Favourite MOO 1 tips/tricks

[granid]

Originally posted by Zed-F
Rinse and repeat, and soon the enemy will be running at minimum pop on most of his planets, crippling his production and research efforts. This will improve your ability to catch up in tech or build up your fleet relative to that particular AI. Once the AI is sufficiently weakened and you have caught up, you can absorb their empire as usual.

I like rebellions for just that reason. I get about a quarter of my enemy's planets into rebelion, causing them to continuously destroy population. In addition, the rebelled planets don't contribute to their economy. I like to rebel big rich planets, so that they need to burn more transports to recapture them, and to take more away from their economy.

[Zed-F]

I have never really gotten the hang of how to use spies offensively for missions other than tech theft. This is why I have historically found the Darloks to be a bit harder to play, though I know some people consider them to be a very strong race, and I think my recent Civ3 experiences will make it easier to play them in future. Tech theft plays only a minor role of filling in gaps if you are striving to be in the tech lead, which is my usual gameplay style.

I guess the question is, is the money you spend on spying (which is money you're not spending on research/colony development) worth the results you get? Probably the answer is, it depends. I would guess that formenting a lot of rebellion in an enemy empire is useful in the middle game where you're out conquering your first couple opponents, but by the time you've taken them over and got a bit of a tech lead, it's less useful as you can just take over enemy colonies as fast as you can consolidate them anyway.

I was thinking of trying out Darloks again soon anyway to see if they seem better now anyway, so trying that suggestion out is another reason to do so.

[granid]

I agree, once you have the game in a bag, it's not that useful to go rile them up into rebelling. At that time, I am usually hard at work building stacks of huges loaded up with mauler devices However, I found it useful in the middle game, when a single empire grows too much and threatens to win by vote or just outbuild everyone. Rebell a quarter of their planets, get others to declare war (not hard, since the target is the largest empire) and soon things become equalized

[Urban Ranger]

I usually play the Klacs in some kind of ICS-esque strategy. At the beginning, I set my starting planet to build scouts to send out to all the planets within reach. All the production I put in Eco to max out population growth. Any remaining goes into research. Usually there is a decent planet within reach for me to colonise. If not, time to restart.For research, I favour polpusion to compensate for my racial flaw, then computers to keep me from being vulnerable to spies.

After I hog all the closeby planets, I build colony ships if there are any good ones to colonise. Otherwise I max out Eco first, then pump up research.

Now my second planet may give me extra systems to hog, so I do that first. After the population of the first planet is maxed out, I switch it to making colony ships at a reasonable speed (maybe 10 turns or so). I colonise everything: first the ultra-rich and rich planets, then artifacts ones, then normal ones, then poor ones, and lastly the ultrapoor ones.

I will first expand away from my own corner until I run into other races. This limits their growth while maximise my own.

After I get some kind of Robotic Contol, I'll start building factories on my planets. Before then, it's not worthwhile because a Klac population is as good as a factory.

[grinningman]

This is very interesting stuff!

Here are a couple of things I've discovered while playing over the last few weeks. They may or may not be common knowledge, but I haven't seen them mentioned anywhere.

- When you retreat from a battle, your fleet sets course for the nearest planet you control. During the turn after you retreat, you can change the retreating fleet's destination to somewhere else - even back to the planet you are retreating from. This means you can attack and retreat from the same planet with the same fleet every turn. This is especially abusable with ships loaded with lots of the faster 2-shot missiles (merculite and better); pop into the system, launch two loads of missiles and then retreat before the defending ships/missile bases can hurt you. Rinse and repeat until everything at the planet is destroyed. I feel like this is against the spirit of the game, though.

- Each missile base has 3 missile lauchers. Each base has 50 hit points. Missile base hit points are modified depending on what level of armour you've discovered in a similar way to ship hit points. e.g if the best armour you've discovered is duralloy, all your missile bases have 75 hit points. I *think* missiles fired from a missile base have twice the range of and the same speed as a 5-shot launcher (as opposed to a 2-shot).

Grinning man

[vmxa1]

Yes you can send your ships back to the planet they just retreated from.
MB have three tubes and are enhanced by your armor. They also have Deflecor shields, battel computer and ECM. You get a +3 to inititive and +1 to attack level.
If you learn subspace interdictors they are added free to bases. They do not get double range, but do get "enhanced range and speed" , this is not defined.

[ravagon]

Originally posted by grinningman

- When you retreat from a battle, your fleet sets course for the nearest planet you control. During the turn after you retreat, you can change the retreating fleet's destination to somewhere else - even back to the planet you are retreating from. This means you can attack and retreat from the same planet with the same fleet every turn. This is especially abusable with ships loaded with lots of the faster 2-shot missiles (merculite and better); pop into the system, launch two loads of missiles and then retreat before the defending ships/missile bases can hurt you. Rinse and repeat until everything at the planet is destroyed. I feel like this is against the spirit of the game, though.

I wouldn't think it against the spirit. Afterall, if it takes multiple turns to eliminate the defenses the AI has time to deploy fleets to stop you. It also assumes that you can eliminate any aspect of the defenses before retreating. A damaged MB after all is of no use to you whatsoever when its fully operational again the following turn.

If you learn subspace interdictors they are added free to bases. They do not get double range, but do get "enhanced range and speed" , this is not defined.

I've never noticed any enhanced missile velocity - although I must admit I don't tend to rely much on missile bases by the time the interdictor is discovered.
I don't think the range can be enhanced either as it doesn't seem to be limited when firing from a planetary base unless one is using teleporters (a moot point when discussing interdictors anyway)? ...

[Zed-F]

I was playing MOO yesterday, trying out offensive spying again, and I realized that I never actually saw HOW you can cause a planet to rebel. The buttons I saw on the spy menu allowed spies to hide, perform sabotage (blow up factories) or perform espionage (steal tech.) How do you use spies to cause rebellions in MOO 1?

I also noticed and have used the "retreat to the same planet" feature. It could be considered exploitative, as it's a feature the AI never takes advantage of. Possibly the game designers included this to allow you to select which of your planets you want to retreat to, but if so it seems like it ought to have been simple enough to implement a filter to only allow retreat to one of your own planets, so perhaps its inclusion as is was intentional. You can rationalize it if you want as warping a very short distance out-system, then warping back in.

Ravagon, at the point in the game at which this tactic first becomes useful (about TL 12-15 weapons & propulsion tech) there is very little the AI can do to prevent you from taking out his missle bases at minimum using this tactic. Consider:
(a) the enemy missle bases will usually not be sufficiently armoured or have sufficient shielding to withstand a salvo of missles from a reasonably-sized attack force without taking some losses,
(b) your missles have the speed bonus from being 2-shot racks whereas his don't,
(c) you have the ability to move up for your first shot before moving back again to retreat and the planet doesn't,
(d) the enemy fleets are still probably speed 1 or 2 (at most 3), so unless they are armed with equivalent missles to yours they will not get a shot in before you retreat,
(e) the AI likes to move its fleets around, so you can be pretty much guaranteed of having an opportunity to hit the missle bases when there's no or only a minimal fleet there to begin with.

All these add up to mean that you can often do damage without taking any (or very much) in return, and ultimately wear down the planet. Part of the reason why this might be considered exploitative is that, in addition to the AI not knowing how to do it, most of the time the AI doesn't know how to defend against it either. Now, this tactic does have a limited lifespan, in that eventually the AI will research fast enough missles that they will potentially be able to cross the entire screen in 2 moves and reach you before you retreat, but IIRC that requires Pulson or better missles, so there is a significant window of opportunity where there's not a lot the AI can do to prevent you from wiping out the planet's defenses. Holding it is another matter, of course, since shoot-and-scoot missle boats don't do very well in a defensive role, but at minimum you can put a significant dent in the AI's research budget by forcing them to devote more effort to military and rebuilding.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Zed-F
I was playing MOO yesterday, trying out offensive spying again, and I realized that I never actually saw HOW you can cause a planet to rebel. The buttons I saw on the spy menu allowed spies to hide, perform sabotage (blow up factories) or perform espionage (steal tech.) How do you use spies to cause rebellions in MOO 1?

It is under sabotage, you get to choose blow up things or incite riots.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by ravagon


I've never noticed any enhanced missile velocity - although I must admit I don't tend to rely much on missile bases by the time the interdictor is discovered.
I don't think the range can be enhanced either as it doesn't seem to be limited when firing from a planetary base unless one is using teleporters (a moot point when discussing interdictors anyway)? ...

Sorry for any confusion. Interdictors do not have anything to do with the missiles themself. I was mearly pointing out that a base provides the device, so teleporters are nullified.
The enhanced distance is notice immediately, because most missiles would not be able to reach the full distance of the screen with out this effect. You can see this when you line up you ships next to the planet and shot say hyper-x missiles, they will not reach a target at the edge of the screen. The bases will using hyper-x or any missile. You will also be able to note that those missile arrive sooner to a target than the ships. This can be seen when you pin a ship to a spot and shoot form a ship and from a base, when the missile is not able to reach the target from the ship in the first round, but the base does.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Zed-F
I was playing MOO yesterday, trying out offensive spying again, and I realized that I never actually saw HOW you can cause a planet to rebel. The buttons I saw on the spy menu allowed spies to hide, perform sabotage (blow up factories) or perform espionage (steal tech.) How do you use spies to cause rebellions in MOO 1?

When a sabotage mission is sucessful you will get a choice to either destroy missile bases, factories or to incite a riot. The rioting citizens provide a percentage chance to cause a rebellion.

[vmxa1]

My perspective on retreating to the same planet is that is if they wanted to remove it, they had several patches to do it and did not.
As to the defenders, well it all depends. What is the level of armor they have and the weapons you have.
I never use missiles on my attacking fleets, so that is not an issue. The real issue is the bombs. When you retreat to the same planet you are restocked with bombs. This lets me bust shields and bases, if the bombs are up to the task. If they are not strong enought to crack the bases, I will not be retreating to that planet anyway. Well, ok, I may do it to destroy some more of their ships. So at times they are able to send in ships to help and sometimes they can crank out some missile bases to drive me off, other times they can not.
I amnot sure that it makes a huge difference, since if you could not use this trick, you would just use another method. It may take longer before you can attack, but in the end you will get them.
This exploit and the missile boat backup are big edges over the AI. I would say the back is a bigger exploit.

[granid]

Originally posted by vmxa1
The rioting citizens provide a percentage chance to cause a rebellion.

Actually, each planet has associated with it a percentage of citizens which are in revolt. Each time you use the "incite revolt" sabotage button, you increase this percentage by some amount. When the percentage reaches 50%, that is, when the majority of citizens is in revolt, the planet secedes from their empire.

I don't know the equations, but it seems that the more spies you have, the faster you get to 50%.

[vmxa1]

granid, to reply using the term actually implies that the response quoted was incorrect. It was not, you repeated what I said and add the part about the 50%, which I think is not correct. You can have an over thrown with less than 50%.

[grinningman]

Originally posted by Zed-F

All these add up to mean that you can often do damage without taking any (or very much) in return, and ultimately wear down the planet. Part of the reason why this might be considered exploitative is that, in addition to the AI not knowing how to do it, most of the time the AI doesn't know how to defend against it either. Now, this tactic does have a limited lifespan, in that eventually the AI will research fast enough missles that they will potentially be able to cross the entire screen in 2 moves and reach you before you retreat, but IIRC that requires Pulson or better missles, so there is a significant window of opportunity where there's not a lot the AI can do to prevent you from wiping out the planet's defenses. Holding it is another matter, of course, since shoot-and-scoot missle boats don't do very well in a defensive role, but at minimum you can put a significant dent in the AI's research budget by forcing them to devote more effort to military and rebuilding.

One point I'd like to add to Zed-F's analysis:

This tactic can still be used later in the game, when both you and the computer both have the faster missile types (pulson, hercular, etc), but in this case you must move first. So you need to have the highest initiative, which you can usually get by putting a high level battle computer, high manuoeuverability (inertial stabilizer) and battle scanner on your missile boats.

Of course, later game you've normally got High Energy Focus, and I find a stack of HEF beam weapon ships (say with lots and lots of Gauss autocannons), is more effective at destroying other ships and poorly shielded missile bases than missile boats.

Grinning man