Master of Orion-Reboot

[GreenGoo]

Nope. So far the other races are still paid DLC.

[GreenGoo]

I may have run out of interesting things to try.

I've tried a couple of early combat races but mostly been wiped out early through ai cheating (from the Extreme difficulty setting. I knew what I was getting myself into). The ai is happy enough to build entire fleets with unearned tech in the blink of an eye. I can get around this sometimes (my earlier brawl with the Meklar was one such occasion) but a lot of the time there is simply nothing to be done except to sit back and build up l like normal, but if I were planning on doing that I would have built a different race and not wasted the first 100 turns driving as fast as I could into a brick wall.

Did you know that you can take an ai's hw in moo2 with nothing but frigates and regular nukes? You build a race around espionage spies and then sabotage early. Since it's so early there is nothing to sabotage except for the starbase that the ai starts with. Boom. Once that's gone, their hw is just another weakly defended colony, although it does have marines so you have to deal with that somehow. Since the race is espionage based and Telepathic gives espionage bonus, racing an early bare bones cruiser can remove the threat of marines.

It's pretty amazing. You can kill an ai empire around turn 30ish using nothing but spies, an empty shell of a cruiser and some frigates.

You can do something similar with a heavy g race with troop bonuses. Fly up to the starbase with tiny fast (gotta reach it before it kills you) frigates and board it. Once your monster marines have killed everything on board, you now control a starbase around someone else's home world. You can turn those guns against it's former people. Fun.

I'm finding less opportunities in this game for anything but straight up colonization, growth and research. Disappointing.

[GreenGoo]

I was thinking about exploring the Lithovore trait, but I really want to know how they function and grow. My god, how this can not be understood a year after release boggles my mind. Right before release the game was undergoing heavy, heavy changes and so the little that is supposedly known was from various patches at that time. Which means they may or may not still be accurate.

Discussions about the game are so superficial ("this paragraph of race colour text is poorly worded because x") and generic that is infuriating for me because I'm all about how a game's systems work and interact with each other. To have a 4X game, let alone a moo game so poorly understood is a travesty.

I sure am glad I got my play time in before reading what the community had to say about the game though. It's depressing enough that I probably wouldn't have played it at all. While it's not filled with hate for the game, it is filled with mediocre interest and a general superficialness that is sad.

Based on what I could find, here is how growth might work for Lithos.

Mineral richness MIGHT impact growth rate.

Planet size probably influences growth rate in the same way it influences everyone's growth rate. Small planets grow faster for some reason. Single population might have artificially slowed growth, or it just could be that the game scales growth at the beginning and end of a planet's population (ie low pop and high pop). This might line up with what I've been experiencing.

Population growth appears to be fastest when the planet is 1/2 full. I.e. the food box (my theory about filling up a "box" with excess food seems to be correct. Not exactly brilliant speculation, as civ works this way) is the smallest when a planet is 1/2 full. I.e. the first pop to grow has a big box and the last pop to grow has a big box but the middle pop to grow has the smallest box. This means fastest growth occurs when you max food production and the planet is 1/2 full. This is very similar to moo2 and the analysis I read was convincing. This explains why brand new colonies are absolutely useless for 10's of turns when first plunked down. Growth is intentionally hamstrung.

Cloning centers and microbiotics shrink the growth box (food box for regular races, lithos have the same concept but can't produce stuff to fill the box faster) for everyone, including Lithos.

Racial trait +/- growth rate impact the box size in the exact same way cloning centers/microbiotics do. It's hard to imagine playing Lithovore without +growth rate, except as an exercise in patience.

That's about it. Lithos fill their "growth box" at a regular rate. Some testing I saw puts the number at something like 2 per pop, so that's linear. Combined with the box size varying based on current pop versus max pop, max growth rate is at 50% max pop. You could in theory slow growth down by terraforming. What a weird system.

Mineral richness might impact the size of the "growth" box but there is almost no discussion of it and even less empirical testing to back it up. The devs are on record with about 20 different ways it works, some of which are conflicting with each other, some of which are empirically obviously not true. I assume these are all statements that were accurate at the time they were said but so many changes have broken them. At one point food actually impacted Litho growth (I think it was a long lasting bug) and at another stage production did too.

I find this insanely frustrating because the last thing I want to do is just hit end turn and hope for the best. I need to be able to min/max these systems because that's where my enjoyment comes from, especially with a moo game.

I may try the balance workshop mod next. There are things in it that I don't like and things that were changed just because the author wanted to do so, not because of any balance issue that I personally agree/disagree with, so that's moving farther away from the vanilla version than I'd like. That said, the mod does seem to make the game a lot more interesting, and since my interesting if failing, it might at least be worth checking out.

Reviewing the workshop, most mods are kids making changes to unbalance things in their favour. I get that that is fun for some, but my time of making races with 40+ race points is long past.

[Freyland]

What about the 5X mod by Spud Dastardly? If I ever get around to trying this I will start with that (and the unofficial patch).

[GreenGoo]

Pollution immunity only seems to affect farming damage. i.e. no farm damage occurs from pollution, although biome degradation still seems to happen. 8 freakin' race points just to be able to farm slightly better than other races while a planet suffers from pollution is insanely expensive. This must have done something else in the past.

A completely broken race trait that I wouldn't take unless it was only 1 point. 2 at the most if I was having trouble spending my last points on something. 8 points is how much cybernetic costs, and that's probably the single most powerful trait in the game.

If I'm wrong and it makes planets immune to biome degradation (I haven't tested it personally) then it's still to expensive, but not as outlandishly so. Maybe 5-6 points would be worth unbridled production.

[GreenGoo]

What about the 5X mod by Spud Dastardly? If I ever get around to trying this I will start with that (and the unofficial patch).

Yes, I was referring to that balance mod, which is highly respected. I will almost certainly give it a try before abandoning the game.

Here's something that I thought was established fact based on my games so far:

Food tiles and production tiles are some percentage of the max population based on biome quality, with better biomes allowing more workers and farmers.

Research tiles are always exactly as many as your current pop. If you have 4 pop out of a maximum of 10, there are 4 research tiles you can put researchers on. Planet growth gives you 5 pop out of 10? A new research tile appears. Which means there are always exactly as many research tiles as there are pop, meaning you can always dedicate a planet to 100% research.

Except here I am at the start of a new game using Litho, and there are only 4 research tiles while I have 6 starting pop. Litho can't devote 100% of their pop to research? That seems needlessly hindering. Having the freedom to do 100% research or 100% production is one of the benefits that you're paying all those racial points for, I would think.

Of possible note is the blue bar of the research area is EXACTLY 6 tiles long, but it is missing the last 2 tiles from it (hard to explain, easier to see). The food bar (normally green) is grey but it is also 6 tiles long, and shows those 6 tiles (even if you can't put anyone on them. Volcanic home world). The production bar (brown) is 6 tiles long, with only 4 "active" tiles that you can put people on and 2 "greyed" out tiles that you can't put people on.

This seems like a clue that something is broken.

AHA! I picked small home world. A small volcanic world has a max pop of only 4! But the game starts you with 6 pop. So I have a small volcanic homeworld with a max pop of 4, but it has 6 people on it. I managed to break my homeworld! Cool. But now I'm wondering what I'm to do, as I used the small homeworld penalty to pay for other racial traits. If I can't have a small homeworld as lithovore without breaking it...that makes me grumpy. There are already very few places to get extra racial points, and now there is one less for litho.

[GreenGoo]

So my HW starts with zero growth rate because it's already overpopulated. I assume that once I build a colony ship my hw will lose a pop unit that it can never get back. Having a hw with a max pop of 4 is...interesting.

I colonized a small abundant swamp. I took +50% growth rate. The game is reporting my first new pop is expected in 20 turns. I'm low g if that matters.

In theory large planets actually have larger growth boxes, so initial growth is actually slower on big planets than on smaller ones. That makes little sense to me but it does mean that your first colony or 2 should take planet size into account, where smaller is better (counter-intuitively) especially if the new colony will be left to its own devices for awhile because you need to worry about other things (and maybe you haven't researched civilian transports yet).

I'm not going to do a full growth analysis, but I am going to keep an eye on it.

[GreenGoo]

I mentioned off handedly earlier but I think it's worth taking note of, and that is max planetary population is based on the quality of the biome. This remains true even for litho, so if you want a LOT of pop (normally you would) you want the best biomes (gaia->terran(ocean too?)->swamp/arid->tundra/desert->barren. The problem is that each higher quality biome has less pollution tolerance. So it's a trade off, and ESPECIALLY so for litho, who have no use for better food production (but still need pop) versus worry-free production.

Is it counter intuitive that small, crappy biome planets are small and crappy even for litho? I don't know. Maybe. I mean, yes, it seems counter-intuitive, but is it a problem, especially from a balance perspective? My first guess is no. Allowing litho a sort of reverse biome quality ranking would make them even more production monsters than they are already (apparently, from what I've read). Litho is expensive, but is it expensive enough to cover that kind of advantage?

Welcome to the world of balancing. It's hard.

[GreenGoo]

Because Litho growth is NOT based on anything they can produce, low g worlds grow just as fast as high g world, or medium g worlds. So while low g racial trait affects research and production as with any other race, it does NOT affect growth rate as it does with other races because growth is not based on food production (which normally takes the low g hit).

So in at least 1 way, picking low g is less of a penalty for Lithos than it is for non-lithos. That's a cool realization.

Lithovores have a growth rate bar just like other races, and it's shown under the "food" section, just like other races, but it has nothing to do with food. Any production of food (from, say, building hydroponic farms for no apparent reason) might appear to affect growth rate because the ui has those 2 closely linked. i.e. excess food listed directly above the growth bar (that slowly fills up) they are not related for Lithos and the appearance is purely coincidental and a relic of how normal, food eating and growing races work.

[GreenGoo]

Just realized I choose Lava Breather for this custom race, which explains why my HW is lava. Oops, my bad. This is part of why my hw pop is broken. Tempted to restart a game as a non-lava breather to see what happens. I assume it would be a normal terran world (with appropriate g and size based on those race choices).

edit: Yep, standard terran world. Research tiles are back to full 100% of current pop.

edit: New colony on small terran abundant normal g (I'm low g) will grow new pop in 21 turns. (just writing it down to take note. May create some sort of data summary later).

edit: I'm 10 turns in and I already want to murder the voice actor playing the research advisor. This isn't exactly new as they seem to make these characters particularly annoying, but what is new is that this actor is weak. The other voice actors did a GREAT job, I just didn't like what the director asked them to do. They all seem to suck in their own ways. Alkari screech every second word at you, Sakkra speak to you in some sort of dumbed down limited grammar speech. Annoying, but the voice actors are doing what they are told to do, and doing it well.

The lithovore research advisor voice actor is not in the same class as the other actors. She's not terri-bad as you might find in a low budget independent game, but she's not good, and it's noticeable given the quality of the other voice acting in the game.

When I first started playing I left advisor chatter on to see what it was like. I then turned it off because it annoyed me. I then turned it back on as some sort of self flagellation and because I felt like I "owed" the game/designers/actors my attention to the detail they worked hard to put into it. The silicoid advisor has me eyeing the "mute advisors" button again.

[GreenGoo]

Restarted my game since I was pretty unhappy with the galaxy layout after 30 turns. Changed my ltho race around a bit too. Took +25% growth instead of +50% to see how that works. Took Nazin genes because their advisor is less annoying, they don't offer much in the way of challenging opponent (any challenge they provide is based on factors other than their traits) and don't offer a good race to conquer either.

New race design is pretty boring really.
growth +25%
prod +50% (I almost never take this much. This is my excitement for this race. :/)
ship cost -20% (this is surprisingly awesome for 3 pts)
Beam Attack -25% (who cares. I mean, it only gives 1 pt, and +25% is almost certainly worth 1 point, yet I take it anyway)
Rich HW (production on HW should be extreme unless pollution becomes a problem)
small HW (need points. Just found out small grows faster than not small. Since I will be moving pop off this world growth rate is more important than max size for early part of game)
low g HW (because I need points, plus see observation in previous post about less of a negative for lithos)
uncreative (need points)
repulsive (need points, almost zero downside)
Litho (because that's the current plan).


Also, I think I'm going insane. The "Master of Orion" screen asking you to "hit any key" to continue after a new galaxy is generated always seems to be a different size. One time it's small. Another it's large'ish. Another time it's somewhere in between, I think. Why the eff is that? The differences in size is just subtle enough that I was never quite sure it was, at least at first. The seeming randomness of the size of this font/message is freaking me out.

[GreenGoo]

Minor annoyance:

The game notifies you when you "discover" a new system. But you already knew there was a system there because of the damn star. The situations where you DIDN'T know a system was right there are almost never. When you click on the notification it takes you to the system that you already knew was there. Almost no new information is presented.

When you scout a PLANET, you get nothing. No notification, nothing. So the very important information used to decide what to colonize next is not important enough to bring to the player's attention. If they want to micromanage the movement of each ship (there is no queueing, so discovering planets early in the game means you need to click on each planet, 1 at a time, 1 per turn. Obnoxious) they need to look at each planet as it is scouted.

It's just a terrible system. I WANT notifications (with planet stats) so I can get information on newly discovered planets without clicking on each and every one (letting me click on the notification and taking me there if the planet info looks promising would be nice). I do NOT want notifications that a star exists. I can already see that. In fact I probably sent my ship there intentionally before you decided to tell me my destination exists.

It's backwards and dumb. Harmless most of the time, but now that I have many games under my belt, wasting a clear opportunity to make my life easier (4x games give me repetitive stress injury) makes me grumpy.

edit: Another annoyance.

Spamming "threatening fleet" notifications about monsters that I'm already aware, that I can do nothing about yet, and that have no ability to leave the system they are currently in. It's the equivalent of yelling at me that I can still see the monster.

A corollary of this is that when the system is out of range, I can no longer see the monster and there is no indicator that the monster is there. I have to rely on my memory. Which is fine for 1 system. The problem exists when there are multiple monster systems with unidentified planets in them. I use unidentified planets as decision makers for where to scout next. Without some way to keep track of where the monsters are, like, say a god damn icon on the system, I am in danger of repeatedly sending scouts to a system they can't scout yet.

I know it sounds ironic that I complain about being told a monster is there and then complain that I'm not being told a monster is there, but it's not as contrary as it sounds. I don't want to be SPAMMED that a monster exists. I just want a simple visual indicator that I'm not ready to scout a system yet because it's guarded.

Related to monsters, monsters in moo2 guarded systems that were more often than not, special. They had above average planets, or planets with specials or whatever. Think of the planets as treasure that is your reward for defeating the space dragon. In moo4, monsters are just random system specials. They aren't guarding anything special, and if the system/planets are above average, it's due to the RNG during galaxy creation. Defeating monsters no long reward you with better than average planets to colonize. Defeating a monster rewards you with nothing but the satisfaction of beating up space fauna. Great.

[GreenGoo]

And because the game enjoys giving the player the middle finger, I'm about to colonize a tiny radiated rich as my first colony. Part of my experimenting with choosing smaller over bigger to see how it affects growth rate. The middle finger part is that I picked low g for my race, and this planet is tiny (i.e. the don't come any smaller) but it has NORMAL gravity.

I've mentioned that I believe galaxy creation is tied to difficulty level. Things like this continue to promote that viewpoint, even if they are fully circumstantial and proof of nothing.

Why would this tiny planet, smaller than earth's moon, have full gravity? I assume the core is lead.

[GreenGoo]

More growth data. I should note that I'm going by growth rates reported by the UI. The UI has been shown to be inaccurate about other things, so this whole thing is one giant grain of salt. There is zero chance I verify that reported growth time and actual growth time are the same.

edit: New pop from killing a pirate base put a bit of a monkey wrench into keeping track of growth data, as the "growth box" is already partially filled when a new pop arrives. The new arrival changes the size of the growth box but the contents remain. Since we don't know exactly how big the growth box is at any one time (without specific and enormously laborious testing), or how much it contains (we don't even know how much lithovores put into it each turn without tons of testing), we only know how long until it fills (i.e. next population unit arrives in x number of turns), changing the box size mid-pop growth destroys any pretense we had of keeping track.

It's like driving to a new city and the only thing you know is that you will get there in 4 hours. Suddenly it will take 5 hours. Are you going slower now, or did you teleport farther away? Or both?
==========================================

Litho with +25% growth
-------------------------------
New tiny rich radiated normal g world will grow new pop in 17 turns.
2 pop tiny rich radiated normal g world will grow new pop in 36 turns. Holy mother effing ouch. The max pop is 3, so I assume this has something to do with being above 50% capacity. Not trying tiny planet as an early choice again.

New medium rich arid normal g world will grow new pop in 27 turns.

New small ultra-rich radiated normal g world will grow new pop in 17 turns.


Litho with +25% growth and +15% growth (microbiotics)
-------------------------------
New medium rich tundra normal g world will grow new pop in 24 turns. Of note is 3 free food being provided by minor race.

2 pop small ultra-rich radiated normal g world will grow new pop in 12 turns.
3 pop small ultra-rich radiated normal g world will grow new pop in 30 turns. Ouch.

New medium abundant arid normal g will grow new pop in 29 turns.

5 pop medium rich arid normal g will grow a new pop in 14 turns.

[dbt1949]

Does you head hurt?

[GreenGoo]

Maybe. But that's from having some sleep problems (which is why you saw me up all night the other night). It's also why I'm more willing than normal to take the time to write out observations on a game that isn't very popular and won't help many people. It's more like mental leakage than anything. It's also why it's mostly just a data dump rather than an organized attempt to convey information.

I do hope it helps someone, but if it doesn't, that's fine.

I'm more than willing to answer any specific questions people might have, if I can. Either from my own experiences or from reading what others have wrote.

As far as I can tell, you and I are the only people even playing this game a year after it's release. It's just not very popular.

[GreenGoo]

That tiny world with only 2 (of a max of 3) pop and over 30 turns to grow a new one is now building a colony ship because despite the long build time it is the best use of it's resources. If you ever told me I would have a tiny world with 2 pop build a colony ship I would have laughed, yet here we are.

[Brian]

As far as I can tell, you and I are the only people even playing this game a year after it's release. It's just not very popular.

I've actually played a few games in the last couple days thanks to this thread.

[GreenGoo]

Yay.

Feel free to tell us about it if you want. I really like reading about other peoples' experiences in games that I am actively playing.

Or ask questions.

In a lot of ways this feels like what happened with moo3, but with a better outcome. Moo3 was completely broken when it was released and then abandoned. This game was still in the design phase when it was released. They did some after release patching and whatnot (some paid DLC) but now it has been abandoned too. Luckily there are a couple of dedicated modders and bug slayers still working on it. Moo4 is obviously heads and tails above the mess that was moo3, yet its still not a finished game, and now it never will be.

[Brian]

Not much to tell really.

I typically run Cluster maps against three AI opponents. My previous game I had effectively sealed off the Human and Klackon neighbors from access to my cluster and was well into taking over the Silicoid territory when I got a notification that the Klackons were "Heavily Investing" into the Galactic Stock Exchange so I bought three shares to slow down their economic take-over bid and ten turns later, BAM, I had the victory which was kind of disappointing as I was really enjoying kicking the arse out of the Silicoids.

My current game has me grabbing up two empty sectors while blocking access to the empty sectors by the Alkari. I also have Orion effectively blocked off while I build a fleet capable of taking out the Guardian. I have not yet met the other AI races as at least one is on the far side of the Alkari and the other is down somewhere in the bottom corner of the map I haven't explored yet.

[dbt1949]

The developers have abandoned the game? Ah crap. I want those other races.

My latest strategy is to build military outpost at all the warp point and then destroy one and build a space gate when I get the tech.

[GreenGoo]

What races are those dbt? The paid dlc still exists. I think it contains the Trillians, Gnolams, Elerians and another human race (I vaguely heard it's based on KHANNnnn! from Star Trek). You can still buy it for 11 bucks or something.

Playing as Litho, I got the 8 techs before turn 50 achievement. I don't normally spend much time early on researching. I don't play races like Psilons very often.

I'm slightly surprised to find that the no farmer/+25% growth/+50% prod/rich home world race seems to be the fastest out of the gate that I've played so far. I mean, just writing that sentence should show how obviously fast the race is, but I'm still surprised to find it's faster than some of my uber growth designs. I don't expect it to be as robust as some of those races, but it's still pretty fast considering how slow the growth rate is and how little ability I have to impact it with gameplay decisions.

I've started prioritizing the early diplomacy tech that allows embassies. Sometimes before the colony base (+1 food on new colonies) and civilian transport tech. The ease with which trade and peace treaties can be reached with the ai, and the benefits of those treaties can't be understated. I am very anti-diplo from my days in moo2 of treating all ai as simply targets, but why not get free money and research until that time? Unlike moo2, moo4 treaties are very profitable.

[dbt1949]

Downloadable Content for Master of Orion
There is no downloadable content available for this game.

Altho now that I look harder I see some for $10 a piece.

And I bought the one that has the other races (except for human).

[GreenGoo]

Oh. Hmmm, I assumed the race pack included the other humans, but maybe they were exclusive pre-order content. The race pack is the only paid DLC that I'm aware of. Revenge of Antares was some sort of patch/free dlc/something but I think everyone gets that now.

edit: Yep, only the 3 races (no humans) for 11 bucks. Why it doesn't show up when you click the DLC link for the game I have no idea. It DOES show up when looking at the game in the store as a separate item. Weird. Since I couldn't care less about the races, and I hear they are poorly designed anyway, it's 11 bucks for new animations and voice acting. I will probably get it eventually, but it's purely cosmetic from my point of view.

[GreenGoo]

6 colonies by turn 60. I don't think any of my other races were capable of that, but they are often normal or even poor homeworlds.

Hmmm, I may need to watch out for Antarans. I should check my score. Edit: Nope, Psilons are still ahead in score, just barely. I'm usually last at this stage of the game except for votes. This race is obviously doing well although it's pretty shallow. None of the colonies could really be considered established.

Bah. Scouted the edge of the Mentar system using 2 frigates (they were in the area for other reasons). 1 had a leader on it (just trying to start gathering experience points). The Psilons pinned me against their outpost and I couldn't run. Total n00b mistake and now the leader's gone. I'd mourn the loss of the frigates too if I were another race, but these guys can replace those frigates in 4 turns, and even better, wouldn't miss the lost production in other areas (like researching instead of producing).

[Daehawk]

Reading these updates make me wish for a modern day Space Empires 4 gold

[GreenGoo]

Reading these updates make me wish for a modern day Space Empires 4 gold

I never got into Space Empires 4 (or 3). They seemed like a lot of fun, but more like a playground with all sorts of neat, completely unbalanced toys to play with. Which is actually a great thing, but at the time I was looking to play competitively and there were too many moving parts, and no interest in balancing them. Which is not to say that people didn't play them multiplayer, they did and I'm sure it was fun for them. It just wasn't what I was looking for.

Now if you want to talk about spreadsheets to the Stars!, I would enjoy a modernized Stars! game. Something that you could PBEM with a wego system. I think there is still a market for those kinds of games (fantasy based too) but I'm not aware of anything that does that and does it well today.

[GreenGoo]

As lithovore with +25% growth rate (and +50% production, which has an effect) I have 8 colonies and 22 pop.

The silicoid (on extreme difficulty. Which means it cheats to get free stuff) have 11 pop and at least 5 colonies (can't tell how many).

So I have double the pop with just +25% growth. Not a huge surprise because the sillies always have the least pop in all the games I've seen them in, so whatever cheating is done, it probably doesn't affect their growth rate.

Literally every single other ai race has more pop than me, although the Klackon only have 23, which is strange since they are a very fast race normally with +50% food and +25% prod.

The Sakkra have almost twice my pop at 41. They have +50% growth rate and that's it.

I should note that not everyone wants to be my friend in this game. Treaties are harder to come by and more expensive to negotiate. I assume this has to do with not being last in all categories.

[dbt1949]

Do ya'll sell off buildings late in the game that have no use anymore?
Such as Cloning Centers and Research buildings?

[GreenGoo]

Do ya'll sell off buildings late in the game that have no use anymore?
Such as Cloning Centers and Research buildings?

No, my micromanagement ends after I conquer my first enemy. Well, I still manually set the queue, but I never move pop around for efficiency or anything like that. In moo2 I would even build all the food producing buildings if I was lithovore, just so they wouldn't show up when looking at the build list. Assuming I could afford the maintenance.

And speaking maintenance, I'm starting to have money trouble as my ability to build stuff outstrips my population's growth and thus ability to pay taxes. This is going to be a real problem before I manage to conquer anyone. If I played peacefully and didn't acquire more pop through conquest, I'd be screwed long before mid game, looks like. And that's building almost nothing but essential buildings. I was toying with building the biospheres for the 1 rp, but since money is now a problem that idea is out.

And that's with trade treaties with all ai in the game. I'd already be negative per turn without those. I recently cranked up taxes to 4 per pop just to keep things in the black.

On that note, exceeding your command point cap results in a 20BC per point over penatly. In moo2 it was 10 bc per point. Just fyi.

[GreenGoo]

9 colonies on turn 100, and that's with only building colony ships when any specific planet has grown to 50% max pop or above. i.e. not prioritizing expansion any longer. That's pretty solid.

Star about to go supernova with 1 colony and a protectorate in the vicinity. Not much pop so not much research points. I wonder if I can manage it? Edit: 3 researchers did it in about 3-5 turns. Not much to it.

Psilons just traded me cloning centers for dauntless guidance out of the blue. Glee! Once I build those on the big planets I'll have +25% +15% +25% = +65% growth. That has got to help Litho stay in the game.

I normally wouldn't trade dauntless to the ai but they are creative so they were going to get them anyway.

[GreenGoo]

Going to have to go to war just to give me something to do. At 11 colonies and already starting to skip micromanaging population. Hitting end turn a lot, without doing much in between.

[dbt1949]

I always ignore stars going supernova. I've never seen one actually go off. I don't know that they will.
Same with plagues. They just have to run their course.
I sent in a late model BB after an amoeba. I watched it play out. The amoeba just kept splitting apart and surrounded the BB with a gaseous substance. The BB just kept taking massive damage before losing. I thought for sure it could handle it by itself. It was pretty cool to watch. Needless to say I sent a much bigger fleet the next time.
Oddly I watched the AI do the same thing on a different planet. I would have thought it would have known better.

[Brian]

I've seen supernova completely wipe out entire systems in a few games including early on in one game where it wiped out the Terran home system leaving them with only a few scattered colonies that were easily, umm, annexed let's say.

[GreenGoo]

Yep, I wrote earlier in the thread of my amazement that a supernova event actually occurred. I had never seen one go off before.

The system was just a pile of orbiting rubble after that.

Let me point out that +50% production results in obscene pollution once you have a couple of production buildings up and running too.

I think I'm going to go after the psilons to counter my -25% research penalty. They are nearby and it might be fun to see if I can overwhelm their technology with torpedos. Did I mention that I'm playing a torpedo heavy race this time around (for no particular reason)?

I'm already a little bored trying to develop all my colonies into something productive.

edit: Instead I went monster hunting, as I have very little experience with those. Killed a space squid but my fleet was fairly big. Cruiser, 3 destroyers, 4-5 frigates. The Squid ate 2 destroyers but went down after the second volley. Cruiser and destroyers were all guided torps (the first ones, anti-matter?) while the frigates were mirv'd merculites. The frigates were left over pirate killers so they had space wasted on a single bomb each.

No battlepods were used. I had the tech but the fleet was in flight and no opportune chance to refit. Unlike in moo2, battlepods barely do anything on frigate and destroyer hulls. On cruiser and up they are more effective.

[dbt1949]

It takes 30 turns for a space factory to make an advanced military post. It takes ten turns to build a regular military post. It takes 15 turns to upgrade it to an advanced military out post.
Did I flunk math?

[GreenGoo]

Beats me, I don't think I've ever built an advanced one. That said, there are other ways to count the cost of something, so it might be another mechanic working behind the scenes. I have no idea.

[GreenGoo]

The psilons have been far too friendly, asking nothing for trade treaties, and now want an NA. This is why I prefer to think of them as yet to be conquered targets rather than empires to diplo with. Now I feel guilt about attacking them. Guess I'll find another target. :/

edit: Lol, and now they just voted for me in the council. I've never had anyone vote for me, ever. I don't even know why. It's not like I'm currying favour with them any more than my normal "everyone gets a trade agreement" approach.

Still not enough votes.

Just caught one of their spies. Should send him back missing a thumb. Or maybe 4 thumbs.

Ai senses something is up. 1/2 of them are requesting non-aggression treaties out of the blue. Weird. Klackons are pissed at me for no readily apparent reason. I assume I made a deal with someone they were at war with. Anyway, tag, Klackon are it. Too bad they're on the other side of the galaxy. Could be awhile.

[GreenGoo]

Psilons just asked for an alliance. I gave it to them. Here's hoping they drag me into a war that I had no intention of starting myself. edit: Nevermind, Sakkra just bribed me into war with the Klackon. We'll see how the Psilons feel about that.

One thing that I think was overlooked in the design of the game revolves around upgrading your ships. Upgrades are now purely cash based. As long as your ships are orbiting a base of yours, upgrades are instant, as long as you have the money. What's missing is researchable technology that reduces the upgrade costs.

If you're running a tight budget you're going to be stuck with a lot of obsolete ships. It's actually a better idea to simply scrap them and rebuild from scratch at times. This seems counter-intuitive. It could be just that it rubs me the wrong way. In any case, I don't like it.

[GreenGoo]

Huh. I could be wrong but it looks like Space Pirates conquered a Mrrshan colony? Probably what happened is the silicoid destroyed it out of scanner range and pirates sprang up after. Maybe.

Remember when I whined about the terrible notification system? Well there is a space dragon in a system that cannot be reached without going through another empire. I can see it, but can't realistically reach it even if I possessed the fleet and tech to defeat it. Yeah, so, I'm notified of that space dragon every turn. I'm on turn 181. At a minimum, allowing for early exploration and expansion, I've been notified that that Space Dragon is there approximately 150 times now. Awesome.