Precursor find gives aliens 86 Battle Cruisers early in the game?

"I love the chaos factor that those random events provide, but I don't like something as overballanced as this occuring. Is this intended?".

NO, it's RANDOM. It could ALSO BENEFIT you. Take it as is and try to beat them in another way. If the Drengin are now the strongest, it doesn't mean you lost the game. This game is about STRATEGY, so find a way to solve your problems, or play another game if you loose. I lost several games and won two so far. That is why it is soo challenging. If you would always win, would you play another game or not?

Shouldn't the maintenance on that have totally destroyed their economy?

SprintSTNYC: Why? The Random Event gave it to them, as a bonus. It could happen also to you if you are lucky. When you start a game you can even give your luck a boost!

give them tributes in exchange for them declaring war on the other races..spend that time building up..rush to battleships if you can, they totally own cruisers.

~SDC~

I don't think the issue is getting the ships or not, just that getting **86** of them is a tad silly....

~SDC~

Freya, I'm well aware that these are random events, and that they might help as well as hinder. My complaint is the drastic overkill that can be involved. After this event happened, nobody else (even combined) had a chance, period. You might as well just insert a random message that another race has won, game over. Either way, that's a rather hollow victory or defeat. It would be nicer if the random event bonuses had some sort of scaleable max / min range that progressed as the game advanced. It's fun to tip the scales of balance ever now and then, not knock them across the galaxy!

~SDC~

Divide Overflow, guess you met one of those rare occassions you simply lost the game due to the event. It never happened to me this drastic. But, hee, I always choose luck on my side when I start a game. Your comments could be an issue, though, if this happens frequently.

How did you know it was random event??
Does the game tell you what they got -- or is it just common sence???

ds6161, the event "happens" and as a result something happens as well. In case of Divide Overflow, the Drengin (the evils) got a tremendous amount of powerfull battleships. So from on turn/month to the other, they became the strongest military cin in the universe. Now, if you are evil, you are going to use that advantage, or not? They blew everyone out of the sky. And yes, you can see the results of such an event, suddenly you (or better: The Drengin) have (in this case) 86 battle cruisers more than one turn ago.

It announces it as a random event.

Freya, it doesn't sound like that improved his fun. It's no fun to have a good game decided by such a random event. Just another reason to allow players to choose to have them, or not, at game setup.

Star Pilot: Sure, mate, as I said in #7. But for me it makes it more challenging, so I would never turn off random events.

The random events should give a race an advantage or disadvantage, not an easy victory or certain defeat.

Randomness is no excuse for a game-ending event.

This is a strategy game, not a lottery

What game year did this event occur in?

Well considering that the fundamentalist just took over the Drengin and the yor leaving only the good races left. Now im sure according to the Drengin and Yor, this was an unbalanced event.

Even if the Drengin had 86 extra Battle Cruisers they outta be dirt poor for paying maintenance, but by now I'd imagine that you had already started a new game. I think maybe there should be a limit to how many ships you can find at a time, or make random events optional as suggested above.

I wonder how much longer til' someone gets 1000 Terror stars from a random event.

Timing is everything. No sympathy from me if this event occured after game year 2185 to be honest...

I suppose the event could be modded to give 15-20 ships instead of 75-90, but I can't find it in the data files ... :notsure:

Scaling down random events would make them so much random noise, like finding a scoutship in an anomaly in the mid/late game - you click disband and forget about it. Nerf every factor in the game and pretty soon you'll have a "press Enter for next turn until Victory occurs" kind of game.

I've never seen any race get battle cruisers, but I've many times seen somebody get a large number of corvettes - good for skirmishing but not taking planets. Even though the numbers were great, in one case enough to save the Altarians from the Drengin, I never found it really unbalancing - shift to research, get to Battleship, shift to military, build Battleships, problem solved. While waiting for the battleships, defend in orbit or use a delay/fallback strategy.

I think it's events like that one that make this game as enjoyable as it is. When I get an event that switches the balance of power immensely in favour of another race I usually do my best to beat them anyway, I might lose 9 times out of 10, but IMHO the 10th makes it all worth it.

Divide,

I too think that kind of an event ruins the game. Say some 20 battlecruisers instead would have been more acceptable but over 80 early on...it practically ends the game right there!

2 other people already said this, but this event is NOT Game Over, simply because the Drengins' economy is completely shot down with the burden of paying monthly maintenance for the ships. If you think things through, it should be possible to attack their economy further, with hit-and-run attacks on shipping lanes, destroying starbases, and such to make him go completely bankrupt. Maybe then you can do stuff like buying some of the corvettes back from him, trade them for a crappy star system, etc.
Yah, it's a huge challenge. But it *should* still be winnable.

Astro

True, Astromarine... Their economy should be shot once they get possesion of all those ships 86x5=430 BC a turn just for upkeep! Snipe their trade routes or get the AIs to do it for you. Once their balance goes below 0, their morale starts slipping, they start falling behind on research and social improvements. Then it's time to bring up the diplo screen and start haggleing for those cheap battlecruisers for your own fleet. I would imagine the Dregnin would practically give many of them away. Plus depending on when in the game this occurs - I mean a battle hammer in a system with protection fields could eat a lot of battle crusiers. I mean yeah it's kind of a slap in the face to have the computer recieve such a boon, but I really like a game that I don't win every single time. And sometimes not losing for a few more turns feels like a victory of sorts.

Bah--I saw the 90 corvette thing(which they promptly squandered against their enemies dreadnaughts in an endless stream) but never BCs.In the early game this is decisive.If I were living next to the civ that got 86 BCs while Im just cranking out my first few--Id reload.I have the game set for save every 2 turns so (like the time I lost ALL my best stars to the fundys)I can turn back time on the game-breakers.

BTW I like that if a system becomes a new Civ the new Civ gets all your techs too--Question--If a system culturally switches sides to another power does the other power get your techs?
I only had a couple defections to my side(not the way I play)but the civ I got them from had less tech so I got no new techs.

First off, I no longer have the save game for this, so I can't tell you what turn it was. I hadn't yet put my first Battle Cruiser into play yet, so it was still very early in the game. I honestly believe that after this event occurred, there was *no* possible way to win the game. That's my only grief really, how overbalance the scope of this event was to the game. Immediately after the Drengini took possession of the Battle Cruiser fleet, they declared war upon me. No surprise there. I immediately tried two things, I tried to maneuver my meager fleet of corvettes into his trade lanes to disrupt things, but I was quickly picked off and completely destroyed within one or two turns. (Attacking an enforced Starbase with a corvette is pure suicide...) I also was able to barter my way into having all other races declare war against the Drengin, although this nearly bankrupt me. All this bought me was a few turns to watch his huge fleet of Precursor Battle Cruisers disperse to destroy all of my fleet, my few Starbases, my planetary defenses, and all the same for those forces of the rest of the alien races.

I can't say that his economy was overly burdened, because the AI was able to follow up the planetary attacks with a wave of troop transports within a dozen turns that rolled me up like a carpet. All attempts at pleading for peace were in vain. They simply rolled right over me, and I noticed that several other races were suffering similar losses as well. The game ended in a total route, with nobody able to put up but a token defense (corvettes / star fighters vs. Battle Cruisers). I was able to get 2 of my own Battle Cruisers out into play. Do the math and guess how long they lasted.

As I stated earlier, my grief is not with the random event itself, rather the scale of it. Handing them 20 top of the line ships would have been a significant challenge. 86 top of the line ships was a death knell. If things were toned down a bit, certainly not to the "shrug, roll your eyes and keep clicking away, business as usual" point, but rather to a manageable level where you need to shift tactics and strategy to cope with things. I like the random events, but their strength needs to be adjusted to the current level of the game.

~SDC~