Has any other got character stories to share from your Legends play?
How to slowly ruin a perfectly good fleet admiral:
In my most recent game I started with crap empire leader (immediately dismissed, only to learn that the new one who turned up was even worse, but I couldn't dismiss that one outright, dismissal quota used up), and an even worse spy (found out after his first mission, which he miraculously survived - dismissed that one as well, in hopes that a replacement would turn up soon, which didn't happen, of course).
In that gallery of losers, one person stood out, my Admiral who had four skills with good bonuses across the board, in addition to that a trait, that raised another two attributes. He helped his fleet in every way imaginable, from damage, speed, fuel savings, maneouverability, evasion. A hero in the making.
From my play experience in a previous game, I had reached the impression, that letting a good leader stay idle may do bad things to him. I had a colony leader with skill in military ship construction speed stay on a backwater planet with indies, where nothing was produced while it was trying to get out a colony ship. Seems that having no use for his skills made him turn to drugs. He acquired the trait 'addict', and you can imagine how nothing good comes from such a trait.
I wanted to spare my perfect, hero-to-be admiral such a fate at all costs!
So I kept him occupied. That occupation consisted in him supervising the little fleetlets sent to take out the odd pirate base (two or three in total), but apart from that there were only space monsters to hunt down. "Better space monsters than nothing", I thought, and let him have at it. Oddly enough, his skills weren't increasing. At all.
Weren't the battles big enough? Probably not, such a pirate base isn't much, and could be taken out by a one ship fleet made up of a derelict destroyer with ease. And single Space Slugs and Kaltors posed no remote threat, either.
Finally I found a ship graveyard with a sizeable group of Kaltors, well, half a dozen of them or almost... I sent my freshly expanded 1st fleet (five ships) over, which I put under the command of my admiral, ahead of a small complement of constructor ships, and the flank secured by the single ship fleet made up of that derelict destroyer. Finally some action! I thought...
Of course, the Kaltors were no match for what I sent against them. They were rather massacred without coming close to damaging even one of the ships. This was still very early, with Epsilon Torpedoes just freshly installed - only that found destroyer sported all the futuristic gizmos like Titan Beam and whatnot, that one did half of the killing. Still a little battle not without the minor risk of having the odd ship damaged, so from the military point of view it was a total success.
Well, fate though otherwise: "In the recent battle our admiral so-and-so acquired a new trait: poor Tactitian". BLAM! 'Poor Tactitian' means -5 to all skills. All his skills were still looking nice and green and double-digit, but less so than before, a bit less hero-like. Playing with Kaltors probably let his skills go slack.
I then looked at his event log (or what it's called). A number of skirmishes were listed, all with no losses on my side, most with nothing to count on the enemy side either. So space monsters apparently don't count.
The moral of the story: don't make the mistake of letting your admiral have target practice on these measly beasts.
