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The Long-Awaited MOO!

Posted by michael on from the moo-baby-moo dept.

Number13 writes "Quicksilver's Master of Orion 3, declared vaporware by Wired magazine, has gone gold! Set to hit the streets on Feb. 25, MOO3 is the the successor to what many consider the best space strategy game series."

6 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. Technology trap by vlad_petric · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I hope the game hasn't fallen in the "technology trap" as its predecessor - in MOO2 it wasn't really worth playing anything but Psilons, as the quick research advancements very easily overweighed the intrinsic advantages of other races (e.g. growth, flying skills).

    That said, I can hardly wait to get my hands on it!

    --

    The Raven

    1. Re:Technology trap by amuro98 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Creative was mostly a waste of time. Since you had a choice of which tech to research (unless you took uncreative - which I would, just to make things interesting again) you could pick the same old tech over and over again...

      Sure, there were a few sucky choices, and sometimes I'd have to forego my normal choice in favor of something I needed *right now* (eg. better weapons because I got into a war)

      But overall, I'd plow the points I would have put into creative and chose +'s to production and farming.

      Offensive spying never worked for me - even when playing with all the +'s, so I just take the maximum penalty, and build a large number of defensive spies.

      Problem is, this same old same old strategy got boring... At least in Moo1, the choices would be randomized, with each race having various advantages in certain areas, like the Psilons would tend to get more engine choices, and a larger overall tree. The randomness made things more interesting... I once played a game where no one got anything faster than warp-2 engines. And in a huge galaxy, that meant it took years to get anywhere. I managed to take Orion, and was given warp-4 engines, which allowed me to more quickly decimate my opponents.

  2. Re:With a little luck... by Steveftoth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This comment is modded funny, but this is a serious concern. I personally will take a wait and see attitude with this game and WAIT until the actual reviews of the hard core people are posted on the internet.

    Also one HOPES that all the crashes are gone for good. I always like to wait for the first patch to come out until I buy a product :).

    I still play MOO2 sometimes. The ironic thing is that it actually plays better (to me) in linux in wine then under win2k. In linux it doesn't have sound, but in windows the screen goes wonky and I can't click anymore (the cursor dissapears).

    But all negativity aside, I will eventuatly buy this game. How soon depends on wether or not the first version is playable. That and I don't NEED to lose a month of my life just yet.

  3. Re:With a little luck... by sweetooth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not only do we have to hope that it's finished (Sim City 4 shipped WITHOUT online support WTF!) but we have to worry about them shipping with copy protection that makes it unplayable (Never Winter Nights, UT2003). I've personally about had it with Game publishers. If you can't ship a finished product in a playable form then maybe it's time to get into a differant business. Then again, maybe I'm just bitter.

  4. Harvesters anyone? by Valdrax · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Good! Maybe those of us who've been following the game's development can finally find out what exactly the Harvesters are. The Harvesters have been kept under complete wraps throughout the development process, and no one outside Quicksilver and Infogrames knows anything about what they are. All we know is that they like cold planets, that they have "the Need" as one of their traits, that they can't join the Orion Senate, that they don't strongly cling to belief systems, that they can't have a representative government, and that they communicate "wetly" according to a cryptic reply by the art designer on the message boards.

    I'm going to be hitting the message boards for the next few weeks occasionally to see if they finally give in and let people know what they are.

    --
    If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
  5. but will it be as good as VGAP? by Technik~ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Remember that? I'm not the only one who forked over $14 to Tim Wisseman for that game just to play on a BBS. It was one of the best I've ever played, addictive as all heck.

    Just about every turn-based, galactic conquest game has been a pale shadow of that one. I had a brief email discussion with the author when he decided to do the Windows version (I was among those who wanted a new DOS version or a port to *Nix) and found him to be a really cool guy.
    VGA Planets Home

    Maybe I should dig out that floppy disk and load up freedos.

    - technik