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[Let's Play] MoO 2: Update 1: Stepping Out into The Stars
Salvation122
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Welcome to Let's Play Master of Orion 2!
What is Master of Orion 2?
Master of Orion 2 (henceforth MoO2) was developed by Microprose and published by Interplay in 1996. It's the sequel to the seminal Master of Orion (MoO), both of which are space-based 4X Turn-Based Strategy games.
Due to rights issues when Interplay went belly-up, no further games in the series have been produced. (No, you're wrong, there haven't. Shut up. Seriously, don't say a fucking word or I'll stab you in the face.)
What are the big differences between MoO and MoO2?
Not at all guaranteed to be comprehensive, as I don't have tons of experience with MoO:
- MoO used sliders; MoO2 uses CivII-style little people. (This is an absurdly big hangup for some people, which I don't really understand.)
- Systems can have more than one planet.
- Antarans! The Antarans are new to MoO2, and are basically giant assholes that got banished to extra-dimensional space and now occasionally pop back in to our dimension to fuck shit up because they are assholes. One of the possible win conditions for MoO2 is to travel to the Antaran homeworld and blow them the hell up.
- Research direction is under much further player control than in MoO, from what I remember.
- MoO2 is in glorious SVGA color and 640x480 resolution!
- A bunch more races, along with the option to create your own.
Screenshots or Video?
Video would be boring as hell, so we'll be working with screenshots.
What's your update schedule?
Hopefully, I'll have a big update every other day or so.
How can I participate?
I'm glad you asked! Throughout the game there'll be various points where I'll ask for the forum's input - probably on significant military, colonization, or research decision points. These questions will be asked in bold orange; I'd ask that you reply in the same way so as to make it easier for me to catch. Additionally, I need names for star systems, which will be used on a first-come, first serve basis. (With one caveat: The home system is Arcadia.) Please put planet names in bold yellow for the same reason.
With all that out of the way, let's get this show on the road:
Update 0: In The Beginning...
Starting Out
This is the New Game Screen. The various elements should be reasonably self-explanatory, but I'll go into 'em anyway 'cause that's the kind of guy I am.
- Difficulty: Determines how often random events favor you, how much opposing players hate you, and various bonuses or handicaps. In order, the difficulty curve goes Tutor-Novice-Average-Hard-Impossible. For this LP, we'll be playing on Average, as I'm somewhat out of practice.
- Galaxy Size: How many stars there are. We'll be playing in a Huge galaxy so I don't finish the thing overnight.
- Galaxy Age: Determines the star composition of the galaxy, and accordingly the predominant types of planets. Young Galaxies are Organic Poor/Metal Rich, Average Galaxies contain no bias, and Old Galaxies are Organic Rich/Metal Poor. (Organic means "Food," by the way.) We'll be using an Average galaxy.
- Players: Determine how many other races are out there (the number chosen, less one - that's us!). I'll leave this one up to you - pick between 4-8 players. Lower numbers mean, in general, more exploration; higher numbers mean more conflict.
- Tech Level: Includes Pre-Warp, Average, and Advanced. Pre-Warp basically serves only to give races with a research advantage an even bigger leg up. Average is the standard start point - you start with your homeworld, one colony ship, two scouts, laser cannons, nuclear bombs, and star bases, with the ability to build all of the above. Advanced starts you with a couple of colonies and a slightly bigger fleet, along with some random additional technology. We'll be using Average.
There are a couple other elements to the right:
Tactical Combat allows us to opt for automatic space combat resolution instead of having to run it all ourselves, which I personally would find very helpful in the late game (not because it's hard, but because it gets tedious and there's usually very little doubt which way the battles will go), but if you do so you can't design your own ships anymore. That's super lame, so we'll be running all the battles ourself.
Random Events enables or disables things like earthquakes on your colonies killing a bunch of people, giant space amoebas turning your idyllic agrarian world into a toxic hellhole, randomly discovering advanced technology in an ancient alien space ship, or having giant planet-wide orgies that result in population booms. These are fun, so we'll leave 'em on.
Antarans Attack: Determines whether or not the Antarans are in the game. I want to leave the possibility of a Win Via Nuking Antares open, so we'll leave this on.
Whew! Now to the part where we get to start having fun:
Race Selection: Building Better People
This is the Race Selection Screen. There are thirteen different races available, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. They're a bunch of rubes, though, so we're gonna make our own.
The first step is to pick a Portrait. This determines what our race will look like, and must be based on the existing racial portraits. One important thing to keep in mind is that whichever race we choose will not be duplicated - that is, if we choose Klackons, the Klackons can't show up somewhere else and push our shit in. For that reason, I generally choose between Klackon, Silicoid, Sakkra, Psilon, and Darlok as my portrait race; the first three can outproduce you if they get any kind of early-game advantage, and the later two out-tech you if not managed quickly (the Psilons through research, the Darloks through espionage.) That said, I'll let you guys pick whichever portrait you want. The above picture is of the Alkari, for the record. The rest of the portraits are in the spoiler below:
Bulrathi:
Elerian:
Gnolam:
Human:
Klackon:
Meklar:
Mrrshan:
Psilon:
Sakkra:
Silicoid:
Trillarian:
After you pick a portrait, you go to the Racial Picks Screen. Here, we get to choose the advantages and disadvantages of our race. Keep in mind that some of the disadvantages can be mitigated via technology (or even through other picks.)
My typical choices are either the Unified Industrialists or Feudal Cybernetic Warlords, but I've included a few other racial builds for you to pick. And by all means, if you're already familiar with MoO2 and have a cool build you think I should try out, feel free to let me know. (I reserve the right to unilaterally pick a different build suggested by someone in the thread.)
- Unified Industrialists: Unified, Telepathic, Subterranean, -50% Population Growth, -10 Spying, -10 Ground Combat. Win through outproducing everyone else. Pop Growth penalty is annoying early on but mitigated by Cloning Facilities pretty quickly.
- Feudal Cybernetic Warlords: Pretty much exactly what it sounds like: Feudal, Cybernetic, Warlord, Rich Homeworld. Focuses on conquering the hell out of everyone; requires a strong espionage element to compensate for low research.
- Pacifist Technologists: Democracy, Creative, Rich Homeworld, -1 Production, -50% Population Growth. Out-techs Psilons. Doesn't matter if you're outnumbered if the ships you have can take out five at a time and the colonies you have are four times as productive.
- Economist: Democracy, -1 Science, Fantastic Traders, Rich Homeworld - Having ridiculous amounts of money is very helpful, as it enormously speeds your production and lets you buy friends.
After you build your race, you get to choose your flag color; this basically just determines the color of your ships and what color your territory appears in. Available options are Red, Yellow, Green, Silver/White, Blue, Orange, Purple, and Brown.
So, to recap: I need the number of players, the racial portrait, a custom race build, and a flag color. Have at it! Subsequent updates shouldn't be quite this text-intensive.
Update 1: Stepping Out Into the Stars
Salvation122 on
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Want to keep the annoying AI races around, so let's go Mrrshan.
Red for the flag
And finally:
+100% population growth (6), Democracy (7), Subterranean (6), Large Homeworld (1), -10 Ground Combat (-2), Poor Home World (-1), Low-G Homeworld (-5), -20 Ship Attack (-2)
Spathi!
I had all the pictures done and everything and whammo, dead hard drive. Killed all drive I had to do it, and I haven't been able to start another one since then. Good luck with your LP though.
8 Players, because conflict is awesome.
I like the idea of being Space Ants, so go with the Klackon portrait.
Yellow flag.
Economist build, because Merchant Trading Space Ants sounds like a cool idea.
Enlightenedbum: That's a hilarious (and accurate) Spathi build, and although I'm sure someone could do very well with it, that person is unfortunately not me.
Space Jews(Gnolams)
+1 B.C.
-.5 Production
-10 Ground combat
Fantastic Traders
And then for the ironic twist: Lucky.
Most offensive race possible.
Alternatively, it might be fun to come up with the worst possible build and see what happens.
Take all negatives, no positives, and just have a score multiplier of like a billion.
I was thinking more like taking painful complements, like Aquatic and Low-G Homeworld. But taking all the negatives and no positives would be quite entertaining. Call it the Space Bastards and hope you can hide under some coats while everyone else kills each other.
Outside of poor homeworld, it's pretty close to my default build. Though I love creative.
Creative is nice but vastly overcosted. There's generally one really good option per tech level, and you can steal or tech swap for the other ones.
There's some (especially in construction) where they're all entirely too useful.
Also: make a ship that can fire 8 Stellar Converters a turn (with the Time Warp Facilitator, obviously).
MoO3 never happened, unless you argue it was named Galactic Civilizations.
And yeah, the absolutely broken abilities are: Unification, Creative, Subterranean, and Telepathic, in my opinion. Democracy is also really, REALLY powerful, but not quite broken.
Lucky is also a pretty fun advantage if you have 3 points lying around (I wouldn't take a disadvantage for it). It's not obvious very often but when it is, it's great. IIRC the Antarans won't attack a Lucky faction, which isn't super useful but it's nice to watch them rampage your enemies during a late-game war.
edit: Wasn't MoO3 just a Microsoft Excel reskin?
Silicoid portrait. They're rock people. What's not to love?
The only advantage I would suggest is Democracy. It's a damn good ability that easily outshines the other forms of government.
Red flag. May as well start a bandwagon on this one. :P
What's fun too is sometimes in GalCiv II I do the opposite, I grab stupid economy buffs, make a massive buttload of money, and then just buy everything from anyone.
And if I run out of money, I sell them shit tech that they'll still pay too much for because I'm so awesome at diplomacy.
Unification is ridiculously good, however, due mostly to the availability of Galactic Unification down the line. And while the research hit incurred by Feudal is incredibly annoying, the 33% reduction in military costs is pretty sweet.
MoO2's diplomatic model is unfortunately nowhere near as robust as GalCiv's. You can't offer tit for tat, except for straight trade swaps - the best you can do is throw money at them to get their respect for you really really high and then ask, but even then they're unlikely to give you their cutting-edge tech.
MoO2 is still about 80 times better than SE:V. I almost never have successfully proposed a diplomatic function in SE:V, including when I have offered giving them all technology without any return. That's right. They can refuse gifts.
Galciv and MoO2 both are really smart about their Diplomacy. GalCiv gives you instant feedback even when just thinking about propositions, and MoO2 at least gives you instant feedback once you've proposed things.
Space Empires V decided that that wasn't too realistic, so you have to send a diplomatic message, which the receiving party will receive the next turn, they will have time to deliberate, then they will return which you will get on your next turn. So the time between offering them anything it takes two turns to hear back. In theory, it's also got a really awesome diplomacy. You can propose limits on research, limits on specific changes in the galactic maps, certain gifts and tributes, all sorts of awesome things that MoO2 and GalCiv don't. The problem is that not all of the diplomatic actions do what they say they do, and the computer likes sending just slightly one-sided messages, which then you have to rebut, and then it's still another two goddamn turns before you hear back from you responding.
Ultimately, SE:V remains my favorite 4x, just because it captures the idea the best. But goddamn that can be the most frustrating game in the world.
Trillarian
Pacifist Technologists
Blue
I've heard about this game, but have only been privileged to play MoO3: Galactic Civilizations II. And I was never terribly good at it, but damn if it wasn't a fun piece of software.
This game is easily broken (up to Hard, at Impossible it gets less breakable), but it's awesome.
The two dumbest tricks I pulled off were:
1) Turning every planet in the galaxy into a Gaia. This took forever, as any Toxic planets needed to be colonized, gifted to someone, Stellar Converted, Artificial Planet-ed, and then Terraformed to Gaia.
2) 8 Stellar Converters/turn Doom Star.
That's, what, five levels of Hyper-Advanced Physics for the necessary miniaturization? Someone was bored.
More like had a ton of research and wanted to see if he could beat Hard Antares with one ship (yes).
You can do that with any ship with a Time-Warp Facilitator, Phasing Cloak, and weapons that will outpace their repairs (probably a couple of Heavy Death Rays with an Achilles Targeting Unit and Structural Analyzer.) A ship with a Time-Warp Facilitator and Phasing Cloak literally cannot be damaged.
I laugh at your Stellar Converters.
(Don't click the spoiler unless you want the ultimate ship build spoiled for you.)
EDIT: GodDAMNIT Salvation.
However I liked the guide. Therefore my post is superior.
It is totally worth building, by the way.
At that point your Stellar Converters should fit in a Battleship class with battle pods. And you can fit it with stealth fields.
Klackon, so that your hive can envelope the galaxy
Um... I've never played, so I won't suggest.
Red since that seems the most popular. Also my favorite color.
At one point in my game the last time I played I had a swarm of battleships armed with Convertors. The fleet was maxed out and couldn't accept any more ships. It nearly filled my side of the battle screen. Quite entertaining to watch.
This was in the game where I had gotten bored (obviously) and started stealing Antaran ships when they came through. I had a pretty good sized fleet of those by the time I ended the game too.
Race picture: Take the Meklar. That way you have a chance of being raped by both the Psilons and the Klackons.
Of course you can, but it's sillier to put a ton of them on one ship. I think if you neuter other things you can just barely fit one on a Cruiser, but it's been a while.
It is sillier against the AI. I used to play against a friend and we got locked into a situation in which both sides were building insane Death Stars but no one could get enough of an edge to be able to be able to guarantee a win if they pulled the trigger. The stealth battleships was my solution.
I admit, I usually go for a Creative race, but most other options are up for grabs. Cybernetic, Lithovore, Subterranian and whatnot are all interesting takes on things, but I like being able to build or develop whatever I need. I suppose working amidst limitations or using force/diplomacy to make up for non-creative or uncreative could be interesting, but like my Civ style, I like to spread out early, catch up and then rapidly exceed the others to a technological edge, lock down what I have and then go wipe out any species dumb enough to pick a fight, or left over from the eventual galactic/world wide conflict that typically ensues eventually.
I rarely build much of a space force until I have said huge lead, but my planets are built to repel invaders pretty early on. It's astounding what you can fend off with shields, missiles and ground batteries. Fighters are nice, but I don't prioritize them highly, as they're far too vulnerable to taking out a ship and then all perishing in the ensuing explosion. Sometimes they're clutch and clear out 2-3 ships nigh on their own, sometimes they get picked off by defenses or an explosion. Even missiles typically fare far better, and a sufficiently advanced station is a nightmare for the AI to challenge while you pick off their ships.
The only reason I build early space forces is so they can be an ablative meat shield for my planets when attacked by Antareans. The two or three turns they exist is all I care about. Especially since my early ships are battleships with ~28 merculite missiles x 2 with fast missile racks. Sure, they aren't great against swarms, but anything they fire at is going to know it's been shot at.
There's just something about watching one ship blow up, and then having ALL the missiles that were aiming for it veer around and annihilate another that makes me smile.
Maybe that'll be my next playthrough; no beam weapons (aside from ground batteries, of course).
8 species in a tiny galaxy is often good times, as the AI will start wiping each other out at the drop of a hat. 8 in a huge galaxy leads to an easier game based on my playstyle, but also takes an absurdly long time to get everything underway, and if you don't strike at the right moment, the computer will annoyingly begin waltzing through your least heavily defended planets with a ragtag armada. That's when production of the fleet goes into high gear, but it's usually a worst case scenario.
The easiest way to win is, of course, to just build enough mini-fleets to strike every opposing system at roughly the same time. By the time they've mobilized, hopefully they're already on the ropes and/or gone entirely.
My other favorite feature in MoO2 is being able to name individual ships and refit them. Between this feature and the experience system, my ships have a lot more character than in the first game. Especially cool in those games where you are numerically and technologically at a disadvantage, but the skill of your crews and careful management of your fleet turns the tide.