The Worst Things That Can Happen

[Atrocities]

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.

[Fyron]

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.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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

[douglas]

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.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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.

[El_Phil]

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.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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

[Atrocities]

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"

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

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!

[El_Phil]

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