New MoO announced

[HansLemurson]

More and more, I feel like an updated and improved MoO1 would blow even my beloved Civ4 out of the water in terms of replayability and streamlined fun-per-time-invested.

Remnants of the Precursors is aiming for an HD remake of MoO1. http://www.pretendstudios.com/
Dominus Galaxia seems to be trying to make "Star Lords 2". http://dominusgalaxia.com/index.php/about/

DG has an AI developer working on it now who turned Pandora: First Contact's AI into a serious threat (that crushed noobs on 'easy' level and is essentially unbeatable beyond 'hard'). He needs some work on reasonable Diplomacy though, since his AI is a ruthless opportunist that preys on the weak.

[Jeff Graw]

Dominus Galaxia seems to be trying to make "Star Lords 2". http://dominusgalaxia.com/index.php/about/

I wouldn't describe us quite like that. Instead, I'd say we aim to be the unofficial true Master of Orion 2. More precisely, what a Master of Orion sequel would have been had it been an evolution of the first game instead of the "Civilization in space" it ended up as. That, and if it were made in 2016.

The one feature we're using from Starlords is that you can colonize a world by simply transporting population from A to B. In Starlords that didn't end up working very well since expansion went totally unchecked, even though the lack of colony ship micro was pretty sweet. In DG, new colonies need to build a starport before they contribute to strategic range, are able to build ships, and send population, which helps us to keep expansion in check. Stuff like that is the equivalent of a "free lunch" because by lowering the burden of one aspect of the game, we can add more complexity in a different area without overloading the player. Colony management is another area we found a free lunch for. Sliders behave somewhat differently, and the end result means that colonies can be managed somewhere around 50% (conservatively) faster than they could be in MoO 1, with a lot less fiddling.

A note about our website: It's long overdue for an overhaul. The stuff on our media page isn't very indicative of the current state of the game either, but we're finishing a few things before we put up better material.

[TheArchduke]

Thanks for trying the game for us, Sullla.

I enjoyed your video.

In any case, if you have not, play MoO2.

It is a totally different game, but a very, very good one.

[Psillycyber]

Dominus Galaxia looks really neat! What does the timeline on its development look like?

(By the way, the Dominus Galaxia website might want to moderate/clean up its forums a bit. I am guessing that the sex adverts and posts all in Russian are not threads pertaining to the game )

[Sirian]

In any case, if you have not, play MoO2.

It is a totally different game, but a very, very good one.

Sulla's lack of experience with MOO2 would seem to explain why he thinks the new moo is Civ in Space. He's not wrong, from a certain point of view. The tech tree, obviously, looks a lot like the one from Civ5. Just that most of the borrowing from Civ happened long ago.

I don't share the view that MOO2 was a very good game, but it was indisputably popular and must be viewed as the most influential space empire game to date, as it is far and away the most emulated.


- Sirian

[Mardoc]

I don't share the view that MOO2 was a very good game, but it was indisputably popular and must be viewed as the most influential space empire game to date, as it is far and away the most emulated.

I loved it. I wonder, in retrospect, how much of that was because I was a teenager and it was the first strategy game I played properly (with a side order of good art). I can certainly see flaws now, and fire up the original much more often than 2.

I've got the same wonder about Alpha Centauri.

[HansLemurson]

In any case, if you have not, play MoO2.

It is a totally different game, but a very, very good one.

Sulla's lack of experience with MOO2 would seem to explain why he thinks the new moo is Civ in Space. He's not wrong, from a certain point of view. The tech tree, obviously, looks a lot like the one from Civ5. Just that most of the borrowing from Civ happened long ago.

I don't share the view that MOO2 was a very good game, but it was indisputably popular and must be viewed as the most influential space empire game to date, as it is far and away the most emulated.


- Sirian

Baby duckling syndrome. A generation of young gamers imprinted on MoO2 at a young age, and now think it's the mother of 4X games.

[Molach]

I don't share the view that MOO2 was a very good game, but it was indisputably popular and must be viewed as the most influential space empire game to date, as it is far and away the most emulated.

I loved it. I wonder, in retrospect, how much of that was because I was a teenager and it was the first strategy game I played properly (with a side order of good art). I can certainly see flaws now, and fire up the original much more often than 2.

This is me too.

Moo2-only stuff I found fun:

• Customize races. It was fun. However, in hindsight, probably not balanced. Never played with stock races, because they were so easy to make a teeny bit better...
  
• Capturing ships & scrapping them for tech (in very rare cases, use the ships). But capturing an early antarean and getting ***, boom game won.
  
• Ship exp and ship leaders. However, this focus on the individual ship probably led to major problem 2.
  

Tedious Moo2-only stuff:

1. Late game colony management. Gah. New colony: Queue up prod buildings 1-4, then trade goods. Click *buy* whenever you can be bothered.
   
2. Late game huge battles. Waah. Thankfully I found the 'z' key, (quick-speed/no animation resolving rest of the combat)and had to use it a lot. Also, late game weapons/systems meant that one good player-designed ship could fry an amazing amount of enemy ships after moving forward. So move forward, then press z = quick way to end battles, rather than targetting all 150 enemy ships. Moo1 with max 6 + 6 fleets flying about never had this problem.
   
3. Outposts - can be built everywhere so range doesn't matter much. Also more planets per system ...not a fan. Perhaps I've just played too much Moo1 recently.
   
4. Production building 1 thru 4, means that planet's mineral status rich/ultra poor doesn't really matter that much. Unlike those dreaded ultra-poors in Moo1.
   
5. Pollution. Better in Moo1.
   

About the NEW MOO ...I saw a chunk of the stream.

- I noticed Sullla having trouble engaging the (first) approaching pirate fleet. Is this possible to do - just unintuitive UI - or something intentional - that you can't engage inside starlanes? If not - cough - not a fan. I really hate europa universalis-kinds of fights, where enemy armies can walk across one of your provinces with 5465456 soldiers, and not be engaged because "they are on the way over to that other province over there".

- Pollution. Do I understand right that you have to build it now and then? If so - ugh. Agh. Noooooo. I'd actually argue that the "diminishing returns from adding pop to production"-thing sort of emulates this - as you ramp up production it becomes less effective because you have to spend more cleaning up after you. (Adding more farmers obviously gives diminishing returns because the best arable land is taken first). As I understood it, slotting in pollution cleanup 'now and then' 'when needed' is a job no human would nor should be forced to do in a 5+ planet empire.

- Tooltip for Morale (%). The number[, rounded up, ]of your population that is content and working. The pop-up will then say 80% - 6 working 1 striking or something.

[Psillycyber]

I loved it. I wonder, in retrospect, how much of that was because I was a teenager and it was the first strategy game I played properly (with a side order of good art). I can certainly see flaws now, and fire up the original much more often than 2.

I've got the same wonder about Alpha Centauri.

Gameplay wise, Alpha Centauri was an 8 out of 10. It needed some modding to really balance out some of the mechanics (such as supply crawlers, which I always put later in the tech tree in my own private mod owing to their complete OP-ness).

Civ4 was an almost straight-up improvement over SMAC gameplay-wise: better balance between vertical and horizontal growth incentives, great people, promotions. The one possible exception where SMAC was superior was with its zones of control mechanic. I loved SMAC's zones of control and how it created real frontal warfare (despite having some exploitable loopholes that made it gimmicky in the hands of the human player, such as sending in units that ignored zones of control like probe teams and needlejets and escorting land troops underneath them) and wish Civ4 had kep that mechanic (while ironing out its rough edges, such as the escort loophole I mentioned above).

But the thing that really made SMAC stand out was the flavor. My god, the flavor! SMAC is one of the few games that I can credit with having changed my worldview and probably my life. Encountering it when I did in high school, it jumpstarted my interest in politics, economics, philosophy, libertarianism...I can't say the same thing about any other game. (Well, Civ4 did help cement my decision to major in history in college.... )

[Ray F]

But the thing that really made SMAC stand out was the flavor. My god, the flavor!

You know, I think even people who say "flavor is important" are underestimating its importance.

It's ultimately what makes a game a "game" instead of a mathematical puzzle. Lack of flavor is what drives people to say that MOO3 and Endless Space had "no soul" or were "sterile".

It's why so many gamers idolize MOO2 and overlook its significant flaws. And since few developers truly understand the importance of flavor, it's why so many space 4X games have since failed to recapture the magic of MOO1/2 despite having more modern interfaces and improved mechanics.

I honestly believe that flavor is probably the most important element of a game. Maybe it's because I come from a strong RPG background. But it's probably the one area where I am excessively obsessive about adding to the game with my MOO1 clone.