FreeOrion

Blockades should take some time to have an effect, so that on the first turn, 80% of the original resource exchange can take place, on the second turn 60% and so on. This would give the planet time to adapt to the blockade.

Also, blockades should not always, as Eleazar hinted at, be complete. It should take a large armada to completely blockade a system, and if the fleet is to small, a certain percentage of supplies should still reach the planet.

I'm not a fan of individual resource pools within an empire. I'd rather go with the simple rule "connected to capital = access to imperial stockpile".

Well for blockades to be handleable you either need
1. Local Stockpiles
OR
2. a slowly increasing penalty (either increasing health penalty or increasing effectiveness of blockade)

I'd either go with
#1 or
#2a

Maybe the tech/research in FO is so ingenious it makes blockades too complex
Namely the concept of Interstellar Co-Production.

Let's say you did have Interstellar Co-Production and you got defeated in a fleet battle in one system. How long would it take for your other systems to adjust to the loss or revert to classic production? Before Interstellar Co-Production, I figure only food shipments would be affected by a blockade, since industry has to be spent at the planet where it's generated. But once you have this supposed inter-dependency... this could be too complex.

Research should not be blockadable since it usually just needs a communications link. At the very most, a slight decrease in research at the blockaded site may be in order to represent inability to transport specialized science equipment & personell.
EDIT: Actually what about enemy ships (with appropriate equipment) causing communications blackouts during a blockade? No research AND you don't even know what's happening until your fleet arrives! The planet can get like greyed out with it's last known data of population/etc, maybe with a big red question mark over it, until you atleast get ships in the system. You don't know if it's been bombarded or invaded or it could be just fine. Maybe some space monsters could have this effect as well.

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I feel like you're talking about Hydroponic Farms and I'm a Klackon who got Biospheres.

Well, In FO industry is NOT spent on the planet that it is generated on

But I really like the Idea of a communications Blackout... perhaps as a second level of Blockade? Maybe requiring specific Techs

(Also some 'Blockade'/'Blackout' passsing techs may be possible... ie Planetary Interstellar portals, the Food is just sent through the Starlane in an unblockable energy form... it might also allow troops to move through)

I think we can just keep it simple and assume that a blockade means no information or physical items leave the planet what so ever. So communcations are blocked, no transmissions, no freight, no one leaves.

Well Transmissions/Physical items are definitely different things, so treating them differently makes sense

A Blockade should definitely stop Physical Items

Whether it Always/Sometimes/Never stops Transmissions is another issue, and much more complicated... if your empire is cut in half... do you have any more control over what the other half is doing?... do communications have to go through Starlanes?

Never stoppping Transmission is the Simplest idea here... communication would be point to point and Instantaneous.

I think that certain technologies causing communications blackouts is a good idea. This shouldn't apply to indirect blockades, where the ships are located between the two systems, but only if the ships are actually in the system. That makes an interesting strategic difference between direct and indirect blockades.

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so how would food be handled for the blockaded planet/s?

It seems best to me to restrict them to whatever they produce.

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Goodmorning all,

I would vote for local stockholds being maintained on a planet to planet basics, and the user being shown the sum of all local stockholds as the amount on that side in the event of a indirect blockade.

Resources on each side would be calculated seperately, and then any extra resources could 'try' to run the blockade from the overproducing side to the under producing side.

It would not be hard to include a UI function for the blockaded, to choose how much resources to try and send over. *example, player makes a blunder, empire gets split. One side had most of the farming planets and now has WAY too much food production, other side as almost enough to feed itself. blockaded player clicking on Any of the blockaded planets causing the indirect blockade would be shown the blockade information, as well as the direction of flow across the blockade for each resource [as is passing through the weakest link in the blockade wall]. The user then would have a slider, of some sort to set the priority level for running the blockade. If the user thinks they are going to break the blockade soon, they set the priority low, and the undernourished population drops (or at least its stockpile), but on the overfed side the population growth both increases, and stockpile increases, to feed the staving when the blockade is lifted*

An indirect blockade would then would be a object in the program which has a list of systems, the blockade would also be given the production, consumption, and stockpiles on each side. Clicking any of the blockade planets could bring up the blockade menu, which would give the user all the information, (including weakest blockaded system) and the opportunity to choose *High* or *low* priority for running the blockade [and or a slider between two extremes].
The strength of the blockade would be determined by the number of resources it can stop (at it's weakest link).
Something like a min number of freighters to be destroyed, a max, and a rate at which freighters above the min will make it thought, 2 destroyed for each one making it to the other side, for example. {or more simply just the destruction rate no min no max.}

For the user it makes sense, center your screen over one side, see one set of numbers, focus on other side see other set, click the blockade, see both sets (only the sub empires on each side no double running blockades). and with the blockade being able to set weather or not resources are being 'wasted' trying to get to the other side.

anyway that's my 3.14159 cents worth of advice

Best wishes all
Robbie.

I like that solution. However i'd call it "Famine" (an extreme shortage of food) rather than "Starvation", which implies citizens should quickly start dying.
A nice touch is the fact that colonies in non-ideal EPs will die off more quickly, since their base health is lower. This sorta corresponds to the way citizens could delay starvation on friendly EP worlds by foraging, or planting something in the window. That's not so easy if the "outdoors" are extremely hostile to your type of life.




First, i'm not arguing that distribution hubs should be added to the "expanding planetary supply line" model described in the preliminary v0.4. I'm arguing that the range of planetary supply lines should be always and only: 1 jump, because of issues with the current model. Hubs are a necessary support to the "1 jump" approach, but not the goal.

I'm also not trying to change fleet supply. It obviously needs to be able to operate at a distance of more than 1 jump. While I originally had the goal of fleet supply and planetary supply operating by the same rules, the alternative i'm proposing of planetary supply operating on a simplified version of the rules ships use, is in practice no less KISS.

I'm not making assumptions about the distances between populated systems, except to say that it will vary wildly with EP (unless the planet distribution model is fixed) the age and the shape of the galaxy. Well, i assume this much: your colonies will usually be in easy reach of your ships, otherwise how did they get there?


OK, hopefully with that much taken care of, i return to my statement:
"...as the length of planetary supply lines grow it becomes increasingly difficult to sever one part of an empire. The only feasable way to create a indirect blockade it to nearly or completely surround that portion of the empire."
For sake of the following i'll assume that late game supply lines will come near to or exceed 10 jumps.

The way starlanes link up varies an awful lot, with different frequencies of starlanes, the galaxy type, the section of the galaxy (edge, vs middle) and of course random chance. However for purposes of discussion, i think we can regularize the galaxy into a rectangular grid of starlanes— with the understanding that actual ease of travel may vary significantly for better or worse.



So, lets consider the most vulnerable empire shape imaginable: the hourglass shape, with a single planet in the middle. As you can see it's not too hard to subdivide the empire, if the largest planetary supply line near the blockade is short (less than 4)— presumably the condition of relatively poor or new colonies. But more mature colonies can pretty effectively circumvent a blockade, leaving indirect blockades as a rather rare tactic only employable under one or more of the following conditions:
1) The invader has an overwhelming force, and thus can maintain a long picket line
2) The target area has undeveloped planets
3) The target area has no access to alternate routes because it's in a "dead end"

In #1 and #2 above, the invader could very likely blockade the systems directly, and thus the concept of an "indirect blockade" doesn't change the macro-strategy possibilities much.

This situation meets in a minimal way this statement from the v.4 docs:
"Having blockades allows a system to be indirectly attacked by isolation from its empire. This prevents excessive turtling strategies, and makes empire shape and distance important strategically."
... But it really doesn't look like it will be nearly as strategically significant as i had hoped.



I'm not going to stress the "this will be fun" aspect too strongly, because that's hard to argue. But i can refute the idea that it's likely to be burdensome (per Civ road-building), unless planet supply ranges can be greater than 1 jump.

* Civ has hugely more "tiles" where roadbuilding may be needed than FO has systems. The max size FO map has 1/3rd the spaces where hubs could be built compared to the spaces on a moderate civ map. (Assuming average civ map = 50x100 tiles with 30% land = 1500 spaces. Accuracy may vary with civ version) With a higher land/sea ratio or larger maps, civ's number of spaces potentially needing roadbuilding would be much greater.

* With civ roadbuilding, you not only need to build roads between your cities (which are never adjacent), but you also need to build them on all useable land around your cities. And usually you need to redo the job 3 times for tech advances: road>railroad>maglev. There are also quite a few other improvements (farms, irrigation, mines, etc, depending on the version) which you should do outside your city.

* With my proposal no "road-building" is necessary between immediately adjacent systems, nor is it necessary to build hubs surrounding a system... all you have to do is make sure all systems are sufficiently connected. You won't have to redo the work with a later tech advance. And there are no other extra-system infrastructure corresponding to civ irrigation etc. Also, i'm assuming that late game technology like "stargates" will allow distant parts of the galaxy to be connected. In all, i'm confident you'll spend a fraction of the time building hubs in FO, that you would building roads in Civ.



My main concern is the following, but i'll have to prepare a bit more for explaining that.

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Sorry, those ideas have been throughly rejected in previous discussion, for various reasons.
If you are curious why, you can read this thread in it's entirety, and other relevant threads that were linked.

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Goodmorning Eleazar.


I have read the full list again, I can't find why planet by planet tracking has been rejected. . ., in fact the local stockpile idea is commonly mentioned in one form or another, so i am rather confused as to where you got the idea that it is completely blocked. (Having those local stockpiles ever reported in the UI, has been blocked, and quite rightly so, but my suggestion does not require ever having more then one location where resources are presented to the user so the UI remains KISS.)

Nor have i seen another model which allows semi-arbitrary severing of supply lines between colonies.

Most of the proposed models involve a single warehouse, without clear indication of how to handle that warehouse being blockaded or worse yet captured.

The method I did see, which made some sense was to have each Planet have a stockpile, but have that stockpile be meaningless UNTIL a blockade event. When you hover over a planet/region the stockpile available over all connected planets is reported. Since resources on individual planets are shared before the calculation of each turn the stockpile on any given planet is meaningless(unless that planet is blockaded exclusively and you click on that planet at which point the 'total available resources' for the local region[one planet] would be only that form the one planet).

This way you never have to worry about what resources are on what planet, and calculating how much of which resources remain on any given side of an indirect blockade becomes trivial.


Famine events are still possible, and famine progressions, which i support.

Other ideas were considered at one time, and people keep bringing up ideas which have already been chosen. However, i'll quote from the opening of this thread:

"The fundamental game mechanics of global queues / stockpiles, and instant resource distribution are not up for review."

"Multiple stockpiles is not going to happen, most simply because it's definitely not "simple"..."



That's a good question, but pretty easily answered.

An empire's stockpile location is by default it's capitol. We might include a building which allows you to move it to another planet.
• We haven't defined what happens when the capitol is captured— possibly that's the end of the empire, but whatever happens to the empire's other assets should also happen to any stockpiles in this case.
• In case of blockade of the central stockpile planet, obviously the entire rest of the empire is cut off from the stockpile.



These statements are very contradictory.

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Actually there is another unanswered question with the Single stockpile (besides what happens if it is captured)

Suppose your empire is seperated into 2 portions

1. Has your Capital/stockpile location

2. has a food/mineral surplus

What happens to your Food surplus generated by part #2? is it
a) lost to the ether
OR
b) stored in a stockpile location in fragment 2
[I'll assume storing it in a stockpile location in fragment 1 is out]

If B then where? highest population... most consumption...oldest planet*
*This last would be good since
1-it can't be changed by the player
2-it would be the capital (unless the capital has been moved)
3-it is probably the one with the highest pop, consumption, defenses



move into editorializing

The problem is blockades themselves violate the fundamental game mechanic of instant resource distribution.

So really the way to solve this problem would be to make blockades impossible.. Food, Minerals, and Industry/pp all can get instantly teleported planet to planet (just like Research and Money)

Or else a blockade renders a planet an economic non entity, neither producing nor consuming.

Currently generation of all 5 is local and consumption of Food, Minerals and Industry/PP is local. Research is consumed globally and Money .. is currently consumed locally by buildings.

If both production And consuption happen locally, then either

1) transport of resources is ALWAYS instant and unlimited [no Blockades or Freighter requirements]
OR
2) production that is not distributed globally is lost
OR
3)there needs to be a possibility of consumption being based on amount of production at the same location

Now a Global Queue is still applicable, that is just the priority given projects across the empire. Each locally limited resource would be allocated based on the global priorities of locally available projects.

We could simply shelve blockades altogether until a later version... but if we are going to have blockades, we will need some type of "local" stockpiling ability [assuming we have stockpiles] even if it is only used for blockades [which is the only time it would be anyways... unless we put in freighter requirements]
That is the thing that makes almost any stockpiling method "simple" the fact that it only matters in blockades (unless you give a player control over it... if they control where the stockpile is distributed, then they may attempt to fiddle with it.)

Perhaps Direct blockades put a planet into "economic stasis" and Indirect blockades have no effect

That question is answered: Any surplus resources in a connected group of planets that are not connected to the stockpile location are lost.