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MoOving In: A Detailed Preview of Master of Orion III
PART 3: THE JOURNEY BEGINS (Page 2)
By Daniel Quick | Apolyton CS Co-Owner/Administrator

AUDIO CLIP TITLE	LENGTH
Intro Movie Audio	(2m:49s)

MoO3's interface is not complicated enough to demand a memorization of the manual to comprehend it, but it is also not as intuitive as a point-and-click layout of an action or racing simulation title. Nor should it be. You can certainly have the game progress without much examination of the menus at your disposal but it will come at the cost of game length and ultimately your enjoyment factor.

Let me finish this aside by stressing not to let the 'Main Screen' or any of the menus I will painstakingly detail in the coming pages psyche you out. Talking about and playing the game are two different things. Next: while I provide a written overview of the 'Main Screen' below, you may find it beneficial to use the similarly named screenshot as a visual aid. I will also refer to parts of it directly in my discussion.

PRESENTING THE `MAIN SCREEN`
The icon that looks like a wheat stock with, in my example, the numerical combination '37/19', is an ongoing tracker of my race's food stores. These values, accurate during my thirty-second turn, show a healthy balance between food production and food demands respectively. It is the output of primarily bioharvest Dominant Economic Activities (DEA). Should I let the latter number rise too high, unrest and a deceleration of growth will result. At 50% population growth will reach stagnation, and below this mark starvation and if prolonged famine will set in. Quicksilver has placed this indicator first in the icon bar and justifiably so: an undernourished population is not a productive one.

Your Minerals icon refers you to the numerical duo that points you to the output of primarily the planetary mines under your control. The ratio presented here, '37/41' -- again referring to my screenshot example – is worrisome enough. The amount of minerals my race is producing here is not sufficient to meet the demand. I cannot wait for Achievements to help lower the factory consumption rate. Also remember that some species rely on this output for nourishment, such as the Meklar who as we recall from Part 1 technologically phased out their biological components some time before. As it will turn out, in a few turns this ratio improves such that I am out of the danger zone… thanks to a new planetary settlement of mine in the Kaff system.

The Industry icon is not present in the screenshot I have been referring to here. That said, it suffice to say that its singular value is “a measure of the operating potential of [a] planet's industry” that “acts as a funnel to determine the final cost of creating Production Points (PP)” ( MoO3 Manual (Page 58) ). My Production Points are '192' in my continuing example. The strength of my race's manufacturing power is shown here. As structure building cost is expressed in these terms, they are the Civilization series equivalent of shields.

Page 58 of the MoO3 manual may refer to image to the left of the '152' numerical value in the aforementioned screenshot as constituting in part a test tube, but I believe it to me more accurately described as a beaker. In any case, this is the quantification of the research potential of your planets. The combined output of research DEAs and your population, it directly impacts the cost of Research Points (RPs). Speaking of RPs, in the well mentioned example I have '231' of them plus another '206', denoted in brackets, indicate a supplement – and an ample one at that – from empirical operations. Pursuing scientific advancement is one of my most personally cherished strategies. As I will broach more fully in Part 5, I am less then successful in exercising military might in a battle over the planet Taben…