MOO1 clone

[Ray F]

Transports - in MoO 1, they're too easy to exploit in an offense sense. It doesn't make sense being able to transport 50 units of population in one turn, when it takes 5 turns to build a colony ship that adds 2 units of pop to a new colony in early game. So we're going to make them actually take time to build, among other considerations. No more surprise 1-turn invasion from an nearby enemy planet. You'd be able to see them building up the invasion forces and prepare accordingly.

Well, the reality is that this capability was exploited mostly by players, not the AI. It's pretty easy to counter with missile bases when the AI does it, so my thought is just to make the AI counter it as well.

AI - Whitemage is our AI developer. We plan on making an AI that minimizes cheating as much as possible, we're going to try and make them act more like a human player, this means limited intelligence (no seeing the whole map, etc), smarter calculating algorithms, etc.

Yep. Not seeing the whole map makes the AI a bit more approachable because you have to make the AI think like a player, which we all already have a lot of experience with.

Race balance - in MoO 1, some races are simply superior to others (Psilons vs Mrrshans, who do you think will win most of the time? Hint, it's not the race with fur). We want to make each race roughly balanced yet distinct. Only a lot of playtesting will answer this.

I agree. The challenge is to buff/nerf the races in a way that remains true to the design concept of the race. However, since I don't want to create a markedly different playing experience from MOO1, the way I am addressing this is to have a "ruleset" option on the setup screen. Selecting "Classic MOO" will follow the MOO1 feature set as closely as possible. Other rulesets (tbd) will enable things like additional races (from MOO2/MOO3, naturally), customized galaxy shapes, and also necessary racial balance issues.

One advantage is that this encourages me to adhere to the MOO1 feature set for the first release rather than slip off into the featuer creep timesink that occurs when you start trying to incrementally improve the game.

There's many more that we haven't fully decided on and are still working out the details. But it WILL be noticeably different from MoO 1. You'd still get the "MoO 1" vibe, but can easily notice that it's a different game from MoO 1. Hopefully it'd feel like a sequel that MoO 2 was supposed to be

I wish you the best of luck! The path to the "next Master of Orion" is littered with the crushed hopes and dreams of many programmers, including myself. It will take perserverance!

[Ray F]

Just fyi, if anyone is interested in the test, I've updated the blog with details on how and when. I will, however, need an email address for anyone who wants to test. You can privately message me here, or email me directly.

[MaxPower]

Unarmed scouts guarding? (We have some ideas, but none set in stone yet)

Pretty straightforward. Unarmed ships cannot initiate combat. Therefore, when a 2nd scout arrives at a system, it is not "challenged" by the enemy scout currently in orbit.

I'm not sure this a "broken feature". IMO, the scout blockade is a key element of the early game strategy. It is the only advantage the human has over the AI at this stage of the game. If you take that away, there's no way you can't prevent the AI to claim everything around you, before you can build your first ColShip.

For balance purposes, I would suggest to increase the cost of the reserve fuel tanks. That would make a bit less cost efficient to spam scouts early in the game.

[Ray F]

I'm not sure this a "broken feature". IMO, the scout blockade is a key element of the early game strategy. It is the only advantage the human has over the AI at this stage of the game. If you take that away, there's no way you can't prevent the AI to claim everything around you, before you can build your first ColShip.

If the AI can build a colony ship before you do, why shouldn't he be able to claim the system? Please understand that the AI in Java MOO is not getting a free galaxy map or any free ships. He has to scout systems and then build colony ships just like you do.

For balance purposes, I would suggest to increase the cost of the reserve fuel tanks. That would make a bit less cost efficient to spam scouts early in the game.

There's no value in spamming scouts once the "scout blockade" exploit is removed.

[MaxPower]

Pretty straightforward. Unarmed ships cannot initiate combat. Therefore, when a 2nd scout arrives at a system, it is not "challenged" by the enemy scout currently in orbit.

Another question, combat is manually triggered like MoO2? or it is automatically triggered when at least one the fleets has an armed ship?

[Ray F]

Pretty straightforward. Unarmed ships cannot initiate combat. Therefore, when a 2nd scout arrives at a system, it is not "challenged" by the enemy scout currently in orbit.

Another question, combat is manually triggered like MoO2? or it is automatically triggered when at least one the fleets has an armed ship?

Like MOO1, combat will always been initiated when at least one fleet in the system is armed and they are not in an Alliance.

There is nothing in this game that will be like MoO2 except within the "Antares" ruleset selectable at startup. This will introduce a few MOO2 elements such as the Antaran invasion and space monsters.