A Dormant Moo2 Mod

[Gidoza]

Dear Friends,

I am a Master of Orion 2 Mac player, and for years I have fiddled with old games (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) to tweak them for either balance purposes or for strategic interest. I have searched around and am aware that there are MOO2 mods available, and some of them are quite interesting (Difficult Choice, for example), but sadly, there is no tools nor mods available for the Mac, and I do not have the programming ability to create one.

Nevertheless...this hasn't stopped my love of theorizing and writing out all kinds of details, and so I have (for some time) had a plethora of data for MOO2 sitting on my computer regarding my thoughts on how I would change some of the details of the game for balance, strategy, or whatever. Having looked at other mods, I can see quite plainly that most of us are thinking alike in our changes, but of course, I have done some things differently, which is not surprising. In any case, my purpose here is that I thought that there is no point in having some of this work go to waste, and so anyone who would be willing or interested in taking up the project to make a mod out of my data is welcome to do so.

In all the documents I have provided, I list first raw data, then suggested changes, and finally my rationale for these changes. I have done things in this way because I firmly believe that no good solution can come to changes without providing good explanations and allowing room for discussion and debate. I actually do realize - after further reflection on some things - that some of my suggestions actually don't work, and I will happily retract them at the appropriate time, but I'll let that time come for the moment. That being said, I have tried to deal with more or less every aspect of MOO2 under the sun - from race picks, to tech tree order, to what various technologies do, to how random events work, how game variables work, the strength of the Guardian, Antaran techs, Hyper-Advanced techs, and so on. Hopefully, at the very least, some ideas here may provide grounding for improvements in other areas to make this a more well-rounded and solid game. And yes, for the record, I do believe that old games like these should be re-worked, improved, and re-sold, rather than creating new games that are disasters and that make people go back to old, buggy, but good games...


My many thanks for your welcome,
-Gidoza

 

[Gidoza]

Last two files to complete the set.

 

[scratchthepitch]

Gidoza

Welcome to the forum.

Don't own a Mac, never have, so what help I may be able to provide will be limited. I cant remember ever seeing mods for the Mac version, either. I just had time to take a look at your race traits doc. in your list. Some interesting things there. One thing that we probably cant change is the hard coded stuff in the game. So doing things like make -.5 money incompatible with expert traders, like the food category is with lithovore, is probably beyond what can be done by modders. Also, I don't think decimals work with assigning race trait point costs, because I don't think there is a way to set any of the traits to a figure which uses a decimal.

 

[Gidoza]

Hm, well, for the incompatibility of one trait with another, I guess that could be a problem...

But as for the decimal race traits, I don't think that's an issue - that's just there for total values. The Very Difficult Choice mod simply doubles all the values of the race traits, which would be the equivalent for using decimals, so that one would work.

 

[scratchthepitch]

To tell you the truth, it may be wrong about using decimals in the racepick costs. The tool I use to change these is called pickhack.exe. and I just checked to see whether it would do decimals, and it does. I might have tried to do this and found it didn't work in the game back when I first began modding the game, but I really don't remember.

One thing I do remember was when I changed dictatorship to cost -2 (instead of 0), this changed the limits of negative and positive pick costs you were allowed to use, if dictatorship was used. I think what happened was the program still saw dictatorship as costing 0, so didn't register the extra -2 the player saw. I figured the default, 0 cost, racepick was probably hardwired to be 0 on the rest of the picks. So I didn't try changing their point cost and changed only the ones with positive or negative costs.

Doubling the cost of racepicks gets rid of decimal question, but you are limited to fewer picks then. Which is OK if that is the direction you want to go. I went the opposite direction, and lowered many of the costs, and also gave the stock races more traits, so there would be more things each race could do well.

One of my experimental attempts was to give everybody creative so the AI would have all the techs and build better ships. The problem with that was I found that while the AI was building better ships, it was also building the same ship designs across the races. There wasn't as much variation in the AI ship designs, and this took some of the fun out of the game since AI ships held fewer surprises when first meeting them. I also found that the races didn't research the tech tree the same way. Some spent more research on some branches, and almost ignored others. I don't know if that was because each race had specific programing for its research tastes, or whether these tastes were randomized in each game for the races. What small variation I was seeing in AI ship designs was determined by this variation in the AI choice of what they researched.

 

[Gidoza]

Well, for doubling the race picks - if I remember correctly, Very Difficult Choice also doubled the initial picks (made them 20) so all is technically the same even though everything is doubled.

As for AI techs - yes, I've found that certain races pick certain technologies every time, though there IS a generalized strategy. (for example, Bulrathi ALWAYS pick Troop Pods because of their Ground Combat bonuses, even though they ironically NEVER USE THEM) Nevertheless, I think the only good way to improve AI ship designs is to reprogram the AI...sadly, AIs never research Hyper-Advanced tech, which really handicaps them in late game, and in the early game, their equipment is a hodge-podge of different junk, with very few useful things in the secondary systems department. Unfortunate.

 

[scratchthepitch]

The AI ship design program probably is programed to prioritize certain ship specials and avoid others. Troop pods are not very useful specials, I cant remember seeing them used by any AI before. So maybe the AI isn't programed to use that special. They do build ships with transporters, and effectively use them for raids. I've even seen AI orbitals equipped with transporters. But I don't remember ever seeing AI use transporters to capture a ship. So maybe they are only programed to do raids. They will use assault shuttles, also. But I'm not sure if it's for raids or to capture? Cant remember the last time an AI assault shuttle made it through my defenses. I know players cant use the shuttles for raids, but the AI might be able to.

The AI will build ships with the specials, but they seem to be programed to lean towards filling a high percentage of the space with weapons. As miniaturization takes effect later in the game, I've seen them use more of the specials as the space requirement for weapons goes down. Many races don't use the specials probably because they don't have them, since I guessing the AI research is programed more to lean towards weapons and production.

 

[Gidoza]

I'm more inclined to think that it's just bad programming. Comps will ALWAYS use Battle Pods if they have them, for example, but only occasionally put Battle Scanners on their ships (when they HAVE the technology), even if their Beam Attack is hopeless and the majority of their weapons are beams! The rest of their specials almost seem to be randomly chosen, and certainly have nothing to do with the theme of a particular ship design. Star Bases, on the other hand, are pre-programmed to equip everything possible, and will prefer certain specials over others.

As for raids and capturing, I've noticed that the AI tends to do a raid if its ground combat is at an inferior value or if the target has enough marines that it doesn't think it will capture it in the same turn. But when the comp thinks it can capture a ship, it'll go for it, and quickly.

Oh, well...

 

[Darza]

Gidoza (and surely any other who could be interested), there is still alive moo2 community in quakenet irc. irc:quakenet.org #moo2 or simply http://webchat.quakenet.org/ , any login, channel #moo2 in case you dont have a irc client at hand. You clearly showd what you understand a game much more than usual newbie do, so if you are interested i game - youll find there some people who will be able to explain a mistakes in the ideas you posted (here its too long, and imho not worthy as the topic could be dead already). Also its a very good place to play moo2 with other people, or learn a game. Hope to see some people from here, good luck.

 

[scratchthepitch]

Gidoza

Battle scanner is a must for beams, it's a major programing fail that this wasn't incorporated into their AI ship design templates. I have seen the AI use some of the later specials affecting beam weapons, but it seems they prefer the defensive specials more than the offensive. Thanks for the info about AI captures. After I had some ships raided, I think it was by Antarans, and saw the damage they were able to do, I made a special effort to prevent AI ships being able to board mine. I would zap any shuttles before they got close, and made sure ships with transporters died, or were themselves captured first.

Darza

Thanks for the link and info. And welcome to the forum.

 

[Gidoza]

Thanks!

Yes, I realize that Battle Scanners are (pretty much) a must for beams. One can get by without them against foes with less speed/ship defence if one is using Continuous Beams with a half-decent computer with a ship that has been trained at a Space Academy. At least, I've had decent luck with that, anyways.

If the following sort of change were possible in the game, this is what I would do: instead of having the to-hit line that MOO2 has now, I would widen it such that even a ship with a HORRIBLE ratio of Beam Attack to Beam Defence could still hit the target, but the chance would be low (just not as low as now). As the Beam Attack got higher and higher, more Beams would hit, but on a diminishing returns line, such that even a superior Beam Attack to Beam Defence would leave some beams not hitting the target, but doing sufficient damage to seriously harm the other ship.

In other words, more Beam Attack = more hits (just as now), but beams would never be useless and would be unlikely to reach perfection. Battle Scanner would thus be a "beef" and not a "necessity", but beams used without a solid Beam Attack would not have the same power of beams at the present time used with a Battle Scanner.

(I HOPE this makes sense and you see what I'm trying to do here...I may have explained it badly. Just imagine a to-hit line that is a LOT wider than it is now.)


Anyways, thanks so much for the welcome, I appreciate it alot!

 

[Darza]

Due to beam hit formula in this game, any beam have ~5% chance to do a max hit. No matter what difference between BA and BD. The game already work the way you want to mod it to.

 

[Gidoza]

What I'm saying is that first of all, 5% is hardly enough, and secondly, that the benefits for having a good BA to BD ratio need to be lessened. The time is pretty rare when I've had a good BA and found any reason at all to use any weapons other than beams. Beams always need to be good enough to use, but demanding enough that varied weaponry is a necessity.

 

[Darza]

If you have enough BA to make a sure hits, and some good beam to get benefit from it, there is no way to make any other weapons useful i this case. Thats simply how that game work. If it somehow went to such late stage - all battles last 1 turn (efficiently), as without initiative. One side shoot first and win, no way of usage of other weapons. They are for earlier game. You can make beams itself weaker, in this case you will remove them from a game, because instead of them in example above will be used EMG or tractors or something like this.

 

[Gidoza]

You're sort of getting my point, now. But making beams less useful will not remove them from the game, they just need proper designing. But yes, what I AM trying to avoid is a game that only uses beam weapons for everything! Why bother playing or having other weapons in the game if the other weapons are unfeasible and if I can predict the whole outcome of the game based on a single weapon type? This is no longer a game. A real GAME requires thought, tactics, variety. With only a single weapon type in play, there is almost none of that, in combat, anyways. I actually want to play a game where thought is necessary.

 

[Darza]

Right now the whole outcome is about interceptors, not beams. Even if you will ban interceptors, game basically have no chance to get to a state we discussed above, because on a way to such beams are tractors and emg already. If you will weaken a beams even more, you will kill any reason to even try to go and try to collect insane amount of tech needed to make beams works. You will just stop a game at tractors, well exactly as it in vanilla already (meant banned interceptors).

 

[Gidoza]

I don't see a reason to ban interceptors, but raising their tech level seems reasonable (that's what I did in my mod). As for tractors, I also edited those with good reason.

Yes, I have thought these things through.

 

[Darza]

Ah and about tactics, variety etc. Moo2 is very shallow game. You can tweak a rules, but you will always have a very few variety in it. Especially if you play against AI, what is basically non-existent there. If you really need A real GAME requires thought, tactics, variety, sadly moo2 isnt fit your goals. The most close game to that description is probably UnrealTournament2004.

 

[Gidoza]

Yes, I agree with you. That's why I like to mod games. Because I know how to mod games enough to cause them not to be so shallow. Which hardly means that it would be anywhere near perfect, but I'm confident that it would be better than it is now.

In any case, my way of getting around this in factory MOO2 is simply to play as Uncreative. Makes for interesting games at times...or short ones.

 

[Darza]

Main problem in moo2 is absolute lack of balance between developing economy and tech and shipbuilding. Ships are very cheap, and all economy stuff is very pricey. In your mod you killed economy severely, but moved interceptors just few RP higher. In result there is absolutely no reason to try a demo and dict you pushed down even more than they was in vanilla. And no reason to get anything besides interceptors, because after you will get them, there is absolutely nothing to stop them after, because you stripped out even the basic free weapons. Thats your main mistake.