Even better, the I idea im suggesting would deepen the aspect of PJI with 2 stages, adding another strategic depth/fun factor into the game without comming up with an oversimplyfied solution (which the current OP idea is) nor making to much effort ^^ .

It would be making SOASE more SOASE.

Ok, thanks for your reply.
But what is and interdictor ship? Sounds sinister

I'd like interdictor ships, too. They're mobile PJI.

As for the stationary types, if the devs made the time of phase lane interdiction easily moddable (don't know if this is the case already), maybe all could be made happy. Those that want only 30 secs, choose that, those like me that want basically permanent phase lane interdiction can type in sth like 3000 secs. The only real important thing here would be to differentiate between phase lanes to friendly systems with an own PJI and all other systems, to which interdiction should work only very shortly (to avoid death traps). And of course, make the AI understand that.

okay heres the post.



I actually like the idea of research to make them more effective, so maybe combining that idea with this in some way, like:

25 seconds delay (base) -> 32 seconds (research level 1) -> 39 seconds (r l 2) for enemies jumping to a system not owned by you/your allie.
45 seconds delay (base) -> 65 seconds (research level 1) -> 85 seconds (r l 2) for enemies jumping deeper into your territory.

numbers can be adjusted.

It is clear that the Beta showed several important drawbacks of making phase inhibitors too power. I would like to summarize:

1. Current phase inhibitors are not working because they do not sufficiently stop enemy fleets from simply going elsewhere. This eliminates one of the supposed main strategic points of this game.

2. The phase inhibitor that completely stopped phasing out was too powerful because it allowed death traps that made the game unfun.

3. Phase inhibitors that would only allow retreats pose the same problems as the case where they stopped all phasing outs. This allowed super turtling strategies until the super weapon.

Therefore to solve these problems, I propose the following alternatives:

1. Make phase inhibitors take up all tactical slots in the system where it's built AND

2. Limit the number of phase inhibitors that can be built based on map size AND

3. Inhibitors should allow retreat.

4. Possibly eliminate the superweapon as it currently adds little value to the game

This way, it will no longer be able to create death traps experienced in the beta.

You now have the ability to create a true strategic choke point but you have to defend it fairly with a fleet. Therefore, the enemy has a fair chance against you to push through. You will have a fair fight, fleet to fleet.

A question to all these people who want a weak PJI: WHY HAVE PHASE LANES BETWEEN PLANETS AT ALL? I thought they were there for a reason, which was to create a strategic geographical dynamic to the game. The developers must have originally thought this as well, because they developed the PJI which apparently functioned fine (imho) in beta. Furthermore, why have the concept of a gravity well?

Look, if a stronger PJI makes no sense, then neither do phase lanes between planets, and neither do gravity wells, so take them out. I'm not being funny or sarcastic, I'm being dead serious - it would actually solve a lot of issues. Keep phase lanes between stars - those are needed because distances between stars are huge, but remove phase lanes between planets, and remove gravity wells because they aren't needed (they create a false impression of some sort of strategic, defendable area).

I think there are two different camps of people, the people who prefer some kind of "open" game play dynamic where they can strike deep into enemy territory at will, do harassment attacks, flank attacks, surprise attacks, and people who don't want that kind of dynamic. Basically it's people who want a wide open "anything goes" "free" sort of game play dynamic, and people who want a more "closed" dynamic. I'm guessing that people who prefer the first dynamic also prefer fast, tactical types of games, they probably tend to be players who rush, and they probably don't have much use for defense, as they believe that a good defense is a good offense. They probably believe that in most cases it is better to counterattack than to defend (i.e. defend by attacking).

This is all fine and dandy, however it seems these two camps of people are at odds. I'm wondering if any accomodation or compromise can be made at all? The suggestion I made above about having one branch of research close off the other branch, so you either go PJI or you go superweapon, is actually a compromise approach which would allow both gameplay dynamics in the same game. However, what I'm worried about is, a compromise approach would be unacceptable to the first camp - the camp which wants a wide open tactical sort of game, where there is nothing in anybody's system to "clutter" their ships from going wherever they want, whenever they want. In that case, I suppose it would make good business sense for the devs to figure out which group heavily outweighs the other group, and please that group. Either that, or make game setup options for dropping the (buffed) PJI and the superweapon.

If there was a "catapult" ship that had a gravity-well-sized range of fire and worked very effectively against orbital structures, you could counter an opponent who tries to turtle up in a single planet by keeping your fleet on the edge of the gravity well and sieging his structures. Your opponent would be forced to either come out past his static defenses and fight you fair, or sit there and accept expensive losses until his defense is gone.

That's how most strategy games have solved this specific problem - by allowing a counter unit against hiding behind a lot of defense. SoaSE's current solution is just to let you run past the defenses and ignore them, rather than giving you a good way of cracking them directly. It's not a very good solution, for the reasons people have said.

The whole premise being Sins is that it's not a rock/paper/scissors game. In fact, a "catapult" ship with the range of the entire grav well is perhaps the most horrible idea suggested thus far

A solution i posted in another thread was having a % chance to disable a non allied ship that tries to jump out of a system with a PJI.

The problem with increasing the time they work for is that in some situation it will be just as good as a 100% block, and in other it wont matter at all.

I understand being able to totally turtle in and build a super weapon or something is undesirable, but empire boundaries should mean something.

My solution means that if you are going to jump deep inside an enemy empire you are going to lose some of your fleet along the way.

Give PJI a 10% chance to create a critical failure of a ships phase jump engine when it tries to leave. You can remove the current slow-down effect entirely. This can be something that will take a minute+ to recover.. Have it upgradeable to 15% and then finally 20%. This effects capital ships as well, but not scouts.

In this way if you absolutely need to kill something in the middle of an enemies empire you can throw ships at it and you should be able to get the job done. But it makes an attack on an enemy system something that needs considering, because you cant just 'jump out' if things start going bad. You CAN retreat if things look REALLY bad, but its going to cost you some of your fleet.

To summarize, this gives the capability to strike deep at the enemy, but with cost. It gives the choice to make a retreat, but with cost. It prevents people from just running around your empire with out difficulty, because they are losing ships the whole time, with out making it impossible to operate within an enemy empire.

It should require a dedicated effort with resolve to attack an enemy, so forcing people to at least PLAN on being able to win when they make that jump into enemy space should be REQUIRED. However sometimes things go wrong. Letting them get away totally free is too easy on them, but not allowing them to 'cut their losses and run' is also asking too much.

This effect of course goes away if the PJI is destroyed. So destroying the PJI before running is another option, and another thing the person controlling the fleet has to consider.

Also make a limit of 1 PJI per planet, to prevent people from making super-death traps.

Could you elaborate on why you think this is a bad idea? There's already a strong counter-strategy to turtling in 1.02, it's just not one that makes for good gameplay. Running fleets or siege frigate wings past heavily defended systems is the "scissors" to static defenses' "paper." I'm suggesting another way players could cut that paper, without the undesirable side effects (useless PJIs) that we see in 1.02.

Catapult ships are just one possibility. Someone suggested an EMP bomb that would disable all static defenses for a few minutes, and that sounds like another good option.

Great - I think that would play well. It would take a while to whittle away the defenses if the attacker didn't send many catapult ships, and the defender would be given a fair chance to react and send some response forces.

The counter is more efficient than the original strategy, and the counter-counter is more efficient than the counter. All is well in the world.


Oh - call it whatever you want. If A>B, B>C, and C>A, I always thought of that as rock-paper-scissors.

Although I do think over all PJI could use some sort of bump, I don't think they need much unless they got a major overhaul on how they work. Perhaps another 25%-50% boost in delay time that what it does now. Or even some techs would have been nice to invest in to boost the capabilities of the PJIs later on in the tree.

On the other hand, it seems like a lot of people don't put defenses up around the inner planets of their empires. PJI are just one brick of the grand wall of defense you could say. Other than the resources it costs to build gun-turrets and hangars, each planet/'roid/gravity well has at least a dozen TAC slots. So fill 'em up! Don't rely on just your outer most planet as the first and last line of defense. If you have several PJI's over the course of several locations the overall time of a fleet potentially making a B-Line drive to your inner planets adds up. PJIs are not meant to completely stop fleets from moving through enemy territory.