What's up with blockades?

[DeadlyShoe]

Are they not working or what? Empire and indie/pirate freighters are just cruising past blockades, even blockades that have been up for a while. The only effect i can see of the blockade is me blowing up pirates for other empires. This is with trade sanctions.

This is kinda frustrating as Teekans since declaring war is against my victory conditions.

[Aeson]

I have no comment to make about blockades; I never use them, personally, as I consider general commerce blockades to be an act of war, and I'd rather have my navy do something more useful in wartime than blockade a colony or two. It may also be the case that blockades only care about certain types of resources, or only inbound resources - perhaps you can watch and see if luxury items are all that comes in to the colony, or if all commerce is dealing with exports, or some such thing.

However, as far as winning without declaring war goes - were you aware that the game allows you to invade planets and blow up or capture ships and stations without a declaration of war? It's not exactly 'honorable,' and I believe it causes a bit of a reputation hit, but it can allow you to have undeclared wars or frustrate the computer player into declaring against you (which I think gets around the "do not declare war" aspect of the Teekan racial victory conditions). Depending on the exact victory conditions you've set, you could even forgo that aspect of the racial victory conditions and just focus on bringing the other victory conditions up high enough.

I will also say that, as far as dishonorable tricks go, I have seen the AI invade my worlds, bombard my colonies, and destroy my ships and stations without a declaration of war, but usually only if relations are poor. So it's not something that only the player can do, although it may be something that only the player is likely to do.

[FingNewGuy]

I will also say that, as far as dishonorable tricks go, I have seen the AI invade my worlds, bombard my colonies, and destroy my ships and stations without a declaration of war, but usually only if relations are poor. So it's not something that only the player can do, although it may be something that only the player is likely to do

.

[Timotheus]

Actual planetary blockades lead to automatic worsening of opinion between the two empires, and the AI empire does it to lower it enough so they can go to full blown war. Think of it as the cold war Cuban spacetorpedo crisis.

[Bingeling]

If you manage to blockade the single spaceport of a 1 spaceport empire, I think it is crippling.

If the AI blockade a colony of mine, I usually send the warning "remove military forces...". If they pretend innocence and do nothing, I kill the blockading fleet [:-]

[DeadlyShoe]

That's the thing though it just doesnt work it has no impact on private sector traffic. It broke sometime between shadows and universe.