lol, cloaks would definately be useful especially for trade.

though the starships in the Stargate Universe travel MUCH faster than any equivilant Star Trek vessel; for example

a Star Trek Starship travelling at TNG Cochrane Warp Factor of 9.9999 (an impossible speed to reach for all 'current' Starships) would take 15 years to reach the Pegasus Galaxy (under the assumption, as given by dialogue, that the Pegasus Galaxy is the Pegasus Dwarf Irregular Galaxy which is about 3 million LY away from the Milky Way)

vs

A Daedalus-Class starship which can make the trip in two weeks.

Needless to say, that answers quite definitively which race has the superior warp drive.

Star trek never got their physics right. Warp 1 is ment to equal light speed. but even then at warp 5 they reach their destinations in a matter of hours. Not to mention if they were travelling at such fast speeds there would be no way for them to stop in time to avoid colliding with space objects like meteorites or asteriods. which would tear the ship apart on impact.

The best method of travel would be to fold space. Safer and you wouldn't have the issue of cleaning the mess off the back wall when you go to light speed. Stargates would work, or if you have seen 'event horizon' then you know that the ships engines in that movie would be efficient.

Or you could take an example from homeworld if you have played it, Hyperdrive technology inverts a ship into sub space and travels at light speed. passing through all normal matter and emerging into normal space on arrival.

There is more than 1 method of travel in question here, the most obvious would be to travel beyond the speed of light. But even then it would take years to complete a single journey to the nearest system, Tal Ceti (even at 9x times the speed of light). Where as something like folding space technology would get you where you are going in a very short period of time, but it's theoreically impossible. Something like subspace travel is also theoretically impossible unless subspace actually exists and is a shorter distance than normal space.

While i was into some testing stuff for X-Worlds, i came up with such a cloak gimmick -- indirectly that is;

I took the *sphere.x* model, textured it with all invisible files (have a look at the Batman Moon in CoSH to witness the potential of transparency UV) , ripped apart diffuse materials, made an EXTREMELY costly component, completely surrounded a tiny scout with the bigger (or resized to fit) newest but weird structure... there it was, completely Cloaked even to me; so, as a result, i had only two ways to find it on the playing field --Ship listing panel on an empty but there row & -- clicking like a fool on each parsec square tiles (if the grid option is actually on) until the cyan circle lighted up!!

There are a number of other ways to make a 'true' cloak system or indirect feature... but, i won't share anymore of my "secrets" until X-Worlds version 06-A is released with a few of its looooong overdue fleets and numerous tricky assets (Magnetic Ride engine and boosted Defenses components, etc!).

I remember in one of the Voyager episodes, they somehow got their Delta shuttle to hit Warp 10, which they stated was the fastest you could possibly go, and the crew on the shuttle, once at that speed, where in every spot in the universe and at every timeframe, so it would just be a matter of stopping the ship when and where you wanted to be, and you would instanteously arrive there. This of course was kind of an off-the-wall episode, since it stated that Starfleet in all it's years has never figured out how to do such a thing, then the crew of Voyager, alone in the Delta quadrant, with absolutely no resources, does it in a week.. hmmmm.. yea.

actually it is possible. it's just stopping that is the main issue. Coz if you stopped suddenly everything inside that object would just keep going, therefore you would be a red paint job on your wall. Litterally.

Err, not that I oppose the direction this thread has ventured into, but on the original topic...

I tend to play the largest maps possible for a number of reason that I'll keep brief, I also go for occassional stars, planets, and habbitable planets. What I'm after is large clusters of stars with almost as much empty space between the clusters. Range, Speed, and Sensors all become much more important in such an environment.

Some of the things I do to "secure" the universe.

Choke points were mentioned as the result of Tight clusters earlier, I'd rather call them areas of focus where a larger number of habbitable planets and or resources fall into a relatively small area. These areas allow you to skip planetary garrisons in favor of a large fast fleets in the area that can move to intercept threats. Like wise there is an increased likely hood that a star base could cover more than one planet at a time for economic or military benefits.

For the sake of surveillance I often out fit a cargo hull with nothing but range/sensors/drives to create an AWAC to monitor the empty space around these areas of focus. Strung together you can create a barrier of surveillance giving your standing fleet more time to maneuver.

Starbases become more important in projection of yours forces as you either have to build a starbase to get to the other side of a void, or build enough range into your ships to get across it thus reducing their potentional armament. This works both ways, if your getting destroyed due to superior numbers you may just need to locate the star base that allows them access to your space.

Anyway, wanted to share and I now return you to your regularly scheduled conversation.

First you say there shouldn't be a boundary, then you say you should have the right to ask a ship to leave 'your space'... So, how can it be your space if there isn't a boundary? How do you tell someone to leave if there isn't something that says you can?

The point I have tried to make is this: Draw the line wherever you want. Say this is mine and that's yours. That's fine. But now try and keep me out. Diplomacy? Sure. Treaties for trade access, Military Access, all access backstage passes to the next state of the empire address... Whatever you want. But if I venture into your said 'territory', after a little timeout in the 'nuetral' area you have every right to blast me out of the sky, if you can. You could be nice about it and say 'hey buddy, wanna turn around?' But you don't have to. I don't imagine the Drengin doing much asking. Pretty much a 'don't come past the line or you're whatever your race calls food for your pets.' No warnings, just a shot from somewhere else to let you know your visa has expired.That's the perogative of having 'my space'. My space, my rules. My space, I don't want you in it. You send ship, ship goes boom. You put up Influence base, base goes boom. It's MY SPACE. It's 'my space' and that's 'your space'. Without borders we can't have either one, so all of the elements of diplomacy that go with them are gone too. I like the idea of blowing up anything that enters my space without me saying it's OK. I like it alot...

Boundaries empower diplomatic relations, and when done correctly allow for all of those glorious confrontations whenever someone or something wants to go someplace that's 'mine'. They aren't walls in space or anything like that. Just a line on a snow globe that says keep out. Or in one of my favorite movies, a big traffic light out in the middle of space you have to stop at until it turns green...

T

Hahaha, your post had me cracking up laughing, especially that comment. Diplomacy is probably one of the toughest things for programmers to do, since it's hard to make the AI do things that people would consider 'normal' negotiations. But I agree, even some small improvements could go a long way.

Your influence boundaries should be considered your 'Space', although these boundaries aren't exactly populated like a countries boundaries are on earth, they would signify areas where you have more of your own citizens traveling about, tourism, trade routes, and other things (that you don't actually control in the game).

Although, unlike in other games where it is more strict, not allowing units to just pass through others territory, it should be more lax since it is open space... but if another civ brings a massive fleet into your territory, and that fleet is spotted by one of your ships, they would not just sit by and do nothing, they would either meet that fleet in space with their own and ask them what the heck they are doing (and likely tell them to leave), or require a good explanation.

Hello

I have a game question?

1) How does guard and sentry work on ship commands. It seems to do nothing. I put my ships on guard and they still let ships go by to destory my starbase. What is the purpose of guard then???

Saint Mina of The Orders Militant of the Adepta Sororitas

I don't think Guard makes your unit auto move and attack a target, I've never seen this happen. Unless you meant, that the guard unit is the one that will defend if attacked, even if a tougher 'non-guarding' unit is in the same stack (not in a fleet). So if a weak unit is guarding a Starbase (a Starbase that is loaded with weapons and defense, e.g.) I would assume that the guard unit would be the first one to take on an attacking force, but I have not tested this.

My understanding of guard is that it would only protect what it was on the same tile as.  The only real difference between guard and simply setting the ship on the starbase in question then (assuming that this is the case) would be if you were to encounter an opponent with the Super Warrior SA, as it would seem guard would have you strike first.

There is also the issue of your ship protecting the starbase possibly being a higher priority target than the base itself, but this is easily negated by not arming your starbase in the first place.

Which is why I suggested that you place them on the same tile.

No, if Guard works like I think it does, then it would simply prevent Super Warrior's First Strike from triggering (since it only works when they attack).

To my knowledge the "favorite race" medal (in this case custom race) only counts games played from DL, not from DA or TA.  Theoretically this is something that's on the list to be fixed as far as MV functionality goes, but for the moment if you want your custom race medal to show up you'll simply need to play and submit a game in DL as a custom race.