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[xenoargh]

This is my fleet, in late midgame:



This is what the Perseans have sent to "raid" my pwecious lil colony.



IRL, this is like, say, Ethiopia sending a fleet of dinghies full of dudes with AKs to fight the 5th Fleet. 

It's not even laughable or insulting that they've arrived in my home system, offering battle to my fleet- it's totally nonsensical. 

If they had any common sense at all, they'd apologize for even dirtying my System's vacuum with their pathetic exhausts and I'd gain diplomatic cred with everybody sensible for kindly escorting them to the nearest Hyperspace portal.

Instead, they're charging straight at me in kamikaze mode, like this will end well, will not be amenable to diplomacy, and I'll have to scatter their radioactive ashes throughout my System after I get done with them, which will involve zero effort on my part, other than clicking on UI elements at the beginning and end.  This won't gain me cred with the more... dictatorial Powers, nor respect from the supposedly-peaceful ones.  Or heck, even a formal apology in the form of please-don't-come-nuke-our-worlds from the Perseans, which would be reasonable, after seeing thousands of their spacers converted into protein-laced ice crystals.

Alex, if the Powers are going to send military... "adventurers" towards us, for specious reasons (disrupting my teeny, tiny Market), without a formal Declaration of War, when I've been nice to them (I had better than 10 standing with them before this)... then they'd really better show up armed commensurate with what the player has, or start behaving more like sensible human cowards and run for it when they see Godzilla's home, angry, and coming right at them. 

This little event just drives home how annoying it is that I can't build my own custom defense fleets by dropping ships I don't want any more into my colony's inventory, so that I don't have to deal with these trashy "raids".  If I could do that, I'd already have enough defense just from fixing up D clunkers to build a Space Wall nobody'd be dumb enough to climb.

[Megas]

More annoying thing is that enemy fleet, weak as it is, violates the fleet cap!

Currently, their "expeditions" feel more like organized crime demanding protection money, and are willing to start a war over it (by letting your rep drop to -50 eventually).

Those factions should outright declare war rather than send endless waves of bricks-in-the-wall to the meat grinder.

I have half a mind to decivilize their planets (or let the pirates do it for me) just to make them stop.

[xenoargh]

Exactly!

Any sensible nation-state would, upon arriving at my doorstep, realize that their gambit has failed and that I have more than enough force to demolish them.  I should, if anything, gain diplomatic reputation for showing some mercy, and reparations from the offender; IRL, stuff like this has serious consequences. 

But no; my choices here are:

1.  Do nothing; hope they don't do too much damage to my pathetic Size 3 Colony.

2.  Kill them and take the diplomatic hit, with no benefits to me other than some free loot I don't need and XP I'd rather get from eradicating Ludd bases and farming the nearby [REDACTED] for XP and [REDACTED].

3.  Kill them, then go to their worlds and do the whole "exterminatus" procedure, if I wanna waste Fuel and kill random civilians, which leaves a bad taste in my mouth, since I'm mainly being a Good Guy.

In all seriousness... Alex, I love the new Colonies, but the lack of ways to handle this in sensible ways feels a bit bonkers.

Nobody should be sending a Raid at me when my colony's hardly a threat to anybody, let alone when I've been nice to them, and if they're going to Raid, they'd better show up with at least as much hardware as the Pirates, or at least take my personal fleet entirely seriously... or it just feels a bit silly.  If I was in their shoes, I'd have been running away as soon as I identified my opponents, and pay the Ludd Toll or the equivalent if discretion wasn't sufficient.

[xenoargh]

On that note... how about a dialog tree that's like this:

1.  Enemy fleet is not irrevocably Hostile to player.  --> Comms are possible.

2.  Player starts comms.

3.  Enemy fleet does a battle sim, taking the player's level, Captain levels and general power into account.  I'd also have a stat that tracks "how often does this player lose ships in combat"- i.e., is this a new player who's easy prey, or hard-bitten master of space combat who eats Onslaughts for breakfast.  The total logic would look something like this:

Battle sim: enemy wins, 30% or fewer losses: the enemy's belligerent and won't back down or take a bribe.  

Battle sim: enemy wins, 30% to 50% losses:  the enemy's willing to take a big bribe to Go Away (see Ludd Toll).

Battle sim: enemy wins, >50% losses: the enemy's willing to take a moderate bribe, but may respond with, "OK, already" if the player threatens violence, leaving the System alone.

Battle sim: enemy loses by small margins:  the enemy's willing to give the player a small bribe and is quite likely to just Go Away.

Battle sim:  enemy loses by large (50%+) margins: the enemy's going to leave, and will bribe the player fairly well to not attack them.  

Battle sim:  overwhelming loss by the enemy:  the enemy's going to leave promptly and pay the player significant reparations for invading their territory.



Diplomatic Results:

Bribing gives small +Rep to enemy Faction (for paying tribute and avoiding expensive violence) but -Rep from any Faction that's Neutral or worse to player (player's seen as weak) and --Rep from any Factions allied to the player.

Getting enemies to leave, rather than die:  +Rep from the Faction for not killing them anyhow, ++Rep from any Faction at war with the enemy, -Rep for enemy allies who also hate the player, +Rep from any Faction that hates the enemy Faction but isn't currently at war.


Anyhow, that's the idea; not only is violence not the only answer, it's frequently the least-good answer, both for players and for enemy fleets.  I know the game's combat-oriented, but the current setup means there's pretty much no way out of the Rep hole once a Faction starts sending Raids; it feels unreasonably nihilistic and ultimately punishes players for setting up shop somewhere.  

There are plenty of reasons why conflict may become inevitable, but Raids currently feel like something where once they start, there's little option for the player other than to start annihilating the offending Faction.  It'd feel better if Factions tried to Raid if the player's weak, but back off if the player defeats them or even try to get the player to ally with them.  I know this is getting the cart a bit ahead of the horse; it's pretty obvious that some form of Interstellar Diplomacy is the last major piece of the game design, now that the core of building Colonies works.  But this is definitely an issue where a sensible fix now is largely to give the player ways to make Raiders go home without having to kill them.

[Plantissue]

Seems a bit complicated. The idea of these raids is to give a reason to fight battles. Unfortunately, right now, the whole raiding mechanic seems nonsensical and breaks the willing suspension of disbelief. I've got a number of ideas of how it could be better, and I suppose the developer too has plenty, but I suppose a number of design principles must be chosen in order to decide what would be best.

[intrinsic_parity]

For me, raids are too frequent and nowhere near scary enough. I like the idea of raids as mini boss battles that the player has to prepare for to survive, rather than constant annoyances every month that you just want to forget about. They seem to more balanced in the mid game if you start colonies early (before your fleet is too strong), but once you get an endgame fleet they become a chore, and you hope to set up your defenses so you can ignore them completely.


The main problem with super strong raids I see are:
1) its very unsatisfying if you don't have enough time to prepare and just lose the campaign
2) if the raid is made strong by adding more ships, it can become very tedious (i.e. an endurance battle where you lose because every ship in your fleet has run out of CR even though you've been winning the fight) This is especially true in the very late game when you have tons of strong capitals and officers and you are just slaughtering waves of relatively non-threatening ships.

Adressing #1: Obviously, if raids are made stronger, the player needs to be more clearly informed and given more time to prepare. This could be achieved by some sort of 'threat bar' for each faction that fills up over time at a rate based on your relationship with the faction and the economic conflict with that faction (how much you are cutting into their profits). When the bar is full a raid is initiated and the bar is reset.  Maybe incidents with patrols could also influence this as well (i.e. getting caught smuggling would tick up the bar a bit). The main benefit of this is that the player can have a much better sense of how soon the raid will be coming. It would have the added benefit of making faction relationships feel more meaningful since they actually influence the raids coming from that faction. Before you have a colony, maybe the faction would send a bounty hunter after you or something.

Adressing #2: It would be cool to add a 'boss capital ship' for each faction. Something that is stronger than any capital ship the player has access to, but only appears in raid fleets. This could make the end game raid fleets more threatening without turning them into endless waves of relatively unthreatening ships.

[Megas]

If raids are stronger, then pirates and pathers need to be much less annoying.  Even when I can completely ignore raids, I still do not have much time to do what I want to do before I need to deal with pirates or pathers.

If nanoforges will increase pather activity, then there is no way to avoid pathers if player wants quality stuff and sufficient production.

[Lucky33]

You have option to preemptively attack their world right after intention of the raid was declared. Use Transverse Jump to deply right on top of their planet, destroy the station and raid the starport/heavy industry. This will result in reducing the raid's strength to the absolute minimum.

[Megas]

Player needs Navigation 3 to use Transverse Jump.  (I do not get Navigation, though I like to.)  But, any player strong enough to kill a Star Fortress is probably strong enough to slaughter everything else in the way.

But preemptive attack is either no good or very inconvenient if the alert appears while your fleet is in the fringe exploring or hunting for something, and may take too long to return to core worlds or your colonies.

If player had to deal with every alert personally, there would be no or very little time to do any extracurricular activities (like searching for new worlds to colonize or reaching the Red Planet).  Player would be traveling everything between the same old worlds as supercop and play whack-a-mole with supervillains at the usual respawn points.

[xenoargh]

The main thing with this mechanic is that if it's actually scary... then there's no counter to reach a tipping-point in a reasonable timeframe.

I can't give my local fleets all the (D) junk I've acquired.  This is especially irksome; I had a pile of ships sitting around collecting dust, but I can't just hand them to my local defense force?

I can't negotiate an end to the hostilities with the Faction without already having a high Rep.  Heck, I can't call their President / Dictator-For-Life / etc. up and just be like, "hey, how's about some hard cash to leave me alone this year?", if I wanted to pay tribute, let alone threaten them with the horrific destruction of their macroeconomies if they don't desist real quick-like and make Godzilla mad.

I can't pour money directly into my economies to get a bunch of defense fleets built, MOO-style.  In fact, I want to have the ability to pour money on any construction project like that, for when I want it done Yesterday.

Soooo, yeah, other than using Surgical Strike to demolish all of their Heavy Industries, etc., I can't really do much other than suffer, because my Size 3 Colonies make "defense fleets" so tiny they're basically inconsequential.