Currently Borders are binary, they either are completely on or completely off. I would like to see borders work Like the following.



Reference Picture





In the model I propose, for each race you encounter you will be able to set whether you want hard borders or soft borders. Hard borders will work exactly as they do now, Soft borders will work as follows.

• Visually they will look similar to the picture above.
  
  

• Setting a border to soft or hard only effects your policy, you can set a soft border with AI #1 yet AI #1 may still have a hard border set versus you.
  
  

• Races will now have an Aggression Attribute, This is set from "Very Aggressive" through "Neutral" to "Peace Loving." (10 to -10)
  
  

• The more peaceful a race is the more they like soft borders. They will increase their attitude towards your race if you set your borders towards them as soft.
  
  

• The more aggressive a race is the more they dislike soft borders. They will decrease their attitude towards your race if you set your borders towards them as soft.
  
  

• AI races can set their borders as soft when their attitude is above their aggression x10, i.e. a Peace Loving(-10) race would be willing to have soft border with a race as long as their attitude was above -100 towards another race. A Very Aggressive(10) race would need over +100 attitude to be willing to set a soft border versus another race. As the attitude increases past these minimums the AI would decrease its Soft Border Slider(see below). Perhaps total war would give Cravers 20 or 30 Aggression.
  
  

• Trade would no longer be allowed by peace, but trade could happen any time two races have their borders set to each other as soft.
  
  

• By choosing Soft Borders, you would activate a slider that would go from 0 CP to one less than your current Max CP's. This slider could be set on any number of CP on the slider. The Attitude adjustment you receive from Soft Borders is inverse to the percent of CP you limit yourself to. The Percent of Ships you are allowed to move into your mutual borders is proportional to the percent of CP you set the slider too.
  
  
  Examples: 10 Available CP, 100 ships

  
  
  You set your slider at the max value of 9. At 90% you are able to take 9CP Fleets into the overlapping border and are able to do so with up to 90 of your ships. You get a 10% attitude adjustment.
  
  
  
  You set your slider at the value of 3. At 30% you are able to take 3CP Fleets into the overlapping border and are able to do so with up to 30 of your ships. You get a 70% attitude adjustment.
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Trade would also be multiplied by the previous slider in an inverse manner. The softer your border the more trade would be allowed.
  
  

Another game mechanic that would be beneficial is a ship support module, an Embassy Module.

• This module would cost similar to a colony module without the population cost.
  
  

• Upon reaching a system with another settled race you would have a button next to the colonize button that would allow you to establish an embassy as long as you were not at war with that race.
  
  

• Establishing an embassy would create a system improvement for the other race settled in that system.
  
  

• Embassies would give +10 Science and +3 Dust.
  
  

• Each Embassy you establish would increase your attitude with that race for as long as they exist.
  
  

• Upon declaring war any embassies you have established with that race , or that they have established with you are scrapped.
  
  

• Any race you have an embassy with you may gift dust or tech to without a treaty.
  
  

These changes would allow more options diplomatically and allow better attitude management.

Instead of being scrapped, the embassies should deactivate while the war is on. The benefits of the embassies should also scale according to the relationship between the two races, along with what treaties are in place. I think that skipping the use of an Embassy Module and instead being able to directly purchase embassies on foreign planets would make the gameplay more smooth, and be more realistic.

I like your ideas +1



But regarding the "establish an embassy" button, I would prefer that option be in the diplomacy chat screen with said race, let them decide based on your relationship if they want your embassy on their world..

I love the concept.



There would need to be a way for the player to easily see (and not forget) that while we (the player) may have set a soft border against AI#1, AI#1 still has a hard border against us. If we aren't given some cue (preferably visual and maybe also written somewhere, for easy acknowledgement) as to their respective relationship with us, it could potentially lead to some unexpected or woeful downfall due to an oversight when judging the relationship.



Although scrapping 'trade through peace' makes sense, I still believe that this should be implemented in the game. If the player wants, this should be a feature to turn "off' (meaning that trade would only occur through mutual soft borders when "off", if I'm understanding you correctly).

Yes, trade only happens when both have soft borders and is multiplied by how soft the borders are, i.e if you set your slider so you only are able to run fleets of 1 CP in your mutual borders(purple in picture) you would get a high amount of trade with the other race as long as they have soft borders with you as well.



I think for this to work well transport frames should be specifically excluded from counting when checking CP, However it would probably need to be changed so there was a +100% cost to weapon modules on transport frames. This would allow you to have as many non military ships as needed within your mutual borders, which might become very important if they add more non military ship abilities.

Well ... it is a good idea.



But a few things bother me:

The more aggressive a race is the more they dislike soft borders. They will decrease their attitude towards your race if you set your borders towards them as soft.

Why should an aggressive race dislike that YOU open your barrier ? The only letdown of this option with aggressive race is that they would not respect your legitimacy over this territory and will attack every ships of yours being in THEIR territory (even if it's yours too) !

It could work even in Peace Time so long as you haven't signed an Open Border treaty.

you would activate a slider

I'm not sure it's necessary to add this level of details. (haro, micromanagement !)



And one thing you may have overlooked is "what if you're set on soft borders and they're set on hard borders ?":

It could actually rejoin the letdown of soft borders with aggressive crav... races.



Again, a good idea I will rate 4 stars.