Master Of Orion II for Dummies

[Destroid]

True, but I found that by the time you get to plasma guns and such the enveloping feature of those weapons made a mnor 3 point reduction (10 at most with the best shield) so insignificant that it wasn't worth it. I usually always had the best armor in the game, and 3 points of 3600 meant nothing to me. Yes, there is vunerablilty to ion pulse cannons, but I found the computer AI was smart enough to put powerful weapons that took out the shields before firing the ion pulse cannons anyways, so was a moot point (lose my shields before they fire the ion pulse, or lose my armor then they fire the ion pulse. Either way I'm probably dead). And any human I ever played against did that as well.

Usually, if I found I needed shields I traded for them, but I focused more on killing the enemy before they could board or destory me. Plus, you can't have shields with hard shields (reduces all damage by 1/4) on the ship, which I got 90 - 95% of the time by the endgame.

I'm thinking you havn't played for a while. Hard shields work with shields and reduce the damage by a further 3 points and allow the shields to function while in nebula and block shield piercing weapons. There is an energy absorber tech that absorbs 25% of the damage, however this can be used in conjunction with shields. You are probably thinking of the damper field which absorbs 75% of damage, but does not work with shields.

Plasma cannons do a pretty huge amount of damage, however they are a lot further down the tech tree than class 3 shields, and by then of course those shields will have a pretty small effect. Class 3 shields are important in the early game, they make your ships a LOT tougher to low level weapons.



I've tried moo once of twice, but the interface always puts me off since I started with moo2

 

[spectre]

my game suddently stops after a while before im even ready to start the real fighting because those alien assholes decide that fighting sucks so "lets vote for it" and, of course, if i went turtle i lose and if i went expansionist i win, you are not even given an option to not recognize the new "universe government" and declaring war on them,
the game just suddently stops, gives you the finger and then you either lose or win depending on how many ppl you have in total, then the game gives you the finger again and game over, damn, thats so fun...

This one is simply not true. Last time I played, you get the option to defy the new republic, meaning all other races surrender to the election winner who then declares war.

From my experience, it most often happens on smaller maps - last time I lost this way was on medium - the whole universe went against my humble two solar systems.

 

[NiM82]

You do know that Wardell said that GC3 will have tactical combat (this time for sure)? Now if only more people would've whined on stardock's forums about how game needs administrators/fleet commanders we would've a chance to get that ideal 4X game.
Also GC2 has some kind of senate too (except it is more like UN).
But yeah another thing I dislike about GalCiv is that it has all solar systems easily reachable by simply moving your fleet to them whereas in MoO you really need to -travel- to another system. GC2 has many other things that make it inferior to MoO2 though like easier planet management (no need to think about food) and only bonuses during race creation/development. It is hard to compare the two though as they are very different in many other things.

You should try Sword of the Stars if you haven't already, it's more fleet focussed, with realtime tactical battles which are fucking great. The different races have different travel requirements, some use nodes others have to stargates (uber slow expansion, but instantaneous reinforcements). A lot more interesting strategically too than GC2 imo.

 

[Destroid]

Sword of the stars also has an extremely primitive economic model, its basically 100% about battle.

Didn't like it much myself, but it might have improved after much patching and I believe an expansion?

 

[spectre]

I have only played SotS for an hour or so, when I saw that it's only about researching stuff for ships and producing ships, I dropped it.

 

[JarlFrank]

Sword of the stars also has an extremely primitive economic model, its basically 100% about battle.

Didn't like it much myself, but it might have improved after much patching and I believe an expansion?

Two expansions, actually.

 

[Destroid]

So... is it actually worth playing now? Or should I try GalCiv2+expansion first, or just stick to moo2 :p

 

[BethesdaLove]

MOO < GALCIV

moo:
unbalanced
tardy, cheating ai

galciv:
no multiplayer


tactical battles dont count for moo cause they are minigames without meaning

 

[NiM82]

So... is it actually worth playing now? Or should I try GalCiv2+expansion first, or just stick to moo2 :p

I'd say yes, the demo put me off entirely, but boredom saw me come back to it a month or two ago. With the first expansion and patches (nothing was removed from inventory) it's great, reading the manual helped too ofc.

They've made some much needed UI improvements, so you can better tell what's going on via the tactical map (you just have to remember to research the option to control things from there). It's still got a few quirks, like the daft 3D research screen, but you can deal with it. They've also added a 2D universe as opposed to the 3D cluster as a gameplay option, makes learning the ropes much easier. It's also a godsend if you can't be arsed rotating the camera on the strategy screen constantly.

It makes up for weak economy management with more tactical/strategic choice. There's a truckload of different strategies you can pursue, with different approaches needed for each race. The encounters/events rock too - advanced research paths carry risks, I was researching an AI and had been stop/starting the research due to a weak economy. The result was someone fucked up and the AI went all SkyNet, commandeered a few planets (and whatever ships I had in orbit above them) and became a new player in the game (one that went on to kill me, as I assumed it was merely going to sit there). There's also similar risks of biological research messing up. You really do have to weigh up the possible consequences of things a lot. There's not much in the way of diplomacy, but you can ally and unlike GC2 you can request aid from them and coordinate strikes. Once the other players turn hostile (they start out neutral by default) there's not a lot you can do to change their status.

It's really a different kettle of fish to GC2, if you want a 4X with lots of tactical combat, depth and interesting strategy I'd say SoTS, if you want to play Civ in space, GC2. There's a great SoTS wiki here, with gameplay/tutorial videos and race guides, should give a good idea what it's got going for it now, the MP is also great.

 

[MetalCraze]

tactical battles dont count for moo cause they are minigames without meaning

I was playing on a huge map yesterday and one of AIs killed off all other AIs (I quickly made an alliance with it after that of course). By that time his and mine fleet consisted of ~100 titans each. Now imagine a tactical battle where both of such fleets fight. I was forced to reload the game because it was ridiculously slow and boring with no chance to skip the battle right to the stat screen. So tactical combat in MOO2 can be indeed tiresome (while being okayish with much smaller fleets) unless you will turn it off BEFORE starting the game but there is no option to do that in the running game.

BTW I won by simply demanding system after system from the AI (I controlled only a bit more than 1/3 of the galaxy) and it was easily giving them to me (and gave me nearly half of all owned systems by it). High diplomacy with all possible bonuses does wonders. But when its economy slowly started to fail due to no funds to keep the massive fleet it told me "you are demanding too much, bitch" and broke all treaties and alliance. After that I simply went on a planet bombing spree totally ruining AIs economy and forcing it to dump nearly all of its fleet - and the final showdown was quick and not boring. And AI begged for mercy. I love this game.

 

[Zero Credibility]

tactical battles dont count for moo cause they are minigames without meaning

I was playing on a huge map yesterday and one of AIs killed off all other AIs (I quickly made an alliance with it after that of course). By that time his and mine fleet consisted of ~100 titans each. Now imagine a tactical battle where both of such fleets fight. I was forced to reload the game because it was ridiculously slow and boring with no chance to skip the battle right to the stat screen. So tactical combat in MOO2 can be indeed tiresome (while being okayish with much smaller fleets) unless you will turn it off BEFORE starting the game but there is no option to do that in the running game.

There is a super-speed auto resolution that you can turn on during battles. It can end any battle in a matter of seconds. Note sure what the key was (maybe "z" or "y" - it should be listed in documentation, but I think it was added with a patch - you did patch it, right?).

 

[MetalCraze]

1.31

 

[Zero Credibility]

It should work then.

 

[Lightknight]

And when you get bored with MOO2 (crazy I know but it happens) you can pick up Space Empires V. I like it better than the GalCiv's.

Did someone finally wrote a decent AI mod for it ? Because its not worth much without one. For singleplayer, that is.