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Does anyone else think one of the problems with MoO3 was that fuel wasn't a factor? in MoO2, you could reach maybe 5 stars, and from there you had to either wait and build a colony ship or invent better fuel cells. In MoO3 you can actually have your scout ships running and exploring nonstop for the entire game. You get overwhelmed too fast. AND, if you're industrious, just leave your scouts running, build colony ships, and get yourself elected galactic President by turn 98.

^That was the last game I ever played because I discovered how worthless it was. Seriously, who were these beta testers?

I won MOO2 for £3.50 on ebay yesterday. It has now been sent to my Uni halls, all I need now is to get my car fixed so that I can go and play it.

By the way, whats your most favorite race to play with?
Mine are Psilons (because you get all the techs) but imo very easy. Or the Saurons because of their sheer numbers.
I also found it very fun with Bulrathi when i specialised in ground combat and boarding techs so I could conquer any planet or ship with a small number of marines. Maybe the enemy had better ships but when i got close enough they were mine

most hatred race played by computer: Darloks. Even when allied those wankers stab you in the back.
At least the Silicons where more honest. They just hate any other race.

In MOO3's defense, I'll say that the troop ship bug was fixed in a patch, so there's really no excuse for knockin that one but so much. Bugs and issues aside, what really killed MOO3 was a lack of proper documentation and a lack of proper feedback on the results of player actions. The game's viceroys and such are actually quite competent, if the player knows how to work with them and give them the input and direction they need...but unless you lurk on the Atari forums for a while, you will never have a clue how to do that.

Oops

Lack of detailed feedback made the game that much harder to learn because unless you already knew, you never really had an idea of why things were happening in a specific way. Oh, and, er...diplomacy system being shot to hell is unforgivable, for one simple reason. A fan patch solved it quite a good deal later. Know what the problem was? The code referenced the wrong file somewhere, was looking for data in the wrong place. Bloody blithering idiots at Quicksilver went /two patches/ without figuring that out.

As for combat, the greatest issue there was the visibility bug, that being task forces and even more critically /missiles/ vanishing for no apparent reason well within your sensor envelope. Someone did a detailed analysis of it on the mod forums and it looks like shitty code allows the game to sometimes return /negative numbers/ as range values.

Was it only me or did turns at MoO3 took ages if you played on huge galaxy?

If there is something that i hate with TBS is that turns take ages

The only thing that MoO3 had better than MoO2 were the animated ambassadors

wautd wrote:The only thing that MoO3 had better than MoO2 were the animated ambassadors

Moo3 is Shakespeare read by a dyslexic. They had a few good ideas, but crappy implementation.

If your looking for a fun 4X game, has anyone considered Space Empires 4??? It's not the most graphicially stunning game, but it's very fun, and easily mod-able if you're into that.

SE4 is awesome, except for the hideous amounts of micromanagement late-game.

White Haven wrote:SE4 is awesome, except for the hideous amounts of micromanagement late-game.

I don't find the micromanagement late-game to be a problem. As soon as you colonize a world you can plan it's entire development, then forget about it and let it build up on it's own. Land, Plan, and forget.

Question on strategy: is settling a Ultra Poor planet which nevertheless has Gem Deposits (+10 BC a turn) a good move?

Stofsk wrote:Question on strategy: is settling a Ultra Poor planet which nevertheless has Gem Deposits (+10 BC a turn) a good move?

It'll get you money, but it'll take ages to actually build anything. +10 BC is pretty good though.

Stofsk wrote:Question on strategy: is settling a Ultra Poor planet which nevertheless has Gem Deposits (+10 BC a turn) a good move?

its worth it, especially early in game imo

Slight difference: what if the planet was Toxic, low-g or heavy-g, poor or ultra poor etc. Basically, what if the planet is a dump, yet has that feature? A colony ship is a huge investment in time and resources; is it worth it then? 10 BCs is a lot, and IIRC it never fades (ie the Gem Deposits never run out, leaving you with 10 BCs a turn for the entire game); however, a Toxic planet can't be terraformed, low-g and high-g planets penalise your workers, and the maintenance cost from settling a Toxic is horrendous; being Ultra Poor would be crippling - basically the worst planetary combinations you can think of, yet fate in its humour saw fit to give it a Gem deposit. Should it still be settled and left as nothing more than a mining colony with all workers doing science?

Stofsk wrote:Slight difference: what if the planet was Toxic, low-g or heavy-g, poor or ultra poor etc. Basically, what if the planet is a dump, yet has that feature? A colony ship is a huge investment in time and resources; is it worth it then? 10 BCs is a lot, and IIRC it never fades (ie the Gem Deposits never run out, leaving you with 10 BCs a turn for the entire game); however, a Toxic planet can't be terraformed, low-g and high-g planets penalise your workers, and the maintenance cost from settling a Toxic is horrendous; being Ultra Poor would be crippling - basically the worst planetary combinations you can think of, yet fate in its humour saw fit to give it a Gem deposit. Should it still be settled and left as nothing more than a mining colony with all workers doing science?

First of all, if its possible to send a colony base instead of a ship, do that.
IIRC toxic planets can be made better but only late in the game with advanced techs (to make toxic -> barren and barren you can terraform IIRC)

Early in the game, when 10 credits is a lot and when its hard to keep a positive income i always try to get those planet. If i find one late in the game (when i got more than enough income) the mineral/organic richness is way more important

Grand Admiral Ancaris wrote:If your looking for a fun 4X game, has anyone considered Space Empires 4??? It's not the most graphicially stunning game, but it's very fun, and easily mod-able if you're into that.

It is a great game. However I dont like the idea of warp points instead of a galactic starmap.

evilcat4000 wrote:

Grand Admiral Ancaris wrote:If your looking for a fun 4X game, has anyone considered Space Empires 4??? It's not the most graphicially stunning game, but it's very fun, and easily mod-able if you're into that.

It is a great game. However I dont like the idea of warp points instead of a galactic starmap.

There is a hyperspace mod

Stofsk wrote:Slight difference: what if the planet was Toxic, low-g or heavy-g, poor or ultra poor etc. Basically, what if the planet is a dump, yet has that feature? A colony ship is a huge investment in time and resources; is it worth it then? 10 BCs is a lot, and IIRC it never fades (ie the Gem Deposits never run out, leaving you with 10 BCs a turn for the entire game); however, a Toxic planet can't be terraformed, low-g and high-g planets penalise your workers, and the maintenance cost from settling a Toxic is horrendous; being Ultra Poor would be crippling - basically the worst planetary combinations you can think of, yet fate in its humour saw fit to give it a Gem deposit. Should it still be settled and left as nothing more than a mining colony with all workers doing science?

Yeah, I'd wouldn't put to much effort into further development. Just consider it a penal colony where all those who oppose your rule are sent.

Hmm... the toilet seat of my empire. Where all the useless nobodies go to if they've been naughty, and produce money for me. Bwahahaha! Yes... I like the sound of that.

Grand Admiral Ancaris wrote:I don't find the micromanagement late-game to be a problem. As soon as you colonize a world you can plan it's entire development, then forget about it and let it build up on it's own. Land, Plan, and forget.

The micromanagement comes when you start to get technologies that replace existing facilities, like monoliths and other improvements. It also shows up when selecting what should be built in the many queues, since there's no way to turn off auto-repeat on multiple queues at the same time for example. I had a proportions game, for example, where I had 50+ orbital shipyards around my home planet, and the micro just killed the fun.

Graeme Dice wrote:The micromanagement comes when you start to get technologies that replace existing facilities, like monoliths and other improvements. It also shows up when selecting what should be built in the many queues, since there's no way to turn off auto-repeat on multiple queues at the same time for example. I had a proportions game, for example, where I had 50+ orbital shipyards around my home planet, and the micro just killed the fun.

I rarely if ever use the auto-repeat. I just fill my queue with what I need. Replacing existing facilities is easy enough too. Just scrap facility type, go to the Construction Queues screen, find out what planets are no longer maxed on their # of facilities and fill their work queues accordingly. Easy enough to do in one turn.

wautd wrote:

Stofsk wrote:Slight difference: what if the planet was Toxic, low-g or heavy-g, poor or ultra poor etc. Basically, what if the planet is a dump, yet has that feature? A colony ship is a huge investment in time and resources; is it worth it then? 10 BCs is a lot, and IIRC it never fades (ie the Gem Deposits never run out, leaving you with 10 BCs a turn for the entire game); however, a Toxic planet can't be terraformed, low-g and high-g planets penalise your workers, and the maintenance cost from settling a Toxic is horrendous; being Ultra Poor would be crippling - basically the worst planetary combinations you can think of, yet fate in its humour saw fit to give it a Gem deposit. Should it still be settled and left as nothing more than a mining colony with all workers doing science?

First of all, if its possible to send a colony base instead of a ship, do that.
IIRC toxic planets can be made better but only late in the game with advanced techs (to make toxic -> barren and barren you can terraform IIRC)

Early in the game, when 10 credits is a lot and when its hard to keep a positive income i always try to get those planet. If i find one late in the game (when i got more than enough income) the mineral/organic richness is way more important

You can never change a toxic world into a non-toxic, only an "axial shift" random event can do that. However, getting "biomorphic fungi" tech lets you farm. Pollution processors and atmosphere renewers make toxic less... toxic.

10BCs per-turn is good. Not as good as a swamp or ocean, but I'd take it before a tundra or desert.

evilcat4000 wrote:It is a great game. However I dont like the idea of warp points instead of a galactic starmap.

Warp points never bugged me too much. I must admit one reason I like them is they allow for strategic chokepoints.

Grand Admiral Ancaris wrote:I rarely if ever use the auto-repeat. I just fill my queue with what I need.

Like I said though, this was a proportions game where I had at least a hundred shipyards. The amount of required micro became absolutely huge, with turns taking 30-60 minutes just to update the queues.

Replacing existing facilities is easy enough too. Just scrap facility type, go to the Construction Queues screen, find out what planets are no longer maxed on their # of facilities and fill their work queues accordingly. Easy enough to do in one turn.

That couldn't possibly be a workable solution to the problem. You need to be able to automatically scrap one facility at a time, and replace it with another facility, then scrap another once the monolith finishes building. Scrapping all the mineral facilities in your empire at once just means that you've lost your entire economy.

There's also a huge amount of micro caused by the fact that the fastest way to build your ships is to retrofit them to more advanced models.

Graeme Dice wrote:Like I said though, this was a proportions game where I had at least a hundred shipyards. The amount of required micro became absolutely huge, with turns taking 30-60 minutes just to update the queues.

In my last game I had 234 space yards, 4 Ringworlds, and 15 Sphereworlds.

That couldn't possibly be a workable solution to the problem. You need to be able to automatically scrap one facility at a time, and replace it with another facility, then scrap another once the monolith finishes building. Scrapping all the mineral facilities in your empire at once just means that you've lost your entire economy.

hmm.. true I guess. You can still scrap all facilities on a few given planets and replace them with what you need. Only takes a minute or two to do that.

Plus, once I've maxed out my tech tree, I scrap all my research facilities and replace them with Monoliths and a few intelligence facilities. After they've developed some, I can move into the other facility types.

There's also a huge amount of micro caused by the fact that the fastest way to build your ships is to retrofit them to more advanced models.

True enough. I typicially retrofitted my ships several times in one shot to get them where I wanted. Then wated for every single component to be repaired.

Darth Wong wrote:It's a huge planet! You can fit 32 people on it!

lol...I'd always just made an assumption that those were the "discretionary" workers...the ones left over after all maintenance was dealt with (that's why you pay the big BCs). Either that, or it was a typo and they meant billion.

BTW, does anyone know how much direct energy transfer is required to have a 100% chance of killing a human (joules of energy)? I ask because I think I may have figured out a way to directly calculate the power of MoO2 weapons.