Will you purchase MOO3 or Civ3?

[loinburger]

Best moderately-low tech weapon in MOO2 was a missile with Emissions-Guidance. Knock down your opponent's shields a bit with some non-EMG missiles (which also act as decoys so that your EMG missiles will have a better chance of hitting their target), and you can take out any ship with only one or two EMG missiles. Great against Antarans raids, too, since the Antarans don't use shields.

[Zealot]

Originally posted by technophile
Best moderately-low tech weapon in MOO2 was a missile with Emissions-Guidance. Knock down your opponent's shields a bit with some non-EMG missiles (which also act as decoys so that your EMG missiles will have a better chance of hitting their target), and you can take out any ship with only one or two EMG missiles. Great against Antarans raids, too, since the Antarans don't use shields.

Now use those EMG missiles on the guardian! And right after you have fired the EMG missiles, fire some MIRV missiles! Now don't tell anyone I told you this!

You might not make it, since I didn't tell you how many misssiles you need, nor the tactics needed. Maybe next time!

[loinburger]

The Guardian is a bit of a pain to hit with missiles since its got a lightning field, but it's not so bad since it just means you need to double the number of missiles used. If the enemy is using pulsars or, worse, spatial compressors, then forget it; stick with lasers and torpedoes.

It always made me angry that I couldn't set my pulsars or spatial compressors to auto-fire. Then again, I can see why they had this restriction; my ships would have been immune to missiles and assault shuttles with auto-fire pulsars. Still, wouldn't that be grand?

[Urban Ranger]

EMG only damage the warp engines, you're still dead from the death rays, plasma torpedoes, and what not.


Zealot,

I'll believe your assertion after I see it.

[Zealot]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
EMG only damage the warp engines, you're still dead from the death rays, plasma torpedoes, and what not.


Zealot,

I'll believe your assertion after I see it.

Ok, ok! Here are the weapons of the ships. Now you only have to figure how many should you have.

First cruiser has:

4 2-shot ARM merculites
7 2-shot MIRV ECCM merculites
battle pods

Second cruiser has:

1 2-shot ECCM ARM FST merculites
4 2-shot ARM merculites
6 2-shot MIRV ECCM merculites
battle pods

Frigates have:

1 2-shot MIRV ECCM EMG merculite
battle pods

[Grumbold]

Well, this poll just proves why the game development company suits think they can just sail along churning out mediocre bug riddled game after game after game. Over 70% of respondents have declared they will buy one or both games no matter what.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Well, this poll just proves why the game development company suits think they can just sail along churning out mediocre bug riddled game after game after game. Over 70% of respondents have declared they will buy one or both games no matter what.

Good point! Sad, but true

[Earwicker]

Just Civ3. I can barely find the time for that. I've had friends show me MoO and I am intrigued but have never played it myself.

[markusf]

Anyone here have moo2? I would like to try it multiplayer sometime. I love the special races\bonus's

moo2 was relatively bug free where as civ2, well it has hundreds of bugs. You can bet that civ3 is just going to be infested.

Really cool thing about moo2 is when you capture a ship you can take it back to a ship yard and scrap it. And you get all tech you don't have!. (well tech they used to build that ship)

[BeBro]

I´ll buy Civ3 of course.

[Admiral PJ]

theres nothing wrong with RTS and strategy mixing, as MOO3 is meant to be doing

The Realtime style is a great way to simulate battles, where actions and reactions can be best simulated and its more fun.

I'd buy civ3 for sure, not so sure about moo3 .. i hope its not like birth of the federation too much - which had good points like minor races and computer naming of ships(not editable tho) n 3d battles

MOO2 was excellent for its day, with a better richer graphics etc i'd buy it.

yes, i'l have to buy moo3 if not just for research for my own 3d rts massive strategy game

and i'm DEFINITELY buying Neverwinter nights- baldurs gate3
its getting near to virtual reality

Firaxis DON'T neglect the graphics and sound of the game,
human instinct is to like this things and react to them, adds more culture too

AdmiralPJ

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'll definetly buy Civ3. Firaxis has impressed me with Gettysburg! and Antietam as well as SMAC.

Moo3, while intriguing, has to be examined further. I've never played a game from this Quicksilver group and am worried about if the concepts are sooo ambitious that it might ruin the game (CtP comes to mind).

[Warm Beer]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Moo3, while intriguing, has to be examined further. I've never played a game from this Quicksilver group and am worried about if the concepts are sooo ambitious that it might ruin the game (CtP comes to mind).

ALthough I am in the buying both games camp, I agree with the above statement... However if they impliment half of what they are intending, MOO3 will most certainly be excellent... but, yeah, there is potential for too much innovation, if that is indeed possible.

[tniem]

Originally posted by Warm Beer
ALthough I am in the buying both games camp, I agree with the above statement... However if they impliment half of what they are intending, MOO3 will most certainly be excellent... but, yeah, there is potential for too much innovation, if that is indeed possible.

Of course it is possible to be too innovative. Black and White comes to mind. While, I personally liked the game, I did not play it to long. It certainly was innovative and took gaming to a new platform but was it fun?

Many would say no.

They may have been to ambitious and did not focus on what makes a game a game - the amount of fun you have playing it.

[Warm Beer]

Originally posted by tniem


Of course it is possible to be too innovative. Black and White comes to mind.

Point well taken. I had about the same experience with Black and white. But from what I have seen, Moo3 seems to be making innovation in a positive direction, still keeping to some basic gaming principles (yes I know many of their chainges are quite controversial).

Civ3, on the other hand, seems to be focused on mainly improving on the previous Civ series ideas as opposed to making an entirely different game that's inspired by the earlier titles.. not that that is a bad thing. But, what do we really know about Civ3 at this point? Not to beat a dead horse or anything....

[paulmagusnet]

I hope Moo3 is worth purchasing, and I hope they keep the very nice ship graphics. I still love those glowing ablative shields.

What I hope they don't do is replicace SSI's very boring RTS (reach for the stars). I played it once and deleated the program.

One of the things that could definitly improved is the planets. Something like Deadlock II 's production structure building and resurce generations would be very very nice.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by markusf
Anyone here have moo2? I would like to try it multiplayer sometime. I love the special races\bonus's

Unfortunately you can only play in on a LAN. It doesn't support TCP/IP over the Internet.

[Zealot]

Originally posted by markusf
Anyone here have moo2? I would like to try it multiplayer sometime. I love the special races\bonus's

Go to www.kali.net and explore, including the MoO2 league, here:
http://www.pixelexiq.com/moo2/
When I get back a connection to the Internet at home, I'll try to play MoO2 with you too. And those life-time 20$ registration are worth it!

[tniem]

Originally posted by Warm Beer
But from what I have seen, Moo3 seems to be making innovation in a positive direction, still keeping to some basic gaming principles (yes I know many of their chainges are quite controversial).

Ah, yes but in the previews Black and White also seemed to be headed in the right direction. No one told us that it simply would not be fun.

Civ3, on the other hand, seems to be focused on mainly improving on the previous Civ series ideas as opposed to making an entirely different game that's inspired by the earlier titles.. not that that is a bad thing. But, what do we really know about Civ3 at this point? Not to beat a dead horse or anything....

And here lies the problem for all sequels. If you make it too new with too many features and advancements do your fans complain? MoO3 fans have had both positive and negative things to say about the new additions. In the end it will come down to whether or not they all fit together for a good game.

Meanwhile, Firaxis is doing some new things for the civ series while staying with the same basic look and design. Many people, including myself, think it is not enough. That it will not keep us interested because we long ago stopped playing Civ I and that it will not be enough for the future generations to be taken into the genre. So then the question becomes have you not done enough with the game? I guess only time will tell...

[ajbera]

My gut reaction would be to say, "Hell, yes, I'm purchasing both games as soon as they hit the shelves." And, a couple of years ago, I would then have proceeded to do so.

However, looking back over the past few years, I have blown a significant amount of money on games I wound up playing for an hour and then abandoning. Now, both Civ and MOO have good track records. Furthermore, most of us are quite excited about the implementation of certain features to make the games more challenging and immersive experiences. I really hope everything pans out.

But, sometimes it doesn't. Some games, even games from quality designers, suck raw alligator. And there is enough concern about the designers ability to adequately implement and balance these prospective features that I feel I should err on the side of caution and wait to hear feedback from reviewers, fans, and the general public.

So, my feelings are this: I will wait for reviews, but will, in all probability, wind up buying both games. The real question is: will I buy a quality game for $50 from CompUSA, or wait several months and purchase a less-than-stellar game for $15 on eBay?

It's up to Firaxis and Quicksilver which action I take.

[Warm Beer]

tniem: Yes, quite true... am suddenly reminded of one of they reasons why I enjoy the genre, the fans tend to be even-headed and thoughfull.

I have to admit the major (actually, one of the major) reasons I am up on Moo3 so much is the excellent PR job done on the official sight... I mean the Head designer and art team actually come out of thier Ivory Towers to chat about the game, almost daily even Of course, I understand that since Quicksilver is radically changing many game elements (the above discussed "innovations") and a lot of that communication is damage control (early-on on the official boards they had to calm down the pitch-fork and torch wielding mob that formed after the mention of IFPs and RTS) but, I think now they enjoy the disscussion with the community and bouncing ideas off the fans to see initial reaction. They do this, I must add, without giving away many of the suprizes that they have in store for the game.

Now I wish I could say the same about Civ3, but I understand that releasing this title is almost lile "Money in the bank" and different companies have different PR strategies (we could look to B&W's Lionhead as an example of "not-so-good", but that is a discussion for a different board). I am not trying to dog Firaxis at all, but in all fairness we (the community) can only pre-examine the game with what we know...

Sorry for the length... don't mean to seem like:
(I managed to use my 2 favorite smilies in this post, groovy)

[Zealot]

Originally posted by Warm Beer
I have to admit the major (actually, one of the major) reasons I am up on Moo3 so much is the excellent PR job done on the official sight... I mean the Head designer and art team actually come out of thier Ivory Towers to chat about the game, almost daily even

And where do they go to chat? Where can I "meet" them?

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Zealot
And where do they go to chat? Where can I "meet" them?

Go to the game site, http://moo3.quicksilver.com, go to the discussion boards (you might have to register), and cick on "Chat" at the top-left of the screen. See if this link takes you there: http://www.delphi.com/n/main.asp?web...ion3&nav=start.

Last time I checked the main guy was Alan Emrich.

[Warm Beer]

Last time I checked the main guy was Alan Emrich.

And you'd be correct, as a matter of fact, Mr Emrich recently dropped some info on the economic model for Moo3... and answered questions and clairified some things, as opposed to something like "Here's some info. Later, Dudes."

The board is neat, due to the info on it... but the interface is not as user friendly as Alpolyton.

[ajbera]

Who can I speak to about designing a nice poll interface? I have a question for the Alt. Civs forum, and a concomitant poll would be peachy-keen. Any advice would be welcome.

Thanks.

[Zealot]

Originally posted by technophile


Go to the game site, http://moo3.quicksilver.com, go to the discussion boards (you might have to register), and cick on "Chat" at the top-left of the screen. See if this link takes you there: http://www.delphi.com/n/main.asp?web...ion3&nav=start.

Last time I checked the main guy was Alan Emrich.

Man, I talked to THE Alan Emrich! Cool!!

Thanks, man! Very much!

Too bad I didn't make it to sid meier's golf presentation...

[Urban Ranger]

The difference between MoO 3 and Civ 3 is while Sid is bordering on being a legendary game designer, none of the people on the Quicksilver team has a positive track record.

Another thing is I certainly hope the computer players in MoO 3 are going to cheat less than their MoO 2 counterparts, which are the worst cheaters I have ever seen.

[Grumbold]

Civ2 is hardly a glowing example of a game where the AI plays by the rules.

I'm amazed you took the time to research the CV's of the whole Quicksilver team. Personally I've been very impressed with all the articles Alan Emrich has written in the last two years. Whether he has been part of a successful games team in the past or not (I thought he had..) his approach to design and development of a strategy game seems rock solid.

[Urban Ranger]

Not really, it's just that none of their names rings a bell

Game design in theory and in practice are very different. Writing articles is one thing, actually developing a good game is quite another. There are a lot of snags a theorist won't know until he rolls up his sleeves.

I have been working on a game in the past five years in my spare time, on and off. We (some friends and I) had worked on a couple of RPG's and a couple of boardgames. It's not easy to get a clean and elegant system that works. It's far too easy to add unnecessary details that only bogs down the game.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
It's far too easy to add unnecessary details that only bogs down the game.

I quit on my game when I realized that the rules to determine the hunger level of your character were over fifteen pages long. Pleh.