MOO2 Tricks

[TERACytE]

I've been a frequent visitor to this forum for sometime (ever since I dusted off my MOO2 CD a year ago). One thing I have noticed is that some people have great tips for squeezing out extra research or development points, or neat tricks to colonize faster then your opponent. These are all great, but I find it's such a pain to search all of the threads for these cool tips.

Hence why I started this thread. If you have a great idea or cool trick for MOO2, why not list it here. This way it's in a single thread which people can search.

I apologise if this has been done before but I did not find it.

Here's my addition:

When researching a technology, once your research hits 50+%, move most (if not all) of your scientists to production. Your research will finish in about the same time & you sqeeze extra production from your planet for 2 or 3 rounds.

[Brutalisk]

Wrong terracyte... that can only apply for 100% tech. I wouldn't even do that for a 99% tech, let alone 50+%

Why? In multiplayer, aka competitive games, every turn you lose out on tech counts!

[Whoha]

Don't know many tricks, well the random number exploit.

test

[TERACytE]

In multiplayer, aka competitive games, every turn you lose out on production also counts.

This is simply a tip. I have found it useful when you have a low production/high tech race. Production gets completed 2 or 3 rounds quicker. It's a trade off with the tech points that you loose. With Research labs, or other buildings which produce research points every round, your % of tech goes up. The percentage is simply "the odds that next round you will 'discover this tech". So you have a chance every round of discovering it. I've had tech at 30% being discovered the very next round, and some remaining undiscovered untill 100%.

However, with production, it is a different story. Production can only complete when all the production points are produced; never before (unless you purchase it).

So if you have a scenerio where your tech is at 50%, and you still have 10 rounds until a building (or ship) is completed, it makes sense to move a few scientists over to production.

Now this is a judgement call, you do not have to do this everytime. But if you are trying to build a colony ship to expand, and the tech you are researching is something which is not as pressing, then keep this tip in mind.

BTW, what is the random number exploit?

[Whoha]

Some events in the game are determined by a random number. Declarations of war,spying,what you get from scrapping ships/conquering orion,etc all depend on this.The thing that generates the numbers generates a series of them(I've forgotten what its called), and always generates the same ones. You can use up the random numbers until you get an outcome favorable to yourself in all of these situations by contacting someone or in some cases firing weapons during a battle that weren't fired.

[vmxa1]

The research trick is probably only used by reloading players, same as the RNG.

If you have 60% and move scientist to soemthing else and fail to get the tech when it would have otherwise been learn, it is bad.
The only way to get the best of both worlds is to reload until finding the min values to get the tech. This is cheating of course.

Same for the RNG for say a battle or a spy event. You can't know you need to adjust unless the out come was one you do not want. Then you can reload and alter the out come by doing something, such as adding another spy to stop a thieft.

The research gambit, exploit, cheat, whatever you want to call it is not worth doing after about turn 100 or there abouts anyway. You have too much going on.

Now for a legit ploy, well known I am sure. If you are a uni race, sell your barracks at the first turn. Later (if not a tele) you can rebuild the barracks for those troops.

In a real special case, some will sell the star base, if they are a Unitol as the production can rebuild it quickly later. The saved maint and addition gold can be very handy.

This is not a good plan if you have an aggressive race close to you.

[Old n Slow]

I've noticed that production carries over (even though research does not -- so one may want to decrease the allocated study to "just 100%" instead of 'way over 100%') -- so sometimes one can bump up a cheap item in the production que (like a freighter) and still get the BB in that same number of turns.

Production is also "saved". One can spend five turns towards a BB & get halfway there, switch to housing for a while, then switch back to the BB and continue to produce the second half of the ship.

Second hint that I'll often try to do is to time my production of a major warship to appear one turn after a relevant improving tech is discovered -- then quickly redesign the ship and next turn -- the improved version hits the surf.

[Brutalisk]

Teracyte: you come here asking for tips... I urge you to try your "50% trick in multiplayer against good players... you'll be mightly disappointed.

Old n Slow's tips are something worth taking note of, especially on removing the EXCESS tech so that u still have 100% for that turn.

[TERACytE]

I appreciate all of the comments; I found it's useful trick when playing the computer (used it today in fact). I've never played MOO2 in multiplayer.

Does anyone have any new tricks/tips to contribute to the thread?

[Brutalisk]

It's better if you ask specific questions about things you want to know...

[siron]

TERACytE's trick isnt bad.

Many MP-freaks use it. It largely depends on the tech that you research.

For example:

Some building like: robos, supercomp....etc and you know that u dont have enuff PPs saved to build it immediately after breakthrough....
The tech isnt that useful 1 turn earlier, when Teracytes trick fails. So u can try it. It is worth the risk.

Some wartech:
U are under attack....and u research for zort etc....RPs are more important in this case to survive....

[Croesus]

My trick is to not get killed. Well how about some real advice.

When your build queue reaches the end, your planet will default to 'trade goods' once production is complete. When it is finished, you get that turns production converted into money, and you can still use this production to build with. However, I think that you lose all surplus production, so it can be bad early game.

As for that tech trick, I use it when I am not in a rush to get tech. You must be careful that you aren't wasting production in pollution though. Also, I use it if I am winning.

If you are playing the computer, do you really need tricks? Isn't playing a uni-tol race a big enough cheat? Ofcourse I still think that with a unitol race that warlord is better than +p LHW, but I think that it is a matter of playing style.

[siron]

"When your build queue reaches the end, your planet will default to 'trade goods' once production is complete. When it is finished, you get that turns production converted into money, and you can still use this production to build with. However, I think that you lose all surplus production, so it can be bad early game."

No, even the surplus production is saved. It is just a bug. Using this bug is the so called CREDIT CHEAT. To avoid such crazy bias in 1.31 MP-games the following rule was formulated:

11. CREDIT CHEAT. All players must put housing at the end of all of their production queues and leave it there for the duration of the game.

BTW, this bug is fixed in the 1.4 patch.

"Ofcourse I still think that with a unitol race that warlord is better than +p LHW, but I think that it is a matter of playing style."

Sure, your race wins against the ai...and if you find rich or better in the first two systems that race is pretty strong.

1pop-housing is extremely important, therefore it is the best strategy to build cbases at start (for uni races). +p is an extremely good pick in combination with unitol because It gives you 7 prod per turn at your homeworld. (30 prod vs. 23).

Unitol without +p and without rich planet in hw is really a very slow start! So your race seems to be risky.

Best strategy for Warlord seems to be an attack at turn 70-75...the time where a prod races has researched the supercomps. (So you have a chance to steal them.)

If u don't have a very good start, with many rich planets you will have a problem to research the necessary wartechs for such a strike.

Generally warlord is preferred in combination with uni aqua. Aqua has no food problem at all. But your race has to take and build hydros?! If it has to take soil it is surely too slow. And it is a long way to ion drive without solving your food problem.

For example uni aqua warlord rhw and +p has also 30 prod at start. (Like uni tol +p). After the cbases it can tech a lot of faster. And the warlord strategy even works if there is no rich or natives-planet in the neighbourhood.

[Croesus]

"Sure, your race wins against the ai...and if you find rich or better in the first two systems that race is pretty strong."

I did play a uni-tol +p LHW against the AI. My problem was that I had to put taxes ~40% to support my ships. the +p LHW helps quite alot at the begining, but warlord seems to help alot during mid-late game, since you might only need to tax ~10% or less. This difference in taxing means that during the mid to late game (given the warlord survives) warlords would have a higher production.

Another point I would like to make is that in the begining, if you encounter someone else soon, warlord does help because you can support more ships. For example, suppose you have 2 planets in your home system, and one expansion. How many Command Points would you have? Maximum 8, but more likely 6-7. A warlord would have 12-14, meaning atleast a 50% increase in CP, which I usually use for missile destroyers or defensive ships, making it easier to expand under pressure.

Maybe my problem is that I really haven't played online. I guess the people there don't use as many ships, and attack sooner, such that a cruiser is an attack force.

[Croesus]

Sorry, I forgot a few other things. Warlord ship crews have bonuses of crews +1 level than their actual level. This means about +10-20 to hit and defense. Considering that +25 def cost 3 and +20 to hit cost 2, this seems like it is nearly a good deal with just these bonuses. What I do is use beams onse I have battle computers, and outfit my ships with nr af ap co lasers (if no one has shields), then later use af ap mass drivers, then to neutron blasters. Because I attack early, and with laser cannons, the meklar give me alot of trouble because of their regeneration.