z

[catullus]

Anyone using the z key much in MOO2?
Playing without tactical combat doesn't appeal to me, but the later-day monster fleet shoot-outs are too boring to do by hand. Even autoplay button would take too long.
Finished a hard/large game yesterday, where almost all the serious fighting went in z mode. I just can't play a battle where both players have three or four columns of titan/battleships. What do you do at late middle to end game?

C.

[vmxa1]

I let them rip while I do something else. If they go first, I will watch to see how much damage they get in on the first round.

[vmxa1]

What is even more boring to me is having a 25-30 ship fleet attack a planet and not having the proper weapons to bust it quickly. The ship jerk around and do little and it take 3 or 4 rounds to get the job done. That is when I wish I had a stellar converter onboard.

[nato]

I tried this z key last night, but nothing happened. Does it just turn fast animations (normally under options) on?

Are you supposed to press it once, or hold it down? Is there some trick I'm missing?

I sure wouldn't mind a way to speed up late game battles, where victory is guranteed.

[vmxa1]

It never worked for me either.

[GePap]

If I don't have the right ships to take down planetary defenses, i just blockade the system and wait for the right ships to come along.

The most fun I have had in MoO2 has been in giant fleet actions. I remember one of my first games, in a low level (I almost always play a low level, even years after) in which it came down to the Psilons (me) vs humans, who had gotten Orion. This was before my greater experience in ship design, so i had designed my ships in very varried ways (had fighter heavy carriers, beam-heavy cruisers, ships designed with weak armor, strong armor, fast ships... a large combined fleet). The battle began, and since even then I had always won even with smaller fleets, the Humans had about a 2-1 advantage in numbers. Well, it became a huge and messy battle, with battleline corssing, lots of enemy boarding actions, and lots of ships lost, by me and him. He was lossing ships twice as fast as I, but he ahd twice as many. Unfortunitelly, after about an hour an a half of this huge battle, my computer crashed. After a few month and other games, i returned to an earlier save, and redesigned all my ships. The second time this battle occured, it was a once sided massacre were I may have lost 2 ships at most, not 30 odd as in the previous one (which never really ended). It was nowehre as fun...The patches made things better, but still.

[catullus]

Super-fast auto. Press once.
No point looking at main screen, just watch the little battle map to see the fleets melt away in a couple of seconds. Hurts mucho if you underestimated opponent's fleet, of course, really no chance to stop the slaughter.

Blockading doesn't work against AI, does it? I thought only wetware players got punished.

GePap: You actually played out a 90 minute battle? My games don't last that long.

C.

[bakalov]

I am using z if I am sure that I'll win .... In the early game I never use it when fighting missile bases. Always use it when the AI attacks one of my colonies and I have no ships, no matter what the result will be. I dont use it when throwing my entire fleet vs a larger one cause if I lose this will be devastating. Sometimes I make several shots by myself and when I see that they are dying easily then I press z.
Another reazon not to press z is if you hope to capture any ship .....

[GePap]

Originally posted by catullus

GePap: You actually played out a 90 minute battle? My games don't last that long.

C.

Well, it was a slow system to beign with, but if you count the fact that the computer had the maximum number of ships possible onscreen, with the smallest being battleships, and I had a fleet about 1/2 to 2/3 the size, and that it went on for several turns, meaning each battlline got al its ships to go for say 12 turns (each turn gets faster as more ships dies, but still, going through 90 ships each turn does take some time), it does eat up a lot of time. The second time it lasted 2 turns. In the first turn i destroyed 90% of his fleet. then he atatcked, then i quickly wiped out the rest. Nowhere as much fun.

[nato]

Is it known why the z key works for some people but not others? It sure sounds nice.

[bakalov]

I think the "z" function is added by one of the patches. Or at least it claims to be so .......