Is this a typical thing to happen in a game?

from Stardock Forums
Only on my second game. This one in a small galaxy with everyone (including me) set as fools. At one point there is a prison escape resulting in the creation of 3 ships that are at least 10 times more powerful than any other ship that anyone else can make. They wipe out all the starbases, all the trade fleets, and all the military of everyone else. So far, I've been pumping out ships trying to destroy them, but I wonder whether it's best not to bother, and just keep pumping cash into research until I can build something that can touch them. Fortunately they don't take planets, but, nevertheless, it does have a feel of being somewhat unbalanced.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
LMAO you got ye olde prison breakout. A good battle Hammer will usually take care of em. You have to get the prison event in the council, then the breakout event Result is it only usually happens once in about 10 games or more. I've gotten the prison twice, and the breakout only once in my 15+ games.

Just wait till you get the fundamentalist revolution event. HEHE.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Funny, I always get it. And they are always battlecruisers, so relatively simple.
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks for the reply, but I must be doing something wrong here. Could not kill them with a battle hammer or anything else I could build. They had 260 hit points (-ish), whereas my ships were 30-40 at most.

There's probably something I missed - haven't really RTFM yet.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
There's some talk about making certain council meetings have a prerequisite based on time or technology. As a result, such meetings won't be as devistating (or as predictive) as they should be.

Prison ships are extremely powerful compared to the norm - the only way to defeat them is to use a large armada of capital ships. You might want to attempt to draw those ships into the territory of other players.

In the earlier versions, you could use a single scout to keep the prison ships away from other military vessels, and let the AI players destroy the prison ships for you.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Prison Escape? HA! Try out ye olde Space Zoo Escape!!! THAT is painful (as long as you don't have AMs)
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
I've had the Zoo but never the escape. Now when the Torians got the Zoo in one of my games, they got the escape. Fortunately, they didn't get near my space. HEHE.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmmm, I'm a bit surprised by the AI in this game. I chose the "fool" setting because I thought it meant that I could win without having to pay any attention to the computer players. Now I find all but one are allied against me and attacking incessantly. Be interesting to see if it actually beats me.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Mabye its a glitch but I had a 1.05 game where the prison ships (3 of them) had 1160 HP each? I didn't bother doing anything about it (I just got frigates) but the other AI's got really 'gun ho' about taking them down. Naturaly I sat back and reaped the benifits of thier expensive Kamakasi attacks . . . :)
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
It's not typical. I've gotten the escape once it what must be over 30 games.

I get the zoo escape fairly often though. It's really annoying.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I would have to agree with you on that point vincible. I got a zoo escape and I wasted a lot of AMM's just to kill one of those slimy little worms.
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Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
i had both the prison and the zoo escape. what i did, since when both times that it happened it was early in the game, and i had only corvettes and frigates at the time, i just left them alone. i just moved any ships that where nearby, even those protecting planets. both the space sharks and prisoner ships left me alone, instead they sailed to a nearby AI's planet and wrecked havok there. The AI's eventually destroyed them -but with great loss.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Although annoying and disruptive, I don't think you can call these events 'unbalancing', because it has the potential to impact all the races equally. It may help or harm your efforts depending on where the rouge elements decide to attack, but it is fair.

In my opinion, events like this can keep the path to victory from becoming a standard routine, formula, or recipe. Life kinda throws you some real surprises and that's one of the cool things that this game trys to emulate. :HOT:
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
I got the prison escape once and I think it was because the Yor took out my defenses on the planet it was located on.

No orbital planet defense = prison escape?

They were Ranger class ships, one step ahead of were I was.

If only the UP didn't vote me the caretaker of the prison...

Que lastima! ;)
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
As soon as I get the prison or zoo, I put +military upgrades on my starbases in the sector. One or two starbases with maxed out military usually is enough.
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
You should have played the game when it was 1.01. Get a zoo breakout on turn 3 that wipes out the galaxy. Now THAT was frustrating.
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
That actually did happen to me on my very first ever game. :SURPRISED:

I was afraid, very afraid indeed. I thought, "What have I gotten myself into with this game!" Then I thought, "Blue is a pretty color."

Then I played some more, stardock released a bunch of updates to the game, I read a lot of forum posts including some by this monkey named Bo-Bo, watched a little t.v., and a whole bunch of other stuff.

The end. :)