So who knows about the moons?

[SeanV]

Okay, I'm wandering through this forum at 10:30 pm and suddenly I see on the news links that moons will not be directly colonizable.
Is this true? Can someone in the "know" enlighten me.

(If true does this mean that the moons regions will be treated as part of the planet that the moon is orbiting or that they simply won't be in the game at all?)

[Baro]

Hear

Re-read where you first heard about the moons, you will see it comes directly from the stat guide.

[H Tower]

so the moons are out then?

[Atragon]

Baro: Which is kind of funny since in one of the datadumps (don't recall which), it was mentioned that moons would be colonizable.

I specifically remember that because a related question was could the gasbag races colonize a gas giant while an oxygen breather colonizes the moons. And the answer was yes.

[Patriqvium]

According to a preview in the Finnish Pelit Magazine (which came out today) the moons are not colonizable, but counted instead to the total resources of the planets they orbit.

[Besuchov]

From what I hear on the official forum, moon colonization is abstracted. If you have a habitable moon orbiting your planet you get more living space and if the moon is mineral rich you get better mining(on you colony on the planet below).

[Xentax]

What Besuchov said is in line with what I've heard; and while I can't elaborate (yet), I will say that there's at least one good *gameplay* reason that the moon colonization thing has changed; it wasn't a technical hurdle, as far as I know.

Brownie points to the person who figures it out.

[ssims]

Why direct colonization of moons is out

I would guess that the reason for dropping this feature is the interface. Either you add the moons directly to the system information screen, which clutters it horribly, or you require the player to make an extra click when selecting a planet: do you want the planet or one of its moons. Incidentally, SEIV chose the second method, and I found the mandatory extra click to get very annoying after a while.
While I'm sad in part to see this feature go (in theory), in practice it will probably make the game more enjoyable.

[Baro]

Huh

Atragon, I remember reading in a data dump about IFP's, doesn't mean they are still in. Strat guide and official forums say no direct moon colonisation, get with the program.

[Zanthis]

It seems to me that the other question that arises around colonizable moons is planetary deffense. What happens if a hostile race colonizes a moon orbiting another races planet and then builds missle and star bases? Would the two colonies simply lob missles at each other until one was destroyed? Lunar colonies with rushed missle bases orbiting more valuable enemy planetary colonies would dominate early to mid game combate when fleets aren't large enough to deffend several planets similtaniously. Probably not what the designers wanted.

[dulahan]

I've followed the game since December 2k. And as far back as I can remember, moons were never going to be directly colonizable. Just added to resources of planet.

And I seem to recall that yes: a big reason was because planet based defenses would have to duel or something between moon and planet.

[playshogi]

dulahan: Here is the quote as of 10/21/01 from an article "part 1: game designers and programmers" fournd under "official comments" on the MOO3 website.

"Ownership of planets and moons: A "moon" works like another planet. You can own the planet and I can own the moon."

Not that it matters....
I'm thankful their gone as colonizable entities, but I hope they show up in tactical combat.

[RolandtheMad]

I thought there was a calculation about how big the colonizable galaxy could be that went like - Suns x Planets x Moons . Whatever happend to that?

[star mouse]

I thought the gameplay reason why moons were no longer colonisable was to reduce micromanagement. The game would be rather tedious if there were thousands of places to colonise. 256 suns x 8 planets x 4 places per planet (1 planet 3 moons) = 8192 places to colonise.

Now suppose you were exterminating a race that has colonised 1/10 of the universe. It would be like exterminating cockroaches - it would take a long time to hunt down every world they had. And they might be colonising nearly as fast as you're exterminating them....

[Zanthis]

256 suns x 8 planets x 4 places per planet (1 planet 3 moons) = 8192 places to colonise

But is every sun going to have 8 planets and every planet going to have 3 moons?