I wouldn't mind seeing mega-events, but I admit there's one I'd be particularly interested in: The Dreadlords suddenly showing up!

Whether they simply start with a "swarm" of ships and invade straight away, or whether they first colonize a previously-uninhabitable system and then go on the rampage, I don't care. But I'd really love to see a Dreadlord invasion in my regular sandbox games.

#5 - Oh, you mean bring pirates back to original game levels?

First time I ever encountered them was in 1.0, my very first game and not very far along at all. My entire (read: tiny) military was wiped out and I was picked off. I lost my very first game and all I could think was: "That was so damn cool."

Count me in!

I'd love some mega events, it would be great seeing a dreadlord fleet coming out of nowhere about to anihalate my fleet.  

I'd love to see mega-events added. Ideally it'd be an option you could enable even from within an existing game, and could adjust their likelihood (ie: if I'm running away with a game, toggle mega events on, at high probability, to throw a monkey wrench in things and see if I could handle it).

Other thoughts:
- An option to make the bad mega-events more likely to happen to the top dogs and good ones to the underdogs (ie: space pirates most heavily infest the leader race's territory, one of the weaker/less dominant races more likely to recieve the Ultimate Doom boost)
- Perhaps have not just some mega events, but also some big events and some medium events: stuff that isn't quite so cataclysmic, but might also be more common. There's already some of these, like the precursor ranger events and the economy boom ones, etc, but I'd like to see more variety of those.

Event ideas:
- A cosmic flux causes a whole new set of wormholes, wrecks, etc to appear across the galaxy that can be explored. Or it causes a few of them to randomly appear every turn. (Actually, I'd love to see this as an settable option outside of the mega-events!)
- Invasion - many cool possibilities:
- Giant space creature attacks, cutting a swath through the galaxy. Possibly a planet eater. Massively tough, requires races to repeatedly attack to wear it down.
- a new fully-populated system appears in the galaxy , populated by an advanced hostile race (ie: Dreadlords).
- A massive invasion/colonization fleet (from one of the races not currently in the game) appears at the edge of the galaxy and carves out a niche for itself.
- Refugee swarm: numerous (but defenseless) colony ships (possibly from assorted races including the player's) appear across the galaxy (fleeing from menace elsewhere), colonizing any/all planets they encounter (and then maybe joining their associated race's civ) and disrupting territory lines.
- A star starts to go supernova, evertually destroying the system after X turns of warning, and afterwards, leaves behind many rich asteroid fields and/or resource points (or perhaps even a white dwarf system) and a huge nebula that slows all ship traffic through it.
- A galaxy-wide warp-storm that prevents ships from traveling faster than some crippling speed (ie: 2-3 per turn), or reduces ships to, say, quarter or one-third speed. This might last for X turns or be permanent. Perhaps some technology could be researched that could be placed on ships to counteract some/all of the speed restriction.

Just to add my voice, yes, yes and YES again.

Who would say no, when u have the option to turn them off or on?

Any new features u add to the game that r optional, r a no brainer. New features extend the playability of game, retaining a players interest. Also in the end game, a mega event would spice the game up considerably.

  Good idea Frogboy.  

If one would design it right and it adds to the gameplay instead of changing or destroying everything player has worked for earlier, I'm all for it. The things listed sound good assuming like the research part for the what-ever-doom is easy enough so it won't destroy you if you're doing reasonably well and putt all efforts in finding the sollution.

Another way to ask, what other cool things would you not be able to do if you did this?

Where on the priority list would this feature go?

Mark

How about a Dread Lord invasion? A Dread Lord fleet with a troop transport arrives from one edge of the map and starts to close in on the nearest inhabitted world.

I wish we had that and space monsters like that.

I love the idea ... even if it costs me the game. I am playing to be a character in a story and if that story involves a dreaded wumpus invasion that blows me away, so be-it.

Though you would definitely want to make this optional, and I think that you would also want to include the frequency of said mega-events within that option.

Dano

I'd like to see these events, so long as I can turn them off. They sound cool and deserving of their own event video's though.

Great idea, to force us to deal with the totally unexpected. How about an event opening up an alternative universe to explore, but with additional risks introduced as well?

I saw the corporate assassination with the minature ships last night for the first time.... oh snap.. that was crazy (my PC didn't seem to mind all those ships). That was/is fun.. I am still dealing with it. Funny thing is, my Ally the drengin got the event where they are slowly becoming very powerful... so the two of us are seriously tearing the galaxy apart between the two of us. This 1.3 (not patched yet) is so much fun. I love it.