[MoO] Master or Orion 4

[namad]

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.

I guess I never really found it to be an issue that took that long, dozens of turns? maybe if you are "glassing" an entire system full of colonies, but surely not for just one. Early on using troops makes sense because you want more planets, and later on your weapons are stronger and they do in fact glass a planet faster. Really though that's part of the reason why moo3 was a failure from a business standpoint, it's a very very slow paced game by comparison to things like SEIV, moo2, sots1

 

[vmxa]

I tried a lot of designs and even with 6-9 armadas I could not glass a planet in short order. Often you get down to that less than a full pop and take many more turns. If you have a design that works let me know as no one ever came up with one on the old Atari board.

This is the only space tbs I have tried that I could not find a method of taking down the planet in one turn. Worse is that many occupied planet are not suitable for your race.

 

[QuixotesGhost]

I just comment on Brad Wardell's quote in the OP. He disparages MOO3 for making changes to the core design, while neglecting to mention that MOO2 made SOOOOO many changes to MOO1.

- Handful of ships as opposed armadas
- Exclusive tech that locked you out of other choices
- Fighters and boarding actions
- Custom races
- Experience
- Control of individual citizens
- Facilities
- The ability to colonize any planet type without tech
- Food and freighters
- Leaders
- Revamped espionage
ect. ect. ect

If we want to talk about "artistic faithfulness" I view MOO3 as being more faithful to the original design and scope to MOO1 than MOO2 was. A lot of things were bungled, but from a pure design standpoint MOO3 was more faithful to MOO 1 than MOO2 was.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Currently (IMO) the most promising hope for a new 4X game not deviating too much from MoO2:

http://starlords-game.com/main/

 

[scratchthepitch]

Currently (IMO) the most promising hope for a new 4X game not deviating too much from MoO2:

http://starlords-game.com/main/

This is what I found there:

Your website has been suspended!

The web hosting account that hosts this website has been blocked due to high bandwidth usage!

If you are the owner of this website, please login to your hosting Control Panel and order additional traffic quota.

If you are a visitor to this website, please access this page later.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Weird. Works now again. I will ask overthere, if the problem is known... Thanks for hinting!

 

[asu]

There is a new project at IndieGoGo to remake this (and to save other titles from their bankruptcy auction as well). more info can be found on the SaveAtari site.

SaveAtari project to save and open-source a number of titles:
http://www.saveatari.com

Master of Orion franchise page:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/atari-reboot-master-of-orion-4

Broader project to save a number of titles:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/atari-reboot-saving-the-atari-vault

 

[Melo-Franco]

MOO4 is my wet dream.

 

[OrionStyles]

Wargaming.net has Master of Orion IP now.

Hopefully we see Master of Orion: Battle at Antares II instead of Master of Orion IV.

 

[vmxa]

They do not mention it on their site. I know that someone bought the rights recently, forgot who.

 

[marc420]

Arrgh, great, another lousy Stardock game. Just what the universe needed. The very first press release got it wrong from the beginning. MOO3 was almost a brilliant game. The designers had the right idea. But obviously the marketing suits disagreed and from that fundamental flaw, the project fell apart and a half-finished hacked-up game at release time was the result. The 'community', working for free of course, almost made a working version of the mess.

So, now the people who make those silly GalCiv games are going to come at it the wrong way trying to repeat the game that's already been made. Kinda leaves the question as to why not just fire up MOO2 and play that if that's what they want.

Arrgh. Sounds like the perfect setup for yet another lousy 4x game that misses the mark.

 

[marc420]

I keep waiting for a game to understand that I'm playing the role of a fleet admiral directing an empire. I'm not friggin Capt. Kirk telling my ship when to fire phasers.

Tactical combat screws up most 4x games for several reasons
1) usually there's not a decent tactical AI. Thus, game balance goes out the window because no matter what strategic mistakes you've made, you can still beat the lousy tactical AI and win the battle.
2) usually, the game fails to tie tactical combat to the strategic choices. Ie, if I'm playing a strategic game, I want the battle resolution to a) honor the strategic decisions I've made and use them, and b) give me enough feedback so I can understand what happened and make future strategic decisions.
3) Often this goes back to bad tactical combat designs. For instance, I tried playing one game where a battle always starts at long range, then always move to medium range, then always moves to short range. So, even if I design faster ships and long range weapons, I still end up fighting at short range. Bad tactical battle design completely defeats strategic decisions.
4) How many 4x games have you seen where you can't go back to find anything about the battles? A battle occurs. A bad tactical combat screen appears. Then the battle is over. Suddenly, the navy has just forgotten everything. As fleet admiral, you remember seeing a battle. But when you try to ask the whole friggin Navy, there's no one else who even knows the battle occurred. There's no reports. There's no analysis. Just poof, now its gone. Other than the missing ships, you'd never know it occurred. What enemy ship designs did you just fight? No one knows. So, watch close when the screens up, because that's the only chance you've got to know what happened in that battle.

In most strategic games, I turn off tactical battle resolution if I can. Usually for reason 1, because it tends to unbalance the game and make the bad AIs that every game company ignores in favor of glitzy graphics be even more disadvantaged. And because it goes against everything to do with the game ... I'm not friggin captain kirk, no matter how many star trek mods are made. There are other games if I want to command the Enterprise in battle. In a 4x game, I want to build an empire instead.

 

[Aroddo]

Try Gratuitous Space Battles then.
The only command you can give during battle is "Retreat!".

 

[vmxa]

#3 sounds like Endless Space.
#4 Space Empires 4 had a combat sim, where you could design a ship and battle any known ships.

 

[PhilBowles]

I keep waiting for a game to understand that I'm playing the role of a fleet admiral directing an empire.

Actually, that's what most modern space 4xes do ... and precisely where they go wrong. Partly this is because they're wedded to MOO's heritage, and the tactical combat was the core part of MOO that differentiated it from other 4xes. This prompts them to add ship design - because it was one of MOO's most beloved features - but remove the tactical combat that makes those designs meaningful. The results tend to be clunky make-work in a game system where your customisation choices are straight + modifier upgrades that could be handled better as fixed units or Sins-type universal tech upgrades (such as the Endless Space system, or in a different kind of space 4x Alpha Centauri's unit workshop).

Tactical combat screws up most 4x games for several reasons
1) usually there's not a decent tactical AI. Thus, game balance goes out the window because no matter what strategic mistakes you've made, you can still beat the lousy tactical AI and win the battle.

True enough. As space 4xes are almost invariably more combat-focused than games like Civ - another MOO legacy - this does become a problem. I loved MOO and MOO2 for the tactical combat and unit design alike, but the unit design was all too easy to exploit to produce designs that took advantage of AI weakness, and its combat sequences predictable.

Distant Worlds has a good approach, as a game that gives some meaning to its overly involved unit design system without player-controlled tactical combat. But it's too MOO 3 in design for hardcore MOO fans looking for micromanagement; it's not quite - as one review I recall of MOO 3 memorably said - a game that plays itself, but there's very little to micromanage even if you want to.

 

[JosEPh_II]

<snip> The 'community', working for free of course, almost made a working version of the mess.

<snip>

Actually "we" Did make several working versions, most based off of Bhruic's MoOIII Patcher and patches.

But too many "players" who denigrated the game never saw that work. They were too busy bashing it any time, any place they could.

JosEPh (Keeper of the Roll Call @ now defunct AtmoO forums)

 

[vmxa]

Hey JosEph, have you tried Distant Worlds Universe? It is rts, who knew that would be fun, lol. The current owners of Moo3 should patch the game up to Strawberry for distribution. It has enough stuff to make it solid and not that many changes.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Though it hasn't been very well preceived by the press, I think Horizon still has some promise, as the developers are still patching it since release. It is 4X game closest to MoO2 I have seen so far and this week you can get it quite cheap (less then 12&#8364 on Steam!

http://www.horizongame.com/

 

[neilkaz]

Horizon sounds like it's lots like MOO2. http://horizon.gamepedia.com/Horizon_Wiki

Some reviews aren't great and I think I'll wait for some more patches from the devs and the next steam sale since it is back to 30 bucks cost.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[Rocco.40]

Here comes Master of Orion 4:


Wargaming - Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars

First news on Polygon