Moo3's Death by a Thousand Cuts

[vmxa1]

What do you mean by a little smack down with the NET?
Do not waste time suggesting I have not played Moo2 or Moo1, as I am sure no one has played any more than me. (note I did not say I was the best player either so forget that)
I have looked at many fleets coming through the net and it is very hard to see the damage, it is so small. You can count the ships that are coming and see that none are destroyed, so where is the smack?
They are so close to being worthless that I can not measure any distinction.
So please quantive the damage you are talking about.

[vmxa1]

Ok just to set the record straight, here is a save that I sent my fleet into a net and only a few had any damage and that was not much. I did not have the top armor from Orion either.
This is at impossible which what I play most often.
Now if you are talking about someone sending in some very weak ships with low armor and shields, ok, I will buy that those will take more damage. Even the weakest ship you will see at impossible will not be destroyed by the net. I do not use planetary defense to protect my planets late in the game when I have the Net (if I have the net). Once I get the 3500 rp stuff researched, I will race for the Star gate. Now I will use warp interdictors to slow them down and my fleet to stop them. Even a maxed out planet with a Star Fortress will not stop fleets at this point, you will need ships. Ok if some how they are so far behind you it is laughable, it could happen, but that does not occur at impossible.
I will want the stellar conveter to use it on one doom star to destroy planets that I do not want to add to my empire. This prevents recolonization and my making a return trip to smash it again.

[RolandtheMad]

I think that there was a percentage of damage that the Artemis defence net did to every size of ship. If I still had my manual (or game) I`d look..

Why doesn`t someone just go into the game and look for this? I`m sure it exists.

[vmxa1]

The guide is a joke, it says that it will seriously damage a doom star and may destroy other classes.
The manual says that it has a CHANCE to do damage, based on class. Small is 20% chance, 30,40 and 50 for Huge, titan 80% for DS it is 100%.
Damage is 150-550 less armor and such. Shields have no impact.
Aa look at the results of the save I posted will show. I don't think any DS had any damage and no ship was more than scratched, that is a small bit of damage, that if you did not look close you would not see. Anyway a few hundred damage is not much to ships that will have Adamantium armor or better yet X-armor that is not going to be a concern. Specials like heavy armor will just make it a non event.

[TheMaestro]

You're way too senstive about Artemis Nets. The whole point is they are cutting things that are small and menial, not like they are saying something like, "We need to cut down the number of planets and redo the code."

Until the entire company went silent, the only info we had was something of some kind of save-game bug. That was three weeks ago?

Besides, with the strength of the modding community out there, there are more people out here than "in" there that could do work on the code anyways.

[vmxa1]

I am not sensitive about at all, I just tend to not let bad information go unchallenged. Honest, I do not give the Nets any thought.

[booklord]

I still maintain hope despite the several cuts......

I don't think I ever used the Artermis System Net. I simply wasn't worth the cost.

Losing the ability to refit ships sux but if ship crews don't get experience anymore it will cut down on the effect. Also given that fleet sizes may be much larger I can see where this will be less of an issue as well.

Capturing ships is a big loss. ( for me anyway... the transporter - nuetron blaster combo won me many a war in Moo2. ) So in that aspect the game will be more will moo1. But taking over an enemy titan with 1 marine was getting a little silly so I'll overlook it.

I remember first reading about IFPs.... They worried me since I wasn't sure the AI was up to the task. Then six months ago I learned they were axed for that very reason. I don't mind an somewhat imcompetent AI colony manager as long as it doesn't make really BAD decisions.

Suprisingly enough the cuts that really bother me is the inability to rename systems, choose your own empire color, and to choose what your ships look like. I really liked giving my empires my own personal touches.

[AIL]

Many seem to complain about missing Warp Interdictors... I got 2 things to say to this: Moo3 is Starlane-Based like Pax Imperia 2, You can simply use Choke Points to your favour! In PI2 Lane-Travel did not even take Time, it was immediately! They only needed Time to fly from one Wormhole to the next. So what to interdict?

I am more disturbed that it will work with Starlaned at all! Moo 1 had so much strategical depth by neither having Stralanes nor having Interdictors! It required smart strategies of fleet splitting, extra missile base building and relocation route setting to defend your empire, not simply moving the one and only fleet to the System where there'll be an attack within 3 turns.

I am a bit worried for what reason Bombs could be out... Sounds like there's either no need for em since other weapons do as well or they want it like in Imperium Galactica 2, where you could not bomb away the population/buildings and always conquered them.

[RolandtheMad]

Anyone know what exactly happend to the outposts?

[Grumbold]

I always used to play white or yellow because of their high visibility on the star map (and rename all my stars too.) If you absolutely have to be red then its going to be irritating and make the game unplayable for people with some colorblind problems.

I'm not going to get too excited about cut features until i know more definitely what other features are in the game. Refitting a dozen doomstars was easy, but if you have a couple of hundred in an equivalent fleet in MoO3 I can see why they might want to cut it. If you're not personally controlling all the special weapons to create powerful combo's there's probably less need to refit anyway since it will just be about increasing firepower. You can do that just by building new ships.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by AIL
Many seem to complain about missing Warp Interdictors... I got 2 things to say to this: Moo3 is Starlane-Based like Pax Imperia 2, You can simply use Choke Points to your favour! In PI2 Lane-Travel did not even take Time, it was immediately! They only needed Time to fly from one Wormhole to the next. So what to interdict?

It is supposedly both. There are warplinks that can be used by some ships, but all ships can move from one system to another in open space.

[warden]

It's weird that you can't choose which planet to attack as you could in MOO2. It's not clear how the choice is made when there is one but the player doesn't seem to have any control over it.

A side-effect of this is that it can be slow going conquering a multi-planet system. Having to do this one planet per turn is the same as MOO2 but there are many more planets in this game.

The shorter build queues are annoying (3 items). I don't find MOO2 difficult to micromanage because I load the build queues up to capacity and it only prompts you to check them when they are empty.

I miss the history graphs from MOO2 too. There's a lot more to manage in MOO3 but there are no time series to help you admire or check your progress.

I hear that you're going to get a blank screen when you click the turn button, like MOO2. You'll be able to chat with the other players, again like MOO2, but it will still be a major frustration that you can no longer review your empire because someone is still using up their time. I suppose everyone will just wait until the timer expires and that will force use of a short time limit. That's probably necessary anyway in multi-player. Just do the math - 300 turns at 5 mins each + ~5 mins of battles in the later turns = 3000 minutes = 50 hours. I'm not convinced that 16 player games will ever finish...

Andrew

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger It is supposedly both. There are warplinks that can be used by some ships, but all ships can move from one system to another in open space.

If you're talking about MoO3, that looks like something related to the old way, and it's been changed. There are three kinds of ships: Orbitals, which orbit a planet, System ships, which tool about in the system where they're built but can't ever leave, and Starships, which may travel either via starlanes (fast) or "off-road" (slow).

[Xentax]

You *can* choose which enemy planet to assault in a system with multiple. I don't know who's saying otherwise, but they're misinformed.

Balanced against the shorter queue are several features:

1) Ships and Ground units can be built in "stacks" of 5 or 10, not just one at a time. So you can queue and even build up to 30 ships at once (though no more than 3 types of course) at any given planet.

2) There are separate planetary and military queues (3 items each), and a LOT of the improvements don't go in either queue but are handled (the various DEA improvements) automatically -- the stuff that there's no reason you wouldn't want to build just gets done (at a rate based on funding) for you.

3) The AI will put things in the queue for you (unless you turn it off), and what it picks is pretty reliably useful and timely. Obviously it won't always fill in what you want next, but it's worth keeping on all the time, compared to almost never wanting to use auto-build in MOO2.

You'll get a SitRep entry whenever something is built, and you can choose to follow the included hyperlink to the appropriate queue, or not.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Craig P.
There are three kinds of ships: Orbitals, which orbit a planet, System ships, which tool about in the system where they're built but can't ever leave, and Starships, which may travel either via starlanes (fast) or "off-road" (slow).

I meant all ships capable of warp travelling, of course.