The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

A new list for your enjoyment.

The worst things that can happen to a player during a game of Space Empires IV.

1. Two turns into your game your star explodes.
2. You design a fleet of ships, build them, and when the time comes to move them, they have no engines.
3. You start a PBW with a moon as your homeworld.
4. You foget your PBW game password.
5. You took the Neutral Culture trait and you find out why that is a bad idea.
6. You start in a system with now warp points on a low tech high tech cost start.
7. Your system is boxed in behind a damaging warp point and a super massive black hole on the other side.
8. Your home world is the only planet in your system
9. A combination of 7 and 8.
10. A combination of 6 and 8.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

11. You get a classic Tesco Start (tm) as your starting location (very few useful planets withing several systems from your homeworld).
12. You start a game with "not all warp points connected" and your starting cluster consists only of your home system.
13. The four warp points leading out of your home system lead to the home systems of the Aquilaeians, United Flora, Tesselate, and Space Vikings. The four AI empires naturally ally with each other, but not you.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

14. While you're struggling to get a decent economy, an enemy star destroyer suddenly decloaks above your homeworld star.
15. You build your first colony ship and send it on its way, 1. happens just as the ship exits a warp point into another system and an enemy uses a Cargo Bomb project on you.
16. You have a massive empire with a slightly declining economy and a moderate fleet, and then suddenly everyone declares you Mega Evil and starts to churn out Star Destroyers.

edit: corrected numbers as Fyron beat me to the first reply

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

17. A player you've been ignoring for a long time simultaneously sends a star destroyer to every system in your empire with no warning, and you've neglected to build system gravitational shield facilities.
18. He does it to your partner at the same time. Your partner has also neglected system gravitational shield facilities. The fact that your greatest enemy is yet another victim is only minor consolation.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

19. The Star Destroyers in your systems pull away as soon as you pacify them with EVERY SINGLE SHIP AND COLONY outside your home system and you get ready to rebuild..... when a black hole creator from another enemy shows up in your system.
20. If the black hole creator mentioned above is not in fact from another enemy, but from the same one that parked SDs over all your stars and now controls everything except your homeworld system.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

21. Your new super uber, first in class, just out of your homeworlds ship yard baseship is taken over by an enemy crew defection intelligence project.

22. 21 and its so tough it can glass your homeworld despite all your defences.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

22. You have a massive empire and you vanquished everyone except one tiny Empire which is subjugated to you and only has a single (domed) tiny planet with 10M pop and no facilities, and then every single star in your empire goes nova making the tiny race the victors..... ouch

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

23. You discover a game ending bug, report it only discover that the developer is no longer providing support for your version of Space Empires IV. (Pre-Gold)
24. 21 + 22 + And it does!
25. You run 25 turns before you realize that you had forgotten to put items into your Research Que. "ouch"

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

26. You make contact with a player who looks like a harmless little empire with little interest in expansion and bully him into doing all sorts of things for you, including Subjugating himself to you and surrendering a large portion of his resources, colonies, units and ships, only to suddenly find several massive warfleets of his decloak over your most important worlds..... say goodbye!

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

27. You accidently end up as a neutral race and unable to leave your starting system.
28. Then the star explodes

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

29. Just before your star explodes, a colony ship full of pop is launched into a distant system by a Spatial Anomaly event..... right in the middle of the front lines of a massive war between the two top ranking players. Kaboom.
30. You are at war with an enemy who demands your surrender every turn except this one. You offer your surrender this time, but the only reply you get:
"Get lost sucker."
and he parks a star destroyer over your homeworld star (as he's already glassed all your colonies outside your HW system).

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

31. You make a fleet of 100s of ships, then find out too late that you didn't put weapons on it because you were waiting to get one more level of a weapon tech. (this happened to me before, but I only had 5-10 ships)

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

32. You warp your brand spanking new battlefleet of 200 superdreadnoughts right smack dab into the enemy fleet of 300 superdreadnoughts who get first shot because of the warp point rule (OUCH!)

33. Your newest class of starship is still inferior to the oldest class of your enemy's.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

34. Your modding a new weapon, make a slight mistype in one of the weapons mounts but don't notice. Then hundreds of turns into a game you engage one of the enemy fleets and get totally mullered because they can do a hundred times more damage than you actually intended. And you didn't build any of them.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

35. You finally amase an invasion fleet with four full large troop transports, but you forget to include a mine sweeper. Need I go on?

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

36. You get owned by the AI on easy mode with no bonuses.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

36. After several moving engagements, your solar power-supplied fleet is chasing the enemy fleet through a nebulae, then a red giant, then a dead star system...

37. Those weapons-heavy fighters youre so proud of are so slow, the enemy was able to circumvent and pommel your carriers...

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

38. You play a humans-only game as the most powerful member of a 19-pronged alliance against a single enemy, you are the top 19 on the list, and then your entire alliance is pounded into dust.
39. You prep your most important shipyard and start construction on the COMCA that stands between total victory and complete annihilation for you. The turn before it's finished the planet rebels and forms a new Empire.....

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

40. You are the player that numbers 17 and 18 happened to http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/Injured.gif

Hehe that still stings! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

41. You play for several hours without stopping, then, remembering that you haven't saved for hours, you decide to save. Instead of clicking "Save" you click "Load"...and don't notice your mistake until your empire is reduced to what it was many turns ago.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

That happened to me a couple of times..... very much ouch

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

42. Patiently building up during a long period of peace an inactivity, you build up a massive empire with great care and attention, and are about to put several plans into action to finally use your carefully designed ships and strategies and everything is about to come together in some climactic battles, when suddenly and unexpected the game ends due to victory conditions you weren't expecting.
43. You find out too late, by the utter destruction of your main fleets during a carefully timed simultaneous attack, that your minesweepers actually have mineLAYER components on them.
44. Due to a transport loading error, strategy setting error, loss of a transport to a satellite, mine hit, quirky initial battle placement, or a random or espionage event, the results of your simultaneous-mode turn execution involves the unplanned mass-extermination by your fleet of billions upon billions of defenseless civillians, including those on your own planets.
45. You miss a PBW turn and haven't turned off the AI design minister, who retrofits most of your fleet to use Graviton Hellbore I's as their main weapons, throwing away most of your APB XII's.
46. You build up a massive armada and a glorious-seeming empire which is the envy of the other human players, until you learn for the first time how SE4 combat modifiers stack, and that you should really have paid some attention to aggressiveness, defensiveness, combat sensors, ECM, and ship and fleet training, which all add to give you a 1% chance to hit their ships, while they have a 100% chance to hit yours, and they all gleefully split up your empire between them while your massive fleets only serve to give theirs legendary experience levels. By the time you can train some ships and install ECM and sensors, their experience from killing your armadas means you still can't hit them.

PvK

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

47. You put your ENTIRE navy into a single fleet, and make an alliance with another human player, he does the same and you both launch a daring attack on an enemy empire's home system and acheive glorious victory over his navy!
The very next turn you find out that his "Navy" was only a single battlefleet among many as he simultaniously takes out you and your allies home planets, home systems and then starts working his way out.
Just as you are about to turn about to exact revenge your enemy shows you the little "surprise" he hid near the sun.....BLAM!

48. You decide to test out your new black hole maker on an enemy sun, only to realize that the system you destroyed wasn't the enemy's pink system, it was your allies!

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

Look on the bright side: you learned a very important lesson in a way you're not likely to forget. Will you ever neglect to build system gravitational shield facilities again?

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

49. You amase an impressive empire and are heavily addicted to the game only to hit the 100 turn limit on the demo and suffor the pains of withdrawal as you wait for your out of print copy of SE IV to snail mail its way to you.
50. Your playing along and all of a sudden you hear a loud popping sound followed by a dry screech croming from your CDRom drive. You pop it own to see that your copy of SE IV has been ground into reflective dust. (Then you go to order a new copy and find out that there are no more copies available the game, after nearly a five year run, is now out of print and sold out.)

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

Indeed http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

I once bluffed the second leading player into surrending his empire by placing cloaked ships on all of his stars and then telling him to surrender or watch his empire die. He withdrew from the game and messaged me telling me that I was a no-good cheating bastard...... I messaged him back telling informing him no, I was a damn good poker player.

I tried this again and a player called my bluff. I had only one star killer and I used it as an example. In response the player, and notice I am not mentioning names here, abandoned most of his smaller worlds and scapped about 80% of his fleet. He then surrendered to my enemy.

I no longer bluff. I give then one chance, if they do not comply, I end their civilization on the next turn.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

51. You play against the player 36 happened to (with no extra experience), and he owns you.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

52. You are sending your massive battlefleet with over 10 Battleships into enemy space leaving little defenses behind, and you spot a small fleet of several LCs on your way to the enemy. You attack..... only to find several dozen cloaked Baseships traveled with them.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

Interesting bluff. If that happened, I'd just divert my system forces to the sun http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

?????

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

See, people usually have small amounts of forces in systems. Star destroyers are usually not well defended. Just tell forces to attack the star... Or station them ON the sun.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

53. You finally settle in for a few hours of gameplay, but then your wife gets sick as does the baby. The dogs then decide to develop gastroenteritis. You have to keep everyone alive with tylenol, liquids and TLC.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

54. You finally build your first sphereworld but before you can colonise it, your ally gets their coloniser to land first.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

55. Noone makes it into the SE5 beta.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

56. You make it into the SEV Beta and instantly find a bug: It doesn't work on your system.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

57. After years and years of play Space Empires IV, you install the beta for SE V and discover that you no longer want to play SE IV. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

58. Just before SEV is released as a finished version, a mass computer virus strike eliminates all beta copies of SEV on all computers of Malfador and the testers..... back to the drawing board

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

59. Your SE5 CD spontaneously explodes.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

60. You put the se5 cd in your computer and your computer explodes, taking with it not only your se5 cd but also your se4 cd in the other drive, AND all your unfinished mods/shipsets AND all your savegames.....

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

61. All of the matter in the universe suddenly ceases to exist, stopping you from playing any Space Empires games.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

62. This thread goes on forever with just me and Ashton thinking up more horrible ways how SEV might be destroyed.
63. All known and unknown universes collapse, taking SEV with it.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

64. You don't like the new SEV interface, the 3Dish map annoys you, ground combat takes so long you get bored annd loads of other small problems make you hate SEV, but everyone else loves it and refuses to ever play SEIV PBW again.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

65. If you see flying pigs on your homeworld in Invasion.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

66. [Since this just happened to me] Your shiny new fleet of crystalline dreads, which are almost impervious to damage because of all the crystal armor they are packing, is pulverized by a smaller, substandard fleet because I accidentally engaged them in one of those "shields useless" systems. **

** Note to self: mark those systems as "systems to avoid"; mark those sectors with minefield markers.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

67. You buy a fleet of known superdreadnoughts, nearly invincible, for most of your colonies, only to realise that the seller renamed some unarmed escorts with ion engines before closing the trade.

(Just happened to me >.<)

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

That'd make me mad...

And welcome to the forums! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

Oooh that's VERY painful.....

68. You place an order for a number of ships with your most trusted ally, and tell them where you want them. You see the ships entering your space alright, but instead of going for the sectors you named, they move to every single star in your space..... and the rest (and you) is history.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

69. This thread doesn't come to a sudden and painful end because you're laughing in class.

Re: The Worst Things That Can Happen
 

'Scuse me, but I don't really get that.....