (fly false flags)...

cheers,

-tid242

How about a game feature where you can deploy a new type of space object called "Mine field" around your territory. These would incur a cost and would need a certain level of technology to develop. You would need to place one at each grid's point (i.e. 4 per parsec or tile - one for each corner). Then if any ship wanders into any tile so protected, it would be destroyed or at least take severe damage. This would affect all ships - friendly or enemy, although this could be a selectable option such that only races at war with you would be affected. Of course, your own ships would not be affected.

In this way, you could also set up mines around your planets and star systems in such a way that there would only be one safe "conduit" or pathway into your systems by other races, if you wanted to exert such territorial control.

These minefields could be upgraded and should incur a per turn cost (much like buildings do), so they might only make economic sense during certain periods of time in the game. Also, as civilizations advanced with better ship defenses, the amount of damage taken when wandering into these minefields would be lessened (unless the mines were also continuously upgraded as well). Also, each time a minefield destroys ships, there should be perhaps be an additional one-time cost to replace mines lost due to this - over and above the normal maintenance cost for each game turn.

Minefields should not be capable of being destroyed - they would have to be deliberately removed by the race who built them (i.e. like making them obsolete - like can be done for ships). If that race happened to be totally destroyed by a means other than being conquered by planetary invasion (like the Korath's spore ships, or a Death Star blowing up their star system), then the minefield would be left over as a space navigation hazard to all races. If the race was conquered by another, then the minefield would become part of the conqueror's assets.

Are you talking about invulnerable mine fields? So how do you get past an enemy's mines? Or an ally's mines? This sounds unbalanced in the extreme. It seems totally unfair to create a weapon that can't be countered in some way, with enough tech.

1- We should be allowed to destroy ships freely, even when not at war. So you can freely get rid of certain... interlopers who you dislike coming close to your territory.

2- The notion of "territory" is, always, ever, SUBJECTIVE. You shouldn't have "territory" spawning on its own. Borders has to be agreed upon by your neighbors.

For example, you could get into an agreement with your neighbor that you will not blow their ship outa the sky as long as they do not trespass on your territorial claim XYZ. The game should allow you to manually select the territory of your choice.

Obviously, AI and diplomatic options should be allowed to discuss your grievance ("you blew up our ship without reason!!", "You violated our treaty!!").

You could even grant right of passage to other races, as long as the ships they send are relatively unarmed. BAM, you just justified the existence of defenseless freighters/traders, and also created potential "pirate zones" (because no military ships can confront them without provoking an interstellar incident)

Well, it's not that the minefields are indestructible. It's just that the race who built them would have to obsolete them. If that race gets conquered during regular warfare invasions, or surrenders, then the minefield becomes an asset now owned by the conquering civilization as part of the spoils of war, and it is up to them if they want to disable or obsolete the minefield. Obsoleting a minefield would effectively remove it from play in the game.

As far as game balance goes, I did mention a couple of factors that would likely balance their use. I will list them here, and maybe add a few more:

1) Mine fields are gonna cost you some money to maintain. Even if they don't blow anything up at all, you gotta pay something to keep them in operation, so there is a game turn cost to owning a minefield.

2) If an enemy's ships DO get destroyed or damaged in a minefield, there is going to be an additional one-time cost (maybe per attack or incident?) to do some "repair" work to replace the mines that were destroyed. This will become part of the automatic Production costs incurred during the game turn.

So there are going to be economic costs for a minefield. That's why they might only make sense during war time or during times when say a Mega-Event like Pirate Swarms or Robotic Ship Swarms occurs in the galaxy. Then minefields might make sense to build as a strategic defense component at that point in the game.

3) Minefields have to be updated technologically too. As I mentioned in my post - as the enemie's ships get better defenses, the minefields should do less damage. so for example, let's say a Drengin or Pirate fleet with much better Tech Level Shields than you heads for your planet and has to go through the minefields. Maybe the net effect is that their ships suffer some damage to their hit points instead of being totally destroyed. Maybe only lesser shielded ships like oh, I don't know - Troop transports - are the ones that get destroyed? So if you wanted your minefields to exact the most amount of damage, they need to be upgraded. Maybe in the Tech tree you have a Space Warfare based technology for Smart Space Mine development that needs to be researched for this. Just a thought.

4) With respect to minefields left by your "allies". As long as your allies exist as a discrete civilization - they control their own minefields. If they want to let you pass through them, maybe you need to develop the Alliances Tech and actually Ally with them so that you can pass freely through their mined space. This might be one way to give a boost to the Diplomacy based tech trees - and incidentally make them more strategic in value to attain. Maybe there could be the benefit of trading with a civilization - any civilization you trade with also automatically allows you to pass through their mined space safely. There could be any number of ways this could figure in the game diplomatically.

None of those solve, or even come close to balancing, the indestructibility issue. There needs to be a way for an aggressor to eliminate them permanently. A mine sweeping module would be best; a hard cap on the number of mines and having heavily armored ships "soak" them would work. But once gone they don't magically reappear.

For that matter, they shouldn't magically appear the first time, either. They would need to be emplaced one hex at a time, by a specialized ship, so there is a significant opportunity cost to building them. If you want minefields, you need to build the ships to lay them and tend them - ships you have to build instead of regular combat ships.

You still haven't suggested any countervailing weapons for these mine fields of yours. If you included some sort of attack ships could use to damage and/or destroy these mine fields, then I would say your idea has merit and I would add my voice to it.

Well for the sake of argument and to add a few more good ideas to a minefield that I came up with:

1) So you want a way to destroy the minefield, well lets take a few lessons from actual "Earth History". Think of these mines as if they were in an ocean (of space). How did the Navies of the world get rid of them? Minesweepers. So to get rid of mines, you need a new ship type or a constructor with a mine-sweeping module. This could do the trick. However, there should be a penalty for using these - the penalty is one of speed, which I will explain below. If your fleet approaches a mined area, it could employ a couple of tactics:

1) Go through the minefield and take the damage. I would suggest that for each round or turn a ship or fleet spends in a mined area, they take damage. So the faster the ship can travel, the less time it spends in a mined area, and the less damage. I would submit though that at a minimum, no ship could ever fly through a mined region without taking at least 1 round or turn of damage - even if they can cross the entire mined area in a single turn.

2) This would introduce some interesting "nasty" things you could do in the game. For example, you could have a mined region, and then build a military satellite in the area with some of those speed-reducing modules on it (like the -2 Warp Field reducing module). This could act to keep an enemy fleet longer in a mined area and thus let them take more damage. How evil is that?

3) Going back to the minesweeper - if you have these in your fleet, then they could effectively clear a path or possibly even remove a mine field, but at a cost or penalty of limiting the movement of the entire fleet to 1 parsec per turn. Hey, it takes time to clear out a minefield! So it could take 10 game turns or more for your fleet to get through a single square or hex of space to clear the minefield - sort of like what happens in Galciv2 when you enter an asteroid field. Your speed is slowed to one movement rate per turn until you get out of the asteroid field, or like when you enter the YOR controlled space - your ships move at a very slow movement rate.

4) Alternatively, you can always fly your fleet AROUND the mine field if it doesn't completely cover your area of attack interest. This way minefields could cause enemy fleets to have to travel a longer route to get to you.

The advantage of introducing delay like this with respect to minefields is that it could buy time for your civilization to build a couple of extra ships or reach that next critical technology that could make the difference in your upcoming battle. Plus if the enemy has troop ships coming, you have a couple of extra rounds to get your ground defenses ready for the upcoming ground assault that is to follow.

By the way, thanks for nitpicking at my ideas around this minefield concept - its given me some extra creative insight around how minefields could actually be used in a game for strategic purposes. Its also good to explore the strengths and weaknesses so that maybe this could be a workable idea or concept for the game.

we should be allowed to destroy ships freely. I imagine this means for your territory. As much as I would like to go around destroying random ships of other people without repercution. I do like the idea of the galactic council setting borders. I really don't like the strict right of passage agreement. U have a right to try not to let me in your territory, but I think if I want to ignore u. U can declare war on me, or try to fixically stop me. I don't think u should get an invisible force field around your borders. Why can't I Emp your mines. I think if u take a territory the mines should not be yours. U should have to disarm them. I think the Krynn, Drengin, Drath, Arceans, and the Korath should have marki and reprisal. This means u can make pirates. It should have to be a tech u research., but I

As far as I know there has never been a situation where u r garanteed to hit a mine. There is a chance. or at least in the movies u can accidentally go through a minefield I don't know the chance but I'm sure its plausable. Can a military person give advice on this please.

Invisible force field? What?

Borders are enforced by the presence of military, of border police, and diplomacy. Anyone can violate borders as an act of military aggression, but you should be able to tell other empires to back off if they do not want a war. I mean, in GalCiv2, the non-player empires can tell you to get out of their territory, but for some reason I don't recall options to tell them to leave. 

Of course one could cross every border, i don't think anyone suggested a "force field" or something like that.

Crossing a border just means you may get the party which space you violate pissed of on you. It's your decision if you ignore that or if you say "ups, sorry, was a mistake". A civ should just have the right to say who has permission to pass and who not and to decide what to do about it. As a human player, maybe you get a message if somebody crosses your borders you hadn't give the permission to do so and you decide what steps to do about it. you could just ignore it if you don't want a confrontation, you could send a diplomatic message with a warning or just flatly declare war over this "incident".

Otherwise, if you cross a border not open to you with one of your ships, you should get a warning: "you are about to violate drengin space, are ou sure?".

A guarantee you get through no - but it can, and usually is made highly improbable by the pattern of the mines you lay. They are laid so there is not an immediately discernible pattern as to where they are in the minefield, a mix of different types, and you need a map to find your way through. You have such "gaps" to enable patrols and and possible future advances by your own forces. Minefields are a two edged sword, they can and do protect you, but later can be a severe hindrance to future "Friendly" advances. Of course you can and do (nost times) lay down "safe lanes", but they must be covered by weapons fire to prevent such gaps being a danger. Unattended minefields are rare.

At the same time, a set of complex lanes through them can provide the needed routes for patrols and future advances - hobsons choice, there is no easy clear cut "solution". Minefields stop you as well as "the enemy", and can be a major barrier to future friendly Offensives on your part.

In a GalCiv sense, they could be a Game de-stabiliser if the barriers become impenetrable. Difficult to get to that granularity level in a game sense for GalCiv which works at a Strategic not Tactical level. If they did get implemented I would see some kind of XML difficulty factor built in allowing penetration by opposing forces, but the "fudge factor" in the XML making it more difficult for the bad guys to traverse the minefield area - probably by random software-dice throws of the dice - many ways it can be done.

In the Real World, minefields are carefully planned, as they can be a two edged sword, they hinder as well as help you. In a Game sense that's overcome by random "software dice" throws, and other mechanisms to retain game balance, but do not over-simplify this, minefields have many ramifications - for real and in a Game sense, its not as easy as it sometimes looks at first sight.

Minefields are a huge waste of resources in space.  It would make far more sense to disperse some nanobots that are attracted to large energy signatures and can paint the sneaky ships onto your hyperwave sensor grid.

I can't recall a game with mines in space where they weren't either pointless, annoying, or tedious to deal with. It's just not a mechanic that works well in space.

Well, to be honest maybe everything is open borders till you issue space embargo, that way if you don't want anybody in, you cannot trade with them. 

This are 2 recommended options

OPTION A:

If that anybody passing through after you issued the space embargo, then it is considered an act of war, so you have to send ships to destroy it. This is way more realistic since you could get away flying through enemy space if they don't see you. However you risk a full scale war and most races will stay away at all cost unless they are looking for trouble.

OPTION B:

You need trade embargo, and ships to enforce this "stay out of my space". if you catch them trespassing  it is automatically declared trespassing . if the AI is caught trespassing, they will either beg for mercy in the diplomacy screen or run away before you can see them. Otherwise if you don't give them mercy you are allowed to blow up that ship up with your ships rather then having a full scale war over one little trespassing,

Perhaps the player can choose which option he likes the best, like option A would be for races like the Drengin and Yor while option B would be for races like human and icon refuge.