Out of curiosity, I set up a 6 player game (5 AIs). I proceeded to land on an asteroid, and crashed it onto the planet everyone was on (my commander was on the asteroid). Naturally, all 6 players, myself included, were wiped out by that move. But the game announced that one of the AIs had won. This should have been a "Nobody wins" scenario, since everyone died at once.
SupCom had a grace period after the match ended where if all of the winning team's Commanders died before the end of the grace period, the match was declared a stalemate and much laughs could be had.
If a astroid smashes into a planet it isnt an instant kill for everything. There is something like a "shockwave" rolling over the planet from the point of impact thats actualy takes some time to expand and kill everything. So the AI that won was probably just further away from the crash then the others, thus surviving some fraction of a second longer and winning the game.
A fraction of a second of survival should be meaningless since everyone is guaranteed to die by my action there. Yes, a shockwave kills closer things first. But functionally, it is purely cosmetic. In the final game this kind of stalemate isn't likely, but if the game announces that everyone is annihilated (including the player that eventually 'won') before the score screen pops up, it makes no sense for one player to win. Regardless of whether they were 'last' to die, they still died and 'lost' before the end-of-game screen came up.
Actually I would wager one of the AIs left the planet as you impacted, they have been programmed to do this when they send an asteroid into the planet themselves so it's quite possible it was a response to your attempt. To do this yourself, launch your commander at another planet a little before the impact - you can also aim for the planet you're about to impact and as long as you get into orbit you won't die.
No it's a time of death thing. I won a game where someone smashed into my planet simply because they didn't leave the moon and died before I did. That's not really a victory though.
How sure are you about this? There is an appreciable timer after the end of the game where you can still die and impacting an asteroid kills everybody almost instantaneously. I have certainly had draws from impacting an asteroid that killed everyone from both planets.
Yeah. planet hit the world, I was never marked as annihilated (despite still being on the planet), and PA stats also labelled me the winner.
