The Legend of pat

pat was an empire that I played very differently than any of my others. My original purpose was to create a junker empire that I could use in an grudges against my other emps to test out how certain parts of the game worked — such as whether a mine would detonate when attacked by a mine sweeper of exactly the same BR, etc. The name of the emp bore that origin out — pat was short for patsy, a sure loser.

After I finished with my experiments, though, I decided to keep pat around instead of just throwing him/her/it away. I could still see some letigimate purposes, such as trying new strategies that I was unsure about and didn't want to try with my normal emps, gauging the strengths of other emps without being recognized, and possibly even creating an "evil" persona. This soon gave way to completely different reasons for playing as pat though.

Since I hadn't been playing for wins with pat, it already had a pretty bad win/loss record. I therefore decided to purposefully make it worse. I entered games and purposefully lost in order to get a higher number of losses. I have to admit, though, that sometimes I couldn't lose no matter how hard I tried. If I was winning too badly I usually just left the game so that I would ruin or be nuked.

I kept my true identity top secret while playing pat. Only three people were in on the joke and knew who I really was. Once I went public everyone asked me why I played like that. Bottom line, because it was a blast. I probably had more fun playing pat than i did playing as my other emps. For one thing, there was absolutely no expectations of winning, so I could just sit back and have fun in other ways.

I always used fun planet ship names, such as baseball positions, Sesame Street characters, ice cream flavors, etc. I also changed the icon regularly, though the fact that I also used the female icons and that pat can be either a male or female name also created some fun. In the end I had to resort to simply stating: It's not a boy pat or a girl pat, it's simply the mighty pat. :)

I would also wait until I met a good opponent while playing as pat and surprise him by having this seemingly pathetic empire nuke him with ease. With this in mind, I purposefully gave pat a rather mouthy attitude. Not only did this idiot nuke the good players, but he also insulted them as he did so. Smashing Pumpkins especially bore a grudge against pat, and pat tormented SP unmercifully. Only when pat and SP teamed up to nuke W.A.R. and his protege did SP see the light and forgive pat — and begin endlessly singing his praises. :)

As well a ongoing fueds with certain players, pat was not above the one night stand — single games where he suckered other players into playing roles in his ongoing comedy performance. Musashi was the target of probably the most memorable of these.

At the same time, though, I also used pat to teach some of the newbies I met. Two players who became regulars served their apprenticeship under pat's tutelage. You might say pat taught 'em everything they know (but *not* everything pat knows <grin>)

While pat is no longer around, I continued to play emps on each server with a similar style. I've been playing SC for too long to take it overly seriously, and these emps can be a lot of fun. One other oldtimer has already made a pat emp of his own, you should try it for yourself too. :-)