Master of Orion is dead and being buried

[alienxo]

Seems like a dead thread. So im sorry if I wake it up again.

Master of Orion was one of the super time wasters of my younger years.
The new one that under beta testing is still a bit ruff and has lots of small things i would have changed. Might be me being nostalgic for nr 2.
Only issue i have had with master is that you have to really tweak or even mod it a bit to get it hard enough for it to be interesting.
After you put a amount of hours in to the game you look at it like solving a math problem. Its not random or hard enough that the standard solutions to the problem wont solve it in the end.

Making the AI quicker but doing the same kinda gives you the solution playing the training. You just need to hurry up on the harder levels.

I dont really know if anyone of the people working on this game reads this, but yeah you just made my day. You are making my favorite type of time "waster". Please be a classic from first play.

[Arioch]

I dont really know if anyone of the people working on this game reads this, but yeah you just made my day. You are making my favorite type of time "waster". Please be a classic from first play.

We'll do our best.

[Awaras]

So, they announced the release of a DLC that will include the gholam



Trilarians (Cthulhu much?)



and Elerians

[Arioch]

The Gnolam are goat people now?

[Awaras]

The Gnolam are goat people now?

Yeah, apparently having them being hunch-backed hand wringing hook-nosed money grubbers is too un-PC for this day and age.

[SmaugTheDragon]

The graphics/music are really good, too bad they forgot about gameplay. Kind of a shame, Wargaming gave them an insane budget what could have been used for something a little more innovative (or actually fun), still, last I played was just after release, maybe they have made it better since.

One thing I vividly remember is that every single planet in the game can be terraformed into a Gaia, that really ruined the endgame.

[Awaras]

Antarans....

[SilasOfBorg]

The game in its current state is decent. If they were aiming for a moo-lite - but not brain dead - then they got it pretty much right.

It isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if you want a reasonably engaging space strategy game with fairly good AI and AAA production values then you really can't go wrong.

If you're looking for MOO2 with better graphics, you'll have to look elsewhere. And I know that is deeply disappointing to a lot of people.

[zolobolo]

I have never player MoO games before but I have been looking for the ultimate 4X space strategy which I would play - like UFO - even after a decade in clumsy dosbox sequel if need be

Tried the latest instalment of MoO as well as ll the other mayor players, but it just cannot move me to a second play-through. The game feels really shallow which might be due to the limited amount of races, star lanes, boring diplomacy but most likely due to the combat system. I got used to not being able to influence the outcome under the justification the motto: "the player should be managing an empire and not play starship commander" but somehow all these games still would like the player to spend most of his time: build factories on individual planets and designing a space cruiser. Guess all the emperors in the future will be tinkling with the blueprints of their armada counting millions of vessels

Think the concept if false, as the player does want to control the ships he/she has researched and produced to have a sense of achievement when pitting these in battle. MoO does try to give you this control... only it fails. It does not feel like the player can really control those ships and influence the battle, feels more like show. Real-time really hurts the sense of control, but especially the UI and the mock 3D view.

This is why I have high hopes for SiS. It has a more solid combat concept.
MoO needs to massively improve the battles to be a classic. Thinking on fire arcs, fighters that do not look like missiles and much more tactical information. Still, at least they have something to improve upon not like other 4X games where it is only show...

[Ashbery76]

I enjoy It a great deal.I don't really get this Moo2 lite thing.It is one of the better space 4x games released.Starlanes add some strategies and is hardly anything to do with dumb.Turn based combat while interesting early game when empires are near parity becomes a chore when you have these large fleets against an A.I that was not very good.Battles were only really fun when the player was outnumbed.

I always see this craving about 4x turn based combat but how many games actually pulled it off? AOW3 is the only one I can think off because the A.I was good enough to use it.

I have not played SIS late game but it is my concern that it will suffer the same pacing issues you get with turn based battles.Micro with 100+ ships is just not fun.

[zolobolo]

I always see this craving about 4x turn based combat but how many games actually pulled it off? AOW3 is the only one I can think off because the A.I was good enough to use it.

- CIV games (or at least the last few) have direct control over the combat as the player can issue commands to each individual unit
- Endless Legend not only has tactical combat but also innovates in a lot of ways
- All the UFO based games - now X-COM thrive on the idea of melting strategic and tactical turn-based game-play.

Didn't play MoO2 so can't tell how problematic that was with large fleets, but the way this game is shaping up, the real fun should start once large fleets are in play as that is when the individual tactical options add up. Like a game of chess There is already group selection for moving and firing + there is an auto combat button to have the AI take over a round - these functions seem promising to cut down on the tedious factor

Just because a 4X game is in space, that doesn't mean that it needs to cut down on this mechanic. If I would hazard a guess why tactical combat (real-time or otherwise) is not present in 4X space games I would guess that this is a budget decision. There is no need to develop this aspect as the player can be fed with other mechanics which are less risky and require less AI programming.

[Ashbery76]

El is the best you can offer sort of says everthing as the combat system was not well received and is more like a compromise for guys who like tactical control than a fleshed out system.Civ is not instanced tactical and X-com is not even a 4x.

[zolobolo]

El is the best you can offer sort of says everything as the combat system was not well received and is more like a compromise for guys who like tactical control than a fleshed out system.Civ is not instanced tactical and X-com is not even a 4x.

Well I have obviously not played all the 4x games out there, but it is true that I find EL to be the best 4X game that I have played so far. Having the game for many years on my hard-drive, I still find the tactical combat aspect very enjoyable. Some of the frustration might come from the lack of hint on how to chain together move and attack orders, but that is only a google search away Altogether the game has won several GOTY awars, and also ranked very well at least on steam, holding the all-time rank of #20 in 4X category: https://steamspy.com/app/289130

I do not know what you exactly mean under instanced tactical combat, but in later iterations of CIV, you are free to position the troops and define who attacks what. Whether this opens in another tab or window I don't think it matters. If you can define on which hill the archers should rain arrows on the cavalry while your spearman keep them in one place...I would qualify this as tactical control. In comparison: in Stellaris I can only tell my blob of a fleet containing hundreds of ships ranging from fighters to titans to attack another fleet - this obviously is lacking tactical control.

X-com is a strange beast, true, but some games can transcendence genres (like Battelzone and UFO did". The current iteration of X-COM has all the components of a 4X:
Explore: - The location of enemy bases and resources are not known to the player from the start and their occurrence is not scripted
Expand: - You can build radio towers, which generate funds, clear out machines in the base and build facilities
Exploit: - This is where it gets fuzzy, but management of a small pool of soldiers is not that wildly different then managing a small pool of fleets. Most of the time is spent on buying new tech, producing the tech and putting hours in the designer to customize the soldier/ship class
Exterminate: - I think this is self explanatory

[ShadowDrake777]

EL was better than ES, both games were well made but I found them to be not very deep.
EL was a good distraction from Civ but I feel Civ was the stronger game of the two.

Moo:CtS I wanted to love but found disappointing. Its not that it strayed from open space and turn based combat as there are 4x's that I enjoy that do space lanes and realtime but its how they implemented it. Moving ships across space lanes is a chore and becomes a point of annoyance and the realtime combat is difficult to manage how you want while providing little to no information on enemy ships for auto resolve.
Moo:CtS has all the flash bang and whistle I could want and I enjoy everything else about the game but they messed up 2 very important aspects.

My all time favorite 4x is SotS and it had realtime combat and star lanes for 2 of the races.

I have put a few hours into SiS and i am enjoying it more than Moo:CTS