|
Fun facts about neutron guns in the first two Master of Orion games: Neutron guns in MoO1 were also the first post-laser beam weapons. They had the advantage of halving enemy shield effectiveness, and doing 2-5 damage instead of 1-4 lasers did. They were an excellent early game weapon for the Alkari race, since it was relatively easy to miniaturize them enough to fit on fighters, and there was no early-to-midgame enemy who could completely shrug that weapon off. With enough miniaturization techs, they can last you a long time. Neutron guns in MoO2 were an early midgame beam weapon that had decently high attack, but were somewhat bulky and lacked fast fire and point defence capabilities many other weapons had. They did have 2 things going for them: They were one of the earliest weapons that did a high amount of damage in a single attack, and therefore couldn't be hard-countered by shield damage reduction (though you still had to bring enough of them to deplete the shields, of course). Also, as was suggested in nweis' lorepost (and not working in nuMoO), they killed the targeted ship's crew if they penetrated shielding. Since ship boarding was a thing in MoO2, this could be extremely useful in some circumstances - you could steal ships of factions that had superior technology and scrap them for a chance of stealing that tech. Neutron guns and ship-to-ship teleporters provided one of the critical stages of the MoO2 gimmick build I call the "Bulrathi Pain Train" (alternatively, 40k fans can call it WAAAAAGH) - your racial picks are a modification of the Bulrathi template, taking High Gravity (primarily for the +1 hitpoint for every soldier, but the planet settling bonus can be nice), Subterranean (the extra population per planet is really important for having an economy that isn't a complete disaster, +10 ground defense ain't nothing to sneeze at), +20 ground combat skill (works in space too), warlord (you will be relying on a large fleet of cheap ships, and will NEED the extra command points, and also, your planets will be hilariously hard to occupy, and the extra troops provide a buffer against bombing to some degree), Repulsive (you aren't going for diplo victory with this build, that's for sure), and Feudal (your science output will be in the gutter, but primary point of the build is to go around this - by looting the science from your fallen enemies) This build is highly reliant on the quality of your starting system. If you're on higher difficulties and don't have at least one rich planet in your home system, restart. Do the early game research as best you can, and do colonize stuff in your system before getting the freighter tech. You colonies can't go below 1 pop, and that 1 pop can still build stuff, including stuff that builds other stuff. Once you've got soil enrichment, pollution processor, and supercomputers, get powered armor (+1hp), fusion drive, and assault pods. Now each of your destroyers can (with battlepods) get reinforced hull and 3x4 assault pods each, in theory being able to capture 3 enemy battleships (though point defence usually means you can reliably capture 3 battleships per 2 destroyers). Scrap the spare battleships to get tech and cash, and use the rest against the AI. Take their planets (hint: this will be very, very, very easy to do) and steal even more tech. Once you've secured an acceptable amount of planets, research neutron guns, antimatter drives, and teleporters - your enemies should have actual, working point defense by this point, which means you'll need a different way of boarding them. And hey, this is just about the time for the Antarans to show their ugly faces.  Warning: This will NOT win you games against human players. But it's really drat fun to use against the AI Did I mention that we shouldn't piss off the big angry space bears if we don't have to? Let's not piss off the big angry space bears. e: there's an nweis' lore post at the end of the last page
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2016 22:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 18, 2024 16:57 |
|
|
In the third game, Neutron Cannons are a mid-range weapon instead. They're still reducing the efficience of enemy shields, but not by that much it's relevant. They're still a good weapon thanks to high damage and high range. Also as beam weapons they're more accurate, which makes them excellent point defense, too. They're even very good fighter weapons, because a fighter armed with neutron weapons is a lot smaller then most comparable fighters, so you can cram your carriers full with nearly twice as many fighters as with most other weapon systems you can get at the time. In vanilla you won't have much fun with them due to getting spammed with newer technologies all the drat time, but if you play a race bad at research or a mod adressing the issue, they're your main weapon for a good chunk of the game. With fighters it's kind of reversed, though: My favourite mod Ultima Orion adds tons of new weapons, including exotic fighter weapons, while in vanilla Master of Orion 3 your carriers will probably be stuck at neutron blasters for a good, long while. Since vanilla MO3 lacks the upgrades to point defense the mod adds, this turns your carriers into even more of a game-breaking terror weapon. If you want to be extra mean to the AI, just never build anything else except carriers. This will effortlessly steamroll everything all the time.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2016 22:26
|
|
|
It looks like we'll be stopping research on Biotechnology, and building neither a new ship nor a spy center, in favor of more colonisation. I will now play through the update. E: Well, I hope people like seeing me getting stomped into the dirt! I will finish playing through the update sometime later. I told you this could happen! nweismuller fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Oct 9, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 14:13
|
|
|
 Is it the end or can we recover?
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 16:15
|
|
|
Oh no... is it unrecoverable? Everything was going so well.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 17:05
|
|
|
Nine Bulrathi frigates steamrolling our border defenses with no losses. I'm not sure if they have anything in place to bomb or invade us, but frankly I'm not sure we'll be able to hold them anywhere. And they'll doubtless get bombs or troop transports before long.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 17:17
|
|
|
Sounds unbearable.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 17:26
|
|
|
That's the problem with armed bears, now isn't it?
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 17:27
|
|
|
AJ_Impy posted:Sounds unbearable. Get out. Also, I thought we were friends...  never trust a space bear I guess.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 17:28
|
|
|
I'm starting to suspect that nuMoO AI has a strong streak of military opportunism. They liked us, and thought we were weak and worth working over for all our lunch money.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 17:31
|
|
|
This honestly sounds like a restart situation, but if you want to stick it out I won't stop you.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 17:36
|
|
|
 It's better AI. They lead you into a false sense of security, but then when you don't show yourself arming up they decide to break all rules and bear all over you.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 17:36
|
|
|
nweismuller posted:I'm starting to suspect that nuMoO AI has a strong streak of military opportunism. They liked us, and thought we were weak and worth working over for all our lunch money.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 18:16
|
|
|
Yeah IF we can claw our way back it'll make a great story but... well, it doesn't sound all too hopeful. To me, it looks like they're gonna nuke anything resembling an industrial base into nothing and/or invade before we can get any meaningful forces up.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 18:20
|
|
|
You certainly can claw your way back into this, but you're going to need to build as many frigates as they have. Also 9 frigates this early? The Bulrathi are a war type AI, but that means their infrastructure is terrible. If you can beat off that wave you should have the upper hand.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 18:26
|
|
|
I'm not sure how we could possibly beat them off, is the issue. They outnumber us severely, were able to take a military outpost and one of our frigates without losing one ship (because concentrating subsequent volleys on precisely the same target is not something I've been able to do), and anything we could build would get smashed.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 18:48
|
|
|
nweismuller posted:I'm not sure how we could possibly beat them off, is the issue. They outnumber us severely, were able to take a military outpost and one of our frigates without losing one ship (because concentrating subsequent volleys on precisely the same target is not something I've been able to do), and anything we could build would get smashed. I'm guessing the game doesn't have a reserve-system to store freshly build ships? With that, you could wait until you have enough ships built before deploying your fleet to smash the enemy.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 18:54
|
|
|
Libluini posted:I'm guessing the game doesn't have a reserve-system to store freshly build ships? With that, you could wait until you have enough ships built before deploying your fleet to smash the enemy. Nope- not that I particularly think it should. Hit the enemy's fleet in drydock if they refuse to launch it. The fact is I got beaten fair and square, although I'll admit I was boggled by such a huge early buildup.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 18:59
|
|
|
This would never have happened if people had voted for a strong military instead of frivolous junk all the time. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 19:17
|
|
|
nweismuller posted:Nope- not that I particularly think it should. Hit the enemy's fleet in drydock if they refuse to launch it. The fact is I got beaten fair and square, although I'll admit I was boggled by such a huge early buildup. That's a shame. I always rationalized this function in Master of Orion III as the reserve just being this huge fleet of mothballed /not combat ready ships distributed throughout your empire. In this view, a ship build on a planet under siege would just silently slip away to join the reserve. Of course, the old space 4x Imperium for the Atari ST does it exactly like you suggest: If there's an enemy fleet in orbit and you don't immediately add your newly built ships to a fleet, the game quietly destroys them for you after the turn ends. Of course Imperium fucks this up in a multitude of ways: 1. Shipyards in Imperium are just an abstract concept and you can just order some far away backwater to receive all of your new ships to avoid this. Of course it makes no sense that some backwater dump is constructing 10 Superdreadnoughts but the game doesn't care. 2. Neither the game nor the manual tells you about what happens to a ship pool on a planet under siege, you only learn about this when your first batch of ships is destroyed this way. 3. Building ships in Imperium is incredibly expensive and taxing for your economy, every ship lost this way is therefore also incredibly painful. 4. Changing the planet meant to be the rally point only works inbetween workorders. If your current workorder delivers to a planet under siege, you're hosed.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 19:22
|
|
|
TIL infrastructure, research, exploration, and colonization is frivolous junk. Sorry we didn't go maximum space jingoist as the peaceful traders race. We just had the bad luck to start next to the race that was kinda built for maximum space jingoism.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 20:16
|
|
|
The eternal problem. You have stuff, you need to defend that stuff, or provide a disincentive to attack, or both. Could we have made trade deals or some such? Even paying tribute to buy time might have been enough.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 20:49
|
|
|
Crazycryodude posted:TIL infrastructure, research, exploration, and colonization is frivolous junk. Sorry we didn't go maximum space jingoist as the peaceful traders race. We just had the bad luck to start next to the race that was kinda built for maximum space jingoism.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 23:14
|
|
|
Poil posted:Maybe you might actually need to get some defenses if you start near a race built for space jingoism? I mean, you don't attempt to start to spam wonders if you start next to Monty in Civ 5 do you? You don't, of course, but in fairness that may be a legitimately unbalanced aspect of Civ 5. I've had to restart runs because I wound up sandwiched between Huns and Mongols and just been so far behind other economies by the time I won that there was probably no way to catch up. Their aggression can be a suboptimal strategy that forces their neighbors into equally suboptimal strategies so even the winners still lose.
|
|
#
?
Oct 9, 2016 23:25
|
|
|
Poil posted:Maybe you might actually need to get some defenses if you start near a race built for space jingoism? I mean, you don't attempt to start to spam wonders if you start next to Monty in Civ 5 do you? Probably, but I've never been close to an aggressive race that jumped me this early in the game, and the Bulrathi aren't the most trigger happy race out there. Then again, I usually start post warp, so maybe the game plays very differently in the early game on pre warp.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 00:24
|
|
|
one thousand years of darkness a grizzly fate indeed
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 00:28
|
|
|
Is the LP over then? We should've made a custom race with Creative at the start
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 00:33
|
|
|
Hey, if we survive this we can RP by saying the war made us more battle hardened and we started focusing more on military and red snazzy uniforms and oh dear we're the Terran Empire now.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 01:41
|
|
|
LEGO Genetics posted:Hey, if we survive this we can RP by saying the war made us more battle hardened and we started focusing more on military and red snazzy uniforms and oh dear we're the Terran Khanate now. Yes, let's do this 
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 03:23
|
|
|
nweismuller posted:I'm starting to suspect that nuMoO AI has a strong streak of military opportunism. They liked us, and thought we were weak and worth working over for all our lunch money. Yeah, it is very good at comparing military strength. How friendly they are with you acts as a modifier to whether they will attack but if the military balance slips too far they will attack unless they are facing some other foe. This is the main reason I suggested rushing shields. I can sometimes take out five or six early frigates with a military outpost if I have shields that keep replenishing.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 04:01
|
|
|
Space bears see you playing friendly econ/science game and will have none of it! Should have listened to the warhawks and made ready. A gun in every hand, a fighter in every hanger.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 04:08
|
|
|
Normally I'm delighted when things go horribly wrong in these strategy game LPs, but in nweiss's games he and a lot of folks put in a lot of effort writing RP stuff. Now they might have to potentially drop everything and start again  (Maybe not *everything* though, there's probably some good alternate universe jokes and other tomfoolery to get weaved into things if there's a reset)
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 04:13
|
|
|
If we reset I'm going to miss the Gaian planet to the one side and the Terran planet with a food bonus on the other the most.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 04:53
|
|
|
So Montezuma is a bear now?
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 05:36
|
|
|
There is still a chance. I would research shields quickly and finish that starbase on the homeworld. Then put up a missile base and then start cranking out frigates. If you also research shields you might be able to draw them into a battle and win. Then rebuild the outpost and put more ships on it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 06:10
|
|
|
If/when we do get stomped by the space bears, I want to see it narrative-wise, and not just go 'welp game over guys'. And then... is there a cheat we can use to switch to the space bears?
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 06:21
|
|
|
Here's what I propose to do. I plan to revert to our last save, and as soon as I get the faintest whiff of in-game evidence of Bulrathi military movements, I intend to swap research and production priorities for a crash military buildup to try and give us a fighting chance. We might still lose the war, but I'll do my best to go down swinging. How does that sound to people?
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 11:42
|
|
|
Let's kick some bear butt 
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 11:47
|
|
|
Let's bring some good ol' fashioned FREEDOM!™ to those 
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 12:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 18, 2024 16:57 |
|
|
I don't regret buying MoO:CTS, but I have an irrational hatred of the fact that ships using the alternate hulls are displayed everywhere but on the battle map as using the default hulls. How that managed to not be fixed prior to release is a mystery.
|
|
#
?
Oct 10, 2016 14:13
|
|
