MOO1 tech reform

[WhiteMage]

How would you change the technologies in MOO1?
Which techs would you drop, add, or mod? How?

[toddestan]

How would you change the technologies in MOO1?
Which techs would you drop, add, or mod? How?

The ones that seem to need the most tweaking are the ship-related technologies. For example, there's a whole bunch of ship specials that I basically never use. Though part of this is because there are only three slots available, and in the end-game when I have all the toys I just don't have the room for them. Torpedoes also definitely need a buff.

In my opinion, the whole late game seems out of balance. Weapons are too powerful, ships are too cheap (compared to your production) and they move too fast (it's one turn to any nearby world, so it's hard to anticipate attacks, plus you can just move the ships where you need them and they'll show up next turn so less planning needed). There isn't really the strategy that the early and mid game has. Just build a bunch ships and go scorched earth. That's part of the reason there's a bunch of specials I never use - a basic design of the fastest engines/best computer/high energy focus/battle scanner/inertial stabilizer/beat beam weapon will basically steamroll over everything including planets. You don't need missile boats. You don't need bombers. You don't need trick ships. One design can do just about anything but colonize a planet. You can crank these guys out like crazy so if you mess up and a bunch get blown up... oh well. I guess they may have made the end game easy on purpose because this is when you're supposed to "win", and if the game gets dragged out longer you're going to run out of content anyway once you get past level 50. Admittedly part of this is also because the AI just doesn't seem to leverage the high level techs well, especially designing their ships.

I guess here's a few suggestions:
1. High end beam weapons need a nerf, so missiles, bombs, and other weaponry are still needed.
2. Movement speeds need to be adjusted. I believe this was already covered, but I would slow down the faster warps. Alternatively, we could still have these speeds but make the engines so large/power hungry/expensive that they would only be put on "trick ships".
3. Not sure how to handle the not enough specials issue. One option would be to just add more slots. Or we could have a technology that could be researched that could add slots. Or we could have a technology that could be researched to make some specials no longer "special" which would free up the slot they would otherwise take for commonly-used specials. For example we could have "Integrated Battle Scanner" that once researched, means that all ships just get a battle scanner included so you no longer have to use a specials slot for it any longer (hope this makes sense).
4. End game ships need to be more expensive. A rich world shouldn't be able to crank out multiple high-end large designs per turn. Maybe this would could encourage the use of small ships in the late game as they now pretty much become obsolete after a certain point.

[WhiteMage]

I need some ideas for new technologies. Particularly in Computers and Propulsion.

[kyrub]

I need some ideas for new technologies. Particularly in Computers and Propulsion.

Not sure if you are looking for specials or a tech line, you could specify that.

Propulsion:
a) The game could use a tech line that "slows down" attacking ships incoming to a planet in late game. The main reason is what Toddestan has said right above, an attack in 1 turn is not defendable and it almost destroys the strategic part of the game (along with long range and many targets). If the AI is good, even the human player will deeply appreciate to have a tech that allows him to avoid 1-turn attacks in late game.
b) Such a tech line could have a tactical impact as well, making ships attacking player's planet slower in combat (they are too quick in the endgame, I thought). In this combination, the technologies would become desirable and powerful. It could be interesting combo with the special Warp Dissipator (making it worthwile longer) as well. These are early_midgame -> endgame devices, which is exactly the space where propulsion falters. And it will make later engine techs more important for the attacker!

I am not very strong with names and backgrounds for a tech. It should be some kind of planetary device, maybe automatically added to any planet. I remember Stars! using "speed mines" that forced ships to slow down to warp X. I'd rather see a minus factor, reducing ship speed by X where X is (1,2,3...). Ship speed can never be reduced to less than 2 this way (ships moving 1 are too easy targets and we need some usefulness for Warp Dissipator).

The second idea: I always thought propulsion should help trade. Probably by increasing max % bonus. The logic is obvious, no? Quick ships that can carry more cargo... Either automatic bonus (I probably prefer this), or some "Trade Freighters" line.
- Another possibility is to deduct success of trade from planets that can reach to other player's planets with fuel (this will help range technologies). What if trade actually helped only these "border" planets, but massively, allowing an increase of up to 50% in production on these planets? Maybe with max 2 trading partners (so overall max 100% increase on a planet, making trade planets potentially as good as the rich ones)?
- [digression] The trade should have immediate impact as well, with necessity to pay a lot of BC (based on number of trading planets) to "build the trade route" from the reserve, as this would (a) prevent player from "pretended trade" agreements and (b) improve role of the reserve. The increase of trade in MoO is too general, too slow and invisible which makes its role marginal.


Computers
My ancient idea was to make automatic spying bonus a technology line. I usually prefer tech line to auto bonus, as it gives the game more decision points. Spying drones could be a tech line, vastly improving the potential (not sure about the internal numbers). I slichtly dislike tech lines with too many levels, so I'd prefer 6 techs with overall 30-60% impovement of general spying success and probably even more improvement in the antidetection of spying identity (even when spy is caught, they cannot find who sent him).

The other part I thought about was Encryption line, strong increments (1..4), which, obviously, prevents tech stealing. I moved this idea later to Force Fields (my Security Fields suggestion), since that seems to be the poorest field. Not sure what you prefer. - You could still divide spy defense into Security Fields (general defense against spying, helping to increase level of blocked/caught spies) and Encryption (specific defense against tech stealing success when spies break in, like in 20..80% of cases). We all know how technology stealing is important. This setup, however, needs a good balance, more painful industrial and MBs sabotage etc.
(Of course, all these changes imply that the old automatic computer bonus/malus to spying is gone.)

[digression 2] Spying in general should be improved in the sequel. Spies could have 3 levels of activity instead of 2: "hide", "discreet activity" or "aggressive", with the second meaning very low risk operations with improbable success (good for peace times and Darloks) and third meaning biggest risk but quick results (like original MoO). Hidden spies should be harder to catch or harder to uncover other spies when caught, allowing you to amass a spying net before attack. Discreet activity should in general be unlikely to trigger a direct war, while it would prevent improving relations in the long term.

Force fields - one more idea
I thought that Shields should be divided into two lines:
- 1 classic Deflector shield line, with less techs (2,4,6,8...)
- alternative shields, which I called "Screens" in my notes, that "blur the target". They block less damage, but improve beam defense as well. (+1,+1; +2,+2 ; +3,+3 ...).
These lines could alternate tier by tier (something like Deflector shield II is level 5 / Alpha screen (1,1) is level 10 / Deflector shield IV is level 15 etc.). Or other distribution. Screens could be smaller to potentially fit small designs. This makes ForceFields less boring and it allows interesting choices when ship building.

[Sirian]

I've always thought that MOO's end game has been better than *any* other entry in the 4x genre, before or since. It's fabulous.

* You can opt out of the mop up phase as soon as you can win by vote. You have to have one of the top two population counts to get nominated, so that prevents cheap wins coming too easily.

* You can gather reinforcements quickly (instantly with gates) and send new fleets in to battle quickly, which *drastically* reduces the number of times you need to hit Next Turn. This forecloses the possibility of last minute catch up wins, which is a good thing. Games that allow any faction to win, no matter how poorly they performed in the early and middle games, are missing the point of playing the game, in my view. If part of the game does not matter, at all, that part should simply be cut from the game and let the player focus on the part that does matter. Letting the end game proceed quickly (and more quickly the deeper in to it you go) is a lesson lost on most empire games, even Civ in all its incarnations.

* You can build fleets more quickly, and even (with miniaturization) make powerful but smaller versions of ships so you can amass a large fleet more quickly.


Watching you guys talk about disassembling the best parts of this classic end game design, and think you're improving things by doing so, makes me realize why we may never see another game this good again.

- Sirian

[wycca]

- Too many specials, never use most of them much
- Missiles, torpedos, bombs not useful at certain stages/at all - I'd probably toss in some expanding of bio-weaponry and customizing it for certain races or effects other than outright population death, and allow countering it similar to the special event of a virus or comet or such
- Some specials are cheesy and negate too much

- Late game ship speeds (expanded below)

I agree with Sirian to an extent. Nevertheless, completely removing late game strategy with the insane ship speed is bad. Here are some of my thoughts -

- Ships should wait a full turn departing from a planet, this delays their destination arrival by 1 at all times (and lets you see where they are going) - think of it as provisioning for leaving, delays the entire game a bit, but I think the strategy implications would be worth it
- Future tech to eliminate the above when your destination is your own colony or an ally
- Allow a tech to delay arrival on a planet by 1 turn for colonies (ie System Mining, built like planetary shields)
- Consider creating empire boundaries on a map like some other games. You could then create a few tech lines and some neat new contruction ship designs allowing construction of an empire fence with various properties. Could also create some interesting new things to do with fleets (ie not having all conflicts occur over around a star - what if you could intercept at the border?)

- Spying and diplomacy expansion (expanded a bit) - this is sorta not purely tech related, but it would obviously be dependent upon tech in several ways (ie new tech to allow it)

Always felt like spying and diplomacy was a bit simple. I was always a darlock fan, so felt like they needed more options. Ie expansion of options beyond destruction & stealing, what if you could engineer a research virus and implant it? What if, you could implant a virus/spy who, instead of outright stealing, would instead funnel secrets that could boost your own research?

[mikeva1]

Change some Specials to regular technology

Battle Scanner - what about taking it off the specials list and add a new line in the top left hand box between Computer and Shields - or better yet re-order the list completely to Computer, Battle Scanner, ECM, and then Shields.

Reserve Fuel Tanks - same deal - add just under Engines

Different Colony bases should remain as specials.

Battle Pods - no opinion right now because I almost never use it. As a possible replacement/add-on to the Specials list I would like to see one labeled External Ordinance Racks that adds a Weapon 5 line to the list - you are trading a special slot for an additional weapons slot.

These are all I can think of right now short of starting up a game and actually writing down all of the special through an entire game

"Ships should wait a full turn departing from a planet, this delays their destination arrival by 1 at all times (and lets you see where they are going) - think of it as provisioning for leaving, delays the entire game a bit, but I think the strategy implications would be worth it"
How about simple slowing ships down to 1 (for that matter zero) for it's first turn of movement. As long as all the stars are a minimum of 2 spaces away this gets the delay you are seeking to give time to react.

Also slow down ships in general. Make the top speed much more dependent on ship size/mass. A Huge ship armed to the teeth is going to be MUCH slower then a medium ship loaded armed with everything it can carry will be faster - twice as fast maybe? Hmm 4 ship sizes - use a factor of 1x for Huger ships, 2x for Large ships, 3x for Medium size ships and 4x for Small ships.

"Allow a tech to delay arrival on a planet by 1 turn for colonies" I seem to remember (and I may be totally wrong) Moo2 has a tech that worked something like that - maybe it could be added - or not.

"Spying and diplomacy expansion" That would be great. Just thinking about what can be done in a face-to-face game should give people some ideas on diplomacy. Spying - Good point about needing a third option - low risk, low gain operations. About like what an American Attache stationed in Moscow during the Cold War might do - simple observe and report. High risk ops should be preserved for war time or for a VERY important target.

More later.