Archeological Site Discovered!

[Syn]

Excellent news! I'll...

Oh. It's in another empire's territory. Or soon will be. Or so far away there's no possibility I could ever build a station around that star.

Seriously. Who thought that requiring a dig site to be inside your empire was a good idea?
This makes 90% of all site finds a pointless frustration.

[arc361]

Whats dumb is the fact that even if you find one you shouldnt touch it until late game. I was doing a co op game and my friend would excavate them right off the bat and fail each one. It was mid-late game when he got the tech that makes it easier.

Its pretty much the same thing that happened when you could fail anomalies, don't touch them until you have all the tech and high lvled scientist.

[Radiosity]

First, if you could do them anywhere, the other AIs would constantly be stealing them within your territory, which would hardly be fun. Second, I'm not sure why anyone would have problems early game, just have your science ship survey for a while until they're level 3 or so, then have them switch to archaeology. Sure, they might fail a few times, but that's often a GOOD thing as you can get crystals, minerals, and other goodies from failures.

[Syn]

Okay, so make it that sites within someone's territory are off limits or a ship performing a dig can be legally shot down if it tries.

But why require a system to be claimed at all for a dig? What's the point of getting a notice for a dig on the other side of the galaxy where there's no chance you'll have the influence to put a starbase there in any reasonable amount of time?

[Zuul]

Frankly, there should be no need to have territory control over a dig site.

For the AI add a diplomatic relations malus if someone is working on a site in their space. If the AI empire doesn’t like them enough, the malus pushes them to close borders.

For the player you already have options to deal with the problem. War, close borders, stick your own scientist on the site.

For unclaimed space, it’s purely first come first serve with the option of war if you’re not first.

Instead of now, where 90%+ of the digs in any given game may as well not exist as far as the player is concerned. As it stands now, you can’t even take hold of a distant system via ongoing war then jamming in a skilled scientist to DIG DIG DIG, because you have to be able to extend claims all the way to the dig then win the war and take the system. Apparently having military control of space isn’t good enough, we have to wait for the diplomats to dot the i’s and cross the t’s because we care about the opinions of our enemies.

[ctcc42]

I am mighty British Space Empire. You are puny Egypt Space Vassal. I will dig your dig sites and put artifacts in my museum!

Seriusly though. Dig sites in unclaimed space, the space of your vassels, or empires your at war with should be free game. Saving up 1000 influence to claim a dig site on the far side the galaxy in order to ultimatly get 500 society research points (late game when I produce 10 times that a month) is not cool.

[Armchair Civilian]

hang on - it doesn't really take that much to get a scientist capable of handling a dig site.
i took on what turned out to be Shard with a first-gen scientist who i was very fond of, having got them to level 5. Didn't take all that long all things considering
took a LOT longer to get to Shard-beating fleet levels :P