Master of Orion-Reboot

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 12:13 am

I finally saw my Doomstar in a battle against Trilarians. They had a star base and a missile base and 6-8 cruisers or below. They did manage to light up the Doomstar a little bit but it really wasn't a contest. Watched the star base go with the first shot.

Is a gaia planet better for Trilarians than an ocean planet?

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 1:30 am

In moo2 ocean=terran for the Trils. Not sure about this game.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 3:15 pm

I decided to play a hard game.
It is harder.

takes longer to do anything.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 3:55 pm

There are pacing settings in the advanced settings for a new game but I've never played with them. They can change pop growth rate and research rate, for instance.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 4:16 pm

Late game Antaran fleet inbound. 3 Titans, 13 BBs etc.

I'm not running my fleets back to defend. If it kills the colony so be it. I have 42 others and I've long since stopped caring about individual ones, although admittedly this is a core one that I use to feed production to one of my builder worlds. Oh well.

I also rush built a doomstar but I built it in the wrong place and it will arrive 1 turn too late. I seem to only be able to build 1 doomstar? What is that about?

I'm only a few turns from wiping out the Meklar, and the Silicoids were wiped out after a concentrated effort by the Sakkra followed by my alliance partner the Psilons couldn't stop bombing them. Once the Meklar are gone it's just the 2 of us versus the Sakkra. Honestly I expect the Psilons to abandon the alliance just because. They are also still enroute to a scientific victory. That may happen before any else of interest.

Eventually I'll go after the Sakkra. Hopefully I can win the stupid council if there is only 2 races left, 1 of which votes for me, and the other being me.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 4:38 pm

Nice visual effect of space traffic/shipping between planets exporting production and planets importing production. I just noticed.

Antaran fleet:

3 titans
13 bb
10 cc
19 dd
25 ff

versus my:

1 doomstar
1 titan
1 star fortress
1 orbital base
1 missile base

Victory chances: Bad.

Playing this out tactically. Note to self: Consider teleport technology on doomstar.

Result: Loss.

Antarans lost:

2 bb
3 cc
1 dd

Which is actually better than it looked.

Biological weapons used, all ife on this volcanic world is gone. Barring re-colonization, nothing but ruins will exist for future anthropologists to study.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 5:00 pm

Meklar have just 1 tiny colony and Orion. I should take Orion next turn. I think I'm going to try an old moo2 trick and leave the last colony standing so I can steal tech from it. Assuming they have anything I don't. It's hard to tell. I wonder if you can steal Orion tech? I know they have death rays.

Council vote:

3x19 independent votes for the Darlok.
344 psilon votes for the Darlok.
636 Darlok votes for the Darklok.
------------------
1036 votes total for Darlok

350 Sakkra votes for the Sakkra

Meklar abstain (26 votes)
independent abstain (16 votes).

Council win for the win. Finally. Been trying to end this game for at least 3 days. Phew.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 5:19 pm

Yes, you can have only one doomstar. But there is a mod to allow you unlimited.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 5:21 pm

dbt1949 wrote:Yes, you can have only one doomstar. But there is a mod to allow you unlimited.

Huh. Doesn't say that in the description anywhere that I noticed.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Sun Sep 17, 2017 5:27 pm

No, no it doesn't.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 11:23 pm

Found a combat race design that I like, and have a decent start in a recent game. the problem is that all the good conquest races are absent from the game so far. You want to grab some Meklar or Klackon or even Sakkra pop to help get things rolling. Unfortunately I've got strong ground troop races (Mrrshan and Bulrathi) nearby, followed by races that give no bonuses (humans and Darlok). It's like the game conspired to make sure I just expanded and teched just like every other game, except this time with a race that was not optimized for it.

Grrr.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Mon Sep 18, 2017 11:47 pm

Altho they're in the game I've never had any inter reaction with them. I see they have votes in the galactic counsel.
What's the deal with them? How do you contact them, ally with them, trade with them, etc?

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Sep 19, 2017 1:15 am

?

Independents? They are just sitting around waiting to be protectorated. They give a bonus to each of your colonies in the same system. +3 to food/research/cash, depending on the race. You can upgrade these by paying cash, so it becomes +6 or +9. It can be substantial if you have more than 1 colony in the system.

The ui gives more information on them but as far as I can tell that information is for mechanics that are not implemented. So they just give you +3 whatever and vote for you. That's it.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:46 am

Nice job of mind reading.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Sep 19, 2017 6:10 am

It was the votes comment that clued me in.

You can also conquer them or wipe them out and colonize.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Wed Sep 27, 2017 1:35 pm

I finally got to set a system explode. How cool!

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Wed Sep 27, 2017 1:42 pm

Neat.

I'm still playing. Trying to find a target for my aggression. The Mrrshan, who seem to be doing ok this game, are at war with the Klackon. The Mrrshan bribed me into declaring war, but I've got no way to reach them, except through Mrrshan territory. I'm going to see how they feel about an open borders treaty. We already have an NA, so, maybe.

Even just grabbing 1 or 2 colonies of the Klackons would make for some great food production.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Wed Sep 27, 2017 5:35 pm

Whenever I send my Orion battlefleet to Orion there's always somebody blocking me. Instead of negotiating access I just declare war and blast my way thru. I don't want to give anybody access to my empire. And after seeing my Orion fleet nobody seems to want to attack me either.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Sep 28, 2017 2:34 pm

After watching multiple battles with my cruisers and battleships equipped with Dauntless systems installed, I'm like 99.5% sure they Dauntless system doesn't work. At no point do I see missiles retarget, and tons of times I watch missiles chase targets that are already dead, only to dissipate when they reach the target's former location.

So no more wasting space on dauntless systems.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Fri Sep 29, 2017 12:33 am

There is an achievement for 100 planetary invasions. It's called Attila. Yay.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Fri Sep 29, 2017 2:22 pm

GreenGoo wrote:There is an achievement for 100 planetary invasions. It's called Attila. Yay.

Mrs. Goo wrote:Way to go, Hunny.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:45 pm

Late game loss to the Meklar who won via scientific victory. We were both equally huge and I tried to taunt them into a war but they weren't going for it despite hating me. We both had massive fleets and I was looking forward to smashing them together. Mine was pure brute force, all missiles, which can definitely backfire late game.

Anyway, the Meklar ascended and that was that.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Sat Sep 30, 2017 10:09 pm

I've enjoyed this game and I put a lot of time in it, and I will continue to, but when you get right down to it I like Sword of the Stars better.
It's been so long tho and I'm going to have to relearn it.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Sep 30, 2017 10:22 pm

dbt1949 wrote:I've enjoyed this game and I put a lot of time in it, and I will continue to, but when you get right down to it I like Sword of the Stars better.
It's been so long tho and I'm going to have to relearn it.

Yep.

I have gal civ III the base game and never started it. I guess I should give that a try. I'm doing 1 more moo4 game, trying another combat-centric race. Once I get that working I think that will be the end of my moo4 play, forever, probably.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 02, 2017 9:00 am

They sure don't make it easy to play a combat race on the hardest settings. Troop transports are 4th or 5th tier tech, and if you're telepathic, battleships are even higher.

Not sure how to win against a production race when the game has to be played as a production race for the first 50-75-100 turns or so. You just don't have the tools to be effective at growing this way, but you can't attack anyone and acquire more territory until you have troop ships.

It's a steep hill to climb.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 02, 2017 9:05 am

Huh. Earthquake on my home world destroyed the capital building. This early means all sorts of bad things, including 10+ turns wasted simply rebuilding it. That's somewhat devastating.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:25 pm

GreenGoo wrote:Huh. Earthquake on my home world destroyed the capital building. This early means all sorts of bad things, including 10+ turns wasted simply rebuilding it. That's somewhat devastating.

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of your homeworld at this difficult time.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:29 pm

Heh.

Game. Deleted.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Oct 08, 2017 8:28 pm

Fired up Gal Civ III and immediately shut it down because all the options intimidated me.

I'm not ready to take on a new learning curve right now.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 10, 2017 1:12 pm

Heightened intelligence, a tech that adds +1 research per researcher, does not add it directly to the population unit. Therefore the bonus is added separately from any increased research race trait (+25%, +50%). Instead of being an increase of 1.5 points for a race with +50% research, it's normalized to just +1. Of course this also applies to races with a reduction in research ability (-25%), so I guess it evens out.

Still, it's disappointing. I'm pretty sure most if not all production tech is modified by a race's increased production ability.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:40 am

There is an achievement for colonizing 5 desert planets in a single game. Not sure why, and not sure why I haven't gotten it before now. Anyway, there it is.

Also, there is an achievement for playing for 5000 turns. That's a lot of turns.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Tue Oct 17, 2017 5:46 am

I did the 5000 one awhile back. I notice there are a bunch of spy ones that I'll never do as I don't care for the spy aspect of this or any other game I own.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:37 am

So I finished a Lithovore/Creative game a few days ago. It was slow going as expected early on, but I made some headway in the midgame through judicious use of civilian transports, keeping planets at 50% pop and shifting the excess pop to new colonies. I do this anyway in most games where growth is particularly slow, but in this case it was imperative that I stay on top of it due to the way Lithovores grow.

I waited too long to go to war and while I ate up large chunks of my neighbours (mostly Klackon, who are a great race to assimilate) more than 1 empire started down the scientific victory path. I assumed I had lost but I kept at it. Eventually I was in a position to start down that path myself, and with more than half the galaxy still unconquered, it was my best possible chance for a win.

The Klackons sued for peace many times, which I refused because I had invested so much in military resources that they would be wasted if I didn't keep conquering. Eventually though, I granted them peace. They won a scientific victory 3 turns later. I was 10 turns from winning a scientific victory myself.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 17, 2017 11:45 am

In my most recent game, I'm playing a Cybernetic/Creative race, attempting to grow faster than my lithovore race. It hasn't worked, and I'm well into the 200's and only now getting some battleships off the line. I'm way behind on pop, tech, score and I'm not sure I can come back from that. The leader (the mrrshan) I haven't even contacted yet, despite the fact that they must be huge, given their pop and score numbers (both are more than double my own).

Not sure where I went wrong, except that I took low-g (which slows everything done until grav generators can be built) and -25% growth (which I thought I could overcome with creative and all the food and growth bonuses therein). Grav generators are extremely production costly, meaning you have to have some infrastructure and pop before even attempting to build them, and even then it is often 10+ turns before they finish. So every new colony starts in the hole. And while I have breeder colonies producing civilian transports by the armload, until morale infrastructure is built, adding new pop to new colonies is a waste of time because they go on strike immediately. Worse, they slow growth on the new colony by eating food while producing nothing. As Cybernetic they only eat 0.5 food, but it still slows things down.

So this race is a bust. My combat tech is coming online now and I can probably handle a decent sized enemy fleet now, but my empire is STILL trying to establish itself, while at least 3 enemy empires are huge. I'm going to have to kick sand in someone's face very soon or I'll be left (even further) behind completely.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:15 pm

There are so few low gravity planets in any of the galaxies I've played that I'm surprised you took that trait. Still, I assume you're trying the harder levels. I'm just not that much into S/M. I usually play the normal levels.
I really don't find creative as good as it sounds. Playing the Klackon I do well scientifically.
Doing without or very little food makes a major difference the way I play. Ever notice how well the Silicoid and Mekklar races do in every game? I think that says a lot. I try to play in games they're not in.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Oct 17, 2017 2:50 pm

I do play on the hardest difficulty, and if a race is left alone to expand, it doesn't matter which race, they will excel due in no small part to the cheats they use. The toughest races I face are most often the biggest, and those are Meklar, Klackon and Sakkra (edit: Oh, and for reasons that I have yet to understand, Bulrathi are monster expanders, but have no traits to help in this area. Yet they are often huge, beating the Klackon/Sakkra in early expansion). Very rarely do the Silicoids make the top 4. They just grow too slowly, even with the ai cheating.

I've written extensively why cybernetic is the best trait in the game, so it's no surprise the Meklar give you trouble.

I'm playing creative races now because up until now, I've avoided it so it's one of the few major traits I haven't tried to exploit yet. Creative comes with +50% research (which normally costs 6 race points) so in essence you are paying 4 race points to get every tech for each tier you research. 4 race points is not a bad deal. The problem is that in my experience +50% research is not worth 6 race points.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Tue Oct 17, 2017 3:25 pm

In Moo2 I'd always select "uncreative" because it provided more of a challenge rolling with whatever the tech the game allowed me to have. There was always a preferred choice at each tech, and it was just too easy (not to mention boring after awhile) to select the same path given a choice. I used the extra points to either neutralize parts of the game I didn't like or buttress skills I was inclined to ignore.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Oct 21, 2017 4:34 pm

So after my cybernetic/creative game, I needed something that would kick ass. I had been playing catchup the entire game with the creative race, so this time I wanted something that would keep up and then exceed the cheating ai.

This is what I used:
Cybernetic
+50% production
+25% growth
-20% ship cost (I can't praise this trait enough. Huge deal if you can afford it)
-25% beam attack (not great, but you can find tech to offset it, or just use missiles/torps the entire game)
-25% beam defense (ugh. One of the weaknesses of the ai is that they use beams/cannons before they have the targeting computers to hit with them. This makes it so they can still hit you. Terrible pick)
Small HW (smaller worlds grow faster and terraform easier. Not as bad a pick as it might seem. You're going to be expanding like a mofo anyway, so this only matters very early on, and since you won't fill up early on, it's basically free points).
uncreative (I wish this didn't come with a -25% research, but you need points from somewhere, and this is one of the traits that give a decent amount of points).
Repulsive (a free 2 points. While it might make things slightly tougher, especially when the ai goes to war with each other so you can't keep both sides happy, but otherwise, not even noticeable).

You can live nearly anywhere because you only need 1/2 the food of other races, and you can build anywhere because you get 50% more production per pop. The growth is nice but I think I'm going to use the points for something else next time. Most of my planets were full long before the game ended and micromanaging moving the pop to new colonies becomes too much of a chore around mid-game.

This race destroyed the ai. I had completely conquered the Sakkra and was working on the Darloks when I won a economic victory. I was the hugest, most technologically advanced, with the biggest fleet, all by a significant amount. I was the only one able to research the science victory tech (I avoided it for awhile) and could build it in a single turn if I wanted to do so.

The game ended on turn 264, whereas I lost my last game in the mid 300's I think.

This is probably my best race to date.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Sat Oct 21, 2017 5:02 pm

Do you build Cloning Centers? Especially on larger planets?

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Oct 21, 2017 5:12 pm

dbt1949 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 21, 2017 5:02 pm Do you build Cloning Centers? Especially on larger planets?

Yes, if I get them (uncreative = random tech).

There are very few colonies where I wouldn't build them. The math says they are worth their weight in gold on most planets, but especially the large ones. They also help when you move pop from older, more established colonies to newer ones, as they help grow back the pop you just moved. The closer to full a planet is, the more the cloning centers help. Well, they also help on low population planets too, but usually don't have the production power to build them. Planets grow slowest when they are at low or high pop.