[MoO] Master or Orion 4

[Antilogic]

MoO3, with the mass of Bhruic patches, is actually playable and kind of good. I would have dropped the space lanes myself, but giving players the option to research different types of FTL drives is interesting. Sword of the Stars does that, and from what little I've played it kind of works.

I never played MoO2 much, but was a huge fan of the original. I'd look for something like the original, with loads of flexibility in ship customization including other vitals like life support, etc. like in MoO3. Something more flexible than the 3-part command-mission-propulsion modules used in Sword of the Stars, but that could be used as a jumping off point.

 

[scratchthepitch]

There was considerably more ways to customize ships in MOO2 over the original. The game in many ways was centered around this ability to customize ships and use them in many different ways. Much of this was lost in MOO3, with their reversion to a more simplistic auto resolution of combat. The complicated aspects of MOO2 ship combat using specialty weaponry and ship components were simply left out of the new version. These are what made the ship combat interesting. This is unfortunate, because MOO3 introduced some needed changes to ship combat. Such as organized fleets that fought as a single group with specific roles for the fleets, and for the ship types inside them supporting and defending the fleets. Also, using weapon range more, along with more variety of sizes (but the way they did the sizes was lame - spindle weapons for example).

 

[Antilogic]

There was considerably more ways to customize ships in MOO2 over the original. The game in many ways was centered around this ability to customize ships and use them in many different ways. Much of this was lost in MOO3, with their reversion to a more simplistic auto resolution of combat. The complicated aspects of MOO2 ship combat using specialty weaponry and ship components were simply left out of the new version. These are what made the ship combat interesting. This is unfortunate, because MOO3 introduced some needed changes to ship combat. Such as organized fleets that fought as a single group with specific roles for the fleets, and for the ship types inside them supporting and defending the fleets. Also, using weapon range more, along with more variety of sizes (but the way they did the sizes was lame - spindle weapons for example).

I vaguely remember much smaller fleets and ship specialization in MoO2, but not much more. Still turn-by-turn resolution.

As far as combat goes, direct tactical control that is not sucky is hard to fit into a game where we are looking for a bunch of detail on the empire-wide level. I have always felt that the giant 4x space conquest games are designed for turn-based resolution, so I don't like too many RTS elements in the gameplay.

Then I think about how unenjoyable the BotF battles were...

 

[vmxa]

The battles in BotF did suck, but I did enjoy some of the action. Just not the not being in control part. I think it was the first time I saw a multiship engagement.

 

[zilfondel]

I think Sword of the stars is MoO 4.

This is the same conclusion I've come to.

A long time ago, I used to be an avid 4x gamer. Civ, MOO... then I bought MOO3 with heavy anticipation, 8 years ago. This changed my life, and heavily I became disenfranchised with gaming, until I discovered nirvana with the Totalwar series (and civ4).

I had given up on 4x games in space, but a few weeks ago stumbled across SOTS1 on Steam for sale for $5. I downloaded the demo and immediately bought the game on sale - and have been completely blown away by a very mature game that combined the simplicity of MOO1 strategy and colony development (single-level interface design) with a randomized, race-specific tech tree (just like MOO1) and real-time ship battles (similar to Homeworld, one of the best space games, period).

The whole package is very much like one of the Totalwar games, and has a heck of a lot of depth and nuances - including racial backstories and detailed tech descriptions on the wiki. Also, it should be noted that the AI in Sword of the Stars is VERY good. And it doesn't seem to cheat. Definitely giving me a run for my money on my first few games, on easy/normal difficulty. That was actually the most impressive aspect of the game; not the technology descriptions (check), fancy ships (check), incredible graphics in battles (check), ease of control over strategy, but the challenge the game gives in trying to win.

Plus, 350-star maps.


Oh, and dont buy SOTS2, its bugged like MOO3 was.

 

[zilfondel]

The perfect space strategy game can be easily defined but it is probably almost impossible to develop except with a lot of time, money and inspiration.

Like I said, the game for which we are all looking, like some gaming Holy Grail, would be easy to define and to recognise...

Its funny, but I think that this is actually an impossibility - that setting our standards so high makes it not only virtually an impossibility that someone will ever develop a game to meet our highest standards (and just as unlikely that many people will be looking for the same thing in a game), but that our very psychology as a people makes what we seek something impossible to ever actually meet.

Its like the idea of pain and suffering being an integral part of defines the human condition, or the fact that young, beautiful rich people can be depressed. The grass is always greener on the other side, I guess.

I think that I've found some peace by accepting the limitations of what is within the realm of possiblility and that my imagination can only be satisfied by a good book.

 

[Antilogic]

My problem with SotS is that I play it like MoO--rapid early expansion, leads to far too many colonies in indefensible positions, can't build up bases quickly enough. Massive death AI fleets, well over any reasonable command limit, sit over their homeworlds and then pick off my colonies. And without really hardcore detection and fast ships, there's no way to intercept them with a mobile force early game.

 

[Zed-F]

I've found it entirely possible to defend early aggressive growth, providing you are reasonably proactive about building up your navy at the same time. You can't afford to sit around waiting for the perfect technology combination with which to build defenses in the early game. Instead you have to pick which technologies you research carefully so as to maximize the bang for your limited research dollars. I have a quite a few TARs (game writeups) over at the Kerberos forums, and a couple at the RB forums, where I give examples of rapid empire growth in SotS1, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

As far as SotS2 goes... it's certainly not ready yet. But Kerberos is in it for the long haul so I'm confident it will eventually be polished up to the level SotS1 is at. I've been tossing my hat in the ring for Christmas as when I am expecting SotS2 to be in a fairly solid state, though still with a lot of tweaking and fine-tuning to do. But if you want a game as polished as SotS1, bear in mind that SotS1 has something like 5-6 years of development behind it now. It will take a while for SotS2 to measure up to that standard.

 

[zilfondel]

I'd like to throw in the ring that I used to dream of a successor to MOO3, and that the single worst flaw in that game was the user interface. If the user interface was much cleaner and information-dense, I may have actually played it to a decent extent to realize the AI bugs.

Thinking about it, you could probably remake a MOO game in a web browser, since they are mostly a bunch of interface screens and little in the way of 3d graphics (and even those can be rendered in a window'd web browser). Until the browser tech changed and you could no longer run it, I guess.

Just a thought.

 

[namad]

speaking of successors.... this mod is like a whole new game, really! I remember playing it a long time ago, but I can't find any of the files on my computer, as I think I uninstalled it years ago, and must've deleted the zip/rar

I'm really interested in this mod, I'd love to try it again: http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=538340
www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=538340

however none of the links in that old thread are valid! does anyone here happen to have any of those files? and could re-upload them? I'd love to play chocolate/pumpkin/boysenberry/apricot whatever pedxing happened to be calling it at the time... it's really the newest and most advanced moo3 mod out there, so new and so advanced that it was still in beta when the moo3 scene started dying out... and well as a result... it's not up on sites like moo3.at which by the way is a great place to get vanilla or strawberry


P.S. the atari forums are a peice of junk..apparently you can't post on the old forums at all, and I tried to register for the new forums but failed... so anyways...

 

[vmxa]

The old Atari was closed a feww years ago. The new board has a problem with signing in, it does not seem to retain the login and you have to sign in each time. Joseph may have the stuff as he reposted much of the stuff off the old board.

He still stops by from time to time. I could not find any of the old files new locations, but I am pretty sure it was moved.

 

[vmxa]

http://www.moo3.at/mods/

Not to be too harsh, but a simple Google search found this site that has the mods and Tropical is there. 25 megs of it.

 

[namad]

http://www.moo3.at/mods/

Not to be too harsh, but a simple Google search found this site that has the mods and Tropical is there. 25 megs of it.

yeah... I dunno if you read what I wrote, or if this reply was to me.. but I actually included www.moo3.at in my post... (I wrote it as moo3.at though so the autotagging system didn't pick it up)


I knew about it... it's missing the newest flavor mod, which was in beta at the community died. called either pumpkin chocolate boysenberry or apricot (the name kept changing during development) that mod developed by pedxing is not found on www.moo3.at it's far harder to google up, so much so that I couldn't find a copy of the files to download at all. it is nice that there is still a place for vanilla strawberry and tropical though.

just to repeat my question... does anyone have the files or know where to find the files for this mod http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=538340 www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=538340 also note this mod is a few years newer than tropical and is radically different from topical in many ways.

 

[scratchthepitch]

namad

I cant tell what mod the Atari link you provided is for since it only lists the front page. I'm not sure which mod you are looking for. Tropical and Strawberry are mods by different people and very different from each other. I've been out of the loop for several years, but the last info I had indicated the guy who made Tropical had to quit development for personal reasons, while the woman who developed Strawberry seemed to have also quit the game.

You probably have tried the following sites, but I'll post them in case you have not and they might help you find what you are looking for:

http://bhruic.dyndns.org/patcher/index.php

http://www.orionsector.com/pages/index.php?sel=features&sub=MOO3

The Strawberry developer was running this site for a while http://www.moo3.at/moo2/files.php

This is their forum, you might find help there http://www.moo3.at/board/

And this is a list of the mods, Strawberry is listed http://www.moo3.at/mods/

I don't know of a later version of that mod.

For Tropical, a guy called danib was continuing the original developer's work for a while, but I don't know how far he got. You might be able to find out more here http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=517077&page=36

That's about all I can think of that might help right now.

 

[namad]

namad

I cant tell what mod the Atari link you provided is for since it only lists the front page. I'm not sure which mod you are looking for. Tropical and Strawberry are mods by different people and very different from each other. I've been out of the loop for several years, but the last info I had indicated the guy who made Tropical had to quit development for personal reasons, while the woman who developed Strawberry seemed to have also quit the game.

You probably have tried the following sites, but I'll post them in case you have not and they might help you find what you are looking for:

http://bhruic.dyndns.org/patcher/index.php

http://www.orionsector.com/pages/index.php?sel=features&sub=MOO3

The Strawberry developer was running this site for a while http://www.moo3.at/moo2/files.php

This is their forum, you might find help there http://www.moo3.at/board/

And this is a list of the mods, Strawberry is listed http://www.moo3.at/mods/

I don't know of a later version of that mod.

For Tropical, a guy called danib was continuing the original developer's work for a while, but I don't know how far he got. You might be able to find out more here http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=517077&page=36

That's about all I can think of that might help right now.

I don't know how I can be more clear... it's called pumpkin or chocolate or boysenberry or apricot, it is NOT tropical, NOR strawberry, it is 1-3yrs more advanced than even tropical... (yeah that one broken link I had in my post definitely was confusing sorry)


this is the link http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=538340 it seems this forum is editing my link for being too long so... the key part is that it is php?t=538340 and it's on this forum http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums


the author is pedxing, and the mod isn't hosted on any of the sites you've linked. I'll try and edit my previous posts to fix the url (EDIT: turns out my original post the url worked fine, but when I copied the url to my 2nd post I did it wrong... I copied from my post instead of quoting it, so I got an abbreviated and fake link.. I've edited my posts so every link should work.)

oh also the thread title is this: MUU:BaA! (Meta-Unofficial UOP: Boysenberry and Apricot)

as far as I can recall it was called chocolate during beta, then he did a release candidate beta 0.99 thingie around halloween or thanksgiving in 2009 or 2008 and then called it pumpkin (or maybe vica versa) then for the final release he decided to call it boysenberry and apricot... honestly all these names were a big mistake, if he/she had kept one consistent name throughout development it would've been easier to try googling up the files

basically, vanilla strawberry and tropical are awesome, but now that the scene is basically dead, it'd be a shame for those 3mods to go down in history as the big 3flavors, with chocolate/apricot/etc going totally forgotten despite it's advanced features! it features a no-colonization early gamephase, it features auto migration to settle new colonies without colony ships early game... it features some late game techs designed to gut- and retrofit the AI empires... one feature of original, vanilla, strawberry, and tropical is that later in the game the AI doesn't ever destroy and rebuild it's DEA's leaving it with a disproportionate economy, and a large fleet, sometimes bankrupting them and taking them apart... also I believe chocolate pushes outposts back in the tech tree (or removes them I forget which), which is a key feature to balance. The ai literally cannot and willnot use outposts, which means giving them to players gives players an unfair advantage which then forces players to turn up how much the AI cheats... so yeah.. chocolate was a fundamental gameplay shift in many ways, it's still a bit buggy, some of the retrofit lategame economy change tech's were slightly misbalanced and instead of fixing a broken AI empire, sometimes killed that same empire off instead. then again, I may have only ever played the mod in beta as chocolate, the apricot/boysenberry release might be less buggy! which is why I am so desperate to find it~! (also I've lost the files for the beta so even those would be welcomed.)

sorry for rambling so much guys, but this is pretty important to me, people not ever having known this mod, it's the newest and most advanced flavor from the atari forums, instead of just tweaking a few things it actually tries to address some of the fundamental problems that made moo3 the least popular moo.



oh also... this link you gave me http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=517077&page=36 on page 35/36 those people are discussing "choc". "choc" refers to chocolate, which is the mod I am referring to... so as recently as 2010 someone was interested in it! it's a shame however that those people are discussing how the author of the mod bailed. I guess since after colt and pedxing quit the scene danib took over tropical, that makes tropical the newest most recently upgraded flavor, but "choc" is still the newest flavor to get created and added! "choc" is so new that it wasn't able to make it onto moo3.at (before moo3.at stopped being regularly moderated and updated). Still it is encouraging to know that joesph and danib were BOTH still interested and excited in this mod in 2010. Maybe one of them still has a copy of it, although with the atari forums closed to all new posts, I'm not exactly sure how to ask them!

 

[namad]

it looks like this is the beta/release candidate, possibly not the latest version ever made, but on danib's forum account on atari.com's new forums he has a signature with a link to the mod, although it's untitled..


http://www.mediafire.com/?5ufitu7mrrq
http://www.mediafire.com/?u6jr6e037dv5ns6

not sure if the updated autobuild is just his personal pet project, or if that's from pedxing as well. anyways, I wouldn't've been able to find this file without you guys, without you guys telling me to look into danib! I was planning to just flat out private message danib and ask him about it, when I saw the file on his profile! so thanks guys!

looks like this is likely the lastest version, and it's from February 2008... so mystery solved! shame about pedxing vanishing, but given how atari ruined their forums, it's not a surprise.

 

[scratchthepitch]

I never got all those different mod names straight or knew the sequence of development. I only tried Tropical and Strawberry and since they seemed to be the only ones being worked on I thought they were probably the latest versions. It was probably back around 2009 when I talked with Danib about a problem I found in Tropical and that was the last time I played the game. There was only a few people posting about the game then. Glad you were able to find the mod you were looking for, namad.

 

[vmxa]

Just fyi I have not run into any problems using Strawberry. I am not sure, but Boysenberry was the last one I remember. I never tried any other than Strawberry as it worked with the 1024 mod.

I modified a few of things I disliked and was able to get in some fun. Still like the big space battles. The biggest issue for me is how long it takes me to dust a planet. That makes the game drag out for a long time, if you go for conquest.

 

[namad]

Just fyi I have not run into any problems using Strawberry. I am not sure, but Boysenberry was the last one I remember. I never tried any other than Strawberry as it worked with the 1024 mod.

I modified a few of things I disliked and was able to get in some fun. Still like the big space battles. The biggest issue for me is how long it takes me to dust a planet. That makes the game drag out for a long time, if you go for conquest.

honestly I don't find that to be a big issue, it's singleplayer, if I conquer half the galaxy and get bored... I can just quit feeling like a winner, I don't actually have to waste my time conquesting if I don't want to! I don't really see that as a flaw in design, for me... a game doesn't need neat and tidy resolution, it's not like there's any plot spoilers or cutscenes to watch anyways, it's moo3! play the section of the game you like best! heck if you hated the early game you could always just run a game without a player, then take over for an ai, or use the built in feature to pre-play the first X turns... they didn't bother to put in a feature for warping past boring later game turns because, quitting the game and starting over is already a thing

to be honest despite playing dozens of times and for dozens of hours, I don't think I ever technically won! (same with sots1)

 

[vmxa]

Sitting on a planet for many turns while it slowing dies is not fun, early game or late game. I conquest maps on Moo3 compeletely many times and SoTS1 as well ( that was better at that),, becasue I want to kill every in all my games.

Else I would leave on win by 5X and be done with it. I do not mind the number of planets or the time to get to them all, I just hate that it take so many turns to kill one planet and they may have several planets.

My issue is the is no bombs to kill off a planet in a turn or tw o or even three. It can take dozens of turns, if you do not send troops to finish them once they get very low. What if I do not want that planet, hence I do not use troops and hence it takes way too long.