Closed Borders (along with a lot of other diplomatic options) is pretty broken right now imo. Here are my ideas.
How it works currently:
How it ought to work (IMHO):
Pros/cons of new approach
Pros:
Tl;dr: let's make closed borders better by moving it from a purely binary system to a gradated one
How it works currently:
- X closes borders to Y. All Y ships are forced to leave X's territory. It's literally impossible for Y to send any more ships into X's territory until either A.) War breaks out or B.) You negotiate open borders (which you pretty much can't at the moment - it's not something you can, for example, trade for).
How it ought to work (IMHO):
- X closes borders to Y. Y has a set amount of time to leave.
- Once time is up all Y's ships in X's territory can be fired upon without X having to declare war. Y's ships either can't fire back or firing back will incur some sort of penalty (perhaps a galaxy-wide reputation penalty similar to terror bombing or a possibly an influence penalty). In an ideal world you'd be able to board and capture the ships/crew and get intel but I'm not gonna ask for the moon.
- Y moving ships in X's territory will incur reputation penalties in proportion to the military value of the ships and the depth within borders. Therefore a science vessel just popping in to grab some data on a planet/star incurs almost no penalty (though it may get blown up, you have to judge the risks), whereas pushing your doomstack right up into their homeworld's grill could turn the entire galaxy dramatically against you. Fleets in X's territory might also have increased costs.
- You can negotiate different kinds of border treaty - civilian vessels only, or only up to Z amount of MP within each others' borders.
Pros/cons of new approach
Pros:
- Creates interesting situations - science vessels sneaking around, getting blown up, deciding whether it's worth outraging the entire galaxy by sending your fleet through the space equivalent of Belgium to get to the space equivalent of France in WW1)
- Less gamey/more realistic (border incursions happen in the real world all the time and it would be even worse in space when your borders will realistically be light years from the nearest outpost)
- More freedom for the player
- Don't get annoying situations where quest lines become effectively useless/unplayable because they're closed off just behind a huge impenetrable empire's kind of arbitrarily drawn borders
- More and more realistic diplomatic options.
- Works well for espionage - your tiny unmanned "science" vessel can get you a lot of useful data before/while it's being blown up by the enemy's doomstack
- Still a bit gamey, particularly if there are influence costs
- Difficult to balance (we don't want closed borders to just not be a thing, nor do we want the penalties for breaking these treaties to be so severe no one would ever break one
- The AI is probably too thick to manage something like this (it won't - and shouldn't - always be a simple decision for the player, so it's going to be hard to make sure the AI doesn't just endlessly send science vessels into a meat grinder whilst trying to research an anomaly)
- Someone probably likes the game just the way it is (see replies)
Tl;dr: let's make closed borders better by moving it from a purely binary system to a gradated one
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