MOO 2 Mod Tools?

[redazncommieDXP]

I'd like to get started modding in Master of Orion, but I have no idea where to go for tools or tutorials. Can anyone point me in the right direction, or maybe to a mod that does what I want to do?

I want to increase the starting distance of the ships/decrease weapon ranges. That hopefully will buff fighters and missiles, and nerf beam weapons a little bit. I'd like battles to be more about fire and maneuver, rather than straight up slugging matches between heavy weapons and occasional anti-missile rocket fire.

 

[vmxa]

http://lordbrazen.blogspot.com/2005/01/installing-master-of-orion-ii-v140-on.html

lordbrazen has done some work on Moo2, good place to start.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I don't remember where I got them but there are some good programs available for MoO2, and some good mods for rebalancing the game.

 

[scratchthepitch]

This page lists many different mod programs with brief descriptions:

http://lordbrazen.blogspot.com/2005/01/download.html

The ones I've been using and can vouch for are:

OCL v0.21 http://www.spheriumnorth.com/blog-images/OCLv0.21.zip This one lets you modify techs, ships, orbitals, weapons and other ship items and more. Very useful. It's a dos program so you'll need to use dosbox or something similar in order to use it - unless you have an old computer lying about.

PickHack v1.0 http://www.spheriumnorth.com/blog-images/PickHackv1.0.zip Easy program to alter the race pick points costs.

Another very useful program is MOO2 WORKSHOP:

http://mo3.fatal.ru/moo2_workshop_eng.htm

This is actually several editors in one application. The program will extract the contents of many MOO2 lbx files to a form in which they can be modified using the program. It then is supposed to recode them back into the original lbx form. Unfortunately, that last part didn't work the times I tried it, but I was able to copy the changes from the extracted files manually to the MOO2 lbx ones using a hex editor. This program also has extensive "help" documentation about the hex structure of many of the MOO2 lbx files so you can use a hex editing tool to modify them. I used this for changing alien characteristics and changing the leader attributes.

Using the above I've been able to change most of what I've wanted to change. The few simple things I would still like to do are:

Change weapon ranges.
Change movement rates of missiles, fighters, assault shuttles and the like.
Give the monsters/guardian more effective combinations of weapons and defenses.
Change what the governments give.
Change the weapon specials (autofire, MIRV, continuous, etc.) so you get these the same time the weapons are researched, not a couple of levels after wards.

I've not been able to find how these are changed. Though I've seen old posts where people describe that they did some of this and these have been changed in some of the mods others had done a few years ago.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

PickHack is pretty good. It came with several pre-made pick setups. One had creative set to 0 picks because most people pick it every time anyway. Another made for multiplayer had charasmatic set to 1 because it does almost nothing if not used against the AI.

I used someone else's set up for rebalancing weapons but one change I made was to make fusion, plasma and the mauler not have heavy mount. The reason is I heard and then tested myself that the double range penalties aspect of those weapons doesn't work. So to make them short range as they're intended I disallow heavy mount.

 

[scratchthepitch]

I found pickhack to be the best of the editor programs for changing alien species pick point costs, of the ones I tried. The one problem I ran into was sometimes the changes didn't stick after I made changes to other parts of MOO2, which may be the fault of the other programs for all I know. Now I just do the Pickhack changes last and that seems to have solved that problem.

That's an interesting idea about setting creative to 0 because everyone picks it. I like using the creative and uncreative picks to help force different strategy use options with the different species. It adds a little more variety in how the game can be played. Without the research coming in, they need to find the techs through spying, trades and conquest more.

I had not thought about charismatic, since I never used it in custom species before - until recently when I was testing a mod and used a species that had it. I've never tried multiplayer. The leader attraction aspect is all that I can think would be useful in multiplayer.

One of the things I changed in the mods I've been tinkering with is giving all the leaders techs so species without creative have a way to find a few extra needed techs. This also gives players a reason to change leaders more frequently. Charismatic in these mods has become more useful in single player games because it just about doubles the frequency that new leaders show up. The reduction in leader hiring costs charismatic provides is also a great help.

That's a great idea about taking the heavy mount away from those weapons. I didn't realize the 2x range penalty didn't work. I've been wanting to work in a beam range aspect into the game like the way it's used in MOO3 and get more variety in the ship combat tactics. I noticed that the game patch took the heavy mount away from ion pulse cannons, but it never occurred to this dense soul that I could adjust the damage, cost and space specs of the regular versions up to about the level of heavy mount specs, and just use the regular as the heavy mount and the point defense mount for the regular and point defense mounts. And that doing this would bring in the range differences I've been seeking to make in the beam weapons. I'll have to try that out now. This will make augmented engines useful for more ship types now and perhaps tone down the player advantage over the AI in tactical combat. I cant remember whether the AI uses augmented engines on it's designs.

Thanks for the info. It was a lot of help.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

There's also a program that can change the default races, which works well with pickhack so you can change the picks cost then even out the default race's pics. The pickhack set up I used had most races get more pick points so I had to give more pics to most races. Any warrior race I gave the warlord ability, and most races got more home world enhancements.
I always play uncreative now, and with increased negative picks for it it's easier to get better spying, ground combat etc.

 

[scratchthepitch]

Last year I remember reading a post by someone who said they increased the positive point total of the picks from 20 to 30, but they didn't say how they did it. What I ended up doing was adjusting the pick point costs so more could be used. I never liked the amount of population you need to use to produce food or the low amount of command points in the regular game. Both are too restrictive in the early game and made the early turns more of a logistics exercise than anything else.

To fix the chronic food shortages, I made the +1 food pick cost 0 points and gave it to all the stock races. Tests of this showed a much more reasonable amount of population needed for food production and the early game is more interesting since that population can now be productive in research and industry.

To get more command points, I just gave everyone the warlord trait and made it also cost 0 points. This took away some of the advantage militaristic races might have had and is a less ideal solution than the food one. The best solution would be raising the default command points setting, but I don't know how to do that. The AI never seems to be hampered by a lack of command points and pumps out large fleets of warships and transports with only a few planets colonized. In my current game, using this free warlord mod, I'm still short of command points. With 8 planets (only 1 has a star base) I'm close to maxing out the command points with only 10 destroyers and 3 frigates. I noticed my current AI opponent, with only 5 planets and 4 star bases has been able to field a fleet over twice the size of mine and seems to have no trouble pumping out battleships. Without the warlord boost, I'd really be sucking wind.

You can still create a custom race with the default 0 food bonus or without the warlord trait if you want in the mod, but all the stock races have these changes. Might be an interesting challenge. There is still the option of the -.5 food to use as a negative pick. I didn't give any of the stock races a minus food, it would hamstring them too much, but 3 stock races have +2 food.

In an earlier mod I tried setting dictatorship to a negative number, but that created problems balancing the number total between negative and positive picks so dictatorship must be hardwired to act as a default that requires a 0 point setting. I've noticed that all the AI races will also get an additional 1 or 2 positive picks above that which is standard for each race.

As an example of the types of changes I've made to the races, this is what the silicoids have (costs in parenthesis):

Feudal (-6)
+1 food (free)
-1 industry (-4)
+10 ground (2)
+10 spy (2)
Heavy gravity (4)
Rich home (1)
Lithovore (6)
Tolerant (5)
Warlord (free)

I redid the weapons in the mod to use the regular weapons as heavy mounts for some of the beams. But in the current test game, the fighting has been between ships armed mostly with interceptors and missiles, with my only AI opponent ignoring the short ranged fusion beams in favor of the more advanced neutron blasters they have at their disposal for the few beam weapons they have been using on their ships. I modified the beams with the enveloping special to be short ranged. These are now fusion, plasma and mauler. Since ion pulse cannons with autofire can be so devastating, I made them short ranged, also.

While making these changes, I found what controls when the weapon specials show up. I changed this now so that all the weapons get their specials at the same level the weapon is discovered, with the exception of the MIRV special for the missiles, which now comes 1 level later, instead of the original 2. This makes the weapons useful as they get researched, found, traded or stolen instead of later on when a high enough level of tech is researched to give them their specials. It also cuts down on the number of times ships need to be upgraded, which can get pretty tedious when fleets get large.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I just noticed that starbase fusion guns still have heavy mounts. They must be hard coded to be that way.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I just noticed that starbase fusion guns still have heavy mounts. They must be hard coded to be that way.

I just saw an enemy ship with heavy fusion guns, so it looks like this mod flag only applies to the player! Makes me wonder what other effects are only happening to me.

 

[scratchthepitch]

I've yet to see the AI use these beams I took away the heavy mount from. They always have something newer to play with when I've attacked so I don't know if they will use them. But if it's the AI using the heavy mounts and not human players, I can live with that. The AI doesn't have a lot going for it in this game, it needs all the help it can get.

Out of curiosity, I was wondering what program, if any, you used to modify the weapon stats with? I've been using the OCLv021 editor for weapon changes.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Yes that's the one I used. It's the only one I know of that does it.

 

[scratchthepitch]

It's the only editor program that I know that does weapon changes. Easy enough to use, though.

 

[nineveh]

This page lists many different mod programs with brief descriptions:

http://lordbrazen.blogspot.com/2005/01/download.html

The ones I've been using and can vouch for are:

OCL v0.21 http://www.spheriumnorth.com/blog-images/OCLv0.21.zip This one lets you modify techs, ships, orbitals, weapons and other ship items and more. Very useful. It's a dos program so you'll need to use dosbox or something similar in order to use it - unless you have an old computer lying about.

PickHack v1.0 http://www.spheriumnorth.com/blog-images/PickHackv1.0.zip Easy program to alter the race pick points costs.

Another very useful program is MOO2 WORKSHOP:

http://mo3.fatal.ru/moo2_workshop_eng.htm

This is actually several editors in one application. The program will extract the contents of many MOO2 lbx files to a form in which they can be modified using the program. It then is supposed to recode them back into the original lbx form. Unfortunately, that last part didn't work the times I tried it, but I was able to copy the changes from the extracted files manually to the MOO2 lbx ones using a hex editor. This program also has extensive "help" documentation about the hex structure of many of the MOO2 lbx files so you can use a hex editing tool to modify them. I used this for changing alien characteristics and changing the leader attributes.

Using the above I've been able to change most of what I've wanted to change. The few simple things I would still like to do are:

Change weapon ranges.
Change movement rates of missiles, fighters, assault shuttles and the like.
Give the monsters/guardian more effective combinations of weapons and defenses.
Change what the governments give.
Change the weapon specials (autofire, MIRV, continuous, etc.) so you get these the same time the weapons are researched, not a couple of levels after wards.

I've not been able to find how these are changed. Though I've seen old posts where people describe that they did some of this and these have been changed in some of the mods others had done a few years ago.

I have those ustilities but I cannot read the help file for some reason... Can you tell me how you were able to get the changes from the race editor into another hex editor? I am dying to change up the alien race stats.

 

[scratchthepitch]

I have those ustilities but I cannot read the help file for some reason... Can you tell me how you were able to get the changes from the race editor into another hex editor? I am dying to change up the alien race stats.

Hey Nineveh

Sorry for taking so long, I just saw your post today. I don't post on this site regularly. The race changes can be done by changing the file with a hex editor, no need to transfer the material to a new file. The info on how to do it is in the help file. I'll see if I can reproduce that help file here, along with more detail on doing the race changes later today. It's been a while since I did this and I need to refresh my memory and dig out the programs.

 

[scratchthepitch]

OK here is the help file for the hex code on the races:

Format of Races Information Files

Introduction

File with information of initial races abilities is packed in archive "RACESTUF.LBX". About packing data in LBX archives see section "Format of LBX Archives".

All lengths are indicated in bytes.

File Header of Races Information

Offset Length Value
00h: 2 Number of records with the information on specified race.
02h: 2 Size of race record. 31 bytes (1Fh).
04h: 31 First record with information on race.

Remark:

Races are featured in the following order: Alkari, Bulrathi, Darlocks, Elerians, Gnolams, Humans, Klackons, Meklars, Mrrshan, Psilons, Sakkra, Silicoids, Trilarians.

Record Format of Race Information

Offsets are counted from a beginning of record, instead of from a beginning of file.

Offset Length Value
00h: 1 Governments:
00h: Feudal;
02h: Dictatorship;
04h: Democracy;
06h: Unification.

01h: 1 Population:
00h: there are no changes for Growth;
01h: -50% Growth;
02h: +50% Growth;
03h: +100% Growth.

02h: 1 Farming:
00h: there are no changes for Farming;
01h: -1/2 Food;
02h: +1 Food;
03h: +2 Food.

03h: 1 Industry:
00h: there are no changes for Industry;
01h: -1 Production;
02h: +1 Production;
03h: +2 Production.

04h: 1 Science:
00h: there are no changes for Science;
01h: -1 Research;
02h: +1 Research;
03h: +2 Research.

05h: 1 Money:
00h: there are no changes for Money;
01h: -0.5 BC;
02h: +0.5 BC;
03h: +1.0 BC.

06h: 1 Ship Defense:
00h: there are no changes for Ship Defense;
01h: -20;
02h: +25;
03h: +50.

07h: 1 Ship Attack:
00h: there are no changes for Ship Attack;
01h: -20;
02h: +20;
03h: +50.

08h: 1 Ground Combat:
00h: there are no changes for Ground Combat;
01h: -10;
02h: +10;
03h: +20.

09h: 1 Spying:
00h: there are no changes for Spying;
01h: -10;
02h: +10;
03h: +20.

0Ah: 1 Low-G World:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

0Bh: 1 High-G World:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

0Ch: 1 Aquatic:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

0Dh: 1 Subterranean:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

0Eh: 1 Large Home World:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

0Fh: 1 00h: disables;
01h: Rich Home World;
FFh: Poor Home World.
10h: 1 Artifacts World:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

11h: 1 Cybernetic:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

12h: 1 Lithovore:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

13h: 1 Repulsive:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

14h: 1 Charismatic:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

15h: 1 Uncreative:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

16h: 1 Creative:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

17h: 1 Tolerant:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

18h: 1 Fantastic Traders:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

19h: 1 Telepathic:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

1Ah: 1 Lucky:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

1Bh: 1 Omniscient:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

1Ch: 1 Stealthy Ships:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

1Dh: 1 Trans Dimensional:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

1Eh: 1 Warlord:
00h: disables;
01h: enables.

 

[scratchthepitch]

Explanation of the help file for the file racestuff.lbx

(I don't know how much you know already, so I will describe this with as much detail as possible)

Open the racestuff.lbx file with a hex editor. My hex editor is divided into 2 halves and shows hex on the left and ascii on the right. You will see the ascii is mostly words. Scroll down around 2/3 of the way and there will be a break in the letters. In hex, it will show mostly zeros instead of hex numbers. This is where the race attributes are and this is what you will be changing. In the help file in my previous post, it tells the order in which the races are on the racestuff.lbx file and the order the attributes are in. The 1st race is the Alkari and there are places for switching on or off all their attributes. Then comes the Bulrathi, then the next race and so on. The hex sequence to look for to find exactly where hex numbers which control the attributes begin is like this:

00 00 00 00 0D 00 1F 00 If your hex editor can search a sequence, this should find it. Otherwise, it's roughly about 2/3 of the way down in the file, where you will find a break of mostly zeros in the hex code.

With my editor, it begins on line: 1887

The next hex number should be 02. I'll walk you through the Alkaris to show how the help file (above) works.

1st number is government type. From the help file, you can see 02 means dictatorship. After the 02 (dictatorship), you will see 5 sets of 00. Like this 00 00 00 00 00. These are place settings of 5 different attributes, in this order: pop., farm., ind., sci., & mon. From the help file above, you can see that 00 means there are no changes - these attributes are not used by Alkaris.

The next hex number should be 03, which is ship defense and 03 means they have +50% according to the help file.

The next 9 hex numbers should all be 00, that's 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00. These are where ship att., ground com., spy, low g world, high g world, aqua., sub., large home, and the last one is for rich and poor home, all in that oerder. All are 00 because Alkaris don't use these attributes. See the help file above on how they are set.

The next hex number is 01. This is artifacts home and should be 01 to show that Alkaris have this attribute.

After this will be 14 sets of 00. Like this: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00. This is because the Alkaris don't have any additional attributes and the 14 hex numbers represent cyber., lith., repul., char., uncreat., creat., toler., fan. traders, tele., lucky, omnis., stealthy ships, trans dim., warlord in that order - see help file above.

The next hex number should be 02 and this is the government attribute (dictatorship) for the next race, Bulrathis. So the whole sequence for the Alkaris should look like this:

02 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00.

There will be a sequence of 31 hex numbers for each race. The help files shows their order and the order of the attributes within that sequence of 31 numbers. There are actually 32 attributes, but rich and poor homeworlds share the same spot in the sequence.

When changing these attributes, it should be remembered that the total negatives should not pass -10, nor the total positives pass 20, just like when making a custom race within the game, or it may mess up the game and cause problems. I believe the game will run if these totals are too high or low, but it could be causing problems that are not obvious.

I'll check back here more often in the future in case you have further questions. Good luck.