What means "open borders"?

[Arvid]

And more importent: Where are these borders and how can I see them?

[NEBUCHADNEZZAR]

The borders are the circles around your planets. They are "your space". When you open borders, you make a diplomatic action that allows other empires to trespass this space.
When you have not open borders, trespass this space is the same as declare war.

I am Brazilian, so my english is not the best.

[Arvid]

No, I do not think so!
The circles (I learned) is the sphere of influence!
An opponent can definitely colonize planets in your sphere of influence without starting a war!

Why am I asking the question if I'm going to answer it myself?
Quite simply, I would like to know where this border is that can be opened.
Somehow I don't understand the concept with the 'borders' of this game
(I never really understood the predecessors and rarely played it)!

I am German, so my english is not the best, too! ;-)

[Trifler]

Normally, if you enter another empire's "sphere of influence" then you get a diplomatic penalty for each turn the ship is inside. If you have an Open Borders treaty, then they will no longer be annoyed by this. So basically you can fly through their territory, and they can fly through yours. However, the developers did not make colonization a separate treaty, so having an Open Borders treaty means they can colonize any planets in your space, and you can colonize planets in their space, as well. This may not matter though, since good planets are almost always colonized before they are enveloped by an empire's sphere of influence.

Hope this helps!

[Arvid]

Ok I understand! Still, it's really confusing with the borders!

But what keeps the opponent from settling with me anyway? Good or bad relationships? Apparently everyone settles with me!

I think colonizing all the major planets as soon as possible is more permanent!
The little strangers with me have an influence problem anyway and will also be incorporated later.
I just find cleanly defined borders better and nicer, like in many other games!

[Dray Prescot]

The problem with colonizing, either small c colonies or large C CORE Worlds, inside the zone of Influence of another Empire, is that in the long run, or even short run, that they may/will revolt and join the other Empire. You can fight this with Culture Star Bases built nearby, which becomes more important in later stages of the game, after researching the Techs needed for them.

Asteroid Mines will ALWAYS send their production to who ever's Influence covers that Asteroid. So Asteroid Mines can and DO, change their owners when the Influence Border shifts between two Empires.

Regular Mines, i.e. in space tiles, will always send their output to the Mining Star Base that first included them in it's area of affect. So The only way to change them is to either kill that Star Base or somehow get control of it.

[Tyrantosaurex]

A few things I'd like to clear up here, and hopefully help a bit. You and the AI can colonize inside of each others borders, open borders or not, the only thing the agreement does is remove the diplomatic penalty for having ships inside of each others space.

There's updates coming that'll help just a bit with that early game rush between you and AI that'll help resolve some of the iffyness of not being able to have clearly defined "this is my space you can't come here!" that your border normally means in other games, so definitely add in any feedback both good and bad that you run into as we're being heard and the game is being improved based on our feedback.

I believe the largest change being discussed to address this is making travel range significantly smaller, you'll need to tech up and expand out before you can travel very far (that goes for the AI as well) so you'll no longer have the case of the AI jumping across the entire sector early game trying to name that spot of space inside or behind you.

[mrmike_49]

Originally posted by Tyrantosaurex:

A few things I'd like to clear up here, and hopefully help a bit. You and the AI can colonize inside of each others borders, open borders or not, the only thing the agreement does is remove the diplomatic penalty for having ships inside of each others space.

There's updates coming that'll help just a bit with that early game rush between you and AI that'll help resolve some of the iffyness of not being able to have clearly defined "this is my space you can't come here!" that your border normally means in other games, so definitely add in any feedback both good and bad that you run into as we're being heard and the game is being improved based on our feedback. :spazwinky:

I believe the largest change being discussed to address this is making travel range significantly smaller, you'll need to tech up and expand out before you can travel very far (that goes for the AI as well) so you'll no longer have the case of the AI jumping across the entire sector early game trying to name that spot of space inside or behind you.

movement speeds are already so slow, that limiting the range seems a waste of time

[Trifler]

Originally posted by Arvid:

I just find cleanly defined borders better and nicer, like in many other games!

Once you get far into the game, the influence from all of your planets combines, and you have nice visible borders then. In the early game, not so much.

[Arvid]

Ok, I thought again about what I'm actually about.
In all strategy games, not just those with a space theme, I try to station my (defense) armies or fleets where a bottleneck has arisen due to the circumstances or is simply necessary because of the reaction speed.
Now I find it really annoying when foreign objects, be they civil or even worse, military, keep invading my territory without my permission!
If I were a real ruler, I would tell my opponents that I don't accept that! And that's how it is in the world!
It's not a problem to work with zones of influence. But that has to be clearly separated.
Take the Civ series or 'Humankind' for example, there are borders and zones of influence. It is clearly separated what is what!
I understand your game design approach. It's ok that there is a penalty, but then the AI should really only violate my borders when the border is opened or if their war doesn't matter.
Again: In contrast to a zone of influence, borders do not arise by themselves through colonization, they are created by at least two parties defined! Boundaries are the same size as zones of influence only as long as they don't overlap!

I'm currently playing the new beta and it seems to be clearer now what you were thinking. Let's see ...

[F.Bolli]

One more question about open borders. After how many turns did the open border agreement expire? I want to declare war against my neighbor but I can`t because of the open border treaty.

[pandreon]

Originally posted by Tyrantosaurex:

I believe the largest change being discussed to address this is making travel range significantly smaller, you'll need to tech up and expand out before you can travel very far (that goes for the AI as well) so you'll no longer have the case of the AI jumping across the entire sector early game trying to name that spot of space inside or behind you.

Please limit the limitation to RANGE and not SPEED; I hate slow ships so much.

[ghost88]

Originally posted by pandreon:

Originally posted by Tyrantosaurex:

I believe the largest change being discussed to address this is making travel range significantly smaller, you'll need to tech up and expand out before you can travel very far (that goes for the AI as well) so you'll no longer have the case of the AI jumping across the entire sector early game trying to name that spot of space inside or behind you.

Please limit the limitation to RANGE and not SPEED; I hate slow ships so much.

They lowered both 3 months ago Tryrantosaurex posted in May.

[z|A|bik2]

Originally posted by F.Bolli:

One more question about open borders. After how many turns did the open border agreement expire? I want to declare war against my neighbor but I can`t because of the open border treaty.

All treaties expire after 50 turns iirc. However open border treaty should not be the issue.
Can it be, that you signed some other treaty?

[Illauna]

Some random responses to what was stated above.

Open borders is traded for about 50 credits and gives a +1 diplomatic modifier, eliminates border friction penalties from borders touching, and eliminates relation hit for either side crossing the line. Generally I will keep open borders even with my enemies. Their ships don't bother me I generally keep enough fleets around to efficiently take them out within a turn if war breaks out.

There isn't really a point to closing off the borders. They can be crossed because space is vast. One of the best Star Trek TOS episodes in balance of terror where the Romulans cross the neutral zone into Federation space. I know some people come from Stellaris and other games that bizaarly treated borders like walls that can be raised and lowered.

Generally if you cannot declare war is it because you've declared a peace treaty and agreed to cease hostilities for a period of time or you are allied. Otherwise, hover over the option and it will tell you the reason in the tooltip.

There is a get off my lawn option:
1) Open Diplomancy
2) Click I have something else in mind
3) Click remove your ships from our territory immediately. Which tells them to remove their 4) ships for 10 turns. It does damage your relations.

[Overloadedcasu]

Have an idea:
Without Open borders treaty, you can attack ship in your own border even if war not declared.
Can be great :)