Master of Orion 1 unofficial patch

[Zed-F]

Interesting to note that this is in development.

Now if you could make a version of MOO that would run on my I-phone, that would be perfect!

[kyrub]

I think the bar for alliances definitely needs to be elevated (and/or the possibility of the alliance breaking increased
...
I think the AI love effect actually makes the Humans a weaker faction though, as once alliances and/or wars have gelled, the Human voting bonus doesn't really mean anything.

Very good point about the breaking alliances. I'll have to see how it's done. The original 'bug' could have been partly intentional, to let the alliances not last forever. But it
a) prevented other positive diplomacy (tech trades)
b) made alliances more unstable the harder the game difficulty
It deserves another review of the whole AI-AI diplomacy in the game.

Another good remark about the Humans being actually weaker. Although they still have their council vote bonus (+ 20% for RNG), the allied status is overriding it.

Now if you could make a version of MOO that would run on my I-phone, that would be perfect!

Hehe. I'm closer to make it a hotseat multiplayer than a multi-platform. Changing the data architecture and the output requires something more than a self-learned disassembling, I think. It may be even impossible.

- a small issue concerning the change in AI defence and ship production when too many MBases on a planet, has been corrected

I have got an intriguing feedback via PM about a better performance of militarist factions with the patch. This quoted issue has a potential to be quite damaging any planet having large SHP%. Could be interesting if anybody else sees the same.

[jianye3]

Good morning, everyone,

My name is Kenneth. I'll probably go by the nickname jianye3 in the forums. I've been playing MOO for 15 years, and have played hundreds if not thousands of games on Impossible, 5, Medium. I'm a pretty good player. Whenever I search MOO 1 on the internet, only MOO 2 or 3 come up. I stumbled upon this website yesterday and it's pretty cool to find it and other avid players.

About 10 years ago, I wrote a very long strategy guide about races and techniques, and even a story about MOO. I posted it on a website hosted by bravenet. Bravenet also had a forum. I have no idea where it is now. I wonder if some of you were people I communicated with via forum 10 years ago.


I read the several parts of the MOO forum, specifically about bugs and flaws. I think this is a bug concerning the ShipPlanet combat screen. If the human player has ships armed with ion streams, warp dissipators, or energy pulsars, he can press "wait" a few times, and the ship can fire the stream, dissipator, or pulsar a few times in that same turn. This is an unfair and very tempting "bug" that we could use to defeat the computer in battle.

Similarly, if we have ships armed with auto repair, and just press "wait" a few times, andthe ship completely heals itself. Again, another unfair and very tempting bug.


The personality trait of Pacifist is usually the easiest computer to beat. If he's got a fleet from hell in orbit of your planet, ready to drop a million antimatter bombs, just threaten him, produce a tiny little scout, he runs away. I was curious if a future patch could simply eliminate the pacifist possibility from the game.
I'm tempted to type that honorable players should be elminated too. Because you could threaten them a whole bunch of times and they'll give you a lot of technology or back their fleets away from you. Again, too tempting in my opinion.


The psilons in my opinion are almost too good for the game. every race has strengths, but they also have weaknesses - some tech area they are weak in, or slow to repoduce, everybody hates them from the beginning.... but the psilons are good in everything with no real disadvantages. I was curious if anyone else feels that to bring them more in line with the other races, the original designers should have given them some kind of counter, such as weak ground fighters or something like that.


Another flaw that may have been pointed out involves biological weapons on ships. Suppose a few enemy ships have death spores and are in orbit of your planet. Even if they don't fire, or have nap with you, your planet will go from pop 110 to pop 10 in a few turns. Again, this happens even if they don't fire.


The following is probably a rare bug, in part because the game might not last this long to enable you to do this. you can only land 300 transports on a planet. so if you had a few gaia planets dispatching transports, and 400 try to land, from the get-go, before they land, the computer is going to say "300 of 400 klackon transports penetrate sakkra defenses."


The following can't be considered a bug. How many of us are capable of defending ourselves from a crystal? Sure, the amoeba is defeatable. But to defeat a crystal, most often, you need shield 10, hercular, lots of hit points, and A lot of missile bases. I wonder if the crystal should be made "more defeatable" to make the game a little funner. I usually evacuate everything in the way of a crystal. I find that no matter how hard I try, every resource, ship, and missile base I use against the crystal will be lost in a matter of seconds. How many of us can usually beat the crystal?


As pointed out a few times by other users, silicoids can't use atmospheric terraforming, or adv terraforming.


Other thoughts. I feel the best races are the psilons, klacks, meks, coids, saks, buls, alks, mrrs (the sometimes don't build many factories), humans, loks.

I'm the type of player that doesn't really like to play super high tech games. I feel that after hercular, planetary shd15, robot 5, and stellar convertors are discovered... it's really a test of who can mass produce and mass deploy, rather than true skill of out maneuvering an opponent with a faster engine or better gum, or better ship deisgn. In my opinion, once you get that really kewl tech listed above, fun factor seems to go down.

tbh, fighting at low tech levels with lasers seems more fun to me than fighting with ship combat teleporters. It's almost like you've got too much of an unfair advantage at high tech levels.


one technique I've used that I'm sure a lot of other players used is the scorched planet technique. Basically, create of lot of graveyards or destroy a lot of colonies. The AI will constantly send colony ships (sometimes with HUGE but slow armadas) to these bombed out, uncolonized planets. Then they send about half their pop from a nearby or even not nearby planet. This halves the ground fighting strength and productivity of their planets. additionally, with so many ships sent out, they send fewers ships against you. after you do this for ten turns, you'll find your opponent doesn't attack you much, and his empire has virtually no fleet to defend their planets. It's like you halved the enemy's strength.

This is particularly useful against the buls or klacks or coids, but can work against anyone. and you don't need to invest a lot. small and fast bombers are really cheap. aim for a few ultra poor planets (which are usually big in pop), and you'll create several graveyards.



i've sometimes wondered what's the best weapon to use to defend yourself from a ground attack? I choose a warship.
one ship rule: if the enemy can put 1 tiny little ship (or medium ship or colony ship) in orbit of one of your worlds, he'll send half his pop from a nearby planet against you. that's when you go from zero missile bases to 20. by the time those transports arrive, you're super defended by mb or ship, and he lost many soldiers/people who could have researched. sure, that one fighter might be able to kill 2 or 3 of your guys on the ground while you're defenseless.... but he'll lose 50 or more.

imagine you've just taken a world, and someone sends a colony ship, or little fighter/bomber. or you're in the last ship combat screen before your troops are about to land, and one defending fighter remains - retreat. if one little ship is in orbit of your world (somehow), the enemy sends a lot of soldiers to land on that planet that you can quickly fortify. i feel this is a good way to defend yourself and hurt the aggressor at the same time.



Happy gaming,

Jianye3

[RefSteel]

Good morning, everyone,

My name is Kenneth. I'll probably go by the nickname jianye3 in the forums. I've been playing MOO for 15 years, and have played hundreds if not thousands of games on Impossible, 5, Medium.

Hello, and welcome! Here at RB, we prefer to mix up our game settings as much as possible - check out our Imperium tournament, for instance - often with our own variant rules thrown into the mix. That's a big part of the reason we're still around when other Orion communities have evaporated! So, if you're interested, you might give our current Imperium a try, at Hard, 4, Small, but with a scoring system designed to let you "play for points" if you want to increase the de-facto difficulty! (Of course, though we may "play for score" none of us really take the scores or standings very seriously.) Closing Day for this one is a week from Monday - if you do take a look at the game, you can post a game report in our tournemant reports subforum on August 3rd or 4th - just please don't post any spoilers about the game before then!

...he can press "wait" a few times, and the ship can fire the stream, dissipator, or pulsar a few times in that same turn. ... and the ship completely heals itself.

Yup, this is one of the exploits whose use we've more-or-less banned by consensus; the only disagreement I've seen is about whether it's acceptible to use it to deal with negative-ship-bug fleets (and since Sargon developed a savefile fix for these and many of us enjoy finding ways to fight these "unfair" fleets fairly, even that point is kind of moot). I agree that it would be great if kyrub could fix the Wait=Recharge bug in the unofficial patch! (I assume a code subroutine is just being executed at the wrong time, but you never know...)

The personality trait of Pacifist is usually the easiest computer to beat. ...just threaten him, produce a tiny little scout, he runs away. I was curious if a future patch could simply eliminate the pacifist possibility from the game.
I'm tempted to type that honorable players should be elminated too. Because you could threaten them a whole bunch of times and they'll give you a lot of technology or back their fleets away from you.

Pacifist and Honorable are both quite strong AI personalities, and threats can be "too powerful" against almost anybody. I think the way to fix this is to make all AIs less willing to cave to threats, rather than eliminating an entire personality (or two!) from the game! (In the meantime, I just pretty much never issue threats to anybody.)

Another flaw that may have been pointed out involves biological weapons on ships.

I've seen this happen too - it appears that bioweapons on ships are "auto-deployed" even if the attacker doesn't bombard with them - definitely a bug.

How many of us are capable of defending ourselves from a crystal?

Check out some of our Imperium 19 reports!

I'm the type of player that doesn't really like to play super high tech games.

Well, then, Imperium 19 aside, I think you've come to the right place!

In general, we avoid intentionally exploiting major flaws in the AI's programming - I feel that the AIs' transport-sending decisions are bad enough already without encouraging them to be even worse in-game! - but I was willing to use borderline-exploits a year or two ago that I'd never consider now (Realms Beyond has had a very good influence on me) and I know that different players have different opinions about what is and isn't a fair way to demolish the AI. The main thing is to enjoy the game - which for us, more than winning itself, means following the Realms philosophy: Play legitimately, and seek additional challenges rather than the easy path to victory!

[jianye3]

thanks for the patch, though i do also have to problem refsteel had.

i put a little money towards a planet. that planet was at 200% normal production for the longest time.

not that i'm complaining. i know a lot of effort went into making the patch.

[RefSteel]

thanks for the patch, though i do also have to problem refsteel had.

i put a little money towards a planet. that planet was at 200% normal production for the longest time.

not that i'm complaining. i know a lot of effort went into making the patch.

Well, as and if kyrub's schedule allows, the patch is going to get better; right now, it's in its embryonic stage - i.e. not even "beta". It doesn't even include all the changes introduced in the "AI enhancement test games" thread's test files in this version (for instance, this version of the patch doesn't fix the RC costs, nor does it correctly display post-transport production). It's cool that this early embryonic version of the patch is fully playable, but we're still in the early play-testing phase. (We're certainly not using this patch for the Imperium games, for instance!)

Speaking of which: I completed another game, this one as Sakkra on Hard (small galaxy with 4 enemies again). It was a really interesting map, with a decent second planet but then no other stars within 5 parsecs of either world except asteroids, and nothng within 6 parsecs except Mentar, the first Mrrshan colony, more asteroids, and a medium-sized Dead world. In time though, I claimed pretty much every hostile world in the galaxy, including several rich and one UR, and even without reserve spending (I've been playtesting this patch with a variant since confirming the reserve transfer bug: I may never transfer reserves to any planet, ever!) it was a romp from there. Played through successfully to another 2425 conquest, and found some new data on the patch:

- Though the spy spending bug described in the other thread isn't responsible, the ETA for a spy is nonetheless not quite reliable; spending just enough to get a 1 turn ETA for a spy on one race (or even one click over) often resulted in no spy arriving (whether successful, just hanging around, or caught). I think it just (slightly) underestimates the cost of a spy, but we'll need to test further to confirm.

- Most "Continue" screens (orbital bombardment results, scouting reports, etc.) now continue with <space> (but not with <c>) but enemy sabotage ("Unknown spy destroys 2 missile bases" or whatever) continues with <c> and not with <space>. I noticed this only once so far, and have not tested it in depth (for instance, I don't know if it also applies to the player sabotaging the AI).

- Something very weird: I was facing Erratic Technologist Psilons among others; they were limited to Mentar itself, which was in a nebula ... and ... they were utterly, unfathomably hopeless. By 2359, when other races had bases up [EDIT: at their colonies, and double-digit bases at their homeworlds], Mentar was at 100 pop, 66 facs, no missile bases(!), 1 destroyer, 303 fighters, and two colony ships. They scrapped the fighters before 2368, but never developed significant technology and never meaningfully improved their world's infrastructure. They didn't get into any wars except with me, and neither of us sent armed ships against the other until 2410, when I destroyed their massive war fleet of 11 medium ships (two different, equally worthless designs) and 4 colony ships, plus their whopping 2(!!!) missile bases - before sending in the transports to take 142(pre-combat!) factories from 107 Psilons. I have no idea what happened here (the separate-file-for-each-autosave thing seems to be working, so I could find the ones for various eras of that game and send them along if it would be helpful).

[kyrub]

Hi Kenneth, some good remarks I read from you.

...he can press "wait" a few times, and the ship can fire the stream, dissipator, or pulsar a few times in that same turn. ... and the ship completely heals itself.

...I agree that it would be great if kyrub could fix the Wait=Recharge bug in the unofficial patch! (I assume a code subroutine is just being executed at the wrong time, but you never know...)

The 'Wait' button has several issues, some of them fall into the 'exploit' bracket for me (see no-cost-in-movement-points dodging missiles, which AI cannot do), some of them are closer to a bug. Those you mentioned go definitely into the 2nd one: Auto-repair, unique weaps + wait.
However, no promises either. The combat part of the code is a K2 peak to my disassembling attempts. The ship data are twice (!) translated and recombined into a special format before they are actually used by the game. Mind you, I understand more the hidden Enemy-of-my-enemy intricacies of the code than a simple "push_button_Wait" and see what it does although I have identified the right place...

Suppose a few enemy ships have death spores and are in orbit of your planet. Even if they don't fire, or have nap with you, your planet will go from pop 110 to pop 10 in a few turns. Again, this happens even if they don't fire.

Thanks for the description, I knew it existed without the right details.

RefSteel, thanks for summing up the patch info. I plan to reach the 'Larval' stage before September, although the bug reports may force me to do it earlier.

- Though the spy spending bug described in the other thread isn't responsible, the ETA for a spy is nonetheless not quite reliable

Ah, I remember some sort of uncertainty when running simple tests. I will have a look, but cannot promise anything - remember we are probably facing a complicated bunch of problems like non-previewed increased production etc. If this is the core problem, I'll probably pass on it, or will make a numerical approximation.

("Unknown spy destroys 2 missile bases" or whatever) continues with <c> and not with <space>.

Excellent, thanks for your interest for the detail. Clear interface means nothing else but a totally clear one (if possible). Added to the list.

- Something very weird: I was facing Erratic Technologist Psilons among others; they were limited to Mentar itself, which was in a nebula ... and ... they were utterly, unfathomably hopeless.

Oy. Uurgh. No smoke without fire, but the 'smoke' is not much specific here, which is bad for identifying. I could definitely use some more proof of this 'bug'. How much was Mentar isolated? When did you contact Psilons? Were they at war with Mrrshans (who were significantly strengthned in early wars, by the patch)?
Do you happen to have an early savegame, so I could try to repeat the process? And maybe one from the latter stages, to see the state..?

[RefSteel]

I'll probably pass on it, or will make a numerical approximation.

I think it's entirely reasonable to pass on the spy cost issue; it's close enough, as far as I'm concerned.

Excellent, thanks for your interest for the detail. Clear interface means nothing else but a totally clear one (if possible). Added to the list.

You're very welcome, and thanks! On a related note, while looking at saves to illustrate the Psilon weirdness, I noticed that <space> doesn't go to the next screen in the council vote (<esc> does, as in the normal game) - my preference would be that <space> would skip any council screen except the player's vote (presently <esc> abstains, I believe).

I could definitely use some more proof of this 'bug'. How much was Mentar isolated? When did you contact Psilons? Were they at war with Mrrshans (who were significantly strengthned in early wars, by the patch)?
Do you happen to have an early savegame, so I could try to repeat the process? And maybe one from the latter stages, to see the state..?

Mentar was totally isolated - 6 parsecs from my second world, 7 parsecs from the (eventual) closest Klackon world, 9 parsecs from the nearest Mrrshan colony, and even further from the Meklar (only other races in the galaxy). My scout first reached their homeworld around turn 9 or 10 (or thereabouts) and I made official contact with them when I completed range 6 research around 2355ish. I was first to achieve contact with them, and it wasn't close. They were not at war with the Mrrshans when I met them nor for a long time thereafter. Neither Mrrshans nor Psilons ever sent a fleet to one another's planets, and I think the same is true of the Psilons with every other race but mine.

My earliest savegame for this one is from 2362 - the earlier autosaves were overwritten by an Impossible Klackons game I started under this patch (in progress but waiting for me to have time to play again). The attached zip file includes that save, plus one from 2370, at which point the Psilons have 100 population, ~70 factories, no missile bases and no tech(!) and one from 2409, the turn before I swarmed Mentar with NPG fighters and destroyed its two(!) shield-2(!!!) bases. I had never fired on the planet up to that date. Let me know if more saves would be helpful; I've moved the ones from that game to a new folder so no more of them will get overwritten.

[Ingos]

Kyrub, Thank you very much for this patch!

I dont know if there are may other moo1 fans out there, but you can be sure that there is one guy on this planet that is very happy because of you and your efforts, and wishes you luck on everything

THANK YOU!

[kyrub]

No need to thank me, Ingos.
I'm not doing this as a charity, but because I really value this old and graphically rough game as a unique one, and I am really pleased to be in contact with people who - despite the old coat and the lack of 'sexy' unlimited features, which are standard in modern games - feel the same.
Moreover, I have found massive layers of mathematical and logical entertainment and challenge in the disassembling process itself. It's basically better than a MoO I impo game with runaway Psilons and your homeworld shrouded in Nebula.

So my response to your nice post should perhaps stand for:
The pleasure is all mine.