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Hey sweet, a Master of Orion Remake LP! I'm still not sure if I should buy the game, so I'll follow this LP closely to see if it can tip the decision on way or other.
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Sep 26, 2016 22:53
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Crazycryodude posted:I'm not entirely sure why but I just keep bouncing off NuMoO whenever I try to get into it. I think it's something about the starlanes or the systems not being single points or the combat or the ship design maybe how pop growth works or something, but I can't quite figure it out and it's really bothering me that I can't enjoy what should by rights be one of my favorite games. Really I think it's a whole bunch of niggling things that are just a little too changed, but I can't pinpoint them. I loved MoO I and II (we don't talk about III) and more recently Stardrive II is one of my favorites so I have no idea why I keep bouncing off this one. Anybody else having similar problems? This made me think, I don't like MO1 and 2 but love the third game. Star Drive for some reason I couldn't get into, so it looks like our tastes are perfectly mirrored. This could mean I would like the remake. Hell, if the new Master of Orion goes into a steam sale over Halloween, I'll grab it.
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Sep 27, 2016 13:59
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ProfessorProf posted:With the currency symbol reading 'BC', shouldn't it be billions of credits, not trilliions? Maybe it stands for "Bajillion Credits"? 
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Sep 27, 2016 23:40
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Asteroid Labs and Biospheres On starship design, let's go with a balanced vessel for the start, since we have no idea what we will meet between the stars: Lancer class frigate Standard Drive + Armor (10p) Augmented Engines (10p) 2 Missile Tubes (8p) 3 Laser Cannon, front-mounted (6p) 3 PD-turrets (3p) (37p total) The idea behind this ship is to serve as an armed explorer, so the focus is on speed and versatility. In combat, the standard tactic would be to use speed and maneuverability to close with the enemy while spitting out some missiles and then wreak havoc with all weapons at close range. Three point-defense lasers should help neuter enemy missiles, while our lasers will make sure said neutering won't happen to us.
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Sep 28, 2016 12:29
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I have to continue supporting my own Lancer-design since it's the only proposal with lasers the chiefs of staff seem to like. (Of course the Lancer still uses missiles, but more as a support at long range until the ship closes, not as main weapon.) Anyway, if we end up going with one of the pure missile-designs I will laugh so hard if the first enemy your missile-ships meet is some abomination decked out in dozens of point defense lasers.
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Sep 28, 2016 22:44
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Xenocides posted:If that happens we just did not send enough missile frigates. Exactly my point. It will never be enough missile frigates before they're all dead and the nukes drop on Earth. Better to go with the laser-option and avoid the worst-case scenario by good planning.
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Sep 28, 2016 23:16
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Xenocides posted:I do not see how inaccurate laser popguns alter the equation in any way. Just because occasionally a hit will miss doesn't make our laser cannons "inaccurate", especially compared to a missile-ship which can see its entire DPS drop to zero when its missiles get torn apart by PD.
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Sep 29, 2016 08:54
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my dad posted:Ah, yes, point defence. poo poo like this is the reason the Ultima Orion mod massively improved shields and added additional point-defense technologies. But I have no idea how the remake handles its real-time combat, so it may very well play out like in vanilla Master of Orion 3!
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Sep 29, 2016 13:32
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Research: Engineering because I really don't like leaving something cheap and useful behind. Military: Time to bomb the pirates! But I think we should plan ahead for the future and design a vessel which will still be useful for some time afterwards: MCHammer-class frigate: Augment Engines 125t <-They're painted red Neutron Cannon 360° no scope surprise 2x 240t <-It's newer and therefore better Buffbomb 100t <-To smash pirates PD-lazor 20,4t 5x <-Emergency measure, can be used to burn "U Can't Touch This" into incomming missiles Colonisation: Yeah, I think we should go with no population transport Diplomacy: Talk to the bears maybe they have something useful? Also please don't give away our ECM to a potential enemy as long as our military uses missiles. Libluini fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Oct 3, 2016 |
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Oct 3, 2016 12:10
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nweismuller posted:Libluini, frigates are limited to three distinct types of weapons (and this includes arcs and modifications, so a forward mount laser is different from a sides mount laser is different from a heavy sides mount laser...). Your proposed design mounts four different types of weapon system, and thus is not a valid design. Oh, I forgot this odd restriction. The proposal is reworked! MCHammer-class frigate: Augment Engines 125t <-They're painted red Neutron Cannon 360° no scope surprise 2x 240t <-It's newer and therefore better Buffbomb 100t <-To smash pirates PD-lazor 20,4t 5x <-Emergency measure, can be used to burn "U Can't Touch This" into incomming missiles Edit: A single hit by PD can down a missile! I didn't know our nuclear missiles where that vulnerable, we should eject our missile-designs for the time being until we get better missiles. Libluini fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Oct 3, 2016 |
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Oct 3, 2016 12:59
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my dad posted:Emphasis on "hit". Remember, early game, poo poo accuracy. Yeah, but PD gets +25% accuracy. Also, in the time it takes to launch another salvo of missiles, the PD-lasers can shoot almost five times at the old one. So every single PD-laser has multiple chances with bonus accuracy and they have to hit only one time. If that new neutron-cannon frigate I suggested gets in a fight with a missile-ship, I would bet on not a single missile getting through during the entire fight.
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Oct 3, 2016 16:30
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nweismuller posted:It does not take 11 seconds by a long shot for missiles to cross the last 10 range to their target. Your statement assumes that missiles are in flight for the entire 11 seconds between salvos, and that they're in point defense range for the entire time they're in flight, neither of which applies. That said, 5 point defense guns is a respectable quantity. Well, I was more assuming five PD-lasers could only be overwhelmed by multiple salvoes in flight and with 11 seconds between launches, no way in hell are the following missiles arriving fast enough to help swamping the defenses. So if a ship launches 4 missiles per salvo, thanks to the 11 second delay all missiles will be exploded by point defense before the next follow-up salvo can arrive. This results in the point defense always destroying all missiles since the missile-ship has no way to make multiple salvoes arrive at the same time. But yeah, I was probably optimistic with my earlier designs. I am also bad at math.
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Oct 3, 2016 17:20
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Man, the Bulrathi are, like the other revived species of the remake, incredibly lucky to live in a parallel universe separate from the old games. The galactic encyclopedia of Master of Orion III tells us how they had to suffer through ten thousand years of the Pax Humanica after the Humans canonically "won" the first game with a diplomatic victory and then got shat on by their allies* in the second great war (the first great war beeing the conflict in the second game) between Master of Orion II and III, only to be bombed into near extinction by the Antarans after the war was over. (And just before the third game starts.) *Bulrathi ground troops were left behind on worlds assaulted by the Antarans until the Bulrathi finally snapped and withdrew from the conflict. Of course, the Antarans forced them into submission like everyone else, so that didn't really help them.
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Oct 5, 2016 15:51
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Xenocides posted:I was following the game when it was first being hyped. The backstory was very odd. There was even a fiction piece about how the Antarans believed they had discovered the way to transcendence (that actually led to death) that wiped out most of their species. The survivors declared themselves the New Orions and formed the Council system in MOO3 to keep the other species in check that seemed like a fun idea but did not work in practice due to subpar programming. That first part never happened, that's just what their victims in the Orion Sector believe to feel better about themselves. The Antarans actually wiped themselves out thanks to a brain-eating parasite called Harvester Gamma. The parasite was supposed to be a new generation of Antaran bio-weapon to kill every species they wanted dead more efficiently then by their old, tedious methods of using work camps and orbital bombardments. The last part is true, it's just missing the "New Orions" still doing their favourite thing: Killing people. You can read about Harvester Gamma, the Antaran Collapse and the wishful thinking of their victims here in more detail.
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Oct 6, 2016 09:39
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So now we're at two Master of Orion remakes? That's five games now in this series. If we can get someone to remake the second and third part, we could overtake Civilization in terms of sequels!
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Oct 6, 2016 14:52
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nweismuller posted:I hate to break it to you, but nuMoO is a lot more of a remake of the second game than the first. And yes, treating the second game as a 'sequel' to the events of the first is basically ridiculous, which helped me to fail to take the MoO3 backstory seriously. From my viewpoint, this makes this series an even more convoluted mess! Back when I stumbled over MO3 I would never have imagined how weird this series would be, it was basically just "Civilization in Space" for me. I took the MO3-backstory simply at face value, since I never bothered learning what was up with the older games until a couple years ago. Until I've read some LPs about the first two games, I just assumed everything in the Encyclopedia Galactica was literally true.
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Oct 6, 2016 15:11
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Well, of course. Which is why I started with "From my viewpoint". The viewpoint of someone tainted by starting with the third game. Someone who never got enough interest in the older games to try them. Someone so imprisoned by nostalgia for MO3 he is forever lost.
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Oct 6, 2016 15:30
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my dad posted:I mean, I understand you, I'm a big fan of flawed games that had the potential to be more. Freelancer comes to mind. From what I've seen in your MoO3 LP, the game has some great ideas, it's just that the execution is... It's basically just nostalgia. As my first space 4x, MO3 has a special place in my heart, as corny as that sounds. There is no other game I'm willing to forgive that many flaws. And even I refuse to play it without multiple patches and a massive mod applied. Edit: At least MO3 doesn't make you feel actively repulsed by playing it. And the game runs stable, without randomly crashing when I accidentally click into empty space or other nonsense. (I haven't forgotten Imperium! I just need some time to overcome my revulsion, OK?! Someday that LP will continue.) Libluini fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Oct 6, 2016 |
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Oct 6, 2016 15:44
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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.
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Oct 8, 2016 22:26
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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.
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Oct 9, 2016 18:54
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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.
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Oct 9, 2016 19:22
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I told you guys I would laugh if our first enemy is a primarily missile-user and I'm laughing right now. I told you this would happen. Sure, we were also incredibly outnumbered, but having the wrong design didn't help either. Since we're redoing this, I suggest the following two designs to go bear hunting: Viper (Heavy Cruiser) 4 Weapons, 4 special hard points Class I Shield 250t 3x Heavy Neutron Cannon 360° mount 480t 54 damage 6x PD Laser-turrets 122,4t 2x Defensive KKVs 60t 912,4t total The Viper is a new class of space superiority warship, able to overpower enemies using primarily energy-weapons with its three massive Neutron Cannon mounts, while missile-based designs can just go home and weap. The Viper can easily shred missile salvoes of multiple enemy ships and even on its own will tear apart enemy warships. The design is similar to the Davy Crockett-class, but exchanges the ECM-Jammer for more offensive firepower. The Viper instead trusts its 6 defensive turrets and two anti-missile launchers to keep enemy ordnance at bay. Shrike (Frigate) 3 Weapons, 3 Specials Class I Shield 100t Augmented Engines 125t ECM-Jammer 150t 1x Heavy Neutron Cannon Front Mount 120t 2x PD Laser-turrets 40,8t 1x Defensive KKV 30t 565,8t total The Shrike is an adaption of earlier frigate-designs: As it lacks the enormous firepower of larger ships, it augments its defenses with a ECM-Jammer and Augmented Engines. The primary weapon is a single frontal mounted Heavy Neutron Cannon to shred unfortunate victims. Two PD-turrets and a single defensive launch tube have been crammed into the small hull to give the ship additional point defense capabilities instead of depending solely on maneuverability and ECM. This frigate, while capable on its own, can be used to devastating effect when escorting a Viper-class heavy cruiser: The sizable point defense of the heavier ship combined with the ECM-Jammer of the smaller escort will keep the space near a task force swept clean of hostile missiles. Thanks to the multiple heavy energy weapons such a task force can bring to bear, this makes potential enemies a lot less lucky. Both ships are able to hold their own if they are alone, but if both Vipers and Shrikes are together in the same fleet they should wreak untold havoc and reduce every ship the bears have to space dust without letting a single missile through.
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Oct 10, 2016 19:27
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"our beam accuracy is poo poo" is the line of reasoning which will lead to us getting owned by space bears repeatedly. At least the Bulrathi will end us the way we deserve it for being addicted to nukes. For one thing, nothing prevents them to just fill up some of their ships with point defense, too. Really guys, we're fighting against someone who will probably heavily outnumbers even if we start building warships sooner, and your idea is to just double down on stupid? 
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Oct 10, 2016 19:38
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Voting for Viper as our main space combat ship and the Shrike as combined scout/escort frigate.
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Oct 12, 2016 14:13
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Rappaport posted:
To be honest, all those early (and remade) Silicoids creep me the gently caress out. My first contact were the alien-looking crystal-beings of the third game. Those look reasonable, the others at best make me chuckle because they look so silly in comparison.
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Oct 12, 2016 19:01
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nweismuller posted:I'm not sure whether surface bombardment leaves pollution. It seems like leaving pollution would be a sensible thing for it to do, but I just don't know. That's a shame. Persistent damage to planets was one of the better things Master of Orion 3 came up with. Both bombardment and prolonged intensive ground combat can slowly make a world more and more hostile over time. Even the planet's graphics change to show how the world is slowly getting turned into a ruined hell! (And terraforming can slowly reverse the damage, so it's not a constant annoyance.)
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Oct 13, 2016 17:14
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Can we force the Bulrathi to accept ludicrous demands like giving us one of their planets if we beat them hard enough? If so, I vote for a mix of options 1 and 2: Let's interdict the poo poo out of their fleet and then park ships over every planet they own and wait until they are willing to give us anything to get back to peace. Basically let's expand the Bulrathi Quarantine Zone to encompass every single system the Bulrathi own.
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Oct 14, 2016 17:40
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I declare today to be the day of the Neutron and support our troops getting neutron blaster rifles as fast as possible! Shoot everything with neutrons! Neutrons.
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Oct 15, 2016 12:12
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Considering we were backstabbed by aliens I foresee open revolt on Earth if we don't at least get something from the Bulrathi. To preserve the peace on Earth we just have to take one of their colonies in reparation! Also lots of money and technologies if possible.
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Oct 15, 2016 17:58
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The war continues! Research Let's concentrate on Neutron Physics for now, we're still at war and should work at getting more firepower at least until the war is over. If the war drags on for long enough, we can maybe follow up with Advanced Fusion later? Ship building One more Davy Crocket. Our fleet is important, but not to the price of completely stopping our colonization program! That's important, too. War Policy Overall we should keep a defensive posture until we have some defenses completed. We don't want every rustbucket in the universe to slink in behind our back, after all. But as soon as we have defenses, we should immediately shift to the offensive and attack. Our goals in this war should be (in order of importance): Defend until ready Attack and destroy enemy fleet Set up blockade over an enemy planet to lure out and destroy Bulrathi reinforcements Optimally, force a surrender with really expensive reparations to keep the Bulrathi weakened If the Bulrathi won't give up or won't give good enough terms, keep up the blockade until enough transports are ready to occupy the planet, march forward and blockade the next planet, rinse and repeat. That last part is more of a long-term goal, though. Would probably take multiple updates to occupy every Bulrathi world. Intelligence The Bulrathi don't look like they spend a lot of time training spies, so I vote for being as offensive as possible with our spies. Paradise While later operations may need a star base as a command center, right now we need some defenses, let's finish the Missile Base first.
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Oct 17, 2016 22:24
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Just as a head's up, Master of Orion is on sale right now. The 40% discount is nearly halving the price and is running until 6th November, so if you want to try the game out, now is the chance! Thanks to this LP, I finally broke down and bought it. I mean, 40% discount! How the hell was I supposed to resist this temptation?
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Oct 31, 2016 22:07
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Stormgear posted:Apparently some people are claiming that things can be fixed after a few turns if you swap all your production workers to research or food. I've bought the game recently and the patch hit just a couple dozen turns into my starting game. This already put my homeworld at max pollution and it took 30 turns for the pollution to slowly fall back to a level were it stopped to cripple my food production. So I don't know how feasable powering through is if you were in late game at patch day, I guess the question is how bad was the AI hit by this change? Maybe it's not as apocalyptical when everyone has the same problems for a while. 
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Nov 2, 2016 18:47
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nweismuller posted:The problem is the rate of cleanup is too slow to get us below the threshhold of environmental degradation, and, well. Just don't want to have to deal with this. Is that degradation permanent? I thought it would clean up when removing pollution. If that doesn't happen, welp I guess I'll have to restart my own game, too.
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Nov 2, 2016 21:17
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McGavin posted:New patch deleted all saves. Wargaming does it again! Good fortune for me! Just as I was trying to focus more on my MO3-LP my old nuMO-saves are gone! One game less I feel compelled to play. This was the easiest pledge I ever made to myself. 
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Dec 1, 2016 23:08
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nweismuller posted:
Yuck. Reminds me of cockroaches. On the ants/bees discussion point, since the hivemind is a telepathic phenomenon, it doesn't have to mean the Klackons started as hive insects. They could have started out like sand wasps. (Sand Wasps build small nests with only a few wasps per nest. Technically, Sand Wasps don't have queens since the adult females are all more or less the same. )
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Jan 19, 2017 00:39
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Crazycryodude posted:Oh, yeah, you do fine Nweis, and any failings are easily attributed to the source material. Maybe it's just because I consume so much sci-fi, but the rubber forehead aliens I see in 95% of it start to wear on me. You should try Master of Orion III, that game has some truly alien aliens.
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Jan 19, 2017 02:39
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nweismuller posted:Meklars are Cybernetic, consuming only half the amount of food that other species require, and automatically repairing their ships slightly every year, even without local repair facilities. They are also Industrialists, gaining a 25% bonus to industry produced by their population and automatically gaining knowledge of Physics after researching Space Travel. Given that Meklars still require some food consumption, I have glossed their foundational technology as requiring some basic nutrient inputs that still require farming. Nice idea! And it actually works better than the stuff the devs of Master of Orion III came up with to explain why the now pure robotic Meklar still needed food/agricultural products: They're sometimes using organic parts in their robot-bodies. Apparently just for the hell of it. There's even a leader who installs flesh-parts into her body to have as much sex with as many beings as possible.
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Jan 19, 2017 02:59
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nweismuller posted:... what. Yeah, that came as a surprise to me, too. Luckily she hasn't made an appearance in my LP yet, probably because Silicoids have a lower chance to get Meklar-leaders (we still got a Robo-Hitler and a traumatized Robo-Victim of Antaran experiments though.) MO3 is kind of a mess. Lots of good points, but then you suddenly get stuff like... this.
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Jan 19, 2017 03:22
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nweismuller posted:Ouch, my sympathies. Man, this gives me flashbacks back to the early 2000s, when my first internet connection was an eleven meters long cable connecting my cheap impuls modem with my mother's phoneline. Of course only during the night, since plugging in my modem blocked her telephone connection. 16,7kb/s maximum speed. Mostly thanks to the eleven meters long cable I dutifully rolled up every morning. Ahem. Also, I looked up Stars in Shadow and bought it. Thanks to your avatar, mostly.
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Jan 24, 2017 21:21
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:05 |
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nweismuller posted:Well, that was a huge update. I'll work on assembling a list of the new planets in the core we've discovered if anybody wishes, along with leftover worlds in our quadrant we have yet to colonise. Sorry it took a while, but perhaps it should be clear why this update was a great deal of work. It's not bad, the cartoony stile reminds me of Sword of the Stars. Personally I find it a bit off-putting sometimes, but it's not a deal breaker. The ships look nice, at least! I tried out the Ortho-somethings (the ice bugs) and already ran into weird things like a human colony self-destructing, by first joining us and then rebelling shortly after. Now their government is gone and 1/3rd of their population, too. I didn't even do anything, they did this to themselves! (Typically Human, you could say. )The game feels like someone put Civilization and Sword of the Stars into a blender and set it to "purée". It's also refreshingly simple, most of the space 4x I've played have been the complete opposite. I think I'll keep playing it one and off again, especially after my more complex games start giving me headaches again. Yeah, and I say we should ally ourselves to the Mrrshan while trying to keep the peace with the Meklar and Darlok. I don't really have an opinion for the rest, so I vote for whatever makes the most sense.
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Jan 25, 2017 12:25
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