[MoO] Master or Orion 4

[ZeroGravity]

I have played all three of the MOO series, GalCiv2, LostEmpire:Immortals, SE 5, SoaSE, and SotS. I've loved all and hated all, each for their own reasons. That being said, I have yet to discover the "perfect" 4x game. If MOO4 would focus on the essence of 4x-ing, I feel such a game may be possible.
The true brilliance of the 4x game is in its depth and scale. We 4x-ers (for the most part) don't care as much about eye-candy or hedonistic effects as fans of other genres. We see our 4x games as sounding boards for our imaginations. We want to "feel" like we are conquering, culturizing, or politicizing, the stuff out of whatever galaxy we're in. To do this, we cannot "dumb down" or "automate" or "simplify" the universe by simply removing features, be it micromanagement, technology, economic tinkering, or political malingering. All of these things are important to the "Universe" to which we escape. What MOO4 needs is better mechanisms to ignore particular aspects that do not appeal to us personally. (ex. governors). I like the idea of a cultural victory, but I invariably ignore/disable it. I love the capacity to form alliances, though I invariably break them in a singular act of empire ending betrayal. I love the political parties of GalCiv2 but invariably use the war party to avoid electoral complications. MOO4 needs to have all the intracacies of MOO3 (ad tedium de facto) but with a better interface so those individuals who care less about specs and stats, can ignore the more "spreadsheet" like aspects of the game.
I believe TomSawyer has some wonderful ideas, and I dont disagree with any. Truly, specifics are not really what makes the game for us 4xer IMHO. Starlanes?... Fine, I'll do massive buildups and epic battles at choke points. No Starlanes? Fine, Ill create a frontline of the war. Use military access to stage an Independence day like strike. We all have enough imagination to adapt to these, thats why we're 4x-ers. The focus of MOO4 should be on increasing size, scale, depth, and scope. More options, more planets, more possibilites, more races, traits, ships, technologies, right down to the most minute ecopolitical considerations. Then, some monster interface that will a allow the "just for fun, once in a while" types to automate all the things they need to "just get on with the game already".
So, I'm sorry about the novel. This post has just been boiling in my guts for years. If you've read this far, I hope you agree.

"A good short-order cook can find work anywhere in the universe" - Heinlein

 

[scratchthepitch]

Welcome to the forum, ZeroGravity. I like your ideas.

 

[Cmcastl]

The perfect Space Strategy game, ZeroGravity, to paraphrase Plato on the perfect republic, is "not here... not here but in another world."

I still have an undying affection and loyalty to MOO3 but the Star Trek mod under Civ IV is not bad either.

Live long and prosper.

 

[tuxu]

Sounds interesting, and the intention seems very good.
I hope it will be reality and that MoO4 will be in the same kind of MoO2 and will not fall into the MoO3 curse.

I beg to differ friend.

I'd rather play Moo2 and Moo3(that got released unfinished) and not have stardock making a GalCiv Moo.
I have all three and the only thing i find exciting about galciv is the creature edi... err.. the ship making screen.

As a matter of fact, i think ill go and play some moo3 mods right about... now!

 

[cool3a2]

PS - BOTF was quite atmospheric I felt of the TV series. Its main drawback was the very limited map on which it could be played.

I know this post is more than a year old, but still: there is a botf mod called the ultimate Dominion Mod which adds a giant map. And the dominion. Also, another Star Trek 4x game - which already is comparably far in development - is Birth of the Empires. Well, it's not Star Trek at the moment, but there surely will be a Star Trek Mod.

To come back to topic, I have to say that I REALLY don't understand how someone can praise moo3. It was a disaster. I was pretty happy when it was released finally, but played it only a few times. My problem wasn't so much that micromanaging. I like to let planets build quite some buildings, although not too much. The problem was, that there were too much planets too soon so that you loose the overview. Sure, you could limit the galaxies size, but then it was hard to find valuable planets again. Weird thing somehow. Another problem was the effect, that colonies got founded automatically by small races - hell, I never wanted those st balls! Next problem: the AI could pass my territory at will and there was no range limit either, leading to a pretty 'colourful map' instead of massive empires. Don't know why nobody ever considered to introduce range limits. There would also have been another option to influence this. diplomacy. Diplomacy was another weak point. It happened quite often that I met with Aliens and then they declared war immedeatly. Some turns later, I manged to get peace again, but another turn later, they declar war agaian. Besides of that, a closed-border status (like in civ4, but without malus - another stupid idea from developers btw) could have stopped the inflation of colonies. Also, I take it as an aggressive act if an alien species passes my space just like that... There were even two things more that were pretty bad. In moo3, planets were divided into regions. Those regions could have been specialized for mining for example. That part was maybe too much of micrmanagement, but that'S not the point. The point is, that if I configured those regions, my configurations were reverted soon by the AI developing the regions into another direction. I never found a good answer why this has happened. I just read that it was a bug, not sure if that is true. Also, ome of these configurations never took place, they remained planned. I think that had something to do with the population, but I never figured out why exactly that happened. The other crucial point was, that I started building buildings and from one turn to another, money was out and my colonies went bankrupt. Another thing I have a rough clue why it happened, but never figured out to come accoss it.
So these things make moo3 pretty much unplayable. Not sure if there are mods fixing this, but I haven't heard of them.

Recently, I tried Armada 2526. Not a good game either. The graphics of the ships aren't that bad, but I'm not a fetishist either. The big problems are, that the interface is so monotonous and un-intuitive. That is really a problem for people who have problems with their eyes. I mean that serious, man. Also, space combats were redicolous and boring. Colony management was boring also, no real terraforming. Map was bad also as it isn't possible to see your planets, only kind of icons. Research was also boring. Really, I don't need thousands of technologies. I'd prefer it if there would be less, but more important technologies that can be introduced rather quick. For example new weapons your already built ships can be equiped with quickly giving you an advance over your enemy. Also, Armadas races were rather boring., they were all bla-bla.

Besides of the tech thing, I think that the count of colonies you found should be rather limited. Have less colonies, but more important ones. If you can't remember where a certain colony is located on the map, you know there are too much colonies. It's even worse, if you can't remember the colonies name. This would avoid overly boring micromanaging as there are not that much planets to give orders to. MOO2 basically fulfilled this, although the game was over too soon IMO. On the rather hard modes, you'd need to research quite quickly to not get outdated. I also liked to deport conquered peoples to toxic planets when their home planet was rich and large Also, I'd like to have the game a bit more 'dark'. The Ithkul were the only good change of moo3. Kind of a dark menace that threatened the whole galaxy, that you couldn't negotiate with. Well, that could be a feature that could be switched off if players don't like this feature. In any case, there should be ugly races, so that the comic isn't just a comic.

 

[Cmcastl]

You are never going to get the perfect space strategy game like you are probably never going to marry the perfect partner. But the modded MOO3 was a vast improvement on what was originally issued, thanks to all who participated in improving it, and is not bad in comparison with later space straegy games.

Live long and prosper.

 

[vmxa]

Compared to what it was and what was made at the time Moo3 is just fair. It was horrid compared to most anything wihtout all the mods.

 

[Cmcastl]

The basic problem is that there are more "sensation" types out there for "shoot-em-up" games than cerebral types who like strategy games, whether earthbound or galactic. The market accordingly responds. We should be grateful, and I am grateful, for what we strategy types have.

Live long and prosper.

PS. I did try a few "shoot-em-up games" and I was hopeless at them! I felt a nervous wreck after ten minutes though maybe that reflects my age as well as my inclination!

 

[RaiddinnRZ]

If I were going to make the next 4x game, I would base it off Orion1.

Once I made a perfect clone of Orion 1, I would start adding the good parts of other games that have been released since then.

More races like in Orion 2. Race creator like Orion 2. Things like that.

I would keep everything the same that just got more annoying with the expansions. No splitting a 1000 ship stack into 1000 individual ships like in Orion 2, for instance. No planetary suckeroys. No having to continually set a build list for every planet and no having to opt in per planet for things you want everywhere like, for example, mining and research buildings in Orion 2.

Really, the game should be quite minimilist and very abstracted. CEOs don't get heavily involved with the granular aspects of assembly lines, for instance, they have middle managers for that and there is really no benefit to a CEO to micromanage at that level.

Orion 1 did this very well. You split each planet's production among 5 slider bars and that's it. Let the people at the next level below you (the COOs, for instance) manage the details.

The emperor in a 4x game should be worried about big picture decisions about 2/3 of the time and about 1/3 of the time small decisions. Maybe 3/4 and 1/4.

I would put a lot of bonuses in the game for leaving stuff just like it is that goes away for a few turns if people change settings.

Raid

 

[vmxa]

Stars had a method, where you could make queue list. Then each new planet you would pick one and that would set all the std builds like mines and factories.

I would not like to have them remove all hands on stuff though as then you are just a live AI doing what the AI would. The trick is to give us something meaningful to do and yet not bore you.

 

[RaiddinnRZ]

Maybe I am in the minority on this point, but I never felt like I was an AI when I was playing Orion 1.

Orion 3 was much more like this when you can just hit OK OK OK like 300 times and win the game.

5 choices per planet plus a couple different choices per research field, plus a couple different choices per AI leads to pretty infinite permutations, but there is still enough redundancy in the game that the game pretty much flows the same from beginning to end.

If there are going to be more clicks required, they should add meaningful gameplay depth.

Most clicks in most post Orion 1 4x games I have played just aren't like that in my experience.

Also, to add to my previous comment, redundant tech trees are a must in a 4x game. Again Orion 1 succeeded on this point whereas Orion 2 failed miserably at it.

In Orion 1, you could get by without waste 80 because you probably have 3 for 1 elimination which will allow you to do OK until you can skip to waste 60 and vice versa. You can skip +10 terraforming and later get +20 and not be too penalized. You could get controlled Radiated and still be able to land on Toxic planets.

In Orion 2, if you miss something early like the + ship space tech early, you might be without anything similar for the entire game, because you can't go back and research prior techs and there may be nothing else in the game that is remotely like that.

For games to, for lack of a better word... flow, there needs to be quite a bit of homogeneity, imho.

I do kinda like the star lanes concept of Orion 3, where you can create galactic choke points, but in the ideal 4x game you would need to make those choke points meaningful, IE the enemy can't just skip right past your blockade.

Raid

 

[Zeraan]

If I were going to make the next 4x game, I would base it off Orion1.

Once I made a perfect clone of Orion 1, I would start adding the good parts of other games that have been released since then.

More races like in Orion 2. Race creator like Orion 2. Things like that.

I would keep everything the same that just got more annoying with the expansions. No splitting a 1000 ship stack into 1000 individual ships like in Orion 2, for instance. No planetary suckeroys. No having to continually set a build list for every planet and no having to opt in per planet for things you want everywhere like, for example, mining and research buildings in Orion 2.

Really, the game should be quite minimilist and very abstracted. CEOs don't get heavily involved with the granular aspects of assembly lines, for instance, they have middle managers for that and there is really no benefit to a CEO to micromanage at that level.

Orion 1 did this very well. You split each planet's production among 5 slider bars and that's it. Let the people at the next level below you (the COOs, for instance) manage the details.

The emperor in a 4x game should be worried about big picture decisions about 2/3 of the time and about 1/3 of the time small decisions. Maybe 3/4 and 1/4.

I would put a lot of bonuses in the game for leaving stuff just like it is that goes away for a few turns if people change settings.

Raid

You might want to check out the game I'm working on, Beyond Beyaan. It's based off of MoO 1, but with good stuff from MoO 2 and MoO 3 thrown in. There's still some placeholder art, but the game is functional.

I'm in middle of overhauling the technology system, then I will add space combat. It will be similar to MoO 1, with stacked ships and turn-based combat.

A screenshot of the game:

 

[plasmacannon]

I am definitely in the NO Starlanes camp.
Ther are no lines in space right now? So why add these artificial choke points into the game?
This was the first thing that killed MOO3 for me.
It did seem to turn into a click fest and ground combat didn't improve enough on MOO2.
MOO2's GC worked for the smaller maps and weekend long LAN games.
MOO3's GC didn't seem too interactive. I guess, I expected an upgrade to something Starcraft-like at the time, and was sadly dissapointed.

The main thing is options.
Options to turn things off or on, like in Civ4. The Empire Earth AoC civ creation tool in the beginning was decient too.

 

[jamotide]

Stardock hah, I would not expect that Moo4 to be any good. The only chance for a good Moo4 I see is either Stephen Barcia returning for it or 1ccompany have one of their developer studios craft some sort of Kings Bounty style remake, which would mean Moo2 with new graphics and some enhancements.
Aside from these two possibilities I see only dumbed down 3d Moo4 with nice looking space battles.

 

[Aroddo]

Stardock spells disaster for ANY franchise they touch!
... apart from Windows Blinds.

 

[Huascar]

(Long time without posting here, but always reading these long term threads)

I do kinda like the star lanes concept of Orion 3, where you can create galactic choke points, but in the ideal 4x game you would need to make those choke points meaningful, IE the enemy can't just skip right past your blockade.
Raid

Although MOO4 could do even with research trees that let you either "use" starlanes or a "hyperspace" engine. However I think that the choke points idea was carried in a rather interesting way by the 4x underdog: BOTF.

In BOTF, not just planets but "empty" sectors were accesible for fleets and combat. One could create deep space stations to extend range and such. The BOTF choke points were set as the "intercept" mission of one or more fleets in a sector. Thus, if the fleets were fast enough, they could intercept any incoming enemy fleet sectors away, thus creating a bottleneck while keeping the front.

MOO4 would be a highly customizable game, scriptable if possible, where the features of the greatest 4x games would be implemented, as outlined by the previous post on this thread.

 

[Rvlion]

I have been a long term fan of the space strategy games.

Stars!...
I remember downloading the demo of this game with a 14.4k modem (spend 15 minutes downloading, my parents would probably have been happy with me when they got the phone bill... ), loved the fact that you also had a species that would not inhabit planets, but could only survive on space stations.

MoO...
I like for being the first graphicly good looking strategic space game I ever played and have played it a lot before I got MoO 2.
I like for having a funny research tree...
I dislike for having to colonize systems and not planets. Which makes it a bit too strategic for me
I dislike for having a faulty AI... This is so bad that when you have an ally it would continiously send troops to one of your systems up to the point of having 10.000 ships belonging to that ally in my solar system.

MoO 2...
I like for being able to actually being able to build structures (those percentage bars I hated in MoO 1).
I dislike about the game is that I can finish a "huge" galaxy in less then 2 hours with every race dead, Orion is mine and I have farmed the Antaran Dimension countless times to keep their numbers low. Even finished the game once with all research done except for the weapons tree... Leaving me with only Gauss cannons on my ships (on easy of course ).

MoO 3...
I only play with the geneticly mutated Parasites considering I like the whole non-trading and non-diplomacy and just love the fact that they tend to randomly spread to worlds I do not yet inhabit. This game has many good and loads of bad things going for it. This game has suffered the same fait as Gothic 4 after Gothic 1,2 and the already weaker Gothic 3. Compared to the previous games it can be fun, but it is a slap in the face for the fans of the franchise.
I like the Space lanes only (btw this is not entirely true, flight is possible without space lanes only it would take 60-90 turns instead of 5-10 in most cases.
I like the fact that it takes a while to actually finish the game.
I like the fact that space combat looks a lot more dashing then MoO 2. Which was more practical, but the formation of fleets and the requirement of having scouts to travel with larger fleets makes for a more realistic game.
I like the new Orion Counsil with the items you can vote on concerning laws who must be followed by all who entered the counsil. Although I find the bug allowing me as Parasite to suddenly joining the counsel halveway through the game and due to my empires size actually become ruler instead of the New Orion's (Antaran survivors) a bit strange. This happened to me many times, while not really shocking it is just weird considering I am a absolute diplomatic no-go.
I dislike the vague research tree
I dislike the constant "we are at war" communications while playing the parasites... Not once, but dozens of times each followed by a "we are at peace now" communication until it start all over again.
I dislike the constant need to manually kill every living thing that enters my systems. A system allowing me to chose which races and empires are friendly and all others to be killed on sight (without any mention of it happening except on the Turn Summary would be a lot less annoying. It was a saddening standard that I had at least 6 attacks each turn by the time I had a large enough empire. While each attack would be a minor battlefleet (compared to my 100 years more advanced Armada's) or a colony ship trying to slip past my defences.

BoTF...
Not sure how many people actually like this game, but from the first moment I started playing up to the moment I actually threw it away with the garbage there were so many things I hated about it...
My biggest hate point has to be Colony development, which was so extremely slow that in some cases when I was lucky I had many races join me and spend several hours developing newly colonized worlds and in the end I had dreadnoughts flying about build on planets belonging to the "joined" races and still the new worlds were developing and were maybe at 40-50 percent of what the Vulcan world would be.
My second biggest hatepoint was that it did not matter if I played Klingons, Feds or Romulans... The moment that the Ferengi found me I was at war. All races I was able to make and keep peace with except the Ferengi. In the end it annoyed me so that I started over the moment I discovered that the Ferengi were directly at my border (and I was not yet strong enough to annihilate them).
My biggest like point except for it being a Star Trek game would be that I had to build LOADS of D'deridex ships just in case a Borg Cube would visit my worlds. Nothing more fun then seeing at least 20 D'deridex warbirds ramming a Borg Cube in order to destroy it (never managed it with regular attacks back in the day). Ow jeah and you probably understand despite of me playing Feds and Klingons from time to time I preferred the Romulans.

The thing I would love to see in a MoO 4 would actually be a mixture of many games.
- The Star Lanes from MoO 3
- The research tree from MoO 1 or 2
- The Orion Counsil from MoO 3
- The ability to build space stations not only at the planets for defense, but also at the actual wormholes used as space lanes (perhaps also in combination to mine fields).
- The ability to choose which weapons you want on the Beam base AND space stations that you build. The point defense weapons who were fitted on the Beam bases of MoO 2 always annoyed me, completely useless. A few more Mauler devices would have been a lot more useful and the same can be said for the space stations... I don't need point defense weapons or projectile weapons like missiles. Just give me a space station with 1 or 2 Stellar Converters and I am a lot more happy.
- The planetary building system like it was on MoO 2... While the zoned areas did give an additional twist to the game it also seemed to make the game a lot more complicated.
- Considering MoO 3 still had small hidden pockets of Alkari, Bulrathi, Darlok and Mrrshan survivors, give them back their homeworlds and give us not only the Antarans to play with, but for those who read the story in the MoO3 manual the Orion sector has more enemies like the race who created the Evon, but also all the aliens that were cast out like criminals long before the Orions and Antarans had to flee their initial home due too the sun going super nova I believe.
- Allow for complete and total terraforming of ALL worlds, disliked the fact that with MoO 2 I never was able to terraform Toxic worlds, those yellow'ish brown planets have always been and will always remain a terrible eye sore...

Most things I personally think can be copies from MoO 3, despite its bugs it was still a good game.

 

[peddroelm]

...
Most things I personally think can be copies from MoO 3, despite its bugs it was still a good game...

Absolutely loved it - one of my favorite games of all time. And it only achieved little of its potential because it was unfinished(far from), bug ridden , undocumented and suffered from an un-ergonomic interface ...

 

[vmxa]

The biggest pain for me in III is how hard it is to snuff a planet. It needed some nice bombs like Moo1 or even like Stars. I got back to a game I started months ago, just this week. I just love the combat with lots of fighters swarming.

Especially when I jump on a guardian and see this mass of tiny fighters rip him up. I use the Strawberry mod, with a few other tweaks.

 

[scratchthepitch]

I found the ship combat in MOO3 to be pretty lame. Some nice concepts in the design of it, but in practice the mechanics are clunky and unresponsive. It felt like some kid's console game.