Blockades: What are they good for?

[Hans Lemurson]

Blockading a Colony:

• Prevents you from Rush-Buying anything at that colony
  
• Stops Import/Export of production with Interplanetary Administration
  
• Gives -10% morale penalty.

Is it just me, or is that pretty underwhelming? If an enemy fleet is hovering over one of my worlds not bombing it, is there any reason I should care? I mean it's not like they're doing anything harmful like destroying my fleets or facilities. Just a little morale penalty and one striking citizen. Not a major source of concern.

Do you think Blockades need more "teeth", or am I missing something vital about their devastating impact?

[Davor]

I think the enemy that is doing the Blockaid is also getting some credits/money out of it as well. Not sure on that one.

It is pretty devestating. Not being able to rush buy means you can't get your defences up real fast and now have to wait for a fleet to show up and could be out of the way for that fleet. Also the moreale could be enough for a worker to go on strike and now you are even building slower. If you don't want that worker to go on strike, then you have to lower your tax rate, taking less income over all the empire now.

It's not devestating, but anoying. Still having a fly buzzing around you non stop is enough to get you upset.

[Jambie Lionheart]

Blackades can be pritty devestating to your economy and military production if they manage to bloackade a major production world. If the AI used it correctly, they could establish a foothold and then rush defense there before you could readily assemble a fleet and get it there in full force.

[Summercat]

Blockades could be a bit stronger, but they work very well. I destroyed a larger empire's main fleet, and moved to his planets, smashing defenses then leaving a picket behind at each. His core systems and mine were adjacent to each other (through an unstable warp point), so despite the fact I was only blockading half his planets, it was mostof his population and production. This allowed me to take his planets one by one, at leisure.

[Hans Lemurson]

Originally posted by Davor:

I think the enemy that is doing the Blockaid is also getting some credits/money out of it as well. Not sure on that one.

It is pretty devestating. Not being able to rush buy means you can't get your defences up real fast and now have to wait for a fleet to show up and could be out of the way for that fleet. Also the moreale could be enough for a worker to go on strike and now you are even building slower. If you don't want that worker to go on strike, then you have to lower your tax rate, taking less income over all the empire now.

It's not devestating, but anoying. Still having a fly buzzing around you non stop is enough to get you upset.

I'm pretty sure you don't earn any money from blockading a system. I do think you should be able to though, taking some large fraction of their tax income and preventing the rest from being collected.

Being able to rush-buy defenses doesn't seem like a major penalty. You have to actually have the cash on hand in the first place, and you'd only ever be able to push out one item at a time. If you could do anything useful with rush-buying, you could have done it the turn the enemy fleet entered your system.

But the penalty for a blockade right now is so low...why even bother?

Originally posted by Kref:

2Davor:
Actually the piracy and blocade system, also being a minor issues, raise the same question - why it was not just copied from MOO2?
With rapid expansion pirates tend to reappear on the same asteroid field and just become a stable source of income with one minor ship onguard near that system. I didn't risk to put that ship into the system with pirates directly to avoid blocking their respawn.

Stable source of income? Have I missed a way to earn money from killing pirates?

I do agree though that blocking the import/export of food in MoO2 was a pretty serious consequence of a blockade.

Originally posted by }P.B{ CtMurphy:

Blockades can be pretty devastating to your economy and military production if they manage to blockade a major production world. If the AI used it correctly, they could establish a foothold and then rush defense there before you could readily assemble a fleet and get it there in full force.

How exactly are blockades devastating? Has a blockade of one of your planets ever seriously hurt your production or economy?

Now, sending a few frigates to blockade all the worlds in a system before the main fleet arrives does seem like a good idea, but it depends greatly on the element of surprise and again its only effect is to prevent rush-buying.

Are you seriously suggesting that you have enough spare cash lying around to be able to buy enough defenses to stop an invasion fleet, and the only thing that would stop you from crushing the enemy is that pesky blockade?

[Itharus]

Blockades should be more devastating than that, yes.

[Jambie Lionheart]

I'd find it great, if half of both the monetary income and research income both became mine until the blockade was lifted. That would put some serious hurt into a blockade for the enemy, whom would suffer from falling behind, both construction wise AND research wise. Or maybe if there are certain buildings on a blockaded planet can give certain extra bonuses.

Research centres can give the blockading player a certain amount of progress in whatever technology the blockaded player is developing. That in itself can be devestating in a more short term way.

And maybe having multiple, blockaded planets can have an empire wide morale penalty.

[Hans Lemurson]

Originally posted by Kref:

2 Hans Lemurson:
bombing pirate bases generally gives about 60 bc income or gives +1 population on nearest colony. Maybe this effect is more visible in spiral galaxies. You see pirate ships, destroy them, fly to their reappeared base, get reward, go back. Wait untill next pirate ship appear, repeat.

So, generally damage from blockade now rather questionable. Would a good player have money enough to buy some big ship, instead of investment them in new colony development? Of cause, the first thing that would be build under blocade is a missile base, so if you are going to blockade all planets, are you really going to have that much ships to blocade all enemy planets so that they would destroy missile bases without large losses? If you have that much fleet, blockade is of no large effect because you already is much stronger and may just invade or bomb colonies at high speed. I think blocade should give big penalties, at least 30% to production or morale, not some small 10%. In MOO 2 blocade penalties were very visible.

Oh, ok, you were referring to farming the respawning pirate bases. The +1 population is handy, but the 60bc is chump-change. In my experience the bases respawn even if you have a ship in the system and even if it's in orbit over the planet.

I think I found a minor exploit in the blockade system. If you send a combat-ship to a planet under blockade, the blockade is immediately broken, battle or no battle. Send in a cheapo 1-Laser Frigate and you can rush-buy whatever you want on the "blockaded" world before the enemy destroys your ship.

A 30% morale penalty seems reasonable for a blockaded world. Throw in "no taxes collected" and you have something that's actually an effective weapon against your enemy. I might even start defending my colonies again.

[Dark Fire]

Logically the following should happen for the duration of a blockade:

• All research generated by scientists should be halved, or reduced to 0 (Blockading fleets would attempt to jam transmissions which would impact the affected empire's ability to receive their research)
  
• For economics:
  
  • If the colony is generating BC, that BC should be converted into either production (a responsible colony leader would attempt to use whatever resources they had available to speed up production of defenses) or morale (rich colonists wouldn't care very much if their day to day business wasn't being effected) or both.
    
  • If the colony is operating at a BC deficit, the loss of BC should effect production negatively (a colony with no money can't pay its workers) or morale (poor colonists are more disgruntled) or both.
  No taxes can be collected from the colony.
  
• Population size should effect morale (smaller populations would be less pleased at the blockade than larger ones, and it makes population loss due to bombing or biologic warfare more devastating to the colony's efficiency as more workers would go on strike the lower a population got)

This could also make blockades much more attractive as a war strategy.

[Swat__Raptor]

Yea I was blockading a planet while I was waiting for the rest of my fleet to catch up. They had a star base and a space factory and they attacked my blockading fleet!!!!! obvious oversight which I reported but I also started to wonder

If a space factory can build a Military fort at a warp point, why not build star bases and orbital defenses at a planet,

and in fact, why should the warp point defenses and planet defenses be any different, why not have the space factory build them all??? why have a space factory build a Military outpost in newly colonized system with a space factory yet tell the new colony you have to build your own defenses with your own planets defenses????

[Dark Fire]

Originally posted by Swat__Raptor:

If a space factory can build a Military fort at a warp point, why not build star bases and orbital defenses at a planet,

and in fact, why should the warp point defenses and planet defenses be any different, why not have the space factory build them all??? why have a space factory build a Military outpost in newly colonized system with a space factory yet tell the new colony you have to build your own defenses with your own planets defenses????

The space factory has a hard set production rate of 5 PP/Turn (upgradable to 10 PP/Turn) and uses up 1 command point from your CP total. In theory it if COULD be able to build the star base it would be a 24 turn construction. As soon as a colony surpases 5 PP/Turn (which can be pretty fast depending what production bonuses you can build or have at the time), it is more time:cost efficient for the colony to build the star base itself. Even with building other things first, a colony with Automated Factories and only 1 worker is operating at its base production (on average 4) + 2 from that building. So we're talking about 10 turns being used to build a factory, and another 20 to build the star base. In a newly settled system, the first order of business would be the warp points anyway, but even if you only had to build 1 outpost, the cost to build the star base on the planet is already 4 turns faster by the time the space factory can get there. If there's two warp points you want/need to build outposts on, the planet would be already 10 turns into building it by the time the factory got there.

Obviously two space factories in the same system would make it more time:cost effective to have the space factories do the work, but then you're essentially using 40% of the new star base's CP bonus just to build the base itself disallowing yourself the equivalent CP cost of a destroyer.

In any case, it IS an interesting idea and could be useful in some situations.

I usually keep 1 or two factories cruising around my empire, and one outside of my borders building surveillance satellites on systems I don't have in order to keep an eye on other empire movements.

[Swat__Raptor]

Originally posted by darkfire2012df:

The space factory has a hard set production rate of 5 PP/Turn (upgradable to 10 PP/Turn) and uses up 1 command point from your CP total. In theory it if COULD be able to build the star base it would be a 24 turn construction.

space factories have a PP rate???? where does it show that??

but still the PP of a space factory is not the same form of production as that of a Planet,
If it were the same kind of production then you could spend it all the same way.
but as it is you can't spend space factory production to build planet items and Planets can't build space factory items.

and if you think about how Star gates used to be a planet item and now they are a space factory item, how much did they used to cost as a planet item? I recall they used to take one of my core worlds (30-60 production) 4-6 turns to build, now a advanced space factory can build one in what 5-10 turns so (50-100 production) for a space factory and somewhere (120-360 production for a plant to build), point is that they aren't treated as the same form of production (feel free to look up what the specific number where)

but why??? whats a space station other than a military outpost with more comm stations and offices/quarters for white collar military staff. (its not the guns on a space station which generates command points)

another good point you bring up, Civilian ships costing Military command points? I would argue that doesn't make total sense (thou its mostly such a small amount that no one ever notices in a game).

My main point was that it would be interesting to have more things that the space factory could do, ( why can''t you have 10+ space factories moving around acting as a mobile shipyard?

[Dark Fire]

Originally posted by Swat__Raptor:

space factories have a PP rate???? where does it show that??

Right now there is no tool tip or information that actually says it's 5 PP/Turn, however the military outpost costs 50 PP to build, and the advanced military outpost costs 150 PP to build. Based on the fact that at the start of the game the military outposts take 10 turns to build, this means that the factory must be producing at a 5 PP/Turn rate. This is further proved by the fact that the description on the Advanced Space Factory says that the production rate is doubled, which explains why the outpost then takes 5 turns to complete after getting that tech.

The surveillance satellites, and asteroid and gas giant construction, cost 25 PP, which is why they start out at a 5 turn construction then drop to 3 turns when you get the advanced factory.

Unfortunately I don't remember what the PP cost of the jump gates were, if it changed, before they were made space factory constructions, but the highest construction cost I've seen from any of the planetary buildings is 280 for the Planetary Supercomputer or Galactic Currency Exchange. I'm pretty sure it was probably around 180-200 PP however considering that my memory of building them on a core planet is similar to yours. If that's the case, then they lowered the production cost to keep with the average production time to build them.

As for the Civilian Ships costing Military command points, it's not all that illogical. The ships are civilian in the sense that they are not outfitted for combat, but they are paid for by the empire, not the private sector (in other words, Menz Agitat is not using his personal vehicle to explore space, he's using a government vehicle). As such, the command points are a government support resource, and are assumed to being used for maintanence, repair, etc., without effecting the greater economy. Basically the empire is squirrelling away resources for use in its system defense, military, exploration, and expansion ventures. Think of CPs as your base power limit which can be expanded upon using BCs if you can support it.

Currently Scouts, Space Factories, Colony Ships, and Civil Transports all count as civilian ships. I believe Troop Transports also have the civilian tag (though obviously they are carrying troops and not civilians) but the civilian and military tags are just denoting ships that can be armed and those that cannot, but all of them are owned and maintained by the government thus using CPs.