[MoO] Master of Orion 2 unofficial patch

[Depth386]

I tried 1% desert[.....]

It is working great, thank you so so much

I just remembered a few more ideas:

-I would love to edit the number of armor/hull damage for neutron blasters and death rays to kill a marine.
"marine_killing_beams_damage = 10";

-I would love to be able to edit the number that the game uses to calculate beam evasion from combat speed. Classic is a multiplier of 5. Hence Augment d Engines gives you +25 beam defense, because it increases combat speed by 5 so 5x5=25.
So imagine this line in .cfg file:
"combat_speed_beam_defense_multiplier = 4";

-I would like to edit the way the game displays shields. I believe it is probably a matter of exposing some numbers in the .cfg file. I believe the game draws maximum shield arcs at 200 shield points. In classic, this works for battleship with class X shield. But titans and doom stars can exceed this so they end up taking some damage but the shield arc stays full. It gets even worse with Multi-Phased Shielding or some people's mods which make shields stronger. Now what I am hoping is that there is literally just a number the game uses as a constant (200) so a calculation occurs that goes "shield_arc_shield_points divided by 200" to decide how much of the shield arc to draw when you mouse-over a ship in combat. If it is just one number like that, exposing it in .cfg would be really nice. "shield_display_divisor = 300";
Alternatively it might be a table where there's a moderate number of "shield thicknesses" (its only so many pixels after all) and they have minimums and maximums. I don't know how you guys find these numbers but I hope you see the logic
"#_thickness_min_max
"shield_arc_1 1 15"
"shield_arc_2 16 30"
Etc.

-I would love to see the option to make weapon mods compounding instead of additive. Below is an illustration:

Additive / Classic Example
Laser Cannon is 6 Space (3 miniaturizations)
Continuous increases size & cost by 50%
Laser Cannon is now 9 space (+3)
Autofire increases size & cost by 100%
Laser Cannon is now 15 space (+6)
So the Laser Cannon CO AF is 15 space

Compounding Example
Laser Cannon is 6 space again
Continuous is +50%
Laser Cannon is now 9 space (+3)
Autofire is +100%
Laser Cannon is now 18 space (+9)
The difference is that you are applying AF ontop of a laser that is size 9 because it's CO. So the Laser Cannon CO AF is 18 space. I left this one for last because I don't think it's just a number, it would require some serious editing of the .exe

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Again, thank you so much guys. You have already made Moo2 into something superior to any new 4x released on steam.

 

[Nelphine]

Just found this mod for Moo2. Thank you so much!

Played an ice-x average game after reading about all the changes to get a taste before trying impossible, using a dictator crearive race. Killed antarans around turn 280 - they were definitely much stronger! I'd love to see how much earlier I can get them than that especially when the so actually are a threat on hard/impossible.

One strange thing - I used to always play the windows version. I also play MoM regularly, so I usually have both games running. So I did the same thing here, and had two copies of dosbox running, one via the launcher for Moo2 and one manually for MoM.

However, after ~150-180 turns, Moo2 started acting sluggishly periodically (it would take 10-90 seconds for the mouse to respond to any movement or clicks k tried to do). Then, about 15 turns after that, it froze up entirely. I couldn't use ESC, or alt tab (which I had used successfully when I first started encountering sluggish activity to make sure it wasn't something else on my system causing problems.); I couldn't even use Ctrl alt Del. I ended up having to use the power button the computer and turning it off completely.

The primary place the sluggishness showed up, and the place I encountered the freeze were in building screen after colonizing a new colony base.

After restarting my computer, I made sure not to have 2 versions of dosbox running, and I haven't encountered any further problems.


Edit: Oh, another strange thing. The raiders (frigate class antarans) guarding the antaran home world had 2 groups of particle beams (probably a point defense and a normal?) but had 0 of each, so they couldn't attack to come out of phase shift, so i had to wait 10 turns for them to do so. The raiders that attacked during 'antarans attack' events had the correct weapons.

 

[Rocco.40]

-I would love to edit the number of armor/hull damage for neutron blasters and death rays to kill a marine.

-I would love to be able to edit the number that the game uses to calculate beam evasion from combat speed. Classic is a multiplier of 5. Hence Augment d Engines gives you +25 beam defense, because it increases combat speed by 5 so 5x5=25.

-I would like to edit the way the game displays shields. I believe it is probably a matter of exposing some numbers in the .cfg file. I believe the game draws maximum shield arcs at 200 shield points. In classic, this works for battleship with class X shield. But titans and doom stars can exceed this so they end up taking some damage but the shield arc stays full. It gets even worse with Multi-Phased Shielding or some people's mods which make shields stronger. Now what I am hoping is that there is literally just a number the game uses as a constant (200) so a calculation occurs that goes "shield_arc_shield_points divided by 200" to decide how much of the shield arc to draw when you mouse-over a ship in combat. If it is just one number like that, exposing it in .cfg would be really nice. "shield_display_divisor = 300";
Alternatively it might be a table where there's a moderate number of "shield thicknesses" (its only so many pixels after all) and they have minimums and maximums. I don't know how you guys find these numbers but I hope you see the logic
"#_thickness_min_max
"shield_arc_1 1 15"
"shield_arc_2 16 30"
Etc.

-I would love to see the option to make weapon mods compounding instead of additive. Below is an illustration: [...]
I left this one for last because I don't think it's just a number, it would require some serious editing of the .exe

- About the 5dmg killing ratio and defense x5 multiplier, I haven't considered modding these values myself until now. We'll have the neutron blaster/death ray x5 will be in next release and perhaps, if we feel like digging in the code to find a couple drive x5 offsets it will be there too (no promises tho... ).
- Unlikely we'll touch shield graphic anytime soon, we had a quick look at the formula and it doesn't work as you wrote above and will require more substantial work to make it moddable.
- I am not a fan of compounding weapon mods and will also require substantial coding to change it. Why not just make the ones that you think are strong more expensive / where do you think synergy is too strong?

Any case, thanks for all your feedback!

 

[Rocco.40]

Just found this mod for Moo2. Thank you so much!
[...]
Edit: Oh, another strange thing. The raiders (frigate class antarans) guarding the antaran home world had 2 groups of particle beams (probably a point defense and a normal?) but had 0 of each, so they couldn't attack to come out of phase shift, so i had to wait 10 turns for them to do so. The raiders that attacked during 'antarans attack' events had the correct weapons.

I just skipped over your duo dosbox issues, as it looks you have found some solution already.
About the raiders: their 0 weapons is intentional so they stay cloaked, while working their wide area jammer effect on the antaran defenses. They should decloak after 3 turns tho, not 10, since phasing cloaks in ice only work for 3 rounds. Hope that was the case in your game too...

 

[Nelphine]

Oh. Hm. I hit auto after killing the rest, and since I'd brought far more ships than I normally ever did to Antares (26 titans; I think I only needed about 12 but I was going for overkill) I have to admit I have no idea how many turns it actually was.

 

[Rocco.40]

Oh. Hm. I hit auto after killing the rest, and since I'd brought far more ships than I normally ever did to Antares (26 titans; I think I only needed about 12 but I was going for overkill) I have to admit I have no idea how many turns it actually was.

ok np, actually your comment about the antaran frigate spurred a bit of code checking and fixing of a few minor things there, so thanks for bringing it up!

 

[plasmacannon]

I think the compounding mods are working as intended. As we progress up the tech tree, we are supposed to use more advanced weapons, not more of the older inefficient ones. Empires still using that old tech, get conquered.

 

[Rocco.40]

[...]

So 1.50.9 still works for you still, or has it been ruthlessly disabled by that cleaner again?

 

[plasmacannon]

So 1.50.9 still works for you still, or has it been ruthlessly disabled by that cleaner again?

It's been working fine lately.

 

[Depth386]

I think the compounding mods are working as intended. As we progress up the tech tree, we are supposed to use more advanced weapons, not more of the older inefficient ones. Empires still using that old tech, get conquered.

Weapon modifications are currently "additive". My request was the option to make them compounding (which would be a balance nerf to heavily modded miniaturized stuff)
It's not the end of the world but it would be nice is all i'm saying.
It's a crazy coding project though... I mean conceptually the source code is not that hard but analyzing the Moo2.exe down at the hex level, I can't believe these guys have accomplished so much already.

- About the 5dmg killing ratio and defense x5 multiplier, I haven't considered modding these values myself until now. We'll have the neutron blaster/death ray x5 will be in next release and perhaps, if we feel like digging in the code to find a couple drive x5 offsets it will be there too (no promises tho... ).
- Unlikely we'll touch shield graphic anytime soon, we had a quick look at the formula and it doesn't work as you wrote above and will require more substantial work to make it moddable.
- I am not a fan of compounding weapon mods and will also require substantial coding to change it. Why not just make the ones that you think are strong more expensive / where do you think synergy is too strong?

Any case, thanks for all your feedback!

Yeah the 5dmg marine thing and "defense = combat speed x5" things are pure single numbers so those would be nice touches.

One more thing, I'm sorry..
AI ship design templates: I wish I could just dictate the missile ammo reserves.
What if I want the AI to use x2 all the time? Or what if I want them to use x10 all the time?
I'm hoping you could expose that in .cfg

Imagine renaming this template (below) to "standard_beam_missile_A" and having a line above or below it "ai_ship_design_missile_ammo standard_beam_missile_A = [x2, x5, x10, x15, x20];

# Theme Beam Misl Def Spec Spec Figh Miss Hvy. Norm PD
# Spec Spec Spec Spec Wepn Dvce ters iles Beam Beam Beam Bombs
ai_ship_design standard_beam_missile_x2 frigate = -1 -1 0 0 -1 0 -1 50 0 50 -1 -1; #50 beam
ai_ship_design standard_beam_missile_x2 destroyer = 0 0 0 0 -1 -1 -1 0 50 50 -1 0; #100 beam & bomb
ai_ship_design standard_beam_missile_x2 cruiser = 10 10 0 0 -1 -1 -1 5 35 30 6 4; #75 beam & bomb
ai_ship_design standard_beam_missile_x2 battleship = 10 10 0 0 -1 -1 -1 5 30 22 10 3; #65 beam & bomb
ai_ship_design standard_beam_missile_x2 titan = 15 10 5 0 -1 -1 -1 5 35 20 8 2; #65 beam & bomb
ai_ship_design standard_beam_missile_x2 doomstar = 15 15 5 0 -1 -1 -1 5 30 23 6 1; #60 beam & bomb

 

[Nelphine]

Welp, I'm playing on Ice-X, huge galaxy (icex standard map), hard difficulty. And It's been actually hard. Lost 3 or 4 games to not getting a decent fleet built soon enough. Been terribly missing creative! So I tried something that totally doesn't make any sense - Uncreative!

And, turn 162 (already lost 3 or 4 planets to Antarans, although 1 or 2 attacks didn't come after me), first galactic council, and enough AI voted for me (playing Charismatic) that I actually won. The lost planets would have let 1 less AI vote for me and still had enough. If I hadn't been uncreative I would have tried to go for terraforming, but I didn't have it as an option this game.

So, with that said.. what the heck negatives do people take with this mod? I no longer feel like I can actually take any of them, except -10 ground combat. They're all actually BAD, and the AI isn't so bad/slow that I can rely on tech to fix them. I'm also considering Feudal just because it at least has some benefits attached to it. This game was -10 ground combat, -10 spying, uncreative.

 

[Nelphine]

Also, on turn 247 (I've been abstaining the GCs), I realized I didn't have Battle Pods - and NONE of the AI have them either.

When reading about all the changes to the mod, I actually thought 'huh, maybe battle pods might not be mandatory now; and certainly I love that the AI won't be hampered by not getting them'... but, I literally have 1 beam weapon on my best designed battleships (no titans in the game, no one has reached doom star construction yet.) Battlepods are basically purely for weapon space and without them, holy crap. I may actually have to drop offensive beam specials, just to get more weapons!

 

[Nelphine]

Hum. Actually, no one has reinforced hulls either. Nor robo miners. Nor any shields better than class 1, or drives beyond fusion. (And yes I'm working on advanced tech in most fields.)

Is it possible there's some kind of similarity between what techs will be available to all uncreatives in the same game (both myself and klackons are uncreative), or between the research choices 'normal' AI choose compared to the uncreatives in the same game? (There are no creatives in this game.)


(Also: I'd like to see a bigger fleet on Antares. The star fortress has about.. 10 times the hit points of all the ships combined? So it feels very lopsided. However, I love that it is difficult, so I don't want the star fortress weakened. Although when my 47 battleships can wipe out every single AI ship in the galaxy at the same time (I think I can kill 8 AI ships per battleship per turn despite lacking battle pods), but can't get the Antaran Star Fortress below 75% health, I think the Antarans are definitely stronger than the AI.)

 

[Rocco.40]

[...]AI ship design templates: I wish I could just dictate the missile ammo reserves.
What if I want the AI to use x2 all the time? Or what if I want them to use x10 all the time?
I'm hoping you could expose that in .cfg

No prob ofc that you bring another suggestion!
This one is for some distant future... We haven't touched on it yet.

 

[Nelphine]

I'm not sure whats causing it as I'm not noticing exactly when it happens, but I'm periodically getting Psionics for no discernible reason. Happened at least 3 times recently, twice as uncreative (once when the tech I had access to was not psionics, once when I hadn't yet researched past the 900 level), and most recently when I was not uncreative or creative - this time, it happened while i was researching psionics, and now i'm in the middle of researching heightened intelligence instead. I haven't found artifacts worlds, nor have any leaders been hired who have stated they come with psionics (nor have I got the same leaders in all 3 games).

The AI promptly offers me lots of cool techs so they can have it too, so it's not something like an AI giving it or trading it to me.

 

[Rocco.40]

Sounds like a weird thing you are describing. What are you playing, 1.50 standard, or ice mod?
Reason for question is that in ice, a leader could bring that tech.

 

[Nelphine]

All 3 are 1.50.9 ice x hard. But if it's a leader shouldn't it be the same leader in each game? And shouldn't it says 'x wants to be hired for y cost and z maintenance, and will bring the psionics tech'?

My most recent game I got.. commissioner... High priestess someone or other, 60% farming, 30% morale, 30% environmental, 8% telepathy.

I've never seen her before in my ice mod games. So did not have her in the uncreative games.

 

[Rocco.40]

High Priestress Electra indeed brings Psionics in the ICE mod, so thats one case solved for sure.
Indeed no other leaders can bring the tech.

 

[Nelphine]

Thank you. Maybe I considered someone or something in my uncreative games. Since those were my first few ice hard games, I'll assume I missed something.

Good to know about Electra.

 

[Rocco.40]

We couldn't think of some potential 'buggy' explanation for this.
If you do come accross something weird again, be sure to let us know.
A savegame (from a turn before a weird event) would help surely!