Intercept ability

Civilizations call to power had something like this except that certain units had the i think it was called auto defence or something ability and that meant that if certain units passed withone one square they would automactically attack it and either shoot it down or damage it as that unit moved by

but i like your idea better because it requires more thinking and strategizing

do i go and attack or wait for them to come to me...

Is that what the "guard" button is for ? Not sure if it works in the beta 3b tho but it would be a bit pointless to only guard one tile..

There are guard and auto attack functions, but I've not realy used them in beta yet. I think they do basically what you're asking for although your idea might be an amalgamation of the two.

I've got another Idea. How about a "star fighter" module for starbases, which intercepts any other ships within some distance, and turns them back. The idea being that you'd have to declare war to move through that territory,

Seer, Ugleb, I don't think that's what they're asking for. In games where some units had an intercept ability, it was active during the other players turn. So, if you had an intercept-capable ship (call it ship A) with movement points left over, and your opponent sent a ship (call it ship near ship A, then ship A would move to and attack ship B before ship B completes its turn. In the computer games that I've seen that have this feature (can't remember which ones off the top of my head) the (attempted) intercept was automatic.

Not sure how I see this working in CG2, but it might be useful for when a transport pops out of the fog of war within range of two of your planets, one of which is undefended. Even if the transport has enough movement to reach the undefended planet that turn, an intercept-capable ship from the defended planet could hit it before it invades.

As you might guess, this could have some serious implications, and I'm not sure it would add anything to the game. It would strengthen the concept of territory, and make anything like GC1's Antimatter Missiles quite useless individually.

Simular to Birth of Federation. Seems a good idea but not necessary unless you have simulteanous turns (Multiplayer?).

I disagree. I think it's more important without simultaneous turns, otherwise a ship can move in and attack a planet/travel across the border/whatever even if you have faster ships on the defense, because you can't move while it can.

Now, I'm talking automated. Especially in multiplayer, you don't want to get down to asking a player if they want to attempt intercept every time it's possible, it will slow down the game. In my mind, units that have the intercept ability would have a setting (representing standing orders) for when to use it. "Off", "Against enemy military ships", "Against enemy ships", "against non-allied military ships", "against non allied ships" (these last two should probably include a popup on the moving player's part that says something to the effect that "We have received a warning that if we continue on our present course, Unit X will declare war on behalf of its government and attack, are you sure you want to do that?"

Well, if the intercept ship had to move to attack the enemy ship, it would definitely make the AI turn longer.  It would probably make the moving code even more complex than it already is. 

It might not be so bad if the intercept ship didn't move, but stayed in one place as if it were in guard mode, and only attacked if the enemy ship came within attack range. 

If we have time for a few extra small features, I'll bring this up and see what Brad thinks of it.

 

Adding the intercept capability in this fashion takes a small portion of the Turn-Based out of the game. Should the game be where each player makes its move and then has to deal with the consequences of the moves he selected or should there be allowed some psuedo real-time elements to benefit each player. Even chess as a limited form of this with the en passant move. However adding this would have to affect every movement since AI ships would need to be allowed this as well, thus making it a little more dangerous out there when exploring.

SMAC has auto-intercept in its air-combat layer/model. It's nice in that mode, but for GC2?

I think it would be better to be able to build significant interdictors at a military starbase. This would create a move penalty to non-native and non-allied ships. If you want to defend your border, then you'd just build a line of military bases that have interdictors on them, and leave a small response fleet out there to whoop on on the slow pokes. I think this would be better then "auto-attack any neighbor" or "auto-intercept". The reason for it is that auto-intercept would move one of your ships (what about fleets?) out to hit your opponent. Then that unit is vulnerable to the rest of the AI's ships killing it. This takes away from combined forces and naval grouping.

I'm against auto-attack a neighbor tile for the simple fact that space is big. Really, really, big. We aren't talking about they are just passing on one side of the mountain your unit is sitting on, after all. And once you add in auto-attack 1 tile away, then why stop there? At the higher techs, then it should be possible to auto-attack anyone that comes within 2 or 4 or 10 tiles of your uber-mega-star-destroyer.

@Popup Target
I'm with you on this one. This could really reinforce the concept of fronts or borders. However, I am concerned about implementation.

For example, as this is a turn-based game, you get one attack per movement allowance. If you intercept a ship near the edge of an interceptor's (current) range, you will have less attack "rolls", and may be at the intruder's mercy in the next turn. Especially if the intruder uses "attack" ships with large attack and low defense values, or if you have very fast interceptors. I would be concerned about a loss of control here, following on to Star Pilot's "combined forces and naval grouping" comment. However, I don't think this issue is a question of how far away can I intercept (each ship has a range value/unused movement points already, right?), but how not to over extend resources (due to both range issue and effectiveness of a player's combined response (smarter) vs. the computer's (probably simple ship-by-ship) auto-intercept).

@Popup Target

I dont know about the move in attack and leave, we still dont know what kind of ship speed will be possible in the final product. I doubt ships faster than 6 will be available, but with any speed the attacker will have to spend half his points moving in half leaving so even at half movement points the defenders will always get him after the attack. The way you defend targets from the initial attack is by stacking the ships with the thing you want to defend, not by having one ship defend multiple things. If that were the case then there would be a delay in a response anyway.

CariElf, I do understand the issue of complexity. I personally don't mind longer AI turns, up to a point. But I know that others would have an issue with it so HO HUM. If it was implemented I would like it more with movement, but I can see how the AI would have major issues with it, since it does add a huge depth to the game that currently doesn't exists. And I can see why other players don't want it on several levels. But one thing at a time. Wish I had thought about 6 months ago and said something about it then. Maybe GC3...lol

I'm sure GC2 will be a great game even without it.