Borders! Why not !?

I have always thought that borders are a great idea but most other people here think it is impossible to implement due to the size of space and vast distances between planets.

But are you telling me that people who are able to travel between stars and terraform planets and build mini-black hole guns cant set some sort of border?

I know that the current borders are just a show of how far your influence extends, but right now there is nothing stopping an enemy scout from flying all over your space right before they declare war.

Borders are realy OLD invention... So why Galactic Civilizations don't know this?

I agree that borders should be a part of the game as well but alas, I believe it's another element that the devs feel just isn't worth the time. A suggestion was made, can't remember who it was, that involved using a specialized "sensor ship" that you could park near your borders and set to sentry, I believe. This is a worthy option if you feel the need to have your borders "monitored" in my opinion. When I play I am usually scanning the map at all times so I haven't tried this one since it isn't necessary, but that's just me.

Didin´t Star Trek and any other sci-fi series out there have borders

Borders help our puny human brains to cope with huge things like space. Its kinda silly when drengi park their whole fleet next to your planet and you think "gee thats pretty obvious". Just my thoughts

As stated its hard to place a border on something as vast as space, plus borderes get annoying dont they, still you can declare war on the civilization that has ships in your borders, and they can do the same. Borders are in a way respected by the AI, but ships that cant do that much like scouts and buiders, should they really be restricted, and i know for one thing i dont want trade ships to stop coming to my planets just cause i have a border and its my space

My guess is there's no boarders because it would make trade routes impossible. Or, at least, frustrating.

I also miss them.

I'd settle even for the ability to patrol a certain area of space.
Just a few ideas to implement it:
- waypoints for fleets
- some kind of module for military starbases (something like: "border customs") that generates a GNN message like "a xx class ship of YY empire has been spotted near military base ZZ", and maybe to give an estimated route/destination (estimation that should be more accurate if the trespasser passes near the starbase and more vague if it passes far away from the starbase, also the distance between starbases an trespasser should affect the ability to detect it). This should also give an interest ot actually build military starbases (I usually don't build them because they feel like i use it once to invade and then they become useless..)
- a governor that manages a few fleets (sending them back and forth on a border line set by the user)and notifies you of any trespasser, with the detection rate being higher the more and better fleets you assign, obviously the actual combat is up to the user

Also i think if they were to be implemented to use them also to spice up the diplomacy (say 2 planets owned by 2 different races on the same system or very near: this is bound to rise attrition, right?), and some kind of option to allow the passage of certain ships (trade, weaponless etc..)

The current "borders" are really just illistrations of influence. For real borders, there needs to be a secondary border that extends x number of tiles from planets and starbases. There needs to be an agreement before ships can pase through.

i have said this and i will say it again influence is felt across the galaxy otherwise how would you know if an empire you have never meet has built an economy capital

and i would like to see something of a patrol infact i think i started this whole thing about borders and patrols but don't quote me on that

One thing I do is build a medium size hull and load it with nothing but engines and sensors....voila...instant sensor platform. (dont forget some lifesupport so they have SOME range!!)

We need borders !

i dont need fixed borders but i desperatly need a diplomaty option to tell an AI to leave my influence zone and/or to stop building influence starbases next to my planets
the AI can do that to me and threaten me with war if i dont listen, i want to be able to do the same

the AI can do that to me and threaten me with war if i dont listen, i want to be able to do the same

Amen to that brother.

Also it would be nice if they gave you the move your ships ultimatum, that they would at least give you a clue as to what ships they're refering to. It's by no means always obvious what they're talking about.

You could have a "close borders" option, meaning your borders are open as normal until you decide to close a border to any or all races, meaning no freighters from the selected race(s) or ships of any kind. Could be good if you think a race is planning to wage war with you. The downside: To adequately defend your borders you would need to have sensors all around it, maybe a new type of starbase...listening post perhaps?

One thing I do is build a medium size hull and load it with nothing but engines and sensors....voila...instant sensor platform. (dont forget some lifesupport so they have SOME range!!)

Medium?! Why not a cargo hull, much cheaper, and more room.

If you think about it, Civ4 has borders and the option to tell the ai to go away (or was it 3...) so why not gc2 or da?

Hmmmm, borders in space, in reality, not as simple as it sounds. Don't forgot that distance/speed/time is relative. So if I say to you, that you can't come within x distance of my planet, but your 'orbit/trajectory' takes you within that distance anyway, it might get slightly tricky to police this.

thus we have patrols

One more huzzah for the notion of players being able to tell an AI to lay off the influence bases (or the fleet buildup, for that matter). And I agree that

it would be nice if they gave you the move your ships ultimatum, that they would at least give you a clue as to what ships they're refering to

I'm sort of in the "but why not just have borders" camp, but appreciate much of the "space is not land" argument. Increasing the diplo functions would be a good compromise, IMO, but I do still wish we could see something like ZOCs for star systems, maybe just ones where you control all the planets.

Depending on your play style, even AI trader or constructor traffic can be a strategic concern. It could be fun to mix in building a ZOC barrier to protect resource nodes as part of the initial colony rush, and a similar map structure could make alliances much more interesting, enabling you to guard the flank of a weaker AI that you are courting as an ally, or being a motivating factor for an AI to seek an alliance ("Please let us out of the corner--we'll help spank your enemies if you do.")

I think Borders carries a terrific selection of books and multimedia. The cafe makes an acceptable cafe mocha. Their deals on books are nearly as good as Barnes and Noble. I wish my GalCivII game had Borders in it.   

I think Borders carries a terrific selection of books and multimedia. The cafe makes an acceptable cafe mocha. Their deals on books are nearly as good as Barnes and Noble. I wish my GalCivII game had Borders in it.

Very creative Proloton, I like that one. Seriously though, to those of you who just cannot see how or why there would be "borders" in space, watch Star Trek. Unfortunately this is the only series/movie that I know of that utilizes the idea of territorial borders as much as it does. Can the Enterprise breach the Klingon border and risk war to save the helpless trader vessel... will the Romulans allow the Enterprise to travel through their borders en route to wherever? Stay tuned...

It's a little scary, but I think I actually agree with Evil S here. My deep Star Trek conditioning is probably why I've always thought the influcence areas in GCII seemed a little off somehow. But on the other hand, I don't recall anything in the Trek mishmash that seriously addressed the notion of cultural dominance overwhelming local governments, and that notion makes some real sense to me.

While it is true that no sovereign nation on Earth has (yet?) applied to become a state in the US, it seems clear that rather a few are willing to come as close as they can without giving up the internal political benefits of nationalism.

While borders throughout deep space wouldn't make much sense, I think political borders set a decent distance from planets are quite viable. Additionally, you would still need to keep some sensors out there--if the Torians didn't actually see you going through their territory with a fleet of dreadnoughts, then it didn't happen...

To get around the trading problem, you can just have different diplomatic stances with each of your opponents: you could close your borders to all traffic, allow civilian vessels (freighters and constructors, etc.) to pass, or have fully open borders that allow the passage of military vessels.

Hmmm...Could we get something workable by adding a ZOC map layer that's based on your planets and starbases? Ship sensors can help you with fog of war problems, but only stationary sensor grids can define a territory that affects turn processing? Something like this would make the Eyes of the Universe even more worthwhile.

p.s. I took me a long time to crawl up to beating the Tough level (1.4beta?), but I've been playing since shortly after the 1.0 release and I don't recall an AI *ever* building the Eyes before I did. Could this be b/c there is an AI "cheat" about fog of war, as I've seen hinted at in other threads?

Static borders in space are probably as doable as static borders in the ocean. The best you can do is threaten anything that gets too close to your actual territory (in our case, land, in GalCiv's case, planets) to go away or be blown to bits.

So all we really need is the "get out of here" ultimatum option.