Worst "oops" moments in PBW?

[rextorres]

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
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.

That was one of my favorite all time PBW moments.

[ April 02, 2003, 05:29: Message edited by: rextorres ]

[Slick]

I love this thread! I have either made the same mistakes outright or can see myself easily doing so. It is fun to laugh at these!

Anyway, here is another one which is not as bad as my other one. It had been many turns before I finally got the Last colonization tech and I really needed to colonize those gas giants in my 12ish systems. I quickly "copied" my rock colonizer, changed the design type to Gas Colonizer, but forgot to change the colonization component from rock to gas. Then I splurged added my new gas colonizer to all available construction queues. Didn't notice the problem either when the ships got built - they had the right name, right? All on the same turn I got a bunch of "Cannot Colonize" errors, but by this turn the 2nd batch of wrong colonizers was produced, so I had to retrofit (at great cost in resources and time) 20 to 30 Gas Colonizers to remove the rock colonizer component and add the Gas colonizer component. This bothered me so much, I didn't even check my resources that turn and (you guessed it) the mass retrofit took me into the red. I don't think any ships got auto-scrapped, but I did lose production at several planets that turn. Grrr!

Slick.

[Ruatha]

I haven't played that many PBW games so my big ones are still waiting to happen!

But in my first game I built most of my ships with solar panels and no resupply depots as I didn't need them.
I sent my entire fleet(almost) against the enemy and it got wiped out.
He then sent in a minor weak fleat through a black hole system (Is that allowed???) towards my virtually undefended home system.
But good enough I had a fighter carrier filled with fighters two system away that had been on the way to the front, so I turned that around.
Then it ran out of supplies! The one ship without solar panels!
What to do?
I sent it to the closest planet with a shipyard and built a resupply ship that was filled with solar panels, planning to fleet them and gain supplies and then unfleet the supply ship and send the carrier on it's way.
Therefore it didn't need any engines as they would take valuable space away from another couple of solar panels!
When it was finished it produced lots of supplies but had a supply storage capacity of Zero!
Starting to refit and repair took two more valuable turns and he got into a killing spree going from planet to planet in my home system!

I think this was what tipped the balance and after that it was all downhill, riots, mineral shortage, ships abandoned and eventually genocide.

I learned some valuable lessons!

[ April 02, 2003, 08:23: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

[MegaTrain]

I loaded the next turn in my current game, and saw that one of my neighbors had opened a warp point to one of my home systems.

Mistake #1: I anticipated that he would send through an attack fleet to pick off the worlds one at a time (because that was MY strategy when invading). I had a medium fleet a couple of systems away (these roaming fleets were my primary offense/defense), and a few miscellaneous ships mingling around the system, which I immediately send to the sector NEXT TO the new warp point. I figured that I wanted to see the size and makeup of his fleet, and that a couple of single ships were just going to get munched if I parked them on the new wormhole. BAD IDEA.

Next turn, I had about 25 Level 5 PLAGUE SHIPS swarming each planet in that and all adjacent systems. DOH! And the Plague ships had no defense--if I had parked my ships ON the wormhole none of them would have gotten through.

I hadn't laid mines, because I figured anyone with a large invasion fleet would be packing enough sweepers to make them irrelevant. I did have weapons platforms, but all the plague ships need is 1 shot to infect the planet. It was a huge mess, within a few turns most of my empire was rioting, and production was down in the negatives.

Mistake #2: After I got all that cleaned up, I built a little better defense on each and every planet. He opened another warp point to another couple of my systems. I immediately sent my fleets toward the systems, and sent individual warships to defend each planet in the system, anticipating another Plague fleet.

Nope. This time, it was ONE tiny ship, with a STAR DESTROYER component!! I even had a whole turn to panic, because I could see his ship sitting on top of my sun, and could scan its components.

I lost about 80 BILLION people that turn, and about 27 planets. (I had populated every planet with native breathing population, and had Replicant Centers III--most planets were maxed out on population.) Fortunately, my attack/defense fleets had not quite made it into the system, so they survived.

After that, I parked a defensive ship on every sun in my empire.

[Ed Kolis]

Oh, how about just plain forgetting the rules of the game? Like in The Hunt, where you're dead if you lose your homeworld, and I forget to build any defenses on it? Or put ships over it? Or build any satellites? Here you go, partner, have a free rest of the empire! Of course, I saw it coming, but I still forgot the rules and decided to retrofit my fleet "so I could thrash his homeworld after he got mine." I was somewhat disappointed with the results. I felt every bit the doofus I was.

ROFLOL... so THAT'S why you lost so quickly... I just figured the enterprising opponent said, "Hey, who cares if someone else gets one point ahead when I have an empire twice the size of everyone else's!"

That was one of my favorite all time PBW moments.

Yeah, it was YOU!

[sparhawk]

Well...my upid moment of SEIV is trying to sweep mines with cloacked mine sweepers.....and losing a 200 sized fleet.
Or being too nice to my neighbors, I used to let people colonize planets even in my homesystem...
bad thing to do

Sparhawk

[FadingSuns]

Allright, this isn't a PBW moment, but I have to add something to keep this discussion going. My worst moment happens in tactical combat. I'll use the formation order to close with the enemy, usually as 'close double wall', and then clear all group assignments once weapons are in range so my ships can do this 'missle dance' if necessary or just pound an enemy from a distance. All to reciently I forgot to clear orders and watched in helpless horror as my defenceless PDF ships moved WELL WITHIN range of a planets crappy DUC defences when my fleet leader made a 45 degree turn. What started out as a great strategy turned into a turkey shoot. I was planning on capturing the planet intact and using it to resupply my fleet. I ended up almost glassing the planet just to survive the fight and having my invading fleet limp home for repairs. I'd like to say that was the only time I've made that mistake...

[SgtBigG]

Originally posted by FadingSuns:
All to reciently I forgot to clear orders and watched in helpless horror as my defenceless PDF ships moved WELL WITHIN range of a planets crappy DUC defences when my fleet leader made a 45 degree turn.

Don't feel bad, I've done the same thing.

I'd like to say that was the only time I've made that mistake...

I'd like to say that too, but I'd be lying.

G

[Noble713]

I only played one PBW game long ago:

I decided to try an early-game strategy that I had picked up on the forums. Instead of building escorts and frigates, build small transports with satellite launchers and cargo. Fill them with sats armed with Capital Ship Missiles. Most early ships have either DUCs (too short-ranged to survive a duel with multiple missile sats) or CSMs (which can't target the sats at all). So your transports get into combat, drop their sats and run, and the enemy ship gets shot up trying to pursue the transport. Then pick up the sats again and move on. My entire navy consisted of these ships.

It seemed like a brilliant idea until I got in my first war. I couldn't figure out why my ships were dropping like flies. Then I looked at the combat footage...and saw that the transports weren't launching the sats at all.

It didn't take my opponent long to break through and destroy my home system.

[tbontob]

Heh, you guys are talking of past mistakes.

At least it gives the impression that you guys are competant and knowledgable players now.

I just made a dumb-assed mistake in Survivor2

Built a big fleet of some 30+ ships. Knew there may be a problem with mines so built ships with 100+ mine sweeping capability.

Assaulted a planet protected by a small fleet, WP's, sats and a few mines. Won the battle, but lost 1 ship and had 3 damaged to mines.

Mines?

How can that be?

Doh!!! Built ships with 100+ mine laying capability.

Just lucky he elected to launch only a few mines!

[ April 24, 2003, 23:02: Message edited by: tbontob ]