Moo 1

[Wisq]

First post here. Hi, everyone!

I recently rediscovered this fantastic game. I once played it when it was a more current thing, but I suspect I was too young to properly appreciate the strategy element, and was sucked away by glitzier games, not to return for over a decade.

I was particularly grateful for Sirian's MoO1 site, which granted much insight into the game. The tutorial gave me little tips I hadn't known or thought of. But the battle reports in particular helped me think in a more strategic sense and imagine the AI as real thinking creatures, rather than merely crunching numbers and trying to make those numbers bigger than the computer algorithms I was competing with.

I've recorded wins with all the races on "average", some fairly easily now. On the other hand, my one "hard" attempt (as Klackon, no less) ended in a diplomatic loss -- or should have ended there, since the ensuing Final War (against a massive Alkari empire with Psilons to feed them tech) quickly proved to be a futile gesture, and I retroactively conceded the diplomatic loss ("gave up"). But seeing as how I've had an unbroken winning streak on "average" since my first few recorded losses, I think it's time to move up anyway -- ready or not, sink or swim, etc.

I'm still mostly stuck in that "gather as much territory as possible without stepping on too many toes, fortify heavily, and research until you can effortlessly wipe out the enemy" camp. Early game skirmishes are still a bit beyond me.

The best I've done so far to break out of that was when, on a small map as Meklar, I got an extermination victory in 2588 using Megabolt Cannons and Nuclear Bombs to wipe out enemies whose missile bases couldn't even hurt my ships through their shields. (Amazing what Meklars can do from a single Ultra-Rich world.) I was set to do the same using Scatter Pack V in the next (small) game (Sakkra), and then everyone voted for me and it was over in 2500. But even there, I had a massive tech edge, and it was more a massacre than a skirmish.

But of course, there's one ultimate question nagging at me: Is anyone still playing this? I note the RBO games quietly ended over three months ago -- not even a "game cancelled due to lack of interest" post, but rather, no RBO9 thread started at all. And the most recent thread on the RBO board was started a month ago by a spambot.

Given that the game is some thirteen years old now, I'd hate to think I rediscovered MoO a mere few months too late to be a part of what looks like the last remaining active MoO community.

So... hi! Is there anybody out there?

 

[vmxa]

Yes some of us are around and still get in games. The problem with a new game is that they cannot figure out what to do that has not been done.

There have all of the games played on this site, so you can look back to read them.

 

[vmxa]

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=9

here is the site used to start new games.

 

[Wisq]

Good to hear! And yeah, that's the board I was referring to. It's even quieter than this one.

Regarding doing things that haven't been done... I see what you mean. Certainly it's hard to maintain interest when so many various variant rules have been tried, and vanilla games are over almost immediately. And the Imperiums seem to have fallen asleep, although there are plenty of reports to read.

I take it Civ4 was also a bit of a temporary MoO-killer? I don't run Windows, so I'm a bit cut off from the PC strategy genre, unfortunately. At least I have DOS...

Ah well. At least there are two forums with experienced MoO players where strategies can be shared and questions asked... even if they're pretty quiet right now.

 

[vmxa]

GalCiv2 is more likely to be played by the Moo players, but many play civ as well. Anyway if you have any questions, pop them up. I mostly play small maps, so I can get a game in in one day, but I squeeze in some with larger maps.

Sounds like you could do hard level now, try it with a strong race like the Klacs to make it an easier introduction.

 

[Wisq]

Actually, I just finished a medium-hard-five Darlok game. Went pretty well. Of course, at least some of that I owe to my fantastic starting position. Within three parsecs of my homeworld were an artifacts world, a fertile world, a radiated (35) rich world, and a poor world. (Can't win them all. ) Had a terran (100) world four parsecs from the artifacts.

Unfortunately, the Silicoids and Mrrshans quickly hemmed me in on both sides, and I spent much of the game with just those six worlds.

Nearly lost a vote, but the Psilons saved me, even though we were at "Discord". I guess they were more angry at the Silicoids than they were at me. (Gee, I wonder how that happened. )

By the next vote, I had cut through the Silicoids and Klackons and surgically seized every rich and ultra-rich world in their possession. By that time, the Bulrathi, Psilons, and Mrrshans were a little fed up with the spying antics of the Silicoid-Klackon alliance (hmmm ), and I was the hero of the day. 31/45 diplomatic victory in 2600.

I had a question, but now I can't remember it. Ah well, it'll come back to me later.

 

[vmxa]

Then go for an impossible in a medium map. Small maps are a real pain at impossible and the vote is ever present danger for some time.

 

[Wisq]

Great, done. Medium-impossible-five-Klackon-white. Extermination victory in 2710. Wiped out a dominant Darlok empire (who'd have thought?), then Alkari, then a one-planet Meklar empire (who had previously wiped out the Sakkra with my help), then a small Silicoid empire.

The Darlok were ahead of me for most of the game in production and technology, but they were fighting many wars while I was just blowing things up with missile bases. Naturally, they kept stealing tech even with security at maximum (where it stayed for most of the game). That finally changed when I out-researched them in computers; soon I was stealing their tech.

Had the domination victory presented to me but kept going because I was set to record an extermination victory as my first Impossible win.

This is the first game I've seen where I didn't get and couldn't steal any bombs after Fusion Bombs(!), nor did I get Mauler Devices, and Orion remained unclaimed (Death Ray). The Alkari were easy pickings, but for the rest of the races, I had to kill their missile bases with Neutron Stream Projectors (later Plasma Torpedoes), and I wasn't given the bombing option for the Meklars or the Silicoids. Fortunately, this lapse in technology also rendered me invincible for the majority of the game with minimal defensive spending.

Aha, I think that was that question I meant to ask. What causes the game to skip the "bomb enemy colony?" question? Is it when you can't do sufficient damage due to planetary shields? I know this was probably the case here. I assume I was able to bomb the Darloks because they had lesser planetary shields, but unable to take their MBs out because of the planetary shields plus deflector shields. But I know I've been in situations before where I was able to take out the MBs no problem, yet not allowed to bomb the colony.

Anyway, I'll definitely be trying more Hard and Impossible games soon. Fun stuff.

 

[vmxa]

I am not exactly sure, but I do see it from time to time. I sometimes will find I have no ships with bombs and tend to not make true bombers. I just fit 1 or 2 bombs onto my large ships to bust bases/shields. With a decent number of them, you usually get the job done.

I normally only make missile mediums ships or large beamers. Planetary shields class XX are hard to destroy, especially if they have Neut armor. So the shields and armor are probably the cause, but I swear I have seen other conditions.

I rarely make use of death rays as I do not go to Orion until I have all techs researched. This is so I can pick up a few (3) additonal techs. The AI will not attack Orion in Moo1, it will in Moo2. So you have as much time as you need.

The RBC games are played differently as they want to get it over quickly. I am in no hurry.

As to techs you could research, it is a fixed value from the start of the game. So you may get 1 bomb type or you may get them all, usually you get 2.

It can be nasty when you do not get an early pop boost or RC, say 3 or 4. I also hate to not get any missiles until after stingers. I rely on missile for much of the game. Just a preference in style.

 

[Wisq]

Yeah, knew about the "tech ladder gaps" things. Makes things interesting, especially when I don't get Gauss Autocannons or Pulse Phasors (my two favourite all-purpose weapons). I usually pick the former over the latter, unless I can fit an Oracle Interface in.

The two funny gap situations I've seen were a map where nobody got Controlled Radioactive Environment (so the radiated rich world was off-limits), and this game, where nobody got any decent bombs (so you needed more innovative MB destroying methods).

I usually avoid death rays (unless I hit 99 in all TL's), but I brought them up here because in lieu of proper bombs or Mauler Devices, the Death Rays were all that was left for assaulting shielded planets.

I've never much gotten into missile boats, but I know I should, and they have occasionally saved planets. Scatter Packs in particular have the highest "average damage versus ship space occupied" ratios in the game, with X's having over 2x as much damage as the best beam weapons, until you get to extremely high shield levels.

 

[vmxa]

Missile boats can be used in many ways, I sometimes will use like the RBC games, offensively. Mostly I will use them to taunt invasion fleets, so they will stick around while the bases slaughter them.

Large stacks of small missile ships can do a lot of damge, especially if you are one of the bird races.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

On the question of whether or not your fleet gets the option to bomb planets...

I had one huge, impossible game that I played out for the full extermination win, where I was building medium ships with 1 death ray each, high energy focus, and enough speed to get in range of the planet round 1. With a decent stack of ships, I would often destroy the colony with the first volley.

Strangely, these ships were never given the option to bomb planets. Obviously, the death ray could penetrate their shields, and the damaged planet would probably die with just one more round of death rays. This turned out to be the case where I left the fleet in orbit until they brought in some ships or built a base. One more shot on the colony destroyed it in the battle screen.

Even when I sent some ships that had a bomb onboard to join some of my fleets, their bombing runs didn't glass planets. The death rays were obviously not being used during the bombardment.


--Just ran some tests with a late stage save I had. A fleet that I got into orbit that had all beam weapons was given the option to bombard. Had some Huge class ships filled with maulers, neutron stream, teleporter, stasis. Also a large class with same loadout. Third type was huge class with death rays. Killed 179 colonists on bombardment with 3, 7, and 6 of the ships. Next round with 1 and 2 of the mauler ships, annihilated the colony from 30. At the same time, 40 large ships armed with 2 death rays and hercular missiles was in orbit of another colony, but were not given the option to bombard (even though the hercular missiles do 25 damage, and the planetary shield was class 20). So my earlier conclusions don't work. The mauler device ships were able to bombard, but ships with death rays and herc missiles were not. Perhaps it is simply a property of death rays that they cannot be used for bombardment (though they are lethal in the battle screen).

For fun, I added one large mauler ship (4 maulers) to my death ray/herc ships. Bombardmentment was now available, and killed 7 colonists. I doubled the number of death ray/herc ships the next turn, 6 colonists killed. Obviously, it's only the 4 mauler devices at work. Added in my huge mauler ship (60 maulers), colony destroyed.

Looks like death rays never get to bombard planets. I don't have the time now to try a test with a ship that has a mix of death rays with maulers (or bombs). I wonder if it's only the death rays that are left out of bombarding, or if the entire ship is left out when d-ray equipped. If the whole ship is left out, squeezing a few bombs onto a d-ray design would be rather pointless.

 

[Zed-F]

For those wanting to know what happened to the OSG series... well, it's had its ups and downs. I was waiting for Maniac Marshall to come back as I'd hoped he'd start OSG9. He'd also spoken of restarting the Imperia. However, he's since vanished once again, so I suppose RL interfered. And I've had other things on my mind as well. I haven't even been to CivFanatics in some time.

The OSGs have had long breaks where there's been no activity before, though. I wouldn't be surprised if there were still people out there, looking for a chance to play some more MOO. I'd encourage you to pop on over to RBO and post a hello message, if nothing else, and if you like, ask about starting up another SG. If enough interested people pop their heads up, I'm sure something can be arranged. Especially if you are interested in hosting the game and coming up with the idea for it.

 

[vmxa]

Good to see you are still around Zed-F. Maybe Manic got married, but wait I seem to remember the GF was also a player.

 

[vmxa]

OlorinStormcrow the doc does not list Death Ray in teh beam table, so it is unknown what is effects. The Planet Bombing phase only states that you will get the option if 1) you control the space 2) have a ship that will do effective damage.

I do not use death rays so it looks like they do not qualify for bombardment phase.

 

[OlorinStormcrow]

I tend to only use death rays when I play a Huge Impossible game, since I usually reach the end of most of the tech trees in those games. When you can fit 9 death rays on a huge ship along with specials, they become very useful to take out missile bases. Death rays are range 1, 200-1000 damage. Against AI with class XX planetary shields and XV deflectors, you can still take out missile bases with one or two beams. They are also great for taking down huge size enemy ships.

Of course, they don't work against large stacks of small ships, but a fleet with enough dray ships to handle missile bases, combined with some smaller ships designed as stack killers (and now I know to add a few bombs to them for orbital bombardment) is an easy way to get the extermination/final war victory.

One thing I have noticed when using death rays on planets in the battle screen; they kill colonists off while leaving a good number of factories intact. They still take out factories, but I've sometimes left a planet with single digit pop and over 1000 factories. The manual says that a colonist is killed for every 400 damage against missile bases, and a factory lost every 100 damage. Without missile bases, kill rate of colonist/factories is doubled. Now if they use the same system for colonists/factories as ships (excess damage past a kill does not carry over), then the stronger weapons can result in fewer factories destroyed per colonist killed.

Example: A death ray hits for 200-1000 damage (100-500 to planet), with max shield of XX, 80-480 damage. I'm guessing that the "kill rate doubled" means that the hit points of each factory colonist are halved to become 50/200. If the death ray hits for minimum damage, 1 factory is destroyed, and it takes three such hits to kill a colonist. So at most, 3 factories are lost per colonist. If the death ray hits for over half damage, it will kill both a factory and a colonist with each shot. So a 1/1 ratio of factories to colonists.

The mauler device does 20-200 damage per shot, 10-100 to planets, 0-80 with XX shield. Here, the max damage will result in the 3/1 fact/col ratio, same as the minimum dray damage. If the maulers were hitting for 50 damage per shot, then 4 factories would be destroyed per colonist. Weaker shots (or weaker weapons) would fall between the 3:1 and 4:1 ratios depending on how much carryover damage is lost when killing off each factory. 30 point hits would kill a colonist every 7 shots (210 damage, 10 damage lost), and a factory every other shot (60 damage). So the first 7 shots would kill 3 factories, do 30 damage to the fourth, and kill a colonist. The next 7 shots would take out 4 factories due to the damage left on the factory, so the overall ratio would be 3.5:1.

Against planets you want to invade, bombarding the planet with death rays during battle is a good way to reduce the pop w/o destroying too many factories. Bio weapons work too, but they have the diplo penalty, and unlike the death rays, they can't blow up the missile bases for you first. Since death rays can't be used for orbital bombardment, you have to have enemy ships around if you want to hit the planet with more strikes once the missile bases are gone. Stasis fields or warp dissipators could help with keeping enemy ships around.

Of course, by the time I'm mounting drays on my ships, I'm usually either in a final war, or going for the extermination victory, so I don't worry about taking planets. In my latest huge, impossible game, I managed to keep an anti-Psilon coalition together for most of the game. My plan was to genocide the Psilons, and perhaps the Bulrathi (who were sometimes allied with them). The Alkaris, Mrrshan and Silicoids had been with me most of the game, so I was going to be gracious and leave them one planet each before voting myself emperor. Of course, after going on a large scale glassing campaign, I remembered that I would need to settle most of the planets myself to get the vote going again, and just exterminated to save time. Had I remembered the 2/3 settled requirement earlier, I could have easily just sent invasion waves following my fleets, and by taking planets with large factory bases intact, use them to quickly clone more pop for the next wave of invasions. They'd also be able to stand up defenses quickly and save me from having to leave ships in orbit to guard them.

---Has anyone ever seen a game where the Alkaris and Mrrshans had a long-lasting alliance? To my knowledge, they never declared war on each other (unless it was before I had contact). Their alliance seemed rock-solid the entire game, which really surprised me. Of course they did have common enemies in the Psilons and Bulrathis, and occasional wars with the Silicoids.

 

[vmxa]

I cannot even remember who attack who in my last game, so I can't answer the bird question.

I tend to only use the best multi shot beamer I have (auto blaster or such). I do not use huge ships, large is my preference. That ship will get 1 bomb of the best I have, with 10- 20 of them I can usually bust all planets.

If I do play a large/huge map and get all through my tech tree, I will replace the bomb with a mauler bay (if I have them). Maulers bust all defenses, so no need for a bomb and I will still have an old bomb design to fall back on.

No need to bomb the place completely as troops are on the way and will finish the job. I do sometimes get bored and will glass all planets and park a deterent ship to prevent recolonization.

 

[Zed-F]

Heh. Teching through the roof and making zoos was a once-in-a-blue-moon thing for me, even way back when I was playing MOO regularily. I find it just gets dull after a while.

One thing I used to do when setting up zoos was 'limit' myself ship-building-wise to the same tech levels as my opponents had. So if my opponents didn't have any weapons better than mass driver or engines better than sublight, then that's what I chose to use as well. Of course, I did still have a high ship space and miniaturization from end-of-tree TL levels, so I could fit gobs and reams of those old weapons on a single ship. And I still had a vast production advantage over the zoo colonies. So, it wasn't really limiting in any significant sense.

 

[neutrino]

other than the colony ships, you can probably hold off on building large and huge hulls until the endgame. insofar as firepower is concerned, fighters offer bigger bang for the buck, provided that it is armed w/ appropriate weapons and powered by the best engine available.

for the most part, weapons like Neutron Pellet Gun is excellent for fighter armaments. weapons that halves enemy shields takes longer to become obsolete. if enough miniturisation has taken place, add extra weapons like bombs and missiles so they can also be used to attack planetary bases. (obviously, you cannot install powerful beam weapons like the Mauler Device; fighters have only so much internal space to work with!)

medium-sized hulls armed w/ missiles can be devastating, once you have a fleet of them. they are also cheap to build. they are quite handy against planetary bases; your fighters armed solely w/ beam weapons may become useless against bases once CP deploys strong planetary shields.

however, large and huge hulls become necessary in the endgame, once one or more CPs deploy 'anti-fighter' capabilities (i.e., Repulsor Beam, Pulsar weapons). generally, fighters are just darn too tiny to carry powerful special equipments like High-Energy Focus; their range-1 beam weapons are useless.

you can win w/o Death Ray. large and huge hulls armed w/ Mauler Device or Plasma Torps are pretty brutal anyway as they will be grouped into a fleet, not used as an individual ship. (ships bristling w/ less powerful Disruptor or Pulse Phasor also kick arse.) i might resort to Death Ray, if i just want to rampage across the galaxy and commit genocide. Pulse Phasor is probably the most useful beam-weapon in the middle and the endgame, if you are at war w/ CP relying on massive fighter fleets.

 

[StuporMan]

neutrino,

Don't forget, or discount, huges with Autorepair. They are great for an early game breakout if you get a decent bomb and beam along with them (sheilds help as well). One of these huges can singlehandedly capture and hold worlds and can take down entire fleets. It is not a tactic you should ALWAYS use, but it can be quite effective in the right situations nonetheless.

StuporMan