Quote:
Q said:
Blockade of an enemy colony by a fast ship with "don't get hurt" strategy can be very powerful, too powerful IMHO. The ship can fly away and avoid combat indefenitely without leaving the sector therefore maintaining the blockade.
And in SE V a blockeded colony not only produces no resources but costs maintenance!
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There are 4 problems that you bring up:
1) Retreating from combat is too easy. Like Kwok says, if you retreat past the edge of the map, you should wind up in the next sector. The opponent can then choose to stay away from the edge and remain in that sector, or follow and also wind up in the next sector. If the opponent chooses to follow and already has ships in that next sector, then you should start the next turn in space combat, surrounded.
2) Movement during combat should use up some supplies. So a blockader who is repeatedly attacked but keeps fleeing should run out of supplies and become a sitting duck.
3) You probably should not be able to totally blockade an undomed colony with only one ship. We usually can't do that for islands on Earth's oceans, and that's only two dimensional. And blockades should be less (or not at all) effective if the enemy has better cloaking than you have scanners.
4) Blockaded planets should be able to use their resource production to maintain themselves, even if they can't get anything in or out. (Conversely, if a blockaded planet doesn't produce the required resources to maintain its facilities and population then those should degrade. And a blockaded planet shouldn't be able to build stuff from non-existent resources.)
I think that #2 would be pretty easy to put into the game, would be well-received, and would take care of the "chicken blockader" problem, not to mention the "unstoppable colonizers" and "untouchable explorers" freely passing through hostile systems. (One can put colony components into fast hulls.)