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Detailed Preview of Masters of Orion 3
garibald writes "Constantine, the head developer, promised that there would be a detailed preview of the game this week, and here it is at Apolyton. Constantine also said the game was in it's final regression testing. Here's hoping that the game will be out by the end of this month." Oh, Lordie, if I counted the hours I spent playing MOO and MOO2 - I'm really looking forward to this one.
They have already pushed the release back more time than I can count. They even made wired's vaporware list at number 5. Its about time they actually went gold.
See this FAQ and look under Technology. For the lazy, it says:
Will the tech tree be larger than MOO2? Will there be a "creative" race?
Oh, yes, the tech tree will be a lot bigger. Even three times bigger. On "creative": there won't be quite such a racial trait that will allow you full access to the tech tree, but some races will have larger tech trees then the rest.
That's three times for ya!
Score:-1, Wrong
True, late in the game it was whoever fired first
wins.
But what it interesting was that there was always
one weapon which totally would dominate in the
game. Most of the time it would be heavy
phasor + auto fire + shield piercing. (Achilles
targetting units should be standard equipment
on all ships)
but in some games I played the AI would build
ships with displacement devices and energy
absorbers, which really take alot away from the
phasor. Heaven forbid they actually had hard
shields to boot. Therefore in scenarios like
that I tend to use Mauler devices and / or
stellar converters. I actually had miniturized
the stellar converter small enough to fit on a
battleship.
Now imagine this, a fleet of battleships w/
stellar converters and time warp facilitators +
half a dozen doom stars equipped with heavy auto
fire phasors + high energy focus + hyper x
capacitors + structural analyzers + achille
targetting units + subspace teleporters & time
warp facilitators. The enemy wouldn't have a
chance to fire one shot against me.
The 1.31 patch with ship initiative turned on
negated some of that though.. had to start
re-thinking strategy due to that!
The website for this game, www.moo3.com, the official site from Quicksilver, has stated this game has been in final regression testing since before December 4th, 2002. Read the Infogrames discussion boards, linked from the MoO3 site, if you want a better scoop as to what's been going on with the "We're near release" deal. I'm not getting excited until I see the game, they were supposedly going to have it done just after Thanksgiving. I'd take Chantz's statements that they're about ready with a grain of salt.
If not now, when?
I've been tracking the release date since about November - not at the Apolyton site, but at online retail sites and actual retail stores. The release date has moved up, from 18 January to 15 January, the last couple times I've checked. I think when they say it'll be January, they mean it.
Plus, consider this: If they don't release soon, they risk having the plug pulled. I'd imagine Chantz and company will have to settle for "good enough" within the next few days or weeks if they can't get everything worked out by then.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.