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Let's Play: Master of Orion I+II: MoO II: TIMELINE /w Pics and New Game
Xenogears of Bore
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
MASTER OF ORION
This is it, my first Penny Arcade Let's Play thread. What better way to start things off than with one of the best games ever made, Master of Orion! I know a good deal of you have either played its direct sequel MoO II, or avoided MoO III, but I was surprised at how few of you had ever played the original. One of the pinoneers of the 4X style of gameplay (explore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) this game brought a fresh life to a field dominated by WW II sims and Civilization. You take the role of a would be immortal space emporer. Found new colonies, research new tech, meet terrible aliens and hopefully conquer them, learn the secrets of the long forgotten Orions. Play a great warlord, or a peace maker, either way can see you as Master of Orion. Anyways, I'll explain more about the game as I go on.
MASTER OF ORION II:BATTLE AT ANTARES
Master of Orion II is an excellent game, even if I suck at it. Released in 1996 by basically the same team that did MoO, it was one of the highlights of the early Windows 95 gaming scene. Take Civilzation, make the combat fun and fair, add some Star Trek, and the original 4x game and you have MoO II. MoO II had amazing graphics for the time, even though it ran on every system under the roof. Optimized for DOS, the game still ran really well under Windows 95 and on Macs. These days the game probably runs the best under DOSBOX (the best way to play it online) but its not too difficult to run it on XP or Vista. I hear it has some bad issues with OS X though.
So you may be asking yourself, "XoB, you're so damn good at MoO, how come you suck at MoO II?" This is because MoO II is a lot more complicated, the computer is a lot smarter, and research is a lot less important. Planets are also spaced much better, making my landgrab approach in II a lot more difficult to do effectively. Also, taxation, supply chains, and building specific planets for specific purposes are paramount, while I'm more of a generalist.
So this time I'll be asking for a lot more advice. Including what race we create. Yes, create. Not pick. You can make your own race in MoO II. Also, I won't just play through the game in a few nights and fill in the posts as I go, I'm going to stop every once and awhile and throw the vote up to you. Ship Design and Naming will be left up mainly to the thread, though If I'm dominating (and I get the right techs) I'll stretch the game out long enough to make at least one of the dreaded ORION SPHERES!
I'll throw up a link to the MoO II posts here, and maybe the MoO one posts if I get bored.
MoO II:Battle at Antares ROUND ONE
I think I prefer MoO: Deep Space Nine.
I've never actually played Natural Selection. Genetic Russian Roulette, on the other hand...
You Must Recover!
I must recover indeed.
Here is the timeline now with pictures!
No actual lines were harmed (or even used) in the making of this post.
MoO II:Battle at Antares ROUND TWO
Sometimes you wait a long time for something amazing...other times...
This is it, my first Penny Arcade Let's Play thread. What better way to start things off than with one of the best games ever made, Master of Orion! I know a good deal of you have either played its direct sequel MoO II, or avoided MoO III, but I was surprised at how few of you had ever played the original. One of the pinoneers of the 4X style of gameplay (explore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) this game brought a fresh life to a field dominated by WW II sims and Civilization. You take the role of a would be immortal space emporer. Found new colonies, research new tech, meet terrible aliens and hopefully conquer them, learn the secrets of the long forgotten Orions. Play a great warlord, or a peace maker, either way can see you as Master of Orion. Anyways, I'll explain more about the game as I go on.
MASTER OF ORION II:BATTLE AT ANTARES
Master of Orion II is an excellent game, even if I suck at it. Released in 1996 by basically the same team that did MoO, it was one of the highlights of the early Windows 95 gaming scene. Take Civilzation, make the combat fun and fair, add some Star Trek, and the original 4x game and you have MoO II. MoO II had amazing graphics for the time, even though it ran on every system under the roof. Optimized for DOS, the game still ran really well under Windows 95 and on Macs. These days the game probably runs the best under DOSBOX (the best way to play it online) but its not too difficult to run it on XP or Vista. I hear it has some bad issues with OS X though.
So you may be asking yourself, "XoB, you're so damn good at MoO, how come you suck at MoO II?" This is because MoO II is a lot more complicated, the computer is a lot smarter, and research is a lot less important. Planets are also spaced much better, making my landgrab approach in II a lot more difficult to do effectively. Also, taxation, supply chains, and building specific planets for specific purposes are paramount, while I'm more of a generalist.
So this time I'll be asking for a lot more advice. Including what race we create. Yes, create. Not pick. You can make your own race in MoO II. Also, I won't just play through the game in a few nights and fill in the posts as I go, I'm going to stop every once and awhile and throw the vote up to you. Ship Design and Naming will be left up mainly to the thread, though If I'm dominating (and I get the right techs) I'll stretch the game out long enough to make at least one of the dreaded ORION SPHERES!
I'll throw up a link to the MoO II posts here, and maybe the MoO one posts if I get bored.
MoO II:Battle at Antares ROUND ONE
I think I prefer MoO: Deep Space Nine.
I've never actually played Natural Selection. Genetic Russian Roulette, on the other hand...
You Must Recover!
I must recover indeed.
Here is the timeline now with pictures!
No actual lines were harmed (or even used) in the making of this post.
MoO II:Battle at Antares ROUND TWO
Sometimes you wait a long time for something amazing...other times...
3DS CODE: 3093-7068-3576
Xenogears of Bore on
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See this screen? Not much to look at, I know. Had a cool fading out effect though. Yeah, it usually sent a chill up my spine. It also meant that homework probably wasn't going to get completed any time soon. :P
Micro Prose did so much good besides this game. This is where Sid Meier started after all.
Simtex. Master of Orion, Master of Magic, MoO 2. Closed in '97. Atari has the rights to their games. Personally, Atari seems to not be able to handle anything better than DBZ these days.
Title Screen. Note the use of purple. I guess purple is futuristic.
See these Klingon Bird of Prey looking dudes? No ships in this game look like it. Spooky.
Kirk:YOU KILLED MY SON!!!! Also, the other two ships just hover there, not doing anything.
That was my favorite rock-tower thingee, and you killed it!
This, good sir, means war!
Firing Missiles.
Wait for it...
BOOM! HEADSHOT!
And now the two useless ships just fly off into warp space. Awesome.
Now we come to the menu. Yes, I know, I don't save very often. This will change for this thread, that you can be sure. The continue function works 99% of the time anyways.
This is the scenario I've chosen for the playthrough. The Galaxy Size options are Small, Medium, Large and Huge. Small has 10-15 planets in the galaxy, huge has somewhere around 70-80 planets. Smaller the galaxy, the harder and faster the game. Large is good enough for me. The difficulty choices are Simple, Easy, Average, Hard, Impossible. Simple and Easy make the computer retarded, Hard and Impossible give the computer huge research and production buffs. If this is your first time playing, Simple is a good place to start. Back when I was younger, Easy could kick my ass. Depending on how the game goes, I can usually win on any difficulty, but the computer can be downright mean on average or above. The number of opponents goes from One to Five. On one, you'll generally have a good time of it, but you'll notice that the diplomacy will be a little lacking.
Next Post:Horrible Space Freaks, Forum Interaction, Baby Steps.
HORRIBLE SPACE FREAKS, FORUM INTERACTION, BABY STEPS
I figured I'd get this first informative/interactive section done as quickly as possible. Right after selecting the game settings we are brought to this lovely screen.
Not to ruin the surprise or anything, but I'm going with these wonderful bastards for this playthrough? Why? I'll tell you why.
PSILONS=EASY MODE
All of the races have advantages in this game. Some have disadvantages too. But know this and know this well; Psilons are the best race in the game by far. This being a civ like game, so tech advantage is the best way to keep ahead of your opponents. Not pitiful earth tech either, this is laser death rays, teleporters, all sorts of future shit. They basically end up with a starting research bonus of 175% and no drawbacks other than being the most stereotypical alien design ever. They are good in all the research fields. When not picking the Psilons, games are pretty much divided in two ways; Games with the computer as the Psilons (usually a lot harder) or games without the Psilons. (a lot easier) Try not to make them angry, and also be warned that they are very good at detecting spies. They tend to be Pacifists and Technologists, (well duh!) and they build large ships with lots of gadgets.
Next up, The Klackons
Space Ants. Awesome. Double the normal production. Also awesome. Excellent researchers of contruction tech, a very decent field. Only drawback? They suck at propulsion research. Hopefully they won't catch you. Easily the second best race. When the computer plays as them, they are often times very Xenophobic, which means two things. One, they hate you and take offense at everything. Two, as long as you stay away from them, they won't "bug" you.
This next one is pretty freaky...
OMG HUMANS! Not quite as wussy as the Star Trek's Federation, nor quite as goofy as their 40k counterparts, the Humans in this game are another great race. Expert diplomats that everyone loves. Often times they'll win the vote without even trying. They are excellent Force Field researchers, a great field to be good at as force fields are much more defensively important than armor. Their diplomatic skills can make the game easier, and they will never have cash flow problems. Unlike the Klackons, humans don't have any research weakness. The computer tends to be honorable when playing the Humans, and won't go to war without a pretty good reason. They can be dicks though, and should never, ever be underestimated. Pretty much the third best race.
Time for another Sci-Fi Cliche...
The Meklar. Cyborgs. They start out with advanced robotics, making their starting factories as efficent as the first robotics upgrade. They are the only race with excellent in the computer research field. However, whenever the computer plays them they tend to max out a few worlds, only expanding when those are at an acceptable level. This makes them localized threats in most games. Also, they tend to be batshit insane diplomatically, offering trade one turn, declaring war the next. They look cool though, and are tied with the next race for fourth best.
These guys play like none of the other races.
The Silicoid. Silicon based lifeforms. Someone must have watched that episode of Next Gen when making this game. Anyways, these fuckers can be a pain. They are uneffected by pollution or hostile planet enviroments, meaning they can build colonies on all those fucked up worlds around. This is an awesome benefit, as the other carbon based races have to spend a ton of money keeping their planets clean and have to research/steal the techs to colonize the hostile enviroments. This does not come without some penalties though. They suck at breeding. This makes perfect sense, as they are some ugly fuckers. They are also the worst researchers in the game. Above Average in computers and poor in everything else. This is bad, but their benefits usually outweigh this. When playing as them, try to focus on computer research and steal as much shit as you can from other people. Also, focus on colonizing worlds habitable by your opponents first, and coming back and getting the weird enviroments later. The computer tends to play these guys as Xenophobic Expansionists, which make border incursions with them very common. Dangerous but a bit tricky to play as.
What, could it be?
Kirk: The Gorn! Where is my primitive diamond shooting bazooka when I need it! The Sakkra are space dinosaurs. Space dinosaurs that breed like rabbits, with basically double the starting growth rate of any other race. No technological weaknesses, excellent at Planetology. They have diplomatic problems, with one race hating them and about half of the rest not caring for them much. The computer usually plays them as agressive expansionists. Usually you can gang up on these guys with one of the races that hates them and stomp them into the ground. Not much else to say, but considering they have a great advantage and a relatively minor disadvantage, they are still considered an above average race. They have no real ship size preference.
You don't see this one too often.
Alkari. Space Birds. +40% to ship defense. Excellent Propulsion researchers, shitty Force Field Researchers. This realistically evens out their defensive bonus. They also start with a hated race. The computer tends to build swarms of small ships with these guys. This can be problematic, unless you know which weapons absolutely rape large stacks of ships. The computer usually plays them as Honorable Militarists, which makes sense. They can be good allies, but they usually end up on the short end of the research stick and in the corner of the galaxy somewhere. Still, they aren't as bad as the last three races. The bottom Dwellers.
Now this is a cool looking race.
The Darlok. Cool Name too. Master Spies eh? Well, espionage and sabotage are powerful tools, but they make enemies fast if you get caught. Another race good at computer research, and no tech drawbacks. Considering computer research is added to spying efforts this is a good thing. So what is the drawback? No body likes them, and nobody trusts them. They'll usually get into a war they can't win before you even meet them, and will sit on their homeworld or maybe another colony or two by the time you start diplomatic relations. The second you meet them start thinking about your counter-intelligence spending. They make medium ships.
Number One on the Threatdown
Bears! In Space! We should have stopped them when we had the chance! These are the ground pounders of the MoO universe. This is a good thing. They are decent Construction and Weapons researchers, but suck at computer tech. Paws must be too big or something. Unfortunately for them, the only good thing about them. You can easily make up their ground fighting advantage with a few hand phasors or armor research and you'll be sending them back to their caves. They tend to be ecologists, which means they have great worlds ready for the taking. They build Large ships, but usually it doesn't matter.
Last, and least.
The Mrrshan. They suck. Bad. Even with a whooping +40% to ship offense. Why do they suck, besides being a furries' wet dream? They have two hated enemies, who don't suck as much and will go to war with them at the slightest provocation. A bunch of other races don't like them either, with their only friends being the humans, who are friends with everyone. Sure, they have excellent research in weapons, but shitty construction skills. They are the ultimate paper tigers. Worse still, the computer usually plays them as ruthless, which is probably the worst of all possible starting diplomatic behavior patterns. They don't give up when they start fighting, get into early wars and get their ass kick. I've never seen the computer win as them. Even these shit suckers can be a threat so don't turn your back on them.
That's it for the races, now we start the interactive portion of this thread. Picking our color! The only thing that this really determines is how are spaceships look. Blue looks kinda Star Trekish, Red looks like a cross between old trek and star wars, White looks like Star Wars with more triangles, Purple is all big and alien looking, Green has a lot of bullet shaped spaceships, and Yellow has a lot of rounded ships with nacelles.
Also, I'm taking suggestions for colony names. If you colonize a planet first, you get to name it. I want good names people.
Next Post: A Brave New World
I am crappy with names. How about "Donkey Punch" for a colony? Make it one of those barren worlds that you only colonize to give yourself more votes in the council.
Name a colony "The Octagon" or "Earf"
Yeah, the races are slightly more balanced in MoO2. Not by that much though. Don't get the wrong idea though, all races are winnable by a smart player, and if you use their advantages you will probably come out on top. The races most likely to become unstoppbable AI's of destruction are the Psilons, Silicoids, and Humans. The Klackons can as well, but its not a big deal.
You got to remember though, the penalty they gave the Psilons in MoO2 is very easy to work around. The Silicoids? Not so much. Dilplomatically hated. The Klackons? Suck at research. The Humans? Only got better.
Indeed.
Good choice. Allright, One more thing before we get started, we need a good Homeworld name. I've got the name of the Emperor already picked out, so after that I'll get started and show you all this awesome game.
MOO3 we do not discuss.
I may bust out my MOO2 game in a bit...I loved making custom races with weird traits.
Fun fact: It took me years (keep in mind I was like, 6 at the time) to figure out I could tax my citizens for more money and use that money to buy ships and stuff. It's a wonder that I won games at all without any taxing. Fortunately, taxing is really obvious in MOO2 and you can't really miss it.
The Darlock and Bulrathi are both underappreciated. The Darlock you just mass-produce spies, cause civil unrest everywhere, steal tech, and blow shit up. Then you blame what you did on someone else. Eventually, everyone loves you!
The Bulrathi? You just focus on building the baddest military around. You don't colonize unpopulated planets, YOU TAKE THEM FROM THE DEAD HANDS OF YOUR FOES!
Indeed. The biggest problem with the Darlok is that when you try to win a game on Hard or Impossible difficulty, you won't be able to steal shit, and when you do, you'll get caught and stomped. Also, when playing against they are usually half retarded. Bulrathi's penalty against computers blows mightily, you may have a ship with badass armor and weapons that can't hit the broadside of a Dreadnaught. However, the computer can't handle coordinated transport attacks, so as long as you can bomb/transport through defenses and have pretty good tech you can just ground pound them. The computer sucks at ground invasion though, making them usually a minor threat.
About taxation. Yeah, I almost never do it in MoO and always, always do it in Two. In one you are much better off making a world that feeds the majority of its resources into industry. Much more efficent than taxation, which will hurt your research and production. Also, trading. In MoO2 they really upped the upkeep costs to the point where you need both ultraspecialized worlds and taxes to get anything done. However, the various social techs will make up for the lost production/happiness.
You get a ton of money
Then you donate it to the place that needs it the most.
One of my favorite things to do is win the senate race then deny accepting leadership, causing the final war.
Oh, I know how taxation works, I just do it differently. I make one rich or super rich planet generate the money, then spend it developing the newer colonies.
Fun Fact, when your trade deals have almost maxed out and if your opponent is making more than you, dump 90% of your reserve into your planets. This should double your gross profits and allow you to sign a much bigger trading deal.
About that other thing, we'll see how well I am doing in the game.
All I need now to get started is someone to come up with a good homeworld name.
OH SNAP! That's the ticket.
People, keep coming up with good colony names, I probably have enough for one update, but the more the merrier.
Speaking about that, I'm going to grab a glass of water and start that.
Eventually, I'll need some good ship names too.
Sorry I can't come up with names under pressure. My brain just keeps saying "Murderballs, Murderballs, Murderballs". Not exactly intelligent or witty for a LP.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Last time I went over the races. This time I'll dig right into the early game. This will probably be one of the most text heavy posts I'll make, as once I get going and get you all up to speed I can just use screen captures and one liners to explain what is going on.
This is the scenario I picked. Pretty routine for me.
I decided that for an easy time I was going to pick the Psilons.
Also with a resounding one vote, captaink chose a banner for our glorious space empire
WHITE POWER! WHITE POWER! Seriously though, they have some awesome looking capital ship designs.
Time to pick a name...
Meson? Meson Dixon? I think I can do better. I'll leave it as a surprise until our first diplomatic encounter.
Mentar is a sweet name, I think I'll go for it.
Or not. Arcadia, fuck yeah!
Anyone who has played the game before should notice that we got a pretty sweet setup, lots of good looking planets around. But let's check out the entire scene. Gumshoes! Let's head to the map!
*Cue Rockapella Music*
Ignore all those names on the lower right side. Yes, they are our opponents, but they probably won't show up for a good twenty-fifty turns. Look at the color of the stars. Yellow stars are the best, usually having Terran or Sub Terran enviroments. You and your opponents always start on a size 100 terran world, and it is always Yellow. Yes, this means you can with minimal exploring figure out where your opponents are most likely to start. Next up are Green stars. They usually have sub terran worlds, and are another world you should always explore early. Red are next. Red Stars are older, usually having Arid, Barren, or Mineral Poor worlds. About 70% they are habitable without any crazy tech. The next three colors, White, Purple, Blue are usually Hostile planets, or at the very best, Barren. Purple tends to be mineral rich, White tends towards Dead planets.
Enough of that nonsense, let's look at our glorious seat of Power, Arcadia!
Arcadia. 50 million people. Few factories. The sliders in the right do exactly what they say. The blue bar represents our focus. It equals one full slider bar, so each click of the left or right button on a slider adds a certain percentage. Ships will increase production on ships. Defense will build shields (if any) and missile bases. Industry and Ecology are the bread and butter of the early game. Remember that factories are a better deal in terms of production for most races, so focus on that. We'll need to ramp up ecology later to make a bunch of settlers, but for now we should focus on factories. Tech is the key in this game. Better tech means better weapons, more factories, more people, cheaper everything. Being the Psilons gives us a huge tech advantage, but right now we need to worry more about building up our homeworld and exploring.
Time to explore. One colony ship, range, 3 parsecs. Not enough for the Kessel Run. This ship can make a colony on any of the non-hostile worlds. Anything that's not Radiated, Toxic, Inferno, Tundra, Dead. Two scout ships, range 3 parsces plus a reserve fuel tank for an additional 3 parsecs. I see a yellow star nearby so...
Curses!
Divide and conquer, baby. I sent the colony ship to the green planet at 5 o'clock, and the scout to the green planet at about 10 o'clock. The ships are equipped with nuclear engines, which move 1 parsec a turn. Time to hit next turn a few times until the colony ship gets there...
An artifact world as our first colony. With the Psilons. Anyone who has played either this game or MoO 2
knows how awesome this is.
Build a colony? Why yes, I think we will.
Fuck that name
Indeed, this will be quite the donkeypunch to our foes.
Since it was an artifact planet it means we also get a new tech to go along with it.
Awesome. This will add 20 million to the max size of our colonies as long as we pump some points into Ecology.
Hell yes, now is the time to build people. Time to make some pioneers!
Pick a colony to donate people from. Since we only have two, this will be simple. Press that button.
Click on the other one, move the slider. I'm sending half of my population, the max you can send in one turn. 58/2 is 29 million.
What will the next few turns bring?
Next Post: It Gets Better
*Fun Fact* When I was 2-10 I used to watch my dad play video games for hours... these threads are almost nostalgic for me.
Steam, PSN, XBL, Xfire and everything else JamesDM
Nice. My family and I have a special connection with this game. Three of my uncles, two of my cousins and my brother and I all played the crap out of this game and we also played a gigantic LAN game of the second one about a month after it came out. My uncle is about a million times better than I am at this game.
Keep up with the planet names. Another update will come tonight.
The way the game does research is interesting. You don't pick out a particular tech to go for? Weird. One of the reasons I loved the Psilons in MoO2 is never having to pick which technologies not to get.
New colony: Zebes. Save it for a toxic/barren world.
BOoooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORing.
At least, that was the problem I had with it. Like, I expected this huge spanning game with the micromanaging taken out to global scale things, and strategy that had a planning phase, then watching this giant 3D battle with ships shooting lasers at each other in a giant epic battle for supremacy.
And what I got was clicking the "Next Turn" button like, 80 times, until I watched ships slowwwwwly approach each other 'till it becomes an arms battle.
Also: the computer took over managing shit for you by default. You had to go and reset it after each planet you took. It was like letting the computer play itself.
It did at least have the courtesy to tell you what it was doing every turn in like, 3 pages of reports about what it did, and every once in a while there was something important in it, but most of the time it was worthless reports that you don't need to read and goddammit why the hell won't it shut up.
Planet names:
Hy Brazyll
Trogdor
Strongbadia
Complexo do Alemão (for a military strong planet)
Eggheadsville
Mordor
EDIT: Endor, Yavin, Dagobah, Mon Calamari... etc.
Also, I really preferred being able to control my research. Like "oh shit, I'd like to research those fancy new lasers next!", not "Uhm, I guess I'll research... uh, quantum core dynamics? That sounds pretty cool. Okay, now it's done and I get... On-ship trash compactors? Hunh?"
I liked the Alpha Centauri method best. Pick your focus, but you don't get to choose where a breakthrough happens.
Also, Nintendoo 64.
Sorry I'm late with the post. I actually have enough content for about two done, and I used various saves to get some scenes of some what ifs. The next couple of ones are going to be very interesting. Will be up later today.
Also, I quoted this for absolute truth. Anyone who has played MoO 2 knows that the whole tech tree is availible to them and their rivals. Of course to guarantee you get them all you have to be creative, but still, every single one. In MoO it works differently. First it takes away three to five techs and hides them on a special planet. One of these is only obtainable from this method. Then, it makes custom tech trees for each race like this. It gives you around 80% of the tree, with at least one in each bracket for each field. It also has something to do with your race's research field, so if you are poor in computers you should only expect one tech a level instead of the maximum of five. To break into the newest area of tech you need to research the top one in that field availible to you. Then the next five, if availible, show up for possible research. Each tech above any given tech takes more research. Some fields it is worth it to drive down a few extra levels for "the good stuff" while others it is just better to get some of the better low to mid range techs. Still this is an incredible way for the game to do tech, and a fairly ok balance to the Psilons, who with access to the entire tech tree would be ten times worse to play against than they already are.
The full acronym for it is: MoO: BaA.
ehehehe.
Edit: I wish MoO2 weren't so flaky on modern systems. Every few years I try and pick it up again, and it just randomly crashes anywhere between 3 and 15 minutes into the game. So anger!
The sequel, I guess, would have to be QuaCK.
Of course, I guess the same thing happens in MoO and MoO2:BaA(OH GOD I LOVE IT), you make doom stars and you just kill everything like crazy.