10 Time Murphy's Law Invaded Your Video Game
1. You Will Outfit Your Spacecraft With The Wrong Weapons
Many grand strategy games like Stellaris or Endless Space 2 allow players the rather spicy option of customizing the armament of their fleets. The concept is brilliant, adding an extra layer of strategy, increasing immersion and catering to the player’s style of play.
The problem is, the AI has the same option available to it and, unfortunately, is a notorious cheating bastard.
And so you find, to your horror, that you’ve got your rock-paper-scissors wrong and brought long-range projectile weapons and armour to a short-range energy weapon and armour gunfight. Inevitably, this will be your most powerful – and expensive – fleet. Even worse it will the only fleet worth the name. As if that isn’t enough misery to deal with, the asteroid-belt you’re fighting in applies a 50% accuracy debuff to long range attacks.
Oh, and you can’t retreat.
Cue drifting wreckage, tons of credits down the drain and enemy fleets blockading all of your planets. Still, at least you were researching...no, no you weren’t researching super-weapons.
But the AI was, and to add insult to injury it just blew one of your planets up – the one with all your shipyards.
Sigh.