Other than cases where the stars are sparse enough that there is only one comparably efficient route to the target, how exactly?
You've got a high-profile target 1000 LY away, and it's the only obvious single-system target (planetary nebula, maybe?) worth doing that long a chain for.
You've done all the hard work to get a chain out the first 950 LY, so there's four hops still to go (maybe more).
What possible restriction can be applied at this point to stop another group jumping in its Fleet Carriers (fully loaded, while yours are returning to restock after finishing the 950 LY system) and racing you to the line for the last 50 LY, making the first 95% of the work largely irrelevant to securing the final claim?
Certainly none of the restrictions - even the more extreme ones - discussed in this thread would have any effect on that case at all, except maybe giving the first group a five-minute head start.
I feel very confident that - even if Frontier accepts that sniping is a problem at all - they're not going to give System Architects a permanent right to lock everyone else out of their systems' colonisation contact. And anything smaller than that either doesn't work at all, or just shifts the position of the key bit of the race slightly but doesn't otherwise affect the result.
Well. I DO think that "just" shifting the position of the key bit of the race would have different implications depending on the implementation. And some of those implementations are more interesting than others. The scenario you describe, where one group leapfrogs another by branching off the chain, sounds cool and exciting, especially when you start to consider what the first group might do to anticipate or counteract that. Perhaps this creates an incentive to mobilize a second fleet carrier, fill it up, and start heading towards the front line while the first one is offloading, etc etc. It can become a large scale series of coordinated logistical moves played out by different groups.
I think there's a possibility for interesting things to happen. Not that the current system as designed prevents interesting things, either. But it's a little different when the final link in the chain is determined pretty much the same way as getting student rush tickets to the opera, or whatever. Any play system reliant on Spamming refresh + praying is a good thing to reduce wherever possible.
None of this would satisfy the people who are right now complaining, of course, because it doesn't solve the underlying "problem" of . . . somebody else can potentially claim something that you haven't yet claimed but have already started thinking of as "yours". People are going to be burned no matter what, and some will demand the rules be changed to suit their sense of injustice, with no end to that. I don't care about that problem by itself, but I AM very interested in what kinds of incentives and disincentives will end up shaping the larger gameworld that I will subsequently be flying around in.
This is partially why I like the current system, 15ly limits and all, better than anything I've yet seen anyone else propose. It sounds like a recipe for a more interesting evolving game world to play inside of, regardless of how many stations I personally decide to build or how many places have my name on them.
But, it doesn't sound like most folks here share my interest in seeing the bubble branch out like a potato sending out tendrils in search of nutrients. They characterize this as "a bunch of boring undeveloped systems cluttering up the galaxy." They want lots of little clusters, player driven personal bubbles, scattered and disconnected all over the galaxy like thousands of micro Colonias. To me, THAT is ugly and boring, and incredibly artificial sounding. But whatever.
One maybe solution could be to allow system architects, once they have
started building their station, to pre-select the next claim site, which will be auto-claimed at the moment of station completion. Yes, someone else could claim that system from a different station somewhere else, and I don't think they should be able to "reserve" anything or otherwise prevent someone from making a legitimate claim before the auto-claim happens. But it would free the system architect from having to worry about beating everyone to the claim gui when the station goes up.
I think if a solution like this were implemented, it would need to be transparent. Anyone docking at the station would be allowed to see and know what the next "target" system is going to be, and to react accordingly. There could be multiple system buildouts in progress all with the same system queued up as their next target claim, and then it would be a simple resource race to build your station before someone else does. To me, this kind of competition feels more fair and in keeping with the premise of what is happening in the game world than the current circumstance where it's going to be mostly an accident of internet connections more than anything else.
People will still be mad. People will still say it's unfair. I think the thing they're mad about would be a little more interesting and less arbitrary feeling, though.
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