Master of Orion about get a reboot

Developed by an obscure studio and the announcement teaser doesn't fill me with confidence either.

Link to video.

Please don't screw it up.

GoodSarmatian said:

Developed by an obscure studio and the announcement teaser doesn't fill me with confidence either.

Link to video.

Please don't screw it up.

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Cant be much worse than MOO3. One thing that does encourage me is that they have some of the original crew working on the new one. I still think MOO2 is the best space strategy game out there. Sins is good but a different kind of game (namely RTS). I also dont think Gal Civ has reached the realms of popularity of MOO2.

Moo2 is definitely a better game but I hate how it gets so micro intense building everything on every planet. I prefer the simplicity of the sliders in moo1 where you just build factories, bases, ships or research. So I hope that they streamline the building process somehow.

Also while having multiple planets to colonize per star is awesome sometimes in moo2 it feels like your empire doesn't expand, it feels too small. So I hope they address that and make it easier to expand.

I'd actually prefer something closer to moo1 but with improved AI and balance and the ship design of moo2.


I kind wonder if they've lost their niche though. 20 years ago when Moo2 was coming out it was the only 4x space game I knew. Now I can name at least four off the top of my head with galactic civilizations series, star drive, endless space, star ruler.

woo-hoo!

civvver said:

I'd actually prefer something closer to moo1 but with improved AI and balance and the ship design of moo2.

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I'd tend to agree. AI better be a priority - we've all been playing this genre for decades now, AI will be one of the things to set a good game apart from others.

I hope they keep the large fleets from Moo1 - I liked how it was actually a choice whether to go with lots of smaller ships or a few death-star types. Moo2 largely removed that decision.

Yeah definitely. But that decision was often determined by what key techs you had or your enemy didn't. Like if the enemy had black hole generators you didn't want small ships usually, or if you had advanced repairs then you might want a big ship. If the research wasn't totally random it would be fun decisions. Like how you can go all shield tech or skip it entirely and go all engines on small ships with inertial stabilizers and make all the enemy shots miss. In moo2 shields always seemed kind of meaningless. And all the weapon choices weren't much of choices either.

Moo1 you have a lot of choices, like missiles or lasers or gatling lasers, all effective at countering different stuff, but many times you were just stuck with whatever research popped up.

Also found yet another 4x space game released today, http://store.steampowered.com/app/322540/. Just seems like anything released with the MOO name will have a rough time as it will get compared to the classic games plus a myriad of new ones.

All I can say here is "don't mess this up" too.

civvver said:

Yeah definitely. But that decision was often determined by what key techs you had or your enemy didn't. Like if the enemy had black hole generators you didn't want small ships usually, or if you had advanced repairs then you might want a big ship. If the research wasn't totally random it would be fun decisions. Like how you can go all shield tech or skip it entirely and go all engines on small ships with inertial stabilizers and make all the enemy shots miss. In moo2 shields always seemed kind of meaningless. And all the weapon choices weren't much of choices either.

Moo1 you have a lot of choices, like missiles or lasers or gatling lasers, all effective at countering different stuff, but many times you were just stuck with whatever research popped up.

Also found yet another 4x space game released today, http://store.steampowered.com/app/322540/. Just seems like anything released with the MOO name will have a rough time as it will get compared to the classic games plus a myriad of new ones.

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I dunno, there were a lot of choices in MOO2 as well. You had standard missiles, pulse missiles (the ones you couldnt shoot down), marines, lasers, long range cannons, bombs, interceptors and special stuff (like black hole generators). Thats a pretty diverse mix. You also had subdivisions between them. The only trouble was that some things were much better than others.

I think MOO2s main problem was the AI not knowing what was good to use and what was not. You could say it was unbalanced, but thats only because the AI sucked. The different weapons and strategies were very diverse, but totally unbalanced. I think this is the main problem in strategy games today. People bleat on and on about balance and AI, and that basically results in games like BE - where you have plus 1 of this and plus 2 of that. MOO2 has buckets more personality that both Civ5 and BE (IMO). But its just a shame that certain races sucked (like the Bulrathi). I also think it suffered from allowing you to create your own master race. As you could clearly make yourself superior to anything else they designed in the stock races. Even though it was a nice feature and a designed my race every single time (creative FTW)

If some things were much better than others, then it doesn't matter how diverse the mix is, you're always going to pick the best things. My ships in MOO2 always have the exact same weapons- mirv nukes or the next level missile as soon as it was available and then at the end armor piercing, auto fire mass driver/gauss cannons. And I always just built the biggest ship possible and stuck the most weapons on them cus why not?

Moo1 weapons were not clearly better or worse than others, a lot depending on what you were fighting. Like beam weapons, vs a really quick race of small ships like alakari they would miss too much unless you had targeting computers. Missiles better, but swarm missiles even better than those vs small ships. Or the gatling type lasers than fire multiple times. But if you ran into ships with shields those gatling type lasers sucked. Or if you could get the range booster sometimes lasers were the best. If you had access to all the tech there were a ton of strategies and ways you could build, all effective. But obviously your tech availability often determined it anyway.

And yes, everyone likes making a custom race but it kind of detracts from the overall game imo. Because you just subtract stuff that doesn't really matter like combat and add a ton of builder bonuses and game is too easy. And you don't ever really have inclination to play the lesser races or try new strategies, at least I didn't. I don't think I've ever played a feudal race, yuck.

sherbz said:

The different weapons and strategies were very diverse, but totally unbalanced. I think this is the main problem in strategy games today. People bleat on and on about balance and AI, and that basically results in games like BE - where you have plus 1 of this and plus 2 of that. MOO2 has buckets more personality that both Civ5 and BE (IMO). But its just a shame that certain races sucked (like the Bulrathi). I also think it suffered from allowing you to create your own master race. As you could clearly make yourself superior to anything else they designed in the stock races. Even though it was a nice feature and a designed my race every single time (creative FTW)

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I agree - balance often kills personality in games. And I get that it's hard to get it just right. Blizzard did a bang-up job with starcraft.

Nonetheless, sometimes it just feels lazy - MOO2's balance issues could've been mostly fixed with a pretty simple balance pass. /shrug

civvver said:

If some things were much better than others, then it doesn't matter how diverse the mix is, you're always going to pick the best things. My ships in MOO2 always have the exact same weapons- mirv nukes or the next level missile as soon as it was available and then at the end armor piercing, auto fire mass driver/gauss cannons. And I always just built the biggest ship possible and stuck the most weapons on them cus why not?

Moo1 weapons were not clearly better or worse than others, a lot depending on what you were fighting. Like beam weapons, vs a really quick race of small ships like alakari they would miss too much unless you had targeting computers.

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Yes, I favoured playing Alkari swarms with hordes of missile boats and the AI can't beat them.

My main wishlist feature - aside from keeping tactical combat (dropped from MOO 3 and most other space 4x games) would be updated star systems based on more recent information about the variety of real-universe planets, as well as varied ancient artifacts that may require research/exploration to unlock (akin to those in Sins or Distant Worlds). Distant Worlds is an example of a game with great exploration mechanics, but too little content to actually find given the scale of the galaxies (it basically has all the same planets as MOO 2 and nothing else). Other modern features, like strategic resources and the ability to build structures in orbit, would be welcome as well.

Those would all be sweet additions, I just don't want it to become civilization is space with that level of micromanagement per colony. Being in space I still want a high level strategy and to colonize tons of worlds without getting bogged down by build queues.

It would also be pretty sweet if you could have battles outside of planets. Unless you are defending a planet it's too easy to just run from combat and there's never any fights in open space. Maybe that's realistic due to how space travel is, too hard to run into anyone.

They have to keep the tactical combat, that would be a huge shame if not, and it would be nice if ground combat got a revamp. I'm not saying you should control all the units like the space combat, but just having +25 and dice rolls is too simplistic. Maybe have like certain unit types that counter other unit types or something. Like shock troops vs artillery, where your artillery auto fire until enemy troops can move to kill them having to go through your front lines first.

better to continue MOO4 posts here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=299600