New MoO announced

[Zygot]

I bought this out of curiosity and hope, especially given the involvement of Soren and Sirian. Of course it's early access, with lots of room for improvement still, but I'm not impressed, and the game needs radical changes.

The main problem is that it's BORING. The racial differences are trivial. The tech tree is bland, and the heavy use of multiple prerequisites means you'll likely research similar things in a similar order every game. Once you get more than a handful of planets, the micromanagement is soul-destroying, with a long series of trivial and obvious build orders; there is not much DECISION-MAKING involved. Combat comes very late; you will play for several hours before a fight breaks out. Sullla's and Marbozir's let's plays seem to be abandoned for lack of interest...

The worst problem, and the same one I had with Endless Space, is that real-time combat means it's difficult to approach space battles analytically. For example, it's great that Gun A has more damage than Gun B, but a ship's acceleration and rotation speed matter just as much, and that's an opaque mechanic, let alone the fact there's no explanation I can see of to-hit mechanics, rate of fire, etc. Basically you blindly design ships, doing the best you can without any real idea of tradeoffs, then throw them in the meat grinder and hope for the best. I prefer being able to mentally simulate parts of the battle to make the best choices before and during; you know, STRATEGY and TACTICS.

Everything I'm describing is part of the game design. It's worth noting too that at this stage the AI is lobotomized.

There's one neat idea here, which is the diminishing returns for worker cells.

Anyway, there's some thoughts after watching maybe 10 hours of streams and playing 6 hours into a game, where I assumed a commanding lead and couldn't be bothered to finish. I do sincerely hope they're able to make something good out this. Right now, it's just bland and repetitive.

[Sullla]

Just to be fair, I didn't abandon this game. I played an initial game for a couple of hours where I was testing mechanics, then played two fulls games after that, one on-stream and one off-stream. I'm waiting on the next patch to come out before starting another new game.

I don't think that Zygot's issues are necessarily wrong, however. The MOO remake does need more work, a lot of it to be honest. If I'm enjoying the game (and I am), it's mostly because my initial expectations were mediocre to poor, and it's filling a void caused by a lack of other good empire-building games released recently. I completely agree that this game plays nothing like the original Master of Orion, and there's definitely a tendency towards too much busywork planetary micromanagement. (If I could just remove some more planets from the map, it would be so much more interesting! I'm playing on the smallest options possible, and I still end up with two dozen planets every game, which tilts the scales from "fun" to "boring" too quickly.)

I'm somewhat encouraged by the list of upcoming features that the developers have posted in the game's forums. They've managed to hit most of the things that I would like to see improved here. Now that said, promises from developers in Early Access games are worth about as much as a bucket of warm spit, so we'll see how much of this ever sees the light of day. Still, we have some very smart people with RB connections involved in this project, so I'm not willing to be completely cynical. Waiting and seeing what happens next here.

[Sullla]

The first big patch of the Early Access period came out today. Here is the changelist: http://forum.masteroforion.com/index.php...tch-notes/

I will be streaming it for a few hours later today. Hopefully the reality lives up to the chagelist, which looks solid at first glance.

[Alhazard]

If the RB people who have some say in the game's development are reading this thread, I would really prefer support for fully automated combat so maybe a future MP version can be played asynchronously.

EDIT: nevermind. saw that option in battles. Since the OSX version is out now, I guess I will play it for myself now.

[Alhazard]

I gotta say that the combat is more simplified. There are so many modular options but it doesn't seem worth it to research a tech out of the way of the critical economic techs when you can just add more beam weapons or what not? Maybe I am wrong.

In addition, so far agree with the person who said that you should let your size 2 planets build colonies and only keep your capital tall because settling a new planet gives you way more benefit than growing a 3rd pop because of the structure you get when founding a new colony. Found an interesting opening abusing this to the max, but maybe it only works with the Meklar.

[Sullla]

That might be true in the abstract sense; I don't know how the numbers work out. I don't think that the gameplay tends to work out that way in practice, however. The constraint on expansion in Master of Orion has never been economic in nature - more planets has always been better, same as in the original title - but rather the other races and their military strength. What stops the player from colonizing every world is the presence of enemies who are also trying to colonize every world. In the MOO reboot, the AIs get very angry if you colonize near them (perhaps too angry from what I've seen). In my first game after the patch, I started two systems away from the Meklar, with one disputed system between us. When I colonized the very juicy planet located in that system 5 turns into the game, they immediately declared war on me, and I spent the rest of the early game fighting off their ships. At one point, they blockaded my world and would have destroyed it entirely if they'd thought to design ships with bombs on them. I'm pretty sure that the AI is intended to be the constraint on expansion.

There's also planet quality to factor into the decision making as well. Sure, if there are lots of Terran planets nearby, it's far better to keep cranking out colony ships to grab them all. However, in my experience the bulk of the planets in the MOO remake are pretty lousy. There are tons of Toxic and Radiated and Volcanic worlds that just aren't very useful until the player has the appropriate terraforming techs. Is it worth it to keep spamming colony ships to grab them immediately? Perhaps, I honestly don't know. I've found myself naturally avoiding them for the most part though, at least until I get better technology or unless one of those planets rolls Rich/Ultra Rich on minerals.

I think this game will ultimately live or die based on what kind of challenge the AI can pose on harder difficulties. I agree that it's on the bland side as a sandbox building exercise. I've had a lot more fun when I'm struggling against an AI neighbor, and we're both putting pressure on one another.

[Alhazard]

first I meant to say combat options and techs should be a lot more simplified.

well so far my play style is to not rush any buildings and I play always taxing 4BC per pop and only rush buy ships. We will see if this works in VH or even a viable strategy in the future.

[Alhazard]

Played VH difficulty for the 1st time and got 10 colonies by T50 with 800+ in the bank to rush ships :O. But I felt I got lucky because Humans and the Bears got to a very early war so I didnt have to rush buy 2-3 ships that I usually do.

And Sulla to build on your point, I do believe that the SP experiencing is not going to be enough, and really think this game will be successful or awful depending on how the MP experience is. However, I am not liking what I see so far at all .

[Zygot]

The early access v2 patch has improved the game immensely by implementing difficulty settings and better AI. It's gone from a "don't waste your time with this" to "hey, this reboot is shaping up into something kind of cool". I've been playing on very hard, and while I feel my criticisms from before are still mostly valid, everything takes on a different perspective when you actually have to work the mechanics and design to survive and thrive. Suddenly, your choices matter. They really should have just held off for a month and started the early access period now; I think they'd have gotten much better initial impressions. Even things I was skeptical about like star lanes and the tech tree are able to be viewed in a more positive light.

Don't get me wrong, they have a lot of polishing and balancing to do. But I actually had fun playing this weekend. I think it will end up a better game than Endless Space, for example.

[Zygot]

I think this game will ultimately live or die based on what kind of challenge the AI can pose on harder difficulties. I agree that it's on the bland side as a sandbox building exercise. I've had a lot more fun when I'm struggling against an AI neighbor, and we're both putting pressure on one another.

I agree 100%. My early access v1 playtime was sandbox building tedium in the extreme, but now with potentially challenging opponents (at least through the early to early-mid game on very hard difficulty) it's much, much better. I can't tell yet just how "smart" the AI is currently, versus them receiving bonuses. I suspect there's a healthy amount of the latter, and that's honestly fine with me, as long as there are some smarts there. After all, the AI in the original MOO is mostly blind RNG decision-making anyway (for example tech choices, planetary spending, and ship design).

I think the AI for the reboot could be substantially improved by focusing attention on their planetary worker allocations and build orders. For example, even a better blind, planet-by-planet local optimization strategy would help their empires overall. I suspect the AI constructs things like missile bases way too early at times when economic structures would be better in the long run.