Master of Orion-Reboot

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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

I've never had an empire switch to a war footing so fast before. Of course this galaxy has an insane amount of abundant/rich/ultra-rich planets, but I still just filled almost 40cp worth of fleet in about 5-8 turns.

edit: And of course my fleet is enroute to the other side of the galaxy as my score slips above the Sakkra, causing the Antarans to shift their attack to me. My HW has all static defenses available, including planetary shield, but with only +25% computers, a racial trait of -25% beam attack, and fairly lame beam tech, chances are the Antarans are going to laugh it off.

At least it's something interesting happening. I am not cut out for planning logistics for a war waged literally on the other side of the galaxy. Making sure I have enough troop transports and more arriving has been enough of a trial.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

I've reached the "I barely care about micromanagement" stage. Some of the more important colonies still get attention, but mostly I just set build queues, move pop around once, then let her rip for a bunch of turns without bothering to review after each notification.

I'm about to start conquering the Mrrshan (they can NOT buy a break. They are almost always the weakest in every game I play) and Klackon at the same time. Klackon are unusual this game as they normally lead, but they got hurt by someone (Sakkra?) earlier and instead of coming out on top, they lost a few colonies.

My ships are pure proton torps, some with enveloping and some overloaded, all semi-guided. There is almost nothing defensive installed, except to make them as tough as possible, with best shields, reinforced hulls and heavy armour. Even the most basic torpedo (which the protons are) in decent numbers do some pretty extreme damage. If they hit, they crush. Nothing so far has lasted past the second volley.

edit: At this stage screw logistics. Gonna just turn newly conquered planets over to troop transport production. It's actually faster than trying to get transports into combat from production centers behind the lines. Moo2 actually had a few things slowing this down, but in moo4 enemy marine barracks remain intact after the planet is conquered, so...bribe the locals into fighting their relatives for you? Whatever. Less of a headache than trying to escort your own transports across 2 interceding ai empires to reach the front line.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

As expected, the static defenses didn't hold up. Part of the problem is that because I decided to build torps exclusively, I didn't develop missile tech. While I do have mirv'd mercs, pulsons were not. If they had been, I probably would have won.

enemy was 4 destroyers (I killed 2 and a half) and 4 frigates (untouched). Surprisingly, after my starbase fell, the beam station and missile station lasted a long time. Their point defense worked great against enemy pulsons, and it's really hard to hit things with beams at this stage of the game, even for the Antarans. Shields were often recharging before a second volley of phasors could do any structural damage, and like I said, point defense (still only mass drivers backed by battle scanners) were holding their own against enemy missiles. They would have done better using shield piercing mass drivers instead of phasors.

They brought bio-weapons, which I assumed would easily penetrate the rad shield, but no. So they didn't actually hurt the colony at all. They are however still blockading it. Not sure what their plan is. edit: Their plan is to bail after doing property damage and not much else. Are these guys the out of town sports fans that smash up the place a little, write some graffiti and go home? Seems so. Total time to completely recover as if they never attacked in the first place? 9 turns. And that's with 1/2 the planet still researching.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by dbt1949 »

I think in every game I've played the Mrrshans are the favorite race to hate for everybody. For the second time I started a war with them because they were weak and close by. I love mind control. No troop ships but then most of their colonies had no marines anyways.
I've nixed the financial and tech victories. It's either diplomatic or conquering. I would choose a huge galaxy this game. But it's probably going to go to the turn limit. I set it at 600. I wanted to be able to have wars at the top tech levels.
I always emphasize tech as my first priority and then catch up with building ship and expansion later on.
I'm finding many of the buildings are not worth the maintenance you have to pay. I normally like to build everything I think can be useful but some building just aren't worth it.
I have just researched everything and will probably go back and sell off my research buildings to see what happens. I haven't read anything that said researching future tech is beneficial.
Oh, and for the first time Orion was close by. I love the cut scene showing my colony ship landing on Orion. It looks so good I want to live there.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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Yeah, I actually ignore the Mrrshan most of the time, but someone offered me a bribe to declare war on them. Considering they were already at war with 2 ai's and losing, I took the bribe since it was low risk and cost nothing. I'm only attacking them (and in the end, not really) because they are between me and the Klackon. I'm mostly just smashing their military outposts on the way through. I did think about conquering a 3 Mrsshan planet system, but when I got there each planet only had 1 cat on it. It would have been a waste of a troop transport, so I just left.

They are doing so poorly that they aren't even worth wasting one planet's single turn of production on (i.e. it takes 1 turn to build a transport).

They'll be gone soon. Oh, and they have tougher marines so taking a colony away from them is slightly more effort. Another reason to not bother.

The thing about moo2 is that playing on impossible resulted in even the crappiest default race getting additional race traits that made them more competitive and made them more interesting as targets. In moo4 that doesn't seem to happen, so boring, poorly balanced races stay that way. Needless to say, I prefer moo2's way of doing things.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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Klackon's sued for peace after I took a 3 planet system from them. In my impaired thinking, I considered it. Then I realized I had like 20 ships in various states of transit towards their empire and I was like, nah. They need to do better than just asking at least. A small bribe might be in order.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

As I play moo4 I am constantly noting the differences between this game and moo2. I'm starting to come away with a realization of how designing games have changed. In the "old days" designing a game was all about the systems. The computer part of a computer game was there to implement those systems. They weren't the system themselves. There are so many systems that are very clearly designed in Moo2 that you know someone with a passion and skill at designing games was involved. Whether you agreed with the design was something else, but still. They could just as easily been designing a board game, a computer game or whatever. Moo2's tactical combat is almost an entire game unto itself, for example.

There have been lots of clues as I play, but what made me stop and write this post is my time conquering planets. I've already mentioned the intact marine barracks, although the last 4 or 5 planets have not had intact marine barracks so I'm wondering if this is something that changed when I installed the bug fix mod, or if my memory is failing me. In any case, conquering a planet in moo2 guaranteed the marine barracks was destroyed. This is important for a bunch of reasons, including preventing a conquering player form hopscotching between worlds, using the productivity of the newly conquered world to conquer the next one. EVENTUALLY you could use the world, but lots of systems kept it from being immediate. Assimilation of the population. Rebuilding the barracks. And something that occurred in moo2 but is missing form moo4. And that is the destruction of 1/2 the colony's buildings. Just taking planet from another player reduced the effectiveness of that planet until it could be rebuilt. I believe it worked something like a 50/50 test per building. Each building had a 50% chance to be destroyed. Sometimes a colony would be taken mostly intact, and other times it would be devastated. In moo4, the entire planet is in nearly pristine condition. One of the systems used to prevent rapid leap frogging from colony to colony is missing. When I take a colony, everything that was there before, is still there. I can build an alien management system in only a few turns, because all the production buildings are still there. Sure, pop is working at 50% efficiency, but the buildings are at 100%.

Either the moo4 designers didn't notice, didn't look, didn't care, or whatever. The bottom line is that a newly conquered colony differs from an unconquered colony in only 1 way. The population works at 50% for a short time (oh, and the starbase is gone).

On the plus side, it certainly speeds up conquest. Which is great. And since I'm not playing multiplayer slowing that down for balance reasons are not an issue.

What I guess I'm saying is that moo4, for all the money and time spent making it, is actually a poor substitute. Sure it has a prettier veneer, but the underlying GAME was more detailed, more thought out, and in many ways just better in 1996 than in 2016. The fact that it almost certainly cost less to make (even accounting for inflation) and was more difficult to make because of more limited technical resources is even further evidence of a superior game.

That said, I like a lot of things about this game. It's certainly not a bad game by any measure. It's just not a great game either.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by DD* »

What he said... if they had just put a prettier face and maybe some minor tweaks to MOO2, it would have been a better game. I can't imagine what they paid for all of the voice talent but beyond the initial "wow, that is actor X" it adds nothing to the game.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

Oh, and there doesn't appear to be a chance for the unassimilated population to rebel, giving the colony back to the original owner. This matters because it removes the risk involved in immediately building static defenses. In Moo4 I can conquer a colony, build a missile base and use it to help defend the counter-attack. In moo2 doing this might result in the colony reverting to the original owner, but now with a shiny new missile base that you built, but is now pointed at your ships.

It's not a big deal, it's just different. Less thought out. Less interesting. But still not a big deal.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

Really think I'm starting to run out of steam. This lithovore game has been even less challenging than other other builder races I've played, although the galaxy is really, really rich. I didn't notice that at first, but obviously that helped a lot. I think the Klackon only have 1 more colony and then I'll have to find another victim. I actually wish I could win the council vote so I can get that victory condition over and done with (and end the game early).

I really want to try another early combat race and see how early I can start conquering and not get curbstomped, but that's about the only thing that comes to mind right now. Warlord is normally a pretty poor race trait except for these super early conquest races, then it's a godsend. +50% to your marines is HUGE, when building even a single transport is a major drain on your resources. You have to walk a very fine line and 50% tougher marines helps you walk it. Nothing kills an early conquest race like defeating an enemy fleet, getting into position over a colony, getting your transports from your production center to your attack site, only to have those marines defeated during the invasion. That is pretty much a deathknell for that game.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by Freyland »

Hey, Goo?
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

Yep?
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by Freyland »

Space Dragon
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

Cool. It's not like I could forget about him. He's still there. And the game just wants to make sure I'm aware of it. We're now pushing at least 200 separate notifications that the Space Dragon exists.

I appreciate you keeping me informed though.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by Freyland »

GreenGoo wrote:Cool. It's not like I could forget about him. He's still there. And the game just wants to make sure I'm aware of it. We're now pushing at least 200 separate notifications that the Space Dragon exists.

I appreciate you keeping me informed though.
Certainly. 8-)

In all seriousness, thanks for the prolific write-ups. You're not really pushing me towards investing in this game over the other 5 or 6 space 4x's I have in front of me.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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First of all Marines give a 5% morale boost. So you still need to build one on a conquered colony.
Second of all space dragons look like goldfish on the galaxy map.
Third, you probably should get the DLC and try the Elerians (or what ever they're called) and use telepathy to conquer planets. No muss no fuss.
And fourthly, I've seemingly noticed quite a few things (that I can't remember right now) that don't seem to be working properly. I just note it and go on. Nothing I can do about it.
And........how many doomstars can one have? I've never tried to build more than one.

Oh, and per chance does the system that has the space dragon happen to have a scout staying there? I've notice my scouts run out of places to go after awhile and just station themselves in one place. Showing everything that goes on there.
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Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by Glycerine »

I have the game and enjoyed playing, just haven't picked up the DLC yet. I hope to grab it and maybe the collector's edition upgrade during the next Steam sale.

Last game I played was as the Meklar, largest galaxy, default difficulty. I ended up conquering Orion and winning with a economic victory. I had the tech and power to go for domination or conquest, but didn't feel like putting in the time it would have taken to do either. I really do like the game and feel I got my monies worth, but do think the combat system or lack thereof was a major disappointment. If it would have had MoO 2's tactical combat I don't think I would have ever played another turn based space 4X again.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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Hear hear. to the tactical battle system.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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In MoO2 you could make a colony base for a cheap colony in your own system. You supposedly discover one in MoO4, but there seems to be no method to do it.
Are there blueprints of advanced military outposts you can inter-react with?

Oh, took on a space dragon. Still looks like a goldfish. My first battle for a doomstar.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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Now Improved Military Outposts start at 15 turns. I know what i saw before. I have added the new DLC. Maybe that had something to do with it.
By going to your colony screen and checking out your building and then checking on your Marine barracks you can find out how many marines you have there. On my prime world I also had an armored barracks but it didn't tell me how many tanks I had. Maybe all my marines are armored?
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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dbt1949 wrote:In MoO2 you could make a colony base for a cheap colony in your own system. You supposedly discover one in MoO4, but there seems to be no method to do it.
Are there blueprints of advanced military outposts you can inter-react with?

Oh, took on a space dragon. Still looks like a goldfish. My first battle for a doomstar.
In Moo4 the colony base tech gives you 1 food on a newly colonized system. That's it. It's not a separate ship and the building is just automatically there when you land. It's not even noticeable if you are still colonizing late game, but early on when you first get the tech, that 1 food is a huge, huge deal.

To the best of my knowledge you can't design your own static defenses.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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Klackon are gone. They must have wasted their fleet against someone else, as I never really encountered anything worthy of calling a fleet. Their static defenses did some damage with reams of mirv'd merculite missiles, but the structures never lasted past a second volley, so they never managed to kill anything of mine. They would usually target a cruiser and knock down its shields. Whatever was left would do some structural damage, but then the building would blow up and the shield would start to regenerate.

Still using modified proton toropedos, the first torpedoes in the game, but my fleet is pretty large at this point. Large being 1 battleship, 6 cruisers and 2 destroyers.

Psilons waited until there were only 2 Mrrshan colonies, each with only about 2 pop on them, to declare war and take one of the colonies away. Real brave, Psilons. :wink:

I'm just about at the "fuck it" stage and gonna declare war on the Meklar for no good reason except that their population seems like they would make nice workers. I built a large number of ships and now that the Klackon are gone I have no use for them. Upgrading them is financially unfeasible, a problem I identified earlier in the thread which has finally reared its ugly head.

The top 3 races in this game are all uncreative, so take that for whatever it's worth.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

Sakkra just bribed me with neutronium armor to go to war with the Silicoid. I was about to accept as a no-brainer, since I'm looking for a use for my ships, but I think I'm going to hold off and start some crap with the Meklar instead.

edit: Yeah, so I chose war with Meklar. They had a couple of colonies they had no business owning, far from their empire, so I took them.

The Antarans just came through a portal. Even if my entire fleet were able to reach them, I doubt I could stop them. They are 4 BBs, 6 DDS and 4 FF's. I assume the colony will be destroyed and I'll have to rebuild from scratch. Oh well. Edit: I should have known better. They destroyed my static defenses without trouble, bombing my planet just enough to drop the shield, then dropped 1 more bomb that killed 1 marine (that I didn't even know was there and gets built automatically and for free).

These are the least scary Antarans evar. Assuming they run away next turn. edit: Which they did. :roll:

star gates are coming online, dramatically shortening the distance between my core worlds and newly conquered ones. Should also allow me to test my fleet against the Antarans next time. The Antarans seem to use all mundane tech, so...not very scary?
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

You'll all be glad to know that I killed that effing dragon on turn 266. No more notifications after ~224 of them. I had to fly through 2 other empires to do it, but it's done.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by Freyland »

Holocaust Truck?
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

Freyland wrote:Holocaust Truck?
Holy crap, I had no idea such a thing existed. Thanks for the history lesson. :shock:
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by Freyland »

Goo, I'm afraid you have me at a loss.
Several months ago there was a pic in the pix thread that I off-handedly referred to as a "Holocaust truck" and you said that elicited uncontrollable snickers from you throughout your day. Since advising you about the space Dragon was now off the table, I inserted the truck reference in hopes of entertaining you.

I have no idea what your retort was supposed to tell me. :oops:
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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I have 53 colonies. I've never had anywhere near that before.
Fortunately more than half are all finished building.
Makes for looong turns.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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Freyland wrote:Goo, I'm afraid you have me at a loss.
Several months ago there was a pic in the pix thread that I off-handedly referred to as a "Holocaust truck" and you said that elicited uncontrollable snickers from you throughout your day. Since advising you about the space Dragon was now off the table, I inserted the truck reference in hopes of entertaining you.

I have no idea what your retort was supposed to tell me. :oops:
I do no recall that, but I'll take a look. I had no idea what a holocaust truck was, so I asked google. Google tells me it's a gas chamber built into the back of a truck invented by the Russians and made famous by the Germans. That was the first time I had heard of it.

So now I'm at a loss. I wonder what the context was that I found it funny. I assume I had no idea what it was and just inserted my own meaning into it.

No problem though.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

dbt1949 wrote:I have 53 colonies. I've never had anywhere near that before.
Fortunately more than half are all finished building.
Makes for looong turns.
Yep. I stop micromanaging population around 15 colonies, except for my primary production colonies. By the time I'm conquering enemy colonies, I just set the queues and go, although I admit I have a hard time letting go completely and will check on population growth, assimilation rate etc.

There is an achievement for having over 100 colonies btw. With Telepathic it's fairly easy to get, although getting there without wanting to punch something can be tougher. That much clicking is too much for me, most of the time. Of course that is why the game comes with automation tools, I just can't bring myself to use them.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by Freyland »

GreenGoo wrote:
Freyland wrote:Goo, I'm afraid you have me at a loss.
Several months ago there was a pic in the pix thread that I off-handedly referred to as a "Holocaust truck" and you said that elicited uncontrollable snickers from you throughout your day. Since advising you about the space Dragon was now off the table, I inserted the truck reference in hopes of entertaining you.

I have no idea what your retort was supposed to tell me. :oops:
I do no recall that, but I'll take a look. I had no idea what a holocaust truck was, so I asked google. Google tells me it's a gas chamber built into the back of a truck invented by the Russians and made famous by the Germans. That was the first time I had heard of it.

So now I'm at a loss. I wonder what the context was that I found it funny. I assume I had no idea what it was and just inserted my own meaning into it.

No problem though.
Lovely. It seemed very appropriate at the time, but less humorous knowing it actually has an actual, unpleasant history rather than just a moment of casual wit. My apologies for the confusion and thread derailment.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

Absolutely no worries.

I did drive over there and torp the thing into oblivion.

Of note, the dragon couldn't really penetrate the class III shields of my battleships (I had 2, obsolete, laying around). The dragon's shields were tough and it took many volleys of overloaded or enveloping proton torps to kill, but he never managed to get my class iii's to drop. So bring lots of firepower. Must of been like 10 volleys to kill him.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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I have played so many games I get confused as to which one I'm in sometimes. :?
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

A single meklar titan killed 2 of my older battleships. My first volley was semi-wasted on an enemy cruiser it brought along, but I still wasn't expecting to do almost no damage to the Titan. Time for a Titan design of my own.

I have a production center with interdepartmental doohickey, surrounded by 4 abundant or rich planets that can funnel enormous production. I'm anxious to see how much it can produce. Core Dump tech is 1 turn away, so I'll wait until that is up and running, just for giggles.

edit:and...I'm uncreative, so of course I got Deep Core Mine. Which is all but useless, since I'm already +50% production with all the production buildings. With this new tech I can have like a maximum of like 3 workers before pollution becomes a problem. Don't get me wrong, those 3 workers will be producing a ton of production, but the planet could get so much more production out of 6 workers and the core dump tech.

edit2: Oh shit. I had been coming at the Meklar from opposite sides of their empire, because my newly conquered worlds were on the far side of the galaxy. I've just managed to move my main battle fleet into primary position to be pincered by 2 massive meklar fleets. There is no way to win, and no where to run.

On the plus side, these are all old ships taking up command points (when have command points ever been a problem in this game? Like twice, ever) and I'm about to start a new wave of production on a modern fleet, yet this will set me back 10's of turns.

It's cool that this far along in the game, where winning is a foregone conclusion imo, that I can still get hurt.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

Post by GreenGoo »

So...ouch. It's hard to evaluate enemy warships without fighting them, because until the bug patch you couldn't even tell what your own ships had installed, let alone the enemy's. Still, the best way to find out what beats what is to try it. The reported offensive/defensive numbers are ok, especially if you're auto-resolving everything, but there are plenty of places where the numbers don't apply. For example if you don't stand still, torps almost never hit you. Doesn't matter how awesome they are. I'm tired of that level of micromanagement in combat though, so I've let enemy torps become more effective through apathy.

Anyway, I've lost all but a few battleships (and some old frigates/destroyers lying around from the pre-war pirate era). The score and army graphs have hilariously steep drop offs in the last couple of turns. I've designed a generic, heavy defense titan. It's generic because I'm not happy with where my weapons tech is right now and I'm not sure what will work, so I threw a little bit of everything on it. It's defensive because I would prefer to live through any potential wins. Some of the defensive tech is huge on a titan, so my offense suffered. We'll see how it goes.

It's got anti-matter torps, heavy fighters, graviton beams and phasors for offense (an a couple of anti-matter bombs and phasor pd).

It's got Zort armor, +100 comp, class III shields antimatter drive for core systems.

Defensive systems are: battlepods (generic), reinforced hull (no space requirements, put on everything), heavy armor (no space requirements, put on everything), Multiphased shields (extra shield points), battle scanners (helps offense and phasor pd) and a multi-wave ecm jammer (this thing is HUGE. I hope it helps). My experience with regular jammers is that they are pretty well balanced, providing decent but not awesome missile defense. Also forces ai to switch to eccm missiles if they want to keep using missiles (not sure whether they switch or not. Moo2's would).

Ship numbers are: att:798 def:1295 hp:4950 shld:1650

I really wanted to put the automatic repair module on it but the module is bigger than frigate. Almost as big as a destroyer. Too much space for a "nice to have"

All for the low low price of 1990 production (and 10 command points).

I'm impressed that the meklar have several of these 2k production point beasts roaming around. It's gonna hurt when I start popping them. At least I hope it does.

I can't find an enemy titan alone, but one with a cruiser riding shotgun has att:335 and def:1802 numbers.
edit: Found 1 alone a turn later. att:215 def:1433
Last edited by GreenGoo on Sat Sep 16, 2017 1:28 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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Oddly, they chose to bomb a former colony of theirs that I took. They destroyed my fleet completely, I have nothing in reach, and the colony is just sitting there on the edge of their empire. Seems like taking it back would be a no brainer.

Council just convened. Just with the independent protectorates and the Psilons, I have almost as many votes as the Sakkra before I even cast my vote. Despite having nearly twice as many votes as the second place dude, still no election victory.

Maybe I could bribe them into voting for me by only conquering them a little?

edit: Another oh crap moment. The game just told me that the Meklar just started down the scientific victory path. Luckily they also told me what planet it's on. :twisted:

I guess I can't wait for my deep core mines to come online. Those take at least 5 turns, then building titan is probably at least 5 turns, plus i need more than 1, plus they need to reach the meklar planet...there is no time. Is there time? No, I don't think so.

But I'm a gambler. :D Plus it's only the first building. How close can they be, really?
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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haha! Losing almost my entire battle worthy fleets dropped me down below the Sakkra, score-wise. Just a smidge, but enough to have the Antarans switch targets. As noted earlier, they aren't much of a threat but it's still fun to see someone else have to deal with them a bit.

fleet size: 11 frigates, 6 destroyers, 3 cruisers, 3 battleships and 2 Titans (!).

It's only turn 289. That fleet seems...menacing.

If anyone is paying attention, it takes about 5 turns to produce one of the Titans I described, after the production mines were built. Which is ok, but now I can't use 1/2 of my production tiles without rapidly accumulating pollution. So the production mines aren't so much a production building as they are a science building, because they free up more workers to do other things, mostly science.

For example, a medium terran abundant planet with a pollution processor (-15 pollution) and a toxic processor (-5 pollution) can only have 2 workers on production without producing pollution.

Once/If I get the Core Dump tech ships are gonna explode out of my production centers. For now it's 5 turns/titan. Which isn't that bad really.

edit: I believe I've mentioned my lack of inclination towards diplomacy. This applies in pretty much all 4x games I play. Anyway, the Psilons and I have been in an alliance for many turns now, treaties have giant payouts, it's pretty good. Of course I have done nothing to exploit their strongest trait, and that's all the tech they have. So I decide to ask these allies (who are at harmonious disposition towards me) what they want. Well, they want 90% of my cash reserves and 95% of my monthly income. Neither of these are particularly great because 2 ai's are dead and I'm at war with another, so the only treaties I've maintained are with the Psilons.

You know what? You can have the cash. I don't need it for anything anyway, and core waste dumps means I can build like 100cp worth of fleet in 5-10 turns (maybe less). Worth it.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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2 Titans, built 10 turns ago, have recently been redesigned in the board room. Cost to refit? 5k+ each. Even end game, that's nuts. I currently have a net income of +34 BC. I have at least 10 other Titans that also have no chance of ever being modernized. If that was the plan, well, accomplished. It seems broken to me, and is also why I want refit cost reduction tech.

I'm not pissed or anything. It just seems pointless. I suppose there could be a strategy that focuses on money and building early, cheaper ships then buys their tech instead of producing it. Maybe.

Obviously I've had empires with +1k or more income per turn, and over 100k in the bank, but retrofiting my current fleet would deplete that in a blink and then it would be another 100 turns before my bank account recovers? Seems poorly balanced with the rest of the game.

I've had a few fun battles. Some that were favourable in auto-resolve that I lost in tactical, which is cool. Of course at this stage I send in Titans with no support and they can only kill so many ships per cooldown, not to mention the firepower you can pack onto a cruiser at this stage with miniaturization is pretty impressive. The ship itself is made of glass, but the front loaded damage is pretty signficant.

Just lost 3 Titans to a bunch of trash. I couldn't even tell you what was there. 20-30 ships I guess? (I still had the defeat screen up. Turns out the biggest thing was a cruiser. Impressive. there would be no way for that fleet to survive 3 Titans in moo2. It's a good thing. Bringing 10 destroyers would have changed everything for me. Not that I'm going to in the future). Because of Uncreative I still only have class III shields, so that makes a difference, especially end game. edit: Speak of the devil, Class VII shields now. Yay.

This is the game that won't end. It started out as an experiment with Litho (which was successful imo, although the galaxy was uniquely suited for them, with lots of abundant/rich/ultra-rich), then an experiment with torpedos (very effective, but more effective than missiles? I'm not sure. Only if defenses have been tuned to anti-missiles I would say). Now it's just a standard end game warfare game where colonies switch hand and whole fleets die and are reborn in just a few turns.

I had twice as many votes as the second place Sakkra, but still no consensus, which is fine, although I wouldn't mind getting a vote win out of the way at least once.

Note to the wise: Always bring troop transports. Always. running out of transports (or having them killed unescorted) can set you back 10's of turns.

I'm experimenting with a battleship who's design is AoE and small ship destruction. I don't think I need it, I have 3 turn Titans now, but it will be fun to see what the Plasma Web and Pulsar can do. Probably not much. Meh, worth a shot. Bah, only 1 pulsar and 1 plasma web per ship. Bah I say!

The Psilons have started down the scientific victory path. So I'll have the choice of letting an ally win or backstabbing them. I think I'll let them win if it comes to that. Of course I could start down my own scientific path but I've already done that and once was enough.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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Verdict on the pulsar and plasma web? Garbage. Cooldown is too long, so you can't stack them without multiple ships armed with them, and they do so little damage to end game shields that they can't even make a dent. At least that's my impression.

More testing will probably clarify.

One last production run then I'll design something else. I would say the obvious plan would be to put them on the smallest ship you can and build a million of those. In moo2 you could stack the webs on a single ship, resulting in a DoT that was pretty effective even if there were better options. That's not the case here.
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Re: Master of Orion-Reboot

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Second combat with Pulsar/Plasma Web equipped battleships has conclusively proven that my design was complete garbage. They would be better off with mirv'd nukes, tech that is 250 turns old now. Waste of production and time.

And I just had a combat lock up for the first time since I complained about it happening earlier in the thread. This time with the bug patch installed, so I guess it's elusive. I can still select ships and whatnot, but nothing is happening. Quiting just autoresolved the rest of it, and since I was already winning, no harm done.
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