System Requirements?

[Antonin]

Does anybody know what the system requirements for MOO3 will be?

I've never played any of the previous versions of MOO. Any resemblance between this game and Space Empires IV (one of my all-time favorites)?

[Xentax]

Re: System Requirements?

Originally posted by Antonin
Does anybody know what the system requirements for MOO3 will be?

I've never played any of the previous versions of MOO. Any resemblance between this game and Space Empires IV (one of my all-time favorites)?

As quoted from the official website on the IG Forum (http://www.ina-community.com/forums/...hreadid=179399):

PC CDROM, also available for Macintosh

1-8 players

Windows®:
300 MHz Pentium II or better
128 MB RAM
8X or faster CD-ROM
250 MB Hard Drive Space
Direct X 8.0 Compatible Video Card (must be able to display 800x600x16bit)
DirectX 8.0 Compatible Sound Card
8 Player Network Play via TCP/IP (LAN or Internet)
Windows 95/98/2k/ME

Macintosh®:
G3 Macintosh - 300 MHz or Better
Macintosh OS 8.6 or Better
128 MB RAM
CD ROM 8X or Better
TCP/IP Internet capable connection for Multiplayer Play

**Please note that, based on current information, Quicktime will be required for Moo3**

The core gameplay elements are fairly similar to Space Empires IV -- you have warfare, diplomacy, economics, and espionage at your disposal, and your goal is to win however you can. MOO3 aims to reduce the amount of micromanagement that you have to personally conduct compared to SE4, among other improvements.

[Antonin]

Re: Re: System Requirements?

Originally posted by Xentax
The core gameplay elements are fairly similar to Space Empires IV -- you have warfare, diplomacy, economics, and espionage at your disposal, and your goal is to win however you can. MOO3 aims to reduce the amount of micromanagement that you have to personally conduct compared to SE4, among other improvements.

Thank you for the information. I rather hope there is some micromanagement left in the game, otherwise, what's the point? I personally don't want a game that just looks nice and plays itself. I want to get involved and make decisions, and sometimes I want to behave like a megalomaniaical control freak.

I play 4X games because I really enjoy the illusion that I am running a government and/or leading a nation/civilization etc.

[vmxa1]

That is why I was glad they dropped the IFP.

[Xentax]

Re: Re: Re: System Requirements?

Originally posted by Antonin


Thank you for the information. I rather hope there is some micromanagement left in the game, otherwise, what's the point? I personally don't want a game that just looks nice and plays itself. I want to get involved and make decisions, and sometimes I want to behave like a megalomaniaical control freak.

I play 4X games because I really enjoy the illusion that I am running a government and/or leading a nation/civilization etc.

You *can* micromanage as much as you want; while it makes vmxa1 happy, some of us wanted all that micromanagement *available* but have the game itself limit how much the players and player AI's could do in a single turn, in terms of micromanagement.

Either way, though, you shouldn't worry about the game not *letting* you micromanage; it's set up so you don't *have* to micromanage. Of course, if the AI doesn't do a very good job, we'll all end up having to clean up after it. I doubt that'll happen though; I won't consider it a challenging or rewarding game if the secret to victory is to out-micro-manage the players, especially the computer opponents...

[Grumbold]

Thats a classic dilemma of computer games. The player wants to discover clever strategies that allows them an advantage, but then get irritated if the strategy involves constant intervention. If its is simple as setting a governor to prioritise housing, food and industrial expansion properly or designing a balanced fleet of ships then setting it to repeat, people will complain that the AI is too dumb!

[Xentax]

Very true. The solution, IMHO, is for multiple strategies (and I mean truly at the strategic/planning level) to give you a shot at winning.

Infrastructure development should be easy to manage, and shouldn't (by itself) be a path to victory (unless, of course, your enemies are skimping on infrastructure because their strategy requires the funding elsewhere).

If everyone is putting a decent amount of effort into their infrastructure, it should still not be tedius, and there should be multiple paths to victory.

MOO3 has the multiple win conditions already down. The other half of it, IMHO, is how you go about achieving the victory you're after while thwarting your opponents in whatever victory paths they're pursuing.

MOO3 *aims* to do that by making diplomacy and espionage as (or nearly as) important aspects of the game as combat. If it works, and if the AI can use all 3 aspects effectively, we could have a real winner on our hands.

[Antonin]

Re: Re: Re: Re: System Requirements?

Originally posted by Xentax


You *can* micromanage as much as you want; while it makes vmxa1 happy, some of us wanted all that micromanagement *available* but have the game itself limit how much the players and player AI's could do in a single turn, in terms of micromanagement...

Either way, though, you shouldn't worry about the game not *letting* you micromanage; it's set up so you don't *have* to micromanage.

Fair enough. Those who don't want to sift through tons of details and decisions shouldn't have to. Ideally, the game will have intelligent AI ministers or governors who will do a fairly good job of shouldering the responsibilities the player doesn't want to be bothered with. I love 4X games and I want MOO3 to be the sort of game that appeals to all types of 4X players, so that the people who've worked so hard to develop it can be rewarded for their work.

But for those of us who want to get involved with the suppression of a rebellion on a single planet...hehe...

[vmxa1]

Don't misunderstand me, I do not want to micromanage, but it is required in every TBS I have played to get the most. If they can do it to the point that no advantage exist by just simply doing a better job than the AI, I will be fine. My concern was that they were going to prevent me form doing a better job if I could. I agree with Xentex that it should not be possible to win by building smarter than the AI, unless the AI chooses to to skimp on purpose. Gun or Butter. In Moo/Moo2/Civ3 you can be prosperous by smarter infrasturcture choices. One of the biggest problems to me in Ascendancy was all work you have to do to run colonies. Stars made it some what better by letting you set up a build pattern that all would use. Space empires was another one with a ton of busy work. I was worried that they would stick me with IFP and the AI would not be limited as well. Anyway we will soon know.

[Xentax]

I think the goal is for the AI (yours or theirs) to be good enough such that you can't give yourself a very big advantage just by micromanaging.

If I implied that you *can't* improve on the AI in the places where it's failing, sorry, that's not what I meant. IFP would have limited your ability to micromanage across the board, but it would still let you do "damage control" where it was most needed; and the AI players would have been similarly limited, so it wasn't a *penalty*.

How will it all work out? We'll see...I'm fairly hopeful.

[Antonin]

The important thing for me is to be able to actually play the game, not to have the game offer so few options and choices that it plays itself. I personally do not want a simplistic game. I don't want a "build lots of starships and blitz the enemy" game.

I suppose everyone has their likes and dislikes as far as computer games go, but expecting a good, immersive 4X/empire building game without micromanagement seems to me to be a contradiction. If you can't make lots and lots of decisions, to me there's no point.

I play and enjoy simplistic games like Starcraft and Age of Empires, but I have lots more fun in games like Civ3, Space Empires IV, Capitalism II, Patrician II and Championship Manager. I like lots of details.

My personal preference is for games that at least give me the option to be a control freak if I want to be. Ideally, such games will also give my gaming brothers and sisters who don't want to be control freaks the option not to be.

[Xentax]

I'm sure the game is still plenty complicated -- remember, most if not everything the AI does for you is still accessible, and modifiable, by the player. It's just that the player doesn't *have* to manage that stuff, if he doesn't want to.

I'm sure the "control freaks" among us will spend that extra bit of time and effort to "tweak" their colonies, so they get the exact ships they want in the right order, the right order of infrastructure facilities, the exact ratio of terraforming to development to military production, etc.

But if you're not interested in min-maxing that to the last drop, you can let those details be taken care of for you, with some higher-level directives -- the planet classification system, empire-level budget settings, etc.

Also, I think some aspects of the game will *have* to be player managed. I don't think the AI will generate ship designs in your empire (otherwise, if you do some designs, and it does others, how does it decide which to use?). Espionage may or may not be managed for you. I don't think diplomacy/Senate issues are handled for you anymore, either. So the empire-level issues are still very much dependant on you, and the fine details are still *available*, just not mandatory.

[Grumbold]

It sounds good to me. Micromanaging the last percentage point of efficiency out of your undeveloped homeworld and first couple of colonies makes excellent sense. Once you have two dozen industrial worlds pumping out your best battleship designs its good to be able to ignore the trivia and focus on what is more important.