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Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war?

Posted: Mon May 28, 2018 6:13 am
by cantfind
Currently playing 0.4.7.1, I've noticed that AIs I'm in peace with often cut my supply lines.

I'd expect this behaviour to be considered an aggression, it had been the cause of several wars during (actual) history.

I suggest that allies share supply lines. This way, they can place their army to cut the routes off without actually cutting them while allies and then suddenly declare war and cut them off. As it is now, they cut them off but otherwise act as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Mon May 28, 2018 6:53 am
by Ophiuchus
cantfind wrote:Currently playing 0.4.7.1, I've noticed that AIs I'm in peace with often cut my supply lines.

I'd expect this behaviour to be considered an aggression, it had been the cause of several wars during (actual) history.

I suggest that allies share supply lines. This way, they can place their army to cut the routes off without actually cutting them while allies and then suddenly declare war and cut them off. As it is now, they cut them off but otherwise act as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
+1 for allied supply

-1 for sharing supply in peace (the interpretation is economic struggle between the empire). The current "solutions" are: increase your supply in that area, make an alliance, or go to war

You are not the first to ask for Allied Supply

it would be good if you could use that information and whip up an issue on github for this

edit: i somehow forgot that allied supply already got implemented

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Tue May 29, 2018 8:24 am
by Vezzra
Ophiuchus wrote:+1 for allied supply
Allied supply is already possible.

The current "peace" stance is actually not really peace, but more of a neutral/indifferent "leave me alone and I leave you alone" kind of stance. A more proper term would probably be "non-agression/non-interference agreement". Meaning, you're not actually at war, but you are certainly not friends and consider the other as competition, hence the "supply dominance struggle".

There are currently no real "peace" and "cooperative" stances beside "allied", which is more like a full blown (military) alliance. As I said elsewhere, diplomacy doesn't really exist yet, therefore lacking essential options.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Tue May 29, 2018 10:41 am
by Ophiuchus
Vezzra wrote:
Ophiuchus wrote:+1 for allied supply
Allied supply is already possible.

The current "peace" stance is actually not really peace, but more of a neutral/indifferent "leave me alone and I leave you alone" kind of stance. A more proper term would probably be "non-agression/non-interference agreement". Meaning, you're not actually at war, but you are certainly not friends and consider the other as competition, hence the "supply dominance struggle".

There are currently no real "peace" and "cooperative" stances beside "allied", which is more like a full blown (military) alliance. As I said elsewhere, diplomacy doesn't really exist yet, therefore lacking essential options.
I think the mechanic that we have is fine. We should have more ways of influencing supply for competition (e.g. building a trade station which boosts your supply only inside the system the station is in; maybe as core part and adding a hull similar to the base hull with a single core slot and without ever having fuel). If you compete too much it should lead to war or alliance and AI should be able to consider this.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Tue May 29, 2018 6:16 pm
by cantfind
Ophiuchus wrote:
Vezzra wrote:
Ophiuchus wrote:+1 for allied supply
Allied supply is already possible.

The current "peace" stance is actually not really peace, but more of a neutral/indifferent "leave me alone and I leave you alone" kind of stance. A more proper term would probably be "non-agression/non-interference agreement". Meaning, you're not actually at war, but you are certainly not friends and consider the other as competition, hence the "supply dominance struggle".

There are currently no real "peace" and "cooperative" stances beside "allied", which is more like a full blown (military) alliance. As I said elsewhere, diplomacy doesn't really exist yet, therefore lacking essential options.
I think the mechanic that we have is fine. We should have more ways of influencing supply for competition (e.g. building a trade station which boosts your supply only inside the system the station is in; maybe as core part and adding a hull similar to the base hull with a single core slot and without ever having fuel). If you compete too much it should lead to war or alliance and AI should be able to consider this.
I'd rather have the "peace" option named non-aggression (and I think that for non-agressive AI, it should be set as the default - seems weird that cautious or even typical aggression levels default to war.
And I completely agree that if a system or a cluster gets cut off from the rest of the empire in a siege-like manner, it should be a casus belli (and we should be able to resolve this without war by either giving up our control of the supply lines, or offering peace).

And I think it makes more sense to have two separate terms - peace, in which we may compete, but it's a sort of "friendly" competition (take for example US and non-NATO friendly relations) alliance should be more akin to the EU+NATO, where there's a common market and a defense pact.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Tue May 29, 2018 8:54 pm
by Ophiuchus
cantfind wrote:I'd rather have the "peace" option named non-aggression
Well, then you would call the current alliance "peace" i guess. AFAIK AI doesnt help you crush your common enemies.

Real alliance probably should "merge" political status. If you are at war with an empire, your allies should be at war with that empire as well.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 7:19 pm
by cantfind
Sounds like the current alliance is in between what I'd call peace and alliance - since what I'd call peace would be peaceful coexistence (e.g. not disrupting supply lines) but not sharing the resources over these supply line (e.g. you have to connect yourself on your own to a system with a black hole, you can't use it just because someone you're at peace with has it, even if his supply lines from that black hole reach to yours somewhere, and you'd not benefit from buildings he has in his empire).

While alliance would let you benefit from the resources of the other's empire as if your empires were as one, in addition to having a defense pact.

So, I think it should be:

All-out war (shoot on sight, amass armies on the borders)
non-aggression (not going to shoot you, but you can't share supply lines) - btw, blocking systems from the rest of the empire should eventually turn non-aggression into war, as happened throughout history, ideally, the AI would warn that you either make peace or go to war under such circumstance.
Peace (peaceful coexistance, not sharing resources, but not disrupting supply lines)
Alliance (sharing empire resources, defense pact, mutual victory)

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 12:44 pm
by Vezzra
Overlapping supply lines are not possible. Only one empire can supply a given system, this mechanic has been deliberately changed to work that way some time ago. Overlapping supply lines turned out to be too confusing and impossible to display on the map in any meaningful way, and has been replaced by the mechanic we have now, where empires contend for the "supply supremacy" of a system. Which also allows to unambiguously determine which empire "controls" a system.

Consequently you can't have a "diplomatic stance" where two or more empires can "share" "control" over a system, and "supply" that system. What is possible is to have a "diplomatic stance" where one empire can use the supply connections of another empire for things that are distributed along/use supply lines (which, in terms of game mechanics, means that one empire can use the supply lines of the other emipre as if they were their own).

Which means, if you want to establish a relationship with another empire where the two of you don't disrupt each other supply lines, you need at least to enter into a (not yet available) most basic form of a cooperative agreement. Currently, the only form of diplomatic relationship that does that is the "alliance" option.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2018 10:39 pm
by cantfind
Vezzra wrote: Overlapping supply lines turned out to be too confusing and impossible to display on the map in any meaningful way, and has been replaced by the mechanic we have now, where empires contend for the "supply supremacy" of a system.
What about marking the shared supply line as your own, and adding an outline with the color of the one sharing it (and in case of more than one, multiple outlines)? Seems quite intuitive to me.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2018 11:34 am
by Vezzra
cantfind wrote:What about marking the shared supply line as your own, and adding an outline with the color of the one sharing it (and in case of more than one, multiple outlines)? Seems quite intuitive to me.
TBH, I have my doubts about this. I mean, having a supply line with two outlines of different colors sounds already a bit challenging on the color mix side, but the image of supply lines with three or even more differently colored outlines sounds more like a recipe for a headache inducing color salad to me than something that intuitively conveys information.

Anyway, conveying information to the player by having the "center" and the "outline" of a supply connection be of different colors is already used to indicate supply resource groups of systems which do not use up all available PP. Using the same means to convey also a completely different kind of information would be very confusing.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 8:21 am
by cantfind
Vezzra wrote: Anyway, conveying information to the player by having the "center" and the "outline" of a supply connection be of different colors is already used to indicate supply resource groups of systems which do not use up all available PP. Using the same means to convey also a completely different kind of information would be very confusing.
We could have the color pulsate to indicate supply resource groups of systems which do not use up all available PP instead, so that there would be no conflict.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:57 am
by Oberlus
cantfind wrote:We could have the color pulsate to indicate supply resource groups of systems which do not use up all available PP instead, so that there would be no conflict.
That may be a good idea, but not sure everybody would like to see flashing/pulsating stuff.

Planets have two coloured circles:
- outer one shows supply ownership (the colour of the Empire with more supply in the system).
- inner one represents planets ownership (the circle is divided in chunks of the colour of each empire with owned planets in the system, with size proportional to the ratio of owned planets in the system).
Outer line could be divided in a similar way as the inner one, but for shared supply. Imagine 3 empires A, B and C in a system with supply strength 1, 2, and 3 respectively. If A and C were sharing supply (not B) the outer circle would be 1/4 A-colour and 3/4 B-colour. If all three were sharing, 1/6 A-colour, 2/6 B-colour and 3/6 C-colour. If only A and B were sharing, since C is dominating all circle would be C-colour.

Supply lines have two parts:
- Inner, thin line that shows supply-dominating Empire.
- Outer, wide bands that only appear in two situations: (a) if it is your inverted colour, it means excess PPs in that supply group, and this can happen for supply lines were you dominated (inner line is your colour) or not (inner line is an enemy's colour), and (b) if it is you colour, it shows where you have supply reach that is dominated by another empire (inner line will always be an enemy's colour).
You could try the same strategy as with planets: divide the supply line in chunks coloured for each Empire with active supply in that line, keeping in mind that each supply line is in fact two segments, each attached to each system, with different supply values. So one end could be 1/6 red, 2/6 orange and 3/6 green, and the other end 2/5 orange, 2/5 green and 1/5 blue... I presume that would be the colour salad Vezzra mentions that can make you dizzy. Looking closely at individual line could be fine, but doing a zoom out would not let you clearly see where are you getting. Pair this with the multi.colour circles of planets and I think I wouldn't like it.

I think shared supply can be represented by using just the colour of the dominating Empire. If you are allied to that Empire or in a peace state that allows supply sharing, and that its supply reaches yours at some place, you now that you have access to the systems with that colour. Optionally, maybe for good, the outer band with your colour that appears in systems where your supply is dominated by another's would not appear for systems where you have shared supply access, and thus that outer band could still be used to show you were you have supply disconnection.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 4:13 am
by xlightwavex
Remove peace.

If peace allows the ai to unbeknownst destroy your supply lines...
i.e. war is better then peace as you can drive them off... its then broken and should be removed.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 5:58 am
by EricF
xlightwavex wrote:Remove peace.

If peace allows the ai to unbeknownst destroy your supply lines...
i.e. war is better then peace as you can drive them off... its then broken and should be removed.
Since the game currently has no real diplomacy that's pretty much the way it already is.

Re: Shouldn't breaking supply routes be possible only at war

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2018 12:14 pm
by Ophiuchus
xlightwavex wrote:Remove peace.

If peace allows the ai to unbeknownst destroy your supply lines...
i.e. war is better then peace as you can drive them off... its then broken and should be removed.
Its not destroying anything and the effect is not so hard to understand. So there are countermeasures against trade war in game already and i guess influence will add some.
And trade war is common between peaceful empires in the real world.

I think the effects are off in the sense which interpret supply lines as possessions.

Slower supply line changes would help. If supply only changes at a rate 0.2 you can get a warning about a supply domination change in time so you can take countermeasures.

Maybe you could refill your ships in peaceful supply for a cost.
Maybe you could buy local extra supply (buy supply rigths from a oeaceful empire) or neutral sysems which are in possession of all empires... etc