Does anyone know anything about this new Master of Orion game?

[Breakdown]

When it comes right down to it, X-Com: UFO Defense and Master of Orion II are basically the gold standards in both their franchises and genres. Master of Orion 2 is really the only 4X game that I've truly enjoyed as much as it, it's also always had a place on my hard drive, on every computer capable of running it that I've owned since the game came out. MOO2 is nearly flawless in 4X execution, it's extremely well balanced, the AI is fairly smart, and you can turn off parts of the game you hate.

All said it looks like the new Master of Orion changed the formula too much to be as good as 2 was... Which is a shame.

I just finished Master of Orion 2 for the first time, I wouldn't say it's perfect. Every other time I've tried to win the game I got bogged down in battles with dozens if not hundreds of mediocre alien ships that seem to take at least half an hour a turn, until I eventually gave up.

You can always turn off tactical combat... You're aware of that right? Just like how you can turn off random events to avoid those nasty hyperspace fluxes, or you can make your race repulsive to not deal with diplomacy.

You can turn the combat off at the beginning of a game, but I don't think you can once a game is underway. I might be wrong though.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

When it comes right down to it, X-Com: UFO Defense and Master of Orion II are basically the gold standards in both their franchises and genres. Master of Orion 2 is really the only 4X game that I've truly enjoyed as much as it, it's also always had a place on my hard drive, on every computer capable of running it that I've owned since the game came out. MOO2 is nearly flawless in 4X execution, it's extremely well balanced, the AI is fairly smart, and you can turn off parts of the game you hate.

All said it looks like the new Master of Orion changed the formula too much to be as good as 2 was... Which is a shame.

I just finished Master of Orion 2 for the first time, I wouldn't say it's perfect. Every other time I've tried to win the game I got bogged down in battles with dozens if not hundreds of mediocre alien ships that seem to take at least half an hour a turn, until I eventually gave up.

You can always turn off tactical combat... You're aware of that right? Just like how you can turn off random events to avoid those nasty hyperspace fluxes, or you can make your race repulsive to not deal with diplomacy.

You can turn the combat off at the beginning of a game, but I don't think you can once a game is underway. I might be wrong though.

Yeah you can only switch Tactical Combat off while setting up a new game, same with Random Events and Antaran Attacks. Where as things that change other dynamics, such as diplomacy, can only be changed when you're making a custom race, or when you get evolutionary mutation researched.

 

[Freyr]

I am not disputing MOO2's excellence. I'm just saying it has little bearing on this game. Yes, MOO2 is still in many ways a benchmark. Yes, new 4X games will be measured by it. And yes, the fact that the new MOO bears that name means there's definitely an even greater expectation placed upon that game to live up to the name it's taken upon itself. But that doesn't mean it will (or will not) do so successfuly, simply based on the name.

Nope, doesn't mean they will do sucessfully at all. On the other hand it's inevitable that it is going to be directly compared given that MOO2 is as you say pretty much the benchmark everybody else aspires to, and this is not only a 4X game but one sharing the Master of Orion name.

They pretty much deliberately invited comparisons with in the demo videos with the whole 2D MOO2 battle transforming to a 3D model and escaping into 3D space thing.

I just finished Master of Orion 2 for the first time, I wouldn't say it's perfect. Every other time I've tried to win the game I got bogged down in battles with dozens if not hundreds of mediocre alien ships that seem to take at least half an hour a turn, until I eventually gave up.

Ah. Just hit the auto button and the AI will zip through it at pretty high speed and generally do the hard work for you.

Battles only tend to take a lifetime if one side or the other has an incredibly big defensive advantage over the other in shields/armour, but without having put much research effort into the offense side of things. This is easily avoided though, if you go down the shields route then you can pick up the Guass cannon without dropping out of the shields route, which is arguably one of the best weapons in the game from a space/damage perspective when on Heavy mount & auto fire.

A single Battleship so armed can kill several ships in a turn. A Titan like this can casually obliteriate a couple of dozen enemy ships in a single battle turn.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

I just finished Master of Orion 2 for the first time, I wouldn't say it's perfect. Every other time I've tried to win the game I got bogged down in battles with dozens if not hundreds of mediocre alien ships that seem to take at least half an hour a turn, until I eventually gave up.

Ah. Just hit the auto button and the AI will zip through it at pretty high speed and generally do the hard work for you.

Battles only tend to take a lifetime if one side or the other has an incredibly big defensive advantage over the other in shields/armour, but without having put much research effort into the offense side of things. This is easily avoided though, if you go down the shields route then you can pick up the Guass cannon without dropping out of the shields route, which is arguably one of the best weapons in the game from a space/damage perspective when on Heavy mount & auto fire.

A single Battleship so armed can kill several ships in a turn. A Titan like this can casually obliteriate a couple of dozen enemy ships in a single battle turn.

I've always found that Gyro Destabilizers are probably the best weapons for the time you get them, they're absolutely devastating and ignore both armor and shields. That means they damage structure directly, so a very small batch of ships can smash larger and more advanced forces. If you have a path to Orion, you can easily remove the guardian very early in the game and get the Orion bonuses, at which point dominating the galaxy becomes child's play. Really the Guardian will fall to less than a dozen battleships with augmented engines and as many Gyro Destabilizers as you can cram on. The beauty of MOO 2's tactical combat, there a lot of really broken combinations most people aren't aware of.

 

[Longview]

I'm just gonna stick with MOO2

 

[Breakdown]

I've always found that Gyro Destabilizers are probably the best weapons for the time you get them, they're absolutely devastating and ignore both armor and shields. That means they damage structure directly, so a very small batch of ships can smash larger and more advanced forces. If you have a path to Orion, you can easily remove the guardian very early in the game and get the Orion bonuses, at which point dominating the galaxy becomes child's play. Really the Guardian will fall to less than a dozen battleships with augmented engines and as many Gyro Destabilizers as you can cram on. The beauty of MOO 2's tactical combat, there a lot of really broken combinations most people aren't aware of.

The broken combination I exploited to win was Bulrathi cruisers fitted out with augmented engines, troop pods and tractor beams. They raced forwards in the first turn and boarded enemy ships before they could fire back.

 

[Freyr]

I've always found that Gyro Destabilizers are probably the best weapons for the time you get them, they're absolutely devastating and ignore both armor and shields. That means they damage structure directly, so a very small batch of ships can smash larger and more advanced forces. If you have a path to Orion, you can easily remove the guardian very early in the game and get the Orion bonuses, at which point dominating the galaxy becomes child's play. Really the Guardian will fall to less than a dozen battleships with augmented engines and as many Gyro Destabilizers as you can cram on. The beauty of MOO 2's tactical combat, there a lot of really broken combinations most people aren't aware of.

I wouldn't say they are really "broken", just that they all have their limitations. My favoured Gauss gannon loadout only deals 27 x3 damage for instance, so if you get a planet with both a planetry Flux Shield and a Barrier shield which blocks 30 points of damage then you simply can't penetrate the shields.

Your massed gyro destabiliser loadout for instance can't deal with an equal number of battleships with decent weapons, and a friend used to be in the habit of just mass loading assualt shuttles on everything and just capturing everyting sent against him. Which works fine, right up until the game retaliated by throwing a dragon at him, which he couldn't capture.

I have decided to go down the construction route first before just for a difference, and ended up with a Doom Star armed with nuclear missiles (only x2), which was roundly mocked by a friend when he saw it as being utterly absurd. (to be fair, he DID have a point) He continued mocking right up until he saw it in combat and realised that my two nuclear missile salvos delivered a total of like 1200 MIRV'ed nukes, which even at a puny 8 points of damage (x4 for mirv) meant I was dishing out more damage than 20 Stellar Convertor shots (ie, a death star superlaser than can cleave planets apart, for those of us who haven't played MOO2 to death). This worked fine, up until the AI started deploying class V shields, which blocked more damage per hit than the nukes were causing, and they became totally ineffective.

The replay value is pretty much limitless, because you can play the game so many ways even excepting ship design. You can go for a win with sheer industry and build swarms of little ships, or research with a handful of the most advanced ships in the galaxy (or a mix of both). Or you could play it diplomatically by getting the tech from other races, or espionage through stealing it. Or you could just build leigons of spies and sabotage the opposition to death without worrying about ships.

 

[minkus_draconus]

Master of Orion II has for a long time been THE point of comparison for it's genre because it got pretty much everything perfectly right, and even after all these years (she's actually 20, not just ten) it's still more fun to play than many if not most games that have came since.

I bounce between MOO2 and Ascendancy. Both are great and there is just something about them that keeps me playing them.

EDIT: Apparently Ascendancy is available on IOS and game play is not compromised (according to devs). Wish I had an updated PC or an android version to play...
At least me CD-ROM still works.