MOO3 weirdness-- anyone else experience?

[darkalli]

I have put in some CONSIDERABLE time on MOO over the past few days... and notice this slight weirdness. 1. AFter the first hundred or so turns (I don't know if timing is that big of a deal), outposts just seem to randomly appear... most turn into colonies relatively fast. I have the colonization option off, and had actually removed the outpost design from the shipyards... so they were never built, never dispatched, and never designated. Anyone else have this happen?

2. Diplomacy... I have had several empires (over several games) suddenly break all treaties and declare war on me. Ok, fine, I can deal with that. What is weird is that they will NEVER make peace, then they will suddenly end the war, wait a few turns, then declare war again (sometimes after agreeing to treaties). The empire(s) continue to do the on again/off again war throughout the entire rest of the game. Anyone else experienced this?

If anyone has, PLEASE let me know...

[Darklighter]

Answer to first question:

Do a search on Magnate Civs. on this board. There is a great thread on this subject on the offical forums.

Don't have an answer to your second question as this happens to me. I had a full alliance with another civ only to have them declare war on me the next turn.

[darkalli]

well, I did the search but didnt' find anything that really answered my question. The outposts weren't on magnate planets, if I remember correctly. I think they were all green planets. Here is an example...

Played a game as the EVON and was actually connected to Orion. Due to the beauty of luck and chance, there were only 2 ways into/out of my space, going thru orion, or a LONG wormhole out to another area of space. I only colonized the areas in my space (17 good planets) and the system on the other end of the worm hole... and them removed the colony and outpost designs from my shipyards. Jump forwared 150 turns, and suddenly systems I had explored WAY back when suddenly have outposts in it... there is no way I would have colonized them, because they were out of the "protective" zone. Why did these appear? No magnates, and I doubt any specials, but close to 9 systems suddenly got outposts...

Do you know/get what I mean?

[darkalli]

btw... I am currently stuck at work, in kansas, during a ***** of a snow storm, so I quite literally can't get home right now. As soon as I do, I will load the game and verify the systems and the specials... but that game was two days ago.

[Harry Seldon]

Hey if you find anything on magnate civs will you post it or a link. I'm dying to find out what each one is and can't find info on it anywhere.

[Darklighter]

I'm in Kansas City also! Here in Overland Park but live in Lee's Summit Mo.

Look in the Help/Strategy portion of this forum. There is a nice thread there. Also look in the readme file. It lists all of the mag civs. and their stats.

Here is the link from the official forums: Official Forums

I hope this worked. They talk about civs migrating to yours, how to get magnate civs to join your empire, and discuss stealing enemy outposts.

[kalbear]

When you found colonies, if there are suitably really nice worlds nearby and the pop conditions are right, you'll make a jump to those worlds. This doesn't happen until later when your pop pressure becomes larger. It happens with magnates more - they'll spread out farther and earlier - but after a while you'll do it with your own species.

You only do this within a certain range, I believe, and only to worlds that could support someone with green2 or better. But it's a pretty cool effect, imo. Aside from auto-colonizing, just the idea that those guys say 'screw this, we're outta here' and pack up for greener pastures tickles me.

[Harry Seldon]

Thanks, Darklighter. I never thought to look in the readme file; I figured it was crap like all the other documentation. Now that I've grabbed a few mag civs I'd like to find out what they do.

[Arnelos]

Empires end wars and re-declare them because war declarations are time-limited. A state of war only lasts for a fixed number of turns before it elapses. After that period, you have to RE-declare war to stay at war.

Personally, I can see why they might have done this, but it's stupid. It would be easier to just have the AI check some variable to see whether it wanted to stay at war every X turns rather than the war automatically stopping and that being the trigger for the AI to decide whether to remain at war or sue for peace.

[Crostoneman]

The war declaration bug is due to the A.I. passiveness. I had the Tachidi declare war on me around turn 95 and we went at each other over their planets. By turn 165, I had several fleets over several of his critical worlds, but the peace message never came. I think when a certain time goes by when two empires fails to attack each other, the war simply ends. The A.I. just declares war again because nothing ever changed. A more aggresive A.I. would probably fix this problem.

[Apillar]

Here's a few oddities, weirdness or just all round things that make you go Hmmmm....

1. Moons - The instuction book says these can't be directly colonized (which is odd anyway), but their habitability is taken into account when the planet is rated for colonization suitability, population limit, etc. If they do have an effect, I've never seen it. A gas giant with three earth like moons will still appear as RED2 to my humans.

2. Black Holes / Neutron Stars - Those things on the map that have no direct star routes, you can still travel to them (it just takes a long time). I was rather dissapointed to find after sending a squadron to a Black Hole which took 68 turns, that I couldn't even bring it up in the system display, it was like it didn't even exist. What a shame, I'm sure they could have added something, maybe an extra tech or some added research from your black hole / neutron star exploration.

3. System Anomalies - Many systems have these, thing like "ancient battle remains","magnetic fields", "storms" etc. Some are self explanatory like undiscovered technology, magnate colony, but others like magnetic fields are more esoteric. I've yet to find any ingame explanation as to what these mean if anything.

4. Diplomacy strangeness - I wish their was a way to make research and economic treaties permanent, unless one side actually ends it. I get tired of every 5 turns or so having to respond to requests for new treaties, it gets really annoying when you have 4 or 5 empires all doing this. For this reason alone I loath being in the Orion Senate.

5. Combat - I hate when you have an undefended colony and a computer opponent will park a ship in the same system and every turn you will have to go through the combat screen rigamaroll when the results are always -No Combat Occured- because the computer is not attacking and you have nothing to attack or defend with. There Should be an ignore unless attacked option.

I've only been play MOO 3 for a couple days so if any of things I've noted have a rational explanation or a workaround let me know.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Apillar
Here's a few oddities, weirdness or just all round things that make you go Hmmmm....

1. Moons - The instuction book says these can't be directly colonized (which is odd anyway), but their habitability is taken into account when the planet is rated for colonization suitability, population limit, etc. If they do have an effect, I've never seen it. A gas giant with three earth like moons will still appear as RED2 to my humans.

I haven´t seen Moons alter the habitability of the Planet, this one seems to be wholly dependend on the Planet.
But they do affect your Population Limit and the Room you have for DEAs. You´ll notice a significant Difference betweeen a single Gas Giant and a Gsa Giant with several large Moons if you look at Population and especially at the Size.

Originally posted by Apillar
2. Black Holes / Neutron Stars - Those things on the map that have no direct star routes, you can still travel to them (it just takes a long time). I was rather dissapointed to find after sending a squadron to a Black Hole which took 68 turns, that I couldn't even bring it up in the system display, it was like it didn't even exist. What a shame, I'm sure they could have added something, maybe an extra tech or some added research from your black hole / neutron star exploration.

Yep, that would have been nice.
Have also tried it and found nothing there.

Originally posted by Apillar
3. System Anomalies - Many systems have these, thing like "ancient battle remains","magnetic fields", "storms" etc. Some are self explanatory like undiscovered technology, magnate colony, but others like magnetic fields are more esoteric. I've yet to find any ingame explanation as to what these mean if anything.

Try the Readme.txt for further Explanations. All Specials are explained there.
There is also an unofficial Patch which incorporates those Explanations into the Encyclopedia. It must be in some of the Threads here at Apolyton. Either MOO3-General or MOO3-Strategy/Tips

Originally posted by Apillar
4. Diplomacy strangeness - I wish their was a way to make research and economic treaties permanent, unless one side actually ends it. I get tired of every 5 turns or so having to respond to requests for new treaties, it gets really annoying when you have 4 or 5 empires all doing this. For this reason alone I loath being in the Orion Senate.

They don´t wish to establish new Trade Treaties with your Empire but improve the existing ones.
For example increase the amount of the Goods traded between your two Empires from 1k AU to 2k AU.

Originally posted by Apillar
5. Combat - I hate when you have an undefended colony and a computer opponent will park a ship in the same system and every turn you will have to go through the combat screen rigamaroll when the results are always -No Combat Occured- because the computer is not attacking and you have nothing to attack or defend with. There Should be an ignore unless attacked option.

I've only been play MOO 3 for a couple days so if any of things I've noted have a rational explanation or a workaround let me know.

Yep, thats one thing they should truely fix.
I have one large Sakkra Fleet in Orbit around one of my Planets. They don´t dare to attack my Planet because of its Beam-, Missile- and Fighter- Bases, but they don´t leave also.
All of my other Fleets are busy elsewhere and this Sakkra Fleet has no Priority, so since maybe 40 or more turns I keep on selecting "Defend Planet" and "Manually Control Combat" every turn.

[uXs]

Diplomacy: those repeated requests for improved trade thingies are indeed annoying. Not being able to use "counter-offer" is also annoying. The constant war-peace-war-peace is also annoying.

Combat: I have a system I share with a friendly empire, in which we both have fleets. Well, not actually fleets but some ships. It's been like hundreds of turns that I have to "defend planet" against ships that don't attack. Boring !

More combat: there's a system that's shared between my enemy and my friend. Is there a way to only attack my enemy's planet ?

Edit: oh yeah. In the previous situation, the problem I have that, for my enemy and friend alike, I only get the choice between "blockade" and "attack". I want to attack my enemy, and just leave my buddy alone. But that doesn't seem possible ?

[kalbear]

If you change your stance with that empire from 'defensive front' to 'quiet front' you'll blissfully share that system with that other empire. To do this, go to the victory tab, find their empire, and use the drop down box in the right hand side menu.

No, it's not well documented, but it's there.

I recommend to everyone to get the encyclopedia mod. It's immensely helpful regarding the planetary specials. It's hosted here as well - just look in the mods forums.

[Darklighter]

Thanks Kalbear, I did not know this! I bet this fixes my problem with not being able to colonize in the same system as another race. I'd always get the combat screen and never be able to establish a colony.