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

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

[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

[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.

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: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?

[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.

-

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

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.

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

[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

It's all fun and games...

[imag0]

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

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: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: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:Utterly worthless preview

[Lars T.]

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

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? ;-)

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".

Regression testing?

[Snaller]

is that when they are removing features?

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!

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*

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.

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.

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. ;)