Master of Orion 1 unofficial patch

[kyrub]

Latest version: MoO 1.40m patch.

[MODERATOR ACTION:  The previous link to the 1.40M patch appears to be broken, so I've attached a link to another copy in its place:

Version 1.40m

The link that used to point to the copy on kyrub's hosting space is in spoilers below.]

Version 1.40m

Important:
!! Before you patch/play, you should BACKUP your Moo folder. !!
- Unzip the files into your Moo folder and play.
If the game crashes (or you experience a bug), go immediately to the Moo folder and conserve for me the save7.gam file - please.


version 1.40m
----------------------------
- no more eternal alliances for AIs (reverted back to the vanilla version)
- the missiles now use correct to hit bonus against ships with high missile defence
- at least 5% of missile will always hit (was 6%)
- AI huge, armored ships now cannot cause a negative overflow (prevention taken, maybe not a bug)
- the game now uses "Controlled Barren" on the Race report screen instead of strange "Control Barren ENVIRON"

version 1.40i
----------------------------

- 4th colony ship curse removed
- nebula speed and nebula ETA should work correctly when launching, with transports and ships having the same speed
- [bug fixed] AIs now actually take their treaties in consideration, when asked to declare war on their allies
- annoying bug / cheat when a fleet with bioweapons automatically bombed an enemy planet while orbiting is gone for good
- during strategic bombing, the game now actually checks whether you have your latest researched battle computer on board of at least one orbiting ship before giving the bonus
- the 'Wait' button allowing to fire unlimited number of rounds with unique weapons (pulsars, projectors etc.) during the combat - fixed
- the 'Wait' button triggering the repeated auto-repair function of a ship during the combat - fixed
- AI clears his spies' missions when succesfully threatened
- entering the general "threaten / break treaty" dialogue no more equals to a penalty of -100 to all temporary diplomatic (see OSG; is reserved for the concrete threats)
- the Meklars now can build up to # 2700 factories on a planet [credit to Lydon]
- the tech tree generation routine now checks for presence of at least one  planetary shields tech for every race (see OSG)
- the Silicoids don't have the planetology techs useless to them in their researchable tech tree
- NEW: fixed an important bug preventing the right distribution of the AI big fleets in the mid-late game

interface
-  the annoying Scout II redesign feature lives no more [credit to Lydon]
-  the discovery percentages on tech screen are no more only 1/2 of the true probability of a tech hit
- AI sabotage message continue = space
- Psilon Leader "Zygot__" Name Correction: (removed empty spaces after name) [credit to Lydon]
- reenabled the cursor over the star
- the game autosaves every turn after the 7th turn into your folder

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Embryonic 18 (last stable version).

embryonic stage - included if not in "regressions"
----------------------------

• bugs corrected- the races now have the appropriate choice of objective  at the beginning of a game - the AI now uses the right race and the right objective when it takes decision about where to allocate the research points- the spies you educate on the same turn against different races are no more overpriced - breaking a NAP / alliance no more positively contributes to your rellations with the AIs (-10, -20 respectively)- the player (AI or Human) who commits an oath breaker is not taken as a victim anymore, but as the tresspasser- combat transporters now work, subspace interdictor works against them - 8th stargate bug corrected (no ship maintenance overflow)- bombing damage with torps halved, normal damage with missiles (was the contrary)- AI-AI positive diplomacy problem  corrected- the AI now correctly uses the radius of action  during its decision making- the AI intentionally aggressive fleet positioning during the final war now actually works- a small issue concerning the change in AI defence and ship production when too many MBases on a planet, has been corrected- the Guardian now gets  on impossible Adv.dam.control, hard gets Adv.rep.system, others none (was Adv. dam.control only on hard )- the research BC now get no 90% discount when starting new technology project- Silicoids do not have unusable techs in their tech tree: they now always get the Cloning tech

• flaws (= not exactly bugs, but clearly not intentional issues)- Bulrathis bombing decision when they are orbiting a planet and have transports incoming corrected to reflect their race gropo bonus- Alkaris and Mrrshans bonus for AI-AI combat corrected to reflect their race bonus- early tech decisions corrected to include a fourth decision point for all AI races- all diplomatic temporary modifiers are now really capped at 100 (was 109)

• interface changes- you may 'continue' a game directly by running starmap.exe- the game autosaves every turn in save9.gam (for the purpose of bug reports)- "SPACE bar" = continue, process to the next / works now on many screens- hotkey "A" = accept dispatching of a fleet, transport etc.- side cursor works for a single slider on a screen- rehaul of TECH screen, TAB runs through tech fields, hotkeys, the diodes lit under the tech level show when you reach max research bonus- rehaul of RACES screen, hotkeys, clickable portraits bring REPORT page- REPORT screen shows name of AI leaders, MAP screen shows current year- after running through the Next turn phase + extra messages (shield build, max pop reached...), the game always recenters on your last planet of choice

[SDragon]

Wowzers. Something has changed, that's all I gotta say.

My game settings are Large, Hard, Five playing HUMANS (thinking it'd be easier).

First game I played, I got stuck in the west region with Silicoids in the northwest and Bulrathi in centersouth region. Okay, no problem, let's spread, split territory and all be chummy right? Well, I guess I wanted a planet that the Bulrathi also had their eyes on and let's just say my first turns that should have been used for spreading and building up planets was used replenishing my POP that it took to defend the planet. I really needed that planet as it was the only planet within 3 parsecs and without it I would only have 2 planets. Sigh. Let's just say by the time I got to 4 parsec tech, Silicoids had already spread to 12 planets and the Bulrathi had sneaked their way onto my flank in the southwest region making their total at 7. Not looking good for the 'Diplomatic' Humans. End result, Silicoids had spread and made contact with all the other Races who decided in the first Galactic Council that they rather like the slimy bastards. Of course the other Candidate were the Bulrathi, so if the other Races had the same experience I had with them, I'm not surprised that they'd vote for the Silicoids ;P

Second game was somewhat similar to the first. Except this time it was the Klackons taking all my planets on my north border. Meeting the Bulrathi on my side border was not what I was looking forward to, but different game, let's give them a chance right? Hell no! They seem to really like their advantage early on and fleet or no fleet they're sending their bulky bodied transporters to 'liberate' my planet. Jeez. I kind of gave up on this game. I'm looking for an easy conquest remember? ;P

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Third games a charm and yes, yes it is! There are no pesky Bulrathi to deal with. Alkari, Meklar, Sakkra, Darloks and Mrsshan to deal with. So in a usual game, it means that the competition are only the Meklar and maybe the Sakkra if they spread fast enough.

I might have had a chance except the Alkari spread like viral and kept me stuck in the northeast corner with about 4 planets. All other planets around me were Toxic and they beat me to that Tech and got those planets as well. By the time I met the Darloks and Meklar who were both Aggressive personality types, they seemed to think they'd be better off declaring War with me then being 'Diplomatic'. Other Races are supposed to LIKE Humans no?

I'm currently at year 2577 still with 4 planets and no Planetary Shields to defend myself with. Yup, didn't get either V or X. Hoping for XV otherwise it's going to be a long game. Darloks are in first place, Meklars in second and Alkari in close third. My only strategy is to hold the fort and hope to regain Tech parity while they take turns declaring war on each other. What's really doing it for the Darloks must be Atmos. T which the other two don't have. Alkari's stuck at T +60 and Meklar has Comp. T already, so it's interesting watching how all the different Technologies are keeping them in the game. Hoping for my first victory with this Patch but doesn't look good.

Hard seems pretty hard now. Hate to see Impossible. But overall I'm enjoying it immensely.

Thanks Kyrub!

PS: Just some feedback. If you'd rather keep the thread clean, please move this to a new thread or to the AI improvement thread.

[RefSteel]

I've finally gotten Imperium 21 squared away (it should be posted sometime by/on Monday the 6th, depending on your time zone) so I'll hopefully have time for playtesting the embryonic patch.

SDragon: Am I reading correctly that the Bulrathi send transports to planets without one of their fleets in orbit under the current version of this patch? Do they do so only at planets they have scouted, or just anywhere in their range?

[SDragon]

RefSteel: They scouted it first and it was a J-110 so I can understand why they'd give it higher priority :o) But yea, I had about 5 Destroyers parked above and they didn't even bother sending a Fleet to take out my ships. Just sent the transports hoping they could secure it first. Their first wave of about 19 Bulrathi destroyed my 34 Human defenders leaving them with 1 survivor and ownership of the planet. I then sent another wave of 45 and retook the planet. They tried a second wave of about 24 Bulrathi soldiers but I was able to defend it. After that they left me alone but the pop damage was enough to secure my lag in the first crucial steps of the game.

The first game, they had scouted the planet first. The second game, I only had a lonely scout on my planet and they had sent a fighter so I had to retreat. They started sending their transports after they decided it was worth taking I guess. Pretty sure they're not just sending their transports to any planet within range.

Looking forward Imperium 21...

On a side note, my third game was a conquest loss to the Meklars. I traded a Tech with the 4th place Sakkra for Planetary Shields V hoping for some protection but the Meklars came in and started blowing my planets away with Black Hole Gen, Disruptors and Plasma. Lousy Darloks and Alkari couldn't contain them.

My fourth game did result in a Human Council win but probably only because the Silicoids were spreading too far and no one else (Sakkra, Bulrathi, Psilon, Darloks) liked them pretty much. Only got to Plan. Sh. V tech and Merculite Missiles so was still pretty early in the game. I'll take the win though

[RefSteel]

Quick note: I haven't played far into the game, but the starting-ship cost bug is still active. That is, the default design Scouts and Colony Ships appear to cost the same as self-designed ships of the same types on turn 1, but by the interturn, and therafter, they have reverted to the more expensive costs they have always had in Orion.

[EDIT: New Bug: I believe this bug or something like it existed in one of the previous starmap.exe tests, but I didn't have time to confirm and isolate it. Now I have, and it turns out to be quite simple: When you transfer any amount of reserve to a planet (I tried it with 2 BC to a maxed homeworld for instance) the planet's production is doubled, apparently permanently - in other words, the game appears to react as though you transferred infinite reserves to the world.]

[EDIT 2: Okay, I played with this a bit more, and found a very minor discrepency, which does point to another old display bug. I managed to land a tech in spite of its showing merely a full bulb (i.e. not in percentages). I at first thought this meant I was getting unreported production from somewhere, but now suspect it was just a manifestation of a bug Sargon reported some time ago: The percentages shown on the tech screen actually represent half the chance of making a breakthrough. Assuming this rounds the chance down, it would explain what happened here: I just got lucky on a 1% chance that the game neglected to report. Anyway, for "Truth in Advertising" purposes, it might be a good idea to fix the tech display so it shows the actual (unhalved) percentage chance of a tech coming in....]

[SDragon]

Still playing with Humans here and finding it VERY hard to earn a diplomatic victory. I find that the AI is really good at forming Alliances with each other and all it takes is one Erratic personality to declare war and next thing you know, all Diplomatic Relations go from Okay to You're the Scum of the Earth.

Not sure if this is due to the change in Diplomatic score going from 109 to 100 or I'm just not playing the Diplomatic venue right.

[kyrub]

Thanks for the first reports, it is encouraging to hear that it is possible to play through a game with so many changes in the code.

I have added a 'To do' and 'Under review' sections above. If you happen to know about another issue not corrected by the patch and not listed there, please let me know.

@SDragon
100-109 diplomatic bonuses being 91-100 are not much of a change, if you ask me. The biggest problem can be the renewed diplomatic stability of the AI players - maybe that is why they got you repeatedly. The old diplomatic issues are still there. You may still threaten the pacifist AI players with no war danger, for example.
Hearing that Darloks AI or Mrrshans AI actually won the game sounds really promising. Let's see if it was not a coincidence.

@RefSteel
I will look at the transfer bug but I do not know when. I have very little spare time and it will be so during the whole summer.
I have already tried to find the tech-hit issue but I really cannot see it in the code. I thought sargon was wrong with this one, but since you are reporting a similar problem, I'll have another look.

[SDragon]

Kyrub, I think you're right. The Human Dip should be fine, though it'd be nice if the AI Alliance could be looked at.

Just had a great game playing the Mrrshans. Sakkra and Psilon had a fairly decent head start with Psilon almost twice my Tech and both races owning about 1/3 more planets than me. I think Mrrshans are underrated and I actually don't think a fast spread works for them. If Mrrshans are near the top two in Council, most votes will go to the other race by default. It's better to stay third for as long as possible while making sure your Tech doesn't fall too far behind. Once the Planets can defend themselves, Mrrshan advantage starts to show itself in combat and beats almost anything hands down once Tech starts going into Adv. areas. Besides the fact that AI doesn't build Missile bases over 40+. Do we know if there's an AI logic behind that? I know MBs become obselete once Weapons go high enough but 80-100 MBs can make a difference defending a base with ships while 40 doesn't make much of a difference in the advanced stages.

Would have been nice to play against the Alkari and see how they hold up. Maybe another game. Oh, Humans and Silicoids were in the game also but couldn't spread fast enough to make a difference. I've played about 10 different games so far (Humans/Mrrshans) but the balance does seem better. Not 'easier', just challenging enough in the right spots.

Enjoy your summer too

[kyrub]

The max MBs are a part of in game difficulty setting. Try playing a harder game and you'll see a lots of them.

The bigger problem is they are easily avoidable via the exploit of Wait button...
Which, - and other exploits, and some are ready to be corrected - I'd like to correct in a second, more free patch. (But that may never happen. So what.)

[RefSteel]

Thanks for the first reports, it is encouraging to hear that it is possible to play through a game with so many changes in the code.

Yup, I just completed a game as well, with no problems (I think) apart from the known bugs. It was a quick cake-walk type of game (Average difficulty, Alkari, small galaxy) with 4 opponents. I drew pac/diplo Humans, err/eco Psilons, err/eco Meklar, and as my nearest neighbor, xeno/mil Mrrshans. Would have been a scary combination had it been Impossible difficulty, but on Average, I strolled to a Conquest victory.

I think the bar for alliances definitely needs to be elevated (and/or the possibility of the alliance breaking increased, as per the unpatched game) since even on Average, the AIs became allies practically as soon as they met, and the alliances held until I took action against them (first asking the Amiable Humans to break up with the only faction they'd met ... then exterminating the Brains and Kitties. It strikes me I should have tested the war-easier-than-alliance-breach bug, but I neglected to do so since I'm now in the habit of avoiding its exploitation in my games). 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.

ALSO: Another bug, not introduced by your patch but in the original Orion, of which this game reminded me: When an AI (Humans in my game) calls to say, "We can no longer maintain a trade agreement with you!" the trade agreement doesn't actually go away!

I will look at the transfer bug but I do not know when. I have very little spare time and it will be so during the whole summer.

Thanks for the heads-up; I hope you're having a great summer! I hope you don't mind my continuing to post updates like this one even though it may be quite some time before you can address them....

I have already tried to find the tech-hit issue but I really cannot see it in the code. I thought sargon was wrong with this one, but since you are reporting a similar problem, I'll have another look.

Cool - thanks. (I guess we know by now that Sargon is rarely wrong - least of all about research in Orion!)