Change Rules for Blockades

[dmm]

I would like to see changes in the rules for blockades. What do you all think about the following suggestions?

1) Only functional warships may blockade. A functional warship is any vessel (ship/fighter/drone) with some sort of ship-to-ship attack strategy and capability. Vessels with "Don't get hurt" strategy cannot blockade. Vessels with no movement or no functioning ship-to-ship weapons cannot blockade.

Seems like this should be easy to implement in the code. It's just one small subroutine.

2) Blockades should be "leaky," and the degree of "leakiness" should depend upon several factors, including: the number of enemy functional warships in the planet sector, the number of friendly functional warships in the planet sector, the planet size, the presence of (and maybe even the range of) weapon platforms, the presence of mines and sats, and the domed status. (Domed colonies should be easier to blockade.)

This would be also fairly easy to implement in code. Again, just another subroutine, slightly more complicated than the one for #1.

3) Blockades should isolate the colony. If it doesn't have sufficient resources available (either through on-world production or through leaks in the blockade), then bad things should start happening: construction should halt, facilities should break down, and people should starve (in that order).

A very nice aspect to this is that blockading a border colony that consisted solely of a shipyard would prevent the colony from hurry-producing a ship to break the blockade. On the other hand, you couldn't blockade it forever while you brought up troops from 20 systems away, because the shipyard would break down and the people would starve. Eventually there'd be nothing left to take over. (Although they might riot before that and join you.)

At first this sounds hard to implement in code, since it seems to require keeping separate track of resources available to each blockaded colony. However, there is already a subroutine that checks for insufficient resources on an empire-wide scale and then inflicts damage commensurate with any shortfall. So SEV would just need to do this first with any blockaded colonies, one by one.

[tmcc]

My tcw: I basically agree although the leaky part might be a little messy to implement. One ship, unless it was extremely fast, could not realistically blockade a whole planet so I agree that the effectiveness of a blockade should depend on the size of the force. One simple way to implement this would be to create a "% to blockade number" based on the criteria you list and then making a roll against that number every turn. If the planet passes it's "blockade roll" then resources get through (i.e. no blockade). If the planet fails the roll the it is blockaded that turn.

I think another key attribute of the blockader should be speed. Functional armament and an attack strategy are fine, but if the engines are shot up then the effectiveness of the blockade would go way down. Like wise some assumption needs to be made about the speed of the "invisible" transports that carry those resources back and forth. This speed should be based somehow on engine tech level and would then be compared to the blockader's speed as another factor in the "% to blockade number".

[DarkHorse]

How about a flat 5% reduction in planetary resources contributed to the empire for each ship in a blockade fleet. I agree that they should be combat-capable ships, also. It's kind of hard to run interdiction missions with an unarmed transport, I would think.

[dmm]

DarkHorse said:
How about a flat 5% reduction in planetary resources contributed to the empire for each ship in a blockade fleet.

I think that should be higher, more like 20%. But the percent would likely be moddable, if this were implemented.

Also, don't you think that friendly warships should also be taken into account?

[dmm]

tmcc said: One simple way to implement this would be to create a "% to blockade number" based on the criteria you list and then making a roll against that number every turn.

I really like that idea. You could even combine the two ideas, in a way, by only letting a little resources through if you barely beat the roll, while letting a lot through if you beat the roll by a lot. The parameters could be moddable to suit everyone's taste.

tmcc said: I think another key attribute of the blockader should be speed.

Great point. Agreed. That would also make it worthwhile to send a warship/fleet on a suicide mission to weaken a blockade by hoping to take out some engines.

[Parasite]

Police cars pull people over all the time. They mostly don't have anti-vehicle weapons on board. The cars (or invisible freighters) know that BAD things will happen if they don't stop. I put "Don't get hurt" orders on my blockade ships. This way I know that they will not get killed by the imobile planet defenses when they "Strayed" too close.

I like the idea of leaky blockades. Part of it could be based on the planet defenses. A small unarmed and remote colony world would not leak much for fear of being blasted. A heavily defended ringworld could surely sneek out stuff and be glad to do it to spite the blockaders. Enemy and friendly ships in the system could also change things.

[vanbeke]

Factors to influence a blockade's effectiveness should include
- the range of any defenses surrounding the planet - if the blockaders are staying out of the way of those defenses, then the amount of space to be patrolled goes up cubically
- speed of the blockaders
- speed of potential blockade runners
- range / reload time of the blockaders weapon systems
- blockade ships' combat posture. I think "Don't get hurt" would not be an effective blockader, something like "Don't approach fixed defenses" would be a useful strategy to implement.

As to the police cars - the hand guns that are carried are a slight detriment, but they are able to summon more cars so the perps just give up, knowing that their chance of running the "blockade" would be very small, and the shields and armor afforded by most vehicles on the road do not afford much personal protection.

Beke

[dmm]

vanbeke said: if the blockaders are staying out of the way of those defenses, then the amount of space to be patrolled goes up cubically

The perimeter surface area only goes up as the square of the radius, but yeah, that was my point about the range of the planetary defenses. And you are right, the safe volume (for the blockade runners) goes up cubically.

Thanks for the other good comments too.

[dmm]

Can any of the beta testers tell us whether or not these types of blockade rules were ever considered? (Assuming you can be a little less confidential now that SEV is released.)

[Suicide Junkie]

Note: since this is 2D combat, you're talking perimeter = radius * pi, and protected "volume" proportional to r^2