This game makes me feel stupid

Wasted · March 6, 2003, 01:59

Am I missing something in this game? I was a big fan of Moo2, and strategy games in general and I have never felt so lost and confused as I have the last couple of days trying to work out this game.

Navigating through the different screens leaves me completely lost, It took me ages to work out my ships I built hid themselves in reserve until I actually told them to go forth and be useful by assigning them to a task force. When I do finally find the screens I need, the computer changed all the settings I make anyway, research levels, my budget...I can see that you can turn off the planet AI but everywhere else it still seems to fiddle with whatever I set...aren't I good enough to decide for my empire what priorities should be set where?

I seem to be researching things galore but I still have nothing to build in my planetary build queue. I've been told that my hydroponic domes are available for use, but I have no idea where to build them?

I have actually in my desperation tried to struggle through the manual. Normally i like to use the manual as a guide while playing the game to clear things up as I approach them...but playing moo3 I feel like I have no anchor points at all to start from...nothing is intuitive at all, and the manual doesn't seem to be helping...descriptions of the different screens only, no how to start section or anything that describes the principles behind the various game features.

I feel like I am fighting with the game, not playing it....I'm hoping there is a good game hidden in here somewhere....

vmxa1 · March 6, 2003, 03:35

That sounds about the norm to me. In case you have not figured it out, the items that are enhancements to any DEA are only built by the vicory. There is a mod to let you see them and queue them up, but otherwise Soil/Farm/AF, you name can only be build by the AI.

Killazer · March 6, 2003, 04:07

The game may be complex or whatever but overall it feels put together by amateurs. Luckily it is moddable enough so that it can be made into at least a half decent game if fans care to do so.

Daz · March 6, 2003, 04:37

Yep. Been there, tried that!

Tried to build the hydroponic farm... couldn't do it. Now that I know that it cannot be done- i'll live with it. It would be nice to learn that kind of thing from the manual.

I will try to master this game. But I can understand a lot of people are fed up with it. The manual is incoplete. SOmeone who picks the game up in a store and starts playing, without being a member of our forum community, will have absolutely no clue on how to play this game!!!

MarkG · March 6, 2003, 07:06

you should consider the process of making the ai do what you want to as part of the game

all emperors had to give orders to stupid people too to get things done and deal with their idiocies

CenturionV · March 6, 2003, 07:09

theres a more simple cure just wait for this galactic civilization game i got an add for with MOO3 to come out it look decent (unlike some games i could mention.....

)

Daz · March 6, 2003, 07:54

Sorry Mark, but if you have to create the AI then you:

Spend 5 hours on your first 5 turns and after that
spend 5 hours clicking and watching what happened....

Nevertheless, I still think (hope) that MOO3 is more than just creating an AI and letting it run by itself.

....but the Manual alone still sucks.... agree?

MarkG · March 6, 2003, 08:39

Quote:

Originally posted by Daz
Spend 5 hours on your first 5 turns and after that
spend 5 hours clicking and watching what happened....

so far i havent experienced this. it's been more like a "small changes/tests every now and then" thing.
then again i'm still in my first 150 turns...

Quote:

....but the Manual alone still sucks.... agree?

i skipped reading the manual

i managed to force myself to not turn off immediately the master notes though, which turned out for the best

anyway, so far it hasnt been failure for me. i came to work 40 minutes late due to an early-morning-moo3-experience

Harry Seldon · March 6, 2003, 09:40

I agree. Controlling the AI is part of the challenge. I made a mistake by creating development plans that didn't specifically include farming. Around turn seventy-five, all my colonies were starving. I was enraged; how could the AI be so stupid! Then I started looking at my planets and sure enough, the AI had been following my plans almost to the letter. I had figured that it would at least build enough bioharvest deas to feed the local population, and there were smatterings of them across my empire. But several of my plans called for mining and industry and it almost looked like each planet was competing to be my number one producer. Oops.

lockstep · March 6, 2003, 15:56

Quote:

Originally posted by Daz
Tried to build the hydroponic farm... couldn't do it. Now that I know that it cannot be done- i'll live with it. It would be nice to learn that kind of thing from the manual.

Yep ... or to learn about pirating, huge foot of government or the way DEA's actually work ...

I'm eagerly awaiting the revised manual. And I hope 'revised' also means 'significantly expanded' and 'properly indexed'.

Vince278 · March 7, 2003, 01:22

Quote:

Originally posted by MarkG
i skipped reading the manual

i managed to force myself to not turn off immediately the master notes though, which turned out for the best

I pretty much did the same thing. I skipped the manual and dove right in but I allowed the master notes to keep popping up in the first game and they were a big help. I switched them off after the first game.

velkoris · March 7, 2003, 02:07

I never really got annoyed at the AI fiddling, mainly because I had no idea what I wanted it to do in the first place. This attitude seems to have improved my enjoyment of the game greatly 8)

I rebelled agains the viceroy at one point and manually zoned some planets, but they ended up doing very badly so I have left the viceroy in charge until I work out what the differences between terrain types actually do ( mountains = mines, check, flat ones are plains I assume, what are the mesa like ones ? Did I miss a section of the manual ? ), mainly I need to work out things like - does a mine on a mountain on an average mineral planet equal a mine on a plain on a very rich mineral planet - this info seems to be lacking, in that you get a DEA productivity figure ( e.g. this DEA gives 10 minerals ) but this number seems to be based on terrain type, planet type, gravity, race, goverment, corruption, starting picks, population and I can't pull a simple value out for comparison.

For that matter why do Ithkul green worlds all have hostile or hardscrabble bio ? Ithkul enjoy the challenge of harsh living conditons ? I would think this except that my ground troops usually die from the atmosphere when I invade other planets, which makes their combat advantages rather less useful.

I like the space battles, I think they look much better zoomed in, but it is very hard to keep track of everything even with fights as small as a single cruiser against some scouts so I usually keep it zoomed out some.

My biggest aggravation though is research speed ! I can live without 50 spam messages a turn about research that my scientists think might be about to become something they are looking at soon !

That though is relatively easy to ignore ( although it does sometimes put important stuff under it so i have to scroll to find it ), what really irks me is the result on my ships. I spend a while designing a new great ship and unless I immediately jettison the build queue my ship is obsolete before I even START building it.

The tech development speed mod was invaluable for helping me with this, now my ships are simply obsolete before they get to their first target rather than being obsolete from the moment I reach for the shipyard tab 8)

This is one good side of deployment points anyway, if you didn't have them a taskforce would be like 20 generations out of date before it got to it's target !

lockstep · March 7, 2003, 12:17

Quote:

Originally posted by velkoris
My biggest aggravation though is research speed ! I can live without 50 spam messages a turn about research that my scientists think might be about to become something they are looking at soon !

That though is relatively easy to ignore ( although it does sometimes put important stuff under it so i have to scroll to find it )

Try this mod: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=79535

N4M8- · March 7, 2003, 12:43

Quote:

That though is relatively easy to ignore ( although it does sometimes put important stuff under it so i have to scroll to find it ), what really irks me is the result on my ships. I spend a while designing a new great ship and unless I immediately jettison the build queue my ship is obsolete before I even START building it.

F-15s entered service in what year? 1974?

Given the time it took to design them, were they built with technology that was current?

29 years later are they still in service?

So far as I know, the B-52 is still in service. (Join the Air Force and fly the plane your grandfather flew!)

Admittedly those planes can be upgraded and you can't upgrade ships in MoO 3, but in real life by the time an upgrade is developed and deployed is it an example of modern technology?

So long as the machine players can't instantaneously churn out ships with the most current tech at its disposal I don't have a problem with the best current technology I have taking a bit of time to see production.

Vince278 · March 8, 2003, 00:40

Yep. That old M16 rifle I used from 1980-2000 has been around since the 60's.

Trystan · March 8, 2003, 08:23

There really isn't tweaks you need to do in the game. Set up your Dev Plans then leave them alone. Leave your planets alone. You might make a mistake or 2 at the start, but once you correct it, there's nothing to do about it anymore. After the initial fix, just click turns and play with your ships. Anything else that you could do would be micromanaging and the game really wasn't set up for that. The details tend to be wrong or too spread out to be of much use for a quick turn.

Vince278 · March 8, 2003, 17:18

I might try that but its hard to resist the temptation to correct the AI's mistakes.