Negative random events waaaaaaaaay overpowered
from 
Stardock Forums
Stardock Forums
I think there are a couple of other threads on this, but I'm pulling my hair out here...
I'm about 6-7 hours into the game, and every single time I begin playing, I have my game ended by one sudden random event. I remember reading on this site that Brad hates random game-killing events... yet there sure seem to be quite a few of them in there. My latest game, which has me pretty freakin boiling mad right now... I was finally winning. Doing well across the board, had one killer star base and a few others built... some trade routes... a few ships...
A fleet of space sharks come by and destroy EVERYTHING. I lost every ship I had, every star base, everything. I have nothing that can combat them (I did manage to destroy one by throwing literally every last ship in the fleet at it), no way to prevent them, no control over it. I spent 3 hours in this latest game. 3 hours. For nothing.
If it's not the sharks, it's the +14 to your enemies planets. Or the magic precursor ship that is 10x more powerful than anything you have. Or whatever that magic item is that causes the event that pops up and tells you so-and-so has to be stopped because they just developed some killer whatzitz.
BALANCE ISSUES.
The game is lots and lots of fun, but if I invest hours into one game only to have the whole thing go down the tubes due to one stupid random event, I'm not only going to quit playing, I'm going to take the CD out and snap it into shards. (Of course, ya don't need it to run the game, so it would be largely symbolic, but ya know...)
I'm about 6-7 hours into the game, and every single time I begin playing, I have my game ended by one sudden random event. I remember reading on this site that Brad hates random game-killing events... yet there sure seem to be quite a few of them in there. My latest game, which has me pretty freakin boiling mad right now... I was finally winning. Doing well across the board, had one killer star base and a few others built... some trade routes... a few ships...
A fleet of space sharks come by and destroy EVERYTHING. I lost every ship I had, every star base, everything. I have nothing that can combat them (I did manage to destroy one by throwing literally every last ship in the fleet at it), no way to prevent them, no control over it. I spent 3 hours in this latest game. 3 hours. For nothing.
If it's not the sharks, it's the +14 to your enemies planets. Or the magic precursor ship that is 10x more powerful than anything you have. Or whatever that magic item is that causes the event that pops up and tells you so-and-so has to be stopped because they just developed some killer whatzitz.
BALANCE ISSUES.
The game is lots and lots of fun, but if I invest hours into one game only to have the whole thing go down the tubes due to one stupid random event, I'm not only going to quit playing, I'm going to take the CD out and snap it into shards. (Of course, ya don't need it to run the game, so it would be largely symbolic, but ya know...)