So I've solved the first of many hurdles in porting this idea to 2.0 You guys may be interested in testing out my latest mod, Disputed Systems . Let me know if it works as intended.

Ported to 1.9 without update

Only thing that I don't like about this mod is that it has weird/negative interactions with allies (e.g. anything adding civilian ships). Makes it almost impossible to do stuff when those ships are floating around and causing system contesting..

Yeah, it looks like the 1.9 changes are about 70% of what this mod does.

1.9 dev diary indicates that this mod may well be overpowered by the changes made in the next patch that will put a single starbase around the star in control of an entire system. However, there was anote about systems with now base reverting to control of a colony in that system, probably because pops will still extrude border a little. I may be able to adapt that. But this mod has moved to the bottom of my mod priority list. Not because I'm giving up, but because it's almost certain that whatever I work out will have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Yeah, will probly get to trying it before then.

That's a long time to wait. I'm also not 100% certain there IS a mining-specific or research-specific component.

Realistically, though, it's probably worth tossing together a rough test and see if it even works or if it breaks on unclaimed stations.

Yeah, it's probably more compatible to mod the mining component than the ship. Good point about unclaimed one tho. Nothing's ever easy. I may just sit on this until next patch with its border system changes and revisit the mod then.

Resource stations don't have sensors to begin with, so you'd have to overwrite the entire ship to add a module. At that point, you should probably make a resource station special extruder for them though.

I do wonder how this would affect unclaimed resource stations. There's a handful of events/anomalies that create them, which may cause problems.

I did mess with the NAI defines so that it assumes borders extend the correct distance and some similar things. Fundamentally I don't know how to get it to think about sending a fleet somewhere in order to claim space. If I can get resource station to extrude a little border, that will help the AI immensely.

In the future will the ai be changed so they will understand this mod?

Today's teaser from Wiz gave me an idea I kicked myself for not already having. Put a border extruding sensor module on resource stations. Can I do that without overwriting ALL the vanilla stations, or worse, ships?

To clarify, this is all stuff that will happen to games in progress. New games should work fine.

It will "Fix" the issue, but will also cause more.

All default sensors will return to being default sensors and won't extrude borders. This means that all existing sensors will not be border-makers, and ships/stations will have to be rebuilt with the extruding sensors.

Meaning - Anything that isn't a planet or frontier outpost won't claim space until it's replaced/upgraded. I'm not sure how terrible of an effect this will have on a game in progress.

@Zaratustra, I think I've got your issue fixed, with Andon doing most of the heavy lifting. This update should fix the issue in a new game, I can't guarantee it'll fix your save. Might though.

Appreciate it. I've got too many ideas and not enough time to learn to implement them all properly, help is welcomed.

@Pode I have an idea that should work without overwriting every single design file. I'll see if I can throw something together as an example.

@Zaratustra has tipped me off ot a larger problem than just pirates closing their borders. Encalves, sentinels, even mining drones are going to pose similar issues. Andon's approach will mean overwriting a lot of ship design files. Still may be the best way, but I'm gonna ponder on it a bit, see if I can find a better way. I was never 100% on linking sensors and borders to begin with.

So got a chance to run the playtest. folk has coded the behavior we need, but not quite in the way we need it. So I will try to adapt his source code to create our own military base constructor who follows your construction ships around building bases where they build mining stations.

Back to pondering the pirate problem.

Can one of y'all playtest the combination of this mod and folk's Autonomous Assemblers for me before I get around to it? Specifically, the assembler that builds military stations in every system under your control. How does that ship behave as your fleets move around and as your constructors build mining stations?

Primitive Players is updated and workingish, so turning my attention back here. folk has dropped a new bit of genius called Autonomous Assemblers and is graciously looking at tweaking it to help our AIs build military stations everywhere they control to keep control their mining outpost systems.

Point. Special pirate ships it is. Why is it that no matter what mod I try to make, somehow the damn pirates find a way to be a problem in it?

If everyone is a war with pirates constantly until they're wiped out, that'd mess with diplomacy options like federations, and certain buffs from ascension/unity/etc.

Good thought Andon, I'll add that to my list of things to mod. I suppose another possibility to explore is a game start event that creates a war between the pirates and every empire.

That's actually a bit amusing.

I THINK you might be able to get away with some shenanigans, though. If you set up the default sensors as "Hidden" (Like the Nomad fleet FTL drive), and give them a lowest priority, you can add un-hidden border-emitting versions with higher priority. Empires that generate designs will use the ones with higher priority (IE, the ones that emit boders), while pre-designed ones will use whatever they're designed with.

I think this would even work for Fallen Empires - While they HAVE designs for their ships, I think they'd be able to (And would) upgrade them to the latest designs. Even if this doesn't work, giving Fallen Empires a fairly minor border penalty wouldn't be the worst thing in the world anyway.

And they aren't an empire you can declare war on to force the borders open. Hmmm. Didn't see that one coming.

Hi, wonderful mod.
I have experienced a problem. I cannot attack pirate fleets because they generate borders and have closed them to me!

Ported to 1.8 without further revision

Particularly the world border size. it -should- be enough to reach one nearby world at the start of the game (not counting ships), And ships should probably only have enough range to cover their own system ever, but have a event fire to boost the border coverage of it at 1k, 3k, and 5k, with 1k going out to the same as your homeworld at start, and 3k doubling that, and 5k doubling 3k's. this would result in a larger fleet corresponding to larger borders, allowing you to occupy resource-rich systems far away from your systems with your fleet in order to collect them, while not having to worry about the AI's fleet patrolling near your border and suddenly poof goes half your energy. Its a nice balance with a focus on fleets, perhaps add a increase to fleet capacity as well in order to encourage using fleets to occupy unowned areas.

Maybe it was just evengelicals then.

Suggestions on which numbers to tweak?

Sad to hear what happened to your brother. never heard of that idiom despite living down here all my life.

about the mod though, its a pretty cool concept, with a bit of number tweaking it could work.

How can FO ibe a waste of influence, when with this mod FO don't drain influence?

AI do not build FO. I recommend check this mode: Improved Borders System, with this mode AI build FO.

Anyway, building FO is a waste of influence. May be AI must build military station in each border system and near borders?

All good, I knew you thought he'd recovered.

I understand now. I didn't mean any disrespect.

:) Thanks Alex, but that's an idiom Bible Belt Southerners in the US use. "Went home" refers to Hebrews 11 where God's people think of themselves as foreigners and travelers on the earth. Heaven is home, we're just visiting here.

Yay!

Thanks guys. He went home this morning.

Good luck with your brother.

I understand, im sorry to hear that.

Huh. One AI doesn't build outposts, another spams them as intended(ish). Gotta love AI. All I can do is point you both to the Enhanced AI mod. My brother's dying, mod updating is on the back burner for a bit.

Yah i just have unlimited spam of Frontier Outposts resulting in most if not all of the map being taken over by the time i get into space as i am using primitive players

I love the idea. But for me, the AI doesn't build Outposts. The AI wastes resources building Mining/Research while ship is in orbit, then loses the station after ship leaves orbit.

Patch Chaos status: The current version of the mod was built on 1.6.1 vanilla code. I found no changes for 1.7.1 and set the mod version for 1.7.x. I never got a chance to examine 1.7.2, nor do I know what if any mod-relevant difference there is between 1.7.1, the former 1.7.2, the new 1.7.2(1.7.3?) and the just released main game version 1.6.2. I'm not inclined to spend much of my limited free time updating until this shit stabilizes. If you're playing in the meantime, good luck, save often, and be ready to console your way out of whatever strangeness you encounter.

I think you misunderstood. I was asking if you could make it so they are limmited by making system limmit include Outposts. As it stands right now the way the whole game works is that Empire can be infantly enormus which dose not let new empires grow and thrive makeing the Universe that you play in Kind of bland. In My personal View a Game with 100 Space Fairing Empire would be amazing. But the AI takes over too many systems for new empires to be able to thrive. I am Applying real logic to this though. If earth had its own empire it would take massive rescorces to upkeep said empire and haveing more then 10 star systems would in my opinion be challanging as a whole to maintain order on both the planets and in our empires space.

Im not sure what the Stargate Ships are Useing. The seince ship is projecting but not the millartary ones

Odd. Are they using a different sensor set than vanilla?

Was not aware outpost systems counted against the core system limit, that's an ... interesting... design decision. Obviously creats a problem with my setting the AI to spam outposts :/

@Pode Hey the new Stargate Ship Sets are not projecting the Terrtory as they shold. Also i was wondering if you would be willing to make a mod that stop Ai from Colonzing past their system limmit as well as Limmiiting their system Limmit. Example : Empire A has 10 System Spots to colonzie. Empire A Colonizes 5 system but creates 5 Frontier Outpost. Thus Filling up their System Limmit Makiing it Impossible for them to take more star systems.

Hardest part of starting a mod is finding the files for the mod you want to start from. Right click on this mods name and copy the link, at the end of that link is this mod's number. Search your Steam directory for that number and extract the zip file in that folder to your local mod directory. Now you have a local version of my mod you can adjust the numbers in.

Thanks for the fast response! I'm currently a bit lost but maybe I get it running and report back on how it plays with lower values.

The border extrusion for ships is a one line add to each of the sensor components, so you can change that value and have it scale for all ships. I never found a way to tie it to ship size that would be as compatible as this (very few mods change ship sensors).