[Growltigger]

I have said this before but just in case Aaron is reading this, I will say it again.

I want COMMUNICATION LAG a la the Starfire model. What this means is that Messages from your planets/ships need to get to homeworld before you can issue orders, rather than being omnicogniscent at all times.

The Starfire model works as follows. Say that one of your scoutships meets an alien race. It needs to get a message back to your homeworld. How does it do this?

At very low tech, it pretty much has to fly back to your home system. At a slightly higher tech, you get courier drones (fast long range missiles)which can be fired off to pass Messages along. Planetary populations have communication devices and these can be used to pass along Messages at light speed. Warp points are a problem, as no light speed Messages can go through so you have to build bases at them to fire drones through. It makes you communication network pretty damn important I can tell you.

Turning back to our example, if the alien race is hostile, the scoutship has to get the message back to homeworld (or your nearest command and control sector) so that orders can be evalueated and sent out to units. This means that you cannot react to that alien race until your ships have received orders from homeworld.

Apologies for the above, a bit rambling I know but I just love the realism of this. For example, 3 systems out, one of my scoutships bumps into an alien armada, one of my fleets is 2 systems away and could intercept if they got orders in time, it takes say 3 days for the message for get back home, 2 days to get a message to the fleet and 3 days for them to get to intercept range - in that 8 day period, the alien fleet would be a damn sight closer or even nuking my homeworld...

Now, in SEIV terms, any time under a turn is not important, BUT I wonder if it could be modded so that you need to develop communications technology to have the "instant" communications network, and until you do, you cannot find out anything until your scoutship returns to a planet...

Does this make sense to anyone?