Any idea what I did wrong?
Background: I got this game just after Christmas. I played one game for a little bit mostly trying to figure out how to do things. Even basic things seemed to have more of a learning cliff than a learning curve, so I spent most of that game reading and watching videos trying to figure out how, for example, to use a tanker. Once I felt I had the basics down, I restarted on new year’s eve. Based on the advice of a tutorial video I watched, I started conventional. I’m almost 100 years into that game now. I encountered two “NPR”s fairly early on. One is quite hostile and the other one has been reasonably friendly. I’ve worked out using diplomacy ships and I’m well on my way to better relations with the second race.
Last night, I got attacked again. I’m leaving out a lot of detail on the actual battles and background here in the interest of brevity. The enemy had a doom stack (27 ships, 24 of which are military and 9 of those have 7 particle lance 18s on them) in the Sol system blowing up civilian shipping left and right and nothing I had there could do anything about it. My actual battle fleet was hunting down an enemy fleet on the opposite edge of my territory and was weeks away. When I actually contacted their fleet, they decided to send the doom stack in the direction of my fleet. To get there, they had to go out a jump point where I had a defense base on the other side. What I expected to happen was for them to appear, the game to stop and then I could unload a volley of missiles and get a few shots off before the doom stack recovered from the jump and obliterated my base. What actually happened was I just got a message that the base had been destroyed. They then flew across the system to another jump point where I had another base. On the way, they encountered a convoy with ammunition for my fleet and I just got a message that they had detected the enemy and the whole thing was obliterated in one time interval with no chance to react. Yes, I had their sensors on. They then proceeded to the jump point. I expected to see a message when they reached sensor range (which is over 100m km for those bases), which is what usually happens. Nope. I just got another message that I had some contacts and my base was destroyed all in the same time intervals. No game stopping or anything like that. In all three cases, the game stopped at the end of a time interval and informed me the bases were destroyed.
What. The. Heck. Happened?
The only thing I can think of is that little line of time intervals below the one that I usually click on. Could that have anything to do with it? I’ve never used it, but maybe I clicked on it by accident.
I’ve had some other weird behavior. Somehow that “auto turn” thing keeps getting turned on somehow and sometimes it does this weird flickering thing where it seems to be rapidly flickering between red and green when I start the game. It generally goes away after a while. I’m wondering if that’s related but it could also be a keyboard thing. I’ve started seeing some keyboard issues and I’m waiting on a new keyboard I’ve ordered). Is there a key for the auto turn button that I could check if it’s getting broken?
In any case, I’m not sure it matters for this game. I suspect it’s over. My fleet probably isn’t a match for theirs. I’ve got a bunch of slow missile ships with just the ammo onboard because the resupply just got obliterated. They do have a full load but that’s maybe 6 volleys. I have a carrier with a bunch of missile fighters. I have a battlecruiser, two light cruisers and a destroyer. Those last four are better 1:1 than their ships but there just aren’t enough of them. I also have one of their heavy cruisers and two escorts from a different fleet that just surrendered after I obliterated some of their companions. I expect to have my fleet either get obliterated or have to hide while they just run rampant and destroy everything. My only hope there is that they go to orbit one of my major colonies where I have heavily entrenched SSO lasers.
Sorry this got so long winded.