Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer
Really, it's less about trusting the AI and more about observing what it does and then changing the conditions to force it into certain paths. But yeah, the majority of our industrial centers will end up being directly controlled.

Otherwise the AI will spend a lot of time building battleships when they could build superdreadnoughts just because the battleships are cheaper. And make the battleships obsolete, and there's a high chance AI industrial centers will full turn full retard and spew out tons of troops and small ships instead of building your largest designs.

I like to sidestep that issue. There are also other problems with the AI, but that's something for far later. Right now we can't see those problems and I like to show you, rather than tell.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

SIGSEGV
Nov 4, 2010


It's pretty funny how half the game appears to be AI wrangling.

How fast is the fleet reserve teleport to position? Is it a turn to de-mothball things or does it take more time?

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

SIGSEGV posted:

It's pretty funny how half the game appears to be AI wrangling.

How fast is the fleet reserve teleport to position? Is it a turn to de-mothball things or does it take more time?

The fleet reserve is weird. Ships from disbanded formations take a seemingly random, but not overly long number of turns to show up in the reserve again. Disbanded formations includes armies, by the way.

But in the other direction, all you need is a mobilization center in a system and you can instantly raise task forces and transport fleets from your reserve at that system. In vanilla, the TFs show up only the next turn (or you have to press "B" to give them order immediately), in Ultima Orion it happens instantly without the need to press anything.

Basically, ships and units in your reserve occupy some strange, otherworldly limbo until needed. Then they'll show up at your mobilization center instantly.

Ships and units you construct are beamed right into this odd reserve dimension. Constructed units don't need any waiting time, they literally teleport from the assembly line into your reserve and from there to the other side of the galaxy if you have a mobilization center over there.

Edit:

This means disbanding and scrapping old fleets is kind of annoying, since you have to wait (and pay upkeep) a couple turns after the disband before you're allowed to scrap them for real.

Libluini fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Apr 28, 2016

SIGSEGV
Nov 4, 2010


That sounds like an excellent way to cut down on micromanaging ferrying troops and ships to the front. And also like something that is extremely easy to abuse.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

SIGSEGV posted:

That sounds like an excellent way to cut down on micromanaging ferrying troops and ships to the front. And also like something that is extremely easy to abuse.

As long as you don't accidentally drop troops from your front-line ships of course. Since that makes your fleet vanish for a while. :v:

(Seriously, never put troop capsules on combat ships, it never ends well.)

SIGSEGV
Nov 4, 2010


Actually it sounds like an excellent practical joke to play on your own troops.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
It seems like such a weird mechanic, the whole mobilization center thing. Like... it seems to be less a mechanic to use, and more a poor aspect of the system to abuse, and it makes zero sense whatsoever from a fluff/descriptive perspective.

(also looks like Libluini pissed someone off on the internet. Nice job.)

Dallan Invictus
Oct 11, 2007

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes, look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

SIGSEGV posted:

That sounds like an excellent way to cut down on micromanaging ferrying troops and ships to the front. And also like something that is extremely easy to abuse.

The random delay on dismissing fleets does a lot to cut down abuse: it's very rare that you'll save any time by dismissing a fleet out of position and remobilizing somewhere else, as opposed to simply flying it over. It's a weird mechanic (or at least something that's never been done in a 4X before or since) but it definitely makes it easier to manage big empires when you can cut out the tedious internal management of "moving things from the shipyards to the front".

my dad
Oct 17, 2012

this shall be humorous
It's a shame this game's economy sucks (from what I can see so far). I loving loved playing space$$$ in moo2 (democracy, good traders, +1BC per pop, poo poo combat stats to balance out). You know, play peacefully, be polite to nice neighbors and trade with them, and if they're not nice, bribe the poo poo out of them to make them nice. And then if you find someone who just refuses want to play nice, burns one of your outlying colonies to the ground, and sends their whole fleet towards your next system? Why, dip into your cash reserves to pop a fleet of battleships custom made to fight their fleet (if needs be, relevant techs acquired through emergency trades with friendlier neighbors) in the 3 turns it takes for the enemy to arrive, crush their fleet, drown them under a neverending tide of cash and steel, and once they're wiped off the face of the galaxy, disband your fleet and ask any newly acquired neighbors if they're interested in a trade agreement. :v:

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

my dad posted:

It's a shame this game's economy sucks (from what I can see so far). I loving loved playing space$$$ in moo2 (democracy, good traders, +1BC per pop, poo poo combat stats to balance out). You know, play peacefully, be polite to nice neighbors and trade with them, and if they're not nice, bribe the poo poo out of them to make them nice. And then if you find someone who just refuses want to play nice, burns one of your outlying colonies to the ground, and sends their whole fleet towards your next system? Why, dip into your cash reserves to pop a fleet of battleships custom made to fight their fleet (if needs be, relevant techs acquired through emergency trades with friendlier neighbors) in the 3 turns it takes for the enemy to arrive, crush their fleet, drown them under a neverending tide of cash and steel, and once they're wiped off the face of the galaxy, disband your fleet and ask any newly acquired neighbors if they're interested in a trade agreement. :v:

You know, this could work with MO3, if you take one of the more diplomacy-inclined races. Like the Imsaies, who are so awesome they even successfully befriended us!

I'm bad at math, so I never tried playing like this, though. No idea how good that would work out in practice. The inability to just buy new ships with money would put a major wrench into things, I assume. On the other hand, to win fights you really only need carriers and good research for fighter techs/defensive techs so your carriers don't blow up at the first sneeze in their direction. So you don't really have to care what the enemy brings to the fight as long as your carriers are up to date.

(It will become clear at a later date that there is a terrible imbalance in weapon-systems. But that has to be seen to be believed.)

Tech trades by the way, are incredibly annoying in MO3. The AI is really bad at telling you what it wants and even worse at anticipating what the player may want. This leads to some hilariously disfunctional tech trading. In most cases spies work better, even though they just blindly grab one of the highest level techs. Just call it pro-active tech trading. :v:

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Libluini posted:

I'm bad at math, so I never tried playing like this, though. No idea how good that would work out in practice. The inability to just buy new ships with money would put a major wrench into things,

Wait a moment, then what do you actually use money for?

Veloxyll
May 3, 2011

Fuck you say?!

If only fighters weren't part of the carrier design.

Then making a bunch of lovely carrier hulls you'll put real fighters on as they appear would be actually useful.

Other things I have learnt trying to throw together a libertarian hoooo! playthrough

Not being able to read diplomessages makes things very difficult!

Are they saying "Hi, we like you" or "Your race is made from poop!"

Will throw together a LIBERTARIAN PARADISE update later maybe.

I feel the extra German-based opacity is authentic to the game experience somehow though.

Veloxyll fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Apr 29, 2016

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
I like that you're willing to preemptively grant the Raas the moral victory of killing robot Hitler.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

PurpleXVI posted:

Wait a moment, then what do you actually use money for?

Well, you can't instantly buy something, but using production or researching things still costs money. Fleet upkeep costs money, keeping people happy costs money. Even your bureaucracy spends money just by existing. Spies need upkeep, too. If we had robotic slaves, they likewise would cost us money to maintain. There are probably some other things costing money I forgot in this list.

Later in the game this will result in the need to keep some planets with empty queues because building stuff on all planets all the time can and will tank our economy if we're not careful.

In general, it works like this: The population generates industry, agriculture, mineral and research points. Industry and research points cost money to be used. Unused points (except for research points, because it is impossible to not use them) generate money instead. That's what the picks in race customization were talking about when telling us this or that pick results in that or this amount of extra-minerals, handcrafted art (industry) or fancy food (agriculture).

Minerals and food are just used up and don't generate extra costs.

quote:

Research points = Costs money, can't be unused
Industry points = Costs money and minerals when used, creates some extra money when unused
Mineral points = Doesn't cost money when used, creates some extra money when unused
Food = Doesn't cost money when used, creates some extra money when unused

As far as I can tell (there's no part of the UI telling you how much extra money is actually created this way), the extra amounts are either really tiny or part of the tax calculation and therefore invisible to the player outside of the race customization screen telling you about this. But I'll keep my eye out for the future to see if I can test this with some random border worlds. (When we're at the point were we have so many planets using some of them in weird experiments doesn't do much harm anymore.)

Fun fact for the day: An old player-guide I found claimed for Silicoids, mining and agricultural preferences are reversed: Plains are good for mining and bad for agriculture, mountains are good for agriculture and bad for mining. I did some tests on Innar II with a couple regions reversed from normal, but as far as I could tell this claim was totally wrong. Maybe it was like this in vanilla but the modders changed it because it was confusing as hell for players? :shrug:

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Libluini posted:

Well, you can't instantly buy something, but using production or researching things still costs money. Fleet upkeep costs money, keeping people happy costs money. Even your bureaucracy spends money just by existing. Spies need upkeep, too. If we had robotic slaves, they likewise would cost us money to maintain. There are probably some other things costing money I forgot in this list.

It seems relatively reasonable, at least in concept, I'm sure MoO3 manages to put some idiot spins on the actual mechanics at some point or another.

But I have to admit I'm not much of a fan of strategy games that leave the player starved for ways to actively reach in and disrupt things. It feels like it often leaves the players too much at the mercy of initial luck/momentum, and not really so much defined by their actions down the road.

If you can't directly spend money on production, though, is there ANY way to focus the resources of your empire on particular projects if they're really important?

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

PurpleXVI posted:

It seems relatively reasonable, at least in concept, I'm sure MoO3 manages to put some idiot spins on the actual mechanics at some point or another.

But I have to admit I'm not much of a fan of strategy games that leave the player starved for ways to actively reach in and disrupt things. It feels like it often leaves the players too much at the mercy of initial luck/momentum, and not really so much defined by their actions down the road.

If you can't directly spend money on production, though, is there ANY way to focus the resources of your empire on particular projects if they're really important?

You can use the sliders to boost production (or research, for that matter). Basically, it makes you spend more money to get more effect out of your points. The thing is, it has diminishing returns. I'm running with 10% military expenses right now on most of our planets, but I could pump in up to 100% of the planet's taxes if I wanted. As I explained in an earlier post, the slider bar will slowly turn red when the boost gets too high. Everything after red generally has so little effect it's just setting money on fire.

If you look at the screenshots, you'll see even with all expenses (industry, research, infrastructure) added up together, I'm using only 20-30% of a planet's output most of the time. The rest is generating money to pay for those 20-30% to keep our accounts balanced.

The game is nice enough to generate immediate feedback for the player: You see the planet's expenses go up and down when you move the sliders, so if you push a planet into economic ruin, you can only blame yourself. :v:

fuck off Batman
Oct 14, 2013

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah!


my dad posted:

It's a shame this game's economy sucks (from what I can see so far). I loving loved playing space$$$ in moo2 (democracy, good traders, +1BC per pop, poo poo combat stats to balance out). You know, play peacefully, be polite to nice neighbors and trade with them, and if they're not nice, bribe the poo poo out of them to make them nice. And then if you find someone who just refuses want to play nice, burns one of your outlying colonies to the ground, and sends their whole fleet towards your next system? Why, dip into your cash reserves to pop a fleet of battleships custom made to fight their fleet (if needs be, relevant techs acquired through emergency trades with friendlier neighbors) in the 3 turns it takes for the enemy to arrive, crush their fleet, drown them under a neverending tide of cash and steel, and once they're wiped off the face of the galaxy, disband your fleet and ask any newly acquired neighbors if they're interested in a trade agreement. :v:

Yeah, and since Fantastic Traders gave you BC for every surplus food produced, the best way to play was to crank the taxes up, forgo industry altogether and focus everything on agriculture. You were literally playing a race of rich fat bastards.

ManxomeBromide
Jan 29, 2009

old school

terrenblade posted:

and I'm running a Moo1 game in sympathy.

I fired it up again to see if I still liked it and it's interesting the degree to which there's a bit of AI help but it's mostly unobtrusive. Ecological spending is adjusted so you don't start dumping waste due to inattention. Every time you get a terraforming or industrial tech or a neat new toy to install on all your worlds you're asked if you want to just have them all adjust that spending on their own. You'll still need to do some tuning (and the interface for that is hideous, so despite preferring 1 to 2 the UI prize still goes to 2 for letting you do almost all the work you'd want to do straight from your list of colonies).

It underlines the idea that MoO3 bit off more than it could chew, as opposed to, say, large chunks of SotS, where it appeared to have been designed by madmen.

edit: vvvv Yeah, to be clear, by any sane metric MoO2 is the better game. I just keep bouncing off of it.

ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Apr 30, 2016

SirPhoebos
Dec 10, 2007

WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Thank you for running this LP. It was one I always felt needed to be done but never had the stomach to do myself.

Like many others, I was enthralled by the development process, and for a few weeks tried to convince myself that it was the greatest thing ever.

I actually prefer MoO2 to the first game. Part of it is because that's what I played first, but also because it has an incredible soundtrack.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

SirPhoebos posted:

I actually prefer MoO2 to the first game. Part of it is because that's what I played first, but also because it has an incredible soundtrack.

Also an increased variety of things to play with warfare-wise and species-wise. I think that about the only special equipment in MoO2 I never found at least some niche use for on ship designs was self-destruct devices.

SugarAddict
Oct 11, 2012

PurpleXVI posted:

Also an increased variety of things to play with warfare-wise and species-wise. I think that about the only special equipment in MoO2 I never found at least some niche use for on ship designs was self-destruct devices.

Time-dilation device, phasing cloak, x-capacitors. Skip first turn, wait for enemy to waste their turn doing nothing, get your "first-second" turn and decloak and lay waste to the enemys, on your second turn, do nothing and recloak, laugh at enemy unable to hurt you for first 8 turns of combat as you lay waste to their fleets.

habituallyred
Feb 6, 2015

PurpleXVI posted:

Also an increased variety of things to play with warfare-wise and species-wise. I think that about the only special equipment in MoO2 I never found at least some niche use for on ship designs was self-destruct devices.

I once played a gimmick game where I used nothing but frigates. Self Destructing frigates were the majority of my point defense.

SugarAddict
Oct 11, 2012
I was sad in Moo3 when they limited the negative perk picks to -10 and made assault shuttles non-reusable. Making a game breaking race and curb stomping the AI or people was fun.

Aethernet
Jan 28, 2009

This is the Captain...

Our glorious political masters have, in their wisdom, decided to form an alliance with a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters right when the Federation has us at a tactical disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in the Feds firing on our vessels...

Damn you Huxley!

Grimey Drawer

PurpleXVI posted:

Also an increased variety of things to play with warfare-wise and species-wise. I think that about the only special equipment in MoO2 I never found at least some niche use for on ship designs was self-destruct devices.

Do you have an excess of industrial production but Uncreativity means you've lucked out of decent ship components but have somehow picked up Quantum Detonators from a lucky Antaran capture? Drown your oponents under wave upon wave of exploding frigates!

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

SugarAddict posted:

I was sad in Moo3 when they limited the negative perk picks to -10 and made assault shuttles non-reusable. Making a game breaking race and curb stomping the AI or people was fun.


Did you mean Master of Orion 2?

Negative perks aren't limited in 3 and I've never seen nor remember an "Assault Shuttles"-tech in this game.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer
Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition




Chapter 12: Dino Crisis




The Light Carrier Hammer: 10 Space fighters with fusion bombs. 330 damage per hit and the fighters can fire every 1,6 seconds. Please compare this with our light cruisers and their 90 damage every ~5 seconds. Also fighters don’t have a max range, they’ll automatically fly to the edges of the map until there is no enemy left.

This cruiser-sized carrier has also 6 light PPG-batteries to rapid-fire at threats close by, like enemy fighters or missiles. A little back up just in case all the escorts blow up.

I keep forgetting to mention this, but the original name for the Particle Projector Guns was "Quark Cannon". The German translation was relatively simple, too: "Quark Kanone" or something similar. Back then I decided "Quark" sounded far too silly for a serious space game like Master of Orion 3, so I changed it to PPK (or PPC in English). But then I remembered that was a term in Battletech, so I left the K off and changed "Kanone" to "Geschütz", a word which in this context means exactly the same thing in English.

It's a mess. If I could go back in time for a do-over, I'd probably leave the old name as is. In the grand scheme of things it's of course utterly irrelevant, but I thought you'd like to know the story behind this weapon-name.





It’s also time for something more powerful for future system defense: A frigate-sized star base. This lump of crystal maybe “frigate-sized”, but it’s still a sizable fortress with 16 space fighters and 8 PPG-batteries for point-defense.

The reason I’m not designing anything heavier right now is the weakness of our defense: Class I shields and light armor won’t stop much and then it’s just a matter of time until the structure points are all used up. The best defense for our planets are ground batteries. It’ll take some times until fleets become powerful enough large fortresses become useful for defeating them. This space base here is already overkill. (Until it suddenly isn’t, but that’s progress for you.)




On our second-rate production planets it’s time to keep the queues filled up.




In research country, another defense upgrade is coming: The Raketenbasis/Missile Base is a version of the Anti-Space Batteries using our strongest missiles. Not much at the moment, but just before the Missile Base Research Project is completed, we get a warhead upgrade. After that ground batteries are still better, but ground based missiles have a terrifying range and after some more missile upgrades, everyone in range will feel the pain.

Also good: Planetary Missile Bases don’t use ammunition, they can fire all day long. (Either that or they have something like 99 shots before they run dry, which will never ever happen with heavier missiles. I'll try to remember to make a screenshot of missile reserves on a planet at a later point.)




Cycle 66 and our first real combat ship rolls from the assembly line.




It turns out the Imsaies want to improve our trade treaty again.
Imsaies (angry): “Greetings, oh stubborn Kingdom of Almandin! We say, it is imperative to agree to a mutual trade treaty. And don’t think about saying no!”




Regardless of how angry that ambassador sounded, our relations with the Annalona Empire are quite good actually. We’re almost in the green!




All this improving is good for us: Trade income is up to 26 AU!




I’m losing no time and order a carrier build at our capital.




Meanwhile, one of our outposts grows up into a real colony. Bad news though: In one of the regions of this small planet there’s an infestation of dangerous transcendental lifeforms. Those energy ghosts are incredibly harmful: Agriculture, industry and mining are all reduced by 50%, research, governmental work and recreational activity are reduced by 75% and military DEAs suffer by 25%.

Now sadly this planet is far too small to justify three military DEAs (we already have one, since this was an outpost), so I just have to suck it up and do some mining here. Our mining workers will have to live with being haunted, I guess. :shrug:




Interestingly, the game shows Tardig now as still contested, but in our color. I guess I misremembered and the coloring is always seen from the player’s viewpoint if a full colony is there, not strictly raw power. (Because no way in hell is our little military colony stronger then the older Imsaies colony next to it.)

Beyond Tardig, swarms of colony ships are slowly making their way to the Cokanuk-sector.




Spy Falcata finishes training in turn 45. Our colony ship for Cokanuk III finally lands and creates a colony. Oh, and Bodenanreicherung/Soil Enrichment gets completed. A minor tech (for us) to make agricultural DEAs produce more.




Dagger: 3; Cloak: 5; Luck: 30 -> still not good. Especially the bad luck is making this one useless in offensive capability. At least Falcata will hopefully help preventing our technologies from getting stolen.




Our local scout is getting and closer to that last neighboring system of Cokanuk we haven’t seen yet.




Cokanuk III: Mineral rich, ideal gravity, large. Nearly perfect pressure and temperature. This planet will be the industrial center of this newly established sector of the Kingdom.




On the other side, deep behind Imsaies-territory, we explore Roch.




Two out of four planets aren’t completely worthless. Roch II is just slightly worse than Cokanuk III.




Since we have a non-aggression treaty, we can move freely without getting attacked. The Imsaies don’t really have an interest into the kind of large, Venusian rocks our Silicoids prefer, so we might have a good change at eventually settling some planets here.




Goddamnit! Spies are running away with our fighter fusion bomb tech. Bad news. And we suddenly got contacted by the Soriane Empire.




The new empire is Psilons! I immediately start talking to prevent undiplomatic nastiness from occurying. Trade Treaty Time!




Our first impression on the Psilons was an unmitigated disaster: -48 on first contact, ouch! Our respective people are quite indifferent to each other, though: Hopefully this time our relations won’t spiral down into revulsion and hate.




I’m kind of at a loss to deal with the unknown spies terrorizing us. I don’t want to make our Kingdom a bad place for rocks by ramping up oppression, so instead I recruit another espionage-hacker. This should bolster our inner security a bit more.




The Dila Empire, home of our beloved Raas, has started researching their first shield and weapon techs. Too bad we’re already a couple steps ahead and building ships, though. And this menu confirms: The spy who stole our fighter weapon tech was send by the Raas.

Looks like those dinosaurs want to go Jurassic Park on our asses.




Since hostilities with our arch-enemies are heating up, I’m taking a closer look at the Soriane Democracy. The Psilons are in a war for their existence. And with zero active ships, this must mean they’re losing. They are indifferent to us and have one ally we haven’t met yet, the Kairenieo Empire.

They’re also fighting the Dzazatar and the Vchiitri Empires. It looks like the Psilons are acting like some sort of buffer keeping all this craziness away from us.

Politically, this means we’re making them our friends (or at least not-enemies). Hopefully their own little alliance keeps fighting that other one for the foreseeable future.




With the Soriane, we now have seen 4 out of 16 races in this game. The Psilon are really good at research: Even though we pushed our technology like mad, the Psilons are almost at the same level. They have slightly more population, but less colonies and zero ships right now.

Thanks to their better research, the game places them at just above the Raas. This makes me happy, because it means we could easily crush both at the same time if the Psilons get stroppy.




And as I thought, the formerly unknown star system next to Cokanuk was the reason we suddenly got contact with the Psilons: While we were very slowly exploring the other star lanes, the Psilons colonized Tali. The good thing is, this way both Beta Caeli and Reticuli are cut off from them and we can safely colonize them ourselves.

Also I’m giving immediate orders for our last explorer in this sector to turn around. The ship is hosed, though. Even if we immediately get a non-aggression pact, the scout will reach Tali before it can go into effect. Hopefully I can get the scout into Tali and back out without the defenders blowing it up.




Nnnnnnope! The Psilons are kind of trigger-happy, probably because of the bad war they’re caught in. Their defense ships move to intercept our scout and shoot it to pieces before I can jump out. Now we have zero scouts in this sector. Welp.




Yeah, that could have gone better. It’s a nice reminder of how system defense ships, like ships in the reserve, aren’t part of the “official” ship count, either.




The Raas-spy/-spies are continuing their rampage. Now they’ve stolen the Ion Drive-technology! We also get a nice little message reminding us of the 100% losses we incurred at the “Battle of Tali”.




A short look confirms it: The second theft was also done by the Dila Empire. Those Raas are starting to annoy me.




Hackers stealing our techs aren’t the only problem: The Raas have send a conspirator and our people are getting fed dumb rumors about the King secretly planning to take over the government. Our democratic Silicoids ain't liking the sound of that!




To keep our backs free, I’m taking the risk of annoying the Psilons by asking for a non-aggression pact. The devastating war the Psilons are fighting makes it sensible to say yes, but with the AI you never know!




Again I’m asking for some economic improvement to our trade treaty. Less because of the money and more because we need some friends.

Every successful diplomatic transaction boosts our relation-ship levels.




With our expansion along the Psilon-border, our thin empire is now even longer and thinner.




The sudden death of our scout in the Cokanuk-sector reminds me to design some new and improved recon-ships. The REConnaissance frigate Light is fast, armed and not really dangerous. But it’s able to deal with most other scouts and the new shield and two light batteries for point-defense may make the difference between life and death if this ship ends up in hostile space.




Our system defense forces get a similar design, just one hull size smaller. The Recon-corvette Light Attack Craft Dark still has more weapons than its FTL-counterpart. FTL-drives take a lot of space.

System defense fleets work differently from the task forces you can raise yourself. For one thing, most system ships you built will simply get placed into the same task force until it is full. Only then does the game start creating a second one. This of course means you should take this into account when designing ships for your system defense: Every slow ship placed into a system will slow down the entire task force it belongs to.

This is why I like to make all system defense ships equally fast and leave the hard-hitting to local fortresses. In gameplay-terms, I can use small and fast system fleets to intercept enemy transports, colony ships and other dross, while a serious invasion means I pull everything back into the protective shield of a planet and its space fortresses.

If I for example, had made a cruiser-carrier and a slow one like our main fleet ship, all those other fast designs would be wasted as soon as one of these system carriers gets build somewhere.




In turn 48 our strategy of mass-recruiting spies for defense starts paying off: A message pops up telling us an enemy spy has been captured and is in interrogation at the moment.

“Our interrogation experts squeeze all captured spies at the moment.”

Captured spies can escape, so this isn’t necessarily the end of the line for captured Raas-spies.




Soriane ambassador: “We decided to hear what you have to offer, but we won’t walk this path any further. Could we continue this talk later?”

A Psilon is talking, be quiet!

Looks like the Psilons don't have time for trading. Welp. Maybe later? :shrug:




Construction is continuing as planned: Our light cruisers are ready and we’re waiting on one single fast escort to make the squadron full. (A full squadron is four ships.)

And then I look into our reserves and see we already have two escorts for our light cruisers. OK then. :shrug:

Since Innar II is still taking its time with the mobilization center (15 turns) being build, I decide to send our fast response squadron from our capital system. 15 turns just 1-2 turns more than the travelling time.

The mobilization center at Seginus II, right inbetween both systems, is taking even longer.




And right after I talk about it, I’m doing it: The 1st Royal Fleet is ready! Two light cruisers with long-range weapons, protected by two fast escort frigates.




OK, looks like I forgot taking our faster FTL-drives into account. 11 turns is faster than I thought. It’s still kind of funny that future fleets will have a travel time of 0 turns after that mobilization center in Innar is finished.




Yeah thanks laser miniaturization II. Thanks for loving over the AI on account of being a new weapon tech, forcing the AI to take you for its designs.

I fondly remember the autobuilder in vanilla MO3 going mental and shoving upgraded old weapons into your design at every opportunity. In this mod, the AI tends to diversify weapons and thus prevents loving themselves over completely. It's also less work for people who don't like designing space ships.

Two other techs in the pipeline are Stoßtruppen/Assault Troops and Punktverteidigung/Point-Defense. The first tech is better troops and the second is a lighter, faster-firing mount with higher accuracy. Point-defense batteries are actually quite situational, since they have the same space requirement as light batteries, but with shorter range and less damage. Balanced against faster shots with higher accuracy, the effect tends to be exactly the same with one difference: Light batteries are also a good emergency-weapon against normal ships. Point-defense batteries, not so much.


Next: Dinosaur Attack

Yes that's right, next update actually contains some battles!

SugarAddict
Oct 11, 2012

Libluini posted:

Did you mean Master of Orion 2?

Negative perks aren't limited in 3 and I've never seen nor remember an "Assault Shuttles"-tech in this game.

You are right, I meant Moo2. Thanks to lack of sleep and late night posting, my posting quality isn't the best.

Edit: I also remember during one game of Moo2 with my dad, he actually ran out of planetary missiles to shoot at the Antarians.

SugarAddict fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Apr 30, 2016

Deceitful Penguin
Feb 16, 2011
Meine Götter, you weren't joking about the game having a sedate pace. How long has this active war had no battles?

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

Deceitful Penguin posted:

Meine Götter, you weren't joking about the game having a sedate pace. How long has this active war had no battles?

It's actually the second active war with the Raas! The first one ended because we had no battles for too long. :suicide:

But in hindsight, maybe I'm making the game look worse than it is, because I tend to make a loving lot of screenshots? In truth, one hour of gaming time creates about three updates worth of screenshots. So this means the 14 updates I've created so far minus the OP and an entire update spend with race creation represents only about 4 hours of gameplay.

Edit:

Another thing: The game goes a lot faster into battle-time if you take a smaller map and put as many enemies as possible in it. This can lead to wacky poo poo like multiple races starting in the same system. Too hectic for my taste and there's always the chance your diplomatic race starts next to EvilKiller McDeath-race, but well, it is faster. :shrug:

Libluini fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Apr 30, 2016

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
Speaking of the map, it feels like you're rotating it pretty much EVERY screenshot, which makes it a bit confusing to follow sometimes. :v:

Any chance of a big over-all view of all our explored space so far?

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

PurpleXVI posted:

Speaking of the map, it feels like you're rotating it pretty much EVERY screenshot, which makes it a bit confusing to follow sometimes. :v:

Any chance of a big over-all view of all our explored space so far?

I have to rotate the map constantly, the map tends to obnoxiously cover parts of itself. :v:

It also doesn't help that the system names and empire colors tend to vanish when you zoom too far out.

But the desire for a big overview is noted. Just be warned, I still have some updates to go through before I can shove this in.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer
Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition




Chapter 13: Dinosaurs Attack!




Turn 49 sees a flood of red messages. Diplomatic progress, a new leader and a new type of warheads for our missiles.




The new leader is one of the very rare ones without any drawback and this means he will stay as long as possible: Modoan Eud. He is an old war computer who was retired as “outdated” long ago but then reactivated due to his experience. He can evaluate almost every kind of weapon or tactic.




As he is basically ancient there remains the question of how long he will continue to work, though. But apart from that, Modoan Eud is an indispensable helper for strategic planning.

One drawback is his inability to be summoned to someone’s aid: He is a gigantic computer, installed inside a government-arcology on the surface of world once owned by a long forgotten militaristic species. He was the military central computer for that planet.




After an unknown disaster, this old race disappeared and Modoan Eud remained, heavily damaged and buried. For some reason we apparently stumbled upon his remains on one of our worlds and decided to repair him. Most of his data is lost, but what is left is still doing us a lot of good: We get +20% efficiency for our ground troops as long as he lives and our fleet maintenance costs are reduced by 15%. Drawbacks: None.

This is exactly what we need to paste those Raas-motherfuckers for their transgressions! With the 20% bonus to efficiency, our troops are now average instead of bad. 15% fleet maintenance bonus would be more useful later in the game, but oh well, it’s still good.




The Annalona Empire is using the non-aggression pact to move small fleet divisions around. Most of it is harmless, but I’m keeping an eye out for this carrier division here.




Until the Raas are eliminated, we still need as much peace as possible, so I’m glad the Psilons accepted our non-aggression pact. From now on, no sudden scout explosions!
“We are incredibly happy with your offer, so we happily accept your terms. Will you tell us if you have further wishes?”




Imsaies (innocently): “We are glad you decided to trade with us and we give our agreement. Are you sure you don’t need anything else?”




The successful non-aggression treaty with the Psilons has halved our bad relations, which is good. At the same time our people have realized they don’t really like those floating meatballs. Even worse, the Psilons dislike us, too.

I’m 100% sure without the Psilons fighting for their lives on another front, our diplomatic efforts with them would be doomed.




All this unexpected diplomatic success has made me careless and I gamble for a defensive alliance with the Imsaies. Will our good relations turn out to be good enough?




Only good news would be boring and Master of Orion 3 agrees. A Dilarian squadron shows up in the Innar-system. Our own is still many, many turns away and can’t fight the Raas-aggression. We’re in trouble!




The three aging explorers guarding Innar II are no match for the Raas-fleet. In fact, they explode so fast the battle is over before I remember to take screenshots. It was bad.

At least I remembered to let my recording software run.

The Innar II Orbit Massacre




The Raas immediately bombard Innar II and since our defensive installations weren’t finished yet, there’s nothing I can do.

In less painful news, a new star lane opens up between Zibal and Twee. I have no idea where that is.




We strike back by capturing and interrogating another Raas-agent. The outpost on Kled II gains colony status and the outpost on Subra-B is continuing to grow.




The 1st Royal Fleet is still 9 turns from reaching the front lines. Innar II has to survive alone until then. That colony ship travelling to Plastrum is mega-hosed now. It can’t turn back and it will drop into a now hostile system.




Luckily, a single squadron with early game weapons isn’t much in terms of bombardment: Sure, our installations and DEAs are slowly getting destroyed, but the population itself can sustain a surprising number of hits.

That mobilization center will never get build until we lift the siege, however. The Raas got us good with that sudden invasion.




The Raas sudden attack forces me to take stock of our ongoing constructions. Our capital is building a second transport at the moment and our two oldest colonies are working on shipyard-upgrades. Seginus II is steadily growing and will probably finish that mobilization center a lot earlier than the 12 turns this window shows.

And with Innar II under siege, we really need this center now, since it will cut our response time in half. Not as good as forming task forces directly in Innar, but the Raas had good timing, so that’s not possible right now.




Our fleet already under way is enough to defeat whatever the Raas can throw at it, but I’m planning ahead. The first carrier enters the assembly lines of Almandin V.

If I can get a carrier squadron to the front line, the war is already over.




The Dila Empire now has more active ships then we have. They got out of debt and still hate us. Nothing new there.

Since the Raas had worse research than us, I can make an educated guess at what those ships probably use as weapons. The Raas won’t be happy if our squadron reaches them. To turn the tables on us, they need to conquer Innar II or that system will turn into a trap for their forces.




As long as our planet is under siege, we’ll continue to see this screen a lot. 8 turns until our retaliation.




Two turns of bombardment have messed up our pretty planet something fierce.

This screen shows up for ground fighting. Green is for our units, yellow for enemies. The weird grid map represents the regions of a planet. To conquer a planet, a landing army first needs to gain a foothold in at least one region. That region then turns from red to blue to symbolize occupation.

In this early battle, there is not much finesse. Just our units (an infantry and a militia division) against an invading infantry corps. I put the setting for Kollateralschäden/Collateral Damage on “medium”, since we don’t want to gently caress up our own planet too badly, but also don’t want to give the Raas to great an advantage. Kampfintensität/Battle Intensity is set to low because if you are the defender and vastly outnumbered, you don’t want intense fights, you instead want to draw out the battle for as long as possible.

In this case, the battle runs fantastic. I took the deep defense doctrine for this battle, to force the enemy to slog through every single Silicoid-soldiers if necessary but it turns out the Raas vastly underestimated us: The corps they land can’t even establish a beachhead. The mighty AK-47 (after looking at some numbers it seems already built troops aren’t automatically upgraded like I thought they would, so they still have those) and the dumb decision to drop dinosaurs onto a larger version of Venus combine forces to wipe them out. The landing fails and the Raas retreat with their tails between their legs.

The 1st Battle of Innar II




Galactic cycle 76 is still going strong in turn 51. Our Kingdom is ablaze with Silicoids everywhere discussing the recent battle on Innar II. Even though it will take many cycles before the relief-forces arrive, everyone is happy to know we at least kicked some reptile butt.

Meanwhile, our second espionage-hacker completes his training and the Annalona Empire agrees to a defensive pact. With this, further Raas-incursions will not only be fought by us alone, the Imsaies will send ships to attack them if the war drags on for too long.

The Imsaies are almost as strong as we are, while the Raas are still bottom-tier. They are hosed.




Hacker Balthasar is another mixed bag, just mixed differently. With his dagger-ability of 4 he is the strongest offensive spy we have, but his cloak is 3 and his luck is the second worst. With that combination of traits I’m feeling less bad for letting him rot in inner security.




The Imsaies are formally accepting our alliance-offer.




The Raas are raging because of their defeat on the ground. Innar II is bombed again (not seen here because I scrolled down) and two more agents have infiltrated us. Again someone is steering up unrest while the second agent has organized a massive counterfeit campaign to damage our finances.




In answer to all of this, I use our new fusion cannon technology in another cruiser-design. The Short Range Ship Rammstein (yes, I haven’t forgotten that suggestion) uses five massive spinal mounted fusion cannons as main weapons. The maximum range is about 25% lower than our light Ruby-cruisers, but every salvo does almost as much damage than a fighter-strike. Which is 3-4 times as much damage, so yeah.

Since I was running out of space, I experimented a bit and put two light batteries of fusion cannons as secondary armament. They will do a lot more damage than PPGs if they hit missiles or fighters, but on the other hand there are only two of them and with shorter range.

The Rammstein has maximum possible speed for our tech level and will be paired with our fast escorts. My strategic planning is to pair one squadron of carriers with one squadron of these monsters. The Rammstein-cruisers (and the fighters) will deal with enemy ships, while the carriers will make assaulting a planet possible.

At this early stage of the game, direct fire ships are completely outclassed by planetary defenses. It’s kind of Rock, Paper, Scissors: Our ships beat theirs, but their planets beat our ships. Using carriers in this analogy is a little bit like drawing a gun and shooting the other guy in the face.




Either the constant bombardment or the landing attempt did some lasting damage to Innar II. The Raas will pay for this.




Until now, the siege wasn’t a terrible problem for the population as long as they didn’t get hit by space weapons. But the bombardment has destroyed the few mining-DEAs the planet had finished before the siege begun and now the people are starving.

Blockaded planets are severed from all food, mineral and money supplies. Yes, the Raas are absolute fuckers and jamming even the galactic cybernet to prevent tax payments from going through. And if you're just a simpls worker Silicoid waiting for your wages and your bank is not on Innar II, welp you're hosed, too.




After some more bombardment, our planet suffers another invasion. But this time I raised a full corps to aid our single division. Together with the militia, we’re actually outnumbering the Raas this time.




To teach those clowns a lesson, I do exactly the same but with higher collateral damage allowed. This time the fighting actually kills half our soldiers, but the Raas suffer even more horrible losses. Also, they fail again to establish a beachhead and retreat.

A human player would have waited until all those single corps had reached the planet before attempting a landing, but the AI blew it. They lost two corps now and still haven’t even gotten onto the planet yet.

This 2nd Battle of Innar II will be the last. After losing that many troops, the Raas switch to genocide. How that turns out for them is something we’ll see next time.



Next: Counter-Strike

Bloodly
Nov 3, 2008

Not as strong as you'd expect.

Deceitful Penguin posted:

Meine Götter, you weren't joking about the game having a sedate pace. How long has this active war had no battles?

It doesn't feel any slower than Master of Orion 2, given we seemed to start in the equivalent of 'pre-warp'.

Rappaport
Oct 2, 2013

Libluini posted:

The Short Range Ship Rammstein (yes, I haven’t forgotten that suggestion)

:neckbeard:

Can't wait to see some dino-murder. Which is preferable, destroying their population somehow or conquering them? They wouldn't want to migrate to Venus worlds much, I assume?

Zanzibar Ham
Mar 17, 2009

You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.


Grimey Drawer

Rappaport posted:

:neckbeard:

Can't wait to see some dino-murder. Which is preferable, destroying their population somehow or conquering them? They wouldn't want to migrate to Venus worlds much, I assume?

That reminds me, I can't wait to see this game's planet destruction cutscene (this better exist). When kid me saw it the first time in MoO2 I was super-wowed.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

Bloodly posted:

It doesn't feel any slower than Master of Orion 2, given we seemed to start in the equivalent of 'pre-warp'.

Funny you should say that, but the modders talked about this: They wanted to implement a real "pre-warp" starting option in Ultima Orion, but Master of Orion 3 apparently fought tooth and nail against this and they were forced to take it out again. If I remember right, especially trying to design FTL-ships without FTL-engine lead to some odd behaviour and the game just choked on it. And system ships can't leave a system, so that didn't work, either.

It would have been basically sitting around and waiting for your scientists to invent a tier 1 warp-drive, so it wouldn't have been that much interesting anyway. (And seriously, without FTL, that one system 11 turns away from the capital would have been like 70-100 turns away. Now that's some serious bullshit. :shepface: )

I think the very last thing (warning 12 year old memories approaching) they tried was replacing the tier 1 FTL-tech with a "prototype warp drive", which was basically just extra-slow to simulate slower-than-light travel. The modders came to the conclusion this wasn't the kind of fun gameplay they had in mind and stopped trying to bruteforce this stuff into the game.


Rappaport posted:

:neckbeard:

Can't wait to see some dino-murder. Which is preferable, destroying their population somehow or conquering them? They wouldn't want to migrate to Venus worlds much, I assume?

The Raas aren't that bad if it weren't for their crazy government. And while Silicoids aren't that picky about their worlds, most of the Raas-worlds would be in the yellow region for us and the gravity would be light enough to give us additional penalties. So yes, we're going to conquer them so they can migrate to all those second-tier worlds across our Kingdom.

Besides, the Raas are against us because they fear to be enslaved again and Silicoids would normally do this and work them to death. Because death crystals and all that. So their fears are founded in experience. They'll be so embarrassed after the war to learn that actually we are the ones with the moral high ground! We are benevolent crystals who will only crush their puny undemocratic democracy and replace it with the only true democratic form of government: A constitutional monarchy! Ours, to be precise. :getin:

Libluini fucked around with this message at 16:39 on May 1, 2016

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
How's the range on planet-based weapons? Essentially infinite as long as something's in a fight with them? Or is it actually possible to outrange a planet and take potshots at it from afar?

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

PurpleXVI posted:

How's the range on planet-based weapons? Essentially infinite as long as something's in a fight with them? Or is it actually possible to outrange a planet and take potshots at it from afar?

Ground batteries have just 4x the range of the largest ship-based weapons. Since the game automatically updates your planet-based stuff, you can sometimes outrange planet batteries even with normal long-range ships. It's always a laugh if a planet's range suddenly drops by 50% because the next tier weapon has shorter range. It's a rare match up, but it happens.

Missiles have a lot more and terrifying range, but ships can shoot at missiles. So as long as a fleet isn't terribly unlucky and spawns too close to a planet, it's survivable.

Fighters outrange everything, which of course means fighters starting from planetary bases and fighters from carriers have exactly the same range: Everywhere.

With fighters, the only way to outrange someone is to use stealth or hope you spawn far enough away to be not immediately visible.

This is the reason why I'm still using non-carriers even though fighters work on everything all the time: Later in the game I need some normal ships around to essentially draw the fighters from enemy planets and stations, so my fighters can kill the enemy carriers. We're a long, long way from that, of course. As the Raas demonstrated, planets without extra fortifications are hilariously vulnerable.

LordSloth
Mar 7, 2008

Disgruntled (IT) Employee

Libluini posted:


Fun fact for the day: An old player-guide I found claimed for Silicoids, mining and agricultural preferences are reversed: Plains are good for mining and bad for agriculture, mountains are good for agriculture and bad for mining. I did some tests on Innar II with a couple regions reversed from normal, but as far as I could tell this claim was totally wrong. Maybe it was like this in vanilla but the modders changed it because it was confusing as hell for players? :shrug:

It sorta makes sense, given how you picked cave farming in the race setup, but given how much of a mess this game is, who knows?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
Dang, even a little bit of aggression can seriously kneecap a starting colony.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply