MOO2 Speculation and Questions

[Sovereign]

Thanks for your feedback, vxma.

Its odd though. The AI in MOO3 plops down colonies on every available planet, even if my fleet leaves the system for a turn, the AI usually manages to slip in a colony ship or two and re-establishes colonies. They even colonize red 2 worlds. Apparently the only planets they don't colonize is stellar converted planets (lava ball planets).

Then in MOO2, the AI sucks at colonization and re-establishing colonies.

Guess thats one area that MOO3 actually improves upon, despite its many flaws.

[Brutalisk]

Actually, once you are about to finish off a race, you should notice that several new colonies start springing around on the map - it's the AI race's last pathetic attempt to stay alive.

Also, the for all its other combat flaws, the AI does have a sense of retreating to save its ships from turn 1 , when your fleet is overwhelming compared to theirs, UNLESS, it's their last planet.

As for MOOIII's AI, well it BETTER BE GOOD! Why? MOO III forces you to rely on the AI to do certain things for you. Besides, MOOIII was made a lot of years after MOOII, so you would expect its developers to deliver a better product... (notice the use of the word "expect" )

[Whoha]

in moo2 ive seen the alkalari retreat from their only planet, interesting message said that the 6 ships were destroyed trying to retreat from the only planet, too bad they didn't go to one of their friends(me...).

[Sovereign]

So basically I gotta do the colonizing for the AI after I pass the "point" in the game when they longer self - colonize?

Damn, that kind of sucks.

Is there any work-able sites for MOO2 patches? Also what does the patches fix, if anything significant?

[vmxa1]

http://www.masteroforion2.com/patch132.htm

I can't vouch for how this plays, but take a look.

[Urban Ranger]

Bah, MoO 3 sucks.

[Sovereign]

Lets hope MOO4 will be better, if there ever will be any MOO4, due to the MOO3 fiasco.

[Ljube]

The best thing they could do is to complete the circle. MOO4 would best serve us loyal MOO players if it would be much more like MOO1 and much less like MOO3.

I anticipated MOO3 eagerly only to be very disappointed when it eventually came out.

[vmxa1]

I just wonder if they completely lost track of what people like in the first two games. Add in wanting to do something new and you can get way off the track.

[Garth Vader]

They wanted to do too much new stuff, but then had too many design changes and ended up just trying to salvage something.

They ended up removing everything I liked (or at least made it worse) from the first 2 games, but didn't add anything interesting to make up for it.

[vmxa1]

I know this is not going to be popular, but I hope they made money on it anyway.
If they did, then someone will try again down the road. If they took a bath, it will be a lot longer before any one takes another stab at a Moo game.
Anyway I already spent my money.

[Brutalisk]

Well, the fact that Atari is not really out there to provide nay patches for it should answer that question/wish for you

In these days money talks...


With all the success Moo and MooII had, it took so long to start developing MOOIII. Given the fortune of MOOIII, I don't expect to see MOOIV any time soon...

[Urban Ranger]

MoO and MoO 2 were written by Steve Barcia. So when Simtex folded, there was nobody to pick up the slack.

[Sovereign]

Well...

I think if a MOO fan started a company to develop MOO4, then all of us would pretty much be happy with the product.

For MOO4, I envision:

1. race and game customization
2. ship refits
3. terraforming of planets
4. Ability to build artficial planets up to a system's maximum # of planets (Moo2 was 5, MOO3 was 8)
5. MOO3's DEA to reduce micromanagement
6. option to build or not to build ground troops as well as auto ship-build
7. More variety in random events
8. The Sol system has 9 planets and 1 asteroid belt to reflect actual Sol system
9. AI's are constitient with treaties and alliances, like MOO2 (not MOO3's peace - war - peace - war)
10. Additional MOO fan ideas

[Garth Vader]

What made Moo and Moo2 great for me was ship design and combat.

Any Moo4 would have to return the focus to that. Plus improve the problems from Moo2.

Ship initiave: I would prefer a combination of BOTF and Moo2 combat. Where you select targets and move your ships like Moo2, but the combat happens all at once.

Ship size and command points: Moo2 made it difficult to keep enough ships to even defend yourself. Making colony/outpost/transports require no command points, and allowing a defense fleet to intercept incoming ships would help alot.

More variable tech: As it is this is fairly well done. From the ship design threads here it seems we have a decent variety of designs. But what made moo so good was that you often had to use different weapons that you'd not normally choose. But uncreative in Moo2 was a disaster because you'd have too many problems with industry/tech/food.

I'd also like to see the miniturization changed, so that you get improvements to size and damage from extended use of a weapon. If I never built a ship with missiles I shouldn't be able to use them as well as a race that's been using them for hundreds of years.

I'll do more at some other time!