Moo3's Death by a Thousand Cuts

RolandtheMad · December 20, 2002, 18:47

I hereby name this the most viewed and replied to Apolyton Moo thread.

Moo3's death by a thousand cuts:

Ship refitting & upgrading

(and subsequently experienced crews)
Bombs
Ability to choose empire color
Ability to rename systems
Ability to capture ships
Colonizable Moons
No choosing ship apperance
Old Style star maps
Warp Interdictors
Starlane upgrading/degrading
No Astroid Belts converted to Planets
Mine fields
Deep space engagements
Inflation
Central New Orion Bank
Pegged vs Floating Currency
Several social policy sliders
Outpost functionality
Non-Mercinary Leaders
Planetary Governers
Mercinary Captains & Admirals
Having more than four leaders
Massive TFs
Reinforcements

Secure Borders?
Nomadic Entry?
"The Speech" functionality?

vmxa1 · December 20, 2002, 19:00

I am only upset by the refit one.

Tolver · December 20, 2002, 20:00

So when I buy MOO3, if I hate it so much that I snap the CD in two, where can I send the disk pieces to make the greatest impact?

Bane99 · December 20, 2002, 20:18

Quote:

Ship refitting & upgrading
No choosing ship apperance

These two bother me the most. All the little cuts add up though.

dulahan · December 20, 2002, 20:41

Counter intel isn't cut... I could even swear the BTs said this was true. If your spies aren't in enemy territory, they are engaging in counter intel.

Kc7mxo · December 20, 2002, 21:22

Word is that the Gamespot preview was off in a lot of things. I'm certianly hoping it was.

vishniac · December 20, 2002, 21:44

On IG forums, I was told that they also cut parts of the Economics (no more currency! What else?!?)

They say the longer it takes, the better the game. It seems the opposite: the longer it takes, more cuts they make!

H Tower · December 20, 2002, 22:52

no warp inderdictors? i was looking forward to something like that out of star wars

Harry Seldon · December 20, 2002, 23:20

Without Warp Interdictors, how I'm I supposed to annihilate that large, weak fleet that keeps blockading my systems or disrupting my trade?!? How can I deal vengence to the infidels who pounded me early in the game if they keep running away?

vmxa1 · December 20, 2002, 23:22

I will miss Warp Inderdictors if they are gone.

Shnozwangler · December 20, 2002, 23:28

No warp interdiction in star stystems either?!

Warp interdiction in system (in moo2) allowed me to build an effective and massive fleet that could be deployed immediately to any system that the enemy was running the warp interdicition gauntlet trying to get at. WARP INTERDICTION IS AMOST A MUST FOR THOSE WHO PLAY A DEFENSIVE STANCE AND CONCENTRATE ON ECONOMIC/SCIENTIFIC SUPERIORITY - HAVING A UP TO DATE AND EFFICIENT SINGLE BUT LARGE FLEET TO STRATEGICALLY DEPLOY AS NEEDE.

But what am i saying... they canned retrofitting ships and have cut some aspects of the economic model... Perhaps this game is intended to be a slug fest as opposed to winning many different ways.

IMHO

RolandtheMad · December 21, 2002, 00:10

Warp Interdictors - http://www.ina-community.com/forums/...hreadid=244719

See 2nd post. Sevilla = BT

booje · December 21, 2002, 00:11

Ugh... Hmmm...refitting is OUT. Hmmm... I'd LIKE to think this won't make a difference but... Bombs and empire colors out too?

I don't think it's a good idea to take away features the game had before unless they were features people did not like. If I upgrade a program I ADD stuff not take stuff AWAY.

Hmmm...starting to look like it's being "streamlined for the masses"....

Arnelos · December 21, 2002, 01:37

Quote:

Originally posted by vishniac
They say the longer it takes, the better the game. It seems the opposite: the longer it takes, more cuts they make!

I concur with this assessment...

GhengisFarb™ · December 21, 2002, 01:41

Quote:

Originally posted by booje
I don't think it's a good idea to take away features the game had before unless they were features people did not like. If I upgrade a program I ADD stuff not take stuff AWAY.

EXACTLY. Its like Civ3 with Firaxis. Features were taken out because Firaxis programmers didn't know how to program them.

kalbear · December 21, 2002, 01:42

I'm happy that they took some of the things out of Moo2. For instance, the building system was dumb; putting sliders back in is an excellent idea. If refitting gets lost in favor of a more robust tactical combat model and more interesting espionage, I'm all for it.

Really, how much 'fun' was refitting? Was it all that important? I personally didn't think so and I doubt I'll miss the feature.

Furthermore, warp interdictors are actually kind of useless in this model, methinks. Interdictors were needed because anyone could attack anywhere in your empire without much warning once the game got to that point. With chokepoints and starlanes, you can 100% predict exactly where an opponent can attack, and can muster your defenses to that spot.

Kloreep · December 21, 2002, 01:59

I can live with most of those cuts (especially since a lot of them, like empire color, are superficial). But I'll definitely miss refitting.

Having obselete forces running around will not be fun, and scrapping them sounds like a pretty raw deal (though if leaders & crew experiance can be transferred in some way, it won't be nearly as bad).

I guess our only hope is that they'll add it in a patch.

Saber Cherry · December 21, 2002, 02:03

Bombs
Ability to choose empire color
Ability to capture ships
No choosing ship apperance

Those all bother me, at first glance. Bombs probably have the greatest impact on play mechanics. But really... in the future bombs are pretty unlikely. Why make a bomb that drops slowly, using precisely calculated trajectories, from within the gravity well, etc etc. when you could double the mass (for 'engines') and allow it to intelligently guide itself to a target regardless of its initial velocity, from a great distance, quickly?

Empire color - that's so trivial to code I have NO IDEA why they might cut it. A bomb is just a slow, short-range missile that only targets planets (no extra coding), so it is a special case of something already in the game, but it does require additional AI, tech, graphics, animations, etc. Empire color - no excuse, unless there is some link to a gameplay issue, like races being hard coded to colors.

Ship capture - would be nice, but you'd have to add "capture task forces" and so forth... I think they'd need a much more complex combat model to allow it, and in general, the only advantage is gaining technology, which you should get anyway by taking the planet the ship guarded.

Ship appearance - I hear the appearance does not matter since ships are specks in combat. But really, that is a problem in and of itself. The ships should be disproportionately magnified, like 3-d relief maps of Earth, which are normally 1:100 xy scale to z scale.

The others don't much matter to me, except counterspies, which are in.

H Tower · December 21, 2002, 02:46

Mobilzation centers instead of warp interdictors?

two completely different things IMO

vmxa1 · December 21, 2002, 03:02

One of the thing that refitting did, besides allow you to improve your ship, is to make it worth while to get a new tech. If I can not implement a new engine or armor or whatever because I will need to make new ships from scratch it will deminish its excitment.
In Moo1 I often could not make a new design as I could not afford to lose the existing ships. In Moo2, that was not a problem.
As some one mention SEiv solved this, by letting me have as many designs as I want and I could upgrade at my lesuire. I may have 4 tyoes of battleships, until I can get them all upgraded and drop the obsolete ones.

Mellian · December 21, 2002, 03:19

Refitting cut, and some of the superficial cuts, are annoying...

but for some reason, cutting off the ability to Capture ships or choose how your ships look like erks me the most...

If you can't choose ship styles, then i guess one can't modify how they look like with a mod?

-Mellian

H Tower · December 21, 2002, 03:30

hopefully that's not true, i think (i hope)what they mean is that all doomstars look the same for each race and haven't been slightly altered for each race. either way its still kind of a pity

RolandtheMad · December 21, 2002, 03:32

Each specie has it's own set of ships, but each race does not. So Humans, Evon, & Psilon use the same but Raas are different (but not different from Grendarl) and Ithkul are different. I think.

moomin · December 21, 2002, 08:28

I too, find it diffucult to imagine how these mob centers replace warp interdictors. If they allow you to intantly build your entire reserve at any spot at any time, then that serious game breakage. If not, they're useless against enemy fleet actions of any size.

I truely hope it won't end up like RTFS - an utterly unplayable superstack undetectable colony genocide bombing race.

pmaura · December 21, 2002, 12:54

Ability to rename systems
Ability to choose empire color

Why these are not in the game is beyond me its the simple things that make a game truly classic.

What really bugs me is that if I understand this right every ones ships look the same? Is that what this means by not being able to change ship appearnce. Christ that could almost be a game killer for me if the humans ships look like the klackons.

Yolky · December 21, 2002, 15:35

Quote:

Originally posted by RolandtheMad

Lets remember the old IFP cut. This is one thing I`m really glad was cut. All the time fanboys (I hate that term, but yes) argued in favor of IFPs when anyone that really thought about it could clearly see how IFPs would not bring anything good to the game (like FUN).

Yes I agree that IFP is gone.

Ship refitting & upgrading

(and subsequently experienced crews)

How is this going to work with the exp. crew? I wish they said. I liked upgrading, yes its anoying to do so also. Just think of it as Moo1, at least we don't have to loose a class of ship. In Moo1 you could only have 6 classes of ships at once. Not to much of a biggy loss.

Bombs

Bombs are always a part of Moo, unless they are using missles wich would be more realistic. Have to wait and see

Ability to rename systems

A big pisser to me. I love to rename my star systems. More of a personal touch. Can't understand for the life of me why they did it.

Ability to choose empire color

Again personal touch. Also different races are different colours makes each game like new. Not always the same. A minor nuscance.

Ability to capture ships

I could never capture a ship cause I sux at it, but the computer always pissed me off when they did it, and I couldn't. I will miss that.

Colonizable Moons

I am disapointed that it is gone but ohwell, a moon is just a small planet or tiny planet and there are lots of planets in the game.

No choosing ship apperance

Big disapointement. Again personal touch to the game and Moo1 had a great selection of nice looking ships. Moo2 was iffy.

Old Style star maps

Not shure what you mean.

Warp Interdictors

Didn't know about them.

Starlane upgrading/degrading

same as about.

No Astroid Belts converted to Planets

This will be missed but lets move on.

Ship limit (?)

? also

Davor

RolandtheMad · December 21, 2002, 15:47

Old style star maps were maps with starry backgrounds.

Warp Interdictors were a tech in Moo2 to slow down approaching enemy ships.

Starlane upgraders/degraders were planned for Moo3 but didn`t make the cut apparently. They were supposed to make starlane travel quicker or slower.

I`ve been reading about some vauge ship limit - this I don`t care about as long as it isn`t too much of a limit. As long as I never run into it. :smile:

vmxa1 · December 21, 2002, 15:59

Maybe we will have lane blockers ala Ascendancy.

Harry Seldon · December 21, 2002, 16:54

They have to give us something. The militia buildup mechanism sounds expensive. A lot of times I was running on a razor blade as far as finances go, I'd hate to have a depression/bankruptcy on my hands or have my enormous fleet that can't get there in time disband because I can't pay them due to the temporary defenses.

Arnelos · December 21, 2002, 20:25

Quote:

Originally posted by vmxa1
Maybe we will have lane blockers ala Ascendancy.

Wow, someone else has actually played this game