Most embarrasing thing you've ever done.

[dgh64]

So, anyone ever, you know, do something incredibly stupid in an otherwise good game? I'll start...

I was University, and I had a pact with the Gaians and Spartans. Little did they know, I had a nice stockpile of about 20 singularity PB's, for a little surprise party once they had helped me wipe out everyone else. Anyway, I saw the Believers unloading a transport full of units near my main bases (still don't know how they got past my patrol ships) and I decided, instead of waiting for them to come to me, I'd send my jets out to kill them, because my weapons were a lot better than theirs.

Well... in the little bar at the bottom where it shows what units are at a base, I accidentally clicked a PB instead of a jet, and didn't figure it out until I had ordered the attack. I lost my 4 biggest bases, most of my secret projects, and my entire PB stockpile. Dierdre and Santiago also had a couple bases each within the blast radius. Everyone of course declared vendetta, drones started rioting all over the place (I scrapped my rec commons and so forth after I got Telepathic Matrix, so once I lost it... yeah, you know the rest) and my economy went negative.

The worst part was that I had spent the whole game sharing tech and giving bases to Dierdre and Santiago, so they'd vote for me in elections and help me kill everyone else. Then I lost the PB's, and they were able to turn around and wipe me out in about 20 turns, using my own tech.

[wgabrie]

Ah, yes, Planet Busters. PBs cause big problems. I once tried to control a massive Fungus Bloom, 3 pops in one area, in a single turn, with a planet buster. I was also building the Voice of Planet secret project at the time which triggers Fungus Blooms every turn until its completion. The PB caused my planet pollution score to really shoot up and I was soon buried in Locusts. I lost the all the bases on my main continent and other factions on nearby continents lost bases as well.

[Marchantbard]

Similar situation: I was playing the Gaians at Talent level in SMAC. One of my sea bases had autobuilt a PB (first time I'd actually seen one), and I mistakenly fired it off...at one of my own coastal bases.

Needless to say, I managed to get all the other factions start ganging up on me (pretty much everyone was still intact at that point), and Planet was sufficiently p.o.'d I couldn't capture any more mind worms to beef up my army.

Did I mention this was (a) the first time I'd ever seen a PB, and (b) was pretty inexperienced as a SMAC player?

[dgh64]

Seems to me like PB's should have an outline when you're moving one around to remind you where the blast radius ends...

[Wobbo]

Traditionally, in my games I tend to make my home base build the Merchant Exchange (or its equivalent - the Echelon Mirror Park in SMANIAC), and then build Crawlers every other turn for energy rich spaces - by the end of the game the base is usually pulling in 1000 credits per turn, roughly 300 directly in energy. I do this because the headquarters has no efficiency penalty.

So anyway one game I do this and around turn 2255 - which was late game in this case - I see a tiny bit of red near the energy bar and realize - the whole time I've been building crawlers for energy to a base that has been suffering 10% efficiency and doesn't have the Merchant Exchange... I thought my capital was there wtf?!

Oops.