... okay, so you want Stardock to build all this, so that you can spend a bunch of time creating an overly elaborate sensor network, so that I can shoot it and fly through? Blowing up my sensors is an act of war in itself, at that point all you're encouraging is to make it easier to play "hide the fleet" and annoy players into submission.

It's worth remembering that Stardock has to build this stuff. Do you *really* want development effort redirected into a sensor building minigame? Not everything has to have an overly complicated solution.

I don't even want to play a game where I have to go through each sector planning out sensor arrays, let alone see development taken away from something more important to make that happen.

Conceptually, the idea of enforcing 'borders' is in interstellar space, is impossible for all practical purposes. The idea of course, comes from our limited perspective of living on an basically 2-D planetary surface bound by a 3D sphere. Of course, our linear thinking 2D ape brains find he concept of territoriality an appealing one.  Interstellar space itself, is tactually and strategically useless. Only planets and solar systems matter-not empty space whose primary characteristics are its vastness and extremely low energy and material density (IE they have nothing worth mining or going to visit). We dont call a vacuum for no reason. You certainly wouldn't dispatch expensive and fragile warships to 'guard' it.

The idea of continuous, linear territories appeals to our mental view of the universe rather nicely, even if the idea in a interstellar space doesn't even remotely apply. We prefer things uniform, linear, and well defined. 

The sheer size, scale, and the fact that space is isotropic in ALL dimensions, space renders such  mental frameworks kind of moot-no matter how appealing they may be to us. The only type of 'sovereignty' one could expect an empire to try to enforce, would exist in planetary systems, and even that is subject to a powers ability to enforce it. For example, if aliens dropped by tomorrow and wanted to set up homesteads on Mars or Titan or whatever, could we deny them based on a claim to solar system 'sovereignty?  How could be enforce such a thing, physically for sure, but on what legal basis could humaity even make a such a claim?

In game terms, if one race settles a desirable planet or system you feel entitled to, but have no physical presence, I would(if I were an alien), react to someone 'claiming' that system with derision. Unless of course, they wanted to start a war over the issue, then its a whole different matter. And since wars in Galciv2 anyhow, are almost always wars-to-the-knife, its a not wise to start a war that only ever ends with one side or the other completely defeated. And in the game terms,the only reason you would make a 'claim' in the first place, is because you lacked the resources to settle the world yourself at that moment in time.

I think the influence mechanic that exists is about as a good a compromise as your likely to see. 2-D maps make such notions of territorial exclusion appealing-even though they are themselves abstractions intended to simplify gameplay for us.

About the sensors thing - you can already do essentially the same thing using cheap ships or the occasional space station with sensor upgrades, and the ships have the advantage of being easily relocated. Even a tiny hull can easily have a sensor radius of 4 or 5 in the early game without any sensor upgrades, so why would I bother deploying a network of sensors that are worse than my scout ships at providing early warning and which will not move when the borders do?

Borders in space are not really any different from the boundaries dividing national and international waters - they are imaginary lines drawn in places that cannot practically be perfectly patrolled or controlled, but nevertheless represent a declared limit to how close warships can come to the inhabitable territory of a nation, as well as a declared limit to where the nation claiming that region can enforce its own laws about resource usage and permissible activities over any internationally agreed regulations regarding such (such a limit can be one which is agreed upon internationally, or it could be one claimed by a specific nation; when these limits do not match, or when nations disagree that the international standard limits are acceptable, conflicts can arise and unfortunate incidents can occur, such as has been happening with figuring out who gets to control the Arctic as and when the icecaps melt). Sure, national borders in space are more likely to consist of a series of isolated volumes of space around inhabitable worlds rather than the continuous lines which represent most terrestrial borders, but claiming empty space isn't really the point. The point is being able to have an area where the AI knows that you don't want it to be, and that it knows you consider a military or naval presence in those areas to be provocative. It's also a convenient way to settle disputes about the control of resources like the asteroid mines in GCII - if it's within my national space, it belongs to my empire; if it's in international space, it belongs to anyone who can influence-flip the mine; and if it's inside some other nation's space, it belongs to them.

if its in my space it belongs to my empire, if its in international space it belongs to my empire if its inside your national space ... welcome to my empire

Because unless you're going to place a gazillion mines, I can just fly around/over/under them, or simply shoot them out of the way since they're not concealed underneath the ground? Putting them around a planet also walls the planet off from trade, which is somewhat less than practical in a space empire.

Space mines only work if you have cloaking mines, AND limited travel lanes that ships have to go through. In open space they just conceptually don't make sense, whereas defense ships can move to the threat and also won't hit your trade ships.

I think you fail to see the possibilities future R&D (real world) can produce. Just because we can't see what current tech can give us doesn't mean someone won't discover some new way of doing something.

Part of a mine's electronic package could (and should) be an IFF transceiver. Then you give your trading partners the IFF code and they can get past the mines. If they change sides on you, then you change the code without telling your new enemy.

A large part of the usefulness of mines comes from that there is no easy way to disable or detect them. An IFF transceiver which disables the mine against certain targets is therefore an inappropriate component to include on a mine for two reasons:  first, a transceiver is an active component which both transmits and receives (hence transceiver rather tan receiver), which basically paints a big target marking the location of each mine in your minefield (granted, if the mine has any active components at all, like station-keeping thrusters or active sensors, this isn't a big issue, because hiding those is probably harder than hiding a weak communications signal), and jamming isn't a solution to this because your jamming would have to cover the frequency band(s) being used for the IFF queries, which disables the transceiver. And second, it's basically a minefield with an off switch that can be picked up by anyone reasonably close to ships passing through the minefield. Even worse if I'm handing it out to trading partners, because not all of my trading partners are necessarily at war with the people I'm at war with, which should make them relatively easier for my war enemies to infiltrate or obtain information or components from.

Making the transceiver reprogrammable also leads to the unfortunate possibility of my enemy figuring out how to reprogram it, which as you might guess is not the most beneficial of occurrences.

Turning the transceiver that you suggest be placed upon the mine into a receiver solves half of the problem, but still leaves the minor issue of giving anyone with the ability to record a transmission an off switch for your entire minefield as long as they can get a ship (or a spy) sufficiently close to record said transmission from a ship passing through the minefield. And before you say that "encryption will solve this" or that "you can't detect the code" - it's significantly easier to record transmissions than to decipher them, and if all I want to do is retransmit said signal I really don't care what the signal contains, as long as I can reproduce the signal, and it should be relatively easy to get a ship or a spy close enough to record these transmissions, especially if you've been allowing trading partners to pass through the minefield. For that matter, if you've been allowing trading partners access to codes or components which allow them to pass through the minefield, it shouldn't be terribly difficult for me to steal the codes or components from the aforementioned trading partner. The more widely distributed these pass-keys become, the less useful they are in restricting passage through the minefield. Additionally, naval powers have historically had somewhat loose interpretations of the freedom of the seas when it comes to neutrals (or non-neutrals) trading with belligerents. While such stops as occur on the oceans would likely be harder to perform in space, it's a rare merchant who would risk the seizure or destruction of his or her vessel and cargo on the basis of being safe from such interference by virtue of being a neutral when stopped by a warship. Such stops are often only avoided when the nation to which the merchant belongs has a sufficiently large military or naval potential to make an issue out of the stops.

Well, they're certainly an excellent way to waste resources that could better be used for something more practical.

on land,this is true and mines are useful. In 3d space, it's hilariously false. there is too much area you have to fill with mines to protect, and the whole thing falls apart. 

They also still don't add anything to the game. we already have mobile defenses and star bases, mines are both silly and add nothing of value. 

I'm thrusting my Machiavellian hips reading this thread. As far as "allied movements" through your own geopolitical territory, it is far more likely that US military aircraft fly through Kazakhstan's airspace than Canada's. Just because you are allied with the Archaens it does not seem realistic to allow their ships through your airspace because you are both major powers who ultimately, are using each other to advance the ultimate objective of total victory for your race. So maybe for minor powers or major races whose power has diminished to polity orbits akin to vassal states, that have nothing left to lose it makes sense to freely invade their airspace without permission

As far as I am concerned, this whole thread is a non-issue. I don't care if a mechanism is included in the game that prevents one's ships from entering another's space borders. If the game includes it, I will adapt.

If mines are included in the game I would insist that countermeasures of some sort also be included, perhaps including the ability to destroy the mines at stand-off ranges (which means adding ranged attack capabilities to ships, and might make the whole idea useless anyway, due to design/coding costs). If this is done, I would adapt.

As far as I am concerned, end of discussion.

1 think we need to consider is that this site is about the player's right to throw other civilizations out of their space. All these other ideas r to help  u do this. My answer to civilizations patrolling their borders perfectally, and not being the jurisdiction of the leader. Reminds me that Obama controls illegal emigration and the military. Let us not forget about homeland security. Remember 911. Border security failure. Pearl harbor border security failure. Over 1 million people sneak into this cpuntry illegally every year. I think we need to consider that every country in this world cares about border security except sometimes Americans. Another consideration is about the thousands and usually millions of miles between objects in space.  I hear stories about people sneaking out of their countries illegally to go shopping all the time. Lets not forget about 18th century Japan and the Zuni. I think the player should have a right to threaten other players to get out of their space.