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TwelveBaud posted:Master of Orion 3 is 85% off as part of the Wargaming.net annual sale, so if you've been excited by Libluini's LP now's the perfect time to get it. Yeah, it's never the time to get it! You poor mad soul.
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Feb 18, 2023 02:40
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I remember getting MoO3 around launch. My dad and I struggling with it. Eventually giving it up. It's never worth it. This LP, not long after it started, inspired me to reinstall it from when I got it as part of a pack for the new MoO a while back and I very quickly gave up trying to make it work. I just went back to being a little kid and dorking around on the easiest difficulty of MoO2 as Psilons or a Creative custom race and just happy devouring the tech tree while minding my business until I could stomp everything else into the ground.
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Feb 18, 2023 03:26
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It really isn't. Even ridiculous german mods cannot make this game good.
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Feb 19, 2023 03:04
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Veloxyll posted:It really isn't. Even ridiculous german mods cannot make this game good. Yeah, this is a game that tries to be a spreadsheet game with horrific AI, a nearly as bad UI, and a far too bloated galaxy that requires far too much micro or even with massive direction it completely breaks down.
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Feb 19, 2023 03:09
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I guess as the LP-Overlord of this thread, I have to be the one to disagree here. The 10 bucks I've spent on my original discs have paid themselves over and over again. So that's at minimum, what this game is worth to me.wedgekree posted:Yeah, this is a game that tries to be a spreadsheet game with horrific AI, a nearly as bad UI, and a far too bloated galaxy that requires far too much micro or even with massive direction it completely breaks down. This, especially, is easily a description of every single space 4x ever made. If you aren't a fan of horrible AI, bad UI and bloated game maps, why do you even play a space 4x game?  Bloated game maps imho, aren't even the fault of the devs, since this is the kind of poo poo video game players always demand from their space 4x (bigger maps) and then they get their bigger maps and have the gall to complain! Just look at this fucker for example: An entire thread of nothing but complaining! Incredible, just incredible.
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Feb 19, 2023 13:42
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Libluini posted:I guess as the LP-Overlord of this thread, I have to be the one to disagree here. The 10 bucks I've spent on my original discs have paid themselves over and over again. So that's at minimum, what this game is worth to me. lol, have to admit, you got me with that one. But you know, Endless Legend 2 for example had a great UI and the differences in game mechanics actually makes the races feel a bit more nuanced to player in comparison, but looking a Distant Universe 2, yeah, okay. most 4X players are bad. I'm just dreading the day we'll get Space Empires 6 which will be just that. Bad UI, clunky engine, terribad AI and incredibly bloated maps. But onwards with MOOO, the only masterpiece in its class....if you count terrible turn-based 4x sequels as a class, that is.
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Feb 19, 2023 21:09
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Libluini posted:I guess as the LP-Overlord of this thread, I have to be the one to disagree here. The 10 bucks I've spent on my original discs have paid themselves over and over again. So that's at minimum, what this game is worth to me. Gotta say you win there and you're totally right on the 'copmlaining' bit! I'm the one who whines after all! ... I also still think I have my original disks tempted to see if I can fin dthem
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Feb 20, 2023 00:53
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I bought the game around when it was released, but it seems like the better investment was the  on seeing Libluini suffer through this monstrosity for seven years now. And counting!
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Feb 20, 2023 08:32
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Mr.Misfit posted:lol, have to admit, you got me with that one. But we've already got SEV for that. We don't have to wait for VI! And I'm someone who's LP'd Sword of the Stars 2. So it's not like MOO3 is unique in a Sequel that is Objectively Worse. Terrible 4x is the only kind of Space 4x there is! (edited because I forgot there are also terrible real time space 4xs)
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Feb 20, 2023 09:15
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Libluini posted:Bloated game maps imho, aren't even the fault of the devs, since this is the kind of poo poo video game players always demand from their space 4x (bigger maps) and then they get their bigger maps and have the gall to complain! Just look at this fucker for example: An entire thread of nothing but complaining! Incredible, just incredible. Eh, on this I'm going to both agree and disagree. - I still blame devs for bad design decisions, even when demanded by players. I definitely share that blame with the players as well, but I think devs have a responsibility to just say no if they don't think something is good for the game. - In terms of AI and UI, I give MOO3 actually a partial pass for that. And certainly nobody can say that a game you've enjoyed for this long wasn't worth it to you. But also, the quality of those items varies a lot between 4Xs I think. Some are much better than others. - What I don't give it a pass for is flat-out broken things like the economy, stuff like ground combat with tactical choices and then zero feedback to the player on the effectiveness of it (diplomacy fits here too), the total inability of the AI to ever actually invade, and so on. I think the bloated map would be far less of an issue if it wasn't possible to deadlock on a system with the limit on how many ships can be in a particular battle. Bloated micro and the like are definitely debatable issues, as some people hated those things in MOO2 and others liked them. The amount of repetitive micro in that game that players enjoyed doing boggles my mind, but I don't tell them they're wrong for liking it; still isn't a positive asset for the game in my opinion but it's more a stylistic preference kind of thing. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Feb 20, 2023 |
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Feb 20, 2023 17:45
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You know what? Play Ascendancy next.
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Feb 20, 2023 21:03
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NHO posted:You know what? Play Ascendancy next. YES!! DO THIS!! Holy crap it really has been 7 years.
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Feb 21, 2023 00:23
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NHO posted:You know what? Play Ascendancy next. Dawncloack posted:YES!! DO THIS!! Funny thing, recently I did a short test game, just to read the various different species flavor texts Ascendancy gives you. Ascendancy is a 4x that entered my LP-list fairly late, around place 7, and has since steadily beaten contenders out of the way. It's currently on place 3, mostly because I really want to play Ascendancy before my next mega-project: LPing all the Space Empires games. Yes, all of them. From 1-6.  The current games on place 1 and 2 by the way, are rather short and limited in scope, which is why they still survive up there. One of them I recently looked at on YouTube, because that was easier than firing up my CPC 464, and apparently you can play through that game in just under 2 hours total playtime. (Even if it's longer, there's only so and so many updates I can squeeze out of the world's first RTS. That one will be a short thread.) The other game is rather complex, but mercifully limited to shortish military campaigns (it has a sandbox mode, but it's like Imperium for the Atari ST, far more wargame-like than most space 4x, and the sandbox mode makes not much sense in-game. In my LP, I will skip that mode.) Also, I've decided to cut down the future "bonus rounds" of this LP. Each of the two bonus rounds will have exactly four posts: Introduction - Early Game - Mid Game - End Game. No sprawling spreadsheet epics anymore because at that point we'll basically be running the epilogue to this thread. But that's for the future! Right now I have to go to the hospital again this week, hopefully get my right eye patched up for good (4th attempt since '21, good lord  ) and when the surgery goes well, I can finally speed my running LPs up! (Because well, less eye strain with properly working eyes and all that*.)*My optometrician send me a 2-for-1 deal on new glasses just yesterday. I don't know what I find more funny: That's it actually really something I'll need when the surgery goes well, or that the coupon has a typo in it. 
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Feb 21, 2023 19:07
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Libluini posted:I really want to play Ascendancy before my next mega-project: LPing all the Space Empires games. Yes, all of them. From 1-6. Judging by this thread, you should easily be able to knock that out by around the year 2150.
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Feb 21, 2023 22:51
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You poor crazed soul. We have high hopes for you in the year 2250, when we bow ot our Silicoid overlords. Or overrocks
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Feb 22, 2023 00:40
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We should let him play a game that isn't going to explode his computer, like minecraft, robin hood, mount and blade, or something else that's really old.
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Feb 22, 2023 04:30
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Best of luck (is that impolite to say?) with your ongoing eye issues, Libluini! I know I mostly post in this thread to bitch about the game, but this really is a monumental LP and uh I'm kind of scared for you at the idea of LPing all of the Space Empires.
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Feb 22, 2023 10:48
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Don't worry, most people only know about the big games like SEV and SEIV (why did I think there was a sixth game???), turns out the early games are all incredibly basic. Hell, SEI doesn't even have AI, that one is barely worth a single update. SEI would only be worth more updates it if I can get a gun and some ammo in time to force someone to play against me, which would put me in jail afterwards, so it's not a viable tactic anyway. It's also probably a bit early at this point, because without my eyes getting better at least one of the next games is practically unplayable, as it consists of 90% text and 10% is in a style I like to call "1980's tactical fleet command center radar room"-aesthetic. I also finally want to finish Operation Eastside, but again, that too hinges on how well my surgery tomorrow goes. Today I did the bureaucratic warm-up thing at the hospital and so I'm now super-nervous. It's a routine thing, say the doctors. The doctors also make a blue X with a pen on my right ear because there were apparently complains and mix-ups with eye surgeries with the old system (a paper dot on your forehead). This of course has me a bit concerned. I guess if I never post again after tomorrow, they operated the wrong eye and I will be blind. Anyway, thanks for the well-wishes, people.
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Feb 22, 2023 11:41
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Libluini posted:I also finally want to finish Operation Eastside, but again, that too hinges on how well my surgery tomorrow goes. Today I did the bureaucratic warm-up thing at the hospital and so I'm now super-nervous. It's a routine thing, say the doctors. The doctors also make a blue X with a pen on my right ear because there were apparently complains and mix-ups with eye surgeries with the old system (a paper dot on your forehead). This of course has me a bit concerned. I think I'd worry, too, but good luck!
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Feb 22, 2023 12:45
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I believe that the game that follows MOO3s legacy the closest is Star Ruler. The first one was almost as ambitious as MOO3 and failed in similar ways. For example it is technically possible to move your empire into a swarm of ships mining asteroids in systems without planets. But the interface makes that practically impossible, and the AI is also to incompetent to do so. SR2 was much less ambitious, but ended up being actually good. Even though it still carries a lot of miner annoyances that came over unsolved from Moo3. For example the feedback gap between ship design and massive fleets requiring net-copying, or the inability of the AI do anything interesting, and the annoying amounts of micromanagement required for anything but the simplest empire setups.
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Feb 22, 2023 16:57
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Good luck with your surgery!
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Feb 23, 2023 06:14
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Viel Glück.
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Feb 25, 2023 01:59
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition  Chapter 140: Intermission – A Victory For Science GC 1005 – GC 1021 We’re back from health-related hiatus! This chapter will be a bit weird, since we technically win the game in this update. But thanks to my super power: Bad Planning, it’s a type of victory switched off in this cursed run. So we’ll be forced to soldier on towards the “real” victory condition. To recap, the current plan is to take Orion and declare mission accomplished. I’ll then play through (without you being forced to watch it) until the game is done and post a last epilogue on our favorite mineralic masterminds. The bonus rounds afterwards will be on a smaller map and with actual non-insane victory conditions, and of course there will be a lot of repetition you don’t really need anymore, it’s more about seeing the alternative economies in action. Which I decided can be done in 4 updates each! Introduction – Early Game – Mid Game – End Game. So yeah, while there’s a lot of playing to be done on my end, we’re on the final road here and the number of updates left is probably less than 20 in total. But before we celebrate, let’s see what kind of madness the AI empires will throw into our way.  It’s still turn 670, where we stopped last time. This time however, we can do something! We detect this Antharan fleet just hanging around nearby. Several hundred turns ago this would have been concerning.  Ages ago, a new star lane connected the Ex-Psilon system of Munic with the Tachidi-system Brachium. Now we can finally abuse this by putting a strong fleet into play. Coincidentally, this will block the New Orions’ fleet in Samenia from doing anything about our advance on Orion in this sector.  Another Almandian fleet moves into the Trax-system against the Klackons, to open a third line of attack on Orion. Not only am I doing so many fleets at once to make this go faster, it also minimzes the chance the AI can just stall us out by spamming thousands of ships into one of the systems we’re working through. Especially the Klackons are weak enough they could do this maybe once, and then the second front could just move on and mop up everything else. Keeping the Tachidi and their many fleets away from Orion is of course also important, so we’re cleaning out their nearby systems on the way.  The next two turns involve a lot of fighting. First result is Brachium I getting exterminatified while the fleet is waiting on ground troops to follow the advance.  Same thing in the Trax-system: A lot of bugs suddenly get charbroiled as the atmosphere of Trax II is set ablaze.  Next turn, our armies arrive to liberate Trax III, and we gain a foothold in the system.  The Tachidi are made form sterner stuff and even though our armies nuke the ground before landing, the Almandian troops barely made it out of their landing zones. Looking at the loss ratio on this battle made me wince. Either more troops or more bombs are needed to get this planet.  GC 1008: Our Orion-campaign progresses nicely. In the background, the Kingdom of Almandin is still researching Antharan ruins and automated colonizers are running around to take the planets we’re constantly bombing into ashes.  Suddenly, I remember to look what our Antaran Expeditions ™ are doing. I also suddenly realize that the chance of those poor bastards finding something is probably zero by now. Really wish I could just call them back. But what am I doing? That’s like wishing you could demobilize recruited armies, how silly of me. Ha. Ha. Ha.  Turn 673 sees the campaign gruel on. Our invasion of Tax I fails, as the Klackons suddenly remember to resist, while several more new armies push two regions further across the surface of Brachium II. A lot of bug resistance this turn.  But my patience with Master of Orion 3’s less amusing bullshit has long run out, and you know what this means for Trax I.  In turn 674, Trax is cleared of hostiles, and a reserve force is moving up to defend the system while the main fleet moves towards Zugamog. We finally managed to get Brachium II and a second reserve force is moving towards Yoth, so the first of our three main fleets can get moving again. The current map rotation makes it hard to see, but the first fleet in Yoth will move over Capage to Juza, the second fleet to Zugamog and the third fleet in Brachium to Woronock. Eventually, all three star lanes leading to Orion will be in our hands. And then, the final assault.  Zugamog has a ton of planets, so 2nd Fleet’s part of the campaign may end up taking longer than the other two, despite them still having multiple systems to go.  And then there is a giant surprise next turn!  In the combat phase between turns, we took Brachium IV from the Tachidi, and it turned out we not only rolled to get a random tech from them, but we also rolled the missing X-Tech. Not only is this insanely lucky, it means our three remaining expeditions are indeed a huge waste of time, as the Tachidi must have found this one ages ago. There is now exactly zero X-Techs hanging around to be found by Antaran expeditions, fancy that.  Turn 675 isn’t all roses, however: The Sakkra of the Farat Empire invaded Chara, and some extra task forces are needed to throw them out again. Also, constantly attacking forces from Toliman-A made me reconsider the overall strategic plan and now there is a strong fleet of ours working itself through the system, just to make sure that flank is secure. This turn has me going “Oh right, Zaniah!” as I realize that Zugamog too has a second hostile system flanking it. So, again bad planning on my side, but fine. Those out-of-the-way-systems will end up mostly burned, as I don’t really care enough for them to send more than token ground forces. If those fail, that’s it. No mercy.  We were only missing the second of the five X-Techs, and now we have all of them. Antaranerspäher/Antaran Scout is a tech that’s mostly a mix of space and spy stuff. Our Oppressometer allows one higher setting with 80% of the oppression costs, which is good, as we put it as high as our constitutional monarchy allows, so now our spy defense can in theory go one step beyond without our population going apeshit from the oppression. Of course, a bit late for that now. The tech also improves income from space ports by a whopping +20% and improves spy abilities by +1. So in conclusion, we get a lot more money in the future (since we have nearly 300 space ports) and our spies have an easier time slaughtering enemy spies. All around nice and useful! Though I had to laugh at this screen because I realized that we just achieved Science Victory, and if I had that victory condition switched on, we wouldn’t have been able to exploit our new toy, as the game would have immediately ended just after getting it.  Anyway, as it is not, the game continues. The New Orions actually try to break through our blockade at Brachium, but pay dearly for it.  The New Orions realize how bad they hosed up fast enough to save most of their fleet. That first task force closest to us however, gets demolished before they can jump out.  The end result of the latest round of fighting: The New Orions have fled from Brachium, we kicked the Klackons chitin in at Toliman-A, and the Sakkra in Chara are stopped, though annoyingly the game declares a stalemate after the Sakkra are down 2/3rds of their fleet.  Turn 677: I have to issue a correction: Apparently, not all of Brachium’s planets were yet in our hand, but the problem is solved after the Tachidi defeat our second invasion of the planet, because I also butter-fingered the orbital bombardment button. Funny, so instead of killing our own ground troops, some of them survive because the game resolves ground combat results in an oddly late way, as the UI goes from space combat to orbital bombardment to ground fighting, but even if you reduce a planet to ashes during the orbital phase, the game still simulates the ground combat and gives you a result. So in this case, despite the UI pretending the opposite happened, at first our ground troops fought and lost, then after the survivors are kicked back to our reserves, the bombardment results come in and everything on Brachium III dies. Still, I guess this is a better outcome than the other two times I accidentally bombarded my own troops, as in both those cases our troops “won”, only to be incinerated shortly after from their own fleet.  The next combat phase is really good to us: Only victories, not even stalemates! We prevent the New Orions again from breaking through in Brachium, an annoying Klackon-squadron is thrown out at Trax and a hastily assembled Klackon reserve fleet in Toliman-A gets exploded by the Almandian fleet.  GC 1017: Our recent successes angered the dread god Erenge, and now despite a huge boost to our spies, and constantly recruiting more spies, one of our leaders gets assassinated.  Erenge must be furious, as the exact same thing happens in GC 1020, two turns later.  Everything else continues to go well though.  This guy is now the only survivor in our council. This Eoladi gives good bonuses to ground troop experience gain and unrest reduction by military DEAs. Too bad he also gives us extra unrest. Ground unit experience gain bonus, huh? Nice enough, though if I get finally too annoyed with ground invasions and never use them again, this bonus will start to feel like a joke. It’s also nice that the military DEA-bonus is stronger than the unrest-gain, because on all planets with a military development area, this means a net gain in unrest reduction. All not heavily militarized planets suffer from this guy’s antics, however.  After some delays caused by Toliman-A also having too many planets for my taste, it’s now the fleet in Yoth that will smash into Zugamog.  The Klackons put up at least some resistence.  But then the mobile units nope out and leave their fighters, the local system defense and their ancient fortresses to die.  And then they die.  To speed things up, the 8th planet gets a roasting before I even attempt to send in the ground troops.  Turn 681 wants to tell us that the unrest caused by our last council member won’t be an issue anymore. Well, fine then. I guess we now have zero leaders in our council. And with this third assassination in a row, the update ends. Our first victory! Since everyone hates our guts, diplomatic victory won’t be happening any time soon, but we’re also closing in on Orion for our own fake victory, so we’re inching closer to the end anyway. Antaran Expedition Status Finished! Defeated Empires: Raas Psilons Imsaies Cynoids Meklar Trilarians Future Victims: Klackons Ithkul Nommo Sakkra Tachidi Humans Evon New Orions Eoladi (and others) Next: Orion II: In Free-Fall.
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Mar 19, 2023 16:58
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Congratulations, even if deactivated, it only took seven years to reach ONE victory condition. Amazing.
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Mar 19, 2023 17:50
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Hooray! Although I guess the super spy tech was too little, too late for the Almandin Kingdom's entire leadership. Oh well.
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Mar 19, 2023 21:42
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Yay! Finally, the game is (very, very slowly) coming to a sort of end! You have at least some bottleneck around the New Orion system and are ready to invade as soon as you have the webways secured! Congratulations on finally seeing through this insanity!
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Mar 19, 2023 22:00
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I have to say, I think the AIs are literally putting all their spies on the offensive against you for you to run out of leaders. Oh well, that's the Master of Orion AI in a nutshell. Kill the player, nothing else matters.
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Mar 19, 2023 22:32
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Is there even any way to know what enemies have Antaran X's other than stumbling on them? And can Antaran X's be stolen by spies?
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Mar 19, 2023 22:59
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Libluini posted:Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition The top message is: Our new agent Disloyal is ready for infiltration. DTurtle fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Mar 19, 2023 |
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Mar 19, 2023 23:03
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PurpleXVI posted:Is there even any way to know what enemies have Antaran X's other than stumbling on them? And can Antaran X's be stolen by spies? They can be stolen. One of our's was stolen by another Empire.
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Mar 21, 2023 02:11
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Be wary of warning the universe that you are about to finish this, it might just get really creative with you.
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Mar 21, 2023 03:22
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Little thread update: After having some eye surgery, I had to get some more eye surgery around Easter. I'm now slowly getting back into the swing of things, but the near future has some more eye surgery prepared for me, so I can't really say when I can stare at a screen for long enough to pump out more updates. Hopefully I get some good news from hospital-checkup in a couple days, but it doesn't look good. Also, my boss would like to preserve some of that eye strain for my actual work, since I just lost an entire month worth of time to my health problems. Again. Since I'm not getting paid for writing LPs, having to cut back on computer time at home of course means an even slower update rate. Next up, I'll try to at least finish my video LP, since I at least don't have to write a lot for that one.
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May 1, 2023 16:06
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Hey, take all the time you need! Glad you're keeping us updated. If you keep squinting, maybe you'll turn into Cyclops from X-Men! And get back to it whenever!
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May 1, 2023 23:02
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Yeah brother, you've already gone above and beyond for a crazy game. Recover fully, take care!
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May 3, 2023 07:49
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Thread Change Announcement Recently, I finally managed to squeeze in some time for another session of MO3, and watching one planet after another burning in the empty void got me thinking. While I still want to play my two "bonus rounds", it dawned on me that Ultima Orion: The Mod, is kind of exhausted after my Silicoid-run is finished. And all the differences between UO and Vanilla, or other mods of MO3, are all in the game balance vein. This, and other observations (like how Ultima Orion makes shields so strong, the player can eventually stop using missile ships in favor of carriers, and then missile ships are never seen again*) made me reconsider my approach. There aren't that many updates left now, and if it weren't for the massive research slow-down caused by our own empire's massive size, we'd have already finished up all 99 research levels of UO's expanded tree. Kind of terrifying, seeing our empire generating literally millions of research points per turn, and seeing your level progress creep up in tiny 3% increments. So my new plan will be to close this thread after final victory is achieved, and start a new thread, with a new mod! This way the bonus rounds make more sense, I think, since with playing another version of MO3 (this time in English, for easier reading of screenshots), this won't just be a 100% re-thread of stuff our Silicoids have already experienced. The mod I selected is slightly fresher as UO (abandoned 2006) and still includes some important changes, like giving the AI the ability to make better ship designs. (We have talked about this before, but to summarize: UO has vast improvements to the AI's ability to make ships, but since the mod is crammed full with new techs, some of which don't work, the AI also can improve itself into traps. The new mod is a lot less overwhelming for the AI.) The new mod, by the way, was abandoned in 2012. There are even fresher mods I could have taken, but the best one I couldn't make work with my GOG-version and at abusing my ancient laptop any further, and the others I felt were too closely to Vanilla. Welp, hopefully I can stay out of hospital for long enough to put this plan into motion!*For those coming in late, or who forgot this over the years, missiles in MO3 need ammunition to function, while carriers just magically spawn new fighters after a set timer. In vanilla, that's interesting to note, but with shields depleting fast and early, you can use overwhelming missile fire-power to kill entire fleets before they have time to react. Fighters of course can do the same, but unless your fighter tech is really backwards, battles tend to end too early for the ever-spawning fighters to become a serious issue. In contrast, in Ultima Orion we eventually ran into the fact that when you carefully plan out your missile-designs to have enough ammunition to keep up with the constantly re-spawning fighters of a carrier, the amount of ammo needed lowered their DPS far too much to stay competitive. Even worse, Vanilla-style missile ships with 2-3 salvos of overwhelming strength, would run out of ammunition halfway through the battle, while the times between salvos meant Ultima Orion's super-shields could just regen away all your damage. Not an issue with fighters, who can keep up the pressure until the end of time! The next update will make this even more pronounced, as our immortal fighter-swarms smash everything, as the mod's regen-shields make the effects of technology ever more disparate, as a lot of weapons in UO are power creeped to keep up with the stronger shields. If you hang back too much, you won't even be able to scratch someone's paint anymore, while your shields regen too slowly to keep up with enemy DPS and suddenly ships start blowing up like it's Vanilla. The end result is, instead of missiles+fighters, UO's endgame eventually only sees fighters and nothing else. Well, maybe some direct-fire ships to add extra punch and some targets for enemy missiles and fighters that are not your carriers, but that's it. Something I never noticed since I'm always favoring shields, anyway: Armor in UO is nice to have, but utterly outclassed by shields. In Vanilla, there are some weirdos who make all armor designs work, in UO that's just a very silly way to commit suicide.
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May 26, 2023 11:02
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When you said "Thread Change Announcement", I thought you were going to stop playing this game after the Silicoid run. Godspeed, you mad bastard.
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May 26, 2023 12:11
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I love that in trying to fix the balance of base MoO3, Ultima Orion just ended up making new and exciting imbalances instead.
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May 26, 2023 12:42
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You poor crazed man. Sort of close to finishing one mod of this game! ... Then going onto another!
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May 27, 2023 00:25
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Master of Orion III: ULTIMATE Edition Chapter 141: Orion II – First Landing GC 1021 – GC 1038 Last time, we “won” by collecting all the X-techs, but since science victory was disabled, we had to sit down from our excitement and continue. And continue, we will!  First, let’s start with a round-up of our Non-Orion fronts: Here we’re using an older fleet to slowly burn our way through the Tachidi. You can see it’s an older fleet because there are still missile ships with it. That’s the big circle with rectangles / the big crosshair symbol in the task force list.  Meanwhile, further down (or up, depending on perspective), the Nommo are still laying siege to our borders. Our revenge-fleet in Mirror is doing a reverse-siege. But with the Nommo having mobilized a total of nearly 15k ships in those two systems, things are stuck for a while. A Master of Orion 3 where everyone could actually leverage their thousands of ships all at once would certainly be an interesting experience. Since modern games always want to look nice, fat chance of that. Even MO3’s ancient real-time engine can barely deal with a couple hundred ships at once. A modern game with massive fleets like these would need to either reduce the fleets of nice looking ships down to smaller numbers, or seriously reduce the graphical quality down to not nice. Honestly, even in Vanilla, maximum task force sizes allow for up to 320 ships on the battlefield. That’s actually a lot. The only space 4x today where I can even imagine theoretically the possibility of putting hundreds of ships into a single battle would be Aurora, and I’m not sure even Aurora could deal with someone mobilizing 15000 ships. Especially not since Aurora is a Paradox-style real-time-with-pause game, MO3 at least has its artificial battle cap. If an enemy sends 8k ships at you in Aurora, I’d have to imagine the game engine simply imploding. Without some serious thought put into things, MO3 is currently the only and best game where massive fleet battles are even possible. A sobering thought.  Then there are a few battles. Zugamog is a Klackon-system and right next to Orion, while Brachium was an Ex-Tachidi system which now currently faces a storm of different New Orion fleets trying to get back to Orion, and failing. This just to give you context. This playing session saw less weird math and bad stalling by the auto-battle system, so I could (mostly) push things a lot faster forward, since I just needed to give some general orders, hit auto-resolve, deal with the terrible lag of multiple large battles running while you’re trying to give orders to the rest, and then let the game do its thing while watching YouTube on another screen. Very relaxing!  At this point, I have sworn a Blood Oath to only use ground troops to take Orion, no matter what. Another reason why I suddenly got more things down. A single turn per planet goes a lot faster than the headache of a multiple-turn invasion while juggling multiple squadrons of transports to keep reinforcements going. The people on the planets I’m genociding probably wouldn’t appreciate my reasoning, though.  GC 1023: Two more planets down, but nothing else of import happens.  OK, there is still some bad math left: 25 ships survive our onslaught in Zugamog, but we still win. But how??? It took me awhile to realize this, but it’s caused by too old ships dying too fast for the game to process, so for one part of the game the 25 ships are still alive when the other part ends the battle because all opposition is destroyed. A win is a win though, and those ships are phantom ships, they don’t actually exist anymore.  Zugamog IV was the victim for this turn. The Orion front progresses.  Turn 683 sees a sudden wave of colony ships reaching our last round of victims. Now to add insult to injury, a lot of planets lost to our enemies now join our empire instead.  The same turn, I realize the Kingdom of Almandin has had enough progress here in the core region of the Orion Sector that I can just move this fleet here into a new system, while a smaller force which was stuck a star lane behind moves up as a covering force. I know, this map is terribly confusing in screenshots. Since this map is even more massive (it’s a mod add-on, remember?) then a normal “huge” map, too small space, pseudo-3D layout and insufficient zoom turn everything here into a trifecta of fuckery. Though at least the player can rotate the map around, people looking at screenshots are just plain hosed. Another thing that won’t happen again when we switch to a smaller map.  As my new standard, every new planet we colonize has the player-facing side of its two available development plans switched with “playerdefined1”, the plan we made that prioritizes research heavily. Even with by now dozens of new colonies having joined up since I made this change, of course the colonies have to develop first, so don’t expect any visible effects before this run ends. It’s mostly for my own sanity during mop-up, when I’m crushing the last resistance off-screen. That last bit will be basically just me clicking on end turn and auto-resolve a lot with jacked-up research to brute force the last few levels. And yes, I know I could just look up the last techs in the text files, but where’s the fun in that?  GC 1026: Several planets die on our alternative fronts, but valiant Klackons managed to create a stale-mate in Zugamog. Another turn lost. Or, in a more positive view, 3% closer to the next research levels.  A short look into our reserves: For several turns, all designs except our ultra-heavy carriers have been marked as obsolete and finally, the AI has started building them. As soon as the counter hits 100 carriers, I can churn out a new standard-sized fleet (8 regular task forces, 2 slots reserved for troops, if you want to know). Approximately 256 ships in total.  The very next turn, we make some more progress in Zugamog.  Our butchery made us so infamous, another gas giant dweller general shows up. Her story is: After killing tons of Orions in the Terraforming Wars, pushing the races of the Orion Sector back, she realized that to really force the other races into a lasting peace, it would be necessary to heavily industrialize their homeworlds. She did just that, and since she was actually a pacifist, she immediately retired after the war ended and now is just some sort of industry advisor, helping empires optimize their industrial output. Kind of hilarious how this “pacifist” now has joined up with an empire committing multiple planet-kills per turn. She massively improves our industrial output, but at the same time the taxes generated by industry goes down a bit. As the bonus massively outscales the penalty, we don’t need to care. As soon as she gets assassinated, everything boes back to normal, anyway.  Next combat phase gets us four juicy targets all at once. Those poor, poor bastards living down there.  Imagine this happening, but four times.  GC 1029 shows us the results.  And then we do it all over again to three more planets! Barely visible at the lower border: Our doomed expeditions lost another ship. How sad.  Turn 687 sees a new breakthrough in Mathematics, as we reach level 77.Three new techs begin prototyping. Antimatter Beam Cannon Miniaturization I: What it says. I love the little blurb we get, though: “Losses: 9 scientists” Improved Metagrav-Vortex: This new, improved Metagrav allows for ships to travel so loving fast, travel to another galaxy becomes possible. In Perry Rhodan, that is. Here it just means “ship goes slightly faster”. Still good for us! Molecular Transformer: I think I translated this slightly off? Oh, nevermind. It just means that now we can change molecular structure of materials as needed, leading to our industry running far more efficiently then before. After this, our industry consumes 20% less minerals, a huge boost! Something that’s not really pronounced at the beginning of the game, but now becomes slowly visible: All six categories scale differently, with Economy/Biology/Sociology needing much less research then the other three -as you can see, with only 8% of our RP allocated, those three categories still keep up with our main research categories. Now that’s something you’ll learn fast, even when playing Vanilla. Next up, you’ll learn that Physics scales faster then Mathematics and Energy, which is why it’s lagging behind here despite hogging most of our RP. But now, deep in end-game, Mathematics has started to lag behind the average, too. I found it interesting that Energy/Mathematics seem at first to grow their RP-need at the same rate, until the numbers become insanely high, at which point you start to see this diversion showing up. I’d like to see an explanation as to why the devs thought this tiny difference between Math/Energy was necessary, since you only really start to notice it long after it ceased to matter. On the other hand, I think it’s a neat little detail that all six categories of research have slightly different scaling, even though most players probably won’t even notice more than the most obvious deviations!  More about our research: A lot of our research categories become emptier and emptier, now that we’re closing in on the last techs in our tree. Imagine going through those empty levels at a speed of currently 3-4% per turn. That’s a lot of turns.  Approximately 150-200 turns from now, we can get the Antiproton Fighter Cannons, the ultimate in fighter weapons. So ultimate, in fact, that it still has its Vanilla-description! Level 83 is understandable for an ultimate weapon tech, but at some point I’ll have to seriously re-shuffle our RP-allocation. Our current speed is simply too small for sanity.  GC 1032: Finally, we have 100+ carriers! Now I can speed things up with another major fleet.  ~ 10 minutes later ~ Finished! Eight new task forces ready for action. I decided to mobilize this new fleet a bit further out from the clusterfuck of overlapping star lanes surrounding Orion. Our FTL-drives are fast enough that this is still only 3 turns from here to Orion.  Turn 689: I’m doing a weird re-shuffle with three task forces (the “MD” is for “Mobile Defense”) going to Zugamog so the main fleet here can leave to clean out the last Klackon defense. Our Orion strike force is still 2 turns out at this point.  GC 1035: More genocide! Also, that was the last planet in Zugamog. System cleared.  Off-screen, I’ve been spending some extra time forming up new BattleMech-regiments to take the New Orion’s planets. Every turn, two new armies are formed up and send out. And I will keep this up until every last planet in the Orion-system is taken. Those will be probably the last ground armies you’ll see me mobilizing. After that it’s mostly genocide 100% of the time. Also it’s “Battleoids” only, as I’m not sure the game appreciates my earlier attempts at combined arms together with tanks. This time, we’re going in with our strongest possible forces.  OK, our Orion-fleet arrives next turn, our new stopping force sits in Zugamog to catch counter-attacks and the fleet that was here is now penetrating deeper into Klackon-space. What do you mean, “this map is too confusing”?  Combat phase! We’ve finally reached Orion itself! Time to show the Antarans why it was a bad idea to throw us out of the Orion Senate. There are some interesting observations here: First, 9 orbitals is the lowest amount here. Every other planet has enough moons to approach task force sized numbers of orbitals. Second, because the “New Orions” are scripted to never expand, they never even exploited that one tiny planet hanging in between the major planets. Third, despite me being super-careful here, it shouldn’t matter: The Antarans start at tech level 40 (or 20 in Vanilla) and the way research scales with levels, their tremendous strength has now reversed into tremendous weakness: It’s hard getting anywhere if four planets is all you have, forever. Also the AI never, ever scraps and replaces orbitals, so those orbital fortifications are not only old, at this point they’re basically like we’re Patton and now we’re running tanks through ancient Sumeria  The battle begins. A massed swarm of fighters launches towards the enemy.  The Antaran “New Orions” home defense would be terrifying, about 300 turns ago. Now this is just silly.  As soon as my fighter clouds expand into single fighters and attack, my frame rate goes down harder than those poor Antaran ships. As this does something funky with my zoom, my attempt to make some close-up screenshots of the Antaran ships fails. Our fleet hilariously managed to get some long-range shots in. With end-game speeds and ranges, all that empty space between our fleets meant less than nothing.  A split second before everything dies, I manage to make a snapshot of the defending orbitals. Evey orbital has similar DPS as the entire defense fleet we just dumpstered. But since orbitals can’t be grouped into task forces, even big fortresses like these ones are hosed if an enemy actually reaches out to touch them.  After that, our fighters simply move from moon to moon, methodically blowing up all 9 orbitals. Some enemy fighter mop-up later, and it’s over.  But whoops, looks like I was too cautious this time! Our ground troops are still one turn off, so I very carefully leave this screen after manually confirming NO BOMBARDMENT. I expected some more trouble, honestly. At this point, having my ground troops arrive one turn late has become one of my Standard Procedures to prevent my armies getting blown up in space. Ah, it doesn’t matter, it’s just +3% to our research.  Turn 691: We killed a spy of the New Orions. Seems like they’re mad about something? Ah yes, according to the arcane rules of the spy system, since we never directly bordered Orion, they weren’t allowed to send spies, that has now changed. As a reminder, AI-empires can break the spy rules if they ever were in contact with you before, even if that contact is lost later, but apparently not if they only had contact through the game’s arcane star lane mapping system, not the Orion Senate alone. (The Humans and Evon can send spies to us for example, since we had contact with them through both star lanes and Senate before, but the New Orions had contact to us only through the Senate and nothing else. Apparently that doesn’t count for spy calculations.)  Next combat phase: The game thought it was funny to put our transports out in front, so I’m rushing them to the side, just in case.  Combined arms in space: Our fighters blow up one part of the newly mobilized enemy fleet, giant murder beams from our ships take out the rest.  At last I manage to zoom in in time to get a screenshot of the Antaran ships, but sadly, the task force graphics are of course, totally messed up at the scale the mod uses. 32 ships may be what the modders thought the game engine can still safely handle, but it sure as poo poo ain’t looking pretty. Personally, 24 would have been plenty. In our “bonus rounds”, we’ll probably see a lot more ships up close, since that other mod doesn’t change the standard maximum size of 16. (Or does it? gently caress, now I have to go back and test the task force rules.)  I tried waiting until some ships are exploded, so the details become more visible, but instead they all blow up instantly. Oh well, victory.  So NOW we can land troops!  High-intensity, nukes allowed, high collateral damage. Our mechs will attack with absolute brutality. All forces concentrated in one spot.  It works somewhat. Our losses are huge, but so are the enemy’s: Nearly all of the defenders are dead, while our army “only” took about 50% losses. We’re on the ground, barely. Good lord, battles like this one are why I tend to send multiple forces across multiple turns. Let’s just hope the Antarans aren’t mobilizing too much ships next turn to block us, because without any reinforcements this could still get ugly if the New Orions mobilize any additional ground troops.  GC 1038: We made landfall on Orion I. The war continues. Antaran Expedition Status Finished! Defeated Empires: Raas Psilons Imsaies Cynoids Meklar Trilarians Future Victims: Klackons Ithkul Nommo Sakkra Tachidi Humans Evon New Orions Eoladi (and others) Next: Orion III: Antaran’s End. Libluini fucked around with this message at 19:16 on May 27, 2023 |
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May 27, 2023 19:08
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| # ? May 26, 2024 06:56 |
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Seven years and we're finally on Orion itself.
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May 27, 2023 19:43
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