MOO3 Revisited
- Thread starter sourboy
- Start date
Not a very positive result so far. 
Perhaps I should vote and help out MOO3 
, however that would skew the results considering this is the first MOO game I've played.
Perhaps I should start a poll about whether MOO3 is a good game in itself. I wonder if that is duplicating threads though!
, however that would skew the results considering this is the first MOO game I've played.Perhaps I should start a poll about whether MOO3 is a good game in itself. I wonder if that is duplicating threads though!
That won't give much more value to the discussions I think. We have a thread about why one should buy this game already too, so...
tctatheel7
Running Silent, and Deep
this game wasnt very good
granted, the ship designing is cool, but it doesnt make up for the sheer boredom of this game. (it takes FOREVER for a ship to get from point A to point B!) Also, it is very confusing the first time u play and takes a while to learn.
granted, the ship designing is cool, but it doesnt make up for the sheer boredom of this game. (it takes FOREVER for a ship to get from point A to point B!) Also, it is very confusing the first time u play and takes a while to learn.
Well, 7 out of 11 voted for the last option. 
I tried it myself once too, but wasn't that much "catched" as with the other two versions. But I figured I needed to get to know the game more and explore all the options there are. It's just that there are so many!
I tried it myself once too, but wasn't that much "catched" as with the other two versions. But I figured I needed to get to know the game more and explore all the options there are. It's just that there are so many!
You know, you're actually the first one ever to make a comment about it.Originally posted by bladester
BTW, seeing your avatar has reminded me of the doom 1 & 2 days. Man, that game was cool, especially the double barrel shot gun
Originally posted by Matrix
You know, you're actually the first one ever to make a comment about it.
Really? Seeing that marine just brought back all the memories. Is there not any here that remembers or is old enough to have played doom?
Edit: about the number of options available. Take it one step at a time, I started off with getting my economy and planets functional and let the computer design all my ships. Then I started designing my own. It is alot more fun when you are learning a bit at a time and the automation tools help A LOT in this department.
I am still learning the game even now, but that has more to do with lack of spare time than anything else.
And the encyclopedia mods are a must. They really do help explain certain things.
pterrok
Warlord
Well, I didn't vote since I never played the other Moos, and it would be hard to recommend it to someone since it DOES have such a steep learning curve--which is only worse with the 1.25 patch since the manual becomes completely outdated...
That said, the game can be quite addictive IF you can get into the spirit of it. You are supposed to be the Galactic Emporer and NOT some micromanager who decides everything about every planet. If you can accept that role, you can like the game. I guess the closest thing in Civ terms is, if you can play Civ with the Governors on, using whatever units or structures they build with workers set on auto, with you only dealing with the combat units and battles and diplomacy, then you have a chance of liking Moo3.
The problem is, though, that you say, OK, I won't micromanage, but then you get overwhelmed because you realize that the choices you make on macroscale sliders DO have Empire-wide effects! If you've never played before, you might figure out what putting one DEA in a region of one planet does--it's understandable--but until you've read all the posts on the Atari MOO forum and played the game a bunch of times, you really don't know what your Empire wide slider setting is gonna do--and you can get paralyzed with indecision.
Stick with it, though, and when it all 'comes together' it's easy to play!
You MUST, however, play with the Senate victory On. Since the AI is STILL not very good (although it's much stronger with the patch) you'll be able to beat it on any difficulty level. You need the Senate victory On for a few reasons:
1) The game will end somewhere between turn 200-300. Your goal becomes to make sure you get in the Senate if you don't start in it, STAY in the Senate if you begin in it--which can actually be quite difficult! As such, this DOES make the game a challenge since you must stay focused on that objective and can't lollygag around.
2) If you DON'T use the Senate victory, as you get farther into the game, the numbers for the Empire will get huge--and there are many roll-over errors in the game where too large a positive number causes it to go negative with sometimes very dire results!
3) Since the game will be ending in that short time frame, you will NOT get all the techs and so may have to develop different tactics and learn to use what you have instead of waiting for stellar converters. (Which I've NEVER gotten and win without!)
So, again, you can see I'm mixed on it--I can't truly recommend a game with some game-killing bugs...
And now a short word about mods. Go to Atari Moo and you'll find mods, lots and lots of mods! On the original release I had installed the tech slow-down mod, but since the patch I've played it clean. I guess after a couple more games I WILL go and figure out which mod(s) I need to make it a challenge--perhaps the Invader megamod mentioned on this board. but there too many to choose from it makes it hard to know which one--or combination of them--to use!
That said, the game can be quite addictive IF you can get into the spirit of it. You are supposed to be the Galactic Emporer and NOT some micromanager who decides everything about every planet. If you can accept that role, you can like the game. I guess the closest thing in Civ terms is, if you can play Civ with the Governors on, using whatever units or structures they build with workers set on auto, with you only dealing with the combat units and battles and diplomacy, then you have a chance of liking Moo3.
The problem is, though, that you say, OK, I won't micromanage, but then you get overwhelmed because you realize that the choices you make on macroscale sliders DO have Empire-wide effects! If you've never played before, you might figure out what putting one DEA in a region of one planet does--it's understandable--but until you've read all the posts on the Atari MOO forum and played the game a bunch of times, you really don't know what your Empire wide slider setting is gonna do--and you can get paralyzed with indecision.
Stick with it, though, and when it all 'comes together' it's easy to play!
You MUST, however, play with the Senate victory On. Since the AI is STILL not very good (although it's much stronger with the patch) you'll be able to beat it on any difficulty level. You need the Senate victory On for a few reasons:
1) The game will end somewhere between turn 200-300. Your goal becomes to make sure you get in the Senate if you don't start in it, STAY in the Senate if you begin in it--which can actually be quite difficult! As such, this DOES make the game a challenge since you must stay focused on that objective and can't lollygag around.
2) If you DON'T use the Senate victory, as you get farther into the game, the numbers for the Empire will get huge--and there are many roll-over errors in the game where too large a positive number causes it to go negative with sometimes very dire results!
3) Since the game will be ending in that short time frame, you will NOT get all the techs and so may have to develop different tactics and learn to use what you have instead of waiting for stellar converters. (Which I've NEVER gotten and win without!)
So, again, you can see I'm mixed on it--I can't truly recommend a game with some game-killing bugs...
And now a short word about mods. Go to Atari Moo and you'll find mods, lots and lots of mods! On the original release I had installed the tech slow-down mod, but since the patch I've played it clean. I guess after a couple more games I WILL go and figure out which mod(s) I need to make it a challenge--perhaps the Invader megamod mentioned on this board. but there too many to choose from it makes it hard to know which one--or combination of them--to use!
A month ago I bought MOO3 and got MOO2 thrown in for free. I played several games of MOO3, one of them straight through to the end, and was not impressed (yes, I downloaded the patches). Then I installed MOO2, downloaded the patch, downloaded The General's and Bobba Fett's strategy guides, and away I went. I got hooked on MOO2 from the first tutorial game. I don't care what fixes Atari does to MOO3, I won't load them. I can't, since I uninstalled MOO3.
MOO2 is a "just one more turn" game.
MOO2 is a "just one more turn" game.
Al Zan
King
dam you got moo2 for free !
tctatheel7
Running Silent, and Deep
sounds like my kindda game!
also, i saw somewhere that a game called "Galactic Civilizations" is MOO3 done right. has anyone played it?
I have galactic civilizations and when I do get around to play it (or any other game for that matter) I enjoy it. I don't know what you mean by MOO3 done right as I haven't played MOO 1 or 2 and I enjoy MOO3 currently aswell.
But GalCiv is very similar to civ in many aspects. I suggest you download the demo, it's not too large and will give you a flavour of the game. Check it out at http://www.galciv.com
But GalCiv is very similar to civ in many aspects. I suggest you download the demo, it's not too large and will give you a flavour of the game. Check it out at http://www.galciv.com
panzer_kevlar
Airborne!
Galciv is much better than MOO3
I just picked up the game about a week ago, despite the mixed reviews. It was cheap, so I figured why not? The site to dl the patch wasn't working at first, and I was impatient to start a game, so right now I'm doing without it. It's not a bad game, but there are some pretty big annoyances. For ex., the diplomacy seems to be even stranger than in civ3. There, every civ in the game dislikes me more and more as time goes on, even though I'm not doing anything to them. In MoO3, it's much the same, but even friendly races will cut off profitable trade relations, break treaties, and declare war for seemingly no reason, despite the fact that I outnumber them 10 to 1. Mb I'm doing something wrong, but still..
Someone else mentioned in another thread that the build queues were messed up, and I couldn't agree more. Instead of being easily accessible in the planets list screen, you have to click to the planet screen, then into 2 sub-panels to even see the names of the ships 2nd and 3rd in the list, or change anything. If they wanted to allow macromanagement, there would be a very simple and realistic way to do it. There should have been a screen where you could request that a certain ratio of your ship types be maintained in your reserves, or somewhere that you could put in bulk orders for ships. ie. "I want 6 carriers and 10 long range attack ships built by 15 turns from now", and the AI would assign the tasks to the appropriate planets. That feature alone would have made the game much better. Without it, I either have to read the sitrep all the way through every turn to see what planets have finished building things and need new assignments, or trust the AI to do it and wind up with 80 transports, 40 point def. ships, and 2 each of my core dreadnoughts. :/ Finally, they could have made the build queue longer than 3 slots, so you could fill them up manually every dozen turns or so with a long list and not have to worry about it for a while.
Finally, the way it handles racial preferences and planet habitability is irritating. You can see the habitability rating (sweet spot through red 2) in the solar system screen, and once you colonize it theres a handy graph in the planet screen that will let you see the environment with respect to other species types and their preferences. But, you cant see that graph until you do colonize the planet or take it over, so you dont know who its a sweet spot for. For an inhabited world, it seems to refer to the population thats living there. But, once you grab a world with a magnate race or conquer a planet from another race, youll start seeing more units, ships, and population from that race instead of your starting one. This is because, apparently, each colony ship contains population from the planet that built it, whatever the majority there is. Now heres the problem: in NO place does it list what kind of colonists that ship is carrying. Ive had several occasions where Ive landed a ship on a sweet spot world, only to find out that the ship contained silicoids, who think the world sucks (red 1), are going to have a hard time living there, and are generally going to waste the planets potential by terraforming it at great expense to suit them.
Phew. Now that Ive gotten that rant off my chest, I just have to say that, like many of the reviewers of this game, I feel frustrated to play a good game thats hampered by stupid niggling problems that could easily have been fixed prior to release.
Someone else mentioned in another thread that the build queues were messed up, and I couldn't agree more. Instead of being easily accessible in the planets list screen, you have to click to the planet screen, then into 2 sub-panels to even see the names of the ships 2nd and 3rd in the list, or change anything. If they wanted to allow macromanagement, there would be a very simple and realistic way to do it. There should have been a screen where you could request that a certain ratio of your ship types be maintained in your reserves, or somewhere that you could put in bulk orders for ships. ie. "I want 6 carriers and 10 long range attack ships built by 15 turns from now", and the AI would assign the tasks to the appropriate planets. That feature alone would have made the game much better. Without it, I either have to read the sitrep all the way through every turn to see what planets have finished building things and need new assignments, or trust the AI to do it and wind up with 80 transports, 40 point def. ships, and 2 each of my core dreadnoughts. :/ Finally, they could have made the build queue longer than 3 slots, so you could fill them up manually every dozen turns or so with a long list and not have to worry about it for a while.
Finally, the way it handles racial preferences and planet habitability is irritating. You can see the habitability rating (sweet spot through red 2) in the solar system screen, and once you colonize it theres a handy graph in the planet screen that will let you see the environment with respect to other species types and their preferences. But, you cant see that graph until you do colonize the planet or take it over, so you dont know who its a sweet spot for. For an inhabited world, it seems to refer to the population thats living there. But, once you grab a world with a magnate race or conquer a planet from another race, youll start seeing more units, ships, and population from that race instead of your starting one. This is because, apparently, each colony ship contains population from the planet that built it, whatever the majority there is. Now heres the problem: in NO place does it list what kind of colonists that ship is carrying. Ive had several occasions where Ive landed a ship on a sweet spot world, only to find out that the ship contained silicoids, who think the world sucks (red 1), are going to have a hard time living there, and are generally going to waste the planets potential by terraforming it at great expense to suit them.
Phew. Now that Ive gotten that rant off my chest, I just have to say that, like many of the reviewers of this game, I feel frustrated to play a good game thats hampered by stupid niggling problems that could easily have been fixed prior to release.
DT_76: I have found the game MUCH MUCH more enjoyable with the 1.25 patch. I hated the game when it first came out with the viceroys changing the build ques even after I turned the planet econ off but they have fixed that in 1.25.
1) Suggestion for stopping the building of unwanted units: Mark them obsolete - the AI will not be able to build them. The AI will still be able to build lots of ground troops but I believe they won't waste too much time doing that because they will reach a critical limit <- haven't played long enough to test this out but it will atleast cut down on the transports.
2) I'd suggest that you use the Planets screen and check to see only owned planets. Then from there you can click on the double chevrons (>>) and go directly to the military or planetary build que. You can then click on the Planets link again at the bottom of the screen and go to another planet.
3) I agree that there should have been some way to tell the computer that you want x amount of carriers and x amount of LR+SR ships etc. Maybe in MOO4! ;-)
My own opinion(s): It would have been cool to get actual characters for the viceorys on each planet...that would have added a bit of life to the game. As to the bad feelings by most everyone about this game I feel that with patch 1.25 and an understanding of how this game is to be played (you can micro but it isn't designed that way) people would feel different about it. I used to be one of the game haters but I have turned a new leaf.
1) Suggestion for stopping the building of unwanted units: Mark them obsolete - the AI will not be able to build them. The AI will still be able to build lots of ground troops but I believe they won't waste too much time doing that because they will reach a critical limit <- haven't played long enough to test this out but it will atleast cut down on the transports.
2) I'd suggest that you use the Planets screen and check to see only owned planets. Then from there you can click on the double chevrons (>>) and go directly to the military or planetary build que. You can then click on the Planets link again at the bottom of the screen and go to another planet.
3) I agree that there should have been some way to tell the computer that you want x amount of carriers and x amount of LR+SR ships etc. Maybe in MOO4! ;-)
My own opinion(s): It would have been cool to get actual characters for the viceorys on each planet...that would have added a bit of life to the game. As to the bad feelings by most everyone about this game I feel that with patch 1.25 and an understanding of how this game is to be played (you can micro but it isn't designed that way) people would feel different about it. I used to be one of the game haters but I have turned a new leaf.
