Need Help with MOO Strategies
cor...@ix.netcom.com
OK, I know that this is probably the world's most talked about strat
game, but I am stumped!! I've tried playing all of the different
races, but I get killed everytime. What's your best strategy for MOO.
Let me know what race you like, how it's possible for the computer
players to settle 12 planets when you are only on 3, how the computer
gets a fleet of 20 Large warships before I can build a single one.
You get the idea.....
I really like the game, but I am having hard time figuring out a
winning strategy. Thanks for your hints.
Cortes
Fotis Kokkoras
cor...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
>
> OK, I know that this is probably the world's most talked about strat
> game, but I am stumped!! I've tried playing all of the different
> races, but I get killed everytime.
I can't believe that!
> What's your best strategy for MOO.
Stay calm (avoid wars) 'till you are strong enough to kick ashes :)
When you start the war make it quickly and show no mercy. Destoying
enemy's planets makes him poor and the rest of the game piece of
cake.
Stuff I trust: Megabolt Cannon, Omega V Bomb, Repulsor Beam, Ion Stream
Projector, Teleporter :) When they become obsolete I know the result
of the game 8->
DO NOT BUILD MISSILE BASES IN THE BEGINING. Not even war fleet.
If I decide to destroy a planet I can do it no matter what is
the number of the bases. IMHO building bases in the begining is
a waste of money. The same holds for war ships.
Comflicts occur in the borders, in most cases, and unless you have
stopped your expansion (due to sortage of planets :) it is not wise to
build bases on your inner planets (got it?). Try to avoid wars with
diplomacy. Giving minor gifts is a good idea. Latter, you will
be able to build bases (if you need them) in quite a short period.
Concentrate your efforts in the begining to:
Increase your population.
Increase number of factories.
Search for tech (construction & terraform in the begining -
and computers to get Robotics )
Ask other races to start war against each other.
> Let me know what race you like,
I'm human. SO I play HUMANS. Psilons are easy to win with. I haven't
try other races too much as with humans.
> how it's possible for the computer players to settle 12 planets
> when you are only on 3,
The CP's obviously cheat!
> how the computer gets a fleet of 20 Large warships before I can
> build a single one.
The CP's obviously cheat!
> You get the idea.....
> I really like the game, but I am having hard time figuring out a
> winning strategy. Thanks for your hints.
>
> Cortes
It is the best game ever (IMHO). I've enjoyed endless hours playing
always in HUGE-IMPOSSIBLE. Thats the best mode for epic conflicts.
My copy of MOO is dead now. The disks failed and I can not install it.
Guess what? I had no back up :(
Waiting for MOO2..... Fotis
Have fun
dsh...@nova.wright.edu
In article <4rq2ir$g...@sjx-ixn4.ix.netcom.com>, cor...@ix.netcom.com writes:
> OK, I know that this is probably the world's most talked about strat
> game, but I am stumped!! I've tried playing all of the different
> Let me know what race you like, how it's possible for the computer
> players to settle 12 planets when you are only on 3, how the computer
> gets a fleet of 20 Large warships before I can build a single one.
>
>
> I really like the game, but I am having hard time figuring out a
> winning strategy. Thanks for your hints.
>
> Cortes
>
Some tips.
Build factories. Factories and Popn points let you build OTHER stuff faster.
Whenever possible research things that make your economy bigger.
Balance internal development and external exploration colonization.
My first turn I set all of my popn to build industry and send my ships out to
explore. When my colony ship has found a nice planet it colonizes and I
send 20 or so popn point there. Once my home world is fully industrialized
I put a few clicks into research and build colony ships like mad.
Play around and vary that initial strategy in a
small/5/medium game until you can out colonize the cps.
Fotis Kokkoras
dsh...@nova.wright.edu wrote:
> The computer probably understands the economic system and you don't ?
>
It also cheats!
> Some tips.
> Build factories. Factories and Popn points let you build OTHER stuff faster.
> Whenever possible research things that make your economy bigger.
> Balance internal development and external exploration colonization.
>
> My first turn I set all of my popn to build industry and send my ships out to
> explore. When my colony ship has found a nice planet it colonizes and I
> send 20 or so popn point there. Once my home world is fully industrialized
> I put a few clicks into research and build colony ships like mad.
>
I agree in generall terms BUT: It is better if you put just one click research
from the very begining. It gives you full bonus benefit (I think after the 5th
year of research on a topic, you get a bonus that leads you to the invention
earlier). Anyway, I've always set a click of money for research. Usually this is
done on my mother Planet that is the most developed in the begining.
> Play around and vary that initial strategy in a
> small/5/medium game until you can out colonize the cps.
Fotis MOOW
ben debaan
>In article <4rq2ir$g...@sjx-ixn4.ix.netcom.com>, cor...@ix.netcom.com
writes:
> I really like the game, but I am having hard time figuring out a
> winning strategy. Thanks for your hints.
first of all, let me tell you i have never gotten all the way up the
tech scale - i tend to win or lose [or run out of time] before that.
a lot of others i have read have built up defensively until they have
high tech, then they pound. me, i don't know how they do that...if i
try to wait to long i tend to get wiped out!
so here is my tips. 1. each game needs different strategy, depending
on your situation/location/race/who attacks and when. so be flexible.
2. check out the map first thing, find out who
you're playing and where you are on the big map.
3. in the beginning you need to - invest in 3
areas: ~6 scouts [1 per 3-5 turns], tech, factories - you need to
reasearch 4 areas: propulsion [50%], computers, construction and
planetology - you need to settle the closest best planet. with the
scouts explore to you range limit. guard good planets with the scouts
next. 4. once you get better propulsion range,
equalize techs you research - unless you get a chance to research nuke
engines. [i hope you still are keeping on building some factories.]
design a new colonization ship [new=cheaper design] and build and
colonize. [don't forget to send some population from the older planets
to the new colonies to get a pop growth jump!]
5. when you contact the aliens at first, try to
make trade and non aggression agreements; also try to get them to go to
war - with other aliens; start a small [hidden] spy $ to find out what
they got in technology; and check out their tech thru a tech exchange
offer, you don't have to accept. start small investments in defense
bases on planets nearest the aliens. [you DON'T trust them!]
6. when you are colonized out - or invaded start
designing and building warships then. go to 50% on spying. send
population reinforcments to threatened planets. counter invade if
possible.
exceptions: Darloks need to spy right away. as the sakra and
bulrathi you might go invasion on first contact while you have the
advantage of pop or ground combat.
note: the most challanging game level is impossible, medium,
mrrshan. the easyest are klackon/psilon, huge - and easy, of course!
and yes, the computer cheats with construction/research - but it
fights lousy.
Daniel M Silevitch
In article <4rq2ir$g...@sjx-ixn4.ix.netcom.com>, <cor...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>OK, I know that this is probably the world's most talked about strat
>game, but I am stumped!! I've tried playing all of the different
>races, but I get killed everytime. What's your best strategy for MOO.
>Let me know what race you like, how it's possible for the computer
>players to settle 12 planets when you are only on 3, how the computer
>gets a fleet of 20 Large warships before I can build a single one.
>You get the idea.....
It sounds like your problem is that you are trying to build a navy
too early. At the beginning of the game, there is absolutely no
need to have a navy; you start several parsecs from any computer
empire, and if you run into the Guardian, any ship that you can
build will just get waxed. Put your BCs into building Colony Ships,
building factories and research. Early research should be in
construction (to increase hull capacities), propulsion (range
and speed techs) and planetology (reduce size of colony module,
land on nastier worlds). Once you can fit a standard module and
a fuel tank in a Large hull and give it a warp 2 drive, equalize
the research among all six regions.
Colonize as many worlds as you can, as quickly as possible. Once
you have an empire of roughly 10-12 worlds, you can slow down
and start developing your worlds. In this stage, you should start
building a light military presence, enough to scare off computer
scouts and colony vessels. A combination of several small ships
armed with lasers and a few medium ships with neutron pellet guns
works well as a picket force. At this stage in the game, large
ships are too expensive to be worth building; wait until you
have planets with 100 pop and >300 factories before building
larges (not counting colony ships, of course).
Once you've made contact with the computers, start trading with
them, both for BCs and tech. This goes easier if you are playing
the Humans, due to their diplomatic advantages. Non-aggression
pacts will help give you a breather. If you have the spare industrial
capacity, build 5-10 missile bases on each of your core worlds;
if not, wait until you've developed planetary shields. In the
early mid-game, missile bases are very powerful defensive weapons.
They start to lose effectiveness once antimatter bombs start
to appear, but are very difficult to take out with lesser bombs.
Redeploy your navy to cover the planets that don't have bases.
Once you have a solid core of ~15 planets with missile bases and
a small (but growing) navy, you can start thinking about staging
a small war against a weak computer player. Be careful to check
whether your proposed victim is allied to a superpower. Continue
researching, steadily upgrading your planets (shields, factories,
terraforming) and your navy. Stage limited wars: grab one or two
planets and hold them until the computer asks for piece. Eventually,
you will be in a position to run for High Leader. Repeat until
you are elected or you have erradicated the opposition.
Good Luck
-dms
GUI TERENCE ANG
On Mon, 8 Jul 1996 cor...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> OK, I know that this is probably the world's most talked about strat
> game, but I am stumped!! I've tried playing all of the different
> races, but I get killed everytime. What's your best strategy for MOO.
In the beginning, I find that sending a constant stream of colonists to
new worlds more effective than one or two major colonist dumps. Since
your pop. growth rate is at its highest at around half of the max (as the
manual points out). Two disadvantages are that this may not be worthwile
sending transports to distant colonies when you don't have at least Warp
III tech (Implulse?).
Concentrate on increasing the production capacity of your planets, and
secondly on tech. Try not to spend any of your resources on Missile
Bases/Warships in the beginning, as this severely bogs you down.
Klackons seem to be easier for beginners to start off with (again that's
another tidbit from the manual, a great one BTW).
You should also get the faq for MOO, which covers a lot of the aspects of
gameplay. It don't think it should be too hard to find.
Try all the above -and all the other numerous suggestions that I'm sure
have preceded this one- and see how you do then.
> Let me know what race you like, how it's possible for the computer
> players to settle 12 planets when you are only on 3, how the computer
> gets a fleet of 20 Large warships before I can build a single one.
> You get the idea.....
If you want to catch the CP's in the act of cheating. Type in ALT-GALAXY
(type in galaxy while holding down the alt key), and this will reveal the
entire galaxy map. Depending on the level of difficulty you're playing,
you should see the CP's start off with more colony ships.
TAG
Peter Stewart
Fotis Kokkoras (kokk...@cs.bris.ac.uk) wrote:
: > My first turn I set all of my popn to build industry and send my ships out to
: > explore. When my colony ship has found a nice planet it colonizes and I
: > send 20 or so popn point there. Once my home world is fully industrialized
: > I put a few clicks into research and build colony ships like mad.
: >
: I agree in generall terms BUT: It is better if you put just one click research
: from the very begining. It gives you full bonus benefit (I think after the 5th
: year of research on a topic, you get a bonus that leads you to the invention
: earlier). Anyway, I've always set a click of money for research. Usually this is
: done on my mother Planet that is the most developed in the begining.
Not quite. What you may be thinking about is the fact that funds you devote
to research gain interest. This is why once you research your first item,
if you reallocate the resources to another research area, never drain the
first one completely. Leave a few clicks in there and it will accrue
interest. The computer players are never smart enough to do this, which is
why in the late game (assuming you have a good economic base and are not
playing the impossible level), you can eventually out-research them.
Pete
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pete Stewart | "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"
ste...@bae.bellcore.com | - Salvor Hardin
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Torch16
Really It depends on what your playing.
Try to get your industries going in the begining and get colonies w/ good
planets. Once you got a good planets and your home world has a lot of
indus, start going into research. I usually keep my tech distribution the
same unless I need something really bad (i.e. better fuel to get to an
artifact planet out of range) . Dont bother w/ building ships at the
begining. Except when you get a better engine, build better scouts. Once
you meet somebody, raise your security up a little (i do 20%) and try to
get a non-agression pact w/ the other race. Try to build missle bases on
the boder, but not too many or the other race might see it as an act of
war. Also dont bother w/ huge ships early in the game because your
industries arent powerful enough to effectifly produce them. (or you can
wait about 30-50 turns if you want)
In the research department, go for terraforming and planet incresments,
and go for reducing waste. By reducing waste you can take out some eco
and move it somewhere else.(unless you are sccioloids then dont even worry
about Eco).
That should get you started on your journey.
Note. this works best on large or huge. I dont think it works very well
in small since you are so close to each other.
Chris
Jonathan Aitken
This sounds silly but - are you playing on 'easy'?
Go with races they recommend -Klackons, Sakkra. Psilons are good too. Be
patient and figure out what works. If you get desperate, therer a really good
strategy manual for sale, if you can find it. Theres also a FAQ somewhere I
think. Check these out first.
Cheers,
J Aitken
Chris Byler
Peter Stewart (ste...@bae.bellcore.com) wrote:
> Fotis Kokkoras (kokk...@cs.bris.ac.uk) wrote:
> : > My first turn I set all of my popn to build industry and send my ships out to
> : > explore. When my colony ship has found a nice planet it colonizes and I
> : > send 20 or so popn point there. Once my home world is fully industrialized
> : > I put a few clicks into research and build colony ships like mad.
> : >
> : I agree in generall terms BUT: It is better if you put just one click research
> : from the very begining. It gives you full bonus benefit (I think after the 5th
> : year of research on a topic, you get a bonus that leads you to the invention
> : earlier). Anyway, I've always set a click of money for research. Usually this is
> : done on my mother Planet that is the most developed in the begining.
> Not quite. What you may be thinking about is the fact that funds you devote
> to research gain interest. This is why once you research your first item,
> if you reallocate the resources to another research area, never drain the
> first one completely. Leave a few clicks in there and it will accrue
> interest. The computer players are never smart enough to do this, which is
> why in the late game (assuming you have a good economic base and are not
> playing the impossible level), you can eventually out-research them.
Well, that and the fact that the computers build insane numbers of ships and
then sit on their asses with them. That takes a serious chunk out of their
research budgets - with a few planets (preferably rich/ultrarich, of course)
turning out ships and concentrating them where you need them (build missile
bases to defend your planets, and make sure to research good missiles), you
can easily match the cp's in fleet engagements without tying up so much of
your budget.
Now for early game strategies: The OSG suggests building scouts 1/turn from
turn 1 on your homeworld, assuming you have sufficient planets around to
scout. I agree with this; also, you should leave your scouts in place over
any remotely useful planet whether you can reach it immediately or not.
Unarmed colony ships will retreat from your scouts, gaining you valuable time.
Also if you have 2+ worlds within 3 parsecs don't commit your colony ship
until you know where you want to send it - it really sucks to find Orion using
your colony ship as a scout. If you have 4 worlds in 3 parsecs build 2 scouts
the first turn (you can barely do it) and explore all 4 before sending the
colony ship. Your first priority should be production potential - go after
a large planet with no specials over a small artifact planet as your first
colony. (Of course if you can find a habitable rich/urich, grab it!)
After this, start building colony ships with about 1/2 your homeworld's prod.
if you have planets available to colonize. (Put the other half into industry
until it maxes.) Put your colony about 1/2 ind, 1/2 tech. I generally
equalize my tech spending (press the '=' key in the tech screen) b/c the
initial distribution shafts construction way too much; depending on your
position, though, you may want to prioritize planetology and/or propulsion
early to get barren or just out of range planets. If you really need a long
range colony ship (one with reserve tanks) research construction, but I find
that these are not usually necessary because someone else will get to those
planets first - there's always *somebody* near them. Then again I usually
play medium galaxies for a fairly quick game, your mileage may vary in larger
galaxies.
Once you have nuclear engines or better, and are in contact with another race,
start building a starfleet. Never, never, never build a starfleet armed with
retro engines, or lasers, or nuclear missiles. They are just too pathetic
to be of any use whatsoever. It is better to concede a border planet and
take it back later than to throw away rp's building and maintaining such junk.
(Besides, new colonies don't start to pay off for a while - let the Sakkras
build it up for you and then take it from them. Or better yet, the Meklars.)
Once you have decent weapons and engines, though, you should start to build
a starfleet, otherwise all the cp's will see you as an easy target and try
to snatch your planets. I generally find it more effective to designate a
small number of planets (say around 1/4 to 1/2 depending on your situation)
as shipyards and build ships there with everything not being used for eco or
defense. (Btw, you should start building 3-4 clicks defense on any planet
that has max pop and factories, and keep it there. It will pay off in the
long run.) All other planets should go into tech. Of course, you should
pick rich/ultrarich planets as shipyards if possible, and never poor/
ultrapoor/artifact planets; other than that, your biggest planets are good
picks for shipyards. I generally use the 'Reloc' function to centralize
my fleet at an appropriate location (depending on who I may be fighting),
but this is really only an administrative aid. Note however that 'Reloc'd
ships move the same turn they are produced toward the Reloc destination,
while there is a 1-turn lag in moving them manually.
Whenever possible, concentrate your fleet on a small number of target planets,
and try not to tie it up defending your own planets. I generally send my
oldest ships into the front lines first, that way they will take the casualties
first and preserve the newer ships. With this technique I hardly ever have
to scrap a class that still has ships in it. As for ship size, missiles vs.
beams, etc., that depends on your tech and situation, but generally, avoid
the extremes of size at low tech levels (smalls can't mount a good weapon,
huges take 10+ turns to build), and put some bombs on any large or bigger
ship if you have a decent bomb. Bombs are cheap, and even the best-armed
ship can be pathetic against planets if it doesn't have them. Using this
principle you can avoid having to build dedicated bombers, which are generally
useless in defensive roles and therefore lack versatility.
I find a combination of large (preferably auto-repairing) beam ships and
fast unshielded medium missile ships works well for me in most cases, but
it depends. Scatterpacks are brutal when they first come out, mount them
immediately. Generally one of your biggest advantages over the computer is
that you can start building ships armed with a new weapon/special as soon as
you discover it, while the computer will not put it into service for some
time. Sometimes I have stolen a tech and had it in service before the original
owner did.
In ground assaults, send troops from several planets, and avoid sending too
many from any one planet - you can send up to 1/2 the planetary pop, but even
on a Gaia this will take time to grow back. Prefer to send troops from
fertile, Gaia, poor, and ultrapoor planets. Avoid sending troops from
hostile, rich, ultrarich, and artifact planets, and (to a lesser degree) from
designated shipyard worlds. You may want to synchronize your transports to
arrive on the same turn - this will prevent the population from growing back
between turns - but be aware that any transports over 300 landing on one turn
are lost. If you have previously explored the planet (Advanced Scanners help
here) you can even synchronize your transports with your warships, but if you
are doing this be sure your warships will win, otherwise your transports will
be killed and you will lose all that population. Invade to win only - if you
can't win, don't bother. Invading is generally superior to bombarding/
destroying, if you can win and hold the planet afterward, because you don't
ruin the planet in the process. I generally don't use bios because they piss
everyone off at you, but they do reduce population without wrecking factories,
which is nice for invading Bulrathis or higher-tech races. They're also good
for hit-and-run raids, especially if you can get enough to wipe out the planet
in one turn. (Concentrate your fleet. Concentrate your fleet. Concentrate
your fleet.)
Diplomatic games: generally not a big deal. Trade with anyone who is at
uneasy or better - if you can, some will reject the deals. If you have good
relations with an alien you may be able to get them to declare war on someone
- this almost always benefits you. Trade tech only for good tech, and don't
trade away anything really nice. You can always get the lower-level filler
by invasions or espionage. Speaking of espionage, don't sabotage. It pisses
off the computer more than espionage and isn't worth as much. Even if you
are the Darloks sabotage is generally a losing proposition. Espionage on
the other hand is always a good idea, but don't set the bar too high as it
will bankrupt you in a hurry. Don't worry much about the Council, unless
you notice that the Humans are running 2nd or everyone is at war with you.
If you are not a candidate you can almost always deadlock the election.
Having an ally will help b/c they must vote for you unless they are also
allied with the other candidate. Also, every time you are at war with someone
you can ask your ally to declare war and they frequently will, and you usually
have good relations with allies which makes trade more profitable.
Of course if you are the Humans then diplomacy is definitely a big deal.
Try to frame the biggest races, or the most popular ones, when you can. Keep
in mind who you is the victim of the act you are framing for, too. It does
you no good to frame the Klackons for spying on the Psilons if they are already
at war. The computer doesn't think about really silly spying like Silicoids
stealing Controlled Environment techs, so don't worry about whether or not
the framing makes sense.
Orion - don't go after it until you have pretty good tech. I'd say hard
beams at minimum. You can sometimes take it earlier but it is really expensive.
High initiative is a must, HEF is a big plus. Don't worry about the computer
taking it, it almost never will. Once you have it, hold it. Concentrating
your force is the key to overwhelming the Guardian - send your entire
starfleet, if possible. You get two big benefits from the Guardian - the first
is the Death Ray and 3 other techs which can be of any realm and level
(Neutronium Armor? Cool! Guess I'll replace my Zortium now..), and the second
is a really, *really* nice planet. Base size 120 with 4xtech.. wow. Don't
forget to develop and defend it nicely.
Races - Each has its strengths and weaknesses, I guess. This post is already
kinda long so I won't go into it right now.
Hmm, have I left anything out? Oh yeah, research strategy. When you get a
percentage chance of discovering a tech, cut that realm back some (not all
the way!) and put it into other realms. If you really need something, increase
its funding level. Choosing which tech: tend to go for unique things like
special devices, but don't forget to keep up in battle computers, improved
construction tech, etc. In weapons, alternating between beams and missiles
is generally a good policy, unless you are building an all-beam or all-missile
fleet for some reason. Improved armor is always good, since it improves both
your ships' hp and your ground combat ability. Shields - even if you don't
use them on your ships they are still automatically employed in your missile
bases, so keep up. One more thing - if you research a tech that was already
on your research list instead of one that has just appeared, no new techs will
appear when the research is completed. The techs come in groups, and you have
to get a tech of one group to open up the next group. Some techs are their
own groups, e.g., High Energy Focus IIRC. You have to get these techs to
progress in that field. Finally, don't scorn Advanced X Tech - they raise
your Tech level and make everything smaller and cheaper, allowing you to put
more on your ships. Also, your Planetology Tech level affects the productivity
of your workers, and your Construction Tech level affects the total space
available in ships.
I think that covers most things. Sorry about the length.
> Pete
> --
Chris
dav...@earthlink.net
A very simple technique for keeping stars for yourself is to place a scout
around each one within range. This doesn't always work but most times when
enemy scouts or even colony ships get to the planet they will likely run unless
armed. In addition if you can keep the enemy from seeing the planet he cannot
invade. In any game with the Bulrathi it is a must to keep them out of orbit
from your planets. When you get shield tech remember that defense money goes to
this first so if you see an enemy fleet headed your way you won't be able to
build up missle bases unless you already have the shield built. Hi priority
once you have a reasonable industry. In addition, you should focus your tech on
Planetology, Construction, and Propulsion at the start of the game with an eye
toward improving your ability to build. Getting Improved construction tech 9
reduces your cost per factory by 25% so it is a must. Plan your colonies on the
basis of expansion as well as planet size, ie if you are in a corner and have a
colony ship and two planets one toward the edge (bigger) and one toward the
center (smaller) grab the smaller one first since you are the only one with the
range to reach the big one so you can get it with your next colony ship.
Setting one world to building a HUge ship with say 5 % of your planets income
will allow you to produce at need a fleet of ships with the newest tech by
simply designung new ships and switching production to them. This saves you the
cost of upkeep on the new ships, keeps the "build points" ready in case you
need them, and allows for the best ships to be built when needed. Good Luck
On Mon, 08 Jul 1996 04:27:50 GMT, cor...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
>OK, I know that this is probably the world's most talked about strat
>game, but I am stumped!! I've tried playing all of the different
>races, but I get killed everytime. What's your best strategy for MOO.
>Let me know what race you like, how it's possible for the computer
>players to settle 12 planets when you are only on 3, how the computer
>gets a fleet of 20 Large warships before I can build a single one.
>You get the idea.....
>I really like the game, but I am having hard time figuring out a
>winning strategy. Thanks for your hints.
>Cortes
David W. Maddocks
dav...@earthlink.net
Flash
In article <Pine.SUN.3.94.96070...@tuzo.erin>,
e0fq...@credit.erin.utoronto.ca says...
>
>On Mon, 8 Jul 1996 cor...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
>
>> OK, I know that this is probably the world's most talked about strat
>> game, but I am stumped!! I've tried playing all of the different
>> races, but I get killed everytime. What's your best strategy for MOO.
Man, I'm really amazed at the diversity in strategies from everyone. For
myself, I have beaten Orion 3 or 4 times with setting all at hardest (max
size, opponents, etc.). In doing so, I have always played the Klackons,
because of their production bonuses. It is also essential that you start in a
corner of the map (that way, you cannot be attacked from all sides); and that
you are able to populate a few (at least one) of the special planets
(+research, rich, etc.) in the very beginning. You have to start out strong,
because you should conquer the first race you meet asap.
[This maybe a spoiler, but its pretty hard to apply and is different for every
situation]
As for start-up strategies, I always focus on pop and factory building at the
beginning. You should transfer guys over to new colonies asap to get them up
and running. I always designate some planets as specifically ship builders,
population builders, researchers, etc. This really helps the mircomanagement
part. A little tech in the beginning helps, because you automatically get
some basic stuff. The best strategy for getting tech is spying (set it to
highest for the most advanced race you meet, no security) and taking over
other planets.
On fighting: build big ships. They can do alot of damage in a small group and
you can retreat without half your fleet vanishing on you. In every game I
played, you will always be overwhelmed by the computers fleets. The only
strategy to used is to remember the computer's basic flaw: it doesn't take the
offensive when it has the advantage, it plays a defensive game. Therefore,
once you have taken over several of the weaker races and have stolen a number
of technology, your new ships will be equipped with technology that makes the
majority of the computer's fleet obsolete.
MOO is a great, I'm glad to see these posts. Hope this helps.
Peter Stewart
Chris Byler (cby...@dsu.seas.ucla.edu) wrote:
[Chris presents some rather good strategy tips here, but I had a few comments
to add :) ]
[snip]
: After this, start building colony ships with about 1/2 your homeworld's prod.
: if you have planets available to colonize. (Put the other half into industry
: until it maxes.) Put your colony about 1/2 ind, 1/2 tech. I generally
: equalize my tech spending (press the '=' key in the tech screen) b/c the
: initial distribution shafts construction way too much; depending on your
: position, though, you may want to prioritize planetology and/or propulsion
: early to get barren or just out of range planets. If you really need a long
: range colony ship (one with reserve tanks) research construction, but I find
: that these are not usually necessary because someone else will get to those
: planets first - there's always *somebody* near them. Then again I usually
: play medium galaxies for a fairly quick game, your mileage may vary in larger
: galaxies.
I find that equalizing spending across the research areas is not a good idea
until later in the game when you have at least a few thousand BCs invested
per turn. Instead, I tend to sink everything initially into propulsion to
get range 4 or range 5 fuel cells, then divide up research evenly into
construction (to get either better industrial tech or reduced industrial
waste) and planetology (to get terraforming +10 for a quick population boost
or eco restoration tech). Then I shift to computers to get better scanners,
and so on.
: Once you have nuclear engines or better, and are in contact with another race,
: start building a starfleet. Never, never, never build a starfleet armed with
: retro engines, or lasers, or nuclear missiles. They are just too pathetic
: to be of any use whatsoever. It is better to concede a border planet and
: take it back later than to throw away rp's building and maintaining such junk.
Excellent strategy. I consider myself in a good position at the start if
I get nuclear engines and neutron pellet guns on my research lists. If I
do, I hold out building a navy til I get these two, and then start churning
out small ships armed with these two items. Very effective in the early game
at warding off armed colony ships, and in the later game when you've moved
on to other tech, you'll have a stockpile of them that are good for taking a
pounding in battles while your other more advanced ships pound the CPs'
planets.
My methods of weapons research later on tend to focus on missiles, more
missiles, and yet more missiles, with some shield-halving beam weapons for
support. One game I played I was just barely holding my own against the CPs;
I then researched stinger missiles and scatter pack VII and started to wipe
the CPs off the map.
: (Besides, new colonies don't start to pay off for a while - let the Sakkras
: build it up for you and then take it from them. Or better yet, the Meklars.)
: Once you have decent weapons and engines, though, you should start to build
: a starfleet, otherwise all the cp's will see you as an easy target and try
: to snatch your planets. I generally find it more effective to designate a
: small number of planets (say around 1/4 to 1/2 depending on your situation)
: as shipyards and build ships there with everything not being used for eco or
: defense. (Btw, you should start building 3-4 clicks defense on any planet
: that has max pop and factories, and keep it there. It will pay off in the
: long run.) All other planets should go into tech. Of course, you should
: pick rich/ultrarich planets as shipyards if possible, and never poor/
: ultrapoor/artifact planets; other than that, your biggest planets are good
: picks for shipyards. I generally use the 'Reloc' function to centralize
: my fleet at an appropriate location (depending on who I may be fighting),
: but this is really only an administrative aid. Note however that 'Reloc'd
: ships move the same turn they are produced toward the Reloc destination,
: while there is a 1-turn lag in moving them manually.
My general rules are:
1) Artifact planets should never waste time building ships
2) Rich/urich planets should never waste time doing research
3) Poor/upoor planets are good for providing troops for invasions, and for
doing research.
[snip]
: in one turn. (Concentrate your fleet. Concentrate your fleet. Concentrate
: your fleet.)
This is something the CP never does. It can't coordinate its fleets as well.
Using a friendly planet as a staging area is the AI's way of compensating,
but this obvious buildup is like a neon sign saying "attack me! attack me!"
The best defense against this is a medium ship armed with only missiles.
Raid the enemy buildup area and take out some of their fleet.
: Diplomatic games: generally not a big deal. Trade with anyone who is at
: uneasy or better - if you can, some will reject the deals. If you have good
: relations with an alien you may be able to get them to declare war on someone
: - this almost always benefits you. Trade tech only for good tech, and don't
: trade away anything really nice. You can always get the lower-level filler
: by invasions or espionage. Speaking of espionage, don't sabotage. It pisses
: off the computer more than espionage and isn't worth as much. Even if you
The only exception is if you're at war with the CP anyway. In which case,
go for the missile bases. Usually if I want to provoke a CP into attacking,
I do espionage like there's no tomorrow and then switch to sabotage once the
fighting begins.
[snip]
: Of course if you are the Humans then diplomacy is definitely a big deal.
I actually find the humans to be the ones I can win the quickest with. You
get bonuses in trade deals and eventually that starts the BCs flowing in,
and everyone likes you from the start. Forge alliances, then have them break
their alliances with each other. Then, because they hate nearly everyone
except you, you get all the votes in the Council.
On that note, keep careful track of which CP has alliances with whom. I once
had a little pipsqueak Sakkra empire declare war on me and I laughed as I
vaporized their pitiful fleet. A few turns later, a powerhouse Bulrathi and
somewhat powerful Alkari declared war and I went "huh?" until I saw that the
Sakkra had alliances with both.
Chris Byler
But if you do this you are wasting the interest.. I would agree with some
degree of concentration for the first 2 or 3 techs (I generally go 25% Con,
25% Pla, 50% Pro until I am into the %chances in all 3), but after that you
really should split it up. In particular, putting a lot of money into
something that is already in the %chances is a waste - cut back to a small
amount and wait for the dice to roll your way. You'll still get it eventually
but you will have had your BC's put more productively into some other area.
The net result is that you pay fewer BC's on average per tech gotten.
> : Once you have nuclear engines or better, and are in contact with another race,
> : start building a starfleet. Never, never, never build a starfleet armed with
> : retro engines, or lasers, or nuclear missiles. They are just too pathetic
> : to be of any use whatsoever. It is better to concede a border planet and
> : take it back later than to throw away rp's building and maintaining such junk.
> Excellent strategy. I consider myself in a good position at the start if
> I get nuclear engines and neutron pellet guns on my research lists. If I
> do, I hold out building a navy til I get these two, and then start churning
> out small ships armed with these two items. Very effective in the early game
> at warding off armed colony ships, and in the later game when you've moved
> on to other tech, you'll have a stockpile of them that are good for taking a
> pounding in battles while your other more advanced ships pound the CPs'
> planets.
I generally don't build smalls at low tech levels, but I guess if you can
squeeze an NPG in without sacrificing too many other things.. can you still
get class II maneuver and battle computer? If you can, then I suppose it
is worthwhile. I never build a ship with class I maneuver if I have a
choice - doubling battlefield speed is just too useful to give up.
I don't think those ships' abilities against armed colony ships would be
very useful given that they have no reserve tanks and therefore cannot go
any further than your own colony ships (and why build warships when there
are worlds waiting to be colonized?). I suppose to keep the Silicoids away
while you research controlled environments, but how often does that come up?
> My methods of weapons research later on tend to focus on missiles, more
> missiles, and yet more missiles, with some shield-halving beam weapons for
> support. One game I played I was just barely holding my own against the CPs;
> I then researched stinger missiles and scatter pack VII and started to wipe
> the CPs off the map.
Scatterpacks are really powerful when they first come out. I remember the
first game I played a lot of missile ships - I was playing the Mrrshans and
got S-pack V, and put it on a medium hull. A couple dozen of those annihilated
anything they came up against - alkaris, klackons, meklars, it doesn't matter.
I also like (once I have good tech) to put a scatterpack and a regular
missile on the same medium ship. The resulting weapons mix is good against
anything. Don't forget that missiles work just fine against planets, though
scatterpacks tend to be ineffective due to their strong shields.
I don't know if I mentioned this above, but in my experience missile-only
ships have trouble finishing off anything that survives the initial volleys,
so I usually build a combination of medium missile ships and large, shielded,
preferably auto-repairing beam ships. About equal numbers of planets building
both provides a good weapons mix. Of course this is dependent on my being
able to research good beams and good missiles - if I don't get anything
better than hyper-x I can just forget the missile ships.
Torpedoes are nice, but you can't cram them into a medium for a while. You
can put them on a large - in fact they work well on a beam ship because they
have no ammo restriction, and can replace bombs at first - but generally not
in any quantity.
Other ship design issues: update your designs regularly and when you get
crucial new technologies; even when you don't have anything spectacular,
though, you can frequently make significant incremental improvements. Don't
mix warp speeds, it doesn't do you any good. This doesn't mean you should use
only the fastest engines all the time, but building one ship with Ion engines
and another with Nuclear is just wasting the extra speed of the Ion engines,
if you intend to use them together.
> : (Besides, new colonies don't start to pay off for a while - let the Sakkras
> : build it up for you and then take it from them. Or better yet, the Meklars.)
> : Once you have decent weapons and engines, though, you should start to build
> : a starfleet, otherwise all the cp's will see you as an easy target and try
> : to snatch your planets. I generally find it more effective to designate a
> : small number of planets (say around 1/4 to 1/2 depending on your situation)
> : as shipyards and build ships there with everything not being used for eco or
> : defense. (Btw, you should start building 3-4 clicks defense on any planet
> : that has max pop and factories, and keep it there. It will pay off in the
> : long run.) All other planets should go into tech. Of course, you should
> : pick rich/ultrarich planets as shipyards if possible, and never poor/
> : ultrapoor/artifact planets; other than that, your biggest planets are good
> : picks for shipyards. I generally use the 'Reloc' function to centralize
> : my fleet at an appropriate location (depending on who I may be fighting),
> : but this is really only an administrative aid. Note however that 'Reloc'd
> : ships move the same turn they are produced toward the Reloc destination,
> : while there is a 1-turn lag in moving them manually.
> My general rules are:
> 1) Artifact planets should never waste time building ships
> 2) Rich/urich planets should never waste time doing research
> 3) Poor/upoor planets are good for providing troops for invasions, and for
> doing research.
Yep. Definitely. Also, I generally don't build a lot of missile bases on
Orion, artifact, poor, and ultrapoor worlds - it's more cost effective to
defend them with some ships sent from the richer planets. Of course those
pickets should be replaced with newer ships, and the older ones put in the
front lines, from time to time. Always give your older ships an opportunity
to die usefully, rather than becoming so obsolete they have to be scrapped.
Also, use older ships against lower-tech opponents. Ships that won't cut
it anymore against the Psilons may still be good for beating up the Bulrathis.
> [snip]
> : in one turn. (Concentrate your fleet. Concentrate your fleet. Concentrate
> : your fleet.)
> This is something the CP never does. It can't coordinate its fleets as well.
> Using a friendly planet as a staging area is the AI's way of compensating,
> but this obvious buildup is like a neon sign saying "attack me! attack me!"
> The best defense against this is a medium ship armed with only missiles.
> Raid the enemy buildup area and take out some of their fleet.
I agree with this. Fast warp engines are a necessity too.
Oh, and one thing I didn't mention before: Be careful with missiles. Their
ranges are not really as long as they look, and sometimes ships can back away
from them and make them useless. Anything lower than stingers should not
be fired on the first turn, unless your ships are very fast. Be particularly
careful about firing on ships that moved before you did - they can go all the
way back to their own mapedge in one turn, too. The 'auto' routine frequently
fires missiles at targets that can avoid them in this way. If missiles are
fired at you, try to interpose asteroids if possible, asteroids *really* mess
up missile volleys. These remarks also apply to torpedoes.
> : Diplomatic games: generally not a big deal. Trade with anyone who is at
> : uneasy or better - if you can, some will reject the deals. If you have good
> : relations with an alien you may be able to get them to declare war on someone
> : - this almost always benefits you. Trade tech only for good tech, and don't
> : trade away anything really nice. You can always get the lower-level filler
> : by invasions or espionage. Speaking of espionage, don't sabotage. It pisses
> : off the computer more than espionage and isn't worth as much. Even if you
> The only exception is if you're at war with the CP anyway. In which case,
> go for the missile bases. Usually if I want to provoke a CP into attacking,
> I do espionage like there's no tomorrow and then switch to sabotage once the
> fighting begins.
I disagree. CP's lower their security in wartime to shift resources to the
war effort. Stealing their tech then is easier. And I would never go for
missile bases - if your ships can't handle missile bases, wait until you
have better tech or put on more high-tech missiles or bombs. Missile bases
are rarely a significant threat because you don't find more than 30 or so
in the same place - the 10 huge ships are a much bigger problem.
> [snip]
> : Of course if you are the Humans then diplomacy is definitely a big deal.
> I actually find the humans to be the ones I can win the quickest with. You
> get bonuses in trade deals and eventually that starts the BCs flowing in,
> and everyone likes you from the start. Forge alliances, then have them break
> their alliances with each other. Then, because they hate nearly everyone
> except you, you get all the votes in the Council.
Hmm. I haven't had much success with the Humans - I am usually not even
nominated in the Council until after a long and bloody fight because Humans
have no economic advantages. Although the trade bonus is nice, it is not
nearly a match for the true economic powerhouses (Klackons, Meklars). And
I'm not usually concerned about who is at war with me - see below.
> On that note, keep careful track of which CP has alliances with whom. I once
> had a little pipsqueak Sakkra empire declare war on me and I laughed as I
> vaporized their pitiful fleet. A few turns later, a powerhouse Bulrathi and
> somewhat powerful Alkari declared war and I went "huh?" until I saw that the
> Sakkra had alliances with both.
So you should have asked the Bulrathis and Alkaris to break their alliances,
especially if you were the Humans, in which case they might even have agreed.
But I wouldn't worry overmuch about wars - the computer is absolutely pathetic
at waging an offensive war. It'll bring about 10% of its fleet, sometimes
less, to attack one of your planets, and if it meets any serious opposition,
retreat. And computer ships usually can't handle missile bases - they are
either slow or have no bombs or both.
> Pete
Chris
(You know, by the time we finish this discussion, MoO2 may be out!)
Chris Byler
dav...@earthlink.net wrote:
> A very simple technique for keeping stars for yourself is to place a scout
> around each one within range. This doesn't always work but most times when
> enemy scouts or even colony ships get to the planet they will likely run unless
> armed. In addition if you can keep the enemy from seeing the planet he cannot
> invade. In any game with the Bulrathi it is a must to keep them out of orbit
> from your planets. When you get shield tech remember that defense money goes to
> this first so if you see an enemy fleet headed your way you won't be able to
> build up missle bases unless you already have the shield built. Hi priority
> once you have a reasonable industry. In addition, you should focus your tech on
> Planetology, Construction, and Propulsion at the start of the game with an eye
> toward improving your ability to build. Getting Improved construction tech 9
> reduces your cost per factory by 25% so it is a must. Plan your colonies on the
> basis of expansion as well as planet size, ie if you are in a corner and have a
> colony ship and two planets one toward the edge (bigger) and one toward the
> center (smaller) grab the smaller one first since you are the only one with the
> range to reach the big one so you can get it with your next colony ship.
> Setting one world to building a HUge ship with say 5 % of your planets income
> will allow you to produce at need a fleet of ships with the newest tech by
> simply designung new ships and switching production to them. This saves you the
> cost of upkeep on the new ships, keeps the "build points" ready in case you
> need them, and allows for the best ships to be built when needed. Good Luck
I agree with what you said except:
Improved construction 9 only reduces costs by 10% - 10 to 9. Reduced
waste 80% is generally a better choice if you can. Follow with Duralloy
Armor, which is crucial in ship-to-ship combat and helpful on the ground and
for missile bases as well. Also the huge ship idea is not really that great,
you would usually do better investing that money into tech, then switching
over to shipbuilding when you need it. In the long run you will get the tech
sooner and therefore can start building the ships sooner. The exception is
if the planet is rich, but unless you are the Silicoids you will probably
not have any riches until you get some controlled techs, because minimal/riches
don't grow on trees.
> On Mon, 08 Jul 1996 04:27:50 GMT, cor...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> >OK, I know that this is probably the world's most talked about strat
> >game, but I am stumped!! I've tried playing all of the different
> >races, but I get killed everytime. What's your best strategy for MOO.
> >Let me know what race you like, how it's possible for the computer
> >players to settle 12 planets when you are only on 3, how the computer
> >gets a fleet of 20 Large warships before I can build a single one.
> >You get the idea.....
I think the easiest races for new players are the Klackons and Psilons,
remember to keep your population/industry maxed out as much as possible,
build colony ships from your homeworld whenever you can. Also start out
playing on the easier levels.
The computer gets colony ships for free, so when you are trying to colonize
everything in sight it is building a war fleet. Don't worry about it - with
a little tech you can kick their butts. Once 6 of my large ships with
ion cannons, duralloy, and nuke engines defeated 6 Meklar *huge* ships
with lasers and nuke-missiles. And I only lost 1 ship doing it. Since
each size is about 5x bigger and more expensive than the previous one, I
outkilled the Meklars 30:1 despite being outmassed 5:1.. not bad, huh? No
tricks, just better tech. In general building a no-tech fleet is a waste
of time and resources. His 20 Larges will be no match for 20 Mediums with
Merculite or Hyper-X. (Get the 2shot, fire them, wait until they hit - you
can easily avoid them with maneuver 2 - then retreat. Repeat as many times
as necessary.)
> >I really like the game, but I am having hard time figuring out a
> >winning strategy. Thanks for your hints.
You might want to invest in the Official Strategy Guide, written by
Alan Emrich and Tom Hughes, and published by Prima. It is extremely good
- in fact, it has nearly everything we have discussed and a great deal
more, including formulas behind trade, an in-depth look at diplomacy,
tips on ship design, and a detailed description of the galaxy generating
procedures.
> >Cortes
> David W. Maddocks
> dav...@earthlink.net
Chris
Johnny Lamar Rhyne
What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
Rob C. Johnson
The most difficult race is the Mrrshan, so that's my favorite of
course.
As for the Best, I assume you mean easiest...
#1 are the Humans, because of the diplomatic bonuses. With a
little effort (and I do mean little!) you can stay at peace
forever, get everyone to war with everyone else, and sail right
into the first or second Council with a win.
#2 are the Darloks, because they spy so darn well you get to
frame everyone else as you steal their tech. Then they get to
fighting each other so much, that they're often willing to keep
the peace with you despite how much you're despised simply
because the AI doesn't like being at war with everyone all at
the same time. Now that's fun!
Once you become a Master Diplomat, so that you don't need any
bonuses or tricks, the easiest probably depends on what your
bad at. The Klackons have a good productivity bonus, but I
don't like their penalties on propulsion tech. The Psilons
are pretty good at tech, which can be very usefull. Heck,
they're even better than species which are Excellent, which
is what makes the Sakkras fairly good.
Rob sez 'Hi!' (rcjo...@prairienet.org)
Johnny Lamar Rhyne
Here a recipe for a great MoO ship design.
The Stats are:
Size: Large
Computer: Mark XI
Sheild: class XV
ECM: Jamer X
Armor: Neutromium II
Engine: Hyperthurst
Maneuver: class IX
Weapons: 1 Tri-Focus Plasma
1 Hecular Missile
Extras: Black Hole Generater
This should work great if you have the tech.
I used it in several games and was unbeatable with it. I won the
"Final War" using a mass produced version of these. I managed to take
out a whole fleet of ships with just on of these.
Enjoy.
Peter Stewart
Chris Byler (cby...@dsu.seas.ucla.edu) wrote:
: Peter Stewart (ste...@bae.bellcore.com) wrote:
: > I find that equalizing spending across the research areas is not a good idea
: > until later in the game when you have at least a few thousand BCs invested
: > per turn. Instead, I tend to sink everything initially into propulsion to
: > get range 4 or range 5 fuel cells, then divide up research evenly into
: > construction (to get either better industrial tech or reduced industrial
: > waste) and planetology (to get terraforming +10 for a quick population boost
: > or eco restoration tech). Then I shift to computers to get better scanners,
: > and so on.
:
: But if you do this you are wasting the interest.. I would agree with some
: degree of concentration for the first 2 or 3 techs (I generally go 25% Con,
: 25% Pla, 50% Pro until I am into the %chances in all 3), but after that you
: really should split it up. In particular, putting a lot of money into
: something that is already in the %chances is a waste - cut back to a small
: amount and wait for the dice to roll your way. You'll still get it eventually
: but you will have had your BC's put more productively into some other area.
: The net result is that you pay fewer BC's on average per tech gotten.
Probably what I didn't make clear in my explanation is that when I shift over
to another research area, I always leave at least a trickle going into the old
one, thus BCs are always accumulating, even if I don't have a large allocation
to it. Often this winds up researching an item in that area anyway after
awhile. And I agree, cutting back once you have a % chance of discovering it
is usually a good idea unless its something that you vitally need at that
moment.
: > Excellent strategy. I consider myself in a good position at the start if
: > I get nuclear engines and neutron pellet guns on my research lists. If I
: > do, I hold out building a navy til I get these two, and then start churning
: > out small ships armed with these two items. Very effective in the early game
: > at warding off armed colony ships, and in the later game when you've moved
: > on to other tech, you'll have a stockpile of them that are good for taking a
: > pounding in battles while your other more advanced ships pound the CPs'
: > planets.
:
: I generally don't build smalls at low tech levels, but I guess if you can
: squeeze an NPG in without sacrificing too many other things.. can you still
: get class II maneuver and battle computer? If you can, then I suppose it
: is worthwhile. I never build a ship with class I maneuver if I have a
: choice - doubling battlefield speed is just too useful to give up.
Yes, because by the time you get to the point of researching both nuclear
engines and NPGs, you're sufficiently miniaturized to get extra manuverability.
I forget whether you can squeeze a battle computer on there as well, but since
I've done well with this strategy, it seems to work in either case.
: I don't think those ships' abilities against armed colony ships would be
: very useful given that they have no reserve tanks and therefore cannot go
: any further than your own colony ships (and why build warships when there
: are worlds waiting to be colonized?). I suppose to keep the Silicoids away
: while you research controlled environments, but how often does that come up?
Every 5-15 turns, a CP randomly scraps a ship design and redesigns it.
Eventually it will choose its colony ship design and the new one will always
have weapons on it. I find that if I don't build a small group of warships,
the scouts still sitting at the outermost "claimed" planets will be
swept aside and I lose the opoortunity to colonize those juicy planets.
: Torpedoes are nice, but you can't cram them into a medium for a while. You
: can put them on a large - in fact they work well on a beam ship because they
: have no ammo restriction, and can replace bombs at first - but generally not
: in any quantity.
Torpedoes are best left to large ships, but I find it makes the fleet too
powerful when I want to bombard the planet after the ship attack phase. What
I find annoying is that it is very hard to estimate ahead of time how much
damage bombardment will do. A few times I've intended only to bomb down the
population enough to allow an invasion only to cross the threshold and wipe
out the colony instead and neccesitate the cost of a colony ship.
: > My general rules are:
: > 1) Artifact planets should never waste time building ships
: > 2) Rich/urich planets should never waste time doing research
: > 3) Poor/upoor planets are good for providing troops for invasions, and for
: > doing research.
:
: Yep. Definitely. Also, I generally don't build a lot of missile bases on
: Orion, artifact, poor, and ultrapoor worlds - it's more cost effective to
: defend them with some ships sent from the richer planets. Of course those
: pickets should be replaced with newer ships, and the older ones put in the
: front lines, from time to time. Always give your older ships an opportunity
: to die usefully, rather than becoming so obsolete they have to be scrapped.
I find missile bases become obsolete in the really late game when everyone is
tooling about the galaxy with teleporters, neutronium bombs, and warp 5
engines or better.
: > This is something the CP never does. It can't coordinate its fleets as well.
: > Using a friendly planet as a staging area is the AI's way of compensating,
: > but this obvious buildup is like a neon sign saying "attack me! attack me!"
: > The best defense against this is a medium ship armed with only missiles.
: > Raid the enemy buildup area and take out some of their fleet.
:
: I agree with this. Fast warp engines are a necessity too.
:
: Oh, and one thing I didn't mention before: Be careful with missiles. Their
: ranges are not really as long as they look, and sometimes ships can back away
: from them and make them useless. Anything lower than stingers should not
: be fired on the first turn, unless your ships are very fast. Be particularly
: careful about firing on ships that moved before you did - they can go all the
: way back to their own mapedge in one turn, too. The 'auto' routine frequently
: fires missiles at targets that can avoid them in this way. If missiles are
: fired at you, try to interpose asteroids if possible, asteroids *really* mess
: up missile volleys. These remarks also apply to torpedoes.
I almost never use the auto mode, unless I'm in a one-on-one battle with beam
weapons at point-blank range and don't feel like sitting there clicking
the mouse for 15 more turns.
: > The only exception is if you're at war with the CP anyway. In which case,
: > go for the missile bases. Usually if I want to provoke a CP into attacking,
: > I do espionage like there's no tomorrow and then switch to sabotage once the
: > fighting begins.
:
: I disagree. CP's lower their security in wartime to shift resources to the
: war effort. Stealing their tech then is easier. And I would never go for
: missile bases - if your ships can't handle missile bases, wait until you
: have better tech or put on more high-tech missiles or bombs. Missile bases
: are rarely a significant threat because you don't find more than 30 or so
: in the same place - the 10 huge ships are a much bigger problem.
It depends on what kind of fleet strength you have. Some of the most
challenging (and often the most fun) games I've had is when a militiarily
superior CP declares war and I have to resort to cleverness rather than brute
force to win. In that case, destroying missile bases out from under them to
let an otherwise understrength fleet in to bombard the planet to rubble
can be a definite asset. Otherwise, I do concentrate on stealing tech.
: > I actually find the humans to be the ones I can win the quickest with. You
: > get bonuses in trade deals and eventually that starts the BCs flowing in,
: > and everyone likes you from the start. Forge alliances, then have them break
: > their alliances with each other. Then, because they hate nearly everyone
: > except you, you get all the votes in the Council.
:
: Hmm. I haven't had much success with the Humans - I am usually not even
: nominated in the Council until after a long and bloody fight because Humans
: have no economic advantages. Although the trade bonus is nice, it is not
: nearly a match for the true economic powerhouses (Klackons, Meklars). And
: I'm not usually concerned about who is at war with me - see below.
The key to playing the humans is making friends with the Klackons and/or
Meklars, and getting them to fight some battles for you :)
: (You know, by the time we finish this discussion, MoO2 may be out!)
I wouldn't hold my breath :p
Pieter
>
> What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
Mrrshan or Alkari, of course.
Otherwise the game is a mayor wimp even on impossible.
Or if are REALLY green and want an easy game,
try Psylons. Really easy vistory.
Scott A. Colcord
Johnny Lamar Rhyne (crh...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
:
: Here a recipe for a great MoO ship design.
:
: Size: Large
: Computer: Mark XI
: Sheild: class XV
: ECM: Jamer X
: Armor: Neutromium II
: Engine: Hyperthurst
: Maneuver: class IX
: Weapons: 1 Tri-Focus Plasma
: 1 Hecular Missile
:
: Extras: Black Hole Generater
:
: This should work great if you have the tech.
: I used it in several games and was unbeatable with it. I won the
: "Final War" using a mass produced version of these. I managed to take
: out a whole fleet of ships with just on of these.
The problem is, by the time you have the tech needed to build this ship,
you've usually pretty much got the game won on tech edge. Also, I suspect
it would be more effective if you reduced the armor to Neutronium I, dropped
the Jammer (Class XV shields neutralize most missiles), and upped the
weaponry. Can I ask how much of a tech edge you had on these fleets and
what difficulty level you were playing at?
----Scott
--
Scott A. Colcord http://www.cs.mtu.edu/grads/Colcord/Home.html
M.S. Cand. Artificial adaptive systems Dept. of Computer Science
Michigan Technological University E-mail: saco...@mtu.edu
--
Daniel M Silevitch
In article <4s7pc4$o...@sjx-ixn3.ix.netcom.com>,|> The Stats are:
|> Size: Large
|> Computer: Mark XI
|> Sheild: class XV
|> ECM: Jamer X
|> Armor: Neutromium II
|> Engine: Hyperthurst
|> Maneuver: class IX
|> Weapons: 1 Tri-Focus Plasma
|> 1 Hecular Missile
|> Extras: Black Hole Generater
The bang for the buck of a ship like this is rather low. At such
a high tech level (at least 60 given Neutronium and Hyperthrust),
having only two weapons is ridiculous. Your design is a good starting
point, but it's far from what I would consider optimal (or even
reasonable).
Some suggestions for improving the lethality of the design:
--Ditch the jammer. ECM is only useful in the mid-end game if
you want to go toe-to-toe with a fortified planet. Even then,
I find that you're better off in the long run using the space
for more weaponry. If you have a little extra space after filling
everything else, squeeze in whatever ECM you can, but it's of
secondary importance unless you're building a dedicated planet-
bomber.
--Put in more guns. If there is only enough space to put in one
TFC and one HM launcher, switch to a larger number of lower
tech weapons. If you have the space and the tech, consider
upgrading the TFCs to Mauler Devices; this will let you use
the beamer against planets.
--Put in a HEF. This is an incredible force multiplier, especially
if your ships are faster than your opponent's.
--Put in some bombs. Omega V bombs are cheap by this point. This
gives the ship a reasonable anti-planetary capability at minimal
cost.
--If need be, go to single-hulled neutronium armor. This can potentially
save a _lot_ of space, allowing for more weapons, which reduces the
need for armor.
--Put in a battle scanner. This could give you the extra jump you need
over a high-tech opponent.
Hope this helps.
-dms
Joseph Poulin
Well, it depends on your playing style, but a lot of people like
the Klackons, the Mecklars, and the Psilons. The humans are great if you
enjoy winning through diplomacy, the Darloks are cool if you enjoy
playing with the entire galaxy hating your guts.
Good luck,
Joe
Johnny Lamar Rhyne
In <4s8u2q$5...@cs.mtu.edu> saco...@mtu.edu (Scott A. Colcord) writes:
>
>Johnny Lamar Rhyne (crh...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
>:
>:
>: Size: Large
>: Computer: Mark XI
>: Sheild: class XV
>: ECM: Jamer X
>: Armor: Neutromium II
>: Engine: Hyperthurst
>: Maneuver: class IX
>: Weapons: 1 Tri-Focus Plasma
>: 1 Hecular Missile
>:
>: Extras: Black Hole Generater
>: This should work great if you have the tech.
>: I used it in several games and was unbeatable with it. I won the
>: "Final War" using a mass produced version of these. I managed to
take
>: out a whole fleet of ships with just on of these.
>
>The problem is, by the time you have the tech needed to build this
ship,
>you've usually pretty much got the game won on tech edge. Also, I
suspect
>it would be more effective if you reduced the armor to Neutronium I,
dropped
>the Jammer (Class XV shields neutralize most missiles), and upped the
>weaponry. Can I ask how much of a tech edge you had on these fleets
and
>what difficulty level you were playing at?
>
> ----Scott
>
>--
> Scott A. Colcord http://www.cs.mtu.edu/grads/Colcord/Home.html
> M.S. Cand. Artificial adaptive systems Dept. of Computer Science
> Michigan Technological University E-mail: saco...@mtu.edu
>--
Ok, a very large tech edge. Something like this:
Me: 1990's U.S. miltary tech.
Them: 300 A.D. Roman tech.
Kia
Johnny Lamar Rhyne wrote:
>
> What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
I absolutely love playing the humans. The sheer joy of running diplomatic rings
around other races can't be beat, especially if it's a huge galaxy with the maximum number of
races, with one of them being the Darlocks. "C'mere, guys, what? Nobody likes you? Mind if
I call you guys 'Patsy?' How about 'catspaw?'"
-Kia
Karen Lofstrom
Fotis Kokkoras (kokk...@cs.bris.ac.uk) wrote:
: DO NOT BUILD MISSILE BASES IN THE BEGINING. Not even war fleet.
I generally start building missile bases once my planets have maxed
out on tech and population (the first time) and everything is being
put into research. I put just a few clicks into bases -- may take 15
years to build one, but it's there, going slowly, and having even ONE
base can be crucial in the early stages of the game. I don't like
building fleets early, so I rely on missile bases to protect my
colonies.
Also: I have recently started manufacturing lots of scouts in
the beginning, so that I can leave a scout parked by any planet I've
explored. If another race sends in a scout or a colony ship, even an
unarmed scout can bluff them away at the very start.
One of the FAQs on the Web had a hint about setting a rich or
ultrarich planet feeding into reserve, then feeding the reserve into
an artifact planet. The rich planets get extra points, which you then
leverage into extra research points. This seems to be working very
well for me. I can't always count on having both a rich planet and an
artifact planet in the earlier stages, but when I do, I usually win.
I'm winning about half my games on "hard" now. Maybe not impressive
to the true masters of the game, but satisfying to me :)
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to realize you're joking
just because you're posting something that is patently deranged.
-- Craig Dickson
GUI TERENCE ANG
On 14 Jul 1996, Karen Lofstrom wrote:
> One of the FAQs on the Web had a hint about setting a rich or
> ultrarich planet feeding into reserve, then feeding the reserve into
> an artifact planet. The rich planets get extra points, which you then
> leverage into extra research points. This seems to be working very
> well for me. I can't always count on having both a rich planet and an
> artifact planet in the earlier stages, but when I do, I usually win.
Once a rich/u-rich planet has maxxed out on factories, depending on my
immediate needs, I usually put it to work building ships. If not, I feed
the production into the reserve regardless of having an Artifact planet or
not, as I use this reserve to build up my new colonies quicker. As for
U-rich worlds, always feed the resources into the reserve, then back to
the planet, you'll still get plenty of extra to divert the rest to
whatever planet that needs it
TAG
Torch16
My favorite race is the humans.
I like them because they look neat when it comes to land battle. I know
thats a bad reason to like somebody but I do. I can play w/. basicly
anybody so I play w/ the humans with the green color. (the Klingon like
ships I think)
Chris
The truth is out there
There is just nobody looking for it.
Scott A. Colcord
: >Johnny Lamar Rhyne (crh...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
: >:
: >: Here a recipe for a great MoO ship design.
: >:
: >
: >Can I ask how much of a tech edge you had on these fleets and
: >what difficulty level you were playing at?
: Ok, a very large tech edge. Something like this:
:
: Me: 1990's U.S. miltary tech.
: Them: 300 A.D. Roman tech.
I thought that might be the case...almost any ship is an easy winner with
that high a tech edge. What people are more interested in is ship designs
that can do well when fighting an equal (or better) tech opponent.
dsh...@nova.wright.edu
In article <4s6p39$9...@dfw-ixnews8.ix.netcom.com>, crh...@ix.netcom.com(Johnny Lamar Rhyne) writes:
>
> What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
If by best you mean easiest - Human
If by best you mean hardest - Kittens
If by best you mean most fun - Darloks
Chris Byler
Rob C. Johnson (rcjo...@prairienet.org) wrote:
> The most difficult race is the Mrrshan, so that's my favorite of
> course.
I beg to differ. The Alkari are harder. Their combat bonus is clearly
inferior, and in all other respects the Alkaris and Mrrshans are pretty
much equal. Plus the Alkari suck at force fields, making their missile
bases more vulnerable, while the Mrrshans are good at weapons plus get
+4 attack to their missile bases, making them incredibly deadly. And finally,
to take full advantage of the Alkari bonus you have to build small ships,
which become obsolete quickly and die even more quickly.
> As for the Best, I assume you mean easiest...
> #1 are the Humans, because of the diplomatic bonuses. With a
> little effort (and I do mean little!) you can stay at peace
> forever, get everyone to war with everyone else, and sail right
> into the first or second Council with a win.
Depends on the difficulty level. At impossible they won't vote for you
even if you are humans - sorry, look for another strategy. Plus you have
to get nominated to be in the council at all, and at the harder levels that
means you need an economic or military advantage.
> #2 are the Darloks, because they spy so darn well you get to
> frame everyone else as you steal their tech. Then they get to
> fighting each other so much, that they're often willing to keep
> the peace with you despite how much you're despised simply
> because the AI doesn't like being at war with everyone all at
> the same time. Now that's fun!
Darloks are fun, but at harder levels even repeated framing will not get
the cp's to go to war with each other - the only real benefit is that you
get all their tech without being blamed. While that is nice, you can get
tech even easier via ground assault, and all you have to do is beat the
defenses on one planet. Plus you get the planet.
> Once you become a Master Diplomat, so that you don't need any
> bonuses or tricks, the easiest probably depends on what your
> bad at. The Klackons have a good productivity bonus, but I
> don't like their penalties on propulsion tech. The Psilons
> are pretty good at tech, which can be very usefull. Heck,
> they're even better than species which are Excellent, which
> is what makes the Sakkras fairly good.
If you don't like penalties on propulsion tech, either (1) put more RPs
into propulsion to compensate (you should have plenty due to your extra-strong
economy) or (2) steal, sieze, or trade for propulsion from alien races.
I like to steal each race's specialty from that race (e.g. Propulsion from
Alkaris) because they frequently have better techs in those areas. Stealing
Force Fields from the Alkaris is usually a waste of time (unless you happen
to know that they have Personal Deflector or something.)
My favorite races are:
1. Psilons. With high enough tech you can get any of the other racial
bonuses. Alkari? Research better engines. Sakkra? Advanced soil enrichment.
Meklar? Improved robotic controls. Darlok? Higher computer Tech level.
(Ok, not Human. But you can bribe the other races with relatively useless
techs and still achieve the same effect.) Plus, high-tech missile bases are
practically immune to low-tech fleets, and high-tech ships make mincemeat out
of anything they meet. I like to make huge, auto-repairing, highly
maneuverable, strongly shielded dreadnoughts, then laugh as my pitiful
opponents try futilely to damage them. Then I BHG them to death. :>
2. Klackons. Lots of production can be used for anything - bigger starfleet,
faster expansion, even more tech. Colonists are cheaper than factories and
don't pollute. And finally, if you are playing the Klackons you won't have
to face those damn annoying (though usually easy to kill) flea fleets.
3. Meklars. Similar remarks to the above, but the Meklars are a much more
dangerous opponent due to their tendency to build big ships, so having them
out of the running is a big plus.
Of course I also like to play some of the weaker races - Mrrshans are a lot
of fun, and so are Bulrathis, and I've even played Silicoids on occasion -
but the above three are the real powerhouses IMX.
> Rob sez 'Hi!' (rcjo...@prairienet.org)
Chris
Scott A. Colcord
Chris Byler (cby...@dsu.seas.ucla.edu) wrote:
: GUI TERENCE ANG (e0fq...@credit.erin.utoronto.ca) wrote:
: > On 14 Jul 1996, Karen Lofstrom wrote:
:
: <Comments regarding backfeeding of Rich/URich planets>
:
: Except in the early game, where the U-Riches are too valuable as shipyards
: to waste them on the reserve trick. Since I build no starfleet until
: Nuclear Engines at least (which can be a problem in the 50%+ of games I
: can't research Nuclear Engines..), I am always last in fleet strength until
: I start building a starfleet. Therefore I have a pressing need for ships
: which tends to last even into the midgame (since I throw my ships immed.
: into combat rather than letting them sit around getting obsolete). So I
: generally have all my rich and u-rich worlds (and frequently some of my
: larger worlds with no specials) building ships constantly.
:
: So when I have an artifact world I usually use the 'Planets' screen tax
: to get reserves to pump it - that, or reserves left over from a max-out
: of previous planet upgrades, or from a brief period when I suspend ship
: production to wait for a crucial tech I am about to discover.
Actually, after cranking out the math, an ultra-rich planet which puts
2/3 of its production into ships and the rest into reserve (backfeeding it
to the planet again) will be able to produce 1/3 more ships than a planet
which puts all of its production directly into ships...Slightly more if you
take pollution control into account, because the pollution produced by
doubled factories is not doubled. If I'm in a close game on impossible
level, I sometimes do this. The micromanagement is a bit of a pain, but
if it gives me that little edge I need it's worth it.
Regarding the 'Planets' screen tax; I'm very hesitant to use this because it
takes a piece out of all my planets' production, including newly founded
colonies that need every cent to start getting off the ground.
Chris Byler
Peter Stewart (ste...@bae.bellcore.com) wrote:
> Chris Byler (cby...@dsu.seas.ucla.edu) wrote:
> : Peter Stewart (ste...@bae.bellcore.com) wrote:
[discussion of research allocations munched]
> : > Excellent strategy. I consider myself in a good position at the start if
> : > I get nuclear engines and neutron pellet guns on my research lists. If I
> : > do, I hold out building a navy til I get these two, and then start churning
> : > out small ships armed with these two items. Very effective in the early game
> : > at warding off armed colony ships, and in the later game when you've moved
> : > on to other tech, you'll have a stockpile of them that are good for taking a
> : > pounding in battles while your other more advanced ships pound the CPs'
> : > planets.
> :
> : I generally don't build smalls at low tech levels, but I guess if you can
> : squeeze an NPG in without sacrificing too many other things.. can you still
> : get class II maneuver and battle computer? If you can, then I suppose it
> : is worthwhile. I never build a ship with class I maneuver if I have a
> : choice - doubling battlefield speed is just too useful to give up.
> Yes, because by the time you get to the point of researching both nuclear
> engines and NPGs, you're sufficiently miniaturized to get extra manuverability.
> I forget whether you can squeeze a battle computer on there as well, but since
> I've done well with this strategy, it seems to work in either case.
And I suppose it builds up your "Fleet Strength" bar to where the cp's are
less likely to pick on you. Also handy for dealing with the occasional
comet.
But in general I find that smalls (even Alkari smalls) die too quickly to
be combat effective - particularly since their armament tends to be minimal.
Especially, smalls that are not significantly higher tech than their opponents
will be outclassed, but large and huge ships are still a force to be reckoned
with even at 10-15 TLs lower. Plus the bigger ships can mount really useful
specials like ion stream - 5 classes of ion-streaming ships can really
brutalize an enemy fleet, or for that matter, missile bases.
> : I don't think those ships' abilities against armed colony ships would be
> : very useful given that they have no reserve tanks and therefore cannot go
> : any further than your own colony ships (and why build warships when there
> : are worlds waiting to be colonized?). I suppose to keep the Silicoids away
> : while you research controlled environments, but how often does that come up?
> Every 5-15 turns, a CP randomly scraps a ship design and redesigns it.
> Eventually it will choose its colony ship design and the new one will always
> have weapons on it. I find that if I don't build a small group of warships,
> the scouts still sitting at the outermost "claimed" planets will be
> swept aside and I lose the opoortunity to colonize those juicy planets.
Just to clarify - you build these warships with reserve tanks? I guess you're
not talking about the NPG smalls anymore, are you? Reserve tanks don't coexist
with weapons on a small until significantly later.. In any case, can you
really get enough warships with reserve tanks to ward off armed colony ships
(and frequently warship escorts) without hampering your own colonization
ability? I find it more effective to put those resources into tech, then use
the tech to build better ships later and use the ships to conquer the planets
in question (or any other planets you might want). But maybe I'm just not
clear on what this strategy is.
> : Torpedoes are nice, but you can't cram them into a medium for a while. You
> : can put them on a large - in fact they work well on a beam ship because they
> : have no ammo restriction, and can replace bombs at first - but generally not
> : in any quantity.
> Torpedoes are best left to large ships, but I find it makes the fleet too
> powerful when I want to bombard the planet after the ship attack phase. What
> I find annoying is that it is very hard to estimate ahead of time how much
> damage bombardment will do. A few times I've intended only to bomb down the
> population enough to allow an invasion only to cross the threshold and wipe
> out the colony instead and neccesitate the cost of a colony ship.
Let somebody else pay for the colony ship - abandon the system, then come
back after the new colony is founded, park in orbit, and send in the
stormtroopers.
Actually, I hardly ever bomb non-Bulrathi planets. If they have better ground
combat tech, all the more reason to invade the planets intact, just send huge
numbers of troops and grow them back later. If they don't have better ground
tech, there's no reason to waste all those factories - factories cost a hell
of a lot more than colonists at any TL.
> : > My general rules are:
> : > 1) Artifact planets should never waste time building ships
> : > 2) Rich/urich planets should never waste time doing research
> : > 3) Poor/upoor planets are good for providing troops for invasions, and for
> : > doing research.
> :
> : Yep. Definitely. Also, I generally don't build a lot of missile bases on
> : Orion, artifact, poor, and ultrapoor worlds - it's more cost effective to
> : defend them with some ships sent from the richer planets. Of course those
> : pickets should be replaced with newer ships, and the older ones put in the
> : front lines, from time to time. Always give your older ships an opportunity
> : to die usefully, rather than becoming so obsolete they have to be scrapped.
> I find missile bases become obsolete in the really late game when everyone is
> tooling about the galaxy with teleporters, neutronium bombs, and warp 5
> engines or better.
Well, usually, my games don't last until the *computer* has this stuff
*in service* - I start cleaning up long before this. Exception is when I'm
way behind, and in that case, there's no point even trying to defend your
planets - just espionage like crazy and hope you can catch up, or better
yet, give up and start a new game.
> : > This is something the CP never does. It can't coordinate its fleets as well.
> : > Using a friendly planet as a staging area is the AI's way of compensating,
> : > but this obvious buildup is like a neon sign saying "attack me! attack me!"
> : > The best defense against this is a medium ship armed with only missiles.
> : > Raid the enemy buildup area and take out some of their fleet.
> :
> : I agree with this. Fast warp engines are a necessity too.
> :
> : Oh, and one thing I didn't mention before: Be careful with missiles. Their
> : ranges are not really as long as they look, and sometimes ships can back away
> : from them and make them useless. Anything lower than stingers should not
> : be fired on the first turn, unless your ships are very fast. Be particularly
> : careful about firing on ships that moved before you did - they can go all the
> : way back to their own mapedge in one turn, too. The 'auto' routine frequently
> : fires missiles at targets that can avoid them in this way. If missiles are
> : fired at you, try to interpose asteroids if possible, asteroids *really* mess
> : up missile volleys. These remarks also apply to torpedoes.
> I almost never use the auto mode, unless I'm in a one-on-one battle with beam
> weapons at point-blank range and don't feel like sitting there clicking
> the mouse for 15 more turns.
I usually use it when there is only one target left and even the computer
can't screw up. Especially if I am attacking planets when I have auto-
repairing ships that aren't being damaged, but have difficulty damaging
the planet (a frequent situation). Also I sometimes use it when I know
the enemy will retreat, just to save time.
> : > The only exception is if you're at war with the CP anyway. In which case,
> : > go for the missile bases. Usually if I want to provoke a CP into attacking,
> : > I do espionage like there's no tomorrow and then switch to sabotage once the
> : > fighting begins.
> :
> : I disagree. CP's lower their security in wartime to shift resources to the
> : war effort. Stealing their tech then is easier. And I would never go for
> : missile bases - if your ships can't handle missile bases, wait until you
> : have better tech or put on more high-tech missiles or bombs. Missile bases
> : are rarely a significant threat because you don't find more than 30 or so
> : in the same place - the 10 huge ships are a much bigger problem.
> It depends on what kind of fleet strength you have. Some of the most
> challenging (and often the most fun) games I've had is when a militiarily
> superior CP declares war and I have to resort to cleverness rather than brute
> force to win. In that case, destroying missile bases out from under them to
> let an otherwise understrength fleet in to bombard the planet to rubble
> can be a definite asset. Otherwise, I do concentrate on stealing tech.
Hmm.. but if your fleet doesn't meet his fleet, what difference could the bases
make? And if his fleet *is* there you are toast.. Relative fleet strength
I find to be frequently irrelevant in war because it is only your *applied*
strength that matters. If I can make an end run around the Meklar fleet it
might as well not be there. Of course this is much easier to do if the
enemy can't beat your missile bases!
> : > I actually find the humans to be the ones I can win the quickest with. You
> : > get bonuses in trade deals and eventually that starts the BCs flowing in,
> : > and everyone likes you from the start. Forge alliances, then have them break
> : > their alliances with each other. Then, because they hate nearly everyone
> : > except you, you get all the votes in the Council.
> :
> : Hmm. I haven't had much success with the Humans - I am usually not even
> : nominated in the Council until after a long and bloody fight because Humans
> : have no economic advantages. Although the trade bonus is nice, it is not
> : nearly a match for the true economic powerhouses (Klackons, Meklars). And
> : I'm not usually concerned about who is at war with me - see below.
> The key to playing the humans is making friends with the Klackons and/or
> Meklars, and getting them to fight some battles for you :)
But if they win, they take even more planets, and how does that benefit me?
I can see how *in theory* I might benefit from a cp-cp war, but in practice
I have rarely gained any planets from one, or even a decisive tech edge. I
generally can only profit from my own wars. Now granted, having the Klackons
attack my enemy at the same time I am can be useful - it gives them something
else to think about, and they may even commit some fleets to attacking the
Klackons - but in my view the computer players are so incompetent at war that
their alliance is basically a non-issue. I generally only ally with cp's
to get them to vote for me, or to raise their opinion of me to promote and
maintain a profitable trade pact.
> : (You know, by the time we finish this discussion, MoO2 may be out!)
> I wouldn't hold my breath :p
Well, what I meant was, this discussion would last a *long* time, because
MoO is such a great and complex game, where there is always something more
to talk about.
> Pete
Chris
Chris Byler
Except in the early game, where the U-Riches are too valuable as shipyards
to waste them on the reserve trick. Since I build no starfleet until
Nuclear Engines at least (which can be a problem in the 50%+ of games I
can't research Nuclear Engines..), I am always last in fleet strength until
I start building a starfleet. Therefore I have a pressing need for ships
which tends to last even into the midgame (since I throw my ships immediately
into combat rather than letting them sit around getting obsolete). So I
generally have all my rich and u-rich worlds (and frequently some of my
larger worlds with no specials) building ships constantly.
So when I have an artifact world I usually use the 'Planets' screen tax
to get reserves to pump it - that, or reserves left over from a max-out
of previous planet upgrades, or from a brief period when I suspend ship
production to wait for a crucial tech I am about to discover.
> TAG
Chris
Johnny Lamar Rhyne
I really like the green klingon ships.
Johnny Lamar Rhyne
In <4sbgup$7...@cs.mtu.edu> saco...@mtu.edu (Scott A. Colcord) writes:
>
>Johnny Lamar Rhyne (crh...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
>: In <4s8u2q$5...@cs.mtu.edu> saco...@mtu.edu (Scott A. Colcord)
writes:
>: >Johnny Lamar Rhyne (crh...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
>: >:
>: >: Here a recipe for a great MoO ship design.
>: >:
>: >: <Design not quoted>
>: >
>: >Can I ask how much of a tech edge you had on these fleets and
>: >what difficulty level you were playing at?
>:
>: Ok, a very large tech edge. Something like this:
>:
>: Me: 1990's U.S. miltary tech.
>: Them: 300 A.D. Roman tech.
>
>I thought that might be the case...almost any ship is an easy winner
with
>that high a tech edge. What people are more interested in is ship
designs
>that can do well when fighting an equal (or better) tech opponent.
>
>
>--
> Scott A. Colcord http://www.cs.mtu.edu/grads/Colcord/Home.html
> M.S. Cand. Artificial adaptive systems Dept. of Computer Science
> Michigan Technological University E-mail: saco...@mtu.edu
>--
Sorry about that.
Chris Byler
Keith Woolston-Young (k...@mindlink.bc.ca) wrote:
> Actually I found that all of the races were pretty well balanced. I have
> beaten the game at impossible level, 5 opponents, Huge Galaxy with all of
> the races. It depends mostly on your playing style, but I have pretty much
> settled on Psilons as my favorite, due to their fast research capabilities.
> A small force with high tech beats a medium-large force with low tech every
> time.
> I had the hardest time winning with the Klackon race, (nobody would vote
> for me even though I was being nice to them), but I have read that other
> people find them easy to play.
> My suggestion is to try them all until you find one you like.
The way to win as the Klackons is not to be nice, it is to leverage your
production bonus into a tech and fleet strength advantage that will allow
you to crush all opposition. Who cares about diplomacy when you have
2/3 of the galaxy's population - you can elect yourself singlehanded!
Of course you have to pick on the smaller races first so your enemies
won't be able to hit back or cause trouble in the Council. Remember
Machiavelli - Men should be either pampered or crushed. For men read
"beings" and you have the essence of MoO diplomacy.
> KWY
Chris
Chris Byler
Johnny Lamar Rhyne (crh...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
> In <4sbgup$7...@cs.mtu.edu> saco...@mtu.edu (Scott A. Colcord) writes:
> >
> >Johnny Lamar Rhyne (crh...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
> >: In <4s8u2q$5...@cs.mtu.edu> saco...@mtu.edu (Scott A. Colcord)
> writes:
> >: >Johnny Lamar Rhyne (crh...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
> >: >:
> >: >: Here a recipe for a great MoO ship design.
> >: >:
> >: >: <Design not quoted>
> >: >
> >: >Can I ask how much of a tech edge you had on these fleets and
> >: >what difficulty level you were playing at?
> >:
> >: Ok, a very large tech edge. Something like this:
> >:
> >: Me: 1990's U.S. miltary tech.
> >: Them: 300 A.D. Roman tech.
> >
> >I thought that might be the case...almost any ship is an easy winner
> with
> >that high a tech edge. What people are more interested in is ship
> designs
> >that can do well when fighting an equal (or better) tech opponent.
> >
Well, in that case, I'd like to put in a good word for the Ion Stream
Projector. Build a large with this, then when you get some good new
tech, design an improved model still with an ISP, then.. you get the
idea. Eventually you will have 5-6 classes with ISP's. Then make
fleets mixing all these types, and you will really brutalize an opponent.
Also the ISP miniaturizes faster than most specials because it is a weapon,
and because much of its size comes from its power requirement. It's great
against ships (especially big ships), and planets too. You just can't go
wrong with it, IMO.
Oh, and you don't have to hit. Useful if you have lousy battle computers
or are facing the Alkari.
> > ----Scott
Chris
Hamster
We interrupt this program to bring you a message from Joseph Poulin...
>: What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
>
> Well, it depends on your playing style, but a lot of people like
>the Klackons, the Mecklars, and the Psilons. The humans are great if you
>enjoy winning through diplomacy, the Darloks are cool if you enjoy
>playing with the entire galaxy hating your guts.
Hmm... that's odd. Everytime I play as the Darloks, I end up with everyone
hating each other, but practically worshipping me. The only time they all
ganged up on me was when I got sick of waiting for war, and attacked a weaker
race. (They had no alliances.) From my experience, the initial diplomatic
penalty really doesn't effect much.
>
>Good luck,
>Joe
--
Kyremius "Hamsterriffic" Nebauchaudnezzar
Captain Hamster and XO of Alpha Squad, TRES Corps.
Dragon, Troubleshooter, and Vericator, and not a hamster.
"Saving the World since 1978" ;-
"Real Dragons Don't Eat Men Who Eat Quiche!" MHM 14X3
(...Maybe it's my magnetic personality...)
Peter Stewart
: Mrrshan or Alkari, of course.
: Otherwise the game is a mayor wimp even on impossible.
:
: Or if are REALLY green and want an easy game,
: try Psylons. Really easy vistory.
It really depends on your style of play, and even the mood you're in when
you start the game. I tend to decide how I want to pursue victory and then
choose a race. If I want to do it by council vote, I tend to choose the
humans, as their diplomatic skills make it easy for everyone to like them
and allows them to build up trade to insanely profitable levels and gives my
tech a chance to catch up. If I'm feeling more expanionist, I choose Sakkras
for their population bonuses. If I really feel in a mood to simply wipe
everyone off the face the map, I tend to choose the Meklar for their
factory bonuses (I hate the Klackons' propulsion tech penalties, and the
Mrrshan and Alkari tend to attract too many enemies early in the game). I
actually find the Psilons boring (too easy).
GUI TERENCE ANG
On 15 Jul 1996, Chris Byler wrote:
> Except in the early game, where the U-Riches are too valuable as shipyards
> to waste them on the reserve trick. Since I build no starfleet until
I guess I play differently than you do. In general, I find that the best
use for a U-Rich planet early on is to quickly use the reserve trick to
build up my newly colonized worlds, and max out their factories sooner.
And as you mentioned, early in the game, I don't even worry about ship
production, so I divert all u-rich reserves to building up my planets
> Nuclear Engines at least (which can be a problem in the 50%+ of games I
> can't research Nuclear Engines..), I am always last in fleet strength until
That seems to happen to me as well, but I can usually wait until Sub-light
comes along, as I try to stay out of trouble early on.
> I start building a starfleet. Therefore I have a pressing need for ships
> which tends to last even into the midgame (since I throw my ships immediately
> into combat rather than letting them sit around getting obsolete). So I
This is something the CP doesn't seem to do well, as they build massive
fleets early in the game, which most of the time just orbit idly around
their homeworld doing nothing. There's no point in building ships that
one won't need until later. They eat up valuable production that could be
used for reasearch/expansion, and when the time comes along that they'll
be needed, they're already obsolete.
> So when I have an artifact world I usually use the 'Planets' screen tax
> to get reserves to pump it - that, or reserves left over from a max-out
> of previous planet upgrades, or from a brief period when I suspend ship
> production to wait for a crucial tech I am about to discover.
I guess you won't really notice a reduction in production if you slowly
"siphon" a few BC's every turn and use it for artifacts. But isn't this
inefficient? I would think that the point of having rich/u-rich worlds
was to use them for reserves, since you "taxing" all of your planets in
the end only goes to reduce total BC production. Anyways, just MO.
TAG
David Browne
>
> What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
The best race, and by that I assume that you mean the one that will win in the
greatest number of situations, is (drumroll) the Psilons.
Others are good, but none compare to the Psilons. Consider:
1) Money spent on reasearch by Psilons is worth 187.5% what money spent by
other races is. (a 50% research bonus added to a 20% technology discount). In
sheer magnitude this racial bonus dwarfs all others.
2) Psilons can spend this racial bonus to get any of the skills given to the
other races.
Any race can win from a winning position (though few can exploit one better),
but which one is best in those marginal starts? Which one can keep up with
the fewest planets? Which one can protect those planets against large
neighbors?
If I bet you $100 that you couldn't win your next game of MOO at impossible,
you'd want to play the psilons.
David the Opinionated
yoss...@mail.utexas.edu
Rob C. Johnson
I would play the humans, because I can avoid a war nearly
indefinitely with them. The only time I ever wasn't able to keep
the peace with Humans was in one wierd game where I started
surrounded by Radiated and Toxic planets well out to 8 parsecs.
Oh, and most of them were Ultra Rich. I was so vastly smaller
than everyone else, that despite all my efforts, they declared
war. All in all, it was a hilarious game, actually.
Rob sez 'Hi!' (rcjo...@prairienet.org)
Rob C. Johnson
Hmmm. Well, we apparently get different results when we play.
For one, when I've played 'em, and I always play at Impossible,
the CPs are more ready to declare war on Mrrshans than Alkari.
So, yes, their weapons are superior, but at Impossible it is
rather more difficult to maintain the peace.
As for humans at Impossible, I have to use spies from day one,
let them get caught, just to keep the CPs from voting me into
office. It's pretty darn hard to avoid it if I've got the
population! I suggest you need to work on your diplomatic
techniques, perhaps.
As for Darloks at Impossible, framing does work. The history
of a MOO game usually starts out with an early peace, soon
followed by a few sporatic border conflicts. As worlds get
more developed, the midgame devolves into a chaotic free for
all where everyone else is at war, while you sit serenely at
peace. Humans and Darloks need never go to war, although
Darloks might have to conquer a few planets to gain some more
votes. Other species eventually get drawn into the conflict
against neighbors.
Rob sez 'Hi!' (rcjo...@prairienet.org)
Chris Byler
Rob C. Johnson (rcjo...@prairienet.org) wrote:
Ah, but if you were the Psilons, you would have owned those planets within
a reasonably short time, and then with all those U-Riches, you could build
a powerful high-tech starfleet to keep the cp's off your back so it wouldn't
matter if they declared war or not.
Nobody ever gained anything worthwhile by being unable to defend themselves
- even if they can usually talk the other guy out of beating them up.
Besides, if you're the Psilons you can afford to give low-level tech as
bribes to keep peace when necessary - you have plenty more tech where that
came from, not to mention the cp's lag in putting tech into practice.
x95...@wmich.edu
In article <4sbgup$7...@cs.mtu.edu>, saco...@mtu.edu (Scott A. Colcord) writes:
> Johnny Lamar Rhyne (crh...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
> : >Johnny Lamar Rhyne (crh...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
> : >:
> : >: Here a recipe for a great MoO ship design.
> : >:
> : >: <Design not quoted>
> : >
> : >Can I ask how much of a tech edge you had on these fleets and
> : >what difficulty level you were playing at?
> :
> : Ok, a very large tech edge. Something like this:
> :
> : Me: 1990's U.S. miltary tech.
> : Them: 300 A.D. Roman tech.
>
> I thought that might be the case...almost any ship is an easy winner with
> that high a tech edge. What people are more interested in is ship designs
> that can do well when fighting an equal (or better) tech opponent.
>
>
> --
> Scott A. Colcord http://www.cs.mtu.edu/grads/Colcord/Home.html
> M.S. Cand. Artificial adaptive systems Dept. of Computer Science
> Michigan Technological University E-mail: saco...@mtu.edu
> --
Ehem... not true... technology does not always rule..
I once got blasted badly by computer players having many 32000 small ships
armed lasers ONLY!! They wiped out my massive BIG ships armed with
powerful shields and graviton breams.
Learn from mistake.. get the repulsor beams..and high energy focus.
Tip : Ultra long range shot.
Get high energy focus and stellar convertors... blast'em before they
reach you.
Scott A. Colcord
x95...@wmich.edu wrote:
: saco...@mtu.edu (Scott A. Colcord) wrote:
: >
: > I thought that might be the case...almost any ship is an easy winner with
: > that high a tech edge. What people are more interested in is ship designs
: > that can do well when fighting an equal (or better) tech opponent.
: Ehem... not true... technology does not always rule..
:
: I once got blasted badly by computer players having many 32000 small
: ships armed lasers ONLY!! They wiped out my massive BIG ships armed with
: powerful shields and graviton breams.
better) shields (not unreasonable on a large ship), those lasers shouldn't
have been able to hurt you at all. Had you gone light on shield tech?
Chris Byler
> > Except in the early game, where the U-Riches are too valuable as shipyards
> > to waste them on the reserve trick. Since I build no starfleet until
> I guess I play differently than you do. In general, I find that the best
> use for a U-Rich planet early on is to quickly use the reserve trick to
> build up my newly colonized worlds, and max out their factories sooner.
> And as you mentioned, early in the game, I don't even worry about ship
> production, so I divert all u-rich reserves to building up my planets
> > Nuclear Engines at least (which can be a problem in the 50%+ of games I
> > can't research Nuclear Engines..), I am always last in fleet strength until
> That seems to happen to me as well, but I can usually wait until Sub-light
> comes along, as I try to stay out of trouble early on.
Yeah, except for the time I missed Nuclear and Sub-Light.. Once I missed
both of those and Fusion too, and couldn't steal tech from other cp's..
> > I start building a starfleet. Therefore I have a pressing need for ships
> > which tends to last even into the midgame (since I throw my ships immediately
> > into combat rather than letting them sit around getting obsolete). So I
> This is something the CP doesn't seem to do well, as they build massive
> fleets early in the game, which most of the time just orbit idly around
> their homeworld doing nothing. There's no point in building ships that
> one won't need until later. They eat up valuable production that could be
> used for reasearch/expansion, and when the time comes along that they'll
> be needed, they're already obsolete.
I agree.
> > So when I have an artifact world I usually use the 'Planets' screen tax
> > to get reserves to pump it - that, or reserves left over from a max-out
> > of previous planet upgrades, or from a brief period when I suspend ship
> > production to wait for a crucial tech I am about to discover.
> I guess you won't really notice a reduction in production if you slowly
> "siphon" a few BC's every turn and use it for artifacts. But isn't this
> inefficient? I would think that the point of having rich/u-rich worlds
> was to use them for reserves, since you "taxing" all of your planets in
> the end only goes to reduce total BC production. Anyways, just MO.
The point of having rich/u-rich worlds is that you can get good ship
production out of just a few planets, leaving the rest free to go 100% tech
after cleaning up any waste generated. At least, that's been my experience
of the most effective way to use them. Pumping their production into
reserves, even considering the bonuses, is still losing 1/2 of their
production which could be going into ships. The tax OTOH is just as likely
to take from other planets.
Also, the tax is taken away *before* specials are applied. So ultrapoor
planets and ultrarich planets make the same contribution to the tax - therefore,
it is taken mostly from no-specials planets since that's what most planets are,
and can be freed up to pump your rich/urich shipyards, or Orion, or artifact
planets, or whatever.
And I don't really use that much tax - mostly just to help jumpstart new
planets, or feed Orion, or boost ship production if I need more fleets in a
hurry, or help out planets with disasters/incoming fleets/whatever.
> TAG
Chris
David Browne
In article <4shn7r$i...@epx.cis.umn.edu>, wags...@gold.tc.umn.edu says...
>
>>Ah, but if you were the Psilons, you would have owned those planets within
>
>But the Psilons always get killed really easy because they don't expand
>enough. That is why the Silicoids are the best.
Except, of course, when you're not playing on Easy/Huge. In which case the
Silicoids kinda suck.
>They have the quickest
>exapnsion and it is fairly easy for them to learn terraforming because they
>don't have to learn all of the control environments. If you have 20 planets
>by the time everyone else only has 10 you are going to win.
With the Scilicoids this is not always true. Although they grab planets
quickly, they develop them slowly. And if they can't grab half the universe,
they almost always loose.
> Thats why they
>are the best!
>
>
Chris Byler
Peter Stewart (ste...@bae.bellcore.com) wrote:
> Chris Byler (cby...@dsu.seas.ucla.edu) wrote:
> : Peter Stewart (ste...@bae.bellcore.com) wrote:
> : > Yes, because by the time you get to the point of researching both nuclear
> : > engines and NPGs, you're sufficiently miniaturized to get extra manuverability.
> : > I forget whether you can squeeze a battle computer on there as well, but since
> : > I've done well with this strategy, it seems to work in either case.
> :
> : And I suppose it builds up your "Fleet Strength" bar to where the cp's are
> : less likely to pick on you. Also handy for dealing with the occasional
> : comet.
> :
> : But in general I find that smalls (even Alkari smalls) die too quickly to
> : be combat effective - particularly since their armament tends to be minimal.
> :
> : Especially, smalls that are not significantly higher tech than their opponents
> : will be outclassed, but large and huge ships are still a force to be reckoned
> : with even at 10-15 TLs lower. Plus the bigger ships can mount really useful
> : specials like ion stream - 5 classes of ion-streaming ships can really
> : brutalize an enemy fleet, or for that matter, missile bases.
> Right. The small ships are useful at the lower tech levels just to show your
> neighbors that you have *something* you can defend with. I generally move
> to medium ships once my planets have started to industrtialize more fully and
> then large ships later on. I once used medium ships rather effectively against
> a Silicoid opponent. The Silicoids started rather close to me (I was playing
> humans) but I managed to colonize a key planet ahead of him and prevented
> him from contacting the other races in the galaxy (read: no CPs to form
> alliances with and ask to declare war on me). He created these hulking
> huge ships armed with tons of gatling lasers. I needed more room to expand,
> so I poured everything into researching class IV deflectors, then created
> a fleet of mediums with them and as many NPGs as I could cram into them.
> My medium fleets toasted his huge ships and I was able to capture all his
> planets before he could get decent weapon tech. (I eventually won that game;
> it was one of the few games where an early war was an advantage rather than
> a hinderance).
Well, in that case you had a single crucial tech that made all his ships
worthless. But barring that (rare) situation, I doubt if a fleet of smalls
would have made any serious difference.
BTW I tend to go immediately to larges for beam ships because IMX you always
need at least one large or equivalent mass to be a credible force, even in
the very beginning, and the extra hp and cheaper shields are essential to
beam ships. Missile boats OTOH need no shields and therefore I generally
build mediums as soon as I can get good missiles on a medium, which is
generally immediately after discovering a post-Nuclear missile.
I haven't found small high-initiative ships effective because large high-
initiative ships will beat them every time. (same maneuver, same or better
computer, battle scanner = higher initiative; then lots of hp, shields,
best computer = swarms of dead fleas.)
> : > Every 5-15 turns, a CP randomly scraps a ship design and redesigns it.
> : > Eventually it will choose its colony ship design and the new one will always
> : > have weapons on it. I find that if I don't build a small group of warships,
> : > the scouts still sitting at the outermost "claimed" planets will be
> : > swept aside and I lose the opoortunity to colonize those juicy planets.
> :
> : Just to clarify - you build these warships with reserve tanks? I guess you're
> : not talking about the NPG smalls anymore, are you? Reserve tanks don't coexist
> : with weapons on a small until significantly later.. In any case, can you
> : really get enough warships with reserve tanks to ward off armed colony ships
> : (and frequently warship escorts) without hampering your own colonization
> : ability? I find it more effective to put those resources into tech, then use
> : the tech to build better ships later and use the ships to conquer the planets
> : in question (or any other planets you might want). But maybe I'm just not
> : clear on what this strategy is.
> Actually, by the time I start building a fleet, I have better fuel cells
> anyway. Using a war fleet to guard good planets is not something I have to
> do all the time; in fact, I try to hold out as long as possible. Generally
> I need the war fleet once borders start to form between me and other races.
I don't see why you would build a warfleet to "protect" an uncolonized world
within your normal ship range - build a colony ship and colonize it! Colony
ships are cheaper than an equivalent mass of warships, and as I mentioned above
you need at least one large-equivalent (1 large, 5 medium, 25 small, 1/5 huge)
to be credible. So it would always be cheaper to colonize the system.
> On that note, another bit of strategy I go by is never forming non-aggression
> pacts with neighboring races until I've colonized all the planets that are
> within reach of both of us. Only after that do I try a treaty to help keep
> good relations between us and make it less likely he'll randomly declare
> war on me.
Also, good relations promote trade, which promotes good relations, which..
you get the idea. Even non-Humans can benefit from trade, if your trading
partner is of a relatively nice disposition (pacifist, ruthless, maybe
aggressive or honorable - definitely not erratic or xenophobic)
> [snip]
> : Actually, I hardly ever bomb non-Bulrathi planets. If they have better ground
> : combat tech, all the more reason to invade the planets intact, just send huge
> : numbers of troops and grow them back later. If they don't have better ground
> : tech, there's no reason to waste all those factories - factories cost a hell
> : of a lot more than colonists at any TL.
> Flooding the enemy with troops will work if the CP does not have too much of
> an edge in ground tech, or you're playing the Sakkras :) I've found that
> having a Sakkra race with advanced soil enrichment and cloning is a force
> to be reckoned with. Almost bottomless manpower (er, lizardpower :) )
I find that by using 4-5 planets as invasion sources I can always generate
a 2:1 manpower advantage, which is nearly always sufficient for non-Bulrathi
targets. And I can do this without seriously crippling any single planet.
And it is nearly always I who have a ground tech advantage - I prioritize it
more.
> : > I find missile bases become obsolete in the really late game when everyone is
> : > tooling about the galaxy with teleporters, neutronium bombs, and warp 5
> : > engines or better.
> :
> : Well, usually, my games don't last until the *computer* has this stuff
> : *in service* - I start cleaning up long before this. Exception is when I'm
> : way behind, and in that case, there's no point even trying to defend your
> : planets - just espionage like crazy and hope you can catch up, or better
> : yet, give up and start a new game.
> True, it's not that often that the game advances to this point, but any time
> it does, I enjoy it immensely, since I rarely get to research those really
> high-tech designs. I find that the longer the game takes, the more challenging
> it makes it; I recently had a game where I didn't win until my fleet was
> equipped with pulse phasors, cloaking devices, black hole generators, and
> hercular missiles. :)
Why bother with the hercular missiles? BHG's will take out planets fine,
and for anything else the phasors are probably more effective. Plus, firing
missiles will require you to decloak at long range, and if you wait until
short range, you are introducing a lag for missiles to strike which is
unnecessary.
> : > I almost never use the auto mode, unless I'm in a one-on-one battle with beam
> : > weapons at point-blank range and don't feel like sitting there clicking
> : > the mouse for 15 more turns.
> :
> : I usually use it when there is only one target left and even the computer
> : can't screw up. Especially if I am attacking planets when I have auto-
> : repairing ships that aren't being damaged, but have difficulty damaging
> : the planet (a frequent situation). Also I sometimes use it when I know
> : the enemy will retreat, just to save time.
> The auto mode has the most annoying habit of moving your ships that have
> missiles forward to launch their volleys and then immediately pulling them
> back, even if the ship design has some kickass beam weapons, and holding
> back the rest.
Actually, this is to your *advantage* unless (a) the cp's have mostly missile
weapons or (b) the cp's are going to retreat and you want to mess them up
before they get away, because otherwise the cp's will have to advance toward
you, hitting your missiles in the process. Charging in right away is not
to your advantage *unless* the enemy has more missiles than you do. Let them
take their casualties closing on you first. This is especially true at low
TL's where it may take a cp fleet 3+ turns to cross the map - you can unload
your entire missile magazines into them, then retreat your missile boats,
before they have even reached effective beam range.
> : > It depends on what kind of fleet strength you have. Some of the most
> : > challenging (and often the most fun) games I've had is when a militiarily
> : > superior CP declares war and I have to resort to cleverness rather than brute
> : > force to win. In that case, destroying missile bases out from under them to
> : > let an otherwise understrength fleet in to bombard the planet to rubble
> : > can be a definite asset. Otherwise, I do concentrate on stealing tech.
> :
> : Hmm.. but if your fleet doesn't meet his fleet, what difference could the bases
> : make? And if his fleet *is* there you are toast.. Relative fleet strength
> : I find to be frequently irrelevant in war because it is only your *applied*
> : strength that matters. If I can make an end run around the Meklar fleet it
> : might as well not be there. Of course this is much easier to do if the
> : enemy can't beat your missile bases!
> The idea in the case of fighting a superior CP force is to try to find planets
> of his not protected by his fleet and pound them to rubble if they can't
> be captured in order to put a dent in his production and to convince the AI
> that you're doing more damage to him than he is doing to you. Also, the AI
> will often start redirecting ships to the planets under attack, tying them
> up for a few turns as they head over there even after you've laid waste to
> them. In order to pound these planets, however, you have to destroy the
> missile bases, and this is what I find sabatogue helps with if you can't
> take the damage the bases will do normally.
But in my experience this kind of tactic is usually ineffective because his
fleet is just as strong as ever - cp's do not scrap fleets in response to their
maintenance costs, nor are they ever forced to scrap them due to not being
able to pay those costs - and will still have to be fought before it pounds
my planets into scrap. Frankly, beating up the cp's planets is much less
important than protecting my own planets or adding planets to my empire -
if I just destroy them, he or another cp will probably recolonize them and I
have therefore been wasting my time. If I cannot increase my own power, how
does it benefit me to decrease someone else's? Particularly when his fleet is
still poised to strike?
This is why I usually begin a war one of two ways:
1. Cp declares war on me. I wait until he launches an attack, then move my
fleet to intercept it with missile base support (being careful not to commit
so much force he flees immediately). After crushing his fleet, I launch a
counterattack, provided no other invasion fleets are impending.
2. Cp is not at war with me. I assemble a sufficiently large fleet, attack
one of his planets, then invade it. Once I have captured the planet I
reinforce it with whatever I can spare and proceed to defend myself from any
other attacks. If I think I have enough force to protect the planet, respond
to enemy movements, and still launch another attack I may do so.
> [snip]
> : > : (You know, by the time we finish this discussion, MoO2 may be out!)
> :
> : > I wouldn't hold my breath :p
> :
> : Well, what I meant was, this discussion would last a *long* time, because
> : MoO is such a great and complex game, where there is always something more
> : to talk about.
> :
> : > Pete
> :
> : Chris
> I agree. MOO is one of those games that will take a long time to go out of
> style.
Well, I guess eternity qualifies as 'a long time'.. has chess gone out of
style?
> Pete
Chris
Chris Byler
Paulo da Costa (dac...@natlab.research.philips.com) wrote:
> In <4sgk3l$g...@cs.mtu.edu> saco...@mtu.edu (Scott A. Colcord) writes:
> :x95...@wmich.edu wrote:
> [...]
> :: I once got blasted badly by computer players having many 32000 small
> :: ships armed lasers ONLY!! They wiped out my massive BIG ships armed with
> :: powerful shields and graviton breams.
> :
> :Something doesn't add up here...If your ships had powerful (Class IV or
> :better) shields (not unreasonable on a large ship), those lasers shouldn't
> :have been able to hurt you at all. Had you gone light on shield tech?
> It must have been inside a nebula, of course. Zero shields.
Yeah, fleas are nasty in a nebula. Anywhere else dreadnoughts eat them for
lunch, especially with the kind of tech advantage he's talking about.
(Assuming the dreadnoughts are well-designed, of course. Don't skimp on
maneuverability - you're a big enough target already, plus it affects your
initiative. Battle scanners are a must.)
Chris
GUI TERENCE ANG
On 15 Jul 1996, Scott A. Colcord wrote:
> : <Comment of using U-riches ommitted>
>
> Actually, after cranking out the math, an ultra-rich planet which puts
> 2/3 of its production into ships and the rest into reserve (backfeeding it
> to the planet again) will be able to produce 1/3 more ships than a planet
> which puts all of its production directly into ships...Slightly more if you
> take pollution control into account, because the pollution produced by
> doubled factories is not doubled. If I'm in a close game on impossible
That's what I do as well. But I never did the math and wasn't sure if
there actually was an advantage to it. But I was at least sure it was
equal to the production if everything went into only ships.
TAG
GUI TERENCE ANG
On 16 Jul 1996, Chris Byler wrote:
> Yeah, except for the time I missed Nuclear and Sub-Light.. Once I missed
> both of those and Fusion too, and couldn't steal tech from other cp's..
One of the few challenges the game offers without employing "cheating"
seems to be the random (it is random, isn't it?) blocking of certain
techs. This can usually make a game much more challenging than if the
tech list given to you goes your way. I believe in my very first game at
hard, I didn't get any robotic controls untiol V, this turned out to be
the longest game I have every played *without* artificially prolonging it.
Not sure what the year was, but it was long (around 2600 I think, have to
check).
>
> > I guess you won't really notice a reduction in production if you slowly
> > "siphon" a few BC's every turn and use it for artifacts. But isn't this
> > inefficient? I would think that the point of having rich/u-rich worlds
> > was to use them for reserves, since you "taxing" all of your planets in
> > the end only goes to reduce total BC production. Anyways, just MO.
>
> The point of having rich/u-rich worlds is that you can get good ship
> production out of just a few planets, leaving the rest free to go 100% tech
> after cleaning up any waste generated. At least, that's been my experience
> of the most effective way to use them. Pumping their production into
> reserves, even considering the bonuses, is still losing 1/2 of their
> production which could be going into ships. The tax OTOH is just as likely
> to take from other planets.
>
> Also, the tax is taken away *before* specials are applied. So ultrapoor
> planets and ultrarich planets make the same contribution to the tax - therefore,
> it is taken mostly from no-specials planets since that's what most planets are,
> and can be freed up to pump your rich/urich shipyards, or Orion, or artifact
> planets, or whatever.
Well, if you can win at hard/impossible with that, who am I to argue with
that? I just prefer using rich/u-rich planets for all shipbuilding/new
colony jumpstarting.
> And I don't really use that much tax - mostly just to help jumpstart new
> planets, or feed Orion, or boost ship production if I need more fleets in a
> hurry, or help out planets with disasters/incoming fleets/whatever.
>
One advantage of using tax as opposed to rich/u-rich reserves that I can
think of is a lot less micromanagement.
TAG
Pridkett (Patrick Wagstrom)
>Ah, but if you were the Psilons, you would have owned those planets within
<SNIP>
But the Psilons always get killed really easy because they don't expand
enough. That is why the Silicoids are the best. They have the quickest
exapnsion and it is fairly easy for them to learn terraforming because they
don't have to learn all of the control environments. If you have 20 planets
by the time everyone else only has 10 you are going to win. Thats why they
are the best!
Paulo da Costa
:x95...@wmich.edu wrote:
[...]
:: I once got blasted badly by computer players having many 32000 small
:: ships armed lasers ONLY!! They wiped out my massive BIG ships armed with
:: powerful shields and graviton breams.
:
:Something doesn't add up here...If your ships had powerful (Class IV or
:better) shields (not unreasonable on a large ship), those lasers shouldn't
:have been able to hurt you at all. Had you gone light on shield tech?
It must have been inside a nebula, of course. Zero shields.
--
Paulo M. C(astello) da Costa /\/\/\ Minha terra tem palmeiras /\/\/\
dac...@natlab.research.philips.com \/\/\/ Onde canta o sabia'... \/\/\/
Philips Research Labs, bldg WY8.011, / Tel +31 40 2744281 Fax +31 40 2744675 \
Prof Holstln 4, 5656 AA Eindhoven NL \__ http://www.iaehv.nl/users/dacosta/ __/
Peter Stewart
: > Yes, because by the time you get to the point of researching both nuclear
: > engines and NPGs, you're sufficiently miniaturized to get extra manuverability.
: > I forget whether you can squeeze a battle computer on there as well, but since
: > I've done well with this strategy, it seems to work in either case.
:
: And I suppose it builds up your "Fleet Strength" bar to where the cp's are
: less likely to pick on you. Also handy for dealing with the occasional
: comet.
:
: But in general I find that smalls (even Alkari smalls) die too quickly to
: be combat effective - particularly since their armament tends to be minimal.
:
: Especially, smalls that are not significantly higher tech than their opponents
: will be outclassed, but large and huge ships are still a force to be reckoned
: with even at 10-15 TLs lower. Plus the bigger ships can mount really useful
: specials like ion stream - 5 classes of ion-streaming ships can really
: brutalize an enemy fleet, or for that matter, missile bases.
Right. The small ships are useful at the lower tech levels just to show your
neighbors that you have *something* you can defend with. I generally move
to medium ships once my planets have started to industrtialize more fully and
then large ships later on. I once used medium ships rather effectively against
a Silicoid opponent. The Silicoids started rather close to me (I was playing
humans) but I managed to colonize a key planet ahead of him and prevented
him from contacting the other races in the galaxy (read: no CPs to form
alliances with and ask to declare war on me). He created these hulking
huge ships armed with tons of gatling lasers. I needed more room to expand,
so I poured everything into researching class IV deflectors, then created
a fleet of mediums with them and as many NPGs as I could cram into them.
My medium fleets toasted his huge ships and I was able to capture all his
planets before he could get decent weapon tech. (I eventually won that game;
it was one of the few games where an early war was an advantage rather than
a hinderance).
: > Every 5-15 turns, a CP randomly scraps a ship design and redesigns it.
: > Eventually it will choose its colony ship design and the new one will always
: > have weapons on it. I find that if I don't build a small group of warships,
: > the scouts still sitting at the outermost "claimed" planets will be
: > swept aside and I lose the opoortunity to colonize those juicy planets.
:
: Just to clarify - you build these warships with reserve tanks? I guess you're
: not talking about the NPG smalls anymore, are you? Reserve tanks don't coexist
: with weapons on a small until significantly later.. In any case, can you
: really get enough warships with reserve tanks to ward off armed colony ships
: (and frequently warship escorts) without hampering your own colonization
: ability? I find it more effective to put those resources into tech, then use
: the tech to build better ships later and use the ships to conquer the planets
: in question (or any other planets you might want). But maybe I'm just not
: clear on what this strategy is.
Actually, by the time I start building a fleet, I have better fuel cells
anyway. Using a war fleet to guard good planets is not something I have to
do all the time; in fact, I try to hold out as long as possible. Generally
I need the war fleet once borders start to form between me and other races.
On that note, another bit of strategy I go by is never forming non-aggression
pacts with neighboring races until I've colonized all the planets that are
within reach of both of us. Only after that do I try a treaty to help keep
good relations between us and make it less likely he'll randomly declare
war on me.
[snip]
: Actually, I hardly ever bomb non-Bulrathi planets. If they have better ground
: combat tech, all the more reason to invade the planets intact, just send huge
: numbers of troops and grow them back later. If they don't have better ground
: tech, there's no reason to waste all those factories - factories cost a hell
: of a lot more than colonists at any TL.
Flooding the enemy with troops will work if the CP does not have too much of
an edge in ground tech, or you're playing the Sakkras :) I've found that
having a Sakkra race with advanced soil enrichment and cloning is a force
to be reckoned with. Almost bottomless manpower (er, lizardpower :) )
: > I find missile bases become obsolete in the really late game when everyone is
: > tooling about the galaxy with teleporters, neutronium bombs, and warp 5
: > engines or better.
:
: Well, usually, my games don't last until the *computer* has this stuff
: *in service* - I start cleaning up long before this. Exception is when I'm
: way behind, and in that case, there's no point even trying to defend your
: planets - just espionage like crazy and hope you can catch up, or better
: yet, give up and start a new game.
True, it's not that often that the game advances to this point, but any time
it does, I enjoy it immensely, since I rarely get to research those really
high-tech designs. I find that the longer the game takes, the more challenging
it makes it; I recently had a game where I didn't win until my fleet was
equipped with pulse phasors, cloaking devices, black hole generators, and
hercular missiles. :)
: > I almost never use the auto mode, unless I'm in a one-on-one battle with beam
: > weapons at point-blank range and don't feel like sitting there clicking
: > the mouse for 15 more turns.
:
: I usually use it when there is only one target left and even the computer
: can't screw up. Especially if I am attacking planets when I have auto-
: repairing ships that aren't being damaged, but have difficulty damaging
: the planet (a frequent situation). Also I sometimes use it when I know
: the enemy will retreat, just to save time.
The auto mode has the most annoying habit of moving your ships that have
missiles forward to launch their volleys and then immediately pulling them
back, even if the ship design has some kickass beam weapons, and holding
back the rest.
: > It depends on what kind of fleet strength you have. Some of the most
: > challenging (and often the most fun) games I've had is when a militiarily
: > superior CP declares war and I have to resort to cleverness rather than brute
: > force to win. In that case, destroying missile bases out from under them to
: > let an otherwise understrength fleet in to bombard the planet to rubble
: > can be a definite asset. Otherwise, I do concentrate on stealing tech.
:
: Hmm.. but if your fleet doesn't meet his fleet, what difference could the bases
: make? And if his fleet *is* there you are toast.. Relative fleet strength
: I find to be frequently irrelevant in war because it is only your *applied*
: strength that matters. If I can make an end run around the Meklar fleet it
: might as well not be there. Of course this is much easier to do if the
: enemy can't beat your missile bases!
The idea in the case of fighting a superior CP force is to try to find planets
of his not protected by his fleet and pound them to rubble if they can't
be captured in order to put a dent in his production and to convince the AI
that you're doing more damage to him than he is doing to you. Also, the AI
will often start redirecting ships to the planets under attack, tying them
up for a few turns as they head over there even after you've laid waste to
them. In order to pound these planets, however, you have to destroy the
missile bases, and this is what I find sabatogue helps with if you can't
take the damage the bases will do normally.
[snip]
: > : (You know, by the time we finish this discussion, MoO2 may be out!)
:
: > I wouldn't hold my breath :p
:
: Well, what I meant was, this discussion would last a *long* time, because
: MoO is such a great and complex game, where there is always something more
: to talk about.
:
: > Pete
:
: Chris
I agree. MOO is one of those games that will take a long time to go out of
style.
Pete
Mike Means
I've found that the single most useful ship is to use the smallest hull
that you can fit noth a teleport device and any torpedo. Basically this
is the ship i research towards from the very beginning and eventually
I can fit all of this on a size medium hull and I can mass produce
them like craze and basically win every where. Once I have a little room
on the little buggers I throw on a bomb or two. In mass they kill everything.
Mike
Mike Means
Rob C. Johnson (rcjo...@prairienet.org) wrote:
: But there are many more situations where Psilons die and Humans
: live. I was pointing out the only time that I ever lost as a
: Human. Besides which, the situation was so hopeless, only the
: Silicoids could've done well, and they did with all those darn
: free colony ships of theirs.
I've found that the Psilons are the best but the Klackons are close. I
expand so rapidly with the klackons and my production is so high that I
have a distinct technological and physical advantage mid game. This of
course means I easily take the win. Also with cloning and some of the later
techs new planets are fully operational in almost no time. I just send a
horde of colonists over and reproduce them on my origional planets by
"buying" them and then the horde over on the new planet can build it
up in no time.
Mike
Chris Byler
But you have 20 crappy planets with 5 population each and no tech, when
everyone else has TL20, 10 good fully developed planets, and a starfleet
to boot. The Psilons can out-colonize anyone other than the Silicoids because
they get the range and controlled enviro tech faster. And when they do,
they have not only much more tech, but better developed planets than the
Silicoids.
Also your 20 planets will do you very little good against the other 5 races
with 10 each.. they outnumber you 2.5:1, not counting the better development
of their planets. Quality of planets is at least as important as quantity,
and tech is never more crucial then in the early game.
Chris
Chris Byler
Rob C. Johnson (rcjo...@prairienet.org) wrote:
> But there are many more situations where Psilons die and Humans
> live. I was pointing out the only time that I ever lost as a
> Human. Besides which, the situation was so hopeless, only the
> Silicoids could've done well, and they did with all those darn
> free colony ships of theirs.
If you had prioritized planetology you could have had those planets in a
reasonable time as psilons. And when you did you would have a massive
industrial base.
I would post about the only time I ever lost as a Psilon but it hasn't
happened yet, even on impossible.
Mike Lemons
Kia (K...@cris.com) wrote:
>Johnny Lamar Rhyne wrote:
>>
>> What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
> I absolutely love playing the humans. The sheer joy of running diplomatic rings
>around other races can't be beat, especially if it's a huge galaxy with the maximum number of
>races, with one of them being the Darlocks. "C'mere, guys, what? Nobody likes you? Mind if
>I call you guys 'Patsy?' How about 'catspaw?'"
I hate winning by vote. What's the point of being an emporer if you
can't grind everyone under your boot heel?
I like the meklars myself. I always get caught stealing with the Darloks.
--
Mike Lemons | "In 20th-century Old Earth, a fast food chain
mi...@crash.cts.com| took dead cow meat, fried it in grease, added
| carcinogens, wrapped it in petroleum-based foam,
| and sold 900,000,000,000 units. Human Beings.
| Go figure." Dan Simmons - Hyperion
GUI TERENCE ANG
On 15 Jul 1996, David Browne wrote:
> >
> > What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
>
>
> The best race, and by that I assume that you mean the one that will win in the
> greatest number of situations, is (drumroll) the Psilons.
>
> Others are good, but none compare to the Psilons. Consider:
>
> 1) Money spent on reasearch by Psilons is worth 187.5% what money spent by
> other races is. (a 50% research bonus added to a 20% technology discount). In
> sheer magnitude this racial bonus dwarfs all others.
This may be so, but I'd still have to disagree with you that "none"
compare to the Psilons. Let's take an example: Psilons are worth 187.5%
better (on average) than any other race regarding research. This
difference will certainly not hold true if Klackons were to invest all
their BC's into research. Psilons will still win out, but no one will be
foolish enough to do such a thing.
One aspect of MOO you didn't take into account is the rate of expansion of
a race's production potential. All things being equal (just to simplify
things), Klackons will be able to build up their colonies faster than most
other races. Silicoids might have more colonies, and Sakkras might come
close, but Klackons in all likelihood will out-produce them. Now that the
Klackons have the necessary production base to do something significant
with research, they can start pumping those BC's into research. Let's say
Psilons up to this point have a production capacity of 500BC, Klackons
would have developed factories faster, and add their production bonuses,
could have a production capacity that will double/triple the Psilons. The
reason they won't have this advantage is cause the CP is too stupid to
realize this and in probably pours the money into making thousands of
those fleas of theirs, instead of focusing on important areas such as
research.
> 2) Psilons can spend this racial bonus to get any of the skills given to the
> other races.
Same can be said for Klackons. While with the Psilons, one needs time for
to get those advantages (even with Psilons, researching does take time).
And how much can one research at the start, when one should be
concentrating on expansion, factory building, whereas the Klackons will
always have their production bonus, no matter what they use it for. I
doubt anyone will start diverting huge amounts into research early on,
this will only hamper expansion, and no matter how much bonuses one
possesses, it's always better to have more planets.
> Any race can win from a winning position (though few can exploit one better),
> but which one is best in those marginal starts? Which one can keep up with
> the fewest planets? Which one can protect those planets against large
> neighbors?
>
I am currently playing in a couple of games, one of which I am the
Klackons, in which the Psilons have emerged to be the 2nd most powerful
race. They've got nearly as much planets as I do (one less, I think).
And I am still neck to neck with, if not beating them in the tech race. I
know this is no way to judge the Psilons (since it's a CP). But this just
illustrates how important a good industrial base is.
Klackons aren't my favourite race only because they're so easy to win
with. There is absolutely no challenge. And I'm not even that good of a
MoO player (I can't clear Impossible with every race).
TAG
Rob C. Johnson
But there are many more situations where Psilons die and Humans
live. I was pointing out the only time that I ever lost as a
Human. Besides which, the situation was so hopeless, only the
Silicoids could've done well, and they did with all those darn
free colony ships of theirs.
Rob sez 'Hi!' (rcjo...@prairienet.org)
Andy
My top 3 MOO races
Psilon: I can win the earliest with these guys. My strategy
(though it isn't as fun as hunting down everyone) is to grab
nearby worlds, then stop and fortify them. Wait till the
counsel session and find out who the #2 guy is. Once you do,
just give out tech very freely and brind 2 or 3 of the other
races to your side and you'll win the next vote. (I find this
is much easier with the Psilons than Humans)
Meklar: A good race but you're usually kinda weak at the
beggining, (lots of pollution balance out the factory adv)
But later in the game when you have traded,stolen, captured
the better Planet techs you can outproduce even the Psilons.
Sakkra: Conquer early on and you'll win very easily. Unless
you screw up in the beggining the only race that can challenge
you will be the Psilons.
Hated races to play against:
Klackons: Even insane lvl behemoths can be taken down by
20,000 fighters. Early to Mid game they are almost always the
major power. Awful Allies because they are almost always
erratic.
Siliconiods: Unless they get boxed in they will own 40% of the
universe. Bomber raids can hurt them though.
Psilon: They make good allies but if they get pissed at you it
becomes a very long war. (Usually with you takin twice his
casualitys)
My thoughts on Moo after many games.
Andy
VALAMIR
The Meklar's are the overwhelming best race...If you can avoid war early
on.
If you can get your first few planets developed to the level where the
Meklar's advantage of extra industry kicks in you're set. Stage two is to
develop just enough military to keep from being over run while pounding
research into cleaning up and preventing waste (hopefully the random
techs offered include these). This keeps you from wasting all of your
income on Environment. Stage three is to just out produce everyone. Who
cares if the Psilons Tech bonus is 1.8 times normal when as the Meklars
you can out spend them 3-1. Not to mention that Tech evens out very
rapidly as soon as you capture 1 developed planet. With a single invasion
you can completely wipe out the Psilon's early lead.
I imagine the Klackons have a similar strategy but I never play them...I
have a thing about being a bug. On the occassions I lose, it is usually
to them.
The Darlocs are also a good option to fight the Psilons with...if you get
a decent starting position. If the Darlocs have to stuggle from the
beginning they're pretty much toast. By dumping money into spies you have
a great opportunity to steal the Psilons blind (while saving bucks that
are better spent elsewhere). Not to mention that with enough spies,
combined with the Darlocs Spy advantage you can frame just about anyone
you want and start a bunch of wars where you get to watch your enemies
destroy themselves.
For a real challenge though play the Alkari. Their advantage (even more
so then the Mrrshan) is so useless its like playing with the deck stacked
against.
Glenn Ironhat
>>Yeah, fleas are nasty in a nebula. Anywhere else dreadnoughts eat them for
>>lunch, especially with the kind of tech advantage he's talking about.
>>(Assuming the dreadnoughts are well-designed, of course. Don't skimp on
>>maneuverability - you're a big enough target already, plus it affects your
>>initiative. Battle scanners are a must.)
>>Chris
>Aren't there a couple of weapons to work against fleets of small ships -
>do 3 or 4 points to every ship in the stack? I haven't played MoO for a
>while, so I can't remember what they are. One prob I found with these
>though, a stack of ships eqiupped with this weapon can only fire it
>once, which isn't enough against a stack of 4HP ships. So I designed 2
>versions of the same ship, had both stacks fire the next time, it seemed
>to work. Should this happen, has anyone else come across it?
Your talking about those streaming type weapons. I haven't found the need to
use them much. But against those 3 hit point ships they would be useful. I
mostly build huge ships because the little tarts can never cary the stuff I
want them to have.
--
**************************************************************************
Glenn Ironhat "Sir, you just committed treason!"
"I always hoped that if I ever had to make a choice
between betraying my friends and betraying my country,
that I would have the guts to betray my country."
Captain Sulu USS Excelsior Star Trek VI:TUC
[gd...@pge.com] My opinion is mine and not my employer's.
**************************************************************************
Torch16
In article <1996Jul16.015149@winnie>, x95...@wmich.edu writes:
>Ehem... not true... technology does not always rule..
>
> I once got blasted badly by computer players having many 32000 small
ships
>armed lasers ONLY!! They wiped out my massive BIG ships armed with
>powerful shields and graviton breams.
>
> Learn from mistake.. get the repulsor beams..and high energy focus.
>
> Tip : Ultra long range shot.
>
> Get high energy focus and stellar convertors... blast'em before
they
>reach you.
>
>
Ive seen my friend get wiped out by 300 small ships carrying gatling
lasers.
But, I never build small ships anyway.
Chris
David Browne
In article <Pine.SUN.3.94.960717...@tuzo.erin>,
e0fq...@credit.erin.utoronto.ca says...
>One aspect of MOO you didn't take into account is the rate of expansion of
>a race's production potential. All things being equal (just to simplify
>things), Klackons will be able to build up their colonies faster than most
>other races. Silicoids might have more colonies, and Sakkras might come
>close, but Klackons in all likelihood will out-produce them. Now that the
>Klackons have the necessary production base to do something significant
>with research, they can start pumping those BC's into research. Let's say
>Psilons up to this point have a production capacity of 500BC, Klackons
>would have developed factories faster, and add their production bonuses,
>could have a production capacity that will double/triple the Psilons.
You make valid points, and the Klackons are certianly a powerful race. But
I'd note a couple of things:
1) The Klackons will only have a production advantage over the Psilons when
their Tech levels are equal. So while the Klackons certianly bring their
new planets "on-line" quicker than any other race, this advantage is
somewhat confined to the initial stages of the game.
2) Even with greater production, the Klackons will ultimately funnell the
vast majority of that production into research. So the effective output of
the Klackon empire may still be less than the Psilons.
Ultimately the question of which of the quality races is the best will be a
question of degrees, not of kind. For instance there is no a priori way to
tell weather a 50% bonus to population productivity is better than a 50%
bonus to research. After playing countless games at impossible with all of
the races it is my opinion that the Psilons were given the most powerful
racial bonus.
GUI TERENCE ANG
On 18 Jul 1996, David Browne wrote:
> You make valid points, and the Klackons are certianly a powerful race. But
> I'd note a couple of things:
>
> 1) The Klackons will only have a production advantage over the Psilons when
> their Tech levels are equal. So while the Klackons certianly bring their
> new planets "on-line" quicker than any other race, this advantage is
> somewhat confined to the initial stages of the game.
Since everyone starts off with "equal" tech levels, does this mean that
the Klackons have a fighting chance at matching Psilons rate of tech
advancement from the beginning? And as for advantages, it seems to be
that races such as the Klacon's/Psilon's advantages are highly dependent
on how well initial colonization/expansion goes.
> 2) Even with greater production, the Klackons will ultimately funnell the
> vast majority of that production into research. So the effective output of
> the Klackon empire may still be less than the Psilons.
You won't get any argument with me that down the stretch most of the
production will be poured into tech.
> Ultimately the question of which of the quality races is the best will be a
> question of degrees, not of kind. For instance there is no a priori way to
> tell weather a 50% bonus to population productivity is better than a 50%
Especially since the geography of the galaxy and random events (ie. tech
list) won't allow for a complete isolation of the variables we're after
(the racial advantages), since different elements of the game will always
get in the way, even if one were to start off in two identical galaxies
using these two different races.
> bonus to research. After playing countless games at impossible with all of
> the races it is my opinion that the Psilons were given the most powerful
> racial bonus.
>
It will be very interesting to be able to put that to the test in MOO2,
which should come out with multiplayer support. But then again MOO2 may
play a lot differently from the original
TAG
Joseph M. Shair
>>>
>>> What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
>
diplomatic rings
>>around other races can't be beat, especially if it's a huge galaxy
with the maximum number of
>>races, with one of them being the Darlocks. "C'mere, guys, what?
Nobody likes you? Mind if
>>I call you guys 'Patsy?' How about 'catspaw?'"
>
>I hate winning by vote. What's the point of being an emporer if you
>can't grind everyone under your boot heel?
>
>I like the meklars myself. I always get caught stealing with the
Darloks.
>
>--
>Mike Lemons | "In 20th-century Old Earth, a fast food chain
>mi...@crash.cts.com| took dead cow meat, fried it in grease, added
> | carcinogens, wrapped it in petroleum-based foam,
> | and sold 900,000,000,000 units. Human Beings.
> | Go figure." Dan Simmons - Hyperion
The human race is so easy to win with it's like cheating. If that
makes them the best, then they are. They are, however, IMHO, no fun
whatsoever to play.
The klackons are a dangerous enemy, particularly until you get class IV
shields, after that their swarms of thousands of ships equipped with
lasers are usless and they are dogmeat. They are great fun to play,
since you, as the player, won't make the mistake of equipping them with
fleas, but use their building power to build huge ships.
If the meklars get a rich or (heaven forbid) extra rich planet early in
the game they can be a problem, otherwise they are great opponents
since after you take their planets you don't have to spend all your
resources building factories.
The alkari and mershans are jokes.
If the bulrathi get technology, they are extremely dangerous, and
therefore are fun to play, but they develop technology so slowly that
one can usually take them out before it's too late.
The silicoids grow so slowly that their scads of planets are nearly
empty most of the time and their best weapon is their bluffing power.
The psilons can be great fun to play, and you can win with them if you:
1: take out the darlocks ASAP.
2: spend all your resources (other than building tech) to build new
planets and defend them, and don't go aggressive (even if at war) until
you have achieved a substantial technological lead (e.g. autoblasters
and high energy focus vs neutron blasters).
3: never, repeat, never, let another culture take one of your planets
with a single factory left standing on it.
Unfortunately, the psilon's supposed tech advantage is fleeting,
because, if they are the enemy, you just make sure to take one of their
planets now and then, even if you can't hold it, to get caught up on
technology.
The darlocks, well, what can one say about them. They have the highest
tech research speed (after all, all the other races are researching for
them) and since they have to put so little resources into tech
(comparatively), they have an extremely high production rate. In
addition, you don't have to worry about being elected! You just have
to consider that you are in "final war" from the beginning of the game
- the other races just don't know it yet. You have to be creative
about blaming your thefts to ensure that no other race gets too popular
and gets elected. All in all, by far the most fun race to play,
although by far not the easiest with which to win!
Gary Turner
>Paulo da Costa (dac...@natlab.research.philips.com) wrote:
>> In <4sgk3l$g...@cs.mtu.edu> saco...@mtu.edu (Scott A. Colcord) writes:
>> :x95...@wmich.edu wrote:
>> [...]
>> :: I once got blasted badly by computer players having many 32000 small
>> :: ships armed lasers ONLY!! They wiped out my massive BIG ships armed with
>> :: powerful shields and graviton breams.
>> :
>> :Something doesn't add up here...If your ships had powerful (Class IV or
>> :better) shields (not unreasonable on a large ship), those lasers shouldn't
>> :have been able to hurt you at all. Had you gone light on shield tech?
>> It must have been inside a nebula, of course. Zero shields.
>Yeah, fleas are nasty in a nebula. Anywhere else dreadnoughts eat them for
>lunch, especially with the kind of tech advantage he's talking about.
>(Assuming the dreadnoughts are well-designed, of course. Don't skimp on
>maneuverability - you're a big enough target already, plus it affects your
>initiative. Battle scanners are a must.)
>Chris
Aren't there a couple of weapons to work against fleets of small ships -
do 3 or 4 points to every ship in the stack? I haven't played MoO for a
while, so I can't remember what they are. One prob I found with these
though, a stack of ships eqiupped with this weapon can only fire it
once, which isn't enough against a stack of 4HP ships. So I designed 2
versions of the same ship, had both stacks fire the next time, it seemed
to work. Should this happen, has anyone else come across it?
--
gwtu...@iastate.edu Gary Turner | 210 Physics Court
(515) 296 0018 Apt. #5, 530 Welch Ave. | Physics Building.
(515) 294 5266 Ames IA 50014 |
http://www.public.iastate.edu:80/~astro/grads/turner.html
"Arguments with furniture are rarely productive."
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
Chris Byler
Joseph M. Shair (joe...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
> In <4sjktr$g...@optional.cts.com> mi...@cts.com (Mike Lemons) writes:
> >
> >Kia (K...@cris.com) wrote:
> >>Johnny Lamar Rhyne wrote:
> >>>
> >>> What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
> >
> >> I absolutely love playing the humans. The sheer joy of running
> diplomatic rings
> >>around other races can't be beat, especially if it's a huge galaxy
> with the maximum number of
> >>races, with one of them being the Darlocks. "C'mere, guys, what?
> Nobody likes you? Mind if
> >>I call you guys 'Patsy?' How about 'catspaw?'"
> >
> >I hate winning by vote. What's the point of being an emporer if you
> >can't grind everyone under your boot heel?
> >
> >I like the meklars myself. I always get caught stealing with the
> Darloks.
> >
I usually get everybody else caught stealing when I'm Darloks :>
> The human race is so easy to win with it's like cheating. If that
> makes them the best, then they are. They are, however, IMHO, no fun
> whatsoever to play.
I don't know about being easy to win with.. Maybe so, but remember, if
you're #3, you don't even get nominated. In an impossible game, you will
have a long fight just to get into the running. And if there's one thing
humans aren't good at, it's fighting. No economic *or* military advantages,
and can't even sabotage bases cheaply. Geez.
> The klackons are a dangerous enemy, particularly until you get class IV
> shields, after that their swarms of thousands of ships equipped with
> lasers are usless and they are dogmeat. They are great fun to play,
> since you, as the player, won't make the mistake of equipping them with
> fleas, but use their building power to build huge ships.
How long does it take to get Class IV Shields? Not very long, imo.
But if they get ahold of Neutron Pellet Guns they can be trouble until
you get good computers, streamer/autofire/pulsars, etc.
> If the meklars get a rich or (heaven forbid) extra rich planet early in
> the game they can be a problem, otherwise they are great opponents
> since after you take their planets you don't have to spend all your
> resources building factories.
I agree, but their production bonuses and tendency to build big ships can
be painful, especially if they get a fast start. One of the things that makes
MoO interesting to play is that you never know which cp will expand fast early.
I've seen the Darloks own half the galaxy by the time expansion settles down.
> The alkari and mershans are jokes.
Smiley when you say that, pardner!
Mrrshans are a fearsome opponent, particularly if they have decent tech. And
they will usually have good weapons, because they are good at weapons. Since
they don't waste their resources on fleas they will have a NASTY starfleet.
The best way to handle the Mrrshans is to (a) get them to fight lots of wars,
or (b) get lots of other races to fight them. Oh, and watch out for their
missile bases -- they get the gunnery bonus too. Mrrshans are in my opinion
one of the most fun races to play because you can slice up your enemes even
when outnumbered *and* out-teched.
Alkaris, on the other hand, die by the thousand once you have a decent anti-
flea weapon and good computers. Even if you don't, your to hit chance can't
fall below 5%, and alkaris can't hit the broad side of Jupiter, especially
through shields.
> If the bulrathi get technology, they are extremely dangerous, and
> therefore are fun to play, but they develop technology so slowly that
> one can usually take them out before it's too late.
Again, this depends on the start. It's really rough trying to get technology
that the bulrathi have, because you can't really invade their planets to get it.
Also, the bulrathi are about the only race that can ever invade your planets
with any hope of success: the computer sends so few troops that it is almost
always doomed to fail, but bulrathi are so nasty on the ground that they can
win anyway. Then you can be in trouble, because they will take your tech.
The other races usually have to destroy your colonies rather than capture
them.
> The silicoids grow so slowly that their scads of planets are nearly
> empty most of the time and their best weapon is their bluffing power.
Yep. Silicoids are never as big as they look. Their large ships look
intimidating but are usually low-tech. Strong shields and high maneuverability
are the order of the day against them.
> The psilons can be great fun to play, and you can win with them if you:
> 1: take out the darlocks ASAP.
Not that crucial. The computer doesn't spy much, doesn't prioritize spying
on psilons (and not much extra spying as darloks), and tends to sabotage when
it does spy. Besides, they can't steal it as fast as you can research it.
> 2: spend all your resources (other than building tech) to build new
> planets and defend them, and don't go aggressive (even if at war) until
> you have achieved a substantial technological lead (e.g. autoblasters
> and high energy focus vs neutron blasters).
Not necessary. Psilon research bonus + the computer's implementation lag
time can lead to a 10+ TL advantage in effective tech even early in the game.
I've had neutron blaster-armed ships facing lasers and gatling lasers.
Especially, pick on the weaker races and grab their planets - they'll be much
more useful in your hands, and psilon tech advantage can be truly crushing
over a race that got off to a slow start.
> 3: never, repeat, never, let another culture take one of your planets
> with a single factory left standing on it.
Again, you can develop faster than they can steal, but this is a sound policy
whenever possible (although that's true no matter what race you are). Against
anyone other than bulrathi it is generally not a big concern, but do try to
prioritize ground tech when it comes along, particularly personal shields and
the power-armor techs.
> Unfortunately, the psilon's supposed tech advantage is fleeting,
> because, if they are the enemy, you just make sure to take one of their
> planets now and then, even if you can't hold it, to get caught up on
> technology.
Not really. If you're playing them, you can easily prevent this by setting
any planet being bombarded to 100% eco to regrow the population - by the time
it gets down to the point it could be invaded there will be no factories left
- or by building a high-tech starfleet. If the cp is, they will sometimes have
so much tech on their fleets and especially bases that you can't touch them.
This requires you to spy, which is a lot harder.
> The darlocks, well, what can one say about them. They have the highest
> tech research speed (after all, all the other races are researching for
> them) and since they have to put so little resources into tech
> (comparatively), they have an extremely high production rate. In
> addition, you don't have to worry about being elected! You just have
> to consider that you are in "final war" from the beginning of the game
> - the other races just don't know it yet. You have to be creative
> about blaming your thefts to ensure that no other race gets too popular
> and gets elected. All in all, by far the most fun race to play,
> although by far not the easiest with which to win!
I disagree about the election - it is not that hard to get elected with
darloks, because there really isn't that much hatred of darloks. It's
just starting at "unease", not "feud", after all! With a little artful
diplomacy and some selective framing, it is possible to get races to go
to war; and once you have done that, simply beat up on one race, and the
other will like you. Establish trade and a treaty, and there you go. You
really only need one ally if you pick them carefully ("erratic" races are
a poor choice, as are "xenophobic" ones.. "ruthless" is pretty good, though.)
Chris
Chris Byler
> > >
> > > What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
> >
> >
> > The best race, and by that I assume that you mean the one that will win in the
> > greatest number of situations, is (drumroll) the Psilons.
> >
> > Others are good, but none compare to the Psilons. Consider:
> >
> > 1) Money spent on reasearch by Psilons is worth 187.5% what money spent by
> > other races is. (a 50% research bonus added to a 20% technology discount). In
> > sheer magnitude this racial bonus dwarfs all others.
> This may be so, but I'd still have to disagree with you that "none"
> compare to the Psilons. Let's take an example: Psilons are worth 187.5%
> better (on average) than any other race regarding research. This
> difference will certainly not hold true if Klackons were to invest all
> their BC's into research. Psilons will still win out, but no one will be
> foolish enough to do such a thing.
But the Psilons *still* have an edge. And that's not even counting the
positive-feedback nature of technology in MoO. Consider a size 100 planet
with no tech, fully developed. Psilons get 50 (colonists) + 200 (factories)
- 100 (waste cleanup) = 150 BC's/turn. Assuming that all goes into research
that is 225 RP, not counting their cost reduction. Klackons get 100 (colonists)
+ 200 (factories) - 100 (waste cleanup) = 200 BC's/turn, translating into
not more than 200 RP/turn. And then the Psilons get Robotics III, and
Terraforming +20, and.. you get the picture. Actually, even something as
modest as Improved Eco will shift this even further to favor the Psilons
(Psilons now have 50+200-67=183x1.5=274, while Klackons have 100+200-67=233.)
> One aspect of MOO you didn't take into account is the rate of expansion of
> a race's production potential. All things being equal (just to simplify
> things), Klackons will be able to build up their colonies faster than most
> other races. Silicoids might have more colonies, and Sakkras might come
> close, but Klackons in all likelihood will out-produce them. Now that the
> Klackons have the necessary production base to do something significant
> with research, they can start pumping those BC's into research. Let's say
> Psilons up to this point have a production capacity of 500BC, Klackons
> would have developed factories faster, and add their production bonuses,
> could have a production capacity that will double/triple the Psilons. The
> reason they won't have this advantage is cause the CP is too stupid to
> realize this and in probably pours the money into making thousands of
> those fleas of theirs, instead of focusing on important areas such as
> research.
I doubt if they will get double/triple the production capacity - as shown
above the advantage is fairly slight. And Klackon bonus is most effective
at the beginning, it decreases as waste reduction becomes cheaper and factories
become a larger proportion of production. As for expansion, except in huge
galaxies expansion is limited by the presence of other races, which means that
the second phase of expansion (to hostile planets) is very significant - a
phase in which the Psilons have a significant edge.
> > 2) Psilons can spend this racial bonus to get any of the skills given to the
> > other races.
> Same can be said for Klackons. While with the Psilons, one needs time for
> to get those advantages (even with Psilons, researching does take time).
> And how much can one research at the start, when one should be
> concentrating on expansion, factory building, whereas the Klackons will
> always have their production bonus, no matter what they use it for. I
> doubt anyone will start diverting huge amounts into research early on,
> this will only hamper expansion, and no matter how much bonuses one
> possesses, it's always better to have more planets.
Disagree. The Klackons, regardless of their raw BCs, will lag the Psilons
in tech with roughly equal numbers of planets, unless you are the Klackons and
prioritize tech much more. Not only that, but the Limited Research List
becomes very important in the midgame, and Klackons can much more easily
be crippled by a lack of important techs (how would you like to miss Controlled
Inferno, Toxic, *and* Radiated? I've had it happen, but not as the Psilons..
missed out on a lot of rich/u-rich planets, too.)
Now I suppose our differences may stem from differences in pre-game setup..
do you play hard/impossible levels? I'd guess from your views that you play
huge galaxies, is that correct?
> > Any race can win from a winning position (though few can exploit one better),
> > but which one is best in those marginal starts? Which one can keep up with
> > the fewest planets? Which one can protect those planets against large
> > neighbors?
> >
Silicoids, Psilons, and Psilons or possibly Mrrshans.
> I am currently playing in a couple of games, one of which I am the
> Klackons, in which the Psilons have emerged to be the 2nd most powerful
> race. They've got nearly as much planets as I do (one less, I think).
> And I am still neck to neck with, if not beating them in the tech race. I
> know this is no way to judge the Psilons (since it's a CP). But this just
> illustrates how important a good industrial base is.
No, it just illustrates how pathetically the Psilons are neglecting their
tech. development. Did you know it's possible for the Psilons to not even
be technologists? Check a race report and see.. Not to mention the ease
with which the cp's get distracted by even a small war and tend to neglect
the long term because of it.
> Klackons aren't my favourite race only because they're so easy to win
> with. There is absolutely no challenge. And I'm not even that good of a
> MoO player (I can't clear Impossible with every race).
Klackons are good, I'm not denying it. But Psilons are better. I've never
lost on a non-Impossible level with Psilons, and I have played them dozens
of times. And even on Impossible I usually win.
> TAG
Chris
David Browne
In article <4sljui$o...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, val...@aol.com says...
>
>The Meklar's are the overwhelming best race...If you can avoid war early
>on.
>
If If If.
The Psilons win without any if's.
Glenn Ironhat
>I don't know about being easy to win with.. Maybe so, but remember, if
>you're #3, you don't even get nominated.
This is not true. I spent a long part of a game being in the number 4 or 5
spot population wise (had 4 or 5 planets in a medium galaxy) and after many
elections with no winner was nominated a couple times.
I don't know the selection criteria for being nominated.
Chris Byler
> > Yeah, except for the time I missed Nuclear and Sub-Light.. Once I missed
> > both of those and Fusion too, and couldn't steal tech from other cp's..
> One of the few challenges the game offers without employing "cheating"
> seems to be the random (it is random, isn't it?) blocking of certain
> techs. This can usually make a game much more challenging than if the
> tech list given to you goes your way. I believe in my very first game at
> hard, I didn't get any robotic controls untiol V, this turned out to be
> the longest game I have every played *without* artificially prolonging it.
> Not sure what the year was, but it was long (around 2600 I think, have to
> check).
Oh, didn't I mention that I missed robotic control III and IV that game?
And I was playing as the Silicoids, to boot. All my tech took twice as long
to research.
The thing I hate about the Silicoids is that other races' hating you for your
size is based on planets, not population, so you can have enough planets to
piss everyone off and still have too little population to block a vote. With
other races I generally have a blocking minority by the time I am receiving
a lot of jealousy.
Oh, and their racial advantage vanishes at TL 18, leaving them with a racial
*disadvantage* and no compensating advantage. Silicoids in the late game suck,
the only thing that keeps them a credible threat is that they build big ships.
> >
> > > I guess you won't really notice a reduction in production if you slowly
> > > "siphon" a few BC's every turn and use it for artifacts. But isn't this
> > > inefficient? I would think that the point of having rich/u-rich worlds
> > > was to use them for reserves, since you "taxing" all of your planets in
> > > the end only goes to reduce total BC production. Anyways, just MO.
> >
> > The point of having rich/u-rich worlds is that you can get good ship
> > production out of just a few planets, leaving the rest free to go 100% tech
> > after cleaning up any waste generated. At least, that's been my experience
> > of the most effective way to use them. Pumping their production into
> > reserves, even considering the bonuses, is still losing 1/2 of their
> > production which could be going into ships. The tax OTOH is just as likely
> > to take from other planets.
> >
> > Also, the tax is taken away *before* specials are applied. So ultrapoor
> > planets and ultrarich planets make the same contribution to the tax - therefore,
> > it is taken mostly from no-specials planets since that's what most planets are,
> > and can be freed up to pump your rich/urich shipyards, or Orion, or artifact
> > planets, or whatever.
> Well, if you can win at hard/impossible with that, who am I to argue with
> that? I just prefer using rich/u-rich planets for all shipbuilding/new
> colony jumpstarting.
As I said, I have them too busy shipbuilding. Once I have sufficient tech
to build an effective starfleet, I figure that it is more profitable to build
a fleet which can (a) protect my planets from raids or (b) add new planets to
my empire, whichever is appropriate at the time. Developing planets is all
very well, but there is a limit on development, and imo grabbing more planets
is the key to success. So even if I am on top in Fleet Strength (which hardly
ever happens because I throw my fleet into combat rather than letting it sit
around - even if I have to start a war to do so, which is rarely) I keep
the shipyards rolling.
> > And I don't really use that much tax - mostly just to help jumpstart new
> > planets, or feed Orion, or boost ship production if I need more fleets in a
> > hurry, or help out planets with disasters/incoming fleets/whatever.
> >
> One advantage of using tax as opposed to rich/u-rich reserves that I can
> think of is a lot less micromanagement.
Definitely. Also, I have continuous ship production, which keeps me with a
fairly sizeable starfleet most of the time. This allows me to pretty much
pick my fights - or ignore people who declare war on me but I don't want to
fight them.
Humans or no Humans, they will eventually smell blood in the water if you
are militarily weak.. particularly if you are also rich/high-tech.
> TAG
Chris
Scott A. Colcord
Glenn Ironhat (gd...@pge.com) wrote:
:
: >Aren't there a couple of weapons to work against fleets of small ships -
: >do 3 or 4 points to every ship in the stack? I haven't played MoO for a
: >while, so I can't remember what they are. One prob I found with these
: >though, a stack of ships eqiupped with this weapon can only fire it
: >once, which isn't enough against a stack of 4HP ships. So I designed 2
: >versions of the same ship, had both stacks fire the next time, it seemed
: >to work. Should this happen, has anyone else come across it?
: Your talking about those streaming type weapons. I haven't found the need
: the stuff I want them to have.
Actually, the weapons which do a few points of damage to each ship are
stream projectors. Streaming weapons are regular beam weapons which can
carry-over the excess damage from one ship in a stack to the next. The
two work very well together.
----Scott
--
Scott A. Colcord http://www.cs.mtu.edu/grads/Colcord/Home.html
M.S. Cand. Artificial adaptive systems Dept. of Computer Science
Michigan Technological University E-mail: saco...@mtu.edu
--
Joseph I. Valenzuela
Pridkett (Patrick Wagstrom) (wags...@gold.tc.umn.edu) wrote:
: >Ah, but if you were the Psilons, you would have owned those planets within
: <SNIP>
: But the Psilons always get killed really easy because they don't expand
: enough.
Maybe when the computer plays them, but not me. I always spend the
first few turns researching propultion tech exclusively, so that I can
have an edge in expansion. With Psilons, I always have a large edge.
: That is why the Silicoids are the best. They have the quickest
: exapnsion and it is fairly easy for them to learn terraforming because they
: don't have to learn all of the control environments.
The problem with this is, after the initial expansion, you have to pray
very hard that the Psilons don't take their 32k stack and mash your
3 million population planets into bits. The fact taht Silicoids can populate
hostile planets early is small comfort for the fact that it takes them an
eternity to populate them (Silicoid's population handicap + hostile handicap).
That's not to say that a good player can't win with Silicoids. I can win
with any race on (almost) any setting. But it isn't as easy as Psilons.
:If you have 20 planets
: by the time everyone else only has 10 you are going to win. Thats why they
: are the best!
BTW: I don't consider a diplomatic victory a real win. I always abstain when
it looks like I'm going to win.
--
Joseph I. Valenzuela -- tsao...@empirenet.com
http://www.empirenet.com/~tsaotsao
Oppose the ANTI-JOE. Just say no to the VOODOO GLOW SKULLS
Andrew D. Myers
[e-mailed and posted]
yoss...@mail.utexas.edu (David Browne) wrote:
[much discussion snipped]
>Ultimately the question of which of the quality races is the best will be a
>question of degrees, not of kind. For instance there is no a priori way to
>tell weather a 50% bonus to population productivity is better than a 50%
>bonus to research. After playing countless games at impossible with all of
>the races it is my opinion that the Psilons were given the most powerful
>racial bonus.
Man oh man . . . reading all this discussion of the best race in Master of
Orion leaves me itching all the more for MOO2. Once you've figured out which
is your fave race in the new game, you'll be able to "prove" their superiority
against other players on the 'net ("Psilons are best? Oh yeah? Then just
watch me whup your ass with the Silicoids! Ha ha!")
Assuming of course that the enhancements to the sequel don't screw up game
balance.
--
Andrew D. Myers : (k) All Rites Reversed
andrew...@pobox.com : Reprint what you like!
Mark Thomas
>Your talking about those streaming type weapons. I haven't found the need
>to use them much. But against those 3 hit point ships they would be
>useful. I mostly build huge ships because the little tarts can never cary
>the stuff I want them to have.
I used to think streaming weapons were pretty useless until this weekend. I
was in a nasty game playing the meklars vs psilons, humans and klackons. I
had a bad start and was way behind on tech. I got into an early disagreement
with the psilons (they invaded a colony of mine while I had transports en
route), and ended up going to final war at the second election. The only
effective ship design I had was a large with repulsor, neutron stream (I
forget which streamer it was, the red fog looking thing). and a heavy beam
weapon (heavy ion cannons maybe). I never would have been able to hit a
thing without the streaming weapons.
Now if you're talking useless weapons, my vote goes for energy pulsars. I
have never used these effectively.
Mark Thomas - tho...@capitol.com (work) - tho...@clark.net (home)
"You can't manage creativity, all you can do is give it a place to work."
Peter Stewart
Chris Byler (cby...@dsu.seas.ucla.edu) wrote:
: Joseph M. Shair (joe...@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
:
: > The human race is so easy to win with it's like cheating. If that
: > makes them the best, then they are. They are, however, IMHO, no fun
: > whatsoever to play.
:
: I don't know about being easy to win with.. Maybe so, but remember, if
: you're #3, you don't even get nominated. In an impossible game, you will
: have a long fight just to get into the running. And if there's one thing
: humans aren't good at, it's fighting. No economic *or* military advantages,
: and can't even sabotage bases cheaply. Geez.
Humans you can win with as long as they keep getting nominated and have
one or two good solid friends out there that will keep voting for them. I
do agree that humans have no innate advantages in fighting. Generally when
I play the humans, I use the Teddy Roosevelt approach: Speak softly and carry
a big stick. In my case the "big stick" in part is good ground-fighting
technology. Zortium armor, ion rifles, and personal deflectors/absorption
fields are quite good (or better, of course). Generally I try to be the
first to get something like armored exoskeletons. Not only does it make
colonies more resistant to invasion but makes it a lot easier to take
enemy planets with smaller amounts of forces.
: > If the meklars get a rich or (heaven forbid) extra rich planet early in
: > the game they can be a problem, otherwise they are great opponents
: > since after you take their planets you don't have to spend all your
: > resources building factories.
:
: I agree, but their production bonuses and tendency to build big ships can
: be painful, especially if they get a fast start. One of the things that makes
: MoO interesting to play is that you never know which cp will expand fast early.
: I've seen the Darloks own half the galaxy by the time expansion settles down.
Speaking of the Darloks, in most of the games I play where they're involved,
I find that they fall behind in weapons' tech, even with their spying ability.
I generally pick on them first when deciding who to go to war with first,
since they're often despised by everyone else as well. The only thing I have
to be careful of sometimes is that the Darloks seem to like to use biological
weapons like they were going out of style.
: > The alkari and mershans are jokes.
:
: Smiley when you say that, pardner!
:
: Mrrshans are a fearsome opponent, particularly if they have decent tech. And
: they will usually have good weapons, because they are good at weapons. Since
: they don't waste their resources on fleas they will have a NASTY starfleet.
: The best way to handle the Mrrshans is to (a) get them to fight lots of wars,
: or (b) get lots of other races to fight them. Oh, and watch out for their
: missile bases -- they get the gunnery bonus too. Mrrshans are in my opinion
: one of the most fun races to play because you can slice up your enemes even
: when outnumbered *and* out-teched.
The only problem I seem to have with the Mrrshan is that I have trouble getting
good propulsion tech. I tend to build my fleets to be fast. Often when I
get a faster engine design, I take my best ship design to date and immediately
design a new one like it with the faster engines and the planets that were
building the older model I change to start building the newer one.
: Alkaris, on the other hand, die by the thousand once you have a decent anti-
: flea weapon and good computers. Even if you don't, your to hit chance can't
: fall below 5%, and alkaris can't hit the broad side of Jupiter, especially
: through shields.
This is true, though I had one memorable game where a combination of luck
and planet placement left the Alkari fleas still a formidable force. My
weapons research list was not giving me any multifire weapons other than
gatling lasers until auto-blasters and scatter pack VII. Meanwhile, the
Alkari got shield IV really early, which I suspect they found on one of the
two artifact worlds they had. This made my "Alkari killer" ships useless
(they had gatling lasers) and their fleas with NPGs and ion cannons were
holding their own against my larger fleet.
In other words, you're right, but I just thought I'd share an interesting
story of the one exception :)
: > The silicoids grow so slowly that their scads of planets are nearly
: > empty most of the time and their best weapon is their bluffing power.
:
: Yep. Silicoids are never as big as they look. Their large ships look
: intimidating but are usually low-tech. Strong shields and high maneuverability
: are the order of the day against them.
The silicoids are sometimes a threat in the early game because their few
huge ships can often blow away your smalls and mediums until you have the
production capability to churn out larges (I never build huges until I'm
so insanely industrialized that I can churn them out in a turn or two, at
which point I'm in mop-up mode anyway and just want a chance to build a ship
with lots of cool specials in them that I may not have had the opportunity
to try yet :) )
: > The psilons can be great fun to play, and you can win with them if you:
: > 1: take out the darlocks ASAP.
:
: Not that crucial. The computer doesn't spy much, doesn't prioritize spying
: on psilons (and not much extra spying as darloks), and tends to sabotage when
: it does spy. Besides, they can't steal it as fast as you can research it.
The way the computer manages the Darlok economy is rather pitiful. Even the
OSG admits this.
: I disagree about the election - it is not that hard to get elected with
: darloks, because there really isn't that much hatred of darloks. It's
: just starting at "unease", not "feud", after all! With a little artful
: diplomacy and some selective framing, it is possible to get races to go
: to war; and once you have done that, simply beat up on one race, and the
: other will like you. Establish trade and a treaty, and there you go. You
: really only need one ally if you pick them carefully ("erratic" races are
: a poor choice, as are "xenophobic" ones.. "ruthless" is pretty good, though.)
Speaking of beating up one CP to gain praise from another, I sometimes get
a really weird effect in the game. Say I'm at war with CPs A and B. As it
turns out, A & B are at war with each other. The weirdness comes into play
when I, say, make a rather large assault against A (i.e. take a planet,
destroy a planet, destroy a chunk of his fleet). B will then give me praise
for attacking the mutual enemy and my relations go up, even though I'm fighting
a war with him! I've seen relations at "feud" go all the way back up to
"wary" even though I'm pounding him to scrap at the same time. I don't
think the AI takes into account the overall relations between the races; it
appears to be a more event-driven algorithm.
dsh...@nova.wright.edu
In article <4sms4j$r...@cs.mtu.edu>, saco...@mtu.edu (Scott A. Colcord) writes:
>
> Actually, the weapons which do a few points of damage to each ship are
> stream projectors. Streaming weapons are regular beam weapons which can
> carry-over the excess damage from one ship in a stack to the next. The
> two work very well together.
Sorry to correct your typo, but the weapons that do a few points of damage
to each ship in a stack are the PULSARS. The projectors reduce the
amount of dammage that each ship in a stack can take.
Subtle change.
Pulsars are great weapons against stacks of small ships.
Projectors are great weapons against stacks of huge ships.
Andrew D. Myers
[e-mailed and posted]
gd...@pge.com (Glenn Ironhat) wrote:
>In article <4slre0$7...@nntp2.backbone.olemiss.edu> cby...@dsu.seas.ucla.edu (Chris Byler) writes:
>>I don't know about being easy to win with.. Maybe so, but remember, if
>>you're #3, you don't even get nominated.
>This is not true. I spent a long part of a game being in the number 4 or 5
>spot population wise (had 4 or 5 planets in a medium galaxy) and after many
>elections with no winner was nominated a couple times.
>I don't know the selection criteria for being nominated.
Population is the _only_ criteria for nomination. If you've got 5 planets with
an average of, say, 140 pop points, you can easily beat out a race with many,
many more planets if someone's waging a bio-terminator campaign against them.
Urn...a Psilon
crh...@ix.netcom.com(Johnny Lamar Rhyne) wrote:
> What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
It's a toss up between the Meklars and the Klackons.
Urn...a Psilon
I wouldn't worry about that. MOO2 is going to kick some major butt.
If you want to see some actual screen shots, check out
http://www.microprose.com/moo2/gameinf.html
I'm watching and waiting (with my mouth wide open
and drool pouring out) too. MOO2 is going to be
awesome!
Urn...a Psilon
crh...@ix.netcom.com(Johnny Lamar Rhyne) wrote:
> What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
A toss up between the Meklars and the Klackons.
GUI TERENCE ANG
Granted that certain races might need more things to "fall into place"
than others, but this generally holds true for all the races. If there
are no habitable planets within 3/4 parsecs and if you don't get to
research robotic controls III/IV. Highly unlikely, I know, especially
when playing at Impossible, and with the Psilon's better tech list, but
it's at least possible, isn't it?
TAG
GUI TERENCE ANG
On 18 Jul 1996, Chris Byler wrote:
> Oh, didn't I mention that I missed robotic control III and IV that game?
>
> And I was playing as the Silicoids, to boot. All my tech took twice as long
> to research.
>
> The thing I hate about the Silicoids is that other races' hating you for your
> size is based on planets, not population, so you can have enough planets to
> piss everyone off and still have too little population to block a vote. With
> other races I generally have a blocking minority by the time I am receiving
> a lot of jealousy.
I've played Silicoids a couple of times, and they do develop at a snail's
pace, don't they? I always run into the trouble of colonizing worlds
faster than I can repopulate them. The only good thing is that they CP's
won't be able to land transports on my planets for awhile on the hostile
worlds, so I try to develop rich/u-rich worlds as quickly as I can, so
they can at least offer some small protection to my colony worlds with
9-10 pop.
> Oh, and their racial advantage vanishes at TL 18, leaving them with a racial
> *disadvantage* and no compensating advantage. Silicoids in the late game suck,
> the only thing that keeps them a credible threat is that they build big ships.
It vanishes at TL 18, yes, but the objective is to attempt to grab all the
good hostile worlds by the time all the other races get to this point.
And hopefully by then, you're also strong enough to defend those worlds.
Inevitably you'll lose a few planets. But usually you're not ahead in the
tech race anyhow, so no big loss, and you've also got a ton of planets,
losing 2-3 isn't going to hurt that much. As for playing against them,
you're right, they're not much of a threat.
Actually, in the first hard game of mine (I apologize for constantly
bringing this up, but that was my best MOO game and I'm afraid I'll never
have another like it) the Bulrathi and Silicoids emerged to be the leading
races in the galaxy, they formed an alliance (I like to call them the Axis
forces). And here we are, the poor, small and insignificant Klackons,
Mrrshans, Sakkra (forgot who the last race was) preparing for the imminent
invasion of the enemy. Anyways all of us little guys formed an alliance
and to make a long story short, managed to battle back. I liked how there
was no "backstabbing" between us allies, and we merely put forth all our
effort against the bad guys, which I'm telling you doesn't happen too
often in the game.
> As I said, I have them too busy shipbuilding. Once I have sufficient tech
> to build an effective starfleet, I figure that it is more profitable to build
> a fleet which can (a) protect my planets from raids or (b) add new planets to
> my empire, whichever is appropriate at the time. Developing planets is all
> very well, but there is a limit on development, and imo grabbing more planets
> is the key to success. So even if I am on top in Fleet Strength (which hardly
> ever happens because I throw my fleet into combat rather than letting it sit
> around - even if I have to start a war to do so, which is rarely) I keep
> the shipyards rolling.
Once I hunker down and have got just about all the planets I'll need for
the duration of the game, everything is relatively quiet. The only time
any battle goes on is if someone else declares war on me and I have to
defend myself. I might also take a few hunting trips along my border just
for fun. Otherwise, I simply keep researching. The way I play, I don't
start to attack anyong until I've got a pretty significant tech advantage.
I rarely start attacking planets until I've got Omega-V bombs. Then it's
all over for the rest of the galaxy at this point. I start churning out
Med bombers with teleporters if I've got it, and hop from planet to planet
killing them off. I don't usually invade as I don't want the
responsibility of managing new colonies.
> Definitely. Also, I have continuous ship production, which keeps me with a
> fairly sizeable starfleet most of the time. This allows me to pretty much
> pick my fights - or ignore people who declare war on me but I don't want to
> fight them.
I also try to have a continuous stream of ship production going. I try to
produce the latest version of whatever ship design I've got, until I get
enough tech to significantly improve on it, then I start producing the new
versions
> Humans or no Humans, they will eventually smell blood in the water if you
> are militarily weak.. particularly if you are also rich/high-tech.
>
If you are rich/high-tech, then they should be the one worrying. Cause
you've got enough production to bring a pretty large fleet up in a short
period of time if you've got high production and tech.
TAG
GUI TERENCE ANG
On 18 Jul 1996, Chris Byler wrote:
> But the Psilons *still* have an edge. And that's not even counting the
> positive-feedback nature of technology in MoO. Consider a size 100 planet
> with no tech, fully developed. Psilons get 50 (colonists) + 200 (factories)
> - 100 (waste cleanup) = 150 BC's/turn. Assuming that all goes into research
> that is 225 RP, not counting their cost reduction. Klackons get 100 (colonists)
> + 200 (factories) - 100 (waste cleanup) = 200 BC's/turn, translating into
> not more than 200 RP/turn. And then the Psilons get Robotics III, and
> Terraforming +20, and.. you get the picture. Actually, even something as
> modest as Improved Eco will shift this even further to favor the Psilons
> (Psilons now have 50+200-67=183x1.5=274, while Klackons have 100+200-67=233.)
Ahhh... But I believe I mentioned in the message you have replied to no
one would be "unwise" enough to plunk down 100% production into research
at the start of the game. I doubt a human player will get anywhere doing
this even in easy level. Let's look at it this way. In the beginning,
most of your production will be going into factory building -who has the
advantage here? You will also be building colony ships -who has the
advantage here? Who do you think will max out on factories quicker?
If the Psilons and Klackons start relatively close to each other, the
Klackons will in most likelihood be able to out-colonize the Psilons,
thereby denying them the precious amount of planets they need to begin any
significant tech research. I don't care which race one plays, 2-3 planets
(even if maxxed out -well, maybe Meklars?) just won't cut it.
Yes, if you do the math by itself, excluding all other factors, then yes,
you are right. The Psilons will win out on production if both of them are
outputting the same amount of BC's. but the Klackons will be able to
expand their industrial base quicker, thus making up for their
technological disadvantage.
> I doubt if they will get double/triple the production capacity - as shown
> above the advantage is fairly slight. And Klackon bonus is most effective
> at the beginning, it decreases as waste reduction becomes cheaper and factories
> become a larger proportion of production. As for expansion, except in huge
> galaxies expansion is limited by the presence of other races, which means that
> the second phase of expansion (to hostile planets) is very significant - a
> phase in which the Psilons have a significant edge.
Okay, it's probably an exaggeration to say double/triple, but even if the
advantage were a significant fraction of the Psilons, it simply means that
they're out-producing them in a smaller scale, but out-producing them
nonetheless. As for waste reduction. When do you think researching
starts in earnest? Klackons bring planets "online" quicker (credit goes
out to the experienced MOO player who used that term in a previous post).
And so can start doing some meaningful research faster. And what I
actually do is slowly ween factory production towards research.
> > concentrating on expansion, factory building, whereas the Klackons will
> > always have their production bonus, no matter what they use it for. I
> > doubt anyone will start diverting huge amounts into research early on,
> > this will only hamper expansion, and no matter how much bonuses one
> > possesses, it's always better to have more planets.
>
> Disagree. The Klackons, regardless of their raw BCs, will lag the Psilons
> in tech with roughly equal numbers of planets, unless you are the Klackons and
> prioritize tech much more. Not only that, but the Limited Research List
> becomes very important in the midgame, and Klackons can much more easily
> be crippled by a lack of important techs (how would you like to miss Controlled
> Inferno, Toxic, *and* Radiated? I've had it happen, but not as the Psilons..
> missed out on a lot of rich/u-rich planets, too.)
>
> Now I suppose our differences may stem from differences in pre-game setup...
> do you play hard/impossible levels? I'd guess from your views that you play
> huge galaxies, is that correct?
I probably don't have as much experience at Huge as most people. I
attempt to play a lot of varied games (all of the at hard/impossible).
I'd say that all my games have been equally distributed between all the
galaxy sizes. However, I don't always play Klackons. Way in the
beginning I did, when I was getting familiarized with the game. But of
course they became way too easy. Mind you I'm not saying that the Psilons
aren't a great race. I've played them myself a few times and I always get
a huge tech edge. I guess I'm just used to the klackons more (if that
makes any sense
> > know this is no way to judge the Psilons (since it's a CP). But this just
> > illustrates how important a good industrial base is.
>
> No, it just illustrates how pathetically the Psilons are neglecting their
> tech. development. Did you know it's possible for the Psilons to not even
> be technologists? Check a race report and see.. Not to mention the ease
> with which the cp's get distracted by even a small war and tend to neglect
> the long term because of it.
Okay, needless to say that the CP isn't the best way to perform best race
comparisons.
>
> Klackons are good, I'm not denying it. But Psilons are better. I've never
> lost on a non-Impossible level with Psilons, and I have played them dozens
> of times. And even on Impossible I usually win.
Same here with Klackons. Let's put it this way, my second ever MOO game,
(first one I just followed the settings recommended by the manual), at
Hard/Large/5. I won despite being sorely ignorant of all the little
tricks in the game.
Anyways, most of my games are with the ones that aren't at the top of the
race ladder. I'm playing a bit of Sakkra right now, just to see how much
more difficult it is.
TAG
GUI TERENCE ANG
On Thu, 18 Jul 1996, Andrew D. Myers wrote:
> [e-mailed and posted]
> yoss...@mail.utexas.edu (David Browne) wrote:
>
> [much discussion snipped]
>
> Man oh man . . . reading all this discussion of the best race in Master of
> Orion leaves me itching all the more for MOO2. Once you've figured out which
> is your fave race in the new game, you'll be able to "prove" their superiority
> against other players on the 'net ("Psilons are best? Oh yeah? Then just
> watch me whup your ass with the Silicoids! Ha ha!")
>
> Assuming of course that the enhancements to the sequel don't screw up game
> balance.
>
This will be true up to a point. I guess it will utimately prove "which
race is the best in MOO2" as I think (I hope) there's enough of a
difference to warrant much discussion concerning winning strategies.
I'll predict that there'll be a lot of Custom Races out there with people
declaring theirs as the best.
TAG
Glenn Ironhat
In article <1996Jul1...@nova.wright.edu> dsh...@nova.wright.edu writes:
>From: dsh...@nova.wright.edu
>Subject: Re: MoO ship
>Date: 19 Jul 96 13:12:52 EST
Yes and neither one of those should be confused with the streaming type of
weapons which allows damage to carry over from one ship to another which works
best with ships with the fewest hit points.
Stig Haugdahl
Peter Stewart (ste...@bae.bellcore.com) wrote:
...
: Speaking of beating up one CP to gain praise from another, I sometimes get
: a really weird effect in the game. Say I'm at war with CPs A and B. As it
: turns out, A & B are at war with each other. The weirdness comes into play
: when I, say, make a rather large assault against A (i.e. take a planet,
: destroy a planet, destroy a chunk of his fleet). B will then give me praise
: for attacking the mutual enemy and my relations go up, even though I'm fighting
: a war with him! I've seen relations at "feud" go all the way back up to
: "wary" even though I'm pounding him to scrap at the same time. I don't
: think the AI takes into account the overall relations between the races; it
: appears to be a more event-driven algorithm.
It's possible even to end up in full harmony with a race you're in war with.
Just give away all your money and all your tech, one at a time, in one
diplomatic session. I've done that.
stig
Crushed them next round, of course...
Urn...a Psilon
yoss...@mail.utexas.edu (David Browne) wrote:
>>
>> What is the best race to play on Master of Orion?
>The best race, and by that I assume that you mean the one that will win in the
>greatest number of situations, is (drumroll) the Psilons.
>Others are good, but none compare to the Psilons. Consider:
>1) Money spent on reasearch by Psilons is worth 187.5% what money spent by
>other races is. (a 50% research bonus added to a 20% technology discount). In
>sheer magnitude this racial bonus dwarfs all others.
>2) Psilons can spend this racial bonus to get any of the skills given to the
>other races.
>Any race can win from a winning position (though few can exploit one better),
>but which one is best in those marginal starts? Which one can keep up with
>the fewest planets? Which one can protect those planets against large
>neighbors?
>If I bet you $100 that you couldn't win your next game of MOO at impossible,
>you'd want to play the psilons.
>David the Opinionated
>yoss...@mail.utexas.edu
I have to agree with you, somewhat. The Psilons kick butt.
HOWEVER...They are NOT the easiest race to play.
The easiest race to play, by far is the Klackons.
With planetology bonuses, the Klack's excel in quickly
making productive new colonies, which is a very important
aspect of MOO.
Psilons are the BEST race. In other words, once you know the
strengths and weaknesses of the Psilons, and know how
to use them to your advantage--not just giving $$$ to
tech either, but using that advantage to research
specific fields that can carry you thru the game--you can
totally dominate gameplay. But few have actually done
this. Or at leats few have done this to its full potential.
As is obvious, I love the Psilons. And once MOO2
reaches my orbit, I will be emerged in universal
warfare with the Darloks across the telephone lines
for ever.
Later, Urn...a Psilon
Paul Rosin
In article <4soohl$r...@sjx-ixn3.ix.netcom.com>
Jason F Kovalik <chew...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >I will admit that the Psilons may possibly have a better chance of
> >winning from an awful start where they have very few planets; but the
> >Klackons, conversely, can frequently score a complete runaway victory
> >where they colonize half the galaxy, have the most advanced tech by
> far,
> >and win the first vote by having 2/3 of the population all by
> themselves;
> >and, yes, this can and does happen even at impossible. In huge
> galaxies,
> >it's even fairly frequent at "Hard" or below.
>
> Ive played the same game large galaxy 3 species with each race, the
> psilons are the best over all.
The Klackons are good, but the Psilons kick their ass. I find that when
I play as the Klackons I can out produce the others but I still can't
research as fast as I can with the Psilons. Just my opinion.
--
--------------------
Paul Rosin
gro...@mailbox.neosoft.com
"This is no place for an entomologist." --Scully on "The X-Files"
Andrew D. Myers
I may regret this, but I'm kind of curious to try and dredge up some numbers as
to which race is most powerful/fun to play.
So, fill in the ballot, and e-mail it to me (andrew...@pobox.com) with the
phrase "MOO Races" in the subject line. Ballots posted to the newsgroup will
be ignored. Invalid/incomplete ballots will be ignored. Sending a quoted
e-mail reply to this message will work just peachy. Ballots will not be
acknowledged (aside from being tallied). One ballot per person, please.
Results will be compiled on August 1, 1996. Ballots received afterwards will
be ignored. Results will be posted to csipgs shortly thereafter.
Rank each race from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest). Use each number once.
Integers only, thanks.
---------------------------------------------------------
In this section, rank each race from 1 to 10 in terms of
how easy it is to win the game when playing as them.
---------------------------------------------------------
Alkari [ ] (powerful)
Bulrathi [ ] (powerful)
Darloks [ ] (powerful)
Humans [ ] (powerful)
Klackons [ ] (powerful)
Meklars [ ] (powerful)
Mrrshans [ ] (powerful)
Psilons [ ] (powerful)
Sakkras [ ] (powerful)
Silicoids [ ] (powerful)
---------------------------------------------------------
And, in this section, rank them in the order of how much
fun they are to play as (eg, a race might be tougher to
win the game with, but may be more fun to play as a result)
---------------------------------------------------------
Alkari [ ] (fun)
Bulrathi [ ] (fun)
Darloks [ ] (fun)
Humans [ ] (fun)
Klackons [ ] (fun)
Meklars [ ] (fun)
Mrrshans [ ] (fun)
Psilons [ ] (fun)
Sakkras [ ] (fun)
Silicoids [ ] (fun)
Ralph Betza
Hmm, I'm trying a different newsreader and it didn't include the article.
I paraphrase....
> "Consider a planet with 100 pop, 200 factories".
Okay, by the time the Psilons have built their hundred factories and
increased their population (by using the ECO bar), the Klackons have had
their planet full for quite a few years, and have discovered several
useful items already. (Or have built several extra colony ships.)
But let's forget that, and concentrate on the part where you compare the
production if put into research. Research? So soon? Not massive amounts,
anyway. You have to use this planet to build colony ships. The Klackons
get 206 per turn after paying for ECO, and can build a new colony ship
every two-and-a-fraction years; the Psilons get 153 per turn after ECO
and can build a new colony ship every 3.7254901960 years. (That's
2.7669902912 for the Klackons by the way).
The Klackons have an advantage only in the beginning, you say? Not when
they can grow so quickly, getting more and better planets; this is a
production advantage that lasts. In addition, you are forgetting that
planetology tech increases your worker productivity. At tech level 10,
the Klackons produce 1.6 per worker, and the Psilons produce a mere 0.8;
and although the Psilon production goes much further when directed into
research, sometimes you have to build planetary shields, or build ships
or missile bases, or build factories, or grow new colonists, or terraform
planets; and the Klackons do all of these things better than the Psilons.
I will admit that the Psilons may possibly have a better chance of
winning from an awful start where they have very few planets; but the
Klackons, conversely, can frequently score a complete runaway victory
where they colonize half the galaxy, have the most advanced tech by far,
and win the first vote by having 2/3 of the population all by themselves;
and, yes, this can and does happen even at impossible. In huge galaxies,
it's even fairly frequent at "Hard" or below.
The way it happens is that the Klackon production edge, which kicks in at
the start (unlike the Meklar production edge or the Psilon research edge)
can be used to make more colony ships faster which increases your
production because you have more planets and the increased production
lets you get better planetology which further increases your production,
and it builds and builds in an unstoppable feedback cycle.
Try it, you'll like it.
Scott A. Colcord
Ralph Betza (sa...@li.net) wrote:
:
: The way it happens is that the Klackon production edge, which kicks in at
: can be used to make more colony ships faster which increases your
: production because you have more planets and the increased production
: lets you get better planetology which further increases your production,
: and it builds and builds in an unstoppable feedback cycle.
An additional factor to consider is that the Klackons are excellent at
construction tech. The research formulas for construction tech work out
to be:
Pop + Fact - Polut = Prod, * Bonus * Psilon = Effective RPs.
100 + 200 - 100 = 200, * 5/3 = 333
50 + 200 - 100 = 159, * 5/4 * 3/2 = 281
When I play the Klackons, I usually get the bare minimum of Propulsion
and Planetology and then spearhead a drive toward Industrial tech 2.
You can get there in a surprisingly short amount of time, even at impossible
level. Once that technology is attained, the Klackons can max out a
colony in about 10 turns. This allows them to expand much more quickly
than the Psilons.
In the later stages of the game, once the borders are pretty well set,
the Klackon's ability to expand is not as significant, and the advantage
shifts toward the Psilons. The Klackons tend to dominate the early game,
however, and the deciding question is whether they have gotten enough of
a territorial advantage to compensate for the Psilon's increased reasearch
ability.
Overall, I consider the two races to be approximately equal in merit.
Jason F Kovalik
>The way it happens is that the Klackon production edge, which kicks in
at
>the start (unlike the Meklar production edge or the Psilon research
edge)
>can be used to make more colony ships faster which increases your
>production because you have more planets and the increased production
>lets you get better planetology which further increases your
production,
>and it builds and builds in an unstoppable feedback cycle.
>
>Try it, you'll like it.
>
Ive played the same game large galaxy 3 species with each race, the
psilons are the best over all.
Chewbacca
Rob C. Johnson
Sigh. In point of fact, any species can win 99.9% of the time
_if_ you've played the game enough.
For that matter, just to make things fairer for the poor AI,
try only using the Auto and Retreat buttons during combat.
That's all you're allowed, because we all now how to run away,
avoid the enemy weapons, while hitting them with our superior
weapons. Oh, and you have to play at impossible, with max
players. Choose the size of the universe randomly (roll a die!).
In fact, choose your species randomly too!
Rob sez 'Hi!' (rcjo...@prairienet.org)