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.

Comments

No!

[Negatyfus]

I think you got a couple of songs mixed up. It's Master of Puppets and Orion is another song from that album altogether.

Re:No!

[Negatyfus]

You're kidding me. No way. Kids these days...

Re:No!

[ender81b]

... my god what has the world come to. *You* Have got to be kidding me. What he is referring to is the Song Master of Puppets by Metallica and the song Orion by metallica. Do yourself a favor, go grab the mp3's off the web (lars ulritch loves it when you do this - everytime somebody pirates a metallica song an angel gets its wings) and download "master of puppets" and "orion".

Re:No!

[Vardan]

Yes, I know Metallica. I grew up in their heyday. I was born in the seventies. I just wasn't sure if he was being serious or not, referring to a metallica song.

Which is why I said "I hope you're kidding..."

Track record?

[Omkar]

Does this game's developer have a track record like Nintendo's or Rare's of delaying games (until they're perfect - good) for years? IF so, then I wouldn't bet on seeing the game soon, no matter what the developer says. Perhaps someone can shed some light on this.

Re:Track record?

[KrizDog]

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.

Re:Track record?

[Kibo]

Vaporware?

Oh you mean Stars! Supernova Genesis. Gah! I still play Stars! dreaming of the day I can finally play Stars! SG.

Re:Track record?

[vortoxin]

What may be better is to have both sides enter their orders in the beginnings of the rounds and see how they react during battle.

I'm pretty excited about RTS for small battles. If ship combat gets to be huge armadas fighting each other, the battle could become and epileptic RTS click fest rather than being able to plan and possibly enjoy a great combat simulation.

Besides perhaps with good enough spies on my side I won't have to worry about RTS battles if all the opposing ships mysteriously explode when they engage weapons. Then there is that diplomacy thing everyone seems to keep blabbering on about.

Re:Track record?

[joshsisk]

If I recall, M002 (though it may have been another space strategy game) had a preference option for 'fast combat', that skipped the battles altogether, resolving them for you automatically.

I hope they kept that feature, or even better, let you pick before a battle starts. After your empire gets to a certain size, all the skirmishes get a bit old.

Re:Track record?

[websaber]

partialy. I feel that one of the worst mistakes of moo2 was that they didn't have a option for fast combat on individual battles. Even at the end of the game it is still fun to find out what 500 mauler beams do to a titan class ship, but how many times do you want to watch 50 ships move just to take over a barely defended planet?

Re:Track record?

[joshsisk]

Exactly. It'd be great if you could do it battle-by-battle. Towards the end of the game, when it's obvious you are going to win, you just want to move quickly to the finish.

Re:Track record?

[Bicoid]

Generally, you wouldn't have to MOVE 50 ships to take over a barely defended planet, unless you were using scouts armed with lasers or something. By the time my fleet was that big, I was moving around fleets of 10 Doom Stars packed with 70 Heavy Plasma Cannons each. Only the big enemy fleets actually got a taste of my REAL fleet, which was a pile of titans and doom stars with gauss cannons to kill shields, Ion Cannons and neutron beams to kill marines and to immobolize the ships, whatever the jump technology there was to let you go basically anywhere in the battle screen, and pods to increase my total marine capacity. The best thing about a fleet like that is that it just keeps on growing and growing and growing...

Re:Track record?

[Totally_Tux]

I found UT2003 to be very stable, they managed to deliver it AND do an unexpected and excellent Linux port at the same time.

I'm looking forward to the first Moo3 reviews from fans and players. With all of the delays people are now expecting a crash-less experience - nothing less.

favorite part

[prichardson]

My favorite part about MOO 3 is the real time ship-ship combat. It always seemed anoying and wrong to have turn based combat. Turn based strategy is fine, but after playing a few RTS's I realized that there are just some really cool things you cant pull off in turn-based.

Re:favorite part

[delstar dotstar]

Turn based strategy is fine, but after playing a few RTS's I realized that there are just some really cool things you cant pull off in turn-based.

Indeed -- it's tough to pull off the Busted-Left-Mouse-Button Maneuver in a turn-based game.

Re:favorite part

[hemanman]

Oh, what to do, mod parrent as troll or reply....

Ok, I guess I reply instead. Turn based combat worked just fine in MOO and MOO 2!

Why does everything have to be real time today, where the AI is so "advanced" that the advanced part is that it attacks you on 3 fronts at once, oh gee what exitement!

I hope they make it a bit like Bioware's Neverwinter Nights so you can pause and stack your commands on all ships, now that would be cool.

-H

Re:favorite part

[meringuoid]

Ok, I guess I reply instead. Turn based combat worked just fine in MOO and MOO 2!

No, it didn't. Two fleets of identical ships face off, and they are built so that it takes a full volley of fire from two ships to destroy one. Suppose there are 100 ships in each fleet. What is the deciding factor in the outcome of the battle?

Answer: who shoots first, wins.

Fleet 1 fires, destroying as many ships as possible and leaving the others undamaged. Fifty of Fleet 2's ships go down in flames. Now it's Fleet 2's turn - but because half of them are dead, they only take down 25 of Fleet 1. Fleet 1 returns fire again and demolishes 37 of Fleet 2's ships, seriously damaging one other. The thirteen remaining ships (if they are at all sensible) turn and run.

And the player _always_ got first shot. I ended up piling on as many weapons as possible to my ships at the total expense of armour and shielding. If the enemy fired a shot at me, I was going down, but I knew full well that they weren't going to get the chance.

It got worse at the end of the game; the defence technology didn't keep pace with the weapons. Shield-piercing autofire (3 shots instead of 1 at a 20% accuracy penalty) heavy phasors coupled to a good computer (making up for that penalty) and an Achilles targeting system (which totally bypasses the target's armour and massively increases damage) were so good they were almost like cheating. Phasors miniaturised well, so you could pack a whole lot onto a ship. It got to the point where one ship could take down several enemy ships in its turn. With a kill rate of 1 a turn or greater, Fleet 2 aren't going to fire a shot; they're just going to be mown down.

One cute thing to do is to conquer all the galaxy except one enemy world - then give them 10% tribute. With such enormous cash supplies they build fleets of hundreds of ships, which you can then use as target drones. See how many you can take down with a single ship...

Re:favorite part

[kurokaze]

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!

Re:favorite part

[meringuoid]

The 1.31 patch with ship initiative turned on negated some of that though.. had to start re-thinking strategy due to that!

Awww. Did they break the cloaking cheat, too? (For those who don't know, Orion 2 had a device called the Phasing Cloak, which was totally impenetrable - a phasecloaked ship couldn't be seen, let alone shot at, but had to decloak to fire and had to go a turn without firing to recloak. The Timewarp Facilitator gives the ship two turns in a row before the enemy gets a shot. This gave people a wonderful loophole...)

Re:favorite part

[Ost99]

To words: ship initiative.

Re:favorite part

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

One cute thing to do is to conquer all the galaxy except one enemy world

My favorite goal, was to cripple an incapacitate the other races, without genociding them. Each race was allowed to have its homeworld, and only that homeworld. I would take all the others, beating them back to their origins... then my lvl 100 warships would patrol orbit. Never again, would I allow them to leave the surface... or for that matter, to build industry! Had to be careful, never to let them go much below 10million population, or you could accidentally extinct them on the next volley. What a pity that would be, the curator of the intergalactic zoo would have had my head! Figuratively speaking, of course. As emperor, I had him executed for sneezing in my presence.

Those were the days. It was only later that I discovered that the Urquan had been doing the same for millenia. But that's another game, another story.

PS I used to do this on Herzog Zwei too... ring his home base with SAMs, and he could never leave to place units, but would never lose either. Just turn the TV off for a week, come back and end the game to see that you died 4 times, but he died 376,122 times. Caimlas, if you are reading this, you won't believe that either, I suppose. Yes, I did beat Zelda without ever getting the sword, asswad.

Re:favorite part

[Stonehand]

You're neglecting the most munchkin weapon of them all -- the lowly Stasis Field.

It's got short range, but either phase cloak or subspace teleporter can get you into range in a jiffy. Then it /completely/ imprisons a ship so it can't do anything, even repair...

A horde of small, fast ships with stasis beams and a remotely decent weapon can kill most things, if extremely slowly and with painful repetiveness.

Re:favorite part

[Stonehand]

Yes, they changed the extra-turn sequence.

Stasis beams and the warp interdictor/stargate combo were still both perversely strong, however, and 1.31's ship initiative broke the black hole generator (it simply doesn't hurt the victims anymore).

Re:favorite part

[mr3038]

And the player _always_ got first shot.

Only in unpatched MOO2 IIRC. About the best weapons: use plasma cannons (it takes a lot of research!) after they are miniaturised, join with achilles targetting unit, structural analyzer, subspace teleporter and time warp facilitors. The idea is to hit with every beam (maximum damage every time) directly into the structure. You can easily destroy 20+ doomstar class starships in one turn with one doomstar size ship. That is, if you're to start first. Stellar converter can do only 400 hit points of damage and IIRC my ships could do total damage of something like 10000 hit points in one turn--bybassing shield and armor!

Re:favorite part

[Clover_Kicker]

>My favorite goal, was to cripple an incapacitate the other races,
>without genociding them. Each race was allowed to have its homeworld,
>and only that homeworld.

You're a kind and soft-hearted leader.

I'd leave 'em with the worst planet in their holdings, hopefully something tiny and ultra-poor.

It doesn't take much of a fleet to babysit a planet like that :)

Re:favorite part

[orichter]

My favorite part of the game, (until I got bored of it) was early game MIRVed missles. I would build a Cruiser hull as quickly as possible and load it with 2x missles. Also make a scout ship with no weapons, but all the speed/turning enhancements. I called this the Observer. Take the pair into battle, have the Missle Cruiser Launch both rounds of Missles, and retreat. As long as the Observer remains in the battle, the missles continue to fly. Have the Observer Run like hell. Usually, your missles will destroy the defending force before thier missles reach your Observer. After the battle is over, your cruiser (which retreated) returns for the ground battle. If you've chosen a telepathic race, mind control the colony, and repeat as necessary. Like I said, it's so easy, it's not really much of a challenge, but if you just feel like taking over the galaxy without too much trouble, this strategy can easily end a game in a Huge galaxy in under two hours.

Re:favorite part

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

But from an aesthetic standpoint, they needed to be confined to their homeworld.

The game should have had technology that allowed you to de-terraform the planets to small, ultrapoor. Wish it were moddable...

Re:favorite part

[kurokaze]

I considered myself to the galatic janitor.

Any poor/ultra-poor planets would get destroyed
and rebuilt as normal planets.

Any toxi planets would get destroyed and rebuilt
as normal planets.

Any gas giants would get converted into planets

Any asteriod belts would get converted into
planets.

So all that's left are the normal, rich and
ultra-rich. Everybody's happy.. except of course
if you happened to be on one of the planets I
destroyed..

Re:favorite part

[Kintanon]

400? That assumes you only put 1 converter per ship. Bollucks! I recall doing over 10k damage with stellarconverters...

Though gauss cannons were always my favorite weapon...

Kintanon

Re:favorite part

[Kibo]

Am I the only one that used to fill up those vaguely star destroyer hulls, I think it was a huge blue flag hull with photon torpedos, disrupters, fighters and bombers?

Re:favorite part

[Scott Carnahan]

Yes, they changed the extra-turn sequence

This did not completely solve the problem. If the enemy does not have PC/TWF tech, it is still possible to attack with impunity if you appropriately time your attacks with the "wait" button. Thus, it is still possible to defeat the Antarean home fleet using a single frigate fitted with with Phasing Cloak, Time Warp Facilitator, and a plasma web.

Re:favorite part

[Scott Carnahan]

400? That assumes you only put 1 converter per ship. Bollucks! I recall doing over 10k damage with stellarconverters...

Stellar converter does 400 enveloping damage, meaning 400 points for each of four shield faces. If you shoot an unshielded planet with 7 convertors, you will do 11200 damage. If you have structural analyzer, those same weapons will do 22400 damage to unshielded ships.

While this sounds impressive, the stellar converter is one of the least efficient high-level weapons, since it is bulky and does not benefit from beam bonuses like high-energy focus and hyper-X capacitors. An optimized ship full of plasma cannons will be able to do over 150,000 damage to unshielded ships in one turn, about six times the stellar converter's efficiency. The plasma cannon is in fact the most efficient weapon in the game, followed by disruptor, gauss cannon, phasor, and mauler device. Naturally, the presence of shields, especialy on planets, will shift the balance in favor of the heavier weapons, e.g. disruptor and mauler.

DIRRTY DIRRTY DEVELOPERS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Muusssst have my ORION 3F)JSKDL Musssst have it now. WHy do they taunt me? WHY DO THEY TEASES ME? I hatesssss them. precioussssss

Re:DIRRTY DIRRTY DEVELOPERS!

[RebelTycoon]

Muusssst have my ORION 3F)JSKDL Musssst have it now. WHy do they taunt me? WHY DO THEY TEASES ME? I hatesssss them. precioussssss

Because master says so. We like master... No we don't. yes we do! no WE DON'T, master not let us play ORION 3! we wait for master to sleep. Yes!

Re:DIRRTY DIRRTY DEVELOPERS!

[oni]

we wait for master to sleep. Yes!

Then we takes it! We takes the precious.

New skills sets?

[grumpygrodyguy]

I enjoyed both MOO1 and MOO2, but was a bit disappointed with the fact that the skills in MOO2 were basically a carbon copy of those in M001. I liked the improved graphics and interface of M002, but would have appreciated more expansion of content.

It gets kinda dull when you reach the end of the game and start exhausting what you can research. Researching Planetary Future Tech 24 , or Weapons Tech 33 may improve my score...but I'd rather have better guns/ships.

Does anyone know if the skills have been expanded for M003?

Re:New skills sets?

[europrobe]

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!

Re:New skills sets?

[luisdom]

>Weapons Tech 33 may improve my score...but I'd rather have better guns/ships.
It did allow you better ships, the more future tech you researched, the smaller the weapons, and more of them you could fit in a ship. Useful for the deathstar ships, you could fill them plenty with death rays...

Re:New skills sets?

[piotrr]

I'm a games reviewer and I wrote a preview on the November build for the Swedish gaming / RPG magazine "Codex". That establishes the background for the following statement:

Yes, they have.

That is all.

Re:New skills sets?

[meringuoid]

>Weapons Tech 33 may improve my score...but I'd rather have better guns/ships.

It did allow you better ships, the more future tech you researched, the smaller the weapons, and more of them you could fit in a ship. Useful for the deathstar ships, you could fill them plenty with death rays...

Death rays were Antaran technology, they didn't miniaturise at all. Mauler devices and phasors got very small, though. And it was so much fun once you could build cruisers with stellar converters ;-)

Researching Advanced Sociology was a complete waste of time, though. AFAIK, it's only worth advancing in physics, chemistry and biology once you've exhausted the original tech tree.

Re:New skills sets?

[mofolotopo]

The stellar converters were awesome. On very stressful days, I'd sometimes go around trying to destroy every planet in the galaxy by not quite killing off an enemy, letting him settle a new world, then vaporizing it. A guilty pleasure. I suppose I'm going to be up in front of a war crimes tribunal some day

Re:New skills sets?

[Epistax]

Research itself is done a little differently. No creative option from Moo2. At the beginning, the engine decides what techs it is possible for your race to research, then allows you to get _all_ of them. I have heard that you can research multiple techs at once, and some techs take multiple prerequisits. We'll know more later.

Re:New skills sets?

[meringuoid]

The stellar converters were awesome. On very stressful days, I'd sometimes go around trying to destroy every planet in the galaxy by not quite killing off an enemy, letting him settle a new world, then vaporizing it. A guilty pleasure. I suppose I'm going to be up in front of a war crimes tribunal some day

MoO2 seemed a little unclear on what exactly constituted a war crime. Dropping bioweapons from orbit - war crime. Blasting every settlement on the face of the planet with disruptor cannon from space - not a war crime. Saturating the place with antimatter bombs - not a war crime. Sending down troops to exterminate the population in person - not a war crime, but carries a diplomatic penalty. Demolishing the entire planet - not a war crime.

Re:New skills sets?

[kurokaze]

stellar converters on cruisers?

holy crap how high did you need on the advanced
research to get to that?

Re:New skills sets?

[meringuoid]

stellar converters on cruisers? holy crap how high did you need on the advanced research to get to that?

Lots. Lots and lots and lots of advanced physics, I think I'd got to something like 30 levels or so. Why bother? I decided I wanted to end the game with _all_ the technology, and I needed a black hole generator from an Antaran ship to do that. So I'd sit about waiting for Antaran raiders to come through with a battleship or better - the smaller ships don't carry black hole generators - and then have my fleet of assault carriers (Titans with Class X hard shields, troop pods and lots of assault shuttles) meet them and start a boarding action. Antarans don't come around that often, though, so I had a lot of time doing research.

It's cute to see the message 'Send 1 ship to attack Antares?' It's even more fun when it's only a cruiser (I couldn't do it with a destroyer without using the timewarp / cloak cheat - that would allow me to do it with a frigate.) I didn't use the stellar converter for that, though - miniaturised Maulers were more space-effective.

Re:New skills sets?

[Stonehand]

Hm, according to the Mooniac guide, miniaturization is rather limited... I think that once you get to Hyper-Advanced VI or so in all the fields that have ship components you want, they don't get any smaller.

I don't recall seeing Stellar Converters go below 200, for instance. And the Antaran tech, as somebody else mentioned, never miniaturizes, so it becomes much more worthwhile to use HV AF disrupters w/ Achilles + Structural Analyzer + HEF (it's not like shields won't go down in a jiffy at that point...)

Re:New skills sets?

[kurokaze]

but how is that possible?

every time I tried to board an antaran ship
it blows up...

Re:New skills sets?

[Clover_Kicker]

>The stellar converters were awesome. On very stressful days, I'd
>sometimes go around trying to destroy every planet in the galaxy by
>not quite killing off an enemy, letting him settle a new world, then
>vaporizing it. A guilty pleasure. I suppose I'm going to be up in
>front of a war crimes tribunal some day

Heh. In small universe games, where every planet counts, I made a point of blowing up poor/ultra-poor planets. Once I'd conquered another planet in that system, if I had time, I'd construct an artificial planet from the left over asteroid debris. The new planet would have normal mineral wealth :)

Re:New skills sets?

[meringuoid]

every time I tried to board an antaran ship it blows up...

They carry a Quantum Detonator. It has two effects - first, it gives a 75% (I think, might be 50%) chance of a warp core explosion if the ship is captured, and second, it triples the damage done by that explosion.

The odds are very much against you if you launch assaults on Antaran ships - they have excellent marines on board, and even if you do win chances are the ship will blow anyway - but it can be done.

Re:New skills sets?

[default luser]

Wow. Sounds like...

Hmmm....

Let me think...

Oh! Master of Orion.

Your tech tree was determined at the start of the game, and was a combination of your race and randomness. You could research multiple techs at once.

They only got rid of the multiple tech research because most experienced MOO players quickly learned that researching one tech at a time could get you key techs sooner, and was the better tactic. The MOO2 programmers simply took out all the repetitive tech concentration movement an experienced player would normally have to do.

Re:What kind of convoluted logic course did he tak

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, still playing computer geek games past the age of 12? GROW THE FUCK UP!

Let's all guess who just turned 14 and thinks he's the hot shit now...

Er..what kind of game is it?

[rufusdufus]

After reading the gobblygook article and looking at the race types, I went in search of something that would tell me what the game play is like.
After seeing this screenshot , I decided I just didn't care.

The article and the screenshot together just make the game look mush-brained.

Re:Er..what kind of game is it?

[AndroidCat]

It would have been nice if they'd got a reviewer who'd played MOO and MOO2. Just copying race descriptions out of the manual isn't exactly a review.

Re:Er..what kind of game is it?

[nehril]

no kidding. this "detailed preview" offers zero useful information about how the game plays. the writing is some of the worst I've encountered:

The purpose here was to expediently observe these base cultures' histories in, as the manual states, "an effort to gain insight into their own dilemma" (Page 23). The goal was to reproduce the elements that led to the Elder Civilizations' conflict on a smaller scale. Whether such research led to discoveries sought by the Orions is unknown. What is known is that these pain-staking efforts would lend rise to no less then five distinct races. Two of these, the Klackon and Psilon, are playable civilizations in MoO3. Another race, the Humans, adamantly rejected suggestions that they too would found their origins within the universal petrie-dishes of Orion whims.

the purpose of this article is to expose the base underworkings of a twisted syntactical constructive that passed the a spell checker, but no passing the whims of sensibility-making.

it's just page after page of ridiculous race backstory. for great justice, does anybody have any idea how the game PLAYS? is it 3d? what are the new weapons and ships like? do you still have a cool movie clip that plays when you fire that mega planet destroying weapon? Do you have to let battles between large fleets run overnight because the engine bogs down?

Re:Er..what kind of game is it?

[Lars T.]

Let me guess: the words "Ambassador" and "polite" scared the heck out of you, and you went running back to blasting Cyberdemons.

Re:Er..what kind of game is it?

[Alsee]

does anybody have any idea how the game PLAYS?

While I haven't actually seen the game, I have been following it pretty closely. There is a lot of information available on exactly how various parts of the game work.

is it 3d?

While there are pretty 3-d graphics, the gameplay is effectively 100% 2-d. I beleive you can view and rotate the "galaxy" in 3-d but the stars effectively lie in a plane. The space combat occurs in a 2-d plane with 3-d models. The game does not require a 3-d accelerated graphics card.

what are the new weapons

You can to some extent design your fighters and missles almost like they are mini-ships. I don't know anything about new weapons. The game system for weapons seems to very similar to MOO2 for weapon mods, miniturization, and general weapon classes.

[what are] ships like?

That's a HUGE question, and a lot of it is the ENTIRELY NEW combat system. I'll just skim a few points.

There are now 14 ship sizes for each of starships, system ships, and starbases. I think they expaned the text-space because of popular demand for the name "superdreadnaught", and that one is merely size 11. The space available on system ships is effectively one size class larger and starbases are effectively 2 size classes larger. YOU GET TO DESIGN YOUR STARBASES! You can have multiple starbases over a planet and they actually orbit the planet during combat. Beta testers have described the weapon capacity of larges starbases as "staggering". Planets and starbases have enormous range on their weapons - *if* they can see you.

MOO3 you are going to making and using larger numbers of ships than MOO2 and you are handling them as task forces. Dozzens, hundreds or even thousands of ships. You are probably going to need a mix of ship sizes and weapon types. It's a lot more sophisticated than MOO2's basic plan of simply making all your ships the largest hull size and stuffing them all with the same weapon. Your task forces will be made up of a variety of ships with different roles.

The combat is real-time, BUT! Lots of MOO fans freak out when they hear "real time combat", but as I understand it is NOTHING like the typical real time combat system and that "turn-based fans" who have used it are actually happy with it. It is not a hectic click-fest. It is strategic in nature. The ship captains and task force leaders in the fleet are "smart" and you give them combat strategies.

The combat uses "fog of war" where you can only see ships within sensor range (planets are always visible). One of the roles for small ships is as perimiter scouts acting as eyes for your big ships with and ultra long range beam weapons and/or missles. You want to keep those ships out of the enemy's sight while they hammer him.

Starships can move from any star to any star just like in MOO1 and MOO2, but they're added starlanes. Starlane travel is MUCH faster than going "offroad". I think they are trying to get the "best of both worlds", starlanes help you build frontlines and choke points, but in starlane-only games things can get too restricted and the chokepoints become become stupid. From what I've read they seem to have done a good job and it works well. Hopfully the combination will give strategic richness.

There's a LOT more, but my "just skim a few points" already turned into 5 paragraphs. The starlanes and realtime combat have been very controversial, but the general consensus is that you have to actually see how it works and that it really does work out well.

-

Re:Er..what kind of game is it?

[meringuoid]

YOU GET TO DESIGN YOUR STARBASES!

Excellent! In MOO2 I was always infuriated by the choice of weapons on my starbases. Antaran death rays are nice, but impractically large; I'd rather have my starbase capable of firing several smaller shots. Later in the game, if you go into extreme physics territory, your conventional weapons have been miniaturised to such an extent that your Star Fortresses are totally outclassed by your light cruisers.

You can have multiple starbases over a planet and they actually orbit the planet during combat. Beta testers have described the weapon capacity of larges starbases as "staggering". Planets and starbases have enormous range on their weapons - *if* they can see you.

Proposed plan of attack: take a Doom Star hull and fill it with rocks. Launch it directly towards the starbase at high speed, and have the fleet follow close behind it. By the time the planetary defences have melted the thing down, the fleet's there on the spot and has negated the starbase's superior range. In general, can my lightly armoured killer ships hide behind tougher ones?

One thing I'd like to see (and I imagine it's a bit late to hope for it to be in MOO3 :-) is for there to be a benefit from standardisation. As it is, I decide I want a battleship, and I specify a variety of parts to go into it, then I order it to be built. So the parts are manufactured, a hull is built, the ship fitted and configured as a one-off affair. What I want is a discount if I order ten at a time.

Or perhaps more realistically, I might run an imperial arsenal. Things like stellar converters and black hole generators I'll only ever need a few of, but I get through thousands of point-defence phasors and pulson missiles. I should order them in bulk, and allocate them to shipbuilding projects as required. Once stockpiled weapons become obsolete, a new option arises for the technologically leading player - become an armsdealer! I notice the Sakkra and Klackons are having a major and very bloody war - would either of you two be interested in buying a few dozen ex-Psilon graviton cannons?

Re:Er..what kind of game is it?

[Alsee]

take a Doom Star hull and fill it with rocks. Launch it directly towards the starbase at high speed, and have the fleet follow close behind it.

I forgot the game title of it, but that reminds me of a MOO-type game that had a sense of humor. The highest level sheild was called "Hide behind a big rock technology".

-

Re:Er..what kind of game is it?

[tbarrie]

After seeing this screenshot, I decided I just didn't care.

The article and the screenshot together just make the game look mush-brained.

What's your beef with the screenshot? One of the biggest annoyances with the SMC/MoO family of games has been the lack of decent diplomatic options. (Moreso with SMC than MoO, though.) The idea of being able to try politley stalling in response to a request sounds great to me.

(And yeah, I realize that having the options doesn't imply that the AI will use or respond to them sensibly, but it's still cause for hope.)

Re:Er..what kind of game is it?

[mselmeci]

take a Doom Star hull and fill it with rocks.

Will that really work? Starbases aren't completely stationary, they orbit planets. Sure, you can calculate how well you need to accelerate the doomstar to hit where the starbase will be, but I'm sure that there should be SOME technology for making minor maneuvers that are enough to push it out of harms way...

Of course, that means the planet's going to be hit by a Death Star, but hey, life is tough.

Re:Er..what kind of game is it?

[salientpoints]

The pop-up ad on the site was more innovative than what the new version looks to have.

The Moo Purification (slashdot?)

[$$$$$exyGal]

The [so-called] Purification... was a lengthy process, and not all Slashdotters survived the transformation. Those who did not wish to undergo the Purification were granted goatse and politely but firmly invited to leave Slashdot forever. Those exiles settled on a distant world and called themselves the Trolls. -- Slashdot Manual (Page 76)

Ok, so I slightly changed it. ;-)

--gal

Re:The Moo Purification (slashdot?)

[AndroidCat]

And nuke that Capriform love cult race too!

The Technicolour Screen-Grab

[TooTrueTroubs]

I'd have to agree, the screen-shots I've seen seem to have been put together by a colour-blind impressionist painter - could they fit more colours on at once? Additionally, while the screen-grabs a limitied, the 3D models looked a little lacklustre for this day and age.

Re:The Technicolour Screen-Grab

[mofolotopo]

That was kind of my response. I'll grant that they're not all that attractive, but it's really not that important as far as MOO goes. It's like saying you don't want to play chess because the pieces are ugly.

Waiting

[Vardan]

I've had my preorder at EB since October. I really hope they get it out soon, it looks like it's going to be great. Maybe they'll actually make a Master of Magic 2 as well...oooh...*drool.* For those of you who haven't played the old Simtex games, see if you can find them, they're worth playing even now.

Re:Waiting

[ender81b]

Master of Magic! Somebody who appreciates good, old classic games! I have a pentium 90 boxen with a (massive) 64 megs of ram, 1gbyte HD, some trident svga card, and sound blaster 16 dedicated to playing old dos games. Stuff like Master Of Magic, Master of Orion, tie fighter, dark forces, the *original* civ, and Crusader: No regret/No Remorse. Man I wish their was a way to run these on more modern machines... you just don't appreciate how much the 640k barrier/irq settings suck until you have to deal with it all over again =).

Man they just don't make games like that anymore.

P.S.
If you are a true MOM fanatic you know that playing with chaos and using flamestrike is cheating! =)

Re:Waiting

[Jugalator]

If you are a true MOM fanatic you know that playing with chaos and using flamestrike is cheating! =)

Hehe...

I personally enjoy picking all Life Magic and that leader ability to make all trained units one level higher than normal. Then you cast Crusade or whatever it was (the global enchantment to *further* increase the levels of all your units one more).

Then destroy the AI with Champion Halfling Slingers or Champion Javelineers. Mwahaha :-)

Torin the Chosen can also become quite powerful at high levels and good custom equipment through the item creation spell.

Aah, the memories. ;-) It's definitely better than the MOO games. hehe

Re:Waiting

[Zathrus]

I use to run MOO on Win98 with no problems... sound worked fine too. Haven't gotten it working on my most recent PC since I have to find the install disks... just copying the game directory wouldn't work :/

Re:Waiting

[will_die]

I liked the chaos global that gave a random affect to all new creatures. I had fleets of flying halking slingers attacking everything.

Re:Waiting

[Aggrazel]

Whoa cool! I'm gonna use that tonight and try to get "Day of the Tentacle" to run.. I've been trying to play that again for years...

Re:Waiting

[Jaysyn]

Awesome game, one of my favorites. I play it under Win2k though....

Jaysyn

Re:Waiting

[meringuoid]

Then destroy the AI with Champion Halfling Slingers or Champion Javelineers. Mwahaha :-) Don't take _all_ Life. Mostly Life, but have one Chaos and one Nature book. Then you can have what is probably the most powerful conventional unit possible. Halfling Slingers, Adamantium weapons, Champion level, with the spells Flame Blade and Giant Strength cast on them, and accompanied by Torin and an Archangel (for the leadership and bless effects) - I make that 18 attack strength, multiplied by eight in the stack equals 144 damage. Ouch.

Re:Waiting

[slaker]

Halfling Slingers + 10 books in Life + warlord + Crusade + Call to Arms + Lionheart + Invulnerability + Endurance = One stack of a "normal", low cost unit that brings down Sky Drakes and 900EP Champions with one hit and can stand up to everything those units can dish out.

Talk about cheating.

I always thought Zombie Mastery was good for a laugh, too. When I play as a Death Wizard, I don't play Master of Magic, I play "Night of the Living Dead"

Re:Waiting

[Jaysyn]

What I'd love to see is, MOM2, done like this. Same or very similar game engine & rules (i.e. still turn based combat), more spells, more creatures, more & different types of heroes, a 3D world & 3D battlefields, where you could actually see your minions fight, instead of just waving weapons at each other.

This would be awesome.

Jaysyn

Re:Waiting

[Sylver Dragon]

Maybe they'll actually make a Master of Magic 2 as well...oooh...*drool.*

Sadly there is a 'sort of' follow-up to MoM (one of the best games ever). The Age of Wonders series is effectively the sequles to MoM. I recently picked up Age of Wonders II, and it is very MoM like in the way the game play works. You are again a wizard controling an army, turn based strategy, spell casting and research and graphics remenicent of MoM. On the whole its almost a great follow-up to MoM.
So why do I say almost? Well, to begin with you no longer have the ability to choose your race. No more playing Dark Elves. You are a human wizard trying to solve the worlds problems by conquering the multiverse. Plus you are a little goddie two-shoes. Was it just me or was there something enjoyable about ransacking a city, murdering its population then building a city for your own race on its ashes? Secondly, and the biggest atrocity, the game is now level based. Its not the huge world that you can crush beneath your boot type game anymore. You are stuck playing levels and trying to acheive objectives. Its just not as fun anymore. They have taken a great game idea and killed it by trying to put a story in it.
I realize that most newer games are these huge productions, with high budgets and paid script/story writters. But I wonder if its a good thing? Sure, its occasionanly nice to have a bit of story to tie the violence together, but the Master of Magic/Orion games didn't need it. You were a warlord out to conquer the worlds/galaxy, that was enough. Now get the story out of my way and let me get on about the business crushing my enemies.
I just hope MoO 3 is as good as MoO 2 was. I spent countless hours finding new and unique was to rule the galaxy, and am looking forward to doing it again.

Re:Waiting

[IsoRashi]

Are you kidding? It's all about a Sorcery artificer! Make your heros hasted, immune to magic, flying, invisible, and with phantasmal attacks. I tend to load one or two heros up with goodies then send them out to destroy everyone and everything. God I miss that game. MOO3 might be worth picking up, but what I'm *really* waiting for is MoM2.

Re:Waiting

[slaker]

Unfortunately, some fucktard at Microprose cancelled it two years ago.

Our best hope is that one of the projects on http://www.classicgaming.com/mom/projects.html will turn into something beautiful.

I play an average of two games of MoM a week. Still. A great way to use my 9700AIW, I know, but I just haven't found anything that's as much fun. Wish it did network play. The AI doesn't use any of the killer strategies a human player would...

Re:Waiting

[pyramid termite]

Well, to begin with you no longer have the ability to choose your race. No more playing Dark Elves.

You can pick another race in the scenarios. If you get bored with the ones that come with the game you can go to aow2.heavengames.com and get more.

Secondly, and the biggest atrocity, the game is now level based. Its not the huge world that you can crush beneath your boot type game anymore.

Again, look at the scenarios - you're talking about the campaign game.

Re:Waiting

[Sylver Dragon]

I'll have to go back and look at that. Thanks. As usual I didn't read the manual, and probably missed the scenario option when starting.

Re:Waiting

[twalk]

Real cheating is using the artifact cheat to put flamestrike X4 on every offensive item you make for free...

Re:Waiting

[Jugalator]

Talk about cheating.

Heey, it's not cheating, it's all according to the rules! Sure, the rules might be broken here and there *ahem*, but this is only using your game experience to SMITE ALL EVIL. Mwahahah! :-D

Re:Waiting

[Jugalator]

Wow, this knowledge will further perfect my Halfling Slinger strategies. :-) And yes, it's their numbers that make the slingers great. hehe

Hmm.. If I only could get this game to work on XP *with* sound. Grr

Not really a review.

[jericho4.0]

This 'review' is just a cut'n'paste from the manual section describing the species, plus screenshots of the species description screens. Oh, and he throws in a screenshot of the logo selection screen. Some info about, ya know, gameplay and such would have been nice.

Re:Not really a review.

[VortexVertigo]

Hence the "Part 1" title portion of the review. I can only assume that future parts will be forthcoming. Let's hope one of them covers game play.

Re:Not really a review.

[jyda]

Maybe that's why the headline says Preview?

Re:Not really a review.

[AtariDatacenter]

The best part of all? The Harvesters. Their 'preview', which is a cut and paste of the manual with a few explanations thrown in, even foregoes doing that for the Harvesters. "They're mysterious and we don't want to ruin the surprise. Sorry."

Re:Not really a review.

[Epistax]

This is part one of six.

It just happens to have six pages that were accidentally titled part 1 to 6 at the bottom.

The other 5 parts aren't up yet.

Sounds familiar.....

[RyoSaeba]

From what i read in the article, the game sure sounds a LOT like MOO2 (haven't played the 1)...
Wonder if there are significant improvements (apart real-time combat), except graphics & animation, of course !
Seems that at least the whole concept is exaclty the same...

Re:Sounds familiar.....

[Anonymous Hack]

I have to admit i haven't played MOO2, only the original, but it looks like they're really going for some serious science here. Stuff like removing species that are overly humanoid and adding species that are completely alien ("life, Jim, but not as we know it")... They're adding the concepts of "established space lanes", similar to the way we used to navigate the oceans during the early ages of exploration and trade. This will make intercepting invasion fleets a lot more practical and interesting. Essentially they're taking the concepts of MOO and making them more realistic, allowing very, very fine-grained control over everything that happens in your empire while still letting newbies come in and have a reasonable game with everything on the default setting...

I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like. Is there still room for a turn-based strategy game in this day and age? Are people going to be amazed by the (attempted) realism or just bored by it? Is it going to be too complex? I think it's a really brave move... These fan-driven game developments are really something special (see the new online multiplayer One Must Fall for another example). Whether people get into it or not, i think it's definitely going to be something very unique.

Favorite MOO2 Memory

[LordZardoz]

A friend of mine gave me access to his copy of the game when I was attending school. I ended up choosing a Lithovore race (can live in toxic environments by eating rocks). I was doing ok, but an aggressor species kept attacking me and demanding tribute. I had a few plantets, but had lost most of them quite quickly.

But lucky for me, I had some excellent research abilities. I managed to discover Planetary Converter lasers (one shot kills a planet) and Doom Stars. But I was so heavily out numbered, that I kept losing most direct confrontations. But I had enough to hold back the attackers from wiping me out.

At this point in the game, I had maybe 5 planets, and my opponent had everything else (about 100 planets). I was despearate, so I started sending my ships to planet colonies of the attacking race, and vaporising every planet in the system, and moving on.

Initially, he continued to demand my surrender and 75% tribute. After toasting about 20 systems, He demanded 50%. Another 20 systems turned to asteroid fields, and he was willing to settle for 25%. A few systems later, he was saying that I was no longer worth his time to squash, so lets call the whole war off. After destroying his home system, he began offering me tribute.

I ended up destorying every star system in the entire galaxy and all life (except my own). It was the only time I can recall winning a game by committing wholesale galactic genocide.

I look forward to buying MOO3.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[Timesprout]

I foresee a career in politics for you

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[Sycraft-fu]

"It was the only time I can recall winning a game by committing wholesale galactic genocide."

Man, you and I had different playing styles. I can't recall a single game where I DIDN'T win by killing off every other race. I generally didn't blow up planets though, just stripped them of all their population.

Same way I play Civ 3 for that matter.

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[DarklordJonnyDigital]

My favourite tactic in MOO2 was not to destroy anything, but to ally with everyone and become their best friends. Seems kinda pathetic, I know, but read on.

Eventually, my people would be in perfect harmony with the Psilons - the most technologically advanced race in the game who not only get more technologies than anyone else in every field of research, they also gain them all faster. In MOO2, technology is a huge power, one that can make or break the game, and if all goes well I'm perfectly allied with these guys. What few enemies I have won't stand a chance.

Now, here's a the excellent part. When you're in perfect friendship with the Psilons and 'demand' one of their technologies, they'll give it. No questions asked - you're their ally, and they really do love you that much. "Hey blueface, how about some of those planet destroying beams of yours?" "No problem, human ally!"

And it's not just technologies. They'll give you entire star systems as well. ENTIRE STAR SYSTEMS. Systems with Gaia planets, systems with Ultra-Rich planets, systems of strategic importance, systems they just spent their hard-earned cash colonising - systems with expensive superpowerful ships at them. Systems choc-full of superbrainy Psilon scientists.

Of course, there's one thing they won't give you, and that's their homeworld. Of course, by the time you demand their homeworld, you've got every other star system of theirs, ninety percent of their fleet and all of their technology.

Luckily, my pacifist race (the Web Designers) is Telepathic, so I once I use ninety percent of their own fleet against the remaining ten percent, I simply Mind Control their home planet into loving my race and serving my faithfully..

Assuming it supports LAN play, I look forward to buying MOO3 for my brother's birthday.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[AtariDatacenter]

That's my alternate end-game.

Generally, I bide my time and work heavily on research and building up my planets. By the time they get around to picking on me, everyone else has massive fleets, and I don't have much at all. So, when the attack fleet is on its way, I start building a single Titan or Doom ship with the most massive and destructive technology I can arm it with. I pit it against their hundreds of ships and usually win.

The nice thing about a one ship vs. hundreds of ships battle is that as you attack the enemy, their firepower continues to go down because they lose ships. You've got 100% firepower until you're defeated.

Once I win that battle, I move the ship around my planets to protect them as the incoming fleets attack. As I am doing that, I produce more of those ships (slowly at first) to guard more planets, then eventually to attack theirs.

At that point, the tide of war has swung in my favor, and it is just a matter of how much they can piss me off before I defeat them.

Then, only if they'd really really really pissed me off, I'd blow up all their planets. Stellar Converters are fun.

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[BigWhale]

Is your name by any chance Ender? ;)

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[Sigma 7]

The nice thing about a one ship vs. hundreds of ships battle is that as you attack the enemy, their firepower continues to go down because they lose ships. You've got 100% firepower until you're defeated.

Not quite: The Gravtron beam (in the mid-tech level) performs both regular damage and internal damage at the same time. If you get hit by that, your firepower will drop slightly (but damage gets repaired after combat anyway).

There are more powerful weapons that do more damage, but that is one of the few weapons that can punch through armor.

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[kurokaze]

What skill level were you on? by all accounts
you should have been vaporized!

must have been damn lucky I tell you what..

BTW, did you know what you can avoid war all
together by simply ignoring the diplomats?

that was one little nice thing I liked to do when
I didn't want to be bothered with them asking
for demands or tributes or alliances and stuff

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[AtariDatacenter]

I think I overlooked that point. Either that, or the AI did. I don't remember having problems with my beam strength ever being reduced on my mega-ships. Maybe the AI just wasn't leveraging their technology correctly.

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

I felt a great disturbance in the Force...as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[Cecil]

I don't think that's right. The Graviton beam does 3x structure damage when (and only when) it penetrates the armor of the ship. Perhaps you're thinking of the Ion Pulse Cannon? It bypasses both armor and structure, and will destroy a ship's systems (shields, weapons, and engines) once it has penetrated the shields. They're also very large, expensive, and wimpy, though, it's best to bring something else to punch a hole in their shields, then let the Ion Pulse Cannons have their fun. :)

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[Stonehand]

No, no. As of 1.31, the final patch, graviton beams still did structure damage /before/ penetrating armor -- despite the description. Try them out; it's one of the bugged weapons.

Another weapon bug comes in the combo of Black Hole Generators being completely ineffectual when ship initiative is on. La-di-da, you can wait wait wait and ships never take damage, let alone implode.

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[Jo_6_Pac]

Hell yes. I always pick the conquest vistory in Civ 3. I could care less about alpha centauri.

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[Alsee]

My Favorite MOO2 Memory

was when those nice men in the white coats came and gave me thorazine... lots and lots of thorazine...

I remember finding it really really funny as they pried the mouse out of my bloody fingers, but I don't quite recall what was so funny about it.

-

Re:Favorite MOO2 Memory

[Scott Carnahan]

BTW, did you know what you can avoid war all together by simply ignoring the diplomats?

This is definitely not true in general, at least not on the "impossible" difficulty level. Occasionally, the computer players, especially the repulsive ones, will declare war for no apparent reason.

The parent's story doesn't sound like the same MoO2 game I've played. I've never seen a CP demand either surrender or more than 10% tribute (it's not an option on the diplomacy screen), and I've never seen a CP offer tribute, no matter how dire the circumstances.

Can you still get MOO and MOO2

[Wee]

I think my favorite game of all timer -- aside from Scorched Earth -- was Starflight on the Commodore 64. I played that like I was getting paid to. I don't know why, but I couldn't put it down. I even found the ROMs for it and Starflight 2 and played them both to completion.

It sounds like the MOO series is a lot like Starflight, but I never got into any of them. Can you still buy the ealier version? Should I bother looking on ebay or whatever, or just wait for MOO3 and play that? I mean, will playing MOO2 help me to appreciate MOO3, or is 3 a stand-alone game?

-B

Re:Can you still get MOO and MOO2

[markov_chain]

Hey, Scorched Earth was awesome ;)

You can get MOO on abandonware sites, such as this link. MOO2 is harder to find free, but is actually still being sold so that's okay.

I prefer MOO because it has a unique galaxy management interface. MOO2 is a boring copy of the Civilization/Master of Magic games where you have to micromanage city productions (s/city/planet/ and you get MOO2). This has apparently been addressed in MOO3.

It turns out that the original MOO developers lost the MOO source code, so there won't be any prettified releases of it with updated drivers etc. It also most likely won't be open-sourced, which would rock ;) A shame.

Re:Can you still get MOO and MOO2

[Anonymous Hack]

The original Master of Orion is available as "abandonware" (old warez) from various sites. With a cursory search i found the Mac version at Abandonware France ("telecharger" then "cliquez ici") and the DOS version at Classic-Trash.

Re:Can you still get MOO and MOO2

[Anonymous Hack]

Oh, and i forgot to mention, the DOS version still runs really sweet under Windows. For some lucky people (i'm one of them :-) you can actually get sound too. Which is a big bonus, because the music is written by The Fat Man, and as we all know he's a game music legend. (Translation: it rocks ass.)

Re:Can you still get MOO and MOO2

[mofolotopo]

Starflight was the first game I ever played on my first home PC. I loved that game!

Re:Can you still get MOO and MOO2

[Stonehand]

MOO2's usually going for about $10 new. Try amazon.com, gamestop.com or ebgames.com -- one or more of those should have it. If memory serves, that's how much I paid for it (boxed version w/ decent paper manual, not just a jewel-case).

From what I've read, MOO3 was /meant/ to be pretty different (imperial focus points and all)... but they scaled that back dramatically, and also have been having numerous delays and assorted issues during development. It ain't looking pretty, so you might want to wait for reviews -- and perhaps go for Galactic Civilizations from Stardock instead, which should be coming out around the same time. Brad Wardell's been pretty good about updates about it on USENET (comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic, notably).

Incidentally, at least on my system (a PIII-ish Celeron running Win2K and a GF2MX400), the mouse frequently locks in MOO2 v1.31. This can usually be fixed with opening up a dialog box (use the keyboard), and right-clicking and dragging. It wasn't meant for Win2K... if you have a 9X-based system, it may work better for you. There's also some instability bugs when moving captured populations, AFAICT.

Re:Can you still get MOO and MOO2

[MilesBehind]

I think if a starflight-like game is what you're after, the best place to look is Star Control 2. Source has been opened, so there's some versions that run on modern machines being worked on right now. Check sc2.sourceforge.net. MOO is more of a strategy game, no plot to speak off (at least in the first two).

Re:Can you still get MOO and MOO2

[Scrameustache]

Oh man, starflight was awsome! I used to play with tons of hand written notes...

It's all fun and games...

[imag0]

Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.

Re:It's all fun and games...

[Khelder]

Then it's just fun.

Great Series, don't let the screenies fool you

[Alcimedes]

The MOO series is probably one of the best strategy series of all time.

it is constantly recommened by long time gamers who have experienced the joy that was MOO1 and MOO2. to put it in perspective, it is the sole reason i keep a DOS machine around, just to play this one stupid game. :)

Some other player's opinions can be found all over the 'net, and they love the MOO series.

and it's not just the fans, game sites constantly wax nostalgic about the MOO series as seen here

the third title, which is close to Gold at this point looks to be another great game in a great series, although it's not going to have the best graphics ever, it will likely have excellent game play, if it's anything like its predecessors.

don't let the anemic review above be your sole example of MOO3, there are lots of better ones around (although i don't have links on-hand)

Re:Great Series, don't let the screenies fool you

[Alcimedes]

oops, link should have been this. and it's not just the fans, game sites constantly wax nostalgic about the MOO series as seen here

Re:Great Series, don't let the screenies fool you

[Jo_6_Pac]

hehe, your sig is pretty darn clever :)

Utterly worthless preview

[Dusabre]

This 'preview' is an excerpt from the manual concerning game races. Would my copying the spell section from the Neverwinter manual qualify as a 'preview'? It's as detailed as Cheesetor's review of Grand Theft Auto: "It's the best game in the world. You can steal cars, shoot cops and run over prostitutes!" Elftor

Slashdot, don't waste our time.

For more detailed previews of the game, check out Gamerankings

Re:Utterly worthless preview

[iamafrogok]

Er is preview part 1, so until you've read the entire review you can't really judge teh quality of the report.

Re:Utterly worthless preview

[Lars T.]

Yeah, the next parts of the preview will cut'n'paste completely different parts of the manual ;-)

Re:Utterly worthless preview

[SHiVa0]

It would be if NeverWinter was not out YET! Preview means getting info on the game BEFORE it's out right?.... So It's actually information not available anywhere else on the web.

Re:Utterly worthless preview

[Dusabre]

Troll? Did any of the moderators read the 'preview'?

Hmm. I put in the gamerankings.com link for a reason. So people could find some proper previews and not a darn CTRL + V out of the manual/development paper/neat ideas thrown together. This is a part 1 of 6 in 5 fragments... one 'part' per day out of the manual? With annoying underlinked phrases which make me want to click them because I subconsciously think they're hyperlinks.

And what's the "HARVESTER" copyright notice doing at the end of 'preview'. Some incredible secret game race that will be the 6 of 9 Borg of the Orion universe?

On another note, I'm wondering about the release date. I haven't seen any reviews of the game and it's only a week until the release (17 January).

Re:Utterly worthless preview

[uXs]

Let's hope they don't, otherwise the manual will be worthless.

Hint: Cut & Paste != Copy & Paste

Re:Utterly worthless preview

[Lars T.]

Who cares what they do with their copy of the manual?

Hint: CopyRight != CutLeft

Re: - Oh man that is awesome -

[voudras]

i realize you're just making sort of an "off-the-cuff" remark/statement, but isolationist and imperialistic are almost complete opposites.

Re:Er..what kind of game is it? (Part 1)

[tigress]

The observant reader might notice the subtle hints, like "PART 1: LET'S MEET THE PLAYERS" and suspect that (surprise) there might be OTHER parts in the article, perhaps posted LATER. And that those OTHER parts of the article might contain more information about OTHER parts of the game. =)

Re:so...

[Albinoman]

Sorry to burst your bubble but theres probably a reason most of us dual boot. All the good games run in windows (unless you count ones that have been made to run later on). And yes Im sure theres exceptions. Theres also a reason why noone writes major games for linux. From what Ive encountered from most diehard linux users is that they literally do want everything to be open source or free. Besides that, a good seller for linux probably would still come at a loss to the studio in revenue.

Do yourself a favor. Quit your job.

[Anonymous Coward]

That usually looks better than being fired.

EverQuest has nothing on the Master of Orion series for addictiveness. I ruined the cumulative GPA of an entire dorm floor in college with it.

MOO2 was a great game. It had impressive graphics and a stunning musical score that stood toe to toe with games released years later. Not to mention it was one of the few strategy games that involved strategy back then. To this day, I know of one person who can beat MOO2 on 'impossible'. And not even directly.

Aliens of every variety, hot chicks (mmm, Elerian scientist chick), sci-fi weapons out the arse..

Damn, now I have to dig out my MOO2 disc. :p

Re:I see what you are saying, however,

[voudras]

certainly, ask any roman emperor.

but, i would argue that the usa (as i assume thats whom your speaking of) is infact not imperialistic, my evidance to support this theory is the rather obvious lack of territorial gain since its inception (this is of course setting aside the indian/mexican points).

some of my friends would argue that the "take-overs" are economic and political and that it is in this way that we bully other countries into a posture which is to our liking (or friendly because they have no choice).

my arguement to this usually starts by pointing out that we dont collect taxes from countries which they might point to as examples, and from there i would point to examples of wars in which we "won" but didnt take territory.

Its always a heated debate, and much to long and complex to dig too far into here - but i do think i have a interesting point to make of this which does reach back to the topic.

Very few games have i seen where political *unity* is a frequent solution (by solution i mean end game). Alpha Centari (a great game, and runs on linux) allows for successful completion by unity but i believe i've only come to that end a couple times.

Usually one wins by oblitherating all enemies, and maintaining strategic control of allies (weather by resources or otherwise). Granted, within the context of a *game* the strategic and tactical portions tend to feed the entertainment.

Ah crap... i lost my train of thought, damn.

well - i suppose i've said enough already - i'll just end with:

"I hope Bush isin't a WarCraft fan!"

offtopic but funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

dilbert

MoM on P4/XP

[Xner]

Man I wish their was a way to run these on more modern machines...

Funny you should mention that. I spent last saturday "nostalgia gaming" with a friend, and we got MoM to work on a P4 with XP professional. No sound though (though we did not really try, legacy drivers would probably sort it out), and you need to make sure the program gets allocated about 8 meg of emulated EMS (not XMS) memory in the properties tab.

Oh, and nothing says cheating like "node mastery".

Re:MoM on P4/XP

[ender81b]

thanks for the tip, I'll have to try it out.

Re:MoM on P4/XP

[meringuoid]

Oh, and nothing says cheating like "node mastery".

The true shameless cheat doesn't take any special powers. He takes every Death book he can get, and takes Wraiths as a starting spell. He conjures them up first thing, and then begins acting very aggressively. Nobody has a chance that early in the game, and by the time someone does have something that can fight Wraiths, our dark lord rules most of the world and commands an immense undead army.

In normal play once - not cheating at all, ISTR I was a chaos / sorcery artificer - I came across a very unusual combination indeed. Taking out the Myrror nodes with an invisible flying Warrax the Chaos Warrior (OK, so maybe that's a BIT lame) I got given Divine Power _and_ Infernal Power. I assume I was doing a number on both sets of gods... great, but what happens when they find out? I get the feeling my wizard was headed for some really _deep_ trouble after death ;-)

That's funny.

[AtariDatacenter]

Lacking in mod points this week, I just have to say that you gave me a good laugh with that one. This is why I keep coming back. The free entertainment.

I prefer the original MOO was based upon

[RogerWilco]

Any of you people who like MOO should check out the play by e-mail game vga-planets. As the story goes MOO was more or less born when the it's creators were playing vga-planets 2.0 beta.
The game is now at version 4. try http://www.vga-planets.com
I started playing this game since version 3.0. (1994) And it's been
my best investment ever.

Adriaan.

You're going to Slashdot Apolyton...

[Ari Rahikkala]

... but we're already planning to fight back! :P

Re:Do yourself a favor. Quit your job.

[meringuoid]

MOO2 was a great game. It had impressive graphics and a stunning musical score that stood toe to toe with games released years later. Not to mention it was one of the few strategy games that involved strategy back then. To this day, I know of one person who can beat MOO2 on 'impossible'. And not even directly.

It's not that hard as the Psilons - Creative was a major advantage, vastly underpriced IMO. Build a communications network out of Outpost Ships, making sure to plant the flag on any handy terran or Gaia planets early. This way you make contact with everyone before they meet each other, and you can set up lots of trade and research pacts. If someone starts looking nasty, you can buy 'em off with technological trinkets. You're extremely vulnerable in the early game, because someone with a big productive base (Sakkra or Bulrathi maybe) could just roll over you.

Later on, once you've converted some of those outposts to colonies and got something of a fleet and a serious technical lead, go after the monsters. A rich, huge Gaia with natives, defended only by a dragon is a good thing to have ;-) Attack the Guardian once you've got ships with graviton guns or better, and zortrium armour at least. The best combo in the mid-game is a volley of grav cannon to knock down the shields, then a volley of ion cannon to demolish internal systems. A couple of Titans with this setup can destroy the Guardian without giving it a chance to return fire.

If you're in lamer mode, you might like to refight the Avenger several times. Loknar gives you four technologies at random - most are unresearchable, but he may give you Moleculartronic Computer. The ones you want are Xentronium Armour and Damper Field. Death rays and particle beams are heavily overrated - they don't miniaturise, so late in the game you'll get more value out of maulers. The black hole generator is cool, but not that useful in practice. Make sure you have a spare slot in your ship captains list before attacking Orion, else you'll just get the ship and not Loknar.

Once you command the Avenger and start integrating Orion tech into your ships, and with microlite construction at your shipyards and Recyclotrons coming into play, and the megafluxer being invented - all at about the same time - you're suddenly the ultimate superpower. You might consider building android worlds - the manual says androids are unaffected by morale, but they are. A planet full of Android Workers with +5 morale churns out Titans every couple of turns. Now pick a fight with someone you don't like. Preferably the one you've had to buy off a few times, the one who bullied you when you were small.

At the end? HV AF SP Phasors w Achilles Targeting System. 'Nuff said. Also, it's worth investigating the potential of phasing cloaks and timewarp facilitators. Does the 'decloak - fire - recloak' tactic appeal to you? ;-)

Stars!

[mmol_6453]

That's how I played Stars!

Anyone remember that one? Anyone interested in cowriting a Linux or Java clone?

Re:Stars!

[meringuoid]

That's how I played Stars! Anyone remember that one? Anyone interested in cowriting a Linux or Java clone?

Stars! works fine in regular WINE. A Linux clone would be nice, but it would be difficult to make it interoperate with Windows Stars! hosts in multiplayer - there are copy-protection lockouts.

As far as I'm concerned, turtling in Stars! is just a non-starter. The early game is a landgrab and nothing but. If you leave it to late in the game to take on an AI, the sheer scale of the game defeats you. You can knock out his bigger planets and annihilate his main battle fleet, but colony ships are just so damn cheap... AIs always seem to have patrol ships, freighters and colony ships in random thermal motion throughout their territories, which makes it a nightmare to actually exterminate anyone.

Re:Stars!

[mmol_6453]

I usually left a defensive ship (Nubian with almost all armor, and some Armageddon missiles) in orbit around each planet. Solved the problem of recolonizations rather nicely. And if I chose to be immune to the elements(like Silicanoids), I could just colonize the planet instead.

Not sure I agree that it was landgrab, though. It used to say on the website that they wrote it because they wanted to play a game that "had the elements we enjoyed." Unfortunately, this has stifled inclusion of things like 3d battles and obstructions, natural space debris, etc.

Re:Stars!

[jandrese]

That reminds me. Whatever happened to Stars! 3.0 (Supernova)? IIRC, it was supposed to be released in 1997, but I don't ever remember seeing it come out.

Re:Stars!

[mmol_6453]

Right now, their sight describes things like diplomacy, but I don't know if that includes AI players.

Regression testing?

[Snaller]

is that when they are removing features?

Will the AI cheat?

[Fredge]

I never played the second one much, but I remember in the first one if you were whipping up on a race and had them down to 1 or 2 planets early in the game, they'd suddenly whip out a stack of 32,000 ships and attack you. There was no way they had the resources to legitimately build that many ships and they'd wipe out planets that you had worked diligently to build up. Very frustrating.

Re:Will the AI cheat?

[B5_geek]

The AI in MOO2 didn't cheat. But it did get very lucky.

Re:Will the AI cheat?

[meringuoid]

I never played the second one much, but I remember in the first one if you were whipping up on a race and had them down to 1 or 2 planets early in the game, they'd suddenly whip out a stack of 32,000 ships and attack you. There was no way they had the resources to legitimately build that many ships and they'd wipe out planets that you had worked diligently to build up. Very frustrating.

Of course the AI will cheat - they always do. If an AI doesn't cheat it hasn't a hope against a competent human. It took decades of programming work to develop chess programs that could take on good human players on even term; Civs and Moos are far more complex games than chess, and their developers haven't had anything like as long to develop the AI. As long as the AI doesn't cheat and get caught, then we're OK. It should really be spelled out in the manual: 'Easy: The AI pays extra for all its ships, its population grows more slowly, and it has trouble keeping its people happy. Normal: The AI plays on even terms. Hard: The AI gets discount ships, faster population growth, and less unrest. Impossible: As Hard, but more so. Also, AIs will be naturally more friendly with each other than with you.'

I think MOO2's AI cheated in the opening game, then stopped. AIs always used to build their first few colony ships and cruisers more quickly than I could. Later on, they came out with some very large fleets, but this seemed to be a policy of going for quantity over quality, and I didn't catch them cheating in their production.

As a matter of fact, I _liked_ seeing someone cruising about with a fleet of 120 obsolete battleships. Cheap to build, sure, but the upkeep on those things must be crippling. Here comes my small but perfectly formed Psilon cruiser to help cut their government spending... *gloat* They definitely have to pay upkeep on their fleets - I tested this once. I had an enemy on his knees, in the last free star system in the galaxy. I ordered the fleet to guard the neighbouring systems, and gave the enemy 10% tribute. This is an enormous sum - most of my great war factories are idle, churning out Trade Goods. AI promptly invests this money in producing all the ships it can, and once it considers its bases adequately defended it starts sending out fleets to attack me. I then cancel the 10% tribute, and watch the economic crisis begin ;-)

I'm pretty sure the AIs don't cheat when against the wall; usually when they're in that state you have full sensor coverage of their territory, and are watching everything that happens. If a dozen warships appear out of thin air the player will notice something awry.

There is one thing the MOO2 AIs do that _really_ annoyed me, but it isn't cheating. The Galaxy's split between me, another superpower that I'm reluctant to fight, and several small empires. I'm storming into one of the little guys in a blatant landgrab, and they realise they're doomed. They immediately surrender - to the other superpower. Aargh!

Re:Will the AI cheat?

[Stonehand]

It did get production bonuses.

As for luck... whoever was behind gets far more beneficial random events, which is why the AIs will constantly get thousands of free credits and numerous free techs, while your events will mostly consist of exploding ships and monster attacks if you've been playing well. I've seen the game try to punish a human player with an Antaran attack (good, once you have assault shuttles or tractor beams; bad before then) *and* a monster attack on the same turn.

Re:Will the AI cheat?

[Stonehand]

On obsolete ships...

The AI did come out with some truly bizarre ship designs. I once saw an AI running around with Doom Stars... armed mostly with vast numbers of nuclear bombs, and with practically no defensive systems. ;)

Re:Will the AI cheat?

[Alsee]

Of course the AI will cheat - they always do.

From what I've read the MOO3 AI will NOT be cheating.

-

Re:Will the AI cheat?

[DeathPenguin]

Damn those Psilons! I remember back in MOO2 I'd always leave them alone since they'd never control more than three planets. Then all the sudden they'd turn aggressive and out fo the blue would come 60 doom stars. I've often have to resort to cloaking device and time-warp facilators to beat them if my usual fleet with billions of small lasers or a few stellar converters couldn't pull it off.

But balance it, please

[ianscot]

Whether they make the tech tree enormous or not -- and yeah, more variety's cool -- they need to fix some play balance problems in MOO2. The "creative" race thing really got monotonous, especially for multiplayer games. Was there anything "creative" about that playing style?

The Civ 3 tree isn't much larger than Civ 2, but when you play the game some you appreciate how much better it is. Just killing the problem with Leonardo's [Free Lunch] Workshop was a huge deal. Play balance is everything. Variety's nice, but if there's a killer race trait or technology, you won't even bother to try all the other options anyway.

VDMSound

[artemis67]

Try using VDMSound. It helps with both memory and sound issues on these old DOS games. It's a "must-have" utility for retro-gaming.

Just last week I used it to play MOO on my Win2k box.

Re:VDMSound

[JohnnyO]

Excellent! I am going to have to try that, I have, as of yet, been unsuccessful getting MOO to run. I have MOO2 running on my P4 Win2K Vaio laptop, its a great game to play on a plane or in the airport.

However, I have run into a couple of bugs lately. After my ground troops take over a planet, the game almost always crashes. There is also an annoying display bug that will stop drawing random parts of the screen, and I have to save and reload the game. I think it is something to to do with DirectX (Anyone know a way I can emulate older versions of DirectX for older games)

The ground troops thing isn't as annoying, though, I just changed my strategy to not involve ground troops. (Plus, then I can pick ground combat -10 in the race creation and get more cool race benefits!)

Re:VDMSound

[Ost99]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Perhaps I can play Darklands again...
O what memories

- Ost

Re:VDMSound

[Jaysyn]

Thanks for the link, now I can play MOM with sound again. Oh wait... Damn you, now I'll never get anything done.... ;)

Jaysyn

Re:VDMSound

[ender81b]

I ran into a similar problem with moo2 as did a friend of mine. The easiest way to completely and totally fix all these problems you mention is to shut off sound. For whatever reason shutting off sound/music has cured the problems you mentioned (screen redraw + random crashes) on at least our computers.

My Shining Moment

[jkabbe]

My best moment in a space sim was an old PC (as in, IBM PC) game called Reach For The Stars.

During one of these games several computer opponents steamrolled over me early on and conquered *all* of my systems. Even though I now had NO systems and NO ships the game wasn't over. I couldn't do anything except hit "next turn". Now, in RFTS you had to maintain a certain level of military presence to control the planet. So when another computer opponent tried to invade one of my former planets they didn't conquer it - but they reduced the number of troops there so my people rose up. I had a planet again! And I went on to win the game.

From zero planets to galactic overlord.
*bow*

Re:Er..what kind of game is it? (Part 1)

[while(true)]

Hey, give the guy some credit.
Atleast he read the first page of the article, which is one page more then 99% of slashdot posters. =)

Spaceward Ho!

[artemis67]

I think MOO came out in 1992, but was predated by a similar Mac game, "Spaceward Ho!".

Interestingly, Delta Tao chose to release upgrades to the Ho and not completely redesigned games. I believe they just released the latest version of the Ho a month or two ago.

Re:Spaceward Ho!

[RogerWilco]

VGA planets was at version 3.0 in 1992, it already had it's own newsgroup alt.games.vga-planets in 1992.
I have no idea how old the first version of vga planets is, but it certainly predates MOO. I can't find the source but I have once read that Tim Wisseman was living across the street from Mircoprose around the time MOO came out, and had handed some of their employees copies of the new vga-planets 3.0 some time before that...
I think it's about 5 years ago I've read that, I can't find it anymore.
I'll check out this Spaceward Ho! It get's mentioned a lot in old newsgroup postings together with vga-planets.

Adriaan.

Re:Spaceward Ho!

[RogerWilco]

I only found this reference:
(Tim is Tim Wisseman, the creator of vgaplanets)

To date Tim has only had 2 lawsuit threats, one from Microprose and one from Starcrossed Software. Microprose wanted all rights to VGA Planets, there was a lot of hot air over a slander case against me for something that he apparently said about Master of Orion (MOO). Tim says there was nothing to what he said about MOO, they were just trying to scare me into tuming VGA Planets over to them and in the end they offered me $7,000 for all rights. MOO came out after version 3.0 of VGAP and Tim got a case of MOO's from them ... he feels they were "Bad Cop" / "Good Cop"ing him. He feels there is nothing to sue them for .... it is more likely MS will sue him over "Reach for the Stars", it came out like 15 years ago, it is supposed to be just like Planets although he has never seen it.

It wasn't BILLED as a review

[doc_traig]

The link was described as a "detailed preview." That would be why it wasn't really a review.

- DDT

Re:It wasn't BILLED as a review

[Stonehand]

It is, and this is being generous, 16% of a preview. ...and it was mostly backstory, which from a gamer's POV won't necessarily be that important. If he wanted to "introduce the players", it would be better to describe the race advantages/disads in GAMEPLAY terms, and then describe the races in terms of how they PLAY.

This was more of a fragment of a preview of the MOO3 /story/, not the game.

Guass cannons work really really well too..

[kurokaze]

...against the Guardian. And those can be had
very early in the game.

4X games have been mastered.

[Remus Shepherd]

I'm surprised to hear slashdotters rallying behind the MOO series. There's an independent developer that has created the ultimate 4X (Expand, Extend, Explore, and Exploit) galactic empire game. Space Empires IV seems to be everything that MOO3 is, plus it is user-extensible -- every aspect of the game is editable and customizable.

I've never played any of the MOO games. Can anyone tell me what it can do that Star Empires cannot? As far as I can see, the only advantage MOO3 has is internet multiplayer. SEIV has all the gameplay. Or am I wrong, and missing something magical about MOO?

Re:4X games have been mastered.

[websaber]

1)move a ship with less than 16 mouse clicks 2)change a colonies production with less than 16 mouse clicks 3)transfer colonists between colonies with less than 16 mouse clicks 4)......... Interface is the game. Why can't you upgrade every research facility with one mouse click? Is it really fun doing each planet individually?

Anyone else remember Outpost?

[WinPimp2K]

I have a rule about games. When the "startegy guide" appears on the store shelves and the game is not available, I will not buy the game until it hits $1.88 on the clearance rack at CompUSA. That way I only feel bad about losing a couple of bucks and won't feel cheated that the game does not include all of the features so glowingly described in the strategy guide.

So, when I feel the need to go conquer the Galaxy, I'll fire up Space Empires IV, or MOO, or Spaceward Ho!, or Acension. But MOO 3 can wait a heckuva long time. (Especially since I browsed through the "Official Strategy Guide" - nothing seemed remotely appealing)

Regression Testing

[dead sun]

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.

Re:Regression Testing

[mr3038]

this game has been in final regression testing since before December 4th, 2002.

I think they're just trying not to repeat history. MOO1 and MOO2 were created by Simtex (bought by Microprose (bought by Hasbro)) and AFAIK none of the Simtex games worked correctly without a patch... After saying that, I'm afraid MOO3 isn't the game I'm expecting it to be simply because pretty much nobody from the previous versions is in the development group.

Re:Regression Testing

[Platinum Dragon]

If they get it out by Feb. 26, I'll fall to my knees and thank the gods that I won't have to tell people anymore, "No, sorry, it won't be out until... ZORAN, WHEN DOES THE DAMN GAME COME OUT AGAIN???"

I'm not holding my breath, though.

OTOH, I'm glad to hear at least one game company is taking the time to make sure the nasty bugs really are squashed before release. I remember when I left the bleeding-edge gaming world years ago and showstopper bugs were common. Can you say "Battlecruiser 3000"?

Quick Gaurdian Killers

[NDPTAL85]

4 Titans with 6 of those Gravity disruptor things that make the ships spin round and round (can't remember the name of them), Reinforced Hull and Heavy Armor. If that doesn't kill the Gaurdian try 5 or 6 of the same ships.

Re:Quick Gaurdian Killers

[Stonehand]

Gyro Destabilizers.

Another approach is to use waves of missiles (MIRV FAST ECCM ARM merculites to get the shields, then a couple of MIRV FAST ECCM ARM EMG merculites to get the warp core explosion; couple with fast missile ranks to get off maximum numbers). EMG merculites takes both Computers and Chemistry, however.

Dev people are really slow

[cp5i6]

Yea I've been waiting for this game since the original release date of nov 25... then dec 15... then dec 24 then dec 30 then jan 3 then jan 14 and the funny thing is it's Jan 10th and the Game hasn't even gone Gold yet.

I have a feeling this is going to be like a Daikatana.

Re:Dev people are really slow

[JohnnyO]

Not to burst your bubble, but Electronics Boutique just pushed the release date back to Feb 25

See?

Re:Dev people are really slow

[Mr. Bad Example]

Isn't it obvious what happened?

A computer virus invaded their research facilities and they lost 530 research points.

Re:Dev people are really slow

[cp5i6]

or perhaps the anterans sucked them into the netherworlds!!!

Re:4X games have been mastered --- WHAT?

[Nanite]

I don't understand the logic here. "The genre of games has been perfected with 'Space Ass-pirates IV' so there is honestly no reason to ever create any more of this type of game."

Horseshit!

No one goes around saying stupid things like "The Beatles perfected the rock genre of music, there's no reason to keep making more rock music. Do you hear me Lars? Put down that guitar!"

I welcome any new addition to the 4X genre because (surpise!) I like to play those types of games. Just one game will never satisfy everybody, so hopefully people will make more.

I'm done here.

Stars Supernova

[BeowulfSchaeffer]

It is a shame that Stars Supernova has not found a publisher. It is ready to go, and seems as good if not better then MOO3.

How about open sourcing MOO and MOO2 now?

[Nice2Cats]

Now that they are putting out a new, fantastic, unbelievable, etc. version, how about open sourcing the old versions? If the new program is any good, then they don't have to fear cannibalism (open sourcing "Doom" didn't hurt "Quake" one bit), they're not going to do a Linux version of MOO3 anyway (I asked), and the publicity would give MOO3 a place in the press like they could never pay for.

Of course, they would have to be really, really confident in the quality of th new version...

Release Date

[PhxBlue]

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.

MOO3's Civ Management is key, not just battles

[red elk]

After millions of hours playing MOO and MOO2, the real appeal will be the ability of MOO3 to offer a simple way to manage the massive colonies as the game goes on. The battle scenes should be fine. I read the strategy guide to and its fascinating with 16 total civs. The only heartbreaking thing was getting rid of the Murmurshans... The cat race is no longer with us.

A humble request...

[danro]

Same way I play Civ 3 for that matter.

Please never run for office in real life! ;-)

Re:Er..what kind of game is it? (Part 1)

[joshamania]

No, that review/preview was for shit and you know it. That hast to be just about the worst game review I've ever read....

MOO rocks.

[Carme]

I never did play MOO2, but I still pull out the original MOO every few weeks.

My strategy as of late has been to conquer the galaxy without building any ships other than colony ships. Sending out transports to ground fight is the only way to accomplish this, and it's a bitch when you get an enemy fleet in orbit right after conquering a new planet. The only way to win is to let 'em bomb and keep sending troops from other planets until you're able to build a missle base or two.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And if you ever get the Comet disaster, buh-bye planet.

Tough, but do-able. Sometimes I give in and build a few ultra-advanced ships to take everyone out with ease, other times I make it all the way to the end without building a single armed ship.

Game Design

[Bohnanza]

No, it didn't. Two fleets of identical ships face off, and they are built so that it takes a full volley of fire from two ships to destroy one. Suppose there are 100 ships in each fleet. What is the deciding factor in the outcome of the battle? Answer: who shoots first, wins.

It's just a matter of game design. Look at Star Fleet Battles, the naturally "turn-based" boardgame. Fire is considered simultaneous in this game, so the problem doesn't exist. Why can't something like this be implemented in a program?

In fact, I've always been shocked at how bad the "tactical combat" segment is in most Conquer-The-Universe computer games. SFB and many other fine tabletop designs have been around for years.

Xeno's Arrow. . ?

[Fantastic Lad]

Just wondering.

I also found it distasteful to genocide a race. --I'd let them do whatever they wanted on their planet surface. Didn't want to interferr with anything in their culture. I just wouldn't allow them to go building up wrathful armadas and such. I found it frustrating that they'd keep sending ships at me to destroy. Depressing.

I think the game would have been improved had there been an option whereby Starfleet Federation style organizations could have arisen, rather than the law of 'All Races Must Kill All Other Races,' bullshit.

Actually, I kinda hated that game. I liked to build, but the finished structures were always ugly, evil things. --That such must be the reality is a total lie. I gave MOO-2 a 5 out of 10 for this reason. Cool beginnings, sucky follow through.

-Fantastic Lad

Re:My fav

[kurokaze]

reflection field + damper field + energy absorber
+ displacement device + inertial nullifier +
wide area jammer + automated repair unit

damn near impossible to destroy.

Sometimes when I got bored I would make one of
those ships (doom star class) and put a stellar
converter on it. If I was feeling really sadistic
I'd also put reinforced hull or heavy armor
too. Then I'd send it out and watch it wreck
havoc against an enemy fleet

Favorite Original Battle Tactic. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

After patching the stupid game, it was possible for the opponent to strike first. Yay.

So. . .

I maintained three types of ships in my fleets; Death Stars in the rear, billions of tiny, nothing ships to waste the enemy time/target resources on in the fore, and a heavy division of what I somewhat unimaginatively dubbed, 'Ghost Ships.'

Ghost Ships were equipped with cloaking, time-warping (for the extra moves), all the extra distance modifiers I could give them, as well as the wonderful, 'Stasis Field' generator (for freezeing enemy vessels). Ghost Ships had nothing else; no weapons or armor to speak of.

And so. . , even if the aggressor went first, they used up most of their firepower on my ranks of clay pigeons, (which I liked to imagine were remote controled). Mass destruction, etc. But when my move came along, it was game over; The Ghost Ships would immediately slip across the game board undetected and snuggle up to the target vessels. --They'd then decloak and put EVERY ship in the enemy fleet into stasis. Twenty or so Ghost Ships could usually do the job.

Then, one by one, you pull a target vessel out of stasis, and concentrate all your Death Star power on it, and efficiently win the battle.

So long as you had enough Ghost ships and at least one major weapons platform remaining by the time it was your turn, the aggressor was done for.

And if you got to go first. . . Well. Having zero casualties in massive space space combat? Not a bad system. I easily trounced races with far superior fire-power and technology.

Another tactic which I used now and again, was to equip fifty or so tiny ships with really big self destruct units. It was like entering battle with a fleet of precision controled missiles which by-passed that annoying bullshit where the computer could tell me that I 'missed'. Very simply, you'd fly them up to a target and detonate them. Fairly effective, so long as the enemy didn't really rank up in the armor. When technologies were reaching their peeks for all races, Ghost Ships were the final answer.

-Fantastic Lad --Tactics. It's what's for dinner.

Nice to be ripped-off

[DownTheLongRoad]

I loved MOO and MOO2 and have been waiting for MOO3 to come out, until last week when I was in BestBuy I saw the MOO3 Strategy Guide. Another game company decided to take more of its customers money for something that should be included with the game. Anyone else remember the lavish manuals for games like Aces Over the Pacific/Europe or any of the original Microprose games? The manuals contained every detailed needed to play the game AND a large amount of material simply for the players enjoyment/information. Now you get a CD, install instructions and possibly a very brief descriptiof of the game mechanics. Thanks but I'll wait a few months until it is in the bargain bin and there are strategy guides online.

Re:Nice to be ripped-off

[DeathPenguin]

90% of the fun in a game is developing strategies of your own, not reading them out of a manual.
That's the problem I have with Warcraft 3 these days--Everyone just goes to www.imbalanceexploitoftheday.com and makes cookie-cutter armies. It gets very old very quickly.

Leonardo's wasn't that useful

[Genyin]

Leonardo's wasn't that useful because upgraded units lost veteran status; most upgrades cause veteran units to become less powerful...

Thanks for the info

[Wee]

I went and grabbed MOO. Thanks for the pointer...

-B

And thanks to you too...

[Wee]

...for the links. I haven't looked into abandonware at all. I need to start doing that.

-B

Re:Do yourself a favor. Quit your job.

[Kintanon]

I can reliably beat moo2 on impossible every time. No cheating. Of course, I've been playing it semi-regularly since it was released. And will probably play it some more now in preperation for Moo3.

Kintanon

Right on....

[V4L1S]

For a long while, I was into making Freeze class ships too. If you had more than one stasis field on a ship, you had to add each one separately so that you could freeze more than one ship.

They didn't work against planets though, so my transition from "defend the empire" to "enlarge the empire" was marked by adding several dedicated Bomber ships to each armada.

MORE

[Alsee]

Oops, I forgot to answer the last two questions...

do you still have a cool movie clip that plays when you fire that mega planet destroying weapon?

I don't know about movie clips, but the "blow up the planet" option is gone. I *think* there is a weapon option to sterilize a planet and turn the entire surface into a smooth sheet of glass.

Do you have to let battles between large fleets run overnight because the engine bogs down?

As I mentioned battles are realtime. I've read that 1000+ ship fleets can be a strain, but system requirements are a mere 300 Mhz Pentium II. It shouldn't be a problem.

-

Yet more thanks...

[Wee]

Yeah, I'll go search for a copy. Ebay only has some macs versions. EBGames has MOO2 for ten bucks, although it's jewel case only. (BTW, EBgames also has MOO3 for pre-order. Ships 2/25.) Dig those system requirements, too. I haven't seen a game mention Hayes-compatible modems or IPX in a long time.

Gamestop has MOO2 for ten dollars as well. Doesn't say whether it's jewel case or not.

I went and grabbed MOO1. Only got 5.1KB/sec. Still only took a couple minutes... :-)

-B

Re:My fav

[Stonehand]

For pure sadism, I once put seven max-miniaturized Stellar Converters on the same doom star, in /one slot/. That generated a pretty big damage number when hitting Antares, if memory serves.

Will it ever ship?

[Ravaging Psycho]

Forget Dec 4th, or Dec 17th... This sucker is not shipping until 2nt Qrtr '03. Seems IG owes a heap of money to IG SA (their parent company), and papa wants it before Jan 1, in order to make the board of directors happy and the stockholders satisfied. Since IG wouldn't make it, the parent company is looking to shop this division, so it is putting the squeeze on any games being release that are not out already, so that it has a viable company with viable products to sell. IG never intended for this game to ship, otherwise it would have pushed it out the door back in October. Forget the part about wanting a quality product (see Neverwinter Night), IG was playing QS as suckers.. So QS may also find itself out of business, since it probably wouldn't get paid for MOO3 for sometime.

Re:Will it ever ship?

[ChiperSoft]

Amazon lists the ship date as Feb 25th http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 05Y4Q0

Re:What kind of convoluted logic course did he tak

[tongue]

I'll be 36 in March, you stupid fuck! I just stopped playing cocksucking video games when my dick started sprouting pubic hair.

So let me get this straight... you haven't played a video game since pacman came out? seems like you might want to take a look at the market before you start knocking other people's pasttimes...

Reason for game delays

[CatKnight]

I believe the developers would have relased the game back in mid-december, but because of the fiasco with Civ 3: PTW, Infogrames wanted to make sure MOO3 was working well out of the box, so they forced the developers to continue testing until all the big known bugs were fixed.

Re:Players Guide is Available

[ChiperSoft]

To follow up on that, I cant find it on Amazon.com or on BordersStores.com, but I know it exists. I put the book on the shelf myself.

Re:My fav

[Scott Carnahan]

reflection field + damper field + energy absorber + displacement device + inertial nullifier + wide area jammer + automated repair unit

damn near impossible to destroy.

A ship like this is rather trivial to destroy, using MIRV EMG ECCM missiles, as unshielded ships are quite vulnerable to the emissions guidance system. Even a doom star with reinforced hull can only take 120 points of damage to the engine before exploding. If the enemy has sensor technology, your evasion becomes (130% [WAJ]+ 50% [IN] - 70% [Sensor] )/2 [ECCM] = 55% so 11 or 12 missiles should suffice, and that can fit on a mere cruiser with enough tech advancement.

If you are playing in a multiplayer game, you will find that no ship is anywhere near impossible to kill. Unfortunately, the AI does not know how to build efficient ships.

Pax Imperia

[tedrlord]

Whenever I read about these 4x games, I always remember all the time I spent on Pax Imperia. Not that Eminent Domain thing, but the original one for the Mac. Man I loved that game. I would tweak my race's abilities, ship designs, and tech designs as much as I could, often just for fun. I would sit there for days. I haven't seen another space game that was as customisable as that one. It ruined the rest of the genre for me.

Re:Do yourself a favor. Quit your job.

[Scott Carnahan]

Attack the Guardian once you've got ships with graviton guns or better, and zortrium armour at least. The best combo in the mid-game is a volley of grav cannon to knock down the shields, then a volley of ion cannon to demolish internal systems. A couple of Titans with this setup can destroy the Guardian without giving it a chance to return fire.

This is gross overkill. The Guardian can be killed with two cruisers and 4-6 frigates fitted with a mixture of appropriately typed merculite missiles (another poster described these - I'd omit the FST mod). It requires just zortrium armor, merculite missiles, emissions guidance system, and fast missile racks. Note that it does not need any beams or computers (making it good for non-creative races by eliminating research tree problems), and the construction takes about half the production needed to build single titan. A custom democracy-lithovore-artifact race often can send off such a fleet within 100 turns of a prewarp start, and several other races can perform similarly. If you're quick enough killing the Guardian, you can just use the Avenger to kill off everyone else.

Death rays and particle beams are heavily overrated

Particle beams have a defensive use: they are the most powerful beam that can be placed in a fighter. While fighters on ships are quite inefficient, they provide rather good defense in a fighter garrison, where they can produce up to 1400 points of damage. Death rays are very good if you can kill the Guardian early, as there are no comparable weapons until the phasor. Unfortunately, both are very expensive to produce.

At the end? HV AF SP Phasors w Achilles Targeting System. 'Nuff said.

If you build smart, you don't need to get much further than MIRV nuclear missiles at the end. Given a pre-warp or average start, it is quite possible to win at "impossible" level before the opponents get either radiation shield or powerful beams to counter the missiles.

As it happens, the most efficient ship-to-ship weapon is the plasma cannon, not the phasor. However, if you are attacking a well-shielded planet, neither weapon will do any damage whatsoever.

Also, it's worth investigating the potential of phasing cloaks and timewarp facilitators.

That and stasis fields make the late game rather silly. There is something wrong with the game mechanics when you can defeat the Antarean home fleet with a single frigate by piling plasma webs on the star fortress and ships.

Re:My fav

[kurokaze]

Don't forget to factor in my displacement
device and damper field.

And where are you getting the 120 damage b4
it explodes?

Re:My fav

[Scott Carnahan]

Don't forget to factor in my displacement device and damper field.

I did. Without the defensive devices, only one missile would be necessary, as MIRV zeon missiles do 4*30 damage.

And where are you getting the 120 damage b4 it explodes?

If you scan a ship on the battle screen, you will get a display of various systems, such as engine, computer, etc... On the top right of each such box, there will be a fraction, e.g. 56/120, indicating the health of the system in question. I don't recall the exact numbers for engine hit points, but it is 10 for battleships and 40 for doomstars, with reinforced hull tripling everything. Note that these numbers are completely independent of your armor technology, and they tend to be rather small (which is why ion pulse cannon is so annoying). Engine damage will cause the ship's mobility to deteriorate according to some formula I don't recall, and at something like 25%, the ship is immobilized. When the engine loses all of its hit points, the ship disappears in a big explosion, damaging everything within 2 or 3 squares.

For the sake of humankind, please...

[tedgyz]

...don't let this game come out! I simply don't have the time.

MOO2 was the first game to introduce me to "Oh my god! It's 3AM!"

Link broken :-(

[Jugalator]

Even *that* site was cancelled.

http://www.classicgaming.com/mom/

*sigh*

Stellar Legacy, OS Stars! project

[OtakuMagistrate]

An OS Stars! effort is underway. Google "Stellar Legacy". This site looks like it's fairly current, they have an SF site also. http://www.stellarlegacy.tsx.org/ I have never loved a game the way I love Stars! Supernova looks 99% dead, it's tragic.