[Karibu]

There was no battle in that system what so ever. I'll explain the political situation of the game:

Alliance A includes 2 strong races (A1, A2), which are in war against alliance B. Alliance A races has partnership and they have war only against alliance B and trade with other races in the galaxy.

Alliance B has 3 races (B1, B2, B3). All 3 races have partnership with each other.

Ships which disappeared belonged to player A1. This happened in a system, which is in the left side of the galaxy and deep in a the territory of player B1. All other races were several systems away -> present was only 200+ ships fleet of player A1 and few fighters of player B1.

Now, like I said, player B1 (me) has partnership with ALL the races who have war against player A1 (means Alliance B), which means I know the exact location of all ships which could fight against player A1. Also, members of Alliance B is in constant contact with each other and we negotiate every move we take before submitting our turns.

This is the reason I know there was no other fleet in presence in the system which could have damaged that fleet. I don't think any fleet in the game at the moment could have beaten that fleet. The player A1 is psychic and religious and it uses talisman, suberters and computer viruses himself, so it would have been very difficult to beat him using same weapons (both would steal each other ships).

Though, I grant 1% change that it is possible that one other race (2. biggest in the galaxy, though neutral in the situation) could have brought big enough a fleet to have a combat against player A1. But that player located other side of the galaxy (large or huge map, can't remember. Over 200 systems anyway) and he would have had no benefit of bringing his fleet (through dozens of systems and several players) in a system where he would have gained nothing to fight any player who were in the system and secondly that player needs all his forces to secure his borders against third biggest player in the game.

I could explain even more of the situation and politics but trust me on this, there was no fleet of that size which could have passed into that system unnoticed. Only reason I can imagine is a bug of some sort OR someething went wrong in turn execution OR AI on the other side could do something which normal players could not (like I said before, player skipped his turn and AI took over).

[edit] I grant the possibility of random event. IIRC it was set to catastrophic. I will tell more when I can catch the other player. I hope he answers my mail soon.

[ February 14, 2003, 14:01: Message edited by: Karibu ]