New MoO announced

[Sirian]

Re: Missile Bases

Too early? Maybe. However, a Missile Base is more than a match for a lone Destroyer, and it is possible for races who start with Engineering to have a Destroyer up by turn 10 and at an AI planet by turn 20. ... If the AI didn't build defense, others would pan it as a sitting duck vs rush attacks. I also think it's possible to get lucky and pull a Destroyer out of an Anomaly. How early? I don't know, actually, but I've gotten one and wiped out undefended AI colonies, because I hit them so early they didn't have a missile base up yet.

A human player might know when they can or cannot get away with delayed defenses, but making up for having to build defense "too early" is what the difficulty-level-based handicaps (in the AIs' favor) is designed to do: to let them play defense safe and still compete on economy.


The "Very Hard" AI was able to take a star system from me. Two planets. One fledgling colony fell easily to them. The core planet there had defense bases and they had to work to take that one. I took it back half a dozen turns later, then went on to obtain a winning position, but I was in war for 115 turns before I reached that winning position.

It's coming along.

The opinion that Early Access should have waited a month is a valid perspective. On the other hand, the game showing marked improvement from build 1 to 2 may help build some faith in where the game is going and where it will end up. There may also be something to be said for the fans having input.


I should check out Sulla's build-2 livestream. Now I just have to find it. ...

EDIT: The link in his sig was somewhat helpful in the "find it" pursuit. I watched the end of his Klackon game just now.


- Sirian

[Sullla]

I keep a Livestream link in my signature, but here's another direct link. I've been putting the version 2 streams up onto YouTube as well, since it's a lot easier for many people to access them in that format.

Finished my first post-patch game tonight (on Hard difficulty). It was a lot more fun than my earlier pre-patch games, especially due to spending essentially the whole game at war with a Meklar race that started only two jumps away from me. We clashed over a very, very good planet in the system between us, and that was it as far as diplomacy. It felt closer to classic MOO that I've seen in a long time. No grace period or anything like that, the AI had zero problems declaring war on Turn 10. Fun stuff.

With an improved AI, better documentation/polish, and some refinement of the Council mechanics to be closer to the original Master of Orion, this could turn into a very good game.

[Windsor]

My post-patch game was not a good experience and felt very much like pre-patch. I played on Very Hard in a small galaxy as Mekklar (AIs Terran, Mrrshans and Klackon) and really met no resistance worth mentioning. Mekklar does seem to be a very strong race with auto-repairing ships and some food/production bonus I can't remember, but it still shouldn't be that easy.

And its not like I'm a very good player. Like I don't know how much food is needed to grow a population point so I haven't calculated a thing. Does each population eat 2 food like in Civ? I don't know. How does armor and hull points work? Like HP and armor in League of Legends? I don't know. I just equip ships with whatever new military stuff I get. What does the cloning center (25% food growth bonus) actually do? Don't know, but food bonuses in 4x games seems to be good so I just assume it is.

I REX'ed hard, got into wars with all 3 AIs early, but even having a 3-front war for the entire game really was no problem. The game was actually very peaceful. I captured one planet rather early and then a crappy planet at the end of the game, but mostly I just won by expanding so fast that I got enough votes to win the council.

But even if the game was harder, I still feel its rather boring once you see past the nice graphics. The planets are very dull to manage since its all slow-growth and not much to balance. A 4th resource, great people (like Civ4) or something would help spice it up, but it need more. I really think the designers should go and watch the movie Das Boot. See how the captain pushes the boat past its limits while the crew tries to make sure it holds together? That's what you need in a 4X game. Some way the player can squeeze out extra production(/science/food/whatever). Many games does this, even simple non-4X ones like Papers, Please! where the player gets forced to drop medicines or heat for a day or two. That's what makes colony management actually interesting. In this game there's no buttons to push for short-term boosts.

Another thing thats not going to get good is the tactical combat. The current system just sucks. It's nowhere near a decent basis for making something thats actually worth playing. Scrap it and go back to the drawing board!

[Zed-F]

Sounds like you have some pretty strong opinions. Let us know when you've made your first game!

[Alhazard]

Now I am beginning to think that the Meklar race is very overpowered. Their population eats 50% less food which is insane since it means that a new colony can grow to 2 then stay food neutral while both pop is working production so you slow build factory then start making colony ships immediately, which leads to insanely explosive openings without rush buying any buildings. To stay food neutral at size 2, other races have to build at least a biosphere first, which slows expansion down a lot.

EDIT: Zed-F, please stop with the personal attacks. Whether Windsor made a game of his or her own game does not validate the arguments presented, which is that Merklars are very strong, there are not a lot of interesting decision in building up planets, and combat is boring. I gotta agree on the 1st and last point, and so far I do see a faint glimmer of interesting planet building decisions because there are real trade-offs early-mid game whether you go for the big money making space port, 2nd happy structure, terraforming, or cruisers first.

[Jeff Graw]

Sounds like you have some pretty strong opinions. Let us know when you've made your first game!

That's a really poor argument and an obvious fallacy. I agree that his last point was not constructive ("scrap it and go back to the drawing board" isn't exactly great feedback), but he is correct in the general sense that tactical combat is lacking. Besides that, his feedback seems valid and constructive.

[Zed-F]

Firstly, stating that someone has presented strong opinions and implying they have flaws is not a personal attack. It is a slight against the opinion, not the person. Neither is it an argument, and as such cannot be a fallacy. It is an observation that is meant to provoke reflection. If you didn't like the sarcasm, that's part of the point; I was replying to Windsor with a tone suitable to the tone he used in making his own post.

The issue I have with Windsor's post has nothing to do with how well-balanced Meklar are relative to the other races in the game at the current time, or whether tactical combat is currently as interesting and enjoyable as it could be. It has to do with (a) his overly-negative tone and way of presenting criticism, and (b) his solutions, which seem to me either to be the wrong approach (i.e. let's add MORE micro to the economy management spreadsheet side of the game!) and/or entirely unrealistic and unhelpful (i.e. let's scrap tactical combat as designed and start over!)

As for whether he's made his own game -- he obviously hasn't, or he would not have made the comments he has in the way that he did. You can't scrap a major system at this point in the production cycle. All you can do is try to improve it - which requires constructive criticism, not destructive.

[Psillycyber]

Firstly, stating that someone has presented strong opinions and implying they have flaws is not a personal attack. It is a slight against the opinion, not the person. Neither is it an argument, and as such cannot be a fallacy. It is an observation that is meant to provoke reflection. If you didn't like the sarcasm, that's part of the point; I was replying to Windsor with a tone suitable to the tone he used in making his own post.

The issue I have with Windsor's post has nothing to do with how well-balanced Meklar are relative to the other races in the game at the current time, or whether tactical combat is currently as interesting and enjoyable as it could be. It has to do with (a) his overly-negative tone and way of presenting criticism, and (b) his solutions, which seem to me either to be the wrong approach (i.e. let's add MORE micro to the economy management spreadsheet side of the game!) and/or entirely unrealistic and unhelpful (i.e. let's scrap tactical combat as designed and start over!)

As for whether he's made his own game -- he obviously hasn't, or he would not have made the comments he has in the way that he did. You can't scrap a major system at this point in the production cycle. All you can do is try to improve it - which requires constructive criticism, not destructive.

I'll admit that the tactical combat, while currently a bit more unwieldly and less intuitive than the original MoO's tactical combat, has great promise to be a genuine improvement/innovation over the original MoO's tactical combat. The idea of a real-time-with-active-pause combat system promises to combine the best elements of real time and turn-based systems. I don't think starting from scratch is necessary or even preferable. I like where they are headed with it.

The only thing that I see currently lacking in the tactical combat of MoO: CTS is any interesting choices to make, aside from which enemy ships to target first (and sometimes I saw that Sullla even had problems getting the targeting to work correctly). But that could be fleshed out with patching and balancing.

For example, are there things in MoO: CTS that work like repulsor beams? Warp dissipators? Subspace teleporters? Cloaking? Energy Pulsars? Those things in MoO1 allow for interesting strategies, such as setting up a huge indestructible auto-repair repulsor ship with little offense to protect a stack of some defenseless medium-hull glass-cannon torpedo boats, or stymieing a huge invasion of bombers with repulsors/warp dissipators/scatterpacks/energy pulsars/black hole generators, or putting subspace teleporters on spore bombers to make a virtually unstoppable bio-death fleet, or the tradeoffs of building beam ships that can provide more damage over the course of a long battle vs. missile boats that provide a short burst of heavier damage.

I did see that some weapons in MoO: CTS ignore shields, and there are some other qualitative differences that make ship design and tactical combat slightly interesting. But things still need to be fleshed out and balanced. I'm especially disappointed that missile racks don't come with an ammo limit. Right now, it just looks like you build missile ships, point and click at the enemy ships, and watch things go boom. Not very interesting choices to make.

Edit: I do think that Windsor made one really good point: a game needs to be able to provide those "Das Boot" moments, like when the captain in that film has to figure out a way to repair his ship after getting hit while going on his suicide run through the Strait of Gibraltar. Those moments where you are feeling like you have to survive against all odds in nailbiting scenarios by coming up with one ingenious strategy that saves the day. MoO1 has tons of those moments. Like when the Klackons show up with thousands of fusion bomb fighters, and you are like, "Oh crap." But then you identify the one weakness of the enemy fleet (such as, slow engines, or lack of supporting escort with beam weapons), and you figure out a way to dance around them or repulse them and whittle down the much larger and scarier AI fleet with your auto-repair/repulsor/energy pulsar cruisers. Or you see that the AI planets are stocked to the gills with missile bases...that are sporting obsolete merculite missiles that your bombers with 5 movement from inertial stabilizers and ion engines can outrun. Or you see that you cannot harm enemy missile bases due to high shielding and spore immunity, and they can't harm your ships either, except that you have ion stream projectors that you can use to whittle down the enemy with and break the stalemate. Etc.

[Psillycyber]

Also, one thing that I appreciate more about MoO1 after watching Sullla's videos on MoO: CTS is how MoO does so much to set the atmosphere with so little in terms of graphics. For example, the biggest difference that I noticed was in how each game currently handles ground invasions.

MoO1, for all of its corny graphics, really sets a tense and ominous mood to the ground combat screen. At first, you hear the battle music start to play, and screen just stays black for a second. It really sets the anticipation in a genius way for having to work with so little.

On the other hand, I love the little cinematic intros to the tactical battles that MoO: CTS has. Also, the planet colonization cinematics in MoO: CTS are fantastic. Definitely a vast improvement! I also love the animated diplomats and advisors for the various races in MoO: CTS. The Klackon science advisor is just...wonderfully bizarre!

So, there's a lot of things in MoO: CTS that I like. But it just seems like, with 20+ years of improved technology and ideas floating around, they could already be a lot farther along to a greatly improved game than they are so far. Maybe patches will flesh it out further.

[Jeff Graw]

Firstly, stating that someone has presented strong opinions and implying they have flaws is not a personal attack. It is a slight against the opinion, not the person. Neither is it an argument, and as such cannot be a fallacy. It is an observation that is meant to provoke reflection. If you didn't like the sarcasm, that's part of the point; I was replying to Windsor with a tone suitable to the tone he used in making his own post.

The fallacy I had in mind was appeal to authority. "The devs know better than you do because they design games for a living and you don't" is a unfortunately a fairly common argument among internet sycophants.

In this case it sounds like you said what you did more out of jest, although there is some irony in you giving unconstructive criticism of what, is in your view, Windsor's unconstructive criticism.

his solutions, which seem to me either to be the wrong approach (i.e. let's add MORE micro to the economy management spreadsheet side of the game!) and/or entirely unrealistic and unhelpful (i.e. let's scrap tactical combat as designed and start over!)

For the former, it really depends on implementation. He's asked for more depth to colony management in a general sense, without going into specifics. This could easily mean more micromanagement. However, for example, you could accomplish "some way the player can squeeze out extra production" by replacing the MoO 2-esque "buy a project in one turn" approach with a more MoO 1 "pour resources into this world to generally stimulate its economy" model. That kind of solution would not add more micromanagement.

As for the tactical combat comment, it's entirely possible he was being snarky and sarcastic in the same way you were