Worst "oops" moments in PBW?

[Phoenix-D]

Heh. A couple of recent things have inspred this one. You ever do something in a PBW turn that seems right, then a turn later you're smacking your head over it? I just did in Homecoming 2. Took over a race as a replacement empire. In the turns I've run this, I've done the same thing, three or four times- mistook a race for another one.

This wouldn't be such a problem is I hadn't just, oh, declared war on said race instead of the one I wanted to..

Phoenix-D

[Baron Grazic]

In a PBW game just Last week, my wife (who has been playing for more than a year) cloaked her entire fleet before the attack, and lost about 20 ships, due to the minesweepers also being cloaked.
And she was kicking some *** too.

[Slick]

This was a long time ago in a PBEM game, but it still hurts. I had a good sized fleet guarding one of my newly established systems. The fleet was self-sustaining and included 2 spaceyard ships. The area was pretty isolated and hadn't had any activity for a while and I had a spy sat in the next system so I decided to mothball the fleet because I was running into a resource crunch. I intended to keep it mothballed for only a few turns. Well, I learned the hard way that a spaceyard ship can mothball itself but can't unmothball itself - you need a non-mothballed spaceyard in the same sector to do that. When my spy sat saw a teensy tiny fleet in the next system it was time to unmothball the fleet so I could apply foot to ***. After a level 8 tantrum, I realized the unmothball problem and that there was no way I could get a spaceyard ship to the fleet in time. You guessed it, the entire fleet was destroyed by a pack of mosquitoes without so much as firing a spit-ball in return.

Never made that mistake again.

Slick.

[Gandalph]

I had to play a turn over again once because someone messed up or something, and when I did, I forgot about the fleet of 175 ships in the Blackhole system. Next turn, they're gone.

[Ed Kolis]

Galactic Concordium (forget who was playing that empire) controlled the eastern half of the galaxy, the SMR-10 Imperium (Tesco) and Bunbunn (Geo) controlled the west, and the Meklars (me) were squeezed in the middle; the three western empires had an alliance against the Concordium and were freely sharing ships and resources (you have spare minerals? here, I'll give you all my ships, I can't afford the maintenance, then I can build more for you! Hey, when one empire controls half the galaxy you're allowed to do stuff like that! ) So anyway we had amassed a combined armada of about 300-500 battleships and baseships, and I also had 60 more ships tagging along. We opened a warp point into the Tudran system on the border of Concordium space and entered... Well, it turns out the devious Concordium player, bless his heart, had a sun destroyer sitting on the sun with sentry orders just waiting for us! KABOOOM!!! All 500 ships, destroyed... all that remained was a nebula, and my 60 ships that had apparently entered the system just AFTER the explosion. (I tried to take advantage of the situation by probing into Concordium space, but unfortunately their other systems were well-guarded and even 60 battleships and baseships couldn't dent their defenses.) The Concordium later used the Tudran system as a staging ground for their attacks - they had 10 warp points all in one sector and guarded them with about 300 baseships and starbases, so no one could get in, and the rest of the empire had grav-shields up so we couldn't open warp points in! Probably the dumbest thing I did, though, was after I'd opened a warp from Xiria to Tudran, I closed it again fearing an attack would come through - I later wanted to send a drone launcher to Tudran and launch drones out of nowhere (hoping the Concordium didn't have any penetrating scanners) but by then there were already 10 warps in Tudran... that was about the time Geo, Tesco, and I surrendered... now who was it who was playing the Concordium anyway? Hornet X1 had them originally, but I can't remember who took over...

[minipol]

Putting a sundestroyer on the sun to toast an incoming fleet? WOW, what a move. This is something i would have never thought about. Brilliant!