It would be nice to have some diplomacy options a la civilization games to make alliances more useful. It would be nice if my sentries didn't fire on allied subs.

It would still allow for backstabs because none of these options would be binding just like funding.

Options that come to mind are:

Cease fire: Allow a period of let's say 24 hours of no connect against another player.

Friendship agreement: Two players decide to become allies and sentries don't fire on them when they come in range.

Some sort of alliance option for more than two players.

What do you guys think?

Yes that would be really nice actually

I don't usually go for sentries, but when I have one I typically don't put it where it will fire on my allies. I'm not sure I see this being necessary.

The cease fire option feels against the spirit of the game to me. If I know for a fact that my ally isn't going to attack me, it take a lot of the tension away.

There are a couple of options for drastically increasing the range of sentries and sometimes it is unavoidable to be in range of allied outposts. Not just that but you could have it surrounding just enemy outposts and the only way to attack the enemy would be to go through the sentry which would cause it to for on allies that aren't necessarily in range.

This is a good idea that I've thought about more than once, but one singular problem keeps popping up. The main idea behind Subterfuge is that diplomacy is I redouble important, and because of this the fear of being back stabbed is an intregral part of the game. It's what makes the game so intense. Adding options that prevent your allies from turning around and backstabbing you removes one of the biggest edges the game has.

escher wrote:This is a good idea that I've thought about more than once, but one singular problem keeps popping up. The main idea behind Subterfuge is that diplomacy is I redouble important, and because of this the fear of being back stabbed is an intregral part of the game. It's what makes the game so intense. Adding options that prevent your allies from turning around and backstabbing you removes one of the biggest edges the game has.

I agree with you about the backstabbing, but I don't see how preventing your sentry from attacking your ally is eliminating the possibilty to backstab your ally? Just let the players set another player as ally and they won't attack their subs and let them cancel their alliance and they immediatly start shooting again. Still the same options to backstab your allies.

If you're using princesses to boost your sentry you can "turn it off" by moving the princess away.

The only counter to having a super boosted sentry is that it becomes unwieldy and targets random targets across the map. If you had a 3 princess sentry you could target individual players with (ally everyone but one person), it would make the sentry way overpowered.

And a sentry that can't be used at the frontline is underpowered, isn't it?

escher wrote:This is a good idea that I've thought about more than once, but one singular problem keeps popping up. The main idea behind Subterfuge is that diplomacy is I redouble important, and because of this the fear of being back stabbed is an intregral part of the game. It's what makes the game so intense. Adding options that prevent your allies from turning around and backstabbing you removes one of the biggest edges the game has.

These options would be toggles like the funding. It can be toggled on and off at will allowing you to backstab an ally if you wished at any point.