Designing Starbases

[Void Stalker]

I just found these forums!

I would love to be able to play Moo2 and have a planet with custom built star bases!

Of course, I wouldn't want to stop there, but would want to be able to have as many SB as the game could be made to handle (a home-world with such limited defenses is just, well, disappointing to say the least). I would also want to have as many FG, MB, and GB on a planet as I want, as well as be able to customize them too.

[Gorean]

The planets would be impregnable... Even without custom starbases, multiple starbases, and multiple other defenses, would quickly change the game dynamic so that fleets would need to be ridiculous in size, and people would play more on the defensive than anything else. This would probably give research races a ridiculous advantage, too.

[Void Stalker]

The planets would be impregnable... Even without custom star-bases, multiple star-bases, and multiple other defenses, would quickly change the game dynamic so that fleets would need to be ridiculous in size, and people would play more on the defensive than anything else. This would probably give research races a ridiculous advantage, too.

I guess I should first state that I am a single player 100% kinda guy, have never played a game of Moo2 online, and the only MP I ever did was a hot-seat game that did me in for MP forever.

I think that your right, planets would be far harder to conquer (which is what I'm after obviously), but what I am after would be the ability to build up planetary defenses so that no enemy could just build his 'juggernaut syndrome' fleet and easily roll up all other empires, one after another, rapidly and without fear of losses slowing him down. If a planetary defense could wipe out small to medium sized fleets, then there would be no quick grabbing of well defended planets, and you would have to try to pick off worlds that were not as well defended. Keep in mind that just because you could build vast amounts of defenders doesn't mean you could afford to build them everywhere. Basically, the more you build on one planet the less you can afford to build on all the others.

I realise that several other issues would have to be addressed as well, not the least of which would be the command point issues, the lack of limiting maint costs (In late games, I always end up with all the cash I could ever use, so there wouldn't currently be any reasonable limit on planetary defenses from a financial point of view), as well as needing the planet to be able to support the defensive works locally (In essence, new planets could not build large defenses because they would lack the support infrastructure, and building and maintaining this should be far to costly for a just settled world to be able to do).

In this manner, newly settled worlds would have to make do with much lesser defenses, would represent a drain on the imperial economy (rather than a bunch of pop 1 worlds with spaceports and set to build nothing but trade goods), and this would make the weaker worlds more attractive for a conqueror to try and take to gain access deeper into enemy territory, and allows a long settled, well developed world with correspondingly stronger defenses to continue under your control until such time as an enemy is willing to pay the cost for taking it.

In terms of gameplay, this would, IMHO, go a long way towards fixing some badly done elements of this incredible game, and would actually make for that long elusive 5th X (eXperience).

[Gorean]

I might just be speaking from a multiplayer perspective, but it should never be the case that someone is able to just roll over an empire in the way that you described. If a fleet is able to take out your defenses, and or, your defending ships, that easily, then you did something wrong already. Most likely that would mean that the enemy has managed to out tech you, and now has massively more powerful ships than you do, and is able to outclass your defenses, as well as annihilate your ships. If this happened, then even with stacked defense you would not be getting anywhere in that game.

Against a computer I can see how it might be likely that you would end up having exactly the above situation, however, but with the overpowering fleet being your own. In this case I suppose it might make the game more interesting to have to rip through a heavily defended computer empire, but I would get bored with it pretty fast. At a certain point with a computer it just becomes obvious that you are going to win even if it has a large, or well defended, empire. That is when I usually just quit.

That said, I suppose it could be interesting to have a veritable space trench war where the game came down to placement of defenses, but it wouldn't be the MoO that I know. It would be something like a variant on the game, as the mechanic would be completely different strategically.

I suppose that it might be workable, however, if there were a major change to maintenance, so that it were extremely costly to build more than the usual number. If this were the case, then maybe it could become a strategy for defense when an enemy is about to invade, but not change the game too much.

In any event, I do not believe that such a mod is possible.

[Void Stalker]

Your probably correct, it isn't likely it can be implemented, but it sure would be nice to try. My main concern isn't beating the computers, but keeping one from wiping out all the others. Happens in game after game.

Oh well, it is nice to finally be able to talk to fellow enthusiasts about this great game as I have wanted to for some time but didn't know about these boards till a couple days ago.

[Time]

Hi Void,
I've been skimming through your topic (unfortunately, no, I am not aware of anyway to modify those hex addresses you mentioned), but, I found myself thinking, there might be an easier answer to this than trying the hardest one first.
#1 When you find yourself or computer foes being defeated by a, " 'juggernaut syndrome' fleet and easily roll up all other empires, one after another, rapidly and without fear of losses slowing him down", type of situation, you might want to try an easier setting.
#2 When it is you that has the " 'juggernaut syndrome' fleet ", you should try a more difficult setting.

Don't forget you can altar the race picks of your AI races to make them more equal (like say, giving Unification to the Alkari).
Also, when you don't choose Repulsive, you can trade tech to those weaker opponents. Things like better missles, armor, shields upgrade instantly, to suprise and slow, that juggernaut fleet down.
(I did this in a LAN game once. Nothing funnier than seeing the look on my cousin's face, when, his 2 early battleships encountered heavy armor, reinforced hull, class 3 shields, and merc missiles on a starbase he scanned earlier and expected to be an easy kill. )

[Void Stalker]

That's evil

I've done that myself a few times, but it isn't all that it could be. I guess that I am alone in that I get bored of easy military conquest of the other races, and so have switched to trying to keep all the races alive the entire game. This isn't what the game designers had in mind, but it does prove to be a challenge (especially if your also trying to keep enough systems uncolonized to avoid the voting). It makes for some interesting challenges, but the gift (leader given) techs tend to make a mess, and there doesn't seem to be a way to stop the computers from trading techs with each other.

I often try to isolate one race on a single world (that I have learned to stay at war with---so the others will ally him rather than snuff him out once they can reach him), and then allow then to expand once the remaining races are penned up on the planets of at most two other systems on the far side of the map. This makes them progress along the tech tree alone (except for the tech I feed them---to force them into researching techs I don't have), and if I have isolated two races, I can do this twice (and get just about all the techs without selecting creativity.

I just love late game Antaran hunting with Star Gates in every one of my systems.

Basically, I guess I get bored with the game and make my own fun playing some silly objective game rather than the three provided in the code. I either loose because I don't expand at the maximum rate (both to cut down the number of AI worlds and have more of my own), or I do rush expansion, which ruins the whole sit back and tech up plan. So either I rush-out and take over (which is all to easy), or I try to remain small enough and yet powerful enough to control events without taking over too many worlds (and thus starting up the voting every 20 or so turns), and completely dominate the other races by pushing them into single planet systems and bombing them to one population so they cannot advance the tech tree until I can feed/guide their research paths...which also gets old fast.

Now, if there were a way to make it possible for each race to be able to 'fort up' to the point that taking all their worlds (or even just one) would be very hard to do, then I could have a nice long game without fear of the AI killing each other off so quickly.

[Gorean]

The computers will be unable to trade techs if you make them all repulsive.

I know exactly what you mean about playing objective games when the game gets old. I used to do that with the old console games when I was younger, and had expended all of the possibilities in the games that I had. I think that you might benefit from playing online with us. We are all generally very good, and some of us are even extremely good. You would find the experience against hardened Moo players on IRC to be much different than the experience of playing computers. It would open up a lot of possibilities. I felt as though I had never really played the game after I saw how people on IRC were playing it. I had to completely rethink everything.

Too, if you are looking for a long game, then playing against humans is the way to go. Some of the larger games can take a couple of evenings.

[Void Stalker]

I seem to recall trying that at one point, but came to the conclusion that they were either still able to trade techs, or were stealing techs from each other like crazy, as they didn't seem to be suffering from lack of techs you would expect the way I had them isolated.

It wouldn't be fair for me to play other people in MP, as I have never played a game of MoO2 all the way through without a break (I do things like watch a movie, cook dinner, or even take a nap in the middle of a game), and with the health reversals I have had in the last two years I don't think I could sit still for all the time a really good game would take to play.

Short games would be possible, but for me a short game of MoO2 is about as much fun as the BRW (Build-Rush-Win) 'strategy' in star-craft or a FPS.

I did once try to play a multi-player 'hot-seat' game, but that experience left me uninterested in a repetition of the experience, and that was just a two player game. I couldn't stand to wait to play my turns, and my friend felt the same way when I was playing.

I guess that's one reason that I hated MoO3 so much, as it was supposed to be bringing MP to the MoO series and failed so miserably.

Well, my pizza isn't getting any warmer, so I got to go...

[Gorean]

Well, if you ever want to have a go at it, and are looking for a partner, I'm pretty flexible with taking breaks during games, so you might PM me.

[Juju Dredd]

The problem with designing starbase is that it would take effect immediately as any new research improves instantly all your starbases.
I think that to conterbalance this you should only give the possibillity to design all the starbases the same way rather than giving the possibility to design of each starbase separately.

[Void Stalker]

I think that there would be three big areas that would need to be reworked, the first being that they get upgraded automatically (which they shouldn't get), and also the way command points are assigned (make the command points work for the planet the SB orbit --- like the warlord pick), and last but not least, the planet needs to be required to have the ability to support all of it's defencive works locally (not relying on the rest of the empire to pay for and maintain them).

If these things were done, I would love to be able to have constellations of custom orbital weapons platforms defending my key worlds and making my main population centers something to be avoided at all costs (unless I'm getting my butt kicked, that is)

As long as I can only build what I can afford/support directly from the planet they orbit, then the increased defensive platforms would offer a choice of a long held, heavily fortified planet or a recently settled world with light or no defences. Also, If this method were implemented, then the often underused blockade might just be worth maintaining after all.