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Which patch to use? 1oom or kyrub?

I'm just getting into playing MOO1 - yes, in 2022.  Decided to have a look at some classic strategy games that I hadn't played yet and although I've played plenty of the classics, MOO1/2 aren't included in them.

What I've noticed is that MOO1 seems to have a *very* steep learning curve.  All the playthroughs I've seen are clearly from people who've got a lot of esoteric knowledge about how the game and AI works internally, and 100s of hours of experience with the game to have an intuitive knowledge of what to do next, what to allocate resources on, how many of which type of ship to put in a star system to ensure you can hold off the AI, etc.  I look forward to learning that!  bang

Anyway, it also looks like the vanilla game has some bugs, and it's a good idea to use a patch.  The main two are 1oom and kyrub's one.  Which should I use?  One difference I've noticed is the "dot in the tech research screen" on the kyrub patch isn't there on 1oom.  Is that an important addition I'll be wanting?  What are the other major gameplay/UI differences?
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Welcome - it's good to see people still picking up the game!  I'm not sure the learning curve for MoO1 is all that steep actually - it's just that it's very long:  You can pick up a lot and still have a lot more to discover.  If you're looking for a simpler playthrough intended specifically to help newer players learn, you might check out Sirian's tutorial for the vanilla game:  His site is no longer up, but you can find it on the internet archive here.  Unfortunately, many of the pictures have been lost.  And if you're interested in learning the game by playing a "Succession Game" with other players (where each player plays a few turns, writes up a description of what they did, and passes the save on to the next player) maybe we can put together a team....

As for a patch, I find myself falling back on kyrub's patch, partly because I'm not sure which is the current version of which branch of 1oom, partly because Dosbox makes cross-platform play easy (e.g. for succession games) and partly because it produces saves in the same format as the base game (there's a way to convert them back and forth from at least one version of 1oom too though).  Depending on the 1oom options you choose, 1oom does implement a version of kyrub's tech LED:  Instead of a separate dot, it "lights up" the tech level (the number to the right of the field you're researching_ when you're getting the maximum bonus for your prior investment in that field for the current tech.  Other UI differences for kyrub's patch include a number of keyboard shortcuts (e.g. pagedown and pageup scroll through the Fleet screen when you have a lot of fleets) and the game date showing up on the map screen.  There's also an introduced bug where the combat "scan" display doesn't show the item in the third slot unless you use SDragon's patch-of-the-patch from here, which I always do now.  There are a lot more differences in some of the branches of 1oom, but I think the default is basically identical to the vanilla game.

Gameplay differences under kyrub's patch are mostly bug fixes:  The cost of the default ship designs is reduced to match the cost of ships you design yourself; "Specials" like autorepair and warp dissipator are usable once per combat round instead of again and again every time you hit the "Wait" button, leader personalities match those intended by the designers instead of those that resulted from a table overflow; the AI judges the distance between stars correctly relative to its warp speed, which has a lot of consequences in the way it dispatches its ships (generally speaking, kyrub's AI expands better than the vanilla game's, and the way it distributes its fleets is different too).

I hope this helps - and I hope you enjoy learning the game!
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Welcome, jez9999! I second RefSteel -- it is great to see people still picking up classics like MOO1. It is a great game, and I hope you have a lot of fun with it. Feel free to ask questions here at RB; there are quite a few veteran players and most of them are friendly. smile

In addition to RefSteel's excellent suggestion of Sirian's tutorial, I will recommend checking out Sulla's MOO section on his web site: https://sullla.com/MOO/moo.html  He has several intro games where he was getting into MOO1, as well as more advanced games later. Sulla also has some streams of MOO games on his YouTube channel if you prefer the streaming format to reading a write up; there are links on his web site.

It has been a while since we had a succession game. Maybe we can find enough interested players for a new one. nod
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Thanks for the replies guys, very useful!  I think I would enjoy a "succession game", not that I've heard of one, lol. Sounds like it might be a useful learning exercise for a newbie as you could tell me what I did wrong on each of my turns. How many people do you need for a game though, wouldn't 2 or 3 do?

(March 1st, 2022, 17:11)RefSteel Wrote: As for a patch, I find myself falling back on kyrub's patch, partly because I'm not sure which is the current version of which branch of 1oom, partly because Dosbox makes cross-platform play easy (e.g. for succession games) and partly because it produces saves in the same format as the base game (there's a way to convert them back and forth from at least one version of 1oom too though).

I've been looking into and using 1oom for the past few days, and it seems the latest and apparently final version is... v1.0. I've actually gotten my own cross-compile from Unix to DOS working so I could run it in DOSBox, in order to remove those built-in cheats (having a game where you could always just cheat on a whim just bugs me), and I fixed one or two minor bugs in the process. As you said, there's a converstion tool for savegames bundled in. I wonder why he didn't just use MOO's savegame format, though...

Quote:Depending on the 1oom options you choose, 1oom does implement a version of kyrub's tech LED:  Instead of a separate dot, it "lights up" the tech level (the number to the right of the field you're researching_ when you're getting the maximum bonus for your prior investment in that field for the current tech.
That actually now seems to be an LED that lights up, similar to the patch.

Quote:Other UI differences for kyrub's patch include a number of keyboard shortcuts (e.g. pagedown and pageup scroll through the Fleet screen when you have a lot of fleets) and the game date showing up on the map screen.  There's also an introduced bug where the combat "scan" display doesn't show the item in the third slot unless you use SDragon's patch-of-the-patch from here, which I always do now.  There are a lot more differences in some of the branches of 1oom, but I think the default is basically identical to the vanilla game.
Guess I'll be using my 1oom branch then in case there are any other niggles I want to change lol I also added the current game difficulty level to the status display as I couldn't see anywhere else it was displayed. Guess everyone here plays on impossible all of the time.

Quote:Gameplay differences under kyrub's patch are mostly bug fixes:  The cost of the default ship designs is reduced to match the cost of ships you design yourself; "Specials" like autorepair and warp dissipator are usable once per combat round instead of again and again every time you hit the "Wait" button, leader personalities match those intended by the designers instead of those that resulted from a table overflow; the AI judges the distance between stars correctly relative to its warp speed, which has a lot of consequences in the way it dispatches its ships (generally speaking, kyrub's AI expands better than the vanilla game's, and the way it distributes its fleets is different too).
Does that mean that for a succession game you'd all need to use the same MOO version? If not, each person's turn would change AI behaviour which might get rather screwy.
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SGs usually aim for 4 or 5 players. They can be done with fewer, but it is more fun with a larger group. Also, the sets of turns do not come around as quickly with more players, so there is less time commitment per player. In the later stages of a successful game (especially on map sizes other than small) playing and reporting turns can take a fair bit of time with many worlds to manage.

It is important for all players to have the same version of the game, or at least interchangable save files. If the 100m conversion utility works, then that is not likely to be an issue.

SGs are a good way to learn more about the game. nod Discussion among the team and seeing what another player does with a given situation can help you see new possibilities you had not considered and reveal game aspects you did not know about before. Past SGs certainly did for me. I am not nearly as good as most of the players here at RB, but I am much better than I was previously. Or at least I was; it has been a while since I last played and I am sure to be rusty.
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OK well I'd be happy play with 3 players if we're the only ones we can get together for it.
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I could fill a slot as a player of middling talent. I have 1oom and (I think) kyrub's patch. I prefer the former just for quality of life improvements but can play the latter.
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I forked 1oom and built an MSDOS version with some bugs fixes and the cheats removed; probably the version I'll be using. If anyone's interested it's at: https://gitlab.com/jez9999/1oom/-/releases/v1.0-jez1
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Hi haphazard and DaveV!  I'm glad there are still enough of us to quickly pull together a Succession Game team!

(March 2nd, 2022, 03:24)jez9999 Wrote: I wonder why he didn't just use MOO's savegame format, though...

I think there's more information in a 1oom save than a standard MoO one, including information about the random seed (1oom has an option, I think on by default, to preserve the random seed so two players taking the same actions from the same save will get the same results) - when converting to the original game's save format, this extra information is lost.

Quote:Guess everyone here plays on impossible all of the time.

Not all the time:  Sometimes it's fun to play on lower difficulty, either with really crazy variant rules or just because someone's looking for an easier, more-relaxed game. (And this can certainly qualify if Impossible sounds like too much for a learning and/or shaking-off-the-rust game!)

Quote:Does that mean that for a succession game you'd all need to use the same MOO version?  If not, each person's turn would change AI behaviour which might get rather screwy.

Yeah, it's probably best if we all play on the same version of the game.  Part of the reason I default to kyrub's patch is that it's an established standard (the SDragon patch I linked only fixes a couple of graphics glitches and has no direct effect on gameplay) and the save games don't need any extra fiddling for compatibility with the vanilla game - but the other reason is that if we're playing 1oom, we have to decide which fork:  The original 1.0 or Tapani's or ignatius's or RFS-81's or a new one like yours.  (See this post for Windows builds of each of the former ... uh ... four) - and also which command line options to use if I'm remembering 1oom's design correctly.  My inclination if we do use 1oom would be toward RFS-81's fork for its bug fixes and staying closer than ignatius to the original game, though my preference is to fall back on kyrub's patch anyway.  If the rest of you have a different preference though, I'll be glad to play along!

As for game settings, does anyone have an opinion?  I'm up for anything, but given that it's meant as a learning experience, something basic might be best:  I'll suggest Standard size, 5 opponents, Impossible difficulty, Sakkra, with no variant rules (apart from avoiding exploits as usual) - in the interest of suggesting something!  I'd definitely be happy with easier, harder, or weirder alternatives too!
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I would be happy to try the lizards on impossible. How bad could it be, right? nod But if jez9999 thinks that would too much for a learning game, I would have no issues with stepping down the difficulty. Standard map and 5 opponents also sounds good to me -- just a straight no-frills game. If things go well and there is continued interest, we could always try some variant play in a following game.

Time to fire up my GOG copy and make sure I remember how to take screenshots and such....
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