After the code patch - Initial Reactions

[BobD]

The inability to lock the tech sliders is irritating. I've also noticed that the CLEAR QUEUED button on the Ship Design screen doesn't work!

I also hate it that I have to reset my preferences (namely view and sorting options on the Planets Screen) every time I start the program and it's not possible to "save" race picks (although you can reset them to default).

BTW I've read that it's possible to see which race is "in" colony ships. Does anyone know how you do this?

[CharlesBHoff]

Originally posted by BobD
The inability to lock the tech sliders is irritating. I've also noticed that the CLEAR QUEUED button on the Ship Design screen doesn't work!

I also hate it that I have to reset my preferences (namely view and sorting options on the Planets Screen) every time I start the program and it's not possible to "save" race picks (although you can reset them to default).

BTW I've read that it's possible to see which race is "in" colony ships. Does anyone know how you do this?

The form taskforce screem tell you which races is on the colony ship I believe.

[masotime]

Originally posted by KWAiRT
- AI building too many System Colony ships and Transports.

I am still constantly babysitting and micromanaging the AI.

Just do the same as pre-patch. Obsolete any transport/system colony designs when there are too many of them.

IMO it seems that other than this "mass system colony/transport" bug, the AI is generally quite good at allocating production of combat ships designed by the player. (My dev plan is very simple. Primary: Infrastructure, Secondary: Military and the last one is Research. I do this for ALL Planets. Can't be bothered with the other classifications)

-AI is using Espionage WAY too much on human players.

Oppression is driving me insane. My people are revolting and the costs are high to keep them in check. I have so many spies I've lost count. All of which are doing internal security. I'm not losing to espionage but the constant baby sitting of oppression and money put towards unrest is getting tedious. I lost 4 leaders to assasination and that is with a tonne of internal security and such oppression my people are revolting.. Mind you I have killed litterly hundreds of spies at this point... go figure...

Well, I do find the consistent murdering of military leaders annoying. If it helps, you should just concentrate on building political spies. I think any spy works as internal security against any other type of spy, and political spies build the fastest.....

-Tech Speed too fast.

Grey's mod really does improve the game when the tech is slowed down. You get to actually use some of the tech you have spent all that money on researching =) Do altered spreadsheets work in multiplayer? Does the host require the update or will both clients function independently allowing one player to speed up his tech?!?!

No comment. But personally, I have no problems with the tech speed post-code-patch.

-Alt Tab problems still.

I am still having problems when alt tabbing except instead of a surface error my mouse cursor looks funky and when clicking on things the target is way off to the left even tho the mouse cursor is in the right place. In effect it still doesn't work. Nothing I do will fix this. Latest Nvidia drivers and Direct X etc etc...

Well... did you do a clean reinstallation of MOO3? It might help. I am lucky to have not experienced this problem at all post-code-patch

-Tech Sliders won't lock.

At first it seemed if I left one unlocked they would remain the same but they just change when they feel like it... Why have a lock if this is the case?


I am just getting my military up and running now so combat will be much more common. PD BETTER be working along with planetary bombardment of military targets or I'm going to break something...

P.D. definitely works. I used to build only IF/Carrier fleets pre-code-patch, but now Short-Range Fleets with light mount weapons work fine. However, PD does not stop ALL missiles/fighters if they come en-masse, which makes sense IMO.

Sometimes missiles will suddenly "uncloak" in front of me and the PD doesn't fire - I solved this by adding a few PD missiles to my ships... when these missiles launch in the general direction of the enemy, they reveal any "cloaked" missiles, allowing me to shoot them down. It actually makes Spinal mounts quite useful

[masotime]

Originally posted by BobD
The inability to lock the tech sliders is irritating. I've also noticed that the CLEAR QUEUED button on the Ship Design screen doesn't work!

If I'm not wrong, Clear queued only removes ships which are in the second and third slots of a planetary build queue. It does NOT remove a ship which is currently under construction. I think this is mainly because you've already spent money on it, and may not really want to "clear it".

[BobD]

Originally posted by masotime

If I'm not wrong, Clear queued only removes ships which are in the second and third slots of a planetary build queue. It does NOT remove a ship which is currently under construction. I think this is mainly because you've already spent money on it, and may not really want to "clear it".

You are absolutely right. It's the second and third slots that I'm talking about. These slots are not cleared when I use the new button.

[Kloreep]

Originally posted by KWAiRT
Yeah that was me that said that about the sliders as it did appear to work but after playing a while you soon realize that you can't really lock them...

Actually, in my experience, you are quite right. However, it seems to only keep them locked one turn; each turn, all of them are unlocked, and the AI does eventually adjust them if you don't re-lock 5 each turn.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by krait23
Ok, well the main things I would have liked to see changed: (in order of importance)

- More convenient ship design (a'la MoO2)
- More influence and feedback in combat (including better graphics)
- Ship refit
- Thorough rightclick info on items and stats (a'la MoO2)
- Less fighting against planetary governors AI
- Leaders that actually matter and stay for a long time
- less erratic diplomacy
- Stats on stuff you research (as in hard numbers)

I am sure theres tons more but I havent played for so long that these are the only things that come to mind immediately. I think some of these things were adressed in mods. But the most important havent, and as far as I can tell they haven't been addressed by the code patch either...

So yes, basically I would like to see a MoO 2,5... But I could even live with MoO3 if only they would fix that which was good in MoO2 but is bad in MoO3 (Ship design, combat to a degree, I agree turn based fleet combat aint gonna work perfectly but the current system is even worse., Leaders, rightclicks, ship refits)....
But apparently they dont...

No wonder today you can earn $ 2.01 if you take a copy of MoO3 off Amazon.com hehehe

Lata
Krait

A fair enough list. Now to comments:

- More convenient ship design (a'la MoO2)

What's inconvient about the ship design now, other than it's different than MOO2?

- More influence and feedback in combat (including better graphics)

What more can you influence other than telling the task forces where to move, whom to attack, where to patrol, when to retreat?

Oh, you must mean "more control" based on the turn based combat of MOO2. It's been awhile but even in MOO2 you still simply clisked to attack, clicked to move, etc. Other than having to manage everything in real-time now, there doesn't seem to be much difference in combat?? Unelss I am missing something.

Regarding the graphics... They could be better, but have you ever zoomed in really close to the ships? They aren't *that* bad. They are pretty small, which is a lot more realistic compared to the biggest ships in MOO2 which were the same size as the planets if I remember correctly.

- Ship refit

One question: why? Other than the fact this was in MOO2, where your crews could gain experience so this was needed, why does it need to be in MOO3? It wasn't in MOO1, which is *much* closer to MOO3 than MOO2 was, IMHO.

- Thorough rightclick info on items and stats (a'la MoO2)

This is about 95% done for MOO3 in the patch. I think I have only found one or two things that didn't have in-game information about them with the patch. In some cases you can learn about something from right-clicking it than you can in the encyclopedia.

- Less fighting against planetary governors AI

Again, define "fighting". If you mean fighting over what get's built, the ability to lock the MBQ does *wonders* to lessen the micromanage headache that this game was when it was initially released. The ability to see what's being built and go straight to the MBQ/PBQ from the "Planets" list also cuts down on the headaches as well.

- Leaders that actually matter and stay for a long time

As opposed to the glorious leaders, who were *all* worth their weight in gold in MOO2? Seriously, the leaders in MOO3 are valuable depending on your situation. Play any low diplomatic race and get a leader that add's +15% to your diplomacy skill and see how much they matter. They usually stay until they die of old age, you dismiss them, or a spy kills them. I am about 65 turns into a recent, post-patch game and I have one leader who's been with me at least 40 turns.

- less erratic diplomacy

I agree with you here, Diplomacy could use work in general, but seems more stable since the patch. At least you can understand now why the AI does some things it does. Have a race that's at war with another group and you try to be "chummy" with both? Not going to happen. One or the other race will start becomming upset that you're friends with their enemies. Of course the game doesn't tell you this now, but it's something they are supposedly working on (I have my doubt but would be happy if they improved this as well.)

- Stats on stuff you research (as in hard numbers)

It's in the patch. You don't see "modestly reduced HFOG" any more instead you see "reduces HFOG 2%". You see the numbers as in range damage, etc on weapons. How much space the engines will use, and even the tech levels when you right click in a diplomacy screen when asking for or receiving an "exchange items" message.

So yes, basically I would like to see a MoO 2,5... But I could even live with MoO3 if only they would fix that which was good in MoO2 but is bad in MoO3 (Ship design, combat to a degree, I agree turn based fleet combat aint gonna work perfectly but the current system is even worse., Leaders, rightclicks, ship refits)....
But apparently they dont..

At least you're honest that what you wanted was MOO 2.5 instead of something new with the same theme. The problem is, of course, that all the stuff you want more like MOO2, a lot of others like and would *hate* if it went more like MOO2. MOO3 is a lot like Civ3, in that the people who loved the second version, didn't seem to like the third, but the people who liked the original seemed to like the third one better.

Go figure.

No wonder today you can earn $ 2.01 if you take a copy of MoO3 off Amazon.com hehehe

I'd bet that this is more from Amazon.com not knowing how to manage their inventory, rather than the game sucking. If the game was selling that bad everywhere you'd see the price at $20 every where you go instead of simply at Amazon. From rumors I have heard, Amazon was very slow in shipping the copies people had bought from them so they had a lot of cancelled orders. Since the game wasn't in the best shape on release it still wasn't selling as well as Amazon wanted. If you've ever bought a car from a dealer and gotten a deal because the dealer was trying to make room for the next year's model's you'd see what Amazon is doing.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST



Let me see:
5 has somehow become more extreme. The planetary governor now has the habit of building a lot of System Colonyships. Was probably implemented to let the AI-Players colonize more than just one Planet per System, but for the human player it means that you´ve got to be constant on watch or you end up having lots of System Colonyships in one System, but no System Defenceships.

Unless you lock the MBQ building system defense ships, even at one percent of spending. Nothing else BUT system defense ships (or whatever unit/ship you added before locking it) will be built once you do that. Have a colony you don't want building much? Have them either very slowly build defense ships, or one unit of troops (nfantry, marine, etc) Once you set spending other than what get's added to the PBQ, the Viceroy has never added more spending to what I placed in the MBQ to begin with once I lock it.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Kahn


Sorry Charlie, I hate MS just as much as the next guy, but it is painfully obvious when a company (QS) can manage to break the Bink API that it is not a DirectX problem!

Is Bink the company that made the AVI software that allows the cinematics to play? If so, the version that shipped with the game, 1.5 has known errors with Windows 98. It was only in the past few months that the company that makes the software fixed this in version 1.5d, or something like that.

If this is not the right thing then sorry.

[Kahn]

Originally posted by Ozymandous


Is Bink the company that made the AVI software that allows the cinematics to play? If so, the version that shipped with the game, 1.5 has known errors with Windows 98. It was only in the past few months that the company that makes the software fixed this in version 1.5d, or something like that.

If this is not the right thing then sorry.

I'm running a Win 2k platform, so I have never experienced any errors (except for MoO3's flawed implimentation). I've also have toyed around with the API somewhat and have found it to be remarkably well written and extreamly stable! The only difficulties I've experienced even remotely connected with BINK is the playback (but the following I must point out is true no matter which codex you use for playback) will studder if you CD-ROM drive is set to read-ahead disk caching. Set the drive to no disk caching as you would for any multimedia app and you will not experience any problems.

[CharlesBHoff]

Re: Just experience...

Originally posted by Kahn

Unfortunately the gaming marketplace has bred some pretty shoddy releases from some of the more unscrupulous publishing houses out there. Bioware I have not had any experience with, but Interplay has been known for some time to release buggy merchandise, long enough for many gamers to shy away from them (though IMHO I do not feel they are the worst by a long shot.) You don’t have to use DirectX to have a bad piece of software, just look at Simon & Schuster Interactive, haven’t seen even one release that would run without crashing out-of-the-box! No DX at all, just plain bad programming. Many games you have may be crashing because of bad implementation of DirectX, not DX itself. For the ones that crash on startup, if you change your display resolution to match the resolution of the game screen, you should find that most will run OK. This is a result of the programmer not checking the screen metrics (GetSystemMetrics) and changing the resolution before attempting to draw the DX screen. This is a commonly encountered problem and is not the fault of DX, just lazy programming.

I would suggest that if you want to see some examples of good programming in DX, look at releases from Blizzard, CaveDog (at least TA was good), and most of EA’s releases (though they have had a few dogs). In terms of programming complexity Total Annihilation, Starcraft, Rainbow Six & Civilization III all run rings around the simplistic MoO3. Heck, even this web page is more complex that any of the GUI’s in MoO3, and it don’t crash.


Actually, you can! Though these are third party tools, I have used them with no ill effects (though I always followed up by reinstalling the version of DX I wanted on my machine).
Here is an example of one of the better ones.
Here are some others...

Thank to the tool to remove DX as I think some games that install DX donot remove the old files that arenot needed anymore, plus I have than old turn base space strat games that want only DX 3.0 to run and nothing later will do.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by BobD
I've also noticed that the CLEAR QUEUED button on the Ship Design screen doesn't work!

This has worked for me - the only thing you need to realize is that only queued ships will be removed from the que; ships already being built WILL NOT be removed. Also, if you don't "Obsolete" a ship the build AI will just plop it back into the queue after you remove it.

My initial reaction to the patch:

I'm actually playing MOO3 again, and now I'm enjoying it. Of course I'm only 100 turns into my first post-patch game.........

[BobD]

Originally posted by Stuie

This has worked for me - the only thing you need to realize is that only queued ships will be removed from the que; ships already being built WILL NOT be removed. Also, if you don't "Obsolete" a ship the build AI will just plop it back into the queue after you remove it.

I do understand that it will only clear ships that have not yet started production. However, your point about "Obsolete" may help. The ships I try to clear are always obsolete, but I don't remember if I used the CLEAR button before I made them obsolete or after. Which should it be?

[Ozymandous]

Clear then use the obsolete button. Sorry, had that backwards before (been a few days since I had used this, but checked last night).

EDIT: Post the correct order instead of the backward one.

[krait23]

What's inconvient about the ship design now, other than it's different than MOO2?

I forgot the details since I havent played for so long, but if I remember correctly you couldn't change weapon properties without deleting the stack and adding a new one. That is my main gripe. I think there were other annoying things, having to do with engines, the mandatory equipment, the names, and the autobuilder, but it has been too long to remember details. All I know is that a 1:1 conversion for MoO2s Ship design would have been a whole lot better....

What more can you influence other than telling the task forces where to move, whom to attack, where to patrol, when to retreat? Oh, you must mean "more control" based on the turn based combat of MOO2. It's been awhile but even in MOO2 you still simply clisked to attack, clicked to move, etc. Other than having to manage everything in real-time now, there doesn't seem to be much difference in combat?? Unelss I am missing something.

In MoO2 you could control and check individual ships. Withdraw them if they were damaged, divide weapons fire to different targets (actually fire every weapon stack individually if you so wanted), move them into position to hit the damaged shields, etc etc... SO much more tactical than what I have seen from MoO3. And so much more control... At least a pause-button would be needed (I am not sure if that is in or not, but I seem to remember that there was no pause?)

Regarding the graphics... They could be better, but have you ever zoomed in really close to the ships? They aren't *that* bad. They are pretty small, which is a lot more realistic compared to the biggest ships in MOO2 which were the same size as the planets if I remember correctly.

At least MoO2 offered different hulls for every weight class (xcept DoomStars) for every race. I would far prefer that in 2D over what MoO3 gives in 3D and I don't think it can be that hard to do in 3D. Homeworld for example is old, runs pretty smooth with lots of space and tons of ships around, and those ships are huge. MoO3 tactical combat in the homeworld engine, I would expect Dreadnoughts to be the size of Homeworld Fighters, and a far far far smaller expanse of space... Should run with little problems (I think, of course I am no programmer so I dunno for sure).

One question: why? Other than the fact this was in MOO2, where your crews could gain experience so this was needed, why does it need to be in MOO3? It wasn't in MOO1, which is *much* closer to MOO3 than MOO2 was, IMHO.

Because refitting an old ship is much cheaper than building a new one? Imagine the US Navy trashing their fleets and building new ships everytime there is a technological advance... Ships are refitted until the new stuff doesn't fit anymore or they age so much that their maintenance becomes too expensive so they are trashed...

This is about 95% done for MOO3 in the patch. I think I have only found one or two things that didn't have in-game information about them with the patch. In some cases you can learn about something from right-clicking it than you can in the encyclopedia.

Thats good news, but I dunno if I will bother to experience it myself anytime soon...

As opposed to the glorious leaders, who were *all* worth their weight in gold in MOO2? Seriously, the leaders in MOO3 are valuable depending on your situation. Play any low diplomatic race and get a leader that add's +15% to your diplomacy skill and see how much they matter. They usually stay until they die of old age, you dismiss them, or a spy kills them. I am about 65 turns into a recent, post-patch game and I have one leader who's been with me at least 40 turns.

Well I was mostly referring to the leaders being little more than fodder for enemy assassins... If that has been remedied, then its OK..

At least you're honest that what you wanted was MOO 2.5 instead of something new with the same theme. The problem is, of course, that all the stuff you want more like MOO2, a lot of others like and would *hate* if it went more like MOO2. MOO3 is a lot like Civ3, in that the people who loved the second version, didn't seem to like the third, but the people who liked the original seemed to like the third one better.

I think Civ3 (which I happen to like almost as much as Civ1 and Civ2) is still very close to Civ2 while MoO3 bears almost no resemblance to MoO2. And while this is only my personal opinion and experience, I still think that there are far far more people who would rather see MoO3 closer to MoO2 than as far from it as it is....

I'd bet that this is more from Amazon.com not knowing how to manage their inventory, rather than the game sucking. If the game was selling that bad everywhere you'd see the price at $20 every where you go instead of simply at Amazon. From rumors I have heard, Amazon was very slow in shipping the copies people had bought from them so they had a lot of cancelled orders. Since the game wasn't in the best shape on release it still wasn't selling as well as Amazon wanted. If you've ever bought a car from a dealer and gotten a deal because the dealer was trying to make room for the next year's model's you'd see what Amazon is doing.

I got mine from Amazon too. They delivered it the day it was released, before I ever got the chance to cancel my order (whish they had taken longer lol). I am pretty sure that Amazon is indeed getting rid of them to make room for other stuff, but that is BECAUSE it sucks (Yes I know it doesnt, so lets say because they like many others think it sucks, and they prolly are aware of the customer reviews too hehehe)