I am a DL veteran and have been playing DA since it was first available, slowly using as opponents, the custom races I have won a game with. I only play gigantic, all abundent, max # minor and major races, max difficulty -- very long games, lots of fun... until I managed to create a game crash. Let me explain.

I like very much for each race to using a different ship style (who wants an opponent with the same ship?) Each of the races I have created uses the same ship design as the race with the matching super ability (easier to keep track.) The game I just managed to crash was the first in which I attempted to create new ship designs (no artist I.) The ship style I choose in the setup was unfortunately a style also being used by another of the races in the game. Rather stupidly, I began deleting the existing ship designs, thinking that the designs were individual to each race, rather that a list that all the races using that design set draws from.

Long story short... after three days of play, I managed to delete a ship design that an opponent has already built. The enemy ships became "invisible" because they were missing the design file and when I entered a combat against a fleet of these invisible ships, the game gave me the finger.

The moral...

Always use the obsolete button and never the delete button while futzing around in the shipyard.

A request… Does anyone know how I can fix the problem so that I might continue the game?

A caveat… I could be totally cracked in interpretation of what happened so if someone knows in fact that the game works differently, please correct me.