What's wrong with MOO3 (Review)

[muxec]

Yes, SE4-Gold can really be great XXXX game, but i dont think that it'll be better than Space Rangers. The genre really needs some refreshing, but not MOO3-like refreshing

[Hydro]

SE4G had some interesting concepts, but it gets seriously bogged down in micromanagement h*ll by mid game. I don't think I ever finished any of my many games. For all its faults Moo3 at least tried to address this issue, although the lack of player feedback (or wrong feedback) on what was going on is (in my opinion) a serious negative design issue.

TB games seem to face a serious dilemma in the mid and late game tedium that develops as the games spiral out of control. It seems our choices are to ultra-streamline and simplify like GalCiv or to automate like Moo3. Gal Civ boiled their game design down to a few key social/military elements, which is fine except it gets a bit dry for me (and lacks feedback on what the bloody things do). I want ship design, and more than old Civ I-style combat. Heck, the Gal Civ combat is worse than Moo2 or SE4. Moo3 offers more depth, and with the patch you get some vital info on what you are doing. But, there is so much information that even if you hit TURN it can be overwhelming.

In my opinion Gal Civ made a nice try but it doesn't advance the TB game idea. Perhaps Moo3 tried to do too much, and suffered the consequences.

[krait23]

As far as micromanagement is concerned (which is indeed one of MoO2s weak spots in late game), I would have liked to see an improved MoO2-approach. Where all the buildings are still built individually on planets, but the automation is not just 'auto build' but something akin to MoO3s dev plans, which allows you to build (and modifiy) custom build queues, and on the planet screen, if you put it on auto you select which queue to use for this planet. And if a new building is researched, you can stick it into the dev plans where you want that building built, leave it out of the others, and its put into all current queues for the affected planets in the position you assigned to it. So instead of having to modify the build queue for every research capable planet when you get the supercomputer, you just have to modifiy one or three dev plans.

That would be how MoO2.5 should handle micromanagement imo...

Lata
Krait

[Hydro]

Krait - you are correct, but your approach is for a more sophisticated gamer. I am almost sure that Moo3 was targeted at the more casual gamer who wouldn't know a dev plan it if hit them on the head (more people/buyers = more $$). If you are going after a larger market then you have to automate more, which is what Moo3 did.

Still, I would have loved to see your approach so the stupid governors could be finally lobotomized.

On possible problem is that your plan would be much like Gal Civ, which largely does away with planet types, sizes, and limits terraforming options. Again, you are sacrificing depth for ease. So, while Moo3 aimed at the casual gamer they also provided enough detail so that anal retentive types like me could delve into its (purposefully?) obscure depths, while allowing the casual folks to handily ignore it. The result was frustratingly opaque system which satisfies no one since the casual gamer has no idea what is going on (even at a macro level) and the more serious folks can't quite understand what the latest factory improvement really does, and why they should care.

[Spectrex]

The problem with MOO3 has never been that QS implemented a bunch of crappy features, but that the end result was poorly designed and unpolished. I would even venture to say that the entire affair was amatuerish - inexperienced coders led by inexperienced management. See Ion Storm and Daikatana. At least outwardly, the two parallel nicely: a development company with little or no prior history attempts to create a revolutionary game, and in the process undergoes significant staff and design changes, and several release date extensions. The final product of all this turmoil is, perhaps unsuprisingly, crap.

[Grumbold]

On the RPG front I admire NN for what it is but appreciate that it can't replace the one player per party based RPGs, which I like too. Its done exactly what it set out to do by cornering the multiplayer D&D market though.

The D&D games are awkward to compare because the bulk of the rules (what does a fireball do, how many XP to gain a level, what % chance does a thief have to pick a lock etc) is enforced by an outside company under strict licencing rights. The developer can only innovate in certain ways even if they wanted to, basically the interface and the graphics. My criticisms of IWD2 are entirely focussed on the awful unimaginative plot and to a lesser extent the difficulty, which are in no way advances on BG2.

For MoO, I would argue that the "don't touch what ain't broke" rule was already thrown out the window when they castrated MoO1 to make a civlike MoO2.

[krait23]

I still think MoO2 is a whole lot closer to MoO1 than MoO3 is to MoO2... There is a certain mesure of departure, but not nearly as radical. Kinda the golden median between progress and conservation (probably since the changes were based on a tried and true system, not something completely revolutionary and new)...
MoO3 is a good (or rather bad) example of too much progress and the C&C series (at least as far as I played it) would be a good (or rather bad) example of too much conservation...

Lata
Krait

[Grumbold]

Well I'd say they took away most of what made MoO original and unique to play when they remade Moo2 in the Civ mould, so it was more regression than progress, but then I guess you knew I'd say that.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Hydro
But, there is so much information that even if you hit TURN it can be overwhelming.

I look for as much realism as possible in a game so this doesn't put me off. MOO3 is childishly simple compared to what running a real space empire must be like.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Hydro
I am almost sure that Moo3 was targeted at the more casual gamer who wouldn't know a dev plan it if hit them on the head (more people/buyers = more $$). If you are going after a larger market then you have to automate more, which is what Moo3 did.

A better space 4x game for the casual gamer would have been Spaceward Ho! or even Ascendancy. I never considered MOO to be a casual game (or wanted it to be).

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Grumbold
I believe it is vital that games always seek to stretch beyond existing parameters and try something new. Even in an established series.

I agree with that in general, but Alan wasn't an experienced game designer, even though he tried to make an excellent game wholeheartedly. As I witnessed the design progress, it went from bad to worse.

Really, you can tell MoO 3 would be a lemon before it was finished.

[Grumbold]

Yep something clearly went wrong with the team put together to produce the game or the spec they were told to work toward. No doubt about that. Each item they introduced makes sense to me in isolation though, its just that the whole did not gel into something greater than the sum of its parts.

Still its the only game so far where I can be throwing armadas of titan class battleships at the enemy on all fronts in a desperate struggle to win the fight for the galaxy. The closest before that was probably Imperium Galactica 2 but that never rose above the 'one big fleet' strategy (and had a planet AI that was worse than Moo3 too.)

[Bored]

Yes, SE4-Gold can really be great XXXX game, but i dont think that it'll be better than Space Rangers. The genre really needs some refreshing, but not MOO3-like refreshing

AFAIK, Space Rangers isn't TBS (there are some elements like turn based space combat though). It is mix of RPG/Adventure (because there are quests,exp. points, skills, classes and so on) and gameplay very similar to Elite (i.e. free space trade,pirates,police,aliens and so on).

[Maverick88]

My single gripe is the lack of control over tactics. There is lots of strategy in the form of macromanegment. I love the diplomacy cause now if you aren't subtle your screwed. Most people say the diplomacy engine is screwy but it is in fact totally logical. I have found that these are the main factors regarding the "strange" alliance AI decisions.

1) They have better relations with a speices you're at war with and they side w/them.
2) If you get real big and powerful your relations worsen with everybody (jealosy).
3) You are framed so well thet you have no knowledge of this.
4) You sanction an embargo against a friend of the ally.
5) Your two races' beliefs are too different for a lasting relationship.
6) You claim a system they had their eye on but did not claim.
7) You send too large of a patrol or fleet through their space.
8) You disregard a senate policy or law.

Also the space battles start off small but by turn 200 or 250... my psilon ally and I had over 300 ships. We held off the combined forces of the Sakrra, Tachidi, and Meklar. The battle was epic. Never before in a space empire sim could you fight with allies at the same time.

MACROMANAGE!!! This was what the game was designed for. That is why there are many planets to a system. The user interface is a pain but once you get the hang of it it's easy. Once the game goes *click* in your mind there's almost nothing you can't do in it.

One more thing... Humans! Humans! Humans!

[wilebill]

MOO3 was the first MOO I encountered and I put about 25 hours into it before complete frustration set in. Then I discovered MOO2 and realized why everyone was so upset. Now after patch 1.2.5 came out I gave MOO3 another shot and find it playable and even fun, although still baffling frequently and often. I am really curious about Space Empires IV Gold after all that has been said about it and might try that too.

One upcoming game seemed appropriate to mention here, even though it is not turn-based, because it might have some relevance to players of MOO2 and to some extent MOO3. In MOO2 I think one of the neatest graphics is the colony ship squishing down on its air shocks, a much neater graphic IMHO than the colony ship breaking into four pieces and drifting down in GalCiv (which I also like). Then as the colony builds out you see all the iconographic buildings like in the Civ series, and those graphics were very well done for their time, which was when the 486 was still the big processor! But what was life like in those colonies?

Maybe someone else wondered the same thing because Firefly Studios, the people who did Stronghold and Stronghold Crusaders, are coming out with a new program this fall called Space Colony. Reason I bother to mention it here is that in looking at the screenshots I found myself being reminded of the graphics in MOO2 of the space colonies, although Firefly's colony components are obviously much neater and more detailed. Space Colony looks like a combination of rather perverse Sims and colony building, skirmishing with aliens, and so forth. RTS game I think, might be totally trivial and then again might not be. www.fireflyworlds.com or screenies at your favorite game site. Sort of like MOO freaked out on mind altering drugs?