I enjoy Space Empires because...

[tesco samoa]

To capt_spoogy. I think he lives on Kennedy somewhere. Just know he goes against the traffic ( and in the process of moving ).

The reason I like SEIV. One game ( about 100 turns into the game) a fellow PBEM decided to sneak attack me by sending in a fleet of 10 minelayers, 20 battleships and 6 carriers all cloaked at level 3. For scanners I had.... nothing. The only reason I knew he was their was because the player did not put a cloak on his repair destroyer. So here I am looking at the screen seeing the triange of despair ( I had not even met anyone yet ). Thinking if he has repair ships here what is he repairing? So I start to research scanner level 1 ( yep only 6 levels of research to go before I can detect ecm level 4 ) Next turn I lose about 12 ships to mines, and 4 planets in one system and I start building sweepers.
So now I get to see what I am up against (and no sweepers on the enemy ships!!!) So I built mines on every planet and send a warp closer to close off the warp point to his system. Oh yea level 2 scanners.

Next turn About half my planets build mines. I lose 6 more planets. ( one system cleaned out ) Warp point to system closed off and a message of war being declared on me.

Next turn level 3 scanners and the rest of my planets have mines on them. The enemy losses 4 ships to mines. I send a message stating that I can afford to lose a planet for 4 ships. Only 2 turns to level 4 scanners.

Next turn nothing happens.

Next turn the enemy attacks another planet with two moons. 4 more ships gone.
I close of the warp point for that sytem area limiting the access to about 6 systems.

3 turns to level 5 scanners.

nothing happens but it was the longest weekend of my life. a turn a day in these moments is distracting. ( nothing like going to a party and figuring out if you want the tac scanners level 3 on escort ships or on sat's one per system. ( yep the tape between the glasses just got a little thicker)) and the sweepers arive ( I clean out all the mines in my system) Next turn my new baby dreads start pumping out about 50 of them.

Ahh 4 turns to level 6 scanners.

level 6 scanners have arrived. now to build the sat's

Next turn I release the sat's and attack his fleet's with figters and dreads. 2 turns later no more ships in my area.

Now for the offence. I like to name my ships like this DF-1-Drea-1 -0001 ( Direct Fire 1 weapon dreadnaught Version 1 with comuter build number at the end)
So I take ships 40 to 60 and re number them as 140 to 160.

I then attack his systems with all my fleet. The enemy natually assumes that I have 160 ships ( half on attack and half on defence )

The outcome. Don't know yet. It is only 5 turns into the attack. I held back the point defence ships so the enemy will build missle ships. A small price to pay in ships while I get the next fleets of missle , armour and pd ships going.

The fun thing was talking about it at work for the 3 weeks of these turns.

Out of all my gaming experiences that was the most intense moments... I figured I was dead ( spent the whole game working on infa sturcture )...................