Free ships granted by a random event.

I had the Peacekeepers mega event in the game I'm currently playing (DA 1.61). They have decimated the militaries of all the other civilizations except mine, much as described in some of the other posts. Not even a single shot has been fired in my direction. I was building up to start invading the Drengins, who had the most powerful military after mine, when the event happened so I had a strong military already, but not so strong the Peacekeepers couldn't destroy my existing ships.

At first I halted military production and shifted all my resources to a tech victory, but being curious, I decided to see how one of my ships would do against the Peacekeepers. I sent a lone ship over to Drengin space hoping it would at least do some damage to a Peacekeeper before it was destroyed. Much to my surprise it was... ignored?!

The Peacekeepers just acted as though my ship wasn't there. I thought that if I declared war and attacked a Drengin fleet that I would surely get their attention, but still no response... After sending some troops in and taking over a planet I decided they really weren't going to touch me, so I'm currently churning out as many transports as possible and I'm almost done crushing the Drengin Empire.

While I'm pleased the Peacekeepers are destroying all possible opposition to my enlightened rule, and allowing me to spend all my money on shiny boots for my invading troops rather than paying for attack vessels, I can't quite believe this is how the event is supposed to work...

I'll save a copy of the game as it stands now in case any devs want to take a look at it.

Maybe... maybe if your ships were all inside your space at the time of the Peacekeepers' arrival, they may have considered you 'peaceful' and attacked anyone else who had ships outside(like those with trade routes). They must've not adapted to you having sent your ship into foreign space and still remained friendly with you.

I had peacekeepers three times.

First time I was not at war with anyone. They did not bother me I had Black hole generators at the time. Then the Korath attacked them and they wiped everthing floating in space the Korath had. The second and third times I was at war and not high enough on the teck tree to do any appricable damage to a single peace keeper ship. Both of these times they killed everthing floating in space. Basically I think they will kill if they dont think they will be killed. I must say when I did kill them off I had to do it with 5 move ships tons of sheilds and Doom Missles.

If you get them early on they really screw the game up. Nothing floats in space till sufficient doom weapons, Ultimante Def and Miniturization. If Jagged Knife hits after this (it did with me) "Game Over Man, Game Over"

Duh

There is no such thing as a Doom Missile in GC2. The highest end weapons are Doom Rays, Black Hole Generators and Black Hole Eruptors. The highest end defenses are Ultimate Invulnerability, Zero-Point Armor and Aereon Missile Defense. Doom Missile and Ultimate defenses sounds like you've been playing beam/shield combos too long.

That may be the case. I already had Ultimate Invulnerability and HD Spike Driver (I or II). Although I didn't have anything built that was equivalent to the Peacekeeper ships when they came, I could've fielded some in fairly short order.



Funny you should say that. I was just about to win with an influence victory, and I did get the Jagged Knife event. My game actually crashed when it happened. I think something went strange when it tried to do both the victory and the event at the same time (since the event would remove enough of my influence to prevent the victory). I ended up reloading from an autosave and finishing with an influence victory.

A Precursor Ranger is a ship that as a random event you can find on a planet that you own. Early in the game, especially, its fairly powerful, with stats in the low double digits.

Hmm... I wonder if these guys will let me by if I stop all my wars. Has anybody tried this? I'll go try right now and see what happens. I'm by far the leader in the galaxy so no worries about convincing others to be peaceful with me.

...

No luck. They came, they saw I was warlike, they decided to kick my ass.


Also, I'm pretty sure they pop up with specific attack and defense based on the current galaxy. My PK ships have an insane missile defense, fairly good beam defense and an absolutely overpowering missile attack. Funny - my military was the most powerful in the game and has decent missile attack. Most of the AI ships have laser attacks. And very few people have strong missile defenses. So the PK are custom tailored to kick ass in my specific galaxy. Oh, and they're using huge hulls as far as I can tell - 150 HP or something insane. And speed... it's terrifying - 31 moves per turn. Guess it's time to devote all my resources to the mass drivers branch since that's the only thing they don't defend against....

After a long session of playing with these frakking peacekeepers, I have much wisdom to impart.

1: Don't engage the peacekeepers until you have significantly surpassed the level of tech that you had when they appeared! If you didn't figure this out on your own, though, I can't really help you.

2: Use them for defense! You can't defend worlds they patrol anyway, so if a transport slips in you have no way to stop it. Just rely on their "protection" to keep your worlds safe.

3: Use them for invasion! Build fast transports (say 10+ pc/turn) to rush through their patrol and take the worlds they're near. You can have some fun wars when the enemy can't defend himself.

4: Don't overestimate them! If you assume they're everywhere and all-powerful, you may rely on their "protection" in areas they don't patrol. They seem to stick around their origin location, so if you have a planet in a contested area and don't see any peacekeepers within 10 spaces, do NOT assume you can leave it undefended!

5: MUST MUST MUST get the sensor achievement (eyes of the universe?) This single achievement is probably the main reason I'm doing so well in my game. I can keep tabs on those bastards from a very safe distance! In a normal game, this achievement is pretty cool, but when the peacekeepers hit it is a must have!

6: Don't bother with military buildup if the map has significant peacekeeper presence (unless you've surpassed their power). Just build small assault fleets and a few transports, otherwise you're spending money on maintaining a fleet that's largely unnecessary. The peacekeepers will do a good job of keeping all fleets at a minimum, so why try to be the military superpower at this stage?

7: Be alert! Autopiloted ships don't avoid peacekeepers any better than normal enemies. I have been doing a lot of going "the scenic route" with my ships to be sure they don't hit the peacekeepers. It's surely overkill, but after a few 3-billion-troop transport losses, I'm happy to lose a turn or two being cautious.

8: Lead them to enemies, not starbases! I don't know all their rules, but the peacekeepers will sometimes chase down a rogue ship in their realm and then go for another nearby ship that previously was outside their patrol area. It can be very useful for taking a world that has defenses - throw some fodder near the world, watch the peacekeepers clean it up for you. But it can be devastating as well. I was trying to run through a patrolled area, so I went toward my very decked-out military resource starbase which so far had been safe. When the peacekeepers decided to give chase, they apparently noticed this starbase for the first time.... Bye bye bonuses.

9: Get the eyes of the universe! I'm not kidding. Sensors are great, but without that you're practically blind. GET IT! I can't stress this enough.

Hey I haven't had GC2 DA that long, and have only seen the P.Ks event twice. Both times they seemed to only attack fractions who were at war. I have had NO problem with them what-so-ever. I just changed tactics from miltary might, to influence. It should be noted that my miltary might was on par if not greater than the peace keeperss when they arrived.

I have had the PeaceKeeper event twice now and in one case they left me alone and in the other they took my ships apart until I reached a stage where I could go toe to toe with them then they just vanished. In the first event I was listed as a Good empire and in the second I was listed as an Evil empire...In both cases the PKs went after the evil empires but ignored the Good empires and only went after war ships of neutral empires. Maybe your alignment determines how the PKs respond in their invasion tactics.

Nope - I was good in my game. A huge warmonger, but ethically good. I'm pretty sure they go after those either at war or in violation of the neutral space rule. In my universe, pretty much everybody was at war, and the Peacekeepers kicked all our asses. It was actually really funny.

Just bought DA, and now you guys are making me want to run back to my nice, safe GalCiv DL, with no Peacekeepers/makers/whatever and none of these 'pirates', at least not in any of my games there.

Turn off mega events then... to be honest Ive had the peace kepper event maybe 3-4 times in my life... its very rare, then again thats all subjective to play style, and sheer volume of games you play.

I had Mega Pirates two games ago, for the first time. When they came, I had already effectively taken an unbeatable lead against the surviving Torian, Arcean, Terran, Thalan and Krynn AI, and was armed with Black Hole Eruptors with Ultimate Invulnerability and Aereon Missile Defense as my defense options. I also had Eyes of the Universe. The Pirates had extreme Point Defense levels and Shield levels and were armed with Mass Drivers and Beam Weapons. I unified all my warships(small anti-transport interceptors, medium frigates and large battleships) into one parsec, fleeted as many as possible together into an Anti-Pirate Force, and rounded up all my utility ships into a stack under the Anti-Pirate Force for protection. I researched like wild into armor and mass drivers while my Anti-Pirate Force successfully managed to destroy 6 pirate fleets for the loss of one frigate and crippling of several others. By the time I had upgraded with Zero-Point Armor, the Pirates had backed off and concentrated against the AI races, so I went on the offensive and began slaughtering them, to the point that my surveyors could resume anomaly patrols under manual guidance. Then, while I had researched up to HD Spike Driver 4, all the Pirate Fleets vanished. Only the singleton ships remained, who soon got hunted down once my even more effective Black Hole Generator armed ships arrived. The AI races, with the exception of the Mass Driver armed Thalans, had been wiped clean of all their ships and starbases, paving the way for a constructor-spam session on my part which led to me taking over all but 1 of the galactic resources and setting up Influence Starbases that would soon conquer the galaxy(through cultural-assimilation-based conquest victory). The Mega Disease(not the Plague, mind you) event also occurred at the zenith of the Pirate Wars, but had no effect other than to delay my armor research by 2 turns.

Amazingly, the Pirates never attack Minor Races, who are able to keep their useless starbases and tons of trade routes alive through all odds. Maybe an extremely-mega Mega Event could be where the Jagged Knife appears with the Mega Pirates as their military force and declares war on everyone. Or an antithesis of this event where the Fundamentalists appear and are defended vehemently by the Peacekeepers. The first idea would have potential to conquer the galaxy, the second idea would cripple(or inhibit to an extent) all evil races in a galaxy.

BTW, is there any difference between the Pirates(who I've had in both the normal and Mega variants) and the Peacekeepers(who I still haven't seen)?

Hi all,

Being reasonably new to this game, and as such, one reads the forums. I saw this thread and read what you all had to say about these 'Mega Events'. But up until that time, I had not experienced one, until today.

I got the I-Rate Pi-Rates. I was not that far into the game, only a couple of hours. We were all motoring along developing our Civ's quite nicely, when BAM, the map has a very severe case of the measles, right out of no where.

These charming little chappies roam around in their seven ship fleets tearing every thing in sight to bits. None of us had anything that would even look like scratching their paintwork, and when they had finished, we had nothing to scratch ourselves with.

Totally destroyed the game to that point and put it right back to square one. For me from now on the 'Mega Events' is turned off. This is a shame really, because some of them are not too bad.

With a little more thought and a little more work, these Mega events could have been game enhancing instead of game destroying Events. Maybe even where you would look forward to them.

I just don't get the problem with mega events. The whole point is that they totally disrupt the game. I abhor a couple of them (particularly the one that effectively puts the game on a timer by giving seemingly-random boosts to one race every turn), but the point is to make the game totally change when they pop in. Pirates are one I haven't dealt with, but they only attack your ships, right? And if nobody in the galaxy can fight them, doesn't that mean you have time to concentrate on your infrastructure and research? If I'm not mistaken, that should be a perfect time to build up your research and get some strong anti-pirate defenses! What's the problem?

EDIT: I guess I should say that I find it odd that people who don't like the mega events get angry. If you don't like game balance going to hell via mega events, turn 'em off and be done with it. The events change the nature of the game, so enjoy them for what they are or else don't play with 'em.

Its one thing for a mega event to upset a game. Its an entirely different thing for it to utterly destroy it. IMO the pirates could probably do with a toning down in firepower and defenses. I don't mind them being strong, I don't mind them being as strong as the strongest navy out their when they show up, but when they show up with absurd 10-1 firepower and hundreds of ships on my gigantic maps, proceed to trash all my starbases (destroying my economy in the worst way), and so on its not shaking up the game, its just stupid. IMO the power should be based on that of the strongest nation.

I suppose I can see the annoyance on such a huge game (I tend to play nothing bigger than large maps for most of my games), but all the same, if they were only as powerful as the toughest civ, wouldn't they still trash your starbases? And in that situation, would they not end up only hurting the civs that are already not number 1? The #1 nation could fight the pirates 1:1 while the others would get blown away. That wouldn't upset the game - it would simply guarantee that the #1 military would reign supreme.

On the other hand, I'd be all for an option for different levels of events. Or even options for each specific event. I think events like the plague are almost totally worthless (so easy to survive) while events like the Jagged Alliance are much more interesting, and then events like PKs and pirates are almost terrifying in their ability to upset a game's balance.

Even if you are the no.1 civ, the Pirates STILL wreck ALL your starbases. It's impractical, at least on the Huge Rare-Stars/Planets/Habitable maps I play on, to keep a fleet of warships to defend every base. And the bases can neither defend themselves effectively nor run away, so they get destroyed.

And while the Pirates and PKs are tailor-made for the galaxy, with massive miniaturization, supreme defenses, and swarms of ships, their weapons are middle tier and their hulls are small. If you have max tech, but of the wrong kind, you can still knock them out.

Ah, last time I had the pirate event (Immediatly after the worst of the organised crime event was pver.) the pirates covered the map with their invincible fleets and shot at anything (including the waves of hostile transports that were crossing the vast nothing between star clusters.) that came within sight. They pretty much destroyed whatever I sent to remove the ones in inconvenient places.

The answer to my problems was just pouring everything into getting medium and then large hulls to destroy them. I also lured the pirate fleets to my military starbases, until the advent of large hulls made such a tactic redundant.

I was, initialy, doing quite badly in that game but the two mega events improved things significantly.

Your right about the eyes wonder. One game that I did win with peace keeper I eventually got the black hole and doom weapons made a fleet of dreadnaughts with a speed of three and hunted there buts down with my Grendal class.

I have had two peace keeper events. One they just ignored me and another they slaughtered everything in space and did it to all races.

Duh

Whenever I get a ridiculously bad Mega Event, I load my last Auto save.

Horrible Mage Events:
Pirates (depending on time of game and tech of pirates)
Peace Keepers
Massive Strike causing all your plants to have spies on them

Easy way around pirates is to use fast, disposable ships to exploit the AI.

Example : I was Korath and got the Pirates REALLY early-on.  I built a series of small ships with nothing but engines and sometimes support, named them "Pirate Kite."  Moved the ships close enough to the pirates in my space to get them angry, then flew my ship into an opponent's territory and scrapped it.  The pirates give chase single-mindedly and will NOT redirect course once their target is selected, unless their target is destroyed.  They also do NOT wander back to their spawn points, so once I got them into another race's space, they generally hung-around and killed their ships as they were built.

It got to the point where I didn't even need my own fleet - the pirates were so powerful they'd trash anything the AI built, usually while it was still in orbit.

I haven't had the Peacekeeper event, but at one point I got the Jagged Knife event like three times in a row. It very nearly got me to turn off Mega Events, that one is just irritating--what, some of your worlds at random just magically get captured by enemies and there's no way to prevent it at all? If it's the wrong planets--and in my games, it was pretty bad--it can really screw you, especially if your tech/military isn't up to recapturing them. The hell with that noise. Time to reload.