Good to have you on the forums, Qyasogk. As you can see from the number of pages, we are quite into Dave's Galaxy.
As for your idea, I would prefer a border system based more upon the regional government ranges of planets, once they get to that society level. This is because outside of those planets able to support a regional government, any claims you have are hard to effectively cement. Sure, you can send in fleet, but your fleets have to travel for at least a couple days just to get outside the range of the regional government which really limits what you can do to enforce it.
I've been lurking for quite a while, so even though I haven't posted much, I'm familiar with most of you.
This all started out as a desire to enhance the player vs player relations beyond the default 3 states "War - Neutral - Allies" with the additional gradients of Tributary, Hostile, Unfriendly, Friendly and Protectorate. Right now you can't really attack someone without being at War with them. But if you had a player marked as Hostile and they were found inside your "territory" then you could attack without declaring war. But then you have to know where your territory is, and that means borders.
The idea behind having "borders" was mostly as a role play device, an expression of power and authority, either recognized by your neighbors or a point of contention. So the arguments about how borders are not real ARE valid, but besides the point. If India and Pakistan agree on a border, then there is peace. But if say both sides lay claim to Kashmir, then they COULD go to war, but what they've actually done is sort of cold war, where they support proxies to poke the other side in the eye, but neither side has been willing to go "all the way".
I have no problem saying that you have to have a Regional Government in the area to draw a border. Or that you have to have 10 contiguous star systems to be able to draw a border. Or that if you're in an area that has more than two "owners" then no one gets to draw a border. And if you've got a world inside my border, and we're both ok with that, then there's no reason why its a problem.
One of the reasons why I like DG is because its kind of like playing Risk only we're drawing the map as we play, and the map is effectively infinite in all directions. Only it does make the beginning of the game last forever!
