Trying out moo2 again

[Father Beast]

OK, it looks like that worked. I applied the 1.3 patch, and Then the 1.31 patch, and it works.

I finished my psilon game and immediately started another as the trilarans.

it is kind of odd to send a ship travelling without engines

but I miss the creative. having to choose between techs makes it a different game.

won that one pretty fast, in 320 turns. I colonized like mad and sent outposts to everywhere I could reach. I only had 5 systems, but I guess the game counts all those outposts, too. Because I found myself electing myself to be High Master.

I'll have to try klackons to find out how much uncreative sucks.

[Zoetrope]

Re capture of Antarans: near max tech the game's over, so capturing Antarans is icing on the cake. When it really matters is earlier in the game. Play a modified Bulrathi with +20 GC and practise capturing until proficient. Develop a few GC techs, sure, but if you prepare well you should be able to take an Antaran ship or two before mid-game, and then unleash the power of the Ancients!

[Zoetrope]

FB> I finished my psilon game and immediately started another as the trilarans.

Trilarians with two "i"s, although in their picture they have many more than two.

FB> it is kind of odd to send a ship travelling without engines

Tactical ship combat falters when my ships have no engines: my ships can't move. Do you get that bug?

FB> but I miss the creative. having to choose between techs makes it a different game.

That's the correct progression: use Creative to become acquainted with what each of the techs do, so that whenplaying without it, you know what you prefer to choose.

FB> won that one pretty fast, in 320 turns. I colonized like mad and sent outposts to everywhere I could reach. I only had 5 systems, but I guess the game counts all those outposts, too. Because I found myself electing myself to be High Master.

I don't think Outposts contribute to the Vote, as their population is zero. What you may have observed is the larger population of Trilarians due to their treating Tundra and Swamp worlds as Terran, and Terran and Ocean worlds as Gaian.

Incidentally, recent real-life astronomical developments suggest that Tundra and Ocean worlds may be up to 10 times more common than Terran ones.

FB> I'll have to try klackons to find out how much uncreative sucks.

Uncreative is highly variable (the opposite of Creative which is so predictable) so in one game it may be almost harmless, but in another it may be a nightmare. ("What? No research _or_ factory technologies?")

[Tiemler]

Tactical ship combat falters when my ships have no engines: my ships can't move. Do you get that bug?

When you self-destruct, do you still get a warp core breach?

Incidentally, recent real-life astronomical developments suggest that Tundra and Ocean worlds may be up to 10 times more common than Terran ones.

Does that estimate already exclude worlds with oceans of methane, etc?

[MORON]

Originally posted by Zoetrope
Re capture of Antarans: near max tech the game's over, so capturing Antarans is icing on the cake. When it really matters is earlier in the game. Play a modified Bulrathi with +20 GC and practise capturing until proficient. Develop a few GC techs, sure, but if you prepare well you should be able to take an Antaran ship or two before mid-game, and then unleash the power of the Ancients!

But the points for Heavy G, +20GC can be used for better things than relying on random events. Popping Orion early (as the Ai rarely does) would probably be far more reliable, or simply conquesting/expanding big enough to win at mid game.....

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by Zoetrope

Tactical ship combat falters when my ships have no engines: my ships can't move. Do you get that bug?

err. I never encountered another ship while I didn't have engines

Originally posted by Zoetrope
FB> won that one pretty fast, in 320 turns. I colonized like mad and sent outposts to everywhere I could reach. I only had 5 systems, but I guess the game counts all those outposts, too. Because I found myself electing myself to be High Master.

I don't think Outposts contribute to the Vote, as their population is zero. What you may have observed is the larger population of Trilarians due to their treating Tundra and Swamp worlds as Terran, and Terran and Ocean worlds as Gaian.

FB> I'll have to try klackons to find out how much uncreative sucks.

Uncreative is highly variable (the opposite of Creative which is so predictable) so in one game it may be almost harmless, but in another it may be a nightmare. ("What? No research _or_ factory technologies?")

Actually, I meant the high council is supposed to be called after 2/3 of the galaxy is colonized (at least it was that way in moo1). I only had five systems, the next player had 2, and the third had only one system. That's a total of 8 systems with actual population on them. but I had about 20 - 25 other systems with outposts on them. in fact, the high council was called for the first time after I dropped one of my outposts.

I'm certain I won right off because of population, like you said.


In my current klackon game, I find uncreative to be a big pain. I fortunately was able to trade for Automated Factory and Research Lab, but what a bother to research a tech you don't really want in hopes that the next one in line will be useful .

[Zoetrope]

GameGeek: PWN appears to also be either a common-language or a commercial term in Polish and Nederlands, but according to the Urban Dictionary (found by Google search) it's computer game oriented meaning is indicated by this first of ten entries on the word:

ENTRY 1. pwn
PWN (verb)

1. An act of dominating an opponent.

2. Great, ingenious; applied to methods and objects.

Originally dates back to the days of WarCraft, when a map designer mispelled "Own" as "Pwn". What was originally supose to be "player has been owned." was "player has been pwned".

Pwn eventually grew from there and is now used throughout the online world, especially in online games.
EXAMPLES:
1. "I pwn these guys on battlenet"

2. "This strategy pwns!" or "This game pwn."
Source: Tactical Ghost, Sep 1, 2003

[Zoetrope]

Tiemler: The estimate is a ratio of Ocean+Tundra worlds to Terran worlds. It doesn't depend on whether these frozen/liquid water worlds are common or rare compared to gas giants or to airless rocks.

It appears from isotopic abundances among meteorites that a supernova explosion occurred within one lightyear of the solar system during its early formation. The energy of the blast at such a close range is calculated to have been enough to have greatly diminished the orbital extent of the Kuiper Belt (of outlying icy planetoids such as Pluto), blown most of the light gases from Neptune and Uranus, diminishing them from full-sized gas giants to their present size and status as Ice Giants, and reduced the water content of the inner solar system by a factor of 10. So, without that event, the Earth would have become an Ocean world. And we'd be Trilarians.

The was reading New Scientist magazine,

http://www.newscientist.com/home.ns

when I came across the article entitled "Hell's Kitchen", of which this is an enticing online extract:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424716.500

Here's an interesting site dedicated to the Kuiper Belt:

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/kb.html

[Zoetrope]

Tiemler asked an excellent question, concerning which I've only just twigged to its significance: "When you self-destruct, do you still get a warp-core breach?"

In other words, how does the game interpret a self-destruct sequence when a ship has no combat engine and no warp drive, but only a crew who "warp space with their minds"?

There should be no warp drive because i hadn't researched any.

I know there was no tactical engine, because the ship was stationary during combat.

Trilarians travel 2 parsecs/turn faster than normal crews, so I should have measured the ships' warp speed. If it was 2, then the base speed was 0, meaning that MOO2 sees no engines. Whereas if it was more than 2, that would mean that MOO2 was treating the ships as if they had warp drives without my researching warp technology.

Unfortunately i'm not in a position to test these hypotheses now because i'm under an absolute computer game ban until my thesis is complete. That's why i'm posting more these days instead of playing.

[Zoetrope]

Tiemler: i misread your other question too, but unwittingly gave the answer, viz. that the ratio was ten Water Ice + Water Ocean worlds for each Terran (mixed land and water) world.

Hmm, the data suggests that Ice worlds should be much more common than Tundra planets (continents of land with frozen water). In MOO2 unfortunately there isn't an option to find Ice worlds or to then terraform (Ocean-form?) planets to make them Gaian for Trilarians.

[Zoetrope]

I mean: immediately Gaian. It should be one step from Ice to Ocean. But instead we have to melt the ice of Tundra worlds to make Swamp worlds (no better, i.e. exactly as good, for Aquatic races) , and then to terraform again to make them Terran, i.e. as good as Gaian.

[Zoetrope]

FB: What size galaxy were you in? 25+8 = 33 claimed planets is less than 2/3 of a Huge galaxy (where I usually play(ed)).

Still, it does seem clear from your observation that for the purposes of the vote what matters to MOO2's Council is how many planets have been flagged, not how many have been settled.

[MORON]

For some reason all those posts look like a attempt at +1...... 4 posts in a row??

[Aabraxan]

Originally posted by Father Beast I fortunately was able to trade for Automated Factory and Research Lab, but what a bother to research a tech you don't really want in hopes that the next one in line will be useful .

FB, you may be aware of this, but when you pull up your Research Screen to pick the next tech, you can click on the title bar above each field, and a list will pop up showing you what's coming in that field. IOW, you should be able to tell from the beginning of the game what you've got coming in each field.

[Aabraxan]

Z, thanks for the clarification. I kept trying to piece together the meaning of pwn, but just couldn't do it. "He pwned the galaxy? Patently won nuisance? Perfectly warred noisily? Probably went north?" You get the picture. Now it makes some sense.