Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Peacekeeper mega event as of Beta 2

It killed my huge-map game with the speed limit event

I searched for other posts on this event, apologies if I missed the right thread to join.

First the odd bit: when the Peackeeper ships first appeared, they were positioned at the *intersections* of map squares and I could not see any data when I selected them. This changed to normal after they made their first moves. (I have a cap I can email)

From my initial notes: 1) Darned neat idea to have a new minor with no homeworld. 2) The Peacekeeper ships were frighteningly strong offensively, and also defensively except that they had *no* armor. There appears to be just one ship design. 3) The immediate results of the event seem likely to vary dramatically depending on the current state of your map. When the Peacekeepers appeared, I was in the final stages of an influence win and no major AI was at war with another. This thing must look *fantastically* different on a map where several wars are in progress.

But I either somehow missed a warship of mine moving out of my territory or there's a bug in the event. The Peacekeepers declared war on the aggressive AIs immediately, and a couple of my allies declared war on the Peacekeepers, but I thought I was OK. Then I got the Ban Stick of the Gods too. No way I could fight my way back from that whilst also suffering the Speed Limit, and apparently Beta 2B is already out, so I'm moving on.

Anyone seen this event in 2A or 2B, by chance when you were pursuing a nonmilitary victory?

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

p.s. I've just noticed the mysterious abscence of an Edit option for an OP. Wanted to note I have a save from around the time I got the notice that I was doomed.

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I've seen it before at the beginning of a game. The ships had about 50 in mass drivers and 150 in armor.

In 2A game the iconian's influence was over lapping my home system and i was just getting ready to launch an assault when the event happened. They destroyed all of my ships thus all the other AIs declared war on me. I thought it would be ok because they "should" destroy any non iconian ships in my sector. But no, they just let yor troop transports through to conquer me while destroying any ships I build for defense.

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

In 2A game the iconian's influence was over lapping my home system and i was just getting ready to launch an assault when the event happened. They destroyed all of my ships thus all the other AIs declared war on me. I thought it would be ok because they "should" destroy any non iconian ships in my sector. But no, they just let yor troop transports through to conquer me while destroying any ships I build for defense.

Havn't you heard the saying, "better to fight and run away...".

Also you can build very fast ships using cargo hulls to zoom around powerful ships and kill transports.

If the transports are escorted, then you could have launched your transports and removed most of your population from the planet before it gets conquored. Retaking a planet gives you a much better combat bonus than simply trying to hold on to a planet. Also if the attacker is ahead in technology, this is a great strategy to gain techs.

Also you could even sell one planet to a powerful AI. Close proximity to other conquored planets will cause friction between those AI civilisations.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

I've seen it before at the beginning of a game. The ships had about 50 in mass drivers and 150 in armor.

The Peacekeepers are definitely indexed to game age and/or existing military stats. The ships I saw had an attack value in the (mid?) hundreds and defenses that you could only see on Details (well over 1k). Geist, if you haven't abandoned the game, please keep us posted.

@Mystik: Have you seen this event? Your post makes me suspect you haven't. The map is *littered* with these Peacekeeper vessels, and I have no idea what their speed is like without the Speed Limit in effect, but I wouldn't be suprised if they're as fast as the fastest ship in the most advanced player's arsenal.

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

Mystik: Have you seen this event? Your post makes me suspect you haven't. The map is *littered* with these Peacekeeper vessels, and I have no idea what their speed is like without the Speed Limit in effect, but I wouldn't be suprised if they're as fast as the fastest ship in the most advanced player's arsenal.

No i havn't seen this event.

However, i have not seen anything that can outrun a cargo hull vessel loaded with engines.

Even at low tech levels, you should still be able to produce some damb fast transports and or cargo hull fighters for killing unescorted transports.

Any ship that wants to carry decent weapons and defences will not be able to catch such cargo hull ships.

The only question is, how effectively can you find safe spots in a map loaded with ships?

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Apologies for not being clear enough, Mystik. I'm not interested in general strategy talk for this thread--I want to hear from folks who've seen this event during DA beta games.

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Havn't you heard the saying, "better to fight and run away...".

It was very early in the game and the peace keepers destroyed anything they could catch. To be honest it wasn't worth trying to salvage that game.

I have had the event in the mid to late game twice where they didn't bother me. Their attack and defense were the same but this time I had conquered most of the map so they did not declare war on me. They did complain to me about how they were losing to the korx who had the second largest military at the time.

I did notice that they will only declare war when they first appear. After that they're just in the way.

note: I was playing large galaxy on painful.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Thanks, Geist. I hope we can see some more reports here from others who've seen the event, and I'm especially interested in anyone else who saw it in the very late game and thinks they might have been a bit overpowered when they showed up.

A sound beating from this planetless minor could definitely spice up a quiet late game, but right now I think their kung fu might be too strong--my strongest (large) fleets had zero chance of defeating a pair of Peackeepers, and the ship stats made me think even a single Peackeeper vessel would take some hits but still win.

I would have had no chance to retool for their lack of armor, and the square root of numbers well over a thousand means "wrong" defenses are still worth something.

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I recently had the event occur in my Mid-late game stage. It was very cool, and forced me to change my game strategy (I was an arms dealer). The ships came in, wrecked havoc for the first two turns (For some reason this included one factory starbase in a sector that I owned - they ignored the other factory starbases that were right beside it).

The strange thing was, after the first one or two turns, the ships seemed to go to sleep. They didn't do anything. I don't know if this is because their sensor range is so small, but they could be pretty much ignored by both me, and the other AIs).

Damned fun event though.

Dano

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

The strange thing was, after the first one or two turns, the ships seemed to go to sleep.

Now I wish I'd hung in a bit longer. Does anyone (Kryo?) know if there's a way to deliberatly trigger an event, and if so, is that a reasonable thing for a beta volunteer to try?

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I had a game where the peacekeepers occured, they just attacked 2 minor races and the dread lords who had just arrived then they also "went to sleep", didnt turnout as good as i had expected.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

Does anyone (Kryo?) know if there's a way to deliberatly trigger an event

Nope.

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G.W. I know you're lookinb for people who have seen this event....but i need to ask something:

Are these "Peacekeepers" an actual planetless minor race who randomly show up or are they the U.P. enforcing laws?

-Spencer

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( OT: if anyone knows StarChamber, any relation between the two? )

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I've had this happen recently where I was in an influence boom which also put me in the final stages of an influence win.

Peacekeepers came out (Drengin opened the way for them appearantly), and declared war on everyone but me, since I had no armed ships in anyone's influence areas. A couple turns later there were no armed ships outside their own areas, and I was able to also get an alliance with the Peacekeepers.

The problem with this event, IMO, is that since I got the alliance, the Peacekeepers left me alone even when I started using my Dreadnaughts to obliterate the Drengin, and even after the other races left opposing territory, the Peacekeepers stayed at war with them. This seems on par with the problems with Dread Lords and Uber Pirates!. By their concept, the Peacekeepers should automatically sign a peace treaty with whomever is no longer within their own influence for 1 round (or so), and should not be allowed the Alliance option for someone to exploit their Peacekeeping function, thus maintaining the ability to declare war on anyone outside their influence for as long as they are in teh game.

It was just that they ended up acting as a second fleet under my command and helped wipe out the other opponents leaving me totally alone (while I conquered 3 opponents during that short time). They didn't leave anything for me to blow up!!

Anyway, because of the Alliance option and the seemingly inability to sue for peace with them after leaving another's territory, they seemed a little inbalancing.

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My most recent game was a Gigantic Tough I won by influence victory, and this event happened pretty near the end (I had 65% or so of the map). Since my influence covered so much of the map it was pretty overkill in my favor (there were no shots fired the whole game except between minors and majors).

The Peacekeeper design seems to use the highest existing tech; the ones in my game had something like 500 beam attack, 150 mass driver, 0 defense across the board, and 29 speed. My highest beam weapon was Phasor VII, and their ships were covered by Phasor VII's (in fact, I'm pretty well certain you can't fit that many Phasor VII's on a large hull unless you had an insanely high miniturization, like 400%, particularly considering engines that must have been on that thing). I had not researched any defense techs, and apparently neither had the other majors. I can load the save to get exact stats if desired, but I thought it important that the peacekeepers seem to be decked out in the best tech available at their appearance.

At that time I could probably have produced enough ships (I had 350+ planets) to kill the Peacekeeper ships by simple fact that my ships would get at least 1 shot each and the Peacekeeper ships had a finite HP, but my losses would have been tremendous. Later on when I had doom rays and small ships with nearly 100 attack, it would have been easier but still based on the 1-shot-per-ship rule.

Now if Peacekeepers had the First Strike super ability... ouch.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Are these "Peacekeepers" an actual planetless minor race who randomly show up or are they the U.P. enforcing laws?

Re minors w/ no planet: They were able to declare war and some AIs declared war on them. They appear on the Minors tab of the Foreign Policy page. I could see all systems on my map and the did not have a home world.

Re UP laws: they have their own (ancient?) agenda; no obvious UP connection.

RF & KL, thanks for the reports. Sounds like you two had a somewhat similar game state to mine when the Peacekeepers arrived. Anyone out there seen them show up in a war-torn galaxy?

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

RF & KL, thanks for the reports. Sounds like you two had a somewhat similar game state to mine when the Peacekeepers arrived. Anyone out there seen them show up in a war-torn galaxy?

I saw them in the 'Farscape' galaxy!

In the ever so brief moment there was some room inbetween all the overwhealming police, hospital and lawyer shows.

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I saw them when war was on me, and I sent in only one freighter to a planet at war with me (because I blew up the influence mining base they put up in my sector)
Mind you, it was a minor race, but if I can replicate this exact scenario then it's not so random.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

IAmTheRad, you raise two questions for me: 1) Did you have just the one war between you & a minor going? 2) Did you see the Peackeepers attack the minor's ships?

If I understand this mega event adequately, it seems like minors would almost always get hit hard b/c they have no influence areas.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

p.s. I've just noticed the mysterious abscence of an Edit option for an OP.

Actually, this must have been a passing issue. AFAIK you can always edit the OP, you just can't change the title.

If you're the OP when you go to the Tools menu the first entry is to Edit Post. Try it, you can go back and edit the OP right now.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

If you're the OP when you go to the Tools menu the first entry is to Edit Post

Thanks, Mumble. I try to be "honorable," so I wouldn't edit an OP after there was a reply. Re the UI, I would never have thought to look for the command under Tools b/c it is a link in plain view for replies.

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