Author Topic: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?  (Read 54958 times)

Offline Hearteater

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Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« on: March 03, 2016, 02:32:05 pm »
So I just saw this on steam in early access. It is the first I've heard of it. At first I thought it was just a packaged collector's edition of the first 3, but it looks like a true 4th game in the series. Has anyone been following this that has information besides the worthless "game press" who all sound like purchased marketing drones?

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #1 on: March 03, 2016, 03:23:16 pm »
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Offline Mick

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #2 on: March 03, 2016, 03:35:37 pm »
The way I feel about Master of Orion is if you took the first or the second (whichever you like more, let's not even mention the third) and simply updated them to modern graphics, it would be... kind of a crappy game.

Don't get me wrong, I loved it back in the day.

Is this game good? I dunno, probably not.

Offline ptarth

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #3 on: March 03, 2016, 03:47:41 pm »
The third was too ambitious in scope, but if you haven't played since release, go download the modfix and have a go. It isn't half bad. Sword of the Stars 1 (SotS 2 is a sad state of affairs) is probably still the king of the Space 4x.
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Offline Cinth

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #4 on: March 03, 2016, 06:21:48 pm »
MoO III was my introduction to 4x.  SotS I/II (don't bash II, it plays just fine) and AI War all followed suit. 

As far as the MoO reboot,  I'll pass.


Hearteater: WarGaming has been teasing this game for about 6 months or so now. 
http://ritastatusreport.blogspot.com/2015/08/master-of-orion-first-screenshots.html
http://ritastatusreport.live/2016/03/01/master-of-orion-dev-diaries-early-acess/

Look around the blogspot site there for more stuff on MoO.
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Offline chemical_art

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #5 on: March 03, 2016, 10:30:52 pm »
The way I feel about Master of Orion is if you took the first or the second (whichever you like more, let's not even mention the third) and simply updated them to modern graphics, it would be... kind of a crappy game.

Don't get me wrong, I loved it back in the day.

Is this game good? I dunno, probably not.

I would agree. I adore the first one, but that is because with a modern computer the game plays like a chess game: The length of the game is really up to how long you take for a move. If you know what you are doing you can get a game done in one session, maybe two. If you were to update and weight it down then it would lose its appeal a lot due to it being slowed down.
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Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #6 on: March 03, 2016, 10:51:39 pm »
I don't see where this fixes any of the issues of 4x games in general.... but it has furry cat people with boo..boooooo... eh, yeah.... ;)

Aside that I think 45€ is pretty ballsy for this especially as EA price. In my mind you would have to offer something of immense scope to warrant that kind of price for a 4x skirmish sandbox without story/campaign and no, furry cat people is not that thing. Though I do like the art style ;) Ships and races look really neat. But graphics do not make a good 4x (see Endless Space)

I still think MOO 3, obviously with the metric ton of you mods that are a requirement, is one of the best, certainly the most ambitious, 4x games ever mad. And this new remake seems more like a casual dumbed down crash-grab by wargaming. If the dude funding this is really a MOO fan, then THIS is definitely not his dream come true. (Basing this on 2 lengthy streams I watched of this... functionality is there, it's a 4x.. but it's not dynamic, has no gameplay progression, nor does it have any staying power)

Point is. It's another fail 4x.. fun to play 1 or 2 rounds to completion.. per race. But then..

Still think 4x genre is really REALLY dead nowadays. Developers seem to cannibalize the same gameplay over and over and over and over.. I am not asking for breakthrough innovation.. but is it too much to ask to not have the SAME GAME remade 60 times?
« Last Edit: March 03, 2016, 10:55:28 pm by eRe4s3r »
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Offline Hearteater

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #7 on: March 04, 2016, 01:46:21 am »
My initial feeling on ANY space 4X is it is probably not going to go well. That said, I still play MOO2, because it is just so much fun. Unfortunately, it has a few issues, mainly balance, I really wish could be resolved. I've even toyed with making my own MOO2 clone on occasion, but I agree the 4X genre is not looking good lately.

That said, I designed a space 4X a year and change ago I think would do amazing in the $10-20 price range and is within my ability and resource (one-man show) to create...and then real life decided to be a royal pain in the butt. Starting these things out is always such a pain for me. I've tried Unity, but it just feel so awkward to me. Looking into SDL2 which I think is really promising, but of course setting up the tool chain is never as easy as I'd like.

Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #8 on: March 04, 2016, 03:12:23 am »
To be honest I wouldn't be sure I could even define what would make a good 4X in space at this point, I have become greatly disillusioned, which is why I am still curious where Arcen is going with their 4x.., to me it seems like Arcen pulled the plug temporarily because they noticed that mechanically 4x games can be tedious to the extreme, and fixing that is not in any way easy.)

My beef with space 4X games aside from their endless retreading of existing gameplay, is that they are all combat focused. And this turns more and more into the defining problem. Imo the "better" 4x game is one where combat is a tiny PART and not the MAJORITY of gameplay. my own decisions should define progression in games... and how I interact with either other players or AI.

Imo as weird as it sounds, when I think 4x, I have to think of "Fate Tectonics" it's an obscure Indy game that I doubt anyone has ever heard off, basically it's... a weird.. kind of.. building puzzle, but since everything you do in there is based on random parts you need to place in order to make the "fates" not blow up the world you end up with different looking land every single time. Now this is obviously not a 4x, but whenever I think of 4X I think of that game and wonder why 2 rounds can't be different like this in 4X games.

Only MOO3 and SOTS 1 changed the races and combat up fundamentally. SOTS 2 was a monumental failure because the developers did not realize which part of SOTS1 was fun and which part was tedious busywork nobody flat out hated, but nobody wanted en-masse as main feature in SOTS 2 ... ;)

So long story short, I think 4x games in space are dead. The genre is just retreading existing paths and tropes. And not in a good funny "self aware" way either. I honestly think nobody sets out to make a bad 4X, but if your base is to clone MOO then you are 50% to the goal of "bad 4x" ;) No Moo version was ever a bad 4X, but trying to clone it makes it the same as all the other clones that failed, and sooner or later saturation hits.

Apparently there still people who buy 4x games purely for the visual fluff though (ie, Moo 4) and even I fell into that trap with Endless Space.
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Offline Hearteater

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #9 on: March 04, 2016, 03:56:43 am »
Ah, Endless Space. What a terrible combat system. Had real potential, and turned out to be pointless.

Anyway, I worked out a 4X design meant to be played single or multi-player in 35-45 minutes total. The entire thing is in real time, combat resolves instantly when fleets encounter each other. AI Wars influenced me in that you have pre-designed ships as part of your empire (5 specifically: colonizer, transport, escort, battle ship, capital ship) that you draft at the start of the game. Your win conditions came from combat, tech, growth, or diplomacy (first one to a win condition in any of the 4 wins the game). Growth required expansion and competition for limited resources, tech allowed for "solitary" play and required limited expansion, combat brought you directly into contention with others but hurt all their strategies expect diplomacy, and diplomacy was a win condition that was a two-way street...the more you use diplomacy the more it can be used against you, but using diplomacy benefited both the tech and growth strategies.

Great, now I really want to get back to it :) .

Offline Misery

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #10 on: March 04, 2016, 04:09:06 am »
To be honest I wouldn't be sure I could even define what would make a good 4X in space at this point, I have become greatly disillusioned, which is why I am still curious where Arcen is going with their 4x.., to me it seems like Arcen pulled the plug temporarily because they noticed that mechanically 4x games can be tedious to the extreme, and fixing that is not in any way easy.)

My beef with space 4X games aside from their endless retreading of existing gameplay, is that they are all combat focused. And this turns more and more into the defining problem. Imo the "better" 4x game is one where combat is a tiny PART and not the MAJORITY of gameplay. my own decisions should define progression in games... and how I interact with either other players or AI.

Imo as weird as it sounds, when I think 4x, I have to think of "Fate Tectonics" it's an obscure Indy game that I doubt anyone has ever heard off, basically it's... a weird.. kind of.. building puzzle, but since everything you do in there is based on random parts you need to place in order to make the "fates" not blow up the world you end up with different looking land every single time. Now this is obviously not a 4x, but whenever I think of 4X I think of that game and wonder why 2 rounds can't be different like this in 4X games.

Only MOO3 and SOTS 1 changed the races and combat up fundamentally. SOTS 2 was a monumental failure because the developers did not realize which part of SOTS1 was fun and which part was tedious busywork nobody flat out hated, but nobody wanted en-masse as main feature in SOTS 2 ... ;)

So long story short, I think 4x games in space are dead. The genre is just retreading existing paths and tropes. And not in a good funny "self aware" way either. I honestly think nobody sets out to make a bad 4X, but if your base is to clone MOO then you are 50% to the goal of "bad 4x" ;) No Moo version was ever a bad 4X, but trying to clone it makes it the same as all the other clones that failed, and sooner or later saturation hits.

Apparently there still people who buy 4x games purely for the visual fluff though (ie, Moo 4) and even I fell into that trap with Endless Space.

I agree with this bit.

I cant remember the last time I saw a space 4X game that wasnt disappointing somehow. 

I dont play a traditional 4X game to just fight wars all the time.   In a game of that type, there should be alot more to strategy than just fighting.  I mean, there's all that potential for things like political backstabbing, which can be entertaining as heck, or trading or... whatever.  So many ideas.  But alot of these space ones just go "Well we have all these big ships, CLEARLY the player will only want them to fire lasers at each other!", and just... ugh.   That's not to say that combat shouldnt be there, or be a mindless afterthought, but still.


Honestly though, it seems very hard to get a good 4X game of ANY type right now.  I cant remember the last time I found a good new one... ARE there any right now that are decent?  I dont mean Civ 5, I already have that.

Offline chemical_art

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #11 on: March 04, 2016, 04:37:00 am »

I dont play a traditional 4X game to just fight wars all the time.   In a game of that type, there should be alot more to strategy than just fighting.  I mean, there's all that potential for things like political backstabbing, which can be entertaining as heck, or trading or... whatever.  So many ideas.  But alot of these space ones just go "Well we have all these big ships, CLEARLY the player will only want them to fire lasers at each other!", and just... ugh.   That's not to say that combat shouldnt be there, or be a mindless afterthought, but still.

For better or worst, 4X is suffering an identity crises. Because what you described is great, but I view it as a whole separate genre entirely (Grand Strategy). 4X has exterminate as one of its words, and implicit in that is that unless one is honorable and so loyal as to allow me to win via diplomacy, I am going to kill you sooner or lately. The more that bogs me down from that goal (politics [external or internal]) is just fluff that slows down my goal. Which is what I meant about updates: Adding in more advanced diplomacy just ultimately slows down the overall flow from early to mid to late game.
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Offline eRe4s3r

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #12 on: March 04, 2016, 04:48:26 am »
Ah, Endless Space. What a terrible combat system. Had real potential, and turned out to be pointless.

Endless Space has a combat system? Could have fooled me! ( yea yeah.. that's a lame joke.. sorry ;p) And here I thought everyone loved the pirates that grew infinitely in power (yes, REALLY) random pirates can have higher firepower than your kick-ass battlefleet of doom... and when you disable them you end up with no way to gain any fleet XP.... like.. WHAT? Why?) Also their strength was based on the average, so if you fell behind you could be defeated by random pirates... ;=)

Argh.. shouldn't have mentioned that. There are 3 games in my steam lib that I would remove if I weren't a hoarder ;P And that would be X:Rebirth and Endless Space... (and SOTS2.. ;p)

I agree with this bit.

I cant remember the last time I saw a space 4X game that wasnt disappointing somehow.

I dont play a traditional 4X game to just fight wars all the time.   In a game of that type, there should be alot more to strategy than just fighting.  I mean, there's all that potential for things like political backstabbing, which can be entertaining as heck, or trading or... whatever.  So many ideas.  But alot of these space ones just go "Well we have all these big ships, CLEARLY the player will only want them to fire lasers at each other!", and just... ugh.   That's not to say that combat shouldnt be there, or be a mindless afterthought, but still.


Honestly though, it seems very hard to get a good 4X game of ANY type right now.  I cant remember the last time I found a good new one... ARE there any right now that are decent?  I dont mean Civ 5, I already have that.

Yeah I have the same problem really. It's why I only later added "space" to that 4x ;) For me the last time I saw a 4x that I really really liked it was SOTS 1... and only until the "grind" to win appeared 20+ battles per round ain't fun....

Either I don't like genre anymore, or the genre left me behind and doesn't like me anymore.

Maybe we should make 3x a new genre, and remove the eXterminate as gameplay "pillar" ;)
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Offline chemical_art

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #13 on: March 04, 2016, 05:12:05 am »


Endless Space has a combat system? Could have fooled me! ( yea yeah.. that's a lame joke.. sorry ;p) And here I thought everyone loved the pirates that grew infinitely in power (yes, REALLY) random pirates can have higher firepower than your kick-ass battlefleet of doom... and when you disable them you end up with no way to gain any fleet XP.... like.. WHAT? Why?) Also their strength was based on the average, so if you fell behind you could be defeated by random pirates... ;=)


I have found the idea of pirates challenging, but I have seen two broad ideas for them:

1) Have the pirates be a faction that owes most of a game's planets / systems / etc. As more and more of units are lost the pirates get increasing stronger. Eventually an equilibrium is established in which it is easier to take other player planets rather then more NPC pirate planets...until the arms race catches up, then the cycle continues. One game did this and also holds the only time I heard the phrase (An AI War-esque mechanic)

2) Pirates are Human controlled. Humans are able to be displaced but not eliminated. Eventually they will resettle somewhere. They can carry out contracts, and their victory conditions are completely independent of the more traditional players.
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Offline Misery

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Re: Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars?
« Reply #14 on: March 04, 2016, 05:26:00 am »

I dont play a traditional 4X game to just fight wars all the time.   In a game of that type, there should be alot more to strategy than just fighting.  I mean, there's all that potential for things like political backstabbing, which can be entertaining as heck, or trading or... whatever.  So many ideas.  But alot of these space ones just go "Well we have all these big ships, CLEARLY the player will only want them to fire lasers at each other!", and just... ugh.   That's not to say that combat shouldnt be there, or be a mindless afterthought, but still.

For better or worst, 4X is suffering an identity crises. Because what you described is great, but I view it as a whole separate genre entirely (Grand Strategy). 4X has exterminate as one of its words, and implicit in that is that unless one is honorable and so loyal as to allow me to win via diplomacy, I am going to kill you sooner or lately. The more that bogs me down from that goal (politics [external or internal]) is just fluff that slows down my goal. Which is what I meant about updates: Adding in more advanced diplomacy just ultimately slows down the overall flow from early to mid to late game.


Typically I like the idea of "Grand Strategy" games, but their tutorials always seem to have been designed by extremely drunken monkeys with hammers, so I never get into those.  It was annoying enough to have to learn Dwarf Fortress by watching through over 50 tutorial videos (each at least 15 minutes long).... sure, it was worth it, but I still dont feel like doing that again with grand strategy games.  Which is a shame, really.  I mean, the tutorials for those may as well be "Okay here's the map, you start here, you have a keyboard, and when you hit keys, stuff may or may not happen, dont forget to click stuff, KTHXBAI!!!"

That's another rant though.

Anyway, what I meant was moreso that the 4 different X elements just need to be more balanced than they are lately.  Having war in the game in question is totally fine.  When the time seems right to do battle rather than negotiate, I'll do so. Explosions shall indeed occur.  I'm good at pixellated virtual explosions with lasers and stuff. Anyone who says otherwise doesnt know me very well. The problem is that with current games of that sort, the time is ALWAYS right for that, and anything else tends to be a bad idea (or just dramatically slower, which ends up being the same).  So I tend to get more than a little bored.  The Civ series naturally seems to be the one that handles all of this the best, but... it'd be nice to have another game that ISNT just that.  I've yet to find one.

Though, it doesnt help that for something like Endless Space, which has alot of combat in it, sometimes the combat systems are just outright bad... so you end up with mere drudgery.  Feh.  That game really wasnt very good, was it...  it seemed like it had such potential, too.


Quote
Yeah I have the same problem really. It's why I only later added "space" to that 4x  For me the last time I saw a 4x that I really really liked it was SOTS 1... and only until the "grind" to win appeared 20+ battles per round ain't fun....

Either I don't like genre anymore, or the genre left me behind and doesn't like me anymore.

Maybe we should make 3x a new genre, and remove the eXterminate as gameplay "pillar"


Yeah, I've had that same feeling as of late.  The genre almost feels kinda like much of the RTS genre, in how that genre... which seems to be mostly Starcraft now... ends up just being wild clicking and micro, instead of actual overall strategy.   With 4X games, it says "4X", but much of the time it's moreso "1X with some brief exploring sometimes".  I mean, obviously that's not true in a technical sense, but that's the feeling I always get from them.

Does make me glad I've got AI War though.  That's typically the game that fills this void nowadays.   I mean, yeah, that's combat-tacular, but it still gives me the same feel and there's LOTS of things to do that isnt just direct fighting.  Granted, all of it is to PREPARE for direct fighting, but still.  It sure feels varied as hell... which I cant say for 4X games lately.

 

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