Please verify suspicion.
 

In the latest turn of one of my games a neighbour suddenly attacked me. There was no message from him and we had a treaty the previous turn. I had a few ships and none of them fired back despite the fact I was the only one on the end of a wormhole and went first. I suspect he broke the treaty, but then saved the turn and loaded it later to finish it thus the game saw he no longer had a treaty with me but since I received no message my ships still thought we were friends and so didn't fire. I think this happened to me before but I can't rememeber if my suspicions were correct. Can anyone tell me if this is probably what happened?

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Megaevil empire? Maybe there was no message for whatever reason.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

I had something simmilar happen to me once in stock, when I was just playing the computer. For some reason the game had started with 2 races using the same shipset and, I'm guessing here, the computer confused one, with which I had a millitary alliance with, with the other who I hadn't met. So my "friends" ships suddenly attacked mine.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Does his status on the empires screen show him at war or still with a treaty? If he is at war, you have your answer, but if he is still shown as having a treaty you may have a serious game bug.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

If he broke the treaty, the status would be "None"

MEE only applies to AI, not human players.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Wait. Is is possible to send a message without any text, and thus it be invisible?

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Breaking a treaty sends no message. But declaring war will. IIRC

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Something sort of like this happened in CB#2. My empire had decided that peace is boring, and OH! look at all the shiny, resource-filled worlds! (this is a Disposable Society race, so everything is basically one-shot use; plus, insane amounts of construction capacity, no repair).

Anyway, I canceled the treaty with SJ, and was expecting on the next turn to lose quite a bit of hardware around our "joint defense" points. I had two ships and a big stack of satellites, he had a few carriers, 8 or so ships, and a bigger stack of satellites. Somehow, when the turn was processed, none of his ships anywhere fired a shot. I had two ships that magically jumped to Legendary status, as they took out all of those defenses, without a scratch.

Strange thing is, once SJ processed the turn again, with (I'm fairly certain) the same *.plr files, his ships started firing again. So, it's probably just some strange quirk in how turns are processed. Try running it again, and see if that fixes it.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

There shouldn't be duplicate sets as the shipsets are built into the mod. It wouldn't be MEE as I suspect he is 1st. rewinding the turn showed he had a trade treaty with me, then he didn't. I don't think it's worth redoing the turn as the few ships I had wouldn't have stood a chance and now I know what he is going to do.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

I think your theory might be right. He probably broke the treaty and the message was lost by the "save and re-load" bug that we've seen before.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Hey, howd that turn out? I'm pretty sure SJ's defenses couldnt be cracked by the heap, alone. But I had two more empires ready to jump in at the first sign of hostilities, to make a nice little multi-front war.

There was also a third one in the wings that might have been willing to turn on one of the other two, if everything played out right.

Too bad I couldnt keep that game up. How about some after action reports?

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Randall,

This is a verified bug, at least as far as I recall from the NGC#4 game. The exact same thing happened, we re-ran the turn to ensure that the message was recieved, and then all was fixed.

I suggest re-run the turn and make sure that the dip messages are sent by the other empire at the end of their orders, and it should go differently.

Alarik

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

My outer defenses are actually holding up quite well.
However, the heap is gutting my empire from the inside quite effectively without any help.

Those ships of yours are making heavy use of a major balance flaw in the torpedoes.
Note: said flaw has been corrected in the other PBW games now.

Your solid shield warships are quite annoying. My hastily assembled defense lines haven't been able to scratch them significantly.
Intel bombs are slowly whittling down the fleet, but they damage is already extensive.
A wave of carriers and my new "Gravol" ships will be making a final stand in the next few turns. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I suspect the other races are not helping, since they know the Heap will be unstoppable if they win this.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

This reads like a good naval novel.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

bah. bloody hell. all that work subjugating a race so that I would have a puppet empire to fire the first shot at you. I'm guessing it didnt work out that way.

you should have seen it, the glory of the master plan. the other major power was the guy in the south-east, and his only hope was if he carved out a chunk of your empire for himself. that, or if he went to war with Mac.

man, you should have seen the look that would have been on your face, if a fleet of Heap warships (belonging to another empire) attacked you while we still had a treaty. It would have been beauty-licious.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

I'm surprised. Even with me believing you were an honorable ally, the other players are much softer targets, and with more territory the Heap would become unstoppable.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

yeah, i planned on being an honerable ally, until you started running intel projects against me. then i started worrying about who the biggest threat was.

I'm insecure, so I try to never break trusts or betray allies. But I'm also overly suspicious, and always imagine people plotting against me. Its easy enough in CBM to run un-traceable intel attacks. I had a few that I knew came from you, and alot that I couldnt identify. It sure looked to me like you were planning on stabbubg your honerable ally in the back.

I had actually originally planned on using my "forign fleet" to aid you against the guys in the south-east, but then you blew up my ship and the hostile projects started coming in...

wither or not it was all justified, or if it was all just a big misunderstanding, i still think it makes for a rather epic tale. keep me posted on how the war is going!

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Seconded.

What is the Heap? A powerful race or something? Space Monsters?

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

what, never been in a PBW game with me? The Nausea Heap has been my trademark empire for the last five years!

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

I've never signed up for PBW in the first place.

I prefer to just mod the game, rather than play it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Anyways I suck at the game (result of lack of play) and as such am often faced with un-overcome-able opponents relying on stock (or basic mod) AI.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Ah, the AI. Scourge of PBW.
I bombed the ship because it was heading for my core systems and I didn't want to cancel our treaty over one ship.
The rest would have been counter-intel forgotten in the queue.

By the way:
I did have a number of the Allied Assistance Projects going on.
I made the conditions optimal on one of your huge breathable worlds before the breakdown. The counter-intel dosen't distinguish between helpful projects and attacks.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Puke, I'll try writing up some reports from the last few turns, but I don't want to make it public yet. The story so far is fairly interesting, and I have a feeling it will become even more so over the next few turns http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif SJ seems to be trying to mass a bunch of frigates with Multi-purpose missiles, which could prove to be troublesome with point-defense. Especially if my suspicion that he can churn one out every other turn from most of his worlds is correct.

I'm not sure when exactly SJ is going to switch the game to a set of data files with re-balanced torpedoes, but I'm going to have to make at least some adjustments to deal with that. I think it's just going to be a mix-up of fleets, so that they aren't overly dependant on one kind of weapon. The wonderful construction rate of a Disposable Society should let me make a more balanced fleet within the span of a few turns... too bad I also have a 25% combat penalty to go along with it :O

Oh, and SJ, I think the really annoying solid shield design ships were my modifications to some of Puke's designs. If they're named after philosophers, that's mine. True, you warned me that Puke's designs were a bit "too shield heavy", but I came to realize that it doesn't matter for this race. All that matters is the ship can take out as many enemies as possible, without worrying about survival. Since for this game, a crippled ship gives me jack-diddly, only takes up maintainence.

--edit: Oh, and another thing to consider about the current power of torpedos... if you're using the battle in Hongor, where I took out your warp defenses, the results of that are skewed for a different reason. I thought I would lose a few more ships, but when I replayed the battle, it looked like all your missile sats were set to Max Firing Range. So all the missiles got picked off as they travelled through my entire fleet formation to get at their target. I think the results of the battle would have been very different if you had them set to target the closest ship instead. Something to consider.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Yeah, that's only one of the strategic flaws...

The torpedo accuracy bonus just needs to be the same order of magnitude as the rest of the modifers in the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

thats one of the other reasons i tried to set up the military relations with another empire. the production rate of a disposeable society, pluss the combat bonuses of a more reasonable culture type.

would have been unstopable, i tell ya.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Someone like me, perhaps? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Now your empire is fighting a guy with a million of each resource in storage.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

although i valued and intended to keep our alliance, i tried to avoid too much in the way of unified military offensives with you. mainly because we were the two largest in the game, had very complimentary traits, and really would have been unstopable.

and that wouldnt have been fun for anyone. partnering up with the poor guy that got stuck in the center, well that made it a bit more fare for everyone.

Re: Please verify suspicion.
 

Yeah. Unfortunate.

It would have been nice to try having the other three partner against us, and then poke them with raiders to toughen them up for some huge and entertaining battles later on.