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 By popular request, I'm playing the second game in the Master of Orion series of venerable-until-it-wasn't 4X games. It's been done a couple times in narrative style by noted bard nweismuller. Over a decade ago, GrandpaPants also did one. This will be more gameplay-focused, similar but much shorter than my adventures with the original here. I'm not nearly as good at this game, so don't expect similar shenanigans. Master of Orion II was produced in 1996 by Simtex Software, published by Microprose. That's the same duo that made the first game a few years earlier, but not the same project lead. Moo2 was very well-received, and there are still many who consider it the finest 4x ever made. For anyone who didn't follow the first LP, I think the original is one of the Top 5 strategy games. However, contrary to popular opinion, I don't hold this one in as high regard. It's an above-average strategy game, better than most -- but I don't consider it a classic and definitely not at the same level of the debut title. I'll explain and hear counterarguments I'm sure as to the why of all that. A lot of this is probably nostalgia-based; i.e., what game you played first is probably the one you like the most. I'll do my best to give more solid reasons for what I think than that. Wasn't there a Master of Orion game more recently? Yeah, but we don't talk about those :P. My working title for a while was going to be At Least It's Actually a Sequel, because frankly I don't think that can be accurately said of the last two entries. Master of Orion III, Libluini's continuing efforts aside, killed the franchise for a while and with good reason. It's one of the great cautionary tales in game development history, up there with Rome: Total War II and a few others in the pantheon of 'what not to do'. The more recent reboot in 2016 is essentially a modernized, dumbed-down version of our subject matter for this thread. Neither of them, especially III, deserve the name printed on the box. Master of Orion II is a legit sequel that generally stays true to the spirit of the original. In that, it stands alone among the other attempts. For the record, Steam says the following: ** Master of Orion 1 - 86% positive ** Master of Orion 2 - 96% ** Master of Orion 3 - 45%. Never let it be said that people are too negative. This isn't nearly negative enough. ** Master of Orion 2016 - 58% This reflects the general consensus again that the first two are considered classics, with II the pinnacle of the series - and that the more recent efforts have been lacking, to put it charitably. Are you going to win with every race on Impossible again? No. This will once again be a hybrid LP in the same style, mostly screenshots but videos for representative combats. I plan to do at least a couple successful games - and hopefully not too many failures - so I'll give a good taste but I won't be exploring every possible eventuality. Also, this may or may not be a dual LP, in the sense that Wayne was at some point going to do some MOO2 videos of his own as a joint effort. I don't know if that's still planned, since he's been quite busy lately - but it may be a thing. If you read this Wayne, you're still invited. I think Moo2 IS the best in the series. Can't you show it a little charity? They tried, they really did. The game is ambitious and improves on the original in many respects. They got many things right, and I think their minds were generally in the right place. My aim here is to be harsh but fair - where it outshines MOO1 in my opinion I'll make a point of saying so. My contention though is that none of those improvements are in the final analysis nearly as important as the things they screwed up. It's hard to make a good sequel. It's REALLY hard when you're following up a good original. So while this game admittedly is being judged, at least by me, in comparison to quite a high bar, they did put 'Master of Orion' not 'Generic Space Strategy X' on it, so I think it's a proper approach. Bottom line: it's a quality game, worth playing. Just not an all-time great. Spoilers? Have at it, just use the tags for anything that gets close to talking about that creature on the box art at the top of this post. If you know enough to spoil it, you know what I'm talking about. No need to tag stuff like talking about tech advances and the like. Most people will probably have played the game before, but I don't want to totally assume that will be the case. I'm also going to come right out here and say that I'll be very interested in hearing strategic advice from the experts on this game, esp. in the first playthrough. So on that spoil, spoil, spoil away. Longhorn Legends Here's what's got us all chasin' circles in the pasture so far. Hard Normal In which I get myself well and truly waxed by a fast-expanding menace. Setting the Stage: First Game Setup Grasping the Very Basics: The First Turn Learning the Essentials Leaving the Cradle Callisto or Bust To Callisto and Beyond! Something Something Plan Enemy Contact With Ever Survives The No UI Wrap-Up All Cramped Up and Nowhere To Go Between a Rock and a Gang of Wannabes Fighter Details (Olesh) A Dastardly Betrayal Combat Hit Mechanics (Olesh) A Grave Mistake Humanity Strikes Back or Dies Trying. Probably the Second One Shields & Damage Mechanics (Olesh) The Grim Reaper Cometh TechnoGeeks Custom Psilons, Hard/Huge/Antarans, in which I aim for maximum science and the new ending. TechnoGeek Opening A Quiet Galaxy The End of the Beginning Habitable Area and You: A guide to Maximum Population (and Food) On Planets (Olesh) How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Hand Over All My Tech The Antarans are Coming! A Whole Lotta Micro Goin' On This Neighborhood Blows War Is Upon Us Counterattack Mrrshan Squeeze Ship Design & Tactics Effortpost (Olesh) Peace is a Lie, but so is War. And everything else, come to think of it. This Galaxy Blows Klackon Krush Let's Talk About Missiles Some More (Olesh) Back to the Designing Board Tipping Point Micro All The Day Long Bye-Bye Bugs Smashing the Rocks Beam Weapon Scaling (Olesh) Evolving Towards Perfection A Billion Strong And Growing A Valiant - and Ill-Advised - Raid Too Many Beakers Palpatine Was a Child Playing With Toys Klingons Custom Elerians, Hard/Small, Going for maximum combat What Do I Even Do Here You Say Federation, I say Faileration Between the Rocks and a Hard Place The Dumbest War An Uneasy Recovery Klackons Stock Klackons because Uncreative, first and only Impossible run, Medium galaxy A Final (Stiff) Challenge Limited Options Expansion Monster-Hunting Antaran Airheads The Peace Ends In Theory Any Ball of Rock in the Storm The Only Good Meklar Is An Enslaved Meklar Silence Freedom and Mixed Success Gnolam Grind Thot's Thoughts: Post-Mortem Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Dec 5, 2019 |
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Mar 12, 2019 08:08
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Thotimx posted:It's been done a couple times in narrative style by noted bard nweismuller. The call-out is much appreciated, and the 'noted bard' descriptor made my day. I'll be following this LP. Thank you very much! 
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Mar 12, 2019 08:14
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Setting the Stage: First Game Setup Prepare yourself for an lot of exposition. I'm going to try to break it up as best I can by saving anything not strictly necessary for later, but there will still be EPIC WALLS OF TEXT before anything actually really happens. It's the nature of this kind of beast. This update will only get us through the process of getting ready to play - the doing of gameplay itself will begin later. Also, if you want to see stock race X or custom trait combo Y, you can go ahead and mention those at any time but I'll be doing a poll on what to use for further games partway through our initial foray. For now, we just need to get some basics out the way and get our feet wet first. Intro Cinematic Full disclosure: that's not mine, it was just easier to use someone else's upload for this purpose due to the 90s-era penchant for skipping in-game video at the touch of a key ... any key. This basically is just a decent-for-its-time cinematic announcing the Antarans. Who the heck are they? Well, the manual has a bit of background:  This tells us a bit more than the original did, but not much. The Orions we knew about, but now we know the Antarans were their rivals in ancient galactic history. And they assuredly weren't too thrilled about this 'prison dimension' they were trapped in, while the ultimate fate of the Orions is still unknown. Both races are clearly intended to still be shrouded in mystery.  The main menu most notably adds a Hall of Fame and and Multiplayer option to the original.  These are the settings we'll begin with. Similarly there are more options here than the original. That's a trend that we'll see continuing throughout. What is here are known as the Eight Serious Decisions. No, really. That's what the manual refers to them as, capital letters and all. I seriously laughed out loud the first time I read that. ** Difficulty -- Five levels again, ranging from Tutor to Impossible. I'll be starting on Hard as a 'warm-up'. Did a few test starts on Average and I wasn't having any trouble keeping up with the AI once I re-figured out what I was doing, but I'll definitely need to improve to have any shot at Impossible. That may or may not happen later, depending on how things go. Similar to the first game, harder levels have rivals who are better in research/production than you are - lower levels result in the player having the advantage. Additionally, custom races are only available on Average or higher, and higher difficulties result in opponents generally not liking you on the general principle of your insistence on existing. ** Galaxy Size -- Five here as well. Small/Medium/Cluster/Large/Huge. Ignoring 'Cluster' for the moment, this corresponds 20/36/54/72 stars, which isn't as many as in the original which had over 100 in the huge setup, but here systems can have multiple planets so that more than makes up for it. I'm hoping to get in one game on each of the 'standard' four sizes. ** Fun Fact: The 'Cluster' option was apparently added via 'fan/unofficial' patch. This may be why selecting New Game from the main menu is the only way to get it. You can also start a new game from within an existing save ... but you'll only get the other four choices. So far as I can tell, Cluster has the same amount of stars as 'Huge' - despite using the 'Large' graphic - but more evenly spaced out. ** Fun Fact: I found a steam poll of MOO2 players on what size galaxy was preferred. Huge was the runaway winner with 58%, 17% wanted Large which I think Wayne has recommended, and the others were all at about 10% each. ** Galaxy Age -- This is new. Average/Organic Rich/Mineral Rich. Organic Rich means more biological resources and less industrial, Mineral Rich means the opposite, Average strikes a balance. ** Players -- Up to 8 opponents, which of course I'll be using the max of. Only five were available in the first game. Why we need a Sesame Street - style graphic of the numbers is beyond me; perhaps consistency with the rest of the screen? ** Tech Level -- We can start Pre-Warp, Average, Post-Warp, or Advanced. The higher levels give you more technology and potentially multiple star systems, etc. at the start. The exploration phase can largely be skipped if you like by taking one of the later options. 'Post-Warp' here is another example of something not originally in the game and added later. Pre-Warp is my preferred setting because it gives you the most choice and control. For immediate purposes it will also let me drip out mechanics explanations more gradually. ** Tactical Combat - All ship combat can be auto-calculated if you just want it to basically be a space empire simulator; I'll definitely be keeping this on instead. If it is off, you also can't design your own ships, but only select the preset ones. ** Random Events - I like having these on for flavor, but some of them have ... issues. I'll get to that. ** Antarans Attack - Having this on adds another possible victory condition, and definitely makes things more difficult/complicated. Off for this first game, but I'll add it down the road.  Demonstrating the graphics for the other choices. I'm not taking the time to display the other opponent numbers, but other than that this should cover everything.  Reusing graphics for the 'unofficial changes' - Average and Post-Warp settings have the same.  And the same here with 'Large' and 'Cluster'.   There's more races this time around. And, if I may say so, the art style is just ... bizarre. It looks like someone took the original MOO races and cross-bred them with a grotesque gargoyle. It really struck me the first time I ever fired this up how dark everything is visually. It's clearly intentional, but the interface, cinematics, etc. just don't have a lot of lighting. The original cast of characters are all here, along with Trilarians, Gnolams, and Elerians. And then we can also choose a Custom race, which means using one of the other race portraits; whatever portrait we choose will then not be represented as an AI in the game. I'm not sure why -- there is a mysterious 'Custom' graphic -- but anywho. Don't worry about the bonii and such listed below each portrait - we'll get to that. Following after our pointy-headed birdbrain here to represent the Alkari, here are the rest in alphabetical order:   So ... why is it spelled differently now? Darlok became Darlock for some reason.  BTW, MOO3 has some interesting canon on the backstory for these races as well as the one it adds further. It's worth reading - just please, please don't play that game itself. Think of your brain cells. Which need enough attention now that I've subjected to you the 'armor' being worn here.    Humans and Klackons in particular look good IMO, although it's clear the homosapien abandons the 'Star Trek, but less innocent' vibe from the original going with a more 'eastern monk' approach.  NO. The wiry skeletons of MOO were much better. Why did they have to do this to the distinctive cybernetics?? This is just some sort of biped in Purple Power Armor. It was a bulge-eyed, ridge-faced, twerking Purple People Eater ... nvm.  Different, but I'm cool with it. This is the only MOO in which the cat-people are not explicitly feminine.  No longer with outsized, bulging craniums, the eggheads have become the ... crystalheads? Another off-beat choice that I can accept.  I'm detecting a purple fetish. I don't recall every hearing anyone tell of purple wetlands, which is probably why the Sakkra were, and should remain, green. Apparently Kermit was right when he sang decades ago that it ain't that easy being green. I don't mind the more aggressive model, but colored like this it seems the avatar is trying to be a combination of Barney and a T-Rex. With entirely too much bling, I might add.  Yep, purplish fetish confirmed. And also - SILICOIDS DON'T HAVE FREAKING ARMS. They are crystalline life forms. I'll take the original cookie monster over this every day of the week, because they are the most unique race in the game. Portrait fail.  Well done here.  The only place this will ever be seen. Not 'used', because again it really isn't. It's just there to remind us that even races customized from non-humanoids, are still humanoid, even though they're not.  Sheesh. Master of Orion 1 didn't even have a custom race option. And look at all this! I've chosen the Humans here and hit Clear. This is known as 'Galactic Normal'. Hence we are the Hard Normal race (I replaced 'Human' at the top with that, you can name yourself whatever you like there). I will go through what all this stuff does at a later time. Right now, it would be sort of trying to explain the finer points of modern fuel injectors to someone who has never heard of an automobile. Let's get some vague clue of game mechanics first, mkay?  Because I forgot to in the original. Also, without the backslash - I couldn't keep that from popping up since it's part of the screenshot hotkey.  Yellow, simply because traditional Humans wore such uniforms in MOO1.  After a few seconds of 'Generating Universe' are so forth. Once we choose our home star's name here, we can actually play. The primary interface is visible behind. And we don't have to worry about remembering to save, since the game will automatically autosave. Yes, autosaves, a newfangled feature nowhere to be found in the first title. Well done. Until next time, when stuff - of a limited nature - actually happens. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Mar 12, 2019 |
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Mar 12, 2019 08:18
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It's the year 2019, nobody has any brain cells left that could be killed by such harmless things as the Elerians in boob armor. Gonna follow this LP. I played MoO2 before MoO, so for me this is the original and the clearly better game. I played with the less advanced starts a few times, but later I always defaulted to the most advanced start. Things start happening much earlier, and you can play with the more exotic toys sooner. It will be nice to see you start in the primitive state for the first playthrough of this LP though.
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Mar 12, 2019 08:46
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I played this game so much. More than the first, but I now agree with your assessment. There's some mechanics I really like, but others I think are business. We'll all get into that later, I'm sure. And I agree that 3's manual had some cool story. Change about the game itself, though (not that it stopped me from playing it a ton back in the day).
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Mar 12, 2019 17:09
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The Sakkra having a malus to espionage is very fitting. Who wouldn't notice a huge purple dinosaur/lizard-looking amphibian in their midst? Also, hooray for Ender.
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Mar 12, 2019 17:26
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Thotimx posted:Humans and Klackons in particular look good IMO, although it's clear the homosapien abandons the 'Star Trek, but less innocent' vibe from the original going with a more 'eastern monk' approach. I'm not so sure re: abandoning Star Trek... 
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Mar 12, 2019 17:29
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Torrannor posted:Gonna follow this LP. I played MoO2 before MoO, so for me this is the original and the clearly better game.
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Mar 12, 2019 17:56
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Grasping the Very Basics: The First Turn Huddled in the Situation Room, this is the display on the main wall screen as generals, admirals, high-ranking politicians, and other manner of dignitaries are busy at various tasks and/or doing their best to look it. As Immortal - or at least nearly so - Emperor of your people, this is the nerve center of your galactic empire. That's a shockingly pretentious title for where we actually are to start off pre-warp, but we'll get there, at least for a time. Officially, this is the Galactic Command Interface. Not the most inspiring name, but it's functional. Let's go with GCI for short. Much is familiar, but there is definitely some that is new. For our immediate purposes, we'll just note a couple things. ** The GAME button in the upper-middle escaped my notice for quite a while when I first played. I had no idea how to save/load etc. and there are settings under there that we'll leave at default for now and get to later. It's just kind of strange to me that it blends in as much as it does and is sort of an afterthought. ** In the upper-right, the STAR DATE. That's literally what the game calls it. Small clap for being able to know the current turn from the main screen at all times. But with that we must scratch our head. MOO2 definitely doesn't have a consistent relationship with it's own timescale or storyline. Last time out we began in 2300. Here we are 1200 years into the future. That's not a small jump, and it's the same year regardless of what your starting tech level is. Over a millenium in the future, same races starting out in the galaxy at the same general capabilities beginning from their respective homeworlds? This is not a big deal from a gameplay perspective of course - the current stardate matters only in relative terms. It's just that it is sort of pointless and has no even attempted justification that I'm aware of ... so just why?  Just below the stardate is the Reserve display - the coin picture. We start with 50 BC and a healthy positive balance. Click on that panel, and you get this tax pop-up. It really confused me for a while that you have positive income with no taxes. Like many things, the reserve works differently in this game. It's enough for our purposes to note taxes are currently at 0% and we can increase them if we need more cashola. Other imperial stuff can wait - let's take a look at our homeworld. Unlike MOO1, we can't do that from this screen.  Click on our system, the only one we've explored, and we get this. We have multi-planet systems now! Generally you have another crap planet or two around your own star. We have a Gas Giant, which are all uninhabitable, and ...  Yep, it's crap. Researching hostile landing tech is not a thing. We can land anywhere - the question is whether it's worthwhile to do so. The 'grab everything in sight' protocol from our original MOO adventures is gone. ** Pro-Tip: When in doubt, right-click. This should be in neon capital letters about 500 pixels high in some unavoidable pop-up soon after you start up the game for the first time. Instead it is recommended as an aside deep in the in-game help somewhere. But while it's not obvious, one really really good design choice that was made on this game is that you can get more information about literally almost anything by right-clicking.  Obviously these are very small max populations - we'll get to that, but these are in millions and 10M was the lowest possible in the first game. Food and farming is a thing, we've got maintenance penalties and worker bonuses ... we're not in Kansas anymore. Let's dive into our homeworld finally to understand what some of this means.  There is a slightly faster way to get to this screen, but clicking on the system then the specific planet is the most natural/intuitive way. At the upper-left we can see that every system has up to five potential orbits, and we can switch between/get more info on the local planets that way. So clicking through the system itself really isn't necessary or even useful when you get right down to it. Planetary Resources Right, let's get to know this place we're matriculating from. The label across the top is dynamic, which is a cool touch - it'll change to 'Industrial Colony' or 'Agricultural Colony' or 'Research Colony' if you focus a lot of labor in a specific area. Population in the upper right is given with precise growth that will occur at the current distribution of labor. We get a new 'citizen' for every 1M population. 8M pop gets you the same of everything as 8.999M does. So for the purpose of getting things done, all that matters is how many citizens you have on a planet. ** Money - 1 BC of reserve income is generated automatically by each citizen; unlike MOO1, production and money are entirely separate concepts. This is distinct from the taxes we discussed earlier - it just happens naturally. I imagine some sort of global sales tax or VAT is in place here, a tax on personal income/commerce or what-have-you. You might well wonder about the gap between the coins here:  Main thing there is that we are actually spending the first 3 BCs on stuff, which is why they are separated. The rest is the profit.  The previous desc. was the right-click option, this is left-click. That's how all these screens work - left-click is 'functional' and right-click is 'tutorial/exposition'. We'll get to what trade goods are but main thing here is to see what our financial income is on the planet. The next section across displays the symbol for what type of government we have, and any morale effects. We have a neutral Morale right now, so all we get is the governmental symbol. ** Food - Four farmers doing their thing on the next line down. Each citizen needs one unit of food per turn. If they don't get it, population growth will slow down or even reverse. You can lose citizens this way, though I don't think you can have a colony starve out completely. It is also possible to export excess food eventually, though I can't do it yet here. Surplus is automatically sold off at a base price of 1/2 BC. The amount of food produced by each farmer is dependent on the environment. That's the single biggest problem with our sister planet Sol II - you can't farm on a Radiated world. So we'd have to import food there to make anything happen. ** Industry - As mentioned, production and finances are separate in this game. We have one worker producing three industry at the moment. Pollution is handled here as well - I'll get to that in a bit. Also, if we increase taxes to the Reserve, this is where they come from. Being schooled in Lords of the Realm and other titles, I expected a morale hit from taxes, but it directly takes away from industry. 10 Industry with a 20% tax rate means 2 more BCs in the reserve and only 8 effective Industry going to whatever. The mineral resource level of a planet determines how much base Industry you get per worker. I keep using the term 'base' because all kinds of stuff will modify this later. Fundamentals first. We have 'Abundant', which means 3/worker ... and it's a bit deceptive because that's actually the standard mineral resource amount. In true MOO fashion, we can also have Very Poor (1), Poor (2), Rich(5), and Very Rich (8). So a worker here does 50% better industrial output than one on Sol II would. That's another strike against that planet. ** Research - 3 Scientists presently produce 9 Research, at 3 each. Both planets have a base of 3 - this depends neither on environmental or mineral resources and is more consistent from one planet to another. Therefore, again in classic MOO fashion, Sol II would be relatively better at that than farming or industry, since it sucks at the first two categories. Of course there are still specials that can change research output.  Let's say that, in a fit of stupidity, I decided everyone is needed in Industry. Well, you can see that I'm going to lose a whole lot of people to starvation. Aside from being a royal jackwagon of a despot, this is also going to make a lot of pollution, eating a sizable amount of the extra effort. The calculation for pollution is a bit complicated, but basically each planet has a certain amount of pollution-free Industry it can support. Above that point, some of your Industry will be lost as pollution, simulating the cleanup effort. There is no choice to simply not clean it up in MOO2, it simply gets subtracted from your production. At our starting level of things, once it kicks in we'll lose half of our 'extra' industry to pollution, and even worse the final resulting production is rounded down. So 2 workers are fine (6 Industry produced), but 3 workers will only produce 7 (9 - 1.5 pollution = 7.5, rounded down). 4 gives us 9 production (3 lost to pollution) and so on. Planetary Economy Assessment The citizen system is a definite, fundamental departure from MOO1, which worked on a five-category slider system. A couple of advantages of this change might be considered to be simplicity and limiting micromanagement. If you've played much MOO2 though, you know that neither one of those actually pan out once you get further into the game, and that it's actually harder to keep the 'spending ratios' you want in place long-term without making constant tweaks. Both systems require require regular adjustments for optimal play, while the original sliders give you more fine control over what investment to make where, and also provides a more natural, organic increase over time compared to the plateaus in the worker approach. This is one area where the original game is best. On the other hand, I do really like the idea of exporting food to supply colonies that can't make their own, and the general concept of how the different planetary environments work. There's a lot more variety out there now. The idea of being able to land anywhere, but not necessarily profitably, is one that is attractive to me. Choosing where to colonize is made more important, so MOO2 gets the seal of approval in these aspects.  In MOO1, the only specific things you needed to select to build were ships. Here, the CHANGE button on the right of the previous screen brings up this. Which is mostly empty now, but it won't stay that way. Here is what all that Industry goes towards building. The Colony Base shown can only be used in-system, which is a nice idea as a cheaper alternative to the Colony Ship we can't yet make. Spies are built planetside which is a major difference to get into later, designing/refitting/etc. is all for another time, but it's worth noting you can set things to be built repeatedly or turn this whole mess over to the AI with Auto Build. The two things on the left are 'settings', not actual tangible structures. That is, Trade Goods will produce more income from their sale - that's where that extra 2 BC we noticed earlier was coming from. Housing boosts population growth - switching to that would increase our gain from 73k to 83k per year. These allow a planet to use its industrial output in these areas if we don't need a ship or structure built at the moment. And there will be more. There will be so much more. Looking at the Build List in the bottom middle, the game will warn you if Trade Goods/Housing are above other stuff because they will never 'complete'. They also don't use production overflow - i.e., if you've 'stored' industry by investing in a big project, switching to something else will transfer the effort. Trade Goods/Housing though won't dip into that, but just use the current turn's production. Selecting an item like shown with the Colony Base, I can either click again to delete it or else move it up or down the queue. If I clicked on the 'Spy' line, the Colony Base would move up to second, and everything below it move down a line. Takes a while to get used to using this, but it works well for setting up build orders that you don't have to mess with for some time.  And then there's this. Planetary buildings, ships, spies, etc. can have 'rush jobs' done and just throw money at the problem. How much money depends on how much work has already been put in; it costs twice as much per Industry to rush something that hasn't been started as it has to finish one that's half-done. That part is a good idea, but I hate the idea in the first place of just being able to crack out that checkbook and say 'name your price' absent any semblance of the proper infrastrucure. You wouldn't want to, but you can go to a fresh new colony and demand immediate construction of the latest and greatest, top-of-the-line massive starship and get it done if you have the funds. MOO1 got this part right by limiting it to doubling the current productive capacity of a planet no matter how much you have in the Imperial Reserve. This is a wheel that didn't need to be reinvented and made into a trapezoid.  The soldiers in the lower-left of our main colony screen give us access to this pop-up. MOO2, you see, has this crazy insane idea that assimilation ought to be a thing. That is, that conquering a planet needn't involve murdering EVERY.SINGLE.PERSON on it - though that's still an option if you want to choose it. I'm a fan of this for sure in theory. In practice ... well, we'll get to that. So our guys are armed with Pulse Rifles, which are baseline +0 and merit no bonus whatsoever. Naturally. We haven't invented Armour/Tanks yet, which as you can see can take twice the damage and are also just better at fighting. Those three guys in the middle are considered Marines, and then we also have a Militia. These troops are added to each planet that has a barracks on a gradual basis, one every few turns. That's supposed to continue until you reach the planet's maximum population, but I think it's actually less than that. Anyway, main point being there's a limit, and to invade a planet you need to bring enough to defeat these military defenders. Both Barracks give a +20% morale boost, which we need as we'd have -20% without it. Morale is just a flat penalty on what every worker produces, and once again the remaining production rounds down so it's really important to not have a negative there. The barracks is the building on the right of our planet view. The big one in the middle is the imperial Capitol. You only get one of those and Bad Things(tm) happen if you lose it. The small whitish buildings are Housing, added automatically based on current population. And then in the top middle is a grey needle in space or whatever. That's the Star Base, which allows us to build larger-sized ships, provides extended scanning range, and has defensive weapons. It also serves a to-be-discussed-later administrative function. I think the Star Base is a bit of an anachronism in a Pre-Warp start, but it's there regardless. And we can scrap any of these buildings for a price if we want. The Star Base requires 2 BC maintenance, 1 BC for the Barracks. Building more of any of them has a long-term cost associated with it. Ignore the LEADERS button for now, that's for another time.  For the time being, I put half the population in farming to keep food adequate, and the other half in research. We need that most at the moment. That brings me here, via the green microscope, bottom section of the right-hand panel of the GCI. This is where the first turn will conclude with a long rant. MOO2 fans, reader discretion is advised. Hard hats and an ample supply of sedative are strong encouraged. This isn't going to be pretty. Let's get the positives out of the way first. Some aspects of the technology system in MOO1, which I still consider to be the best ever implemented, remain. I give MOO2 credit for these even though it didn't come up with them, because there's a lot to be said about being handed a good idea and not screwing it up. ** We're keeping a lot of naming conventions; BCs, RPs, and so on. Class I Shields, Mass Driver, Anti-Missile Rockets, Extended Fuel Tanks - familar names of advances being given their new flavoring within the new system. And then there's also new options. ** The tier system remains intact. Something has to be researched from each of the now-eight instead of six fields before you can unlock anything later. ** The whole 'prototyping' period is also back. A particular research project can spend up to as long from an RP standpoint in that X% chance of discovery phase as it did to accumulate the initial minimum amount. Gone is the display bug that halved the discovery chance, but also gone is the cool lightbulb-filling graphic. ** Miniaturization and cost reduction are still a thing. In fact, they have more extensive impacts that will be explained when we get to ship design down the road. Unforunately, many vital to mind parts of the old system were ripped out for no good reason. As a result, the MOO2 tech system is a shadow of it's predecessor. This is literally what kept me from getting into MOO2 for years. I would fire it up, forget what happened the last time, do a setup, start a game - and then literally get angry when I remembered what was going on with technology. It took me a long while to adjust my mindset around what researching in MOO means, and I had a few ragequit - don't play again for months periods. ** You never 'miss out' and have to adjust. There is one exception to this, for which I have to talk about racial traits a bit. Stock Psilons are naturally Creative, meaning they get all techs from any given tier. For the price of one of them. Yes, that's just as insane as it sounds. Stock Klackons are Uncreative, meaning they get only one from any tier - except for a few esp. at the start where everyone gets them all because they are basics. Uncreatives don't get to pick which one they get either - it's chosen for them at random. So this objection doesn't apply to Uncreatives ... but it does apply to everyone else. If you don't have one of those two traits, which we don't and most games shouldn't esp. if you are experimenting with different setups and options, you get one but you get to pick which one it is at each tier. From all the available options. This takes an absolute hacksaw to so much strategic choice. You can't take two from a tier and accept the delay elsewhere (see: Terraforming +10 and Eco Restoration from MOO1). Can't take a missile and come back for a bomb later that's group with it. And you're never surprised. You never just don't have Radiated Landings/Planetary Shield V in your tree and have to figure out how you are going to work around that. Master-planning and defined, rigid research paths are the order of the day. You can choose one and do the exact.same.thing every time if you want. We'll see more of why that's a bad thing before long, but these kinds of considerations are a big part of what made MOO1's system so good. The thing is, there's a pretty easy and staggeringly obvious solution here. Creatives get all techs(usually 3). Uncreatives get a random 1. Why couldn't everybody else just get a choice of two, and have to pick between those? Then you'd have a lot more unpredictability - not enough for my liking, but that would have been a major improvement just by itself. ** No cost differentials. Everything in each tier costs the same thing, which means you don't ever choose between a cheap tech to just move up the tiers and a better one that would help you more but is more costly. It's ALWAYS a choice of which tech is best within a field - you still have the option of comparing different fields of course - which means, like the previous point, there's usually one best option and there isn't often a reason to select anything else. That exacerbates any issues of under-used techs/imbalance. Similarly, there are no TL system and the side effects such as Planetology boosting your worker productivity in MOO1 either compnletely aren't a thing or are much less nuanced at a minimum. ** Only one active project at a time. The whole interest/atrophy dynamic and the tension between crash-course projects that you need NOW and the long-term strategy? Gone. Everything is a crash course. All the research goes to that one thing until it's done. Scientists have lost the ability to walk, talk, and chew gum simultaneously. ** Progress can be switched to another project at any time with no penalty. At least for those of equal or lesser cost, I don't know how it works if you switch to a cheaper one that you've already put in enough effort to complete. Allowing for switching horses in midstream without consequences means you can put off important decisions, lessening the importance of strategic planning. ** No racial distinctives. Obviously some races are better at research in general than others, but here I'm talking about within specific fields. The Klackons being strong but having that propulsion weakness that could help in slowing them down early, or the Darlok facility with computers feeding into their espionage skills, etc. from MOO1 are no longer a thing - not even in the custom traits. These played a big role in giving races a specific general profile. All of this added together means that there are so many more mindless choices that you don't even need to consider. And when you do need to think about it, there's just a ton less to think about. The tech ladder does do some specific cool things with the new MOO2 mechanics, but that's a lipstick on a pig thing given how much the underlying system has been critically weakened. And as the manual writers specifically acknowlege, research is a really big deal in this kind of game. Our current situation actually personifies that. The one best choice is Computers-Electronics-Electronic Computer. Not because I want the Electronic Computer specifically, although it's nice (+25 attack for ship weapons). I want what's behind it. And I know what's behind it. I know I'm going to be able to research it next, that there's exactly zero chance of me not being able to do that, so I don't need to consider odds or plan contingencies. It's a totally brainless choice once I've determined what the optimal possibility is. On the Sid Meier scale - the whole defining a game by a series of interesting decisions thing - this is only interesting up the point where you've discovered the One Right Way(tm). Then it ceases being interesting permanently.  I do like this; clicking on Computers or any of the other field headings brings up a list of all possible technologies. Using right-clicking, I can check out what any of them do in-game, which is very nice.  So here's the GCI with my first turn ready to finish. Profit is down to +5 BC due to the fact that I'm not building trade goods anymore. The Electronic Computer is due to finish in 7 years at 12 RP each. For now, that's all I can usefully do. We'll advance time a lot faster in some of the coming updates, and of course expand into other game systems/mechanics. We've seen here the planetary economy and the tech system, a couple of major ones that we should now have a decent handle on. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Mar 13, 2019 |
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Mar 13, 2019 06:24
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nweismuller posted:Thank you very much! You're welcome! Good to have you along this ride.
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Mar 13, 2019 06:47
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I probably have the opposite view to you on most of these differences. I'd rate MOO2 above MOO in most regards. Then again, I greatly prefer replayability through customization to replayability through randomness, so it's more of a different philosophy on what we want from the game than anything else. Although you're obviously going to talk about it in more detail later, it's worth noting that it would probably be a good idea to keep one guy stockpiling production so you can build the lab faster once the tech is researched. If you go from max science to max production while not playing a pollution tolerant race, you suffer pretty badly from diminishing returns on how much you produce.
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Mar 13, 2019 06:50
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This probably comes down to which game you played first? The research system of MoO1 was one of the reasons why I could never really get into the game, I vastly prefer MoO2's system. Random tech trees can be a lot of fun (see Sword of the Stars 1), but fixed tech trees like in Civilization can be, too. And it's not as if you research the same techs every game, since what you want and need often depends on what your neighbors do. It's a rude awakening if you've focused on beam defenses and then your enemy comes at you with missile heavy ships.
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Mar 13, 2019 07:16
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I pretty much agree with your assessments, though I'm not quite as bothered by the tech as you are.
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Mar 13, 2019 20:23
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my dad posted:I greatly prefer replayability through customization to replayability through randomness, Good synopsis of a major difference; I'm definitely strongly on the other side of that, which I'll talk more about when I get to delving into the custom traits more. my dad posted:it would probably be a good idea to keep one guy stockpiling production so you can build the lab faster once the tech is researched. If you go from max science to max production while not playing a pollution tolerant race, you suffer pretty badly from diminishing returns on how much you produce. I didn't intend to go to max production once it was done researching, but this is a good point. I don't have a great handle yet on when I want to stockpile and when I don't. That's partly because I really don't like it for reasons already mentioned, and used it only rarely in MOO1 where it was less of a mandatory thing. I definitely need to learn more about the when and why of it here.
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Mar 13, 2019 20:48
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** Note: I'm doing something with the 'spoiler' section that I should have done a long time ago probably. They are meant to be read, but just hide me commenting on what happens in a video so that it's a lot easier to watch the video (if you choose to of course), then read what I have to say about it without accidentally doing that in reverse just because it comes next on the page as you are perusing. There are no actual spoilers in the spoiler tags, it's just the best way I can think of have the video links as part of the update without prematurely giving away what they are about and so forth. Learning the Essentials Time for our empire to get it's feet under it and actually do something. Before that though, there's lots of 'Turn' button hammering to be done. And I do mean lots of it.  Four turns later. Compare this shot carefully to the one in the last update, and you'll notice something - the planets are rotating around the star. Not only that, but the innermost ones rotate more than those in the more distant orbits. This is the kind of small thing that I really appreciate - such attention to detail isn't hard to do, but it's a lot easier not to. Bravo! Turns pass basically instantaneously in this game, at least on any vaguely modern computer, and things happen more slowly on a per-turn basis, especially in an early start like this one. Population growth follows the same basic idea that a half-full colony will grow the most, but the overall gain per-turn is a LOT slower in keeping with the whole 10 turns per year deal. Because of that, I find it requires a lot more discipline to play well. This will actually be the first game I've ever really done 'carefully'. In this case though, we really have nothing whatsoever to do until we get our research done.  So now it's time to talk about Leaders. You can also see that our luck with the research has been quite bad. This is one of the things that we'll spend those BCs we're accumulating on. You always get one approaching you sometime in the first handful of game turns, and then periodically afterwards. Typically there is an initial hire price and then a regular wage to be paid each year, which varies with the quality. That first option is almost always a low-level one. Captain Tyranous says he'll wait, because he's a patient fellow, and we don't have 140 BC yet. Much like MOO1, it is a good idea to maintain a decent Reserve level, though I don't have a great handle on exactly how much that is here. That way you can afford to spend on these opportunities if you like.  This is the Leaders display, one of the bottom row selections in the GCI. On the left, we can have up to four domestic (Colony Leaders) and four military (Ship Officers) leaders active at any one time. Like you, they are immortal - so if you hire one, they will do your bidding until you fire them. Right now Tyranous is giving us a 30-turn countdown until he is no longer available, so we've got to decide what to do in that timeframe or he'll just disappear. He's a proper merc, with bonuses to boarding actions (security), ground combat (commando), and ship attack (helmsman). In this he'll work well to illustrate the possibilities here, as he has skills that are useful both in fleet and army actions. On the right, though it's perhaps not immediately obvious, the top section is for selecting from our fleets and the bottom one for selecting a star system. A leader can be assigned to either of these. They are bound to the specific location they are assigned to, and will not benefit the empire elsewhere so it's important to give them a job where they will do the most good. Once we start hiring some, this screen will begin filling up and it'll be important to cull unwanted candidates. They may or may not return at a later date, so if you want someone it's best to Hire them when you have the chance. In this case, we are far from being concerned about any imminent combat so it's not worth the money. Next turn, this guy shows up to tell us all about what we've just discovered. He'll do that same three-second animation for as long as we let him. When you get done wondering what gravity-defying effect causes that loose-fitting jacket sleeve halfway up his forearm without falling down to his wrist, you can click anywhere and pick a new research option to pursue.  Sticking with computers as noted, we're going Optronics. ** Dauntless Guidance System provides IFF capability to missiles and torpedoes. Not that we, you know, have any. They'll retarget if their current target is destroyed, a helpful thing indeed. ** Optronic Computer does the same thing as the Electronic one we just researched, but twice as well a +50 bonus. ** Research Laboratory is what we're here for. +5 Research at a planet whether we have any active Scientists or not, and also +1 base research for each Scientist at any planet that has one built. We're making a beeline for the research lab because it'll speed up the necessary starting research we need to do in other areas to get our feet under this fledgling civilization and start turning it into a proper empire. This is unfortunately one of those times when the question must be asked: why would anyone do anything else? It's important to have balanced techs under a fixed, exclusionary system, and MOO2 is hit-or-miss on this point. What this means is that getting either of the other two options depends on either a rival AI race being Psilons to acquire it from later, or one of them making a bad decision to get it instead. If neither one of those things happen, the first two options are thrown on the ash-heap, never to be seen or considered again. Sometimes the best option can vary, but you always want research labs because of how much of a difference they make. Naturally things get more expensive as you go up the tiers. There aren't the same amount in each field, but here we've tripled the cost so the estimate is 18 turns. At our homeworld, we're up to almost 8.6M, so it'll be a few more turns there as well until we get a new worker 'grown'. In between, we'll hammer that Turn button and quite possibly not do anything else.  Stardate 3501.3, and Administrator Galis offers his services. He's basic but cheap. We continue to bring in the cashola. As a Financial Leader, he boosts the BCs we produce at any colony by 10% - which basically means right now he will almost pay for himself. It's a close call whether he's worth it - as our population rises he'd eventually be a net positive on a larger colony. At the moment I'm not convinced it's worth parting with even a small amount of our savings though, which I'll be using for other things eventually. Galis is rejected. If you have the money to hire a leader, you have to choose here before doing anything else.  One more turn, and Sol I tips over the 9M mark. We have another citizen! That gives me cause to visit the ledger, aka the Colonies screen - left-most button in the GCI's bottom row. And that means it's time to stand up and applaud MOO2, because this screen is near-perfection. Not only can we click through to any colony faster this way than selecting it's system first, but this screen itself has control functionality. I can move around the workers/farmers/scientists as I see fit, go directly to the build screen by clicking on the 'trade goods' text there, or buy whatever's building by clicking that circular icon on the far right. You want info? Check. At the bottom of the screen we can see the key factors of the planet - I'd like a more detailed current population so I know if a planet is about to grow again, but other than that all the key elements of the environment, production, etc. are there. The galactic minimap and imperial information synopsis ensure I don't have to leave to see the key elements of the big picture. Sortability? Got ya covered there too. Seven different categories to select from so we can quickly identify and fix problem areas or address overall needs. No longer are we restricted to the MOO1 way of 'look, this is the order in which the game stores your planets, so you will view them in this order and only this order until the end of time. It's Galactic Law'. Our new citizen has been put to work as a Farmer. We can either leave him there and have one food go to waste with a 67k growth rate, or go one food short, get more research done, but see that growth drop precipitously to 17k. As important as it is to get research done and I mean now, I think it's better to keep getting more population and leave things how they are. Also note that with the extra citizen, we are up to a +6 annual income. Mo money!!  We're 25 turns into the game by the time we finish the lab research. This'll change things up a bit.  We're now headed to the Construction field of study. Same reason as before - what we really want isn't available till the next tier. ** Anti-Missile Rockets have a range of 15, fire once per turn, and an accuracy rating of 85%, -5% per square of distance. Which means at their maximum range, they aren't hitting much of anything. You can tell by this that we're going to be dealing with a much bigger space combat map than before, since that's like twice the size of the entire thing in MOO1. ** Reinforced Hull triples the amount of damage a ship in general and the drive system specifically can take. ** Fighter Bays equips a ship with four fighters for each bay that is included. Fighters use the best available PD beam weapon - again, we'll deal with more of that at another time - and can fire it 4x before they have to return to reload their power cells or whatever at their 'mothership'. All of these choices are attractive. Missiles are a big deal early-game, more survivable ships are obviously a plus, and I have a big personal soft spot for carriers. MOO1 didn't have them, which makes me want to do it. Objectively Reinforced Hull is too good to pass up, and fits that 'look, this is the best choice period' criteria. Triple HP is a LOT. There are more advanced bays we can have for carrier-type operations, but those don't show up till late in the tree and we may not even get to them in this game. It's wrong, but I'm taking my fighters and you can't stop me. If it costs me the game, well, I did it my way and we'll learn from my mistake. More than anything else though I just bloody want to go with the hull reinforcement and then come back for fighters at my leisure. I need my WAAAAAAMBULANCE!! Ok I'm fine now. Mostly.  Next, back planetside, I need to build a Research Lab now so I'm dividing up our efforts. Two workers is the most we can sustain without incurring pollution penalty. Also, we now have 4 Marines and 1 Militia. It's gone up by one Marine in 25 turns.  Yep, definitely calling BS on this explanation. It is most assuredly NOT how this is working. I'm thinking maybe it goes up to half your current population or something.  Stardate 3502.9, and we have a 10th citizen on Sol I. I didn't adjust them - the game put them in as Scientists automatically. Let's all applaud the fact that it is making a serious effort to deploy new citizens intelligently. Also, population growth isn't down as much as I would expect as we approach the maximum here. The curve for that is clearly a lot flatter than it is in MOO1. I make no adjustments.  The next turn the lab is halfway done, so I'm going to buy it as this is the most efficient time to do so. We've got over 200 BC by this point. Our profit margin will be cut into slightly due to losing another BC annually to maintain the lab. Well worth it of course, and I switch back to maximum scientist employment. When the lab finishes, that pushes us up to 25 RP - 5 for the lab, 4 each for the five scientists. That's a two-thirds jump from the 15 RP before it went up.  Two more turns, and Advanced Engineering - Fighter Bays is a thing.  Automated Factories are the next must-have. They do for Industry what the research lab did for Research - automatic +5 without workers, +1 base for each worker. ** Heavy Armor - negates armor-piercing effects and triples the armor value of a ship. The fact that you pretty much gotta have the factories here is another reason to go with reinforced hull on the previous choice - now I'm bypassing two effective ship-survival techs. ** Planetary Missile Base - 300 'space units' of our best missiles, with unlimited ammo, can be fired. Note the singular - unlike MOO1, one doesn't built dozens of these. We can build one per planet. Missile defense is not even close to enough to fortify a world. Messed up the shot, but at this point we got a new leader app. Howdy there Captain Jarred! He's got quite the range of skills, increasing ship attack and defense, improves diplomacy, and the Navigator skill is a heck of a thing. It improves ship speed by 1, while also allowing normal travel through nebulae and near black holes. Nebulae basically do what they've always done - slower travel and shields don't work - while black holes are new and typically there is an enforced 2-parsec no-fly zone around them. Your antiquated laws of space-time distortion don't apply to Captain Jarred the Explorer though. He's more tempting than the others, but I still have more pressing matters to attend to.  Stardate 3504.0. Factory research is in. Now we need to get some basics for warp travel. Note how in the Power-Nuclear Fission field we have arrows pointing to all three, meaning we get them all. This is what it is like to be a Creative, but there are three starting fields that are similarly mandatory. Chemistry and Physics are the other two. After that, we'll start to be less sure of what the best course of action is. The Nuclear Bomb and Nuclear Drive techs are, as you might expect, basic entry-level versions of those weapon systems just as they were in the first game. Freighters need a bit of talking about though. They are MOO1 transports on steroids, and far superior in implementation. This is one of my favorite MOO2 mechanics, a great example of expanding a feature without ruining it. Any time you need to export or import food or colonists you need to use a Freighter to do it. They are essentially civilian-operated transports. You have to pay to build them, but they only cost maintenance to the degree that they are used. Inactive freighters cost none; any active ones cost 0.5 BC each year. In this way there is both a setup and an operational price tag for moving stuff around, something to consider when deciding whether it's really worth doing. As before, I put a couple of workers into Industry, then buy it at the halfway point so I can max out Scientists once more.  Chemistry is next, providing entry-level missiles as well as the fuel and armor requirement for starships. Also note the newly-revealed Cold Fusion tier. That's another everything-must-go set and we can't expand beyond Sol without it.  By default, this pops up whenever something is built somewhere, or another 'event of note' occurs. There are options, but for now I'll leave it on. Pretty rare occurence right now, but later it'll be a constant drip each turn. Clicking on the message takes us to the surface to make adjustments, and the window will still be there when we return in case there are other notifications requiring our attention.  Forgot to put this in for a turn or two; I've got a Freighter Fleet (50 Industry to build) set up followed by a Spy (100 Industry). That's just to get one of each ready but more to do something useful with the Industry. Since we've got the Automated Factory now, and you can see the landscape getting decidedly more busy than it was initially, you're always building something. Need to make sure it's what I want it to be, or else it will be trade goods by default.  After Chemistry arrives, Cold Fusion is the next step. We have everything we need for warp travel. If we find anything out there in the galaxy, this will be required to exploit it. That means ship design, exploration, etc. are all next on the agenda. We're now almost to the point where an Average tech-level game, or a MOO1 game, would begin. Stardate 3504.8 with 210 BCs in the reserve. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Mar 18, 2019 |
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Mar 15, 2019 06:33
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Torrannor posted:Random tech trees can be a lot of fun (see Sword of the Stars 1), but fixed tech trees like in Civilization can be, too. And it's not as if you research the same techs every game, since what you want and need often depends on what your neighbors do. It's a rude awakening if you've focused on beam defenses and then your enemy comes at you with missile heavy ships. You're right with the last bit here for sure - that's a good bit of design that there are multiple effective weapons systems. Nostalgia does play a role - this stuff would be somewhat less bothersome to me if the box said something other than 'Master of Orion' but was a different space strat series that simply went in a different direction from the one I'd prefer. But given the choice between Civ's tech system (we'll come back to this later but I played that also and enjoyed it) and the one in MOO1, I'd take MOO ever day of the week and twice on Sunday. Using your example, in both games you do need to concern yourself with having effective counters for the ships being fielded by your opponent. Both have effective ways to do that. The difference is, in MOO2 the most effective ways are always available to you, and it's just a matter of whether your economy can keep up and whether you are selecting and deploying the right stuff to give yourself an advantage. In MOO1, maybe those counters aren't available. Maybe you are stuck on warp 1 while everyone else is at warp 3-4 because your researchers just haven't come up with any new engine options to even choose yet. Maybe you don't have the robotics you need to keep up economically, or you didn't have planetary shields to allow yourself sufficient defense and deterrence. Do you have to give away the store to bribe them with tech until you catch up? Hope they don't attack you until you can rectify the situation, thanks to the passive AI (a strength of MOO2 in being more aggressive if they have the edge)? Build a bunch of inferior ships to whittle them away through attrition, costing yourself valuable economic development time? Bribe another neighbor to attack and distract them? A fixed tech system is too rigid, no matter how well-designed, to offer these kinds of questions and challenges to the player. That kind of emergent gameplay, implemented over a decade before the idea of emergent gameplay really even caught on, delivers a much deeper pool of potential strategic outcomes and is a big part of why people who think as I do consider MOO1 brilliant and MOO2 merely solid to good. .02 Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Mar 15, 2019 |
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Mar 15, 2019 06:49
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You're right about the troop maximum. It's half the population for non-warlords. I'm pretty sure the pop growth curve here is the highest when the population is smallest, and also improved by planet size and quality. Building housing on a planet with one pop and automated factories, and transporting the new pop to where it's needed, is an extremely effective way to grow your empire's population. It's also why having a second planet in your starting system, no matter how lovely it is, is a big deal, because worst case scenario it's still a cheap to colonize population factory. You are underselling missile bases somewhat. Missile bases stop an early rush dead in its tracks, and remain viable throughout the game. At the very least, they ensure that the enemy at least takes some casualties while taking the planet and slow their momentum. Though it's still generally an inferior choice to automated factories most of the time.
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Mar 15, 2019 06:58
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quote:** Fighter Bays equips a ship with four fighters for each bay that is included. Fighters use the best available PD beam weapon - again, we'll deal with more of that at another time - and can fire it 4x before they have to return to reload their power cells or whatever at their 'mothership'. More advanced starts will not give you Fighter Bays as an option, for some reason. If you want the option to run fighters, you have to start early that you are permitted to make that choice.
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Mar 15, 2019 08:05
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Thotimx posted:Our new citizen has been put to work as a Farmer. We can either leave him there and have one food go to waste with a 67k growth rate, or go one food short, get more research done, but see that growth drop precipitously to 17k. As important as it is to get research done and I mean now, I think it's better to keep getting more population and leave things how they are. Also note that with the extra citizen, we are up to a +6 annual income. Mo money!! It's been a long time since I played MoO2, but I think you get like 0.5 credits for every unit of food you're not consuming? I'm 99% certain that the surplus food is not totally wasted.
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Mar 15, 2019 08:35
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Thotimx posted:We're making a beeline for the research lab because it'll speed up the necessary starting research we need to do in other areas to get our feet under this fledgling civilization and start turning it into a proper empire. This is unfortunately one of those times when the question must be asked: why would anyone do anything else? It's important to have balanced techs under a fixed, exclusionary system, and MOO2 is hit-or-miss on this point. In my experience, beelining Research Labs first isn't quite as good at getting you bootstrapped as beelining Automated Factories first, and using stored production to accelerate future building (including that of your research lab). Torrannor posted:It's been a long time since I played MoO2, but I think you get like 0.5 credits for every unit of food you're not consuming? I'm 99% certain that the surplus food is not totally wasted. 1 BC per two units of food left over, rounded down. This isn't a reason to fund yourself with excess food, but it's a bonus when, with later techs, there's a cushion left over after you reduce agricultural populations as low as possible. It's not directly mechanical, but I think the scaling works far better when you view each turn as a year (and the game is inconsistent about whether it's a year or not) and each unit of population is a billion total population. nweismuller fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Mar 15, 2019 |
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Mar 15, 2019 15:23
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Thanks for the ideas. I wasn't sure if it was rounding down on the food or if I needed a freighter to export it - just was not showing up as any increased income so that's a nice clarification. my dad posted:having a second planet in your starting system, no matter how lovely it is, is a big deal, because worst case scenario it's still a cheap to colonize population factory. Thanks - I'll keep this in mind. I'm a couple updates ahead but I'm not going to go any further than that so I can try to utilize some of these good points. On the missile bases, I know they're good early-game when fleets are smaller, but my recollection is that by even mid-game planetary defenses were nearly irrelevant. I may need to revisit that. nweismuller posted:beelining Research Labs first isn't quite as good at getting you bootstrapped as beelining Automated Factories first, and using stored production to accelerate future building (including that of your research lab). Noted. A good item for me to test out and if I can confirm this, I'll begin the next game that way.
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Mar 15, 2019 20:42
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Are you ever going to show off a modded Moo2 game? There VDC, and regular modded both which add and change various stuff, Antarans being much much more dangerous, starbases and planetary defenses got buffed, and the tech tree got reworked for starters. ICE-M and ICE-X makes the AI more difficult. In all of these you are expected to cheese the game whenever possible. http://moo2mod.com/ for those that want to look at it, and yes I have played it, and yes I got my butt kicked. Edit: to share a story, my family used to play Master of Orion 2 for years, until the original CD exploded in the CD drive, good game. SugarAddict fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Mar 16, 2019 |
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Mar 15, 2019 23:26
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Thotimx posted:Thanks - I'll keep this in mind. I'm a couple updates ahead but I'm not going to go any further than that so I can try to utilize some of these good points. On the missile bases, I know they're good early-game when fleets are smaller, but my recollection is that by even mid-game planetary defenses were nearly irrelevant. I may need to revisit that. The problem with missile bases is flight time. Sure, a missile base can help make sure a few harassing bombers can't catch you with your pants down, and early in the game when two Cruisers backed up with a trio of Destroyers is considered a massive fleet the extra firepower helps, but it quickly gets to the point where a missile base by itself will not protect your planet, and if you've got a fleet stationed there, by the time the missiles arrive, the fight is already over one way or the other. It's weird that "300 space of infinite missiles" is not that great, seeing as missiles are kings of the early game. The short version for those who may get to see that in action soon: missiles hit harder than equivalent beams this early and have 100% accuracy. The only way to not get hit by a missile is to shoot it down (good loving luck with the targeting computers available) or use technology that comes further down the tree. Sure, missiles have limited ammo, but a few five-shot racks should be able to shoot down most of what you encounter, with a backup laser or two just in case.
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Mar 16, 2019 01:17
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Missile bases stay relevant with fleet support in the midgame, and on their own can keep you safe from boarding cheese. But generally yeah, planetary defenses can't keep up with the ships.
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Mar 16, 2019 01:31
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I'm interesting in see fighters work. I've tried a lot of goofy designs and most of them work, but I could never get a fighter swarm to be effective. Looking forward to it!
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Mar 16, 2019 01:53
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SugarAddict posted:Are you ever going to show off a modded Moo2 game? Nope. It's unlikely that I'm going to become good enough at this to take those on. We're doing 3-4 runs here, depending on how things go. I'll be taking feedback on what the others should be once we get deeper into this initial game, but it's going to be all vanilla.
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Mar 16, 2019 02:59
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Thotimx posted:That gives me cause to visit the ledger, aka the Colonies screen - left-most button in the GCI's bottom row. And that means it's time to stand up and applaud MOO2, because this screen is near-perfection. This screen alone is why my old MoO-playing college buddies ended up preferring 2 to 1. They worked with this screen a bit and then said "I can't go back."
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Mar 16, 2019 07:31
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MechaCrash posted:It's weird that "300 space of infinite missiles" is not that great, seeing as missiles are kings of the early game. You can get enveloping on fusion beams which makes for a good early game anti-missile/fighter weapon. Also if you stack up on modifiers on lasers they are the poor man's death ray.
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Mar 16, 2019 08:32
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Thotimx posted:Master of Orion III, Libluini's continuing efforts aside, killed the franchise for a while and with good reason. It's one of the great cautionary tales in game development history, up there with Rome: Total War II and a few others in the pantheon of 'what not to do'. The more recent reboot in 2016 is essentially a modernized, dumbed-down version of our subject matter for this thread. Hey, thanks for linking my LP! Also, I'm kind of interested to see more of MO2 in more detail, especially since I could never get into the earlier games of the series. (That seems to be a thing with me, Space Empires had the same problem: The first game I played was SEV, and all the older games simply didn't click with me afterwards.) Anyway, I'll be following this LP closely.
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Mar 16, 2019 11:55
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Looking forward to "goons design a world beating custom race," followed by, "goons design the worst race possible." Also if you emphasize economy 2 shot launchers are where its at. You attrit the enemy faster than they can replace their ships. Build a really survivable larger ship so your shots actually make it in. Or just a bunch of frigates with nothing but engines and ECM.
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Mar 16, 2019 21:18
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habituallyred posted:Looking forward to "goons design a world beating custom race," followed by, "goons design the worst race possible." I'll tell you right now, the answers to both are centered firmly on whether you have a bonus or malus to science.
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Mar 16, 2019 23:59
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Olesh posted:I'll tell you right now, the answers to both are centered firmly on whether you have a bonus or malus to science. Unitols would like to have a word.
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Mar 17, 2019 00:18
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my dad posted:Unitols would like to have a word. ...but can't because the uniteles brain scorched their entire empire.
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Mar 17, 2019 00:57
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I saw a Let's Play on YouTube where a guy took a penalty to Food, Industry, and Science and still managed to beat the highest difficulty setting, so it's entirely doable if you've got the chops. Granted, a lot of that was "suck up to people, give them presents, and then pick off the vulnerable with missile-laden ships." But it can be done.
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Mar 17, 2019 06:16
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Libluini posted:Hey, thanks for linking my LP! You're welcome! Consider it payback for me ripping that game you like a new one at every appropriate opportunity, and some where it's probably not appropriate as well. MechaCrash posted:I saw a Let's Play on YouTube where a guy took a penalty to Food, Industry, and Science and still managed to beat the highest difficulty setting, so it's entirely doable if you've got the chops. I don't have said chops, but that doesn't surprise me. By reputation at least, it's a lot easier to beat this game on Impossible. habituallyred posted:Looking forward to "goons design a world beating custom race," followed by, "goons design the worst race possible." This thread wouldn't do that to me would they? Yes, I'm sure they probably would. *shudder*
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Mar 17, 2019 07:57
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Leaving the Cradle Our Sol I build screen still looks the same on the left, because we're only researching what we need to build and then immediately getting it done. On the right, the Imperial build options side if you will, we've got more coming though. The middle group is what we are concerned with here at the moment - those are our designable ship classes. One doesn't design noncombat ships in MOO2, and there is no such thing as building a colony ship but with cool new weapons on it. If you thought the six classes of ships in MOO1 wasn't enough - well, get ready to face the pain of only five. But with refit eventually becoming a thing. Also, you don't scrap designs anymore - you just directly replace them.  Selecting Design and then picking a ship class is how that works. This is a part of the UI I don't like, for a couple of primary reasons: ** Designing ships is a pretty common activity in these games. Why do I need to do, at a minimum, four clicks to get into the ship design screen? It should be a bottom-row button on the GCI like it is in MOO1. ** If I change my mind about which ship I want to replace in the middle of the process, I have to exit the ship design screen and lose everything I've been working on. So this whole bit just grates on me, in the clunky-but-functional sort of way.  So here we are, and we can see that MOO2 is going to take suboptimal AI ship design routines from its predecessor and double down on the STUPID ON STEROIDS factor at times, though they aren't all nearly this bad and some are actually suprisingly decent. The general flaw, which I'm told was eventually addressed some by fan patches not to be seen here, is the 'kitchen sink' approach. The AI tries to put some of everything on a lot, and it isn't generally particularly super at designing ships for specific roles within a larger fleet concept. We have a Scout here. With Nuclear Bombs. And a computer that only benefits beam attacks - the manual explicitly states that bombs never miss. There are no beam weapons on this ship. Or even invented yet. So the computer is literally a complete waste of money. Also, who wants a scout that can attack planets - but not defend itself against other ships? Wouldn't that be, I don't know ... a small bomber?? Yeah, don't build these. Ever. For any reason. That good old CLEAR button returns. Let's definitely use that. Now before I get any further, let's note some things about the design options themselves. And these are arguably better news. I'm reserving judgement for now on the whole ship design/combat part of the game, because I need to spend more time kicking the tires on it before I render an intelligent opinion. ** Six ship size options now instead of four. All of them have multiple ship portraits except the massive Doom Star, for which 'blocky blob' is understandably the only possible aesthetic configuration. That whole Death Star, but MOO, idea is obviously in vogue here. ** Larger ships have progressively slower combat speed and therefore beam defense. Very much in keeping with the original. The base ranges from 20 speed/+100 to 13 speed/+65 for an empty ship. ** The basics - drive system, armor, shield, computer - are apparently mounted either externally or in a standard, reserved compartment. They have only a cost, no space requirement. ** We can see that structure and armor points are separated out from each other - basically you have to destroy the armor first before the ship itself takes damage. Unless you have an armor-piercing weapon and so on, so there's another damage dynamic at work here compared to the original 'hull points and that's all' deal. ** Adding weapons or specials does consume space ... and it also slows down the ship. That is a very nice thing indeed. A Frigate with five Nuclear Bombs is completely full right now, and has half it's maximum speed and beam defense - 10 and +50. So there's at least potentially a reason to not fill up a ship beyond mere cost. ** As one would imagine, structure/armor points, space available, and base cost also scale up with the ship class.  As you can see, this is much like before in terms of adding Specials. There's a cost and a size and you choose what you want, with a limited amount of slots per ship even if you have the space for more.  Weapons though - they got a whole new treatment going on. We can filter the list by type. We've got firing arcs now - bombs are inherently 360 Degrees, but beam weapons can be limited to a specific arc. Once we get some I'll get into the specific tradeoffs involved there, and also the various modifications which we obviously don't have either. Missiles can be in racks of 2, 5, 10, 15, or 20 salvos as needs permit. Cost and space scale with those changes, with larger racks being more efficient. I.e., a 20-shot missile launcher has a cost and space of 40 each, while a 2-shot is a quarter of that despite only having 10% of the firepower. And while we can't fit it on a ship smaller than a Destroyer, we have our Interceptor - which is what we got for the Fighter Bay invention. There is of course also the fact that we have no fighter weapons yet. So that's just a taste, we'll be revisiting this - and I am extremely not at all in any way the best or even adequate at MOO2 ship designs. Yet.  Ok so here's a proper Scout design. No computer or bombs and it's faster, harder to hit, and cheaper as a result. Cost is down from 34 to 25. Except of course, as is my tradition, I'm calling it a Recon instead.  I add a couple of these to the top of Sol I's build queue. Because of how combat encounters work, picketing systems with scouts, esp. unarmed ones, is no longer a winning tactic in MOO2 but rather a totally wasteful one AFAIK. A welcome change as I freely declare that was always a gamey thing, even if a necessity to handle MOO1 Impossible. So really I just want to get a couple out there and see what's within range - which isn't much. More on that in a second. I decided to get a Worker going on these, because I'll want to start building an actual Colony Ship as soon as those are ready. I'll have the Recons done in about three turns each, and with this labor division we are seven years out from getting the research done so that syncs up well.  Our standard fuel cells are akin to MOO1 Hydrogen, four parsecs - we have a range of seven with the extended tanks. Except not really, because while the help says four parsecs, we actually get only three out of them. Grrr. So how far will that get us? ** Pro-Tip - I recently discovered the F9 hotkey, which is not in any way necessary but cool and it gets rid of the haziness about how far away something is. Press it once and you get a 'From?' cursor. Picking Sol as that source system, I can then move the 'To?' cursor around and get a specific readout. So this white star is just out of range - the red one diagonally down and left from here is 8 parsecs away, or too far as well. Anything closer we can reach. Without extending our range in some way, we are limited to four additional systems. Being right on the edge of the galaxy like we are is not super-great. Between the edge and the middle would be best for early exploration and securing territory.  This kind of operation, and moving ships around as well, can be made easier by use of the Zoom function. There are two levels of magnification; the default entire galaxy and then a closer one that focuses in on about half of it.  Like so. Right-clicking recenters the galaxy map to move around.  And now ... Command Point Reserve. The relevant panel is the second one down on the right, the starbase picture with 6(+6) on it. This is a good explanation, so I'll not to try to improve on it. Basically, Command Points are a soft cap based on the empire's logistics. More star bases are needed to support a larger fleet, or else you pay through the nose for some of your ships to get the supplies they need through the commercial sector and not a streamlined official pipeline. This is a good, simple, and effective addition IMO. With this in place, nobody's building a bazillion frigates to spam the map with and overflow the fleets table, crashing their game. Not that I know anything about that. As you have probably already figured out, the remaining two GCI panels are net food and available(total) freighters. The interface tour is mostly complete.  Another small thing that really deserves to be applauded. Unlike most games of the time, this notification now tells me what's building next in the queue - that way I have a heads-up in case I want to change it.  We now have a ship - and our command point reserve is down by one. Like MOO1, all ships at a system are automatically joined into a fleet. Those icons get even trickier when zoomed out, as they are smaller. The fleet window pops up when selecting them. Part of a fleet can be moved by clicking on the individual ships; that blue highlight goes away when you do so, removing the ship from the selection. The other three systems in range being red stars, I head for the yellow one in the corner first. The types of stars will mostly be familiar to MOO1 aficianados.  Except they aren't, because 'ours' is white here. Say goodbye to that fourth wall, for it is gone. More importantly though, yellow is the best chance for a suitable colony location.   In other words, red stars suck - and we're surrounded by the things. That doesn't bode well, particularly when the rest of the galaxy is much more diverse.   Accordingly, blue-white stars can be useful for ramping up the economy a little later.  We have one of these, on the opposite side of the galaxy from us. So it won't trouble us, but perhaps it will annoy one or two of our rivals. There's at least one more type, but they are rare and this galaxy doesn't have any.  This kind of thing happens very often, and is one of the rewards for exploration. He's better than Jarred, and we have no recruitment fee.  Well now - five planets! As you can probably spot, Callisto IV is a terran planet. It's a copy of Earth/Sol I actually, max pop of 12, abundant, etc. We're definitely headed there. The others: ** Callisto I - Large, Radiated, 5 max, Abundant. You might wonder why a 'large' planet has such a low population maximum - it's part of the effect of being Radiated. That can eventually be dealt with, which would increase the size. There are other ways to do that as well. ** Callisto II - Large, Radiated, 5 max, Ultra Rich, HeavyG. That last bit means heavy gravity, which means all forms of production are halved. That sucks considering how much potential the system would have otherwhise. We'll still probably develop it eventually anyway. ** Callisto III - Large, Arid, 12 max, Abundant. The only difference between this and the terrans is the arid environment, which means farming only produces half as much. Farmers can produce enough for themselves but that's it - some importing or improvement of the planet in some way will be necessary to do more than just be a population incubator. ** Callisto V - Small, Barren, 3 max, Poor, LowG. A ball of rock with more gravity problems and nothing to recommend it for industry either. There's literally nothing good about this planet, which is right there with your Inferno 10M max type from MOO1. Low gravity isn't as bad as high gravity, but still has a penalty: 25%.  Now we have some stuff to look at under the Planets. Another fine screen if I do say so myself. This is a list of all the planets you've discovered that aren't occupied. Those would be Colonies, and we've already seen that ledger. The difference confused me at first, esp. because of the 'No Enemy Presence' filter. Enemy presence in the same system is being referred to there. It's possible to have split ownership of a system with two races having colonized a planet in it, which I think is completely great. MOO2 was pretty early IIRC in adding in that kind of possibility. Anyway, the sorting and filtering controls here work very effectively and the minimap highlights the system that whatever planet you moused over last is in. The key stats listed are exactly what they should be. And we can even automatically send a colony or outpost there without having to do it manually! I don't use that much because I want to control the order of things, but still a cool option to reduce micro if you want it. As bad as those red stars are, we've been quite fortunate to find a system like Callisto within range. Often it's tough to find a clear first target. Exploiting that target will be up next. Amidst all the blather we only progressed time a little over half a year; it's now Stardate 3505.4. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Mar 17, 2019 |
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Mar 17, 2019 08:22
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A lucky find, having such an obvious target in your first explored system. The ship designer is one of the best things about MoO2. I think only Ascendancy had one that was as good, even if it was pretty different. There are a lot of cool things one can do here, but it will take a bit of research to see that. I hope we have one playthrough with creative race, too. There are some really neat equipment combinations, and depending on the AI to research the techs we skipped can be a massive disappointment.
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Mar 17, 2019 09:48
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Thotimx posted:If you thought the six classes of ships in MOO1 wasn't enough - well, get ready to face the pain of only five. But with refit eventually becoming a thing. Also, you don't scrap designs anymore - you just directly replace them. MOO2 doesn't work quite the same way MOO1 does.. those five slots are simply saved designs and don't affect your existing ships. Plus, you always have a dedicated slot for Colony Ships. Let's say you build five recons, and then decide later on that this whole unarmed scout business is terrible, you've gotten a little miniaturization, and you want to upgrade the Recon to the Recon II, now with two shot missile launcher. When you go and update the design, you'll have removed your original Recon design from the saved slot. However, any existing Recons you have flying around (or any that are still in the build queue) will still exist - and, in the latter example where they're in the queue, will still build based off the original design. If you want to upgrade a ship, you need to send it to a colony and choose the "Refit" option - in which case, you select a specific ship and a design of the matching size class and it "builds" the new ship based on the difference in cost between the current ship and the new design. Why do this when you could just build another ship? A few reasons: - Thotimx talks about Command Points later on the post, but especially early on, running over your budget of Command Points can drain your reserve relatively quickly. - Scrapping an existing ship is kind of wasteful - you get a little BC based on the cost of the ship back as long as you scrap the ship at one of your colonies, but refitting an existing ship is more efficient. - It costs less to refit an existing ship than to scrap and build new. - Ships in this game have veterancy - when you refit it a ship, it retains all experience and veterancy upgrades it possessed, whereas scrap-and-replace just gives you a brand new crew On the other hand, once you commit to a refit, that ship is wholly committed - you can't undo the process if, say, a couple enemy ships turn up unexpectedly. Canceling the refit process deletes the ship entirely. Additionally, it can be tedious and time consuming to refit numerically larger fleets. Six command points may not seem like a whole lot right now, but that increases both with numbers of colonies, star bases (and their upgrades), and certain technologies. Swarming enemies with large numbers of smaller ships can be a viable strategy in this game, although size classes do matter quite a bit - two frigates are generally not the equal of a destroyer. Likewise, three frigates do typically not measure up to a single cruiser and neither four frigates nor two destroyers will be as effective as a battleship. Bigger is better, but on the other hand those frigates are a lot cheaper and faster to build. Which brings us back to refits - replacing your large, high quality ships with new upgraded models is expensive and time consuming, and refits allow you to perform upgrades relatively cheaply and quickly. It is possible to do a weird sort of "doubling up" on ship production, by having colonies spit out cheaper, empty designs which then get sent to other colonies for refit and upgrade, but this is inefficient and I can't really imagine a scenario where you'd want to do this instead of simply building them in parallel.
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Mar 17, 2019 09:54
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One thing where MOO2 always felt better to me then all competitors was the connection between ship design and actual combat. You could expect to leave a combat encounter with some ideas on how to improve your ship design philosophy, unless the combat was horribly one-sided of course. Many other games (MOO3 is one of the worst offenders) abstract away the combat into large fleets which makes ship design a very blind guessing game.
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Mar 17, 2019 11:05
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All those tiny-but-nice little interface improvements you're mentioning? That's why I could never play MOO1 after starting with this game. The interface of 1 just felt so primitive and lacking in functionality by comparison to my baseline experience from 2 that I just couldn't get past the clunkiness.
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Mar 17, 2019 11:28
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