it shouldent be automatic that way the net could be destroyed by other players or AI. so they can try and slip units through if this is the case then designing the net is crucial.

i could build a single layer net that a hole can be blown through and an enemy could sneak there fleet through before i could repair it id know something entered my space but not who or how large of a fleet

i could set up multiple layers so that even if they managed to sneak past the outer layer they would have to contend with the second layer

i could set it up as a maze that way if someone wants to sneak through they can but it would take them a long time

... okay, so you want Stardock to build all this, so that you can spend a bunch of time creating an overly elaborate sensor network, so that I can shoot it and fly through? Blowing up my sensors is an act of war in itself, at that point all you're encouraging is to make it easier to play "hide the fleet" and annoy players into submission.

It's worth remembering that Stardock has to build this stuff. Do you *really* want development effort redirected into a sensor building minigame? Not everything has to have an overly complicated solution.

I don't even want to play a game where I have to go through each sector planning out sensor arrays, let alone see development taken away from something more important to make that happen.

I like you

Conceptually, the idea of enforcing 'borders' is in interstellar space, is impossible for all practical purposes. The idea of course, comes from our limited perspective of living on an basically 2-D planetary surface bound by a 3D sphere. Of course, our linear thinking 2D ape brains find he concept of territoriality an appealing one.  Interstellar space itself, is tactually and strategically useless. Only planets and solar systems matter-not empty space whose primary characteristics are its vastness and extremely low energy and material density (IE they have nothing worth mining or going to visit). We dont call a vacuum for no reason. You certainly wouldn't dispatch expensive and fragile warships to 'guard' it.

The idea of continuous, linear territories appeals to our mental view of the universe rather nicely, even if the idea in a interstellar space doesn't even remotely apply. We prefer things uniform, linear, and well defined. 

The sheer size, scale, and the fact that space is isotropic in ALL dimensions, space renders such  mental frameworks kind of moot-no matter how appealing they may be to us. The only type of 'sovereignty' one could expect an empire to try to enforce, would exist in planetary systems, and even that is subject to a powers ability to enforce it. For example, if aliens dropped by tomorrow and wanted to set up homesteads on Mars or Titan or whatever, could we deny them based on a claim to solar system 'sovereignty?  How could be enforce such a thing, physically for sure, but on what legal basis could humaity even make a such a claim?

In game terms, if one race settles a desirable planet or system you feel entitled to, but have no physical presence, I would(if I were an alien), react to someone 'claiming' that system with derision. Unless of course, they wanted to start a war over the issue, then its a whole different matter. And since wars in Galciv2 anyhow, are almost always wars-to-the-knife, its a not wise to start a war that only ever ends with one side or the other completely defeated. And in the game terms,the only reason you would make a 'claim' in the first place, is because you lacked the resources to settle the world yourself at that moment in time.

I think the influence mechanic that exists is about as a good a compromise as your likely to see. 2-D maps make such notions of territorial exclusion appealing-even though they are themselves abstractions intended to simplify gameplay for us.

playing hide the fleet and annoying other players into submission both sound like valid tactics to me

theres not a whole lot to build its essentially a way of eliminating the constructor spam that was present in gc2 as opposed to 1 stabase requiring dozens of construcors each to build you drop 5 sensor probes in a line each one capable of seeing 1-5 tiles in range

so you have essentially

5 ship components (1 base +4 upgrades)

5 techs  (1 base + 4 upgrades)

1 stationary space object with sight = tech level

finally programming a mechanic that would allow a player to say go from point (x,y) to point (x2,y2) and drop one sensor every A tiles

and yes theres the hard part of programming the ai to use the system effectively (which should be relatively simple compared to all the other aspects of the game)

if such a system were implemented i wouldn't be surprised if there's an auto place function that would automate the ship to lay out a sensor net much like the AI would

i was just hoping that if there was a manual control they would allow it to be easier than go here, place sensor, go here, place sensor, go here, place sensor,etc ,etc and more like

place sensor at these locations and alert me when your done

About the sensors thing - you can already do essentially the same thing using cheap ships or the occasional space station with sensor upgrades, and the ships have the advantage of being easily relocated. Even a tiny hull can easily have a sensor radius of 4 or 5 in the early game without any sensor upgrades, so why would I bother deploying a network of sensors that are worse than my scout ships at providing early warning and which will not move when the borders do?

Borders in space are not really any different from the boundaries dividing national and international waters - they are imaginary lines drawn in places that cannot practically be perfectly patrolled or controlled, but nevertheless represent a declared limit to how close warships can come to the inhabitable territory of a nation, as well as a declared limit to where the nation claiming that region can enforce its own laws about resource usage and permissible activities over any internationally agreed regulations regarding such (such a limit can be one which is agreed upon internationally, or it could be one claimed by a specific nation; when these limits do not match, or when nations disagree that the international standard limits are acceptable, conflicts can arise and unfortunate incidents can occur, such as has been happening with figuring out who gets to control the Arctic as and when the icecaps melt). Sure, national borders in space are more likely to consist of a series of isolated volumes of space around inhabitable worlds rather than the continuous lines which represent most terrestrial borders, but claiming empty space isn't really the point. The point is being able to have an area where the AI knows that you don't want it to be, and that it knows you consider a military or naval presence in those areas to be provocative. It's also a convenient way to settle disputes about the control of resources like the asteroid mines in GCII - if it's within my national space, it belongs to my empire; if it's in international space, it belongs to anyone who can influence-flip the mine; and if it's inside some other nation's space, it belongs to them.

I want borders. Nation claims to space. If violated bam bam ship shot

I don't really want another thing to keep track of when ships (with engines and guns) can do the same job so much better with Sentry or Guard enabled.  You want big sensor range, get Eyes of the Universe.  Now you have long range sensor ships that can respond to enemies.  If you really don't want to bother going up the (short) sensor tree, then stack a bunch of sensors on a cargo hull.  Your economy should be good enough to handle it by then if you are considering building a sensor net anyways.

EDIT: the same goes for mines.  Ships can do the same thing better.

if its in my space it belongs to my empire, if its in international space it belongs to my empire if its inside your national space ... welcome to my empire

For the sensor net: I agree.

for the mines: I don't. Mines are much cheaper (even in greater numbers) than a starship with equal firepower and they need no crew. And even the fastest ship can only be in one place at a time. Mines are fixed defenses but the targets you want to protect with (planets, stabases) are also immobile, so why waste a mobile platform to guard it?

Because unless you're going to place a gazillion mines, I can just fly around/over/under them, or simply shoot them out of the way since they're not concealed underneath the ground? Putting them around a planet also walls the planet off from trade, which is somewhat less than practical in a space empire.

Space mines only work if you have cloaking mines, AND limited travel lanes that ships have to go through. In open space they just conceptually don't make sense, whereas defense ships can move to the threat and also won't hit your trade ships.

I agree with the limited traveling lanes for mining. I mentioned that in a previous post.

If someone wants something from your planet (e.g. conquer it), this someone has to come to the planet. For the mines - they are of course hard to hit. First because they are very small targets. Second, they don't emit any energy, so you don't get them on passive sensors. Third, active sensors like radar or lidar are easy to counter through shape and hull materials (that is possible even today, so why not in the future?) So you see that there is something, but you can't target it. No fancy cloaking devices needed.

And for the trading ships: Normally, it's easy to give your mines a friend/foe distinguishing system (transponder codes etc). When a invader fleet arrives, every merchant will get away as fast as he can before some straying missile decides he's the enemy's flagship...

I think you fail to see the possibilities future R&D (real world) can produce. Just because we can't see what current tech can give us doesn't mean someone won't discover some new way of doing something.

Part of a mine's electronic package could (and should) be an IFF transceiver. Then you give your trading partners the IFF code and they can get past the mines. If they change sides on you, then you change the code without telling your new enemy.

That's nice. It doesn't address what mines add to the game. As far as I can tell that's nothing in particular, except that it's mines for the sake of having mines. It's not any kind of solution for traffic at the border (what this thread was about), unless the border is using limited space lanes for travel that you can mine. A general line in space is impossible to mine effectively due to the size of it, as others have already pointed out.

So then I use espionage to steal the code, salvage a destroyed enemy ship and steal their code, jam transmissions in the area so that nobody can use any codes and your ships are just as vulnerable to the mines...

Help me out here. What are space mines supposed to do that isn't done better by something else?