There's a number of things in this field that needs to change: Another example is how you can often move around inside the territory of a player despite having no open borders agreement. If at peace with another empire with no open borders treaty one should be forced to turn ships around and move the same way back one came from upon reaching a colonized system. The way you can currently completely scout out an opponent you're at peace with with no treaty is quite ridiculous.

@davea Got it. Interestingly, I found the save, but when you load it, it auto-initiates a battle between the two fleets, even though the enemy fleet never attacked me in my original play-through of the game itself. I see, looking around the forums, that this is an exploit that's well known:



1. Attacking multiple times with save/load



One fleet can attack multiple times, if you save and load after each combat. Information about whether a ship has already attacked, is not saved. The AI will use this also.



exploit-attack-multiple-times-by-save-load



(from the instructions in the sticky welcome post in the tech support forum)



Nice to know in the future that I can always save a game when I'm stuck and reload in the hope that the enemy will start a battle that lets me get out of the system!



It's a fix, of sorts, even though it uses an exploit that I'm assuming they'll fix at some point.



@Mikey davea has it right. The fleet who's invading doesn't have his territory there. It's the third party (who we're both at war with) whose territory we're in, and it's my outpost, since I just invaded it from the third party. Sorry it's a complex situation.

Mikey wrote:
That's because you cannot attack someone in their own territory while in a state of cold war. They can attack you, however, and even invade any of your systems in their territory.

The description is a little hard to follow, but I believe titan's observation is that he could not attack *another player* (player three) while in the region of influence of player two, despite no ships of player two being around. I had not noticed this; but it is probably consistent with the current behavior of influence regions. For example, suppose you send a colony ship to an empty system, with no ships but your own, and the system happens to be in the region of influence of some player. You cannot colonize. I guess we can "accept" the mechanic that the region prevents any action against the owner, while allowing the owner to do anything they want including attack enemy colonies during cease fire. But it is certainly an unusual mechanic.



Regarding your amoeba experience, I guess the diplomacy AI "should have" declared war again as soon as it was allowed, but the AI cannot be "blamed" for not declaring war during the cease fire part.

Titan wrote:
You can't engage in combat - the button is greyed out and the tooltip says, "Cannot attack: there are no enemy fleets in this star system" - for some reason it thinks the AI fleet isn't an enemy despite us being at Cold War.

That's because you cannot attack someone in their own territory while in a state of cold war. They can attack you, however, and even invade any of your systems in their territory.



I just had a game where my influence overwhelmed the Amoeba player next to me, and I was able to destroy about 30 of his fleets and take 75% of his planets before he finally declared war on me (half of this happened while in uncancellable Cease Fire, no less). While this is more a failure of the diplomacy AI, I would say that invasion of full colonies should not be possible in Cold War state regardless of territorial status.

Titan wrote:
Sure, davea, I think I do. How do I upload it (what files do I need and where do I post it)?

Please see the instructions in the sticky welcome post in the tech support forum.

You can't engage in combat - the button is greyed out and the tooltip says, "Cannot attack: there are no enemy fleets in this star system" - for some reason it thinks the AI fleet isn't an enemy despite us being at Cold War.

Does it do what you desire if you engage in manual combat and select all cards to Defensive Retreat?

Sure, davea, I think I do. How do I upload it (what files do I need and where do I post it)?

@ apheirox, if you are discussing about scouting new territory, the game does let you travel to a system you have never been to before, regardless of a region of influence. You can travel there once. If you think about it, otherwise, you would never be able to scout in the early game -- you would be prevented from traveling to any enemy home planet to make contact with them. Since it is only allowed once per system, there isn't much you can do to exploit it.



@ titan, I understand most of what you have described. Once an invasion has started, the only way to stop it is by destroying the invading fleet; simply moving another fleet there will not stop an ongoing invasion. I suppose the reason you could not move your fleet away the second time (when the third player's fleet was invading) is because that invading fleet was also on intercept, which prevents enemies from leaving.



However, I do not understand why you could not attack the third player's fleet. Do you have a save game which we could load, to see exactly what you saw?

I've come across a very frustrating situation a number of times now. It's not a bug - the game works the way it's intended, I'm pretty sure - but it's definitely not a good thing. Here's what happens:



I have a fleet and I send them to a new star to explore it. The fleet arrives and finds the star system belongs to a nation I have a cold war with. There's a home fleet that's set to 'Intercept Enemy Fleets Leaving The Star System'. Now, my fleet can't leave without destroying the opposing fleet, and if the star system is within the other culture's zone of influence I can't even do that without starting a full war. And if I'm at Cold War status because of a cease fire agreement, I can't even start a full war!



Now, after the very early stages of the game I tend to 'recon in force' by sending full battle fleets to scout new systems near my enemies. That means I lose a big expensive fleet. I can't move it unless I want open warfare, and even at an outpost that's away from the culture's zone of influence I don't always want to blast the other fleet because I assume it'll sour relations where I might be trying to improve them. In this way I've had a 10,000MP fleet made totally useless by a 20MP scout ship. And this has happened to me a number of times in the last three games. It's getting annoying.



So my question is two-fold: Is there a way out of this under the current game and, assuming the answer is no (and I'm not missing anything obvious), how can things be changed to prevent this situation without it destroying the intent of the 'Intercept Enemy Fleets Leaving The Star System' option (which I like, on the whole)?



And fair warning in advance - anyone who says nothing should be done and it's all fine as it is... well, that person is going to get scoffed at by me because I very fundamentally believe, on a deep level, that it's not fine. It's not rational that a tiny scout ship could stop a huge battle fleet from leaving the system, and it's poor gameplay (which is a worse sin in my book).



All other comments and thoughts are gratefully received.

"But, is there a *bug* or do you just disagree with the *mechanic*? "



I'm not sure. The thread you linked to doesn't seem to answer what happened to me last night: I was in enemy territory (I'm at war with them) and took a colony of theirs. It became an outpost of mine, still surrounded by the enemy's colour. Okay, no problem. I moved the invading fleet out to help another fleet for a turn, and another AI (who's at war with the same enemy but only cold war with me) sent in a fleet to capture my new outpost. It was going to take him 2 turns to take the colony, so the next turn I just sent my fleet back, knowing it could destroy the invader really easily.



But no, I got the worst of all worlds:



I wasn't allowed to attack the fleet (There are no enemy fleets in this system, so the button was greyed out).



I couldn't stop him taking the outpost for himself - my fleet's presence did nothing to stop his invasion.



I couldn't move my fleet away, so it was stuck there, completely useless.



That can't be the way it's intended. We weren't within the cultural borders of this third empire - we were in the borders of the empire that we were both at war with.



What happened? Well, luckily the AI is stupid and as soon as he took the outpost I made sure I didn't have the 'intercept when fleets leave the system' option selected and his fleet left. I immediately started an invasion on the same star system and took it back, keeping my fleet there to intercept his fleet in case it returned. It did and I couldn't attack it (doh!), but at least I could activate 'intercept when fleets leave the system' and make his fleet useless. And also, it didn't seem like he could initiate an invasion while my fleet was actually orbiting, so at least it was a stalemate with me controlling the system.



Still bloody annoying, and I'm struggling to see how that one's a feature rather than a bug.

Igncom1 wrote:
I really don't like that idea, having them auto-travel to the nearest colony without interruptions would be better then them magically teleporting across the map.

That would be better, only if it was 100% obvious to see that this fleet cannot accept any new orders. Otherwise we would just get a host of complaints "why can't I give this ship any new orders?". Many games including Civ IV, Total War Shogun 2 and probably others use this teleport technique.

The idea of a special scout hull that can evade interception sounds good ! however I think this ability should only work in outpost and uncolonized systems as I have already seen a few threads complaining that scouts are already annoying.

I think that solution lies in diplomatic plane. You (as the leader) may just ASK the leader of that empire to give [single] permission for your fleet to pass through. Of course, your opponent also may ask something from you in exchange.

davea wrote:


For the specific case of units trapped by a ceasefire, I really wish they would just "teleport" trapped units outside the region. That is what almost all other 4x games do.

I really don't like that idea, having them auto-travel to the nearest colony without interruptions would be better then them magically teleporting across the map.

I am glad that we can finally see the invasion-MP threshold on invasions, which was a very common source of complaints. Adding a threshold for intercept and blockade, even with some specific tooltip, seems like it would cause similar complaints. Somebody suggested that there should be a specific scout hull, and then the transport and scout hulls should not be able to intercept or blockade. Do you think that would help?



For the specific case of units trapped by a ceasefire, I really wish they would just "teleport" trapped units outside the region. That is what almost all other 4x games do.

Influence circles are buggy as hell.

This is another common reaction. But, is there a *bug* or do you just disagree with the *mechanic*? Here is the last long thread about that:



/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9340-influence-is-broken!

No, there's no way out of this right now.



The game needs to consider MP ratios when blockading/intercepting; the aggressing fleet should need to have something like >= 1/4th the CP or MP of the fleet they're trying to intercept or the combined defenders of a system they're trying to blockade, and there should be some representation of fleet CP/MP ratios in the system GUI.



There should also be minimum MP (or even specifically weapon count/MP) thresholds for performing either action even against a 0-MP enemy. unarmed scout ships shouldn't even be able to blockade an empty system or intercept a colony ship.

Influence circles are buggy as hell. I have had influence circles in spiral-8s that block off using parts of my spiral in the beginning of a game! I have also run into issues where they could blockade a system I took from them during cease fire but I could not attack them because of the cease fire. I could not move near forces to it because it was under their influence circle even though it was my world