[MoO] If I could change one feature about MOO1...

[Ray F]

It would be to perform a significant nerf on missile bases. They're a favorite for players who like to "turtle" and not have to worry about building ships until they reach a technology level where they can roll over the AI (who has spent time investing in ships in the early game).

It's a really lame strategy that has absolutely no basis in science fiction. Show me any mainstream sci-fi novel/movie where an invading military force from space was driven back by planetary missile bases.

It's absurd and completely unrealistic to have non-ftl missiles climb out of a planet's gravity well (which takes a lot of time) and then somehow have them travel through nearby space and successfully track down ships with ftl engines and laser weapons. Even missiles from the ships would be more powerful because they can be aimed at stationary targets and are moving down into a gravity well.

Here's what I would do. On the ship combat screen, all missile bases have a range of 1 square. This allows them to be used as defense against bombing and military transports, but otherwise have no other effect on ship combat.

This will allow a military fleet to swoop into an unguarded planet, take some losses while knocking out the bases, and then control the planet. This is not only realistic, but it completely eliminates the turtling strategy and forces the player to, you know, actually play the full game if he wants to win instead of just a small subset of features.

If this makes bases too weak, they can be toughened up with increased armor and/or shielding. But the reality is that an unguarded planet should be child's play for an enemy fleet in orbit.

 

[vmxa]

First it is a game, no realism at all. Second there are no ftl engines and none can be ever created, per Albert.

Giving ships hindered by that same gravity well, missiles will be faster than the ships as they are today. Knowing a large fleet is coming a planet could muster up a lot of missiles. They will vastly out maneuver ships.

 

[Ray F]

First it is a game, no realism at all. Second there are no ftl engines and none can be ever created, per Albert.

Giving ships hindered by that same gravity well, missiles will be faster than the ships as they are today. Knowing a large fleet is coming a planet could muster up a lot of missiles. They will vastly out maneuver ships.

Well, obviously MOO is based on sci-fi, not science. FTL engines exist everywhere in sci-fi.

Orbiting ships are not in the same gravity well as surface-based missles. This is why we use tons of propellant to get rockets off the ground but asteroids come crashing in with no additional propulsion whatsoever.

There is no way ground-based missiles could be effective against ships in orbit.

There is still value, however, in having missile bases(to stop transports and ships coming in low orbit to bomb, but they really should have no impact on ship battles away from the planet they are on.

 

[Rocco.40]

you could also;
- make missile bases more expensive
- make missile base maintenance cost higher (progressively?)
- limit the max number of bases
- make them easier to shoot down
- create or adjust a tech to be better at shooting down or ECM'ing missiles
- if you want to give them limited fuel (= 1 square range) you could make them explode anyway, no matter if they hit a target or not. (like depth charges, with a damage radius)

 

[vmxa]

Moo has missiles shooting ships. Remove it, you do not have Moo, you have a different game. That can be fine or not.

I want a rebooted Moo. If not then make it anyway you want and do not call it Moo.

 

[Ray F]

Moo has missiles shooting ships. Remove it, you do not have Moo, you have a different game. That can be fine or not.

I want a rebooted Moo. If not then make it anyway you want and do not call it Moo.

oh, you misunderstand. I was not talking about Java MOO, which is most definitely going to be a straight clone of MOO1. I was speaking in general about what I perceive to be a design flaw in the original game.

edit: let me elaborate a bit. Java MOO is going to have the concept of "Rulesets" on the setup screen. This will allow me to make a MOO1 clone in the same game as perhaps a MOO1.5 which has an altered ruleset.

 

[Rocco.40]

A feature i would like for the extended 1.5 rule set is the ability to refit obsolete ship designs to another design of the same ship class instead of scrapping them alltogether. On condition that a.i. can handle that feature too.

 

[Ray F]

A feature i would like for the extended 1.5 rule set is the ability to refit obsolete ship designs to another design of the same ship class instead of scrapping them altogether. On condition that a.i. can handle that feature too.

By "refit" do you mean that existing ships are automatically upgraded? What do you envision as the mechanism for that?

The existing scrapping mechanism returns of portion of the scrapped ships BC back to the empire reserve pool where it can be immediately applied to new ships. To me, that seems to be perfectly sensible.

 

[Rocco.40]

Did not mean auto-upgrading or free upgrading.
By refit I meant the MOO2 mechanism of sending fleet to system of choice, then that colony can instead of building a new ship refit the existing ship against a certain lower cost and build time.

Perhaps a refit system has not much nett advantage to the current scrap-for-money system, but I always felt it a bit weird (even before playing MOO2) to just scrap my dear old ships because I hit the max. # designs.

 

[Ray F]

Perhaps a refit system has not much nett advantage to the current scrap-for-money system, but I always felt it a bit weird (even before playing MOO2) to just scrap my dear old ships because I hit the max. # designs.

Except the reason that you are refitting in the first place is because your engineers have come up with new, improved and smaller versions of the weapons on your existing ships. So it's not a matter of just adding new weapons, but instead taking out all of the obsolete weapons and replacing them with a full set of modern weapons. Scrapping and rebuilding ships is the game's abstraction of that process.

Max # designs is a different limitation. If you use stack-based combat, you MUST have a limit on the number of designs. Otherwise, you could flood the combat map with multiple stacks of identical ships. Not only does that make the AI more difficult, but turns ship design and tactical combat into something that rewards micro-managing.

 

[Harv]

Moo has missiles shooting ships. Remove it, you do not have Moo, you have a different game. That can be fine or not.

QFT. This.

See the intro movie. It shows missile bases shooting down ships.

 

[Rocco.40]

Scrapping and rebuilding ships is the game's abstraction of that process.

Max # designs is a different limitation. If you use stack-based combat, you MUST have a limit on the number of designs...

ok- it took me a few days, but yes, I can agree now, with scrapping already there, refit is not necessary.
In fact, the strength of MOO1 compared to MOO2 lies in this abstraction and 1 is of very elegant design, while 2 is much more elaborate and detailed, which made it for me a more immersive game. Have always played almost only MOO2 since it arrived, but now, since I know of your work, I am actually playing some 1 games once more and I noticed that I really don't mind the blocky graphics that much, the main graphical thing I really dislike is the tiny screen real estate for the main screen galaxy map and the out-dated way of scrolling. Compared (and apart from all the other improvements offcourse), The JAVA-MOO provides an ocean of space!

 

[Ray F]

ok- it took me a few days, but yes, I can agree now, with scrapping already there, refit is not necessary.
In fact, the strength of MOO1 compared to MOO2 lies in this abstraction and 1 is of very elegant design, while 2 is much more elaborate and detailed, which made it for me a more immersive game. Have always played almost only MOO2 since it arrived, but now, since I know of your work, I am actually playing some 1 games once more and I noticed that I really don't mind the blocky graphics that much, the main graphical thing I really dislike is the tiny screen real estate for the main screen galaxy map and the out-dated way of scrolling. Compared (and apart from all the other improvements offcourse), The JAVA-MOO provides an ocean of space!

Yeah, I definitely see how the MOO2 version of refitting ships would be more immersive. More details is always more immersive!

It's probably really good that MOO1 was made in 1993 when there were still severe graphical and memory restrictions on video games. It forced them to economize and abstract the feature set, which led to a very tight 4X game.

There are a few things added in MOO2 that scale well and would be nice features in a MOO1 sequel, but there are just as many features that do not scale well.

 

[Timoteo]

There are two things I would change, but they are related, so I guess it really is just one thing. Sometimes when you use the feature that automatically upgrade all of your planets to a new planetary shield level or upgrade to fertile/gaia, after the upgrade is complete the the allocation bars do not revert to research. So you then have to go back and do it micromanage it manually for all your planets or else you will get a huge number of bases or waste BCs.

As far as nerfing missile bases, an AI that builds dedicated bombers or puts a few of its best bombs on every design will work wonders.

The turtling strategy works because the MOO AI only occasionally builds ships with enough bombing strength to bust your missile bases. Even lowly nuclear bombs can bust missile bases for about the first 1/4 of the game. Because of miniaturization and the AI's production advantages, they could put a huge number of them over a planet. Sure each bomb may only do 2 or 3 points of damage, but it adds up quick when your dropping hundreds if not thousands of bombs every combat turn.

I am guilty of relying on the turtling strategy and I find that my games often hinge on whether or not the AI is fielding ships that can slag my bases. I can't tell you how many times I have seen the AI have fusion or anti-matter bombs in their research list and turn after turn attack me with beam ships that have to retreat because they can't scratch my bases.

 

[vmxa]

The upgrades are just a bug IMO. It does not always do it. You have to check after any mass upgrade of planets or shields or factories. I mostly play on small maps, so it is not hard for me.