Master of Orion 3 - What went right?

[Romanus]

MOO3 is not a game you can just jump into and start whippin butt. I was VERY intimidated by it when I first started a game, but am now starting to understand things. I really appreciate the complexity.
My main concern currently isnt whether I will figure out how to play it well, but is with the game itself, does everything work as it should, if not will it get patched. Which are legitimate concerns with any game.
I want more games like MOO3.
It took me weeks to get a grip on Civ3, and I still am struggling to make the jump from Warlord. I just recently started playing Civ2...and thats still a mystery to me.
I like tinkering with tax rates, Development plans and other minutia......I enjoy Capitalism2, so that could be a part of it.

For me, a LOT of things went right with MOO3.

Now, why the floating cyberthings are so disagreeable as a race, I just dont know.

[Craig P.]

Re: It's Every Thing I've looked for.

Originally posted by BottleOfPills Yes its daunting at first, I've only got 5 planets, played 73 turns, and I still haven't figured out how to put troops on a troop transport.

Highlight your home system or another system with a mob center in the galaxy map and choose "Create ground force". First you will be prompted to organize your troops into a division, corps, or army, then once you've done that you will be taken to TF creation to create a transport TF to carry them.

I have enemy spies blowing stuff up left and right.

Build defensive spies and up the oppressometer.

[Harry Seldon]

I can't play the game until tomorrow, so I can't comment on gameplay itself. The manual is very nice, though, and I like the back story. I'm pretty damn excited to fire it up and lead the Psilons to ultimate domination.

[Utrecht]

It works on my laptop!!!!! I am truly thankful that QS did not go the put as much flash into the game - because I means that I can't play it when I travel (and I travel a lot)

After playing for a couple of hours, I truly enjoy the game and expect to play for quite some time.

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Silellak
See, this is the problem. A game should not take 8 hours to learn, unless people are having fun during those 8 hours. Some people may be, but obviously quite a few aren't.

And how do you know they aren't having fun? Just because *YOU* weren't having fun doesn't mean that no one can or has.

Telling someone their opinion isn't valid because they refuse to do something they don't enjoy for over 8 hours is just silly. I didn't buy a game to work through it to the point where I like it, I bought it to HAVE FUN.

Telling someone their opinioon isn't valid because it doesn't agree with your's is silly as well, yet you're implying the exact thing you accuse others of.

[Bort]

I think that when people say “steep learning curve” they really men “adjustment period” from what they’ve experienced in the past and were expecting. The game is a snap to pick up…its just redefining the role of the player to give the game a much wider scope. Oh there are changes beyond number that I would make…but most of them are small, the music does get redundant…but that’s because I’ve been playing it for the last four hours. I can’t run win-amp at the same time (I believe that every city should be built on rock and roll), but I have a stereo. Oh I dig this game…stuff can be made better…I am not “looking foreword” to an expansion but I will be once I really flesh out this thing out. The diplomacy…very nice…but for this kind of game needs to get nicer. I think peace negotiations should be a huge part of it…and more information should be given about why certain relations do what they do. Spying is also difficult…cause I’m not thinking about it…and all of a sudden I have no agents and people are stealing my science. The final thing is I would like there to be a boarder option. If you control an infinitely larger force and someone sends a colony ship through…you should be able to turn them back without killing them (I hate killing civilians). Can’t let them get in and colonize my worlds...oh god…last thing…there needs to be a speed up option for battle…they’re killing me and I don’t want to watch any…more.

[Pallidyne]

I actually like the space combat--- Esp if its at least 5 ships on a side. Its very painful with 1 to 1 or so battles.

Ground combat sound is fun. (Just wish I knew how it actually worked to do it more successfully.)

-P

[krait23]

Well one big thing that went wrong with MoO3 is that there ARE many things that turn up even after playing only 8 hrs. And they have nothing to do with a steep learning curve, they are just interface 'oversights'.

Like
- no color choice at start of game
- No saving of custom races
- No right click help-popups (especially for the resource numbers)
- Extremely inconvenient ship design
- Lack of decent documentation (Planet Specials for example, and no a readme is NOT decent documentation)
- No empire grants for specific planets
- No colony list where all your planets are listed along with building queue and the ability to change it in one click
- A very poor so called encyclopedia
- No more planet landings/views (I really give a rats ass about graphics usually but I enjoyed those in both MoO1 and 2. Those weren't graphical masterpieces, but they sure added a lot to the athmosphere. And if they had bothered with them in MoO3 they coulda been gorgeous in MoO3 with all the different stars, planets, moons, and I dont think a bunch of background pictures would have been THAT hard to do)
- No more Elerian (*sniff*)

Almost all these features were present in MoO2. I really cannot see why they are not in MoO3. MoO3 would still be the new game it is rather than a MoO 2,5... But it would be so much more convenient and fun to play (at least for me).

I am getting the impression that we got the first beta where all game functions worked properly, but they had no time to adjust the interface to meet the needs of a 'gold' version.

Alas, this threat is named what went right, so heres what went right IMO:

- Race customization (no more tolerant mineral eating Humans)
- More systems and planets, along which moons
- Nicer Galaxies
- Starlanes adding a nice new strategic element
- More Ships
- Seemingly reliable planetary AI (if you need it, in the early stages this is a drawback for me though as I like to micromanage and the AI is too damn penetrant)
- lots of planet specials (albeit poorly documented)

The game sure has a lot of potential. The things that are keeping me from playing atm (I have a life and other games to tend to and in its current stage I can't convince myself to spare time for MoO3) are all more or less easily fixable with a patch or three. But judging from the eternity it took them to release the game, I really wonder what they spent that time with...

Certainly not playtesting it, at least not by anyone that played and loved MoO1 and 2....

Or they didnt listen...

Whatever, something definitely went very wrong rather than right...
So I guess I am in the wrong thread, but I really don't care...

Lata
Krait

[Silellak]

Originally posted by Ozymandous


And how do you know they aren't having fun? Just because *YOU* weren't having fun doesn't mean that no one can or has.

Er. I know they aren't having fun because they posted that they weren't. I'm aware some people are having fun with it, including a good friend of mine, and as I've said multiple times, I'm envious of them. I wish I could enjoy MOO3. And maybe eventually I will.

Telling someone their opinioon isn't valid because it doesn't agree with your's is silly as well, yet you're implying the exact thing you accuse others of.

Everyone's opinion is valid, and I never implied otherwise. I'm sorry you feel that I did.

[H Tower]

Originally posted by krait23
Well one big thing that went wrong with MoO3 is that there ARE many things that turn up even after playing only 8 hrs.

WRONG THREAD! This is the thread to say what went right

[AeternitasXIII]

Since I got a rather lengthy post in on whats wrong with the game I guess its only right that I put the 40 hours of game time to use and report whats right (or at least ok).

Ground combat. It feels like a strategic level planet invasion. Some soldier reporting to a general that the AI's getting iced, options for standard military tactics and use of WMD...Unfortunately the AI doesn't seem to care about deploying armies to defend its planets, even on normal difficulty. I fought a handful of actual land battles against things other than planetary militia in a 16 empire, huge 3-armed galaxy that I won by elimination. Given that I never even got stellar converters, its safe to say that I did a lot of ground combat. The AI has yet to ever invade me with troops, so I can't say what it was like to be in a defensive battle.

What else...hrm...oh, and the race balances and ambassador animations (though definitely not diplomacy in general). If all the graphics in the game were as colorful and descriptive as the ambassador animations, the horrible UI and space combat might actually be forgiven. At least playing as a non-research/creativity based race is an available option as well, unlike MOO2 where there was little point in not taking the creative perk.

Hmm...I'd say the viceroy AI was ok, except for the fact that they continually run up unrest on planets by excessive taxes, and seem to thoroughly enjoy mass producing command centers and other ground support units. By the end of my elimination game, it would take me quite a while to scroll through the ground unit assembly menu due to all of the utterly worthless support units filling the queue. I can't obsolete those units, and when I started having to scroll through the planets tab and search for any of 40+ planets that were producing them I gave up on controlling them. There seems to be no options for military queue control either, akin to the development plans section of the empire tab.

Other than that I'm hard pressed to find any positive changes to the game. This isn't MOO2.5, or MOO3 or MOO4/5 as some fanbois have suggested. This is more like MOO 1.5. Every positive item in MOO2 was watered down (and in some cases broken), and the changes in graphics are almost certainly a step backwards compared to MOO2. Yeah, space battles might be rendered with polygons, but they are still 2d and still entirely tactical. The real time addition to it just means it takes me 2 minutes to move a fleet across the long void to an enemy rather than 30 seconds in a turn based mode. It doesn't add anything to the game.

People keep saying that this is some revolutionary new type of game where you are experiencing the purest sensation of what it means to be an imperial ruler. To them I ask, "What hallucinogen are you smoking, and can I have some?" I wanted MOO3 to be a great game like anyone else, and honestly was looking forward to a simulation of political intrigue merged with a strategic level empire building game in space. MOO3 however, has no political intrigue, and the empire building is mostly automated now.

[AeternitasXIII]

Oops, double post.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Silellak
Everyone's opinion is valid, and I never implied otherwise. I'm sorry you feel that I did.

Well maybe most peoples opinions are valid, but not all.
I would say morons, fools, liars, lunatics and the like do not have valid opinions.

[HugoHillbilly]

I love the sheer scale - when I first booted up a large,2 arm spiral galaxy, figured out I could zoom out and rotate the map in 3d, I lost my breath, that was only the smallest of the spiral galaxies.

The game went right in my opinion because it is what it is, an empire management game. You control the broad policies of your empire, not the minute detail. You are the supreme commander of your forces, not the ship gunners and frontline troops.

The SitRep is awesome, I picture myself getting up from a 2 hour sleep to find a stack load of reports on my desk every day.

The DEA system is good - instead of building soil enrichers as a building, they are building upgrades to bioharvesting zones, same with spaceports, automatic mines, research labs, etc.

The planet build queues are good - You can build a military improvement/unit as well as a planetary improvement at the same time. Excess PP from the first in the queue is then spent on the second, so if you keep them full you dont waste extra PPs

The planet economic sliders - you can custom tailor your planets. Crank normal economic developement to get an uber-infrascructure world. Crank research to give the most funding to your researchers.

[H Tower]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I would say morons, fools, liars, lunatics and the like do not have valid opinions.

who gets to decide who the morons are?

"And if I claim to be a wiseman, it surely means that I don't know"-Kansas