An NPR ´´cheated´´ on me!

[Triato (OP)]

I don´t know if this is a bug or a pair of bugs, I am using version 6.3, so it may no longer matter, I don´t know how or if I should report it. I had a colony with a single pasive sensor facility (forgot their name in the game) and a fleet of two monitors with active sensors on, a pair of pasive (thermal and EM) scouts, an active scout and more than 12 FACs some of which were scouts. I detected 3 enemy FACs aproaching but decided not to act on them thrusting my monitors point defence, I advanced an hour with auto sub pulses which is the amount of time I calculated would take them to aproach and launch.

Then the ´´cheat´´ ocurred, suddenly 46 ships (mostly FACs, but also a pair of 36000 tons and a pair of 20000 tons ships) apeared at 0 Km from my colony and fleet. The events log show about 10 missile interceptions and misses and two missiles that hit the colony, far less missiles than my fleet would have intercepted considering their speed, and also far less that what I presume they could have launched. There was no missile detection warning and no previous detection of the enemy fleet I know I would have detected them hours before they could reach me.

Also, all of my orbiting ships disapeared, but there is nothing in the events log about them being hit, damage description or ship destroyed anouncements, I updated the list with 2000 events just in case but nothing.

I am considering abandoning the game, it takes me about 10 minutes to advance some turns and many errors show frequently. Please advice me, I am tempted to abandon the game, but need to know if this is a known issue that is fixed in the next version, I think it has to do with autopulses because in a previous game a fleet passed in the noses (0 km) of my thermal scouts without being detected.

I apologize for my english, I have no time to correct (and have no autocorrect), hope it is no to hard to read.

Thanks in advance.

Bellow is some of the story of the game if you are interested.

Through guerrilla tactics I slowly eat away my enemy. I was only using beam and kinetic weapons so the final asault to his planet was for the moment imposible.

Even though I had destroyed all of their ships, every few monts they had a few facs that they used against my home system (my only one after they destroyed my first interstellar colony). I started building monitors wich I took to their system to avoid damage to my civilian fleet and the strategy worked fine, after I wethered their alfa strike I sent fast facs to finish them. All of this took my economy to the edge in both duranium and fuel. During the long war I also built boarding ships wich I used very succesfully to gain much needed materials and tech (they are more advanced in alomost everything).

I decided to stablish a small colony in their system, put some PDCs on it, a pair of monitors and FACs. This strategy also worked very well for a time. Until the cheat I described happened.

I theorize they had another big colony and that I was lucky to fight them while they were fighting another NPR wich they defeated and then sent their big fleat to fight me, all of this is fine and very interesting, but the ´´cheat´´ is ruining the game for me, I can use space master to rebuild my fleet (of course without the training and officers) but I am afraid it will happen again and if that is the case I prefer to download the new version and start again (this time with a universe with less stars to improve time between turns)

[Triato (OP)]

Forgot to say, there were no lifepods around.

[sublight]

First, were the aliens marked as 'hostile' prior to the engagement? I've seen fleets of neutral ships fly past each-other at 0km intercepts without triggering an interrupt. Sometimes it seems that neutral contacts are only updated at the end of time increments and not during sub-pulses.

Second, did the colony surrender? If so did your missing fleet happen to number 46 with our without PDCs? I've never heard of a hostile fleet moving fast enough to skip completely past an active anti-missile scanner on 1-hour increments, but I have occasionally had trouble with missiles passing through a 20-second wide detection zone on 5-minute increments. A wave of missiles faster than expected launched from further out could easily escape detection on 1-hour increments, and if you got unlucky on a surrender check may have taken the ships in orbit with it.

Those are the only explanations I can think of.

[Triato (OP)]

Yes , they were hostile and the colony is aparently destrtoyed (there is no population on the planet and no contact for enemy population). I advanced a single 5 sec inc. and the game advanced 6 5 sec inc. with many errors that said ´´Error applying internal damage in between´´. My ships had been destroyed but I had remade them with SM. The funny thing is that my fleets were still there but with no ships. I checkeded and one of their ships had a TM signature of 1400 so I think they could not aproach undetected in an hour. The range of my longest active sensor with apropiate resolution is 86000000km and the enemy colony was about 65000000 km away. I don´t have data on the enemy ships speed yet.