Master of Orion 2 pet peeves and annoyances in general

For me it includes all ^^^^ this plus
The ratio of command points to hull size which guaranteed Titans only
The lack of a mechanic to constrain ship production in the late game

And this one which is more abstract, the game was choppy, not in an IT sense but rather an enjoyment sense. there were spaces of boredom throughout the game. Some of what Vivisector9999 refers to would have helped there but I can't help but feel that even the existing game could have been paced better.

Oh, and I'm sure (and hope) Ivan K will have more to say on it but I thought the AI was mediocre in how it handled some tasks, the AI factions stood no chance without the buffs they received on harder difficulties.

Edit
How could I forget? the way terraforming was handled, it was so exciting to have all terran and Gaia worlds with maxed pop...NOT!

 

I think this is the main one.

 

You don't have to say it twice . AI had it's shortcomings, I guess it's inevitable unless serious effort gets invested in developing it. Ray Fowler, guy behind Remnants of Precursors (former JavaMoo) wrote a blog post (link) more which applies to MoO 2 AI. Point #1 is the most troubling one and I thinks it's the reason why AI was so catastrophically bad at designing ships. The game had two combat modes: strategic and tactical. Most players are familiar with tactical and sane person would assume that "strategic" is the same as tactical where computer playes both sides. Nope, it follows completely different rules, it's mostly dice roll driven (like ground combat) and ship are automatically designed following specific rules. Each ship size has fixed number of beams, missiles, other weapons and special equipment of best available type, regardless of item size and space limitation. To me it appears AI follows these rules in tactical mode and therefore builds predictably bad ships. Thankfully AI doesn't follow those rules to the letter, it tries to comply with space limitations and fills empty space with whatever it can if certain equipment type is not available. This makes for an odd situations where uncreative Klackons have better ship designs then Psilons on the same tech level.

The other rule AI mistakenly follows in tactical mode is no miniaturization. In strategic miniaturization doesn't exist and there is no need to research hyper advanced tech levels. So, once AI researches all regular technologies it diverts all scientists to industry. That's when ridiculously large fleets start to show up, every AI colony is building a starship and there is enough production for taxation to cover command point overhead.

Diplomacy was very bland overall. Early on it's impressive, big emperor holograms in a mysterious hall, trying to get good enough relations to establish treaties and occasionally trading technologies. And that's where problems begin, AI would offer you a limited set of technologies it was willing to trade but could ask for any of your techs in return. It would ask for absolutely most valuable item and you could either agree or disagree, there was no way of giving them second best item or limiting which techs are you willing to trade. Demands were a roulette, you never knew if AI is going to comply or declare holy war on you for daring to click "demand" button. Alliances were something that humans learned to actively avoid, AI would get in war with 3rd party, pull you in, make you break trade treaties with them, few turns later make peace and leave you in quarrel with an empire you didn't want pick on (yet).

There are probably more I'll remember tommorrow but here is a technical one: play order matters, even outside of combat. In one game I was allied with Trilarians (we had mutal enemy before alliance) and we were at war with Sakkra. Trilarians were down to two star systems and Sakkra was going for their homeworld. I've parked my fleet at Trilar but it didn't matter because my turn (within same turn number/stardate) comes after Sakkras. They were able to choose who to fight, choose to attack Trilarians and I had to stand by and watch them glass a planet. Play order also unfairly resolves other non-combat conflicts like who gets to colonize a planet if 2 races have bring a colony ships and don't fight or who claims first visit reward (pirate cache, artifact technology, rescue leader).

 

For me, my pet peeves are:

• Only 1 item can be produced in a turn (in Moo1 you could build many in a turn).
• Having to choose 1 of the 3 technologies (that just made no sense).
• Only 1 missile base, 1 star base etc. per planet, this just made no sense (Moo1 you could build as many as you wanted).
• Planetary defenses were too weak.
• Who goes first in combat has too much of an advantage.
• You couldn't group select multiple ships in combat to give them all the same order.
• Too much civ city for the planets. In Civilization it made some sense to be restricted to only 1 of each building per city, but it doesn't make any sense for a planet. Why would a planet be restricted to 1 barracks, 1 factory etc...
• Too much planetary micromanagement late game.
• Populations grew too fast, they must have been breeding like rabbits.

 

Oh that reminds me of more:

• Planetary defenses would pick wrong weapon types. They would pick the highest tech level which takes a lot of space (less weapon mounts) and doesn't have unlocked modifications. It's especially bad when ground batteries pick ion cannon vs Antarans. Oh and I'd rather have mauler device instead death ray.
• Technology distribution made battlestation unavailable (robo-miner is infinitly more valuable)
• Computer upgrades are overshadowed by essential research boosting buildings.
  
• Espionage was a roulette much like demands in diplomacy.
• No real intelligence (ship positions, designs, colony defense information) could be gained through espionage.
• Sensor range got too short later on. Compared to ship movement speed it drop from 3-5 turns of advance warning to 1, maybe 2.
• Ocean planets were rare, no terraforming could create them and they were a cool concept .
• Planet construction was too powerful, once it starts rolling it would triple the empire's population capacity and make galaxy a very bland place where every planet is ether large or huge gaia.
• I wish there was a simple workforce distribution method. I'd often put all scientists to industry and remove them one by one until I got to the point where construction ETA would change. It would get especially tedious after researching new building you want to build on 20+ colonies.

 

My main gripes were really in combat. Whoever fires first usually ends up winning. Also the fleet battles got so big, it was hard to manage. (I LOVED the plasma cannons though...wow!)
Maybe a little bit of the same build queues on every planet, and the terraforming, but these appear to be fixed in PSS, so that is good.

On a humorous note... Haha, given the other replies in this thread, MoO2 sounds like the worst game ever...I wonder what we'd see for MoO3!

 

Eh, I'd rather not, I saw enough of it (both 3 and CtS) on MoO:CtS official forum. Here is something different: good things in MoO 3. It was juggling so big numbers that it was possible to overflow 32-bit integer (2,147,483,647) with income, for a reference in MoO 2 it was possible to overflow 16-bit integer (32,767) with research points and get back to positive but you couldn't overflow it multiple times. This feat is only surpassed by idle and incremental games which can break double precision float (309 digit number). Also there is decent amount of nerd porn (safe for work example) which showcases how interesting the game could have been.

 

I'll have to check out that thread (I've seen the DEA page before). I am probably one of the few that actually liked MoO3. I haven't played MoO:CtS yet. Doesn't like it offers me much but maybe I'm wrong.

Anyways, to keep this on topic still. I want to expand on the terraforming and what I didn't like.

I didn't like how easy it was to make all the planets Gaias. It also made the view just kinda boring, since all of the planets looked the same. Yeah, it is cool at first, and it gives a large boost to your empire, but in the long run, it homogenized the game too much IMHO. So far, based on what I've experienced and seen so far in PSS, this will not be a problem, so thank you very much!

Oh, and leaders. I never understood why I could only hire 4 leaders? Probably a game play/balance thing with managing them and whatnot.

 

Ugh, that was such a massively depressing thread, by far the largest and most passionately debated topic on the entire forum and not a single dev or mod ever said a word except to finally lock it. It really highlighted WG's total total lack of concern for anything except churning out a dumbed-down, casual money spinner with the MOO label slapped on to milk some extra nostalgia sales. Very sad.

You're not wrong, while nowhere near as bad as the trainwreck that was MOO 3, MOO-Cts was basically a very casual, simplistic version of MOO, "MOO for dummies" is how many have accurately described to it. A really soul-crushing disappointment for such a long awaited sequel, if only Firaxis had successfully bid for the IP rather than Wargaming.........

But back on topic, my most notable annoyances with MOO 2 would be....
- Limited ship design slots, made no sense and the "game choice" added is very artificial, irritating and metagamey.
- Galaxy too small: Too big is definitely bad for gameplay but a little bigger would have been nice.
- Combat initiative: MOO2's implementation failed to stop one side from always shooting first. A bit of tweaking could have fixed it so that even small ships with much lower tech still moved and fired first. Combat initiative could work, but in MOO 2 it was not implemented well at all.
- No deep space intercepts: Impossible in MOO 2, but very possible (and useful) in other free-movement games like SOTS2 and Distant Worlds.
- No Minor races: I dont think they should be "make or break" like in BOTF but having them supply a modest boost or be a modest threat would be nice.
- No pre-FTL races: I love this concept in Stellaris. Having these guys to help or bully - as you see fit - would have been a great addition.
- No Fallen empires: Another great concept from Stellaris. Can really help spice up the end game which in MOO2 was quite lacking.
- Ultra simplistic ground combat: Nobody wants this too complex, but being able to do at least something strategic to affect the outcome would be nice.
- Design: Ship design was great in MOO 2 but it would have been nice to be able to design Stations, Fighters, Ground emplacements, even Ground forces. Look to the Space Empires series (4 and 5) for how awesome freedom of design for almost everything can be.
- Diplomacy: Actually not too bad in MOO 2 but having it even more detailed, nuanced and powerful would be great. It should be possible to be a diplomatic power in the galaxy, NOT just a military one.
- MODABILITY: Cant stress this one enough, MOO 2 simply wasn't moddable enough, the more easily moddable the better. As a game designer you cant possibly please all of the people all of the time but modding goes a long way towards fixing that, which translates directly into sales.

 

To be honest existing events were not that exciting. Getting time anomaly early on at system which constitutes 50% of you GDP is a hard kick in the sensitive area. Hyperspace flux was fun killer too. Both events would maybe be OK if their duration was short, say no longer then 5 turns. Losing ultra rich classification was outright bad design, from the start there are few rich and even fewer ultra rich planets in the galaxy, some of them hopelessly useless (toxic climate or small planet size) and then the game removes a good one because somebody dared to colonize it.

Scarcity of planet specials was really a missed opportunity. In most games I'd see no more then 1 gold or gem planet before drawing definitive borders with my neighbors. Natives and artifacts are decently uncommon but many times it feels they like those are only specials a planet can have. Like AI, map generator was not properly fleshed out.

Yeah but anybody get fooled, it was still a great game 10/10.

 

Agreed, nobody did the whole "living galaxy" thing better than Distant Worlds. I think it had a lot to do with the brilliantly implemented private sector and how well it worked in giving the player something for their navy to protect.

 

A quote from another thread which reminded me of how poorly trade treaties scaled in MoO 2. Or rather didn't scale at all, you'd be limited to 0.5 BC per pop of smaller empire for the whole game. It was a lot in early game but as you get more buildings it starts to matter less and less until it becomes less then 10% of your empire net profit.

 

Generally speaking I agree with you. There were times however when the trade treaties scaled better. This meant you had one with a faction that eventually grew to be quite powerful, of course that would end soon after reaching this point. If the player didn't break it, the AI would, and it was during some of those times that I truly felt the impact of a trade treaty.

When this scenario occurred, I believe both the scaling of treaties and their in game impact were executed well, unfortunately this was not always the case.

 

MoO1 fan here. There are very few things MoO2 did better. These include extra side 'missions' such as fighting space monsters for planets and antaran lore. Better variety among the races. Custom race option. *Maybe* Colony leaders but they need to be tweaked to no longer be stationed AT a particular planet.

Some things the 2 games were equally bad at. Namely: spying, diplomacy, lack of early ground combat options. Poor galaxy generation options.

Now on to the things MoO2 was worse at....

Micro hell.

Sliders > population assignment.

Late game combat absolutely terrible.

Freighters are just unnecessary and would be better off as costs.

"Constructing" combat troops added to micro headaches that MoO1 gracefully handled as population.

Build queues. MoO1 could be adding population, building a ship, building a missile base, and increasing production (ie building automated factories). Queues were a step BACK not forward.

Predictable (and therefore optimal) research choices compared to the far superior method of randomized ladders.

MoO1 defense through missile bases was potentially much more formidable but also easier to prepare against (because it was just missiles). This is a superior system to MoO2's "variety" of defenses that ultimately melted.

Micro managing planets.

Only 1 research topic at a time compared to MoO1's much more elegant allocation system.

Ship leaders are a joke and only emphasize how poorly MoO2 combat scaled once you were building huges.

Have I mentioned planet micro?

Building spies which added to micro headaches compared to %BC allocation of MoO1.

Multiple planets per system gets praised but they only hurt tactics/strategy and would've been much better off as separate planets to defend.

Any combat with more than ~10 ships was just painful. Please take notes from MoO1 stacks or continue to reward larger and larger ships in smaller numbers.

Refit sounds nice in theory but it wasn't worth the mouse clicks. Take notes from MoO1 scapping into BC. I would even be in favor of a separate BC account that scrapped ships feed into and new ships can be built at 2-3x the rate when using that source. If you want to build that new ship quickly? Better find some existing ones to trash.

Boarding parties are just ridiculous. Unnecessary. Maybe have a small % chance that destroyed ships are recovered.

Tedious planet micro.

Terraforming as adding +max pop is fine by me. Repeat building it multiple times? Ugh. MoO1 eco sllider ftw.

Planet micro that makes me want to uninstall the game?

 

I'd say my biggest is that once you know the optimal ship builds, then the AI is basically won.

It's been a while since I've payed MOO2, but I remember some mods tended to fix some of these issues.