Master of Orion 2 unofficial patch

Does anyone know how to allow for disabling Ship Initiative for patch 1.50.18.1? The last patch I was using was 1.50.14, and I modified the ORION2.cfg file to include:

strict_combat_sequencing = 0;

That does not seem to work for 1.50.18.1

Edit: I seem to have figured it out. I kept testing it with a saved game that I'm assuming retained the original parameters loaded when I started the game. New games do not seem to have ship initiative enabled.

Note: If launching the game using O2M, the game runs ridiculously slow. I'm talking as slow as it would run on a computer from the era of MOO2's 1996 release. Is that normal or intentional? Otherwise, if I run the game using the shortcut created from the 1.50.18.1 patch it runs as fast as you'd expect using a modern PC.

 

Yes, it was intentional. But you can edit the DOSBox configuration at any time, the file it's fully commented. Before launching the game, click DOSBox Configuration, look for cycles=30000 and set it to cycles=auto, then save the file. Then the game will run faster. Some DOS games may not run properly if the emulation runs too fast so this speed was fine-tuned to work well for all DOS games, but MOO2 doesn't need have such a limitation so maybe I'll change the default behavior in a future release.

 

Thanks for the reply. Here's another question: do you know why when using the 1.50 improved mod (with or without +picks) none of my fleet's ships seem to have shields? Every time I enter combat I notice no shields in the portraits of my ships and all damage is consistent with having no shields. Even doomstars are taking more damage than they otherwise would without using the 1.50 improved mod. If I use the standard mod, shields are up and tactical combat is normal.

Edit: Never mind. I think I answered my own question.

 

I recall I spotted a (mini-)mod someone made that boosted planetary defenses or something like that, making colonies harder to conquer/destroy. I also seem to recall a mod that made research slower/more expensive, stretching game duration. Does somebody know where I can find either of these (if they do in fact exist)?

[edit]Or maybe that first "mod" I seem to recall were in fact changes made in the patch here?

 

You're probably referring to my mod, Long War. It's also included in O2M.

 

Indeed, yours must be what I was thinking of.

Does the stronger defense refer to planetary defense, or also to ship defenses?

[edit] what about bombardment damage?

 

Most aspects of the game are tweaked. Research is slow, star bases are very strong, planetary defenses have more missiles/beams/fighters, weapons power adjusted, espionage is harder, computer cheats less etc. This mod has a long history, even before the unofficial patch, but thanks to the patch I was able to greatly enhance it. Whenever I've played MOO2 and noticed something wrong I fixed & fine-tuned it, but I didn't keep track of the changes so there are no details. Play a few games and see if you like it.

 

Can someone offer suggestions for getting multiplayer to run in the game? My kids have discovered MoO II and are into it big-time and my son wanted to play with me yesterday. I tried opening dosbox.conf from the launcher and setting ipx = true and ipxnet startserver 2000 on my system (Xubuntu) and ipx = true and ipxnet connect 192.168.1.64 2000 on his (Win10). We couldn't get the multiplayer game I created to show on his system. We were able to get 1.31 to work by entering those configurations in a plain DOSBox window, but next time we start a game together I'd like it to play the fan patch.

 

You can do that with the fan patch too, make sure ipx=true in DOSBox conf, run DOSBox, type the ipxnet commands for server and client, then run orion150.exe. You can also do this in the [autoexec] section of the DOSBox.conf file so you don't have to type it every time you start the game, like this:

Code:

...
[ipx]
# ipx: Enable ipx over UDP/IP emulation.

ipx=true

[autoexec]
@echo off
mount c d:\games\dos\moo2\
c:
ipxnet startserver 2000 (or ipxnet connect 192.168.1.64 2000 for client)
orion150.exe
exit

 

Odd, I can't get it to work. From the fan patch launcher I open DOSBOX.conf and make the changes, but I still don't see the MP game show up on the client machine. I did move the ipxnet setting from [ipx] to [autoexec]. Here are the sections on the server and client at present. I haven't removed anything or made any changes besides the ipx settings (and I double-checked my server's IP address just now).

Server
[ipx]
ipx = true

[autoexec]
ipxnet startserver 2000
exit

Client
[ipx]
ipx = true

[autoexec]
ipxnet connect 192.168.1.64 2000
exit

 

DOSBox has many command line parameters and I'm not sure how the fan patch launcher is using them. It may skip the [autoexec] section entirely. My example was for starting MOO2 + fan patch manually from DOSBox. Anyway, I packed some files for you, unpack them in the MOO2 folder, then see the mmoo2-readme.txt for details, should be very easy to use: