What needs to be done to save MOO3

[McThrustin]

After completing 3 games (More than 3 hours each) I have come to the conclusion that Moo3 needs a few things changed to round the game out a bit more. Aside from taking forever, there are some serious balance issues that need to be addressed, such as:

1. The X's. Getting all the Antaran X's is a near impossible strategy if you are trying to win. I myself have never found one, and from what I have seen only 2 or 3 seem to ever be found by any players on extremely long games. Antaran X's need to be easier to find, or at least more information needs to be posted on how to find them more easily.

2. Guardians & Antarans. Guardians are *expletive* impossible to kill without a enormous armada of missile dreadnaughts, and even then they kill most of your ships....and don't even get me started about the Antarans. Guardians need to be slightly easier to kill so you can get on with the game sooner.(Question, what is the point of killing guardians? Do their systems contain special techs or antaran X's? If anyone knows holler back)

3. Missiles. With a supposedly balanced rock-paper-scissors combat model, Missiles suspiciously seem to win 90% of the time. Any army composed of large groups of missile ships will mop the floor with any fleet not equipped with missiles, no matter how much point defense they have. This makes taking home enemy homeworlds nearly impossible without 5 armadas of ships because homeworlds are almost exclusively defended with missiles. Missiles need to be toned down, so people will actually have a reason to use other ship types like short range and long range.

4. AI. I know you've heard it. But I'm saying it again. The AI is lame and rarely attacks. The AI diplomacy makes no sense. (The Trilarian ambassador says, humbly pleading "I just called to say I hate you, we are now at war" beggingly. Or something like that) There are no good references to tell YOU how to properly communicate with other races and in what tone.

5. Game Length. They need to make the game faster. Ships should get to new planets faster, research should happen faser, and especially CONSTRUCTION should happen faster. Games take way too long even on small galaxies with 1 opponent. Even if they don't want to change it they should offer a 'lightning' game setting which makes production faster on planets, and finding the X's a bit easier for those of us without 5 hours of free time to waste on a game.

6. Victory. Any other victory except the Orion Senate is basically impossible to achieve. Conquering all the other civilizations means an 1000 or so turn game because the pace is so slow, and combat so one-sided.
As I said before, getting all 5 x's is also about 500 turns. (Or more, I haven't even found one, with 3 or so Armadas looking). And if you start outside the senate your basically screwed unless you can ween your way in there somehow. The only race that stands half a chance is the Ikthul and they don't even find the X's very well.

So basically, if they could fix these things in a coming patch, they might be able to change the horrible reviews they are getting, and make the game half worth the price I bought it for

[egervari]

7. We need a way to quickly assign ships to be built at each planet. It should only take 1 click from the planet's tab, not 3.

8. In the planet's listing, there is option to only view 'green' worlds or all of them. Why not allow us to select

a) green (setting 1)
b) green + yellow (setting 2)
c) all of them (setting 3)

They could make this a slider or something.

9. fix the problem with building scouts and troop ships. It's just annoying.

10. Do a 'real' usability study and get rid of any unneccesary clicks. Also make the most frequently used screens accessible at the top level rather than being buried within the game. This is just moronic of the UI designers.

[egervari]

11. QuickSilver: There is a thing called a right mouse button and believe it or not, we know how to use it. Make context popup boxes like in windows for common things. For instance

a) If you go to the planet's tab, you should be able to right click on any planet and have the orders come up (like send colony, send outpost, etc.). When you click the tab at the button and then move your mouse up and down for all the planet's you'd like to colonize, the player is a wasting a lot of time and hand movements to issue such simple orders.

b) if you want to remove an item in the queue, you should be able to right-click the item and go 'remove item' rather than the following:
i) clicking the military icon
ii) selecting the item
iii) clicking the 'scrap item' button (which should have read 'remove item' by the way).

I'm sure people can come up with many other uses for right-clicking. Quicksilver really had the worst usability analysts in the world. Even I could have helped this team out. Just look at windows!!

[Zanman]

11. I wouldn't mind a reminder when I have not moved a scout ship. Sometimes I forget that not all my ships have moved and waste a turn.

12. It would be great to sense more control over research. At present allocating 100 percent of research points to a specific school forces the game to focus on that school. I think the research tree is clever, but I don't FEEL I have control over what I am doing.

13. Allow me to micromanage if I want to. I should be allowed to disable Viceroys if I want to. Some people LIKE micromanagement so give me that option (I would also like sto save the payroll).

[WhiteCrow]

14. the game needs better sitrep screen.

- more news filter, especially 'show military news' for military queue items and 'show economic news' for the other queue/DEA items.

- proper priority assignment. Is there any reason that 'tech foo is ready to be used' is usually yellow news and 'protesting of tech foo...' is red news? and I don't see migration news is worth for yellow file.

15. better in-game documentation

16. better shortcut key map. I hate '-' and '=' key for zoom in/out

[egervari]

I never understood why it had to put a big box around each one. Why not put them all within a single coloured box instead and just use blank space to seperate them? That would save screen space and make them easier to comprehend I think.

[PaulNAdhe]

15. I was stunned when they announced Refit had bit the dust. This is unexcusable, I don't know what the reason for it was, but it totally blows.

It seems like the purpose of the Delay Box in the Fleet screen was for refitting purposes. Why oh why can't they put that back in?

If they took out Refit for MP purposes, then I'm doubly p*ssed.

[vmxa1]

I don't know why it was removed, likely time and money.
If it had anything to due with MP, that seems crazy. MP players could adopt rules to get around any of those issues.

[Corentor]

Originally posted by egervari
7. We need a way to quickly assign ships to be built at each planet. It should only take 1 click from the planet's tab, not 3.

Thats not what we need. What we need is a macro queue which allows us to tell the empire what ships need to be built and then the Viceroy AI decides to take on a contract depending on its industrial capcity.

[The Templar]

MoO3 is severely broken, but:

Originally posted by McThrustin
1. The X's. Getting all the Antaran X's is a near impossible strategy if you are trying to win. I myself have never found one, and from what I have seen only 2 or 3 seem to ever be found by any players on extremely long games. Antaran X's need to be easier to find, or at least more information needs to be posted on how to find them more easily.

I've found a couple, but this method of victory is both tedious AND I have no real sense that I'm accomplishing much. Click 'send ships' and wait. Better yet, design a bunch of big ships with research labs, empty out the reserves then click send armada. No thrill.

Originally posted by McThrustin
2. Guardians & Antarans. Guardians are *expletive* impossible to kill without a enormous armada of missile dreadnaughts, and even then they kill most of your ships....and don't even get me started about the Antarans. Guardians need to be slightly easier to kill so you can get on with the game sooner.(Question, what is the point of killing guardians? Do their systems contain special techs or antaran X's? If anyone knows holler back)

I disagree, this is too easy. The key? Continuous Graviton/Neutron or dual phaser pod fighters. Sit back and watch the swarm destroy the guardian.

Originally posted by McThrustin
3. Missiles. With a supposedly balanced rock-paper-scissors combat model, Missiles suspiciously seem to win 90% of the time. Any army composed of large groups of missile ships will mop the floor with any fleet not equipped with missiles, no matter how much point defense they have. This makes taking home enemy homeworlds nearly impossible without 5 armadas of ships because homeworlds are almost exclusively defended with missiles. Missiles need to be toned down, so people will actually have a reason to use other ship types like short range and long range.

That is the point-defense (PD) bug. Basically, kiss your ass goodby if you see alot of missiles headed your way.

Originally posted by McThrustin
4. AI. I know you've heard it. But I'm saying it again. The AI is lame and rarely attacks. The AI diplomacy makes no sense. (The Trilarian ambassador says, humbly pleading "I just called to say I hate you, we are now at war" beggingly. Or something like that) There are no good references to tell YOU how to properly communicate with other races and in what tone.

But their aliens! Don't you see? Their reactions should be unintelligible. If we take Heidegger seriously ...
Well, I'm sure that's what QS would say. Actually this little 'feature' has killed any desire for me to play anymore. When down to one system, the AI should really take that peace deal ...

Originally posted by McThrustin
So basically, if they could fix these things in a coming patch, they might be able to change the horrible reviews they are getting, and make the game half worth the price I bought it for

I hope they do, but I have the feeling that I'll be too busying playing GalCiv to care IF that patch ever shows up.

[vmxa1]

It is one to not make peace, but to never even protest as I blow up planet after planet and no war.

[Grumbold]

1. X's are pretty easy to get once you can build super dreadnoughts and up. Packs or armadas led by recon ships packed with labs always seem to find one, and you can send as many expeditions as you like simultaneously.

2. Guardians become comfortably killable at about the same point on the tech tree, maybe a little higher. A single balanced armada of leviathans probably won't even get scratched by one. Fighters and LR beamers can take down a guardian easier than missiles imho as long as they have enough recon to spot the beast at a distance. Guarded systems usually contain nice planets and have about a 25% chance of an X.

3. Missiles are balanced unless you hit the PD bug. There are posted work arounds but only a patch is going to correct this for certain.

4. Again, being patched. The diplomacy communications are also being tweaked by modmakers in the meantime to make it more obvious what is annoying/pleasing the other race.

5. I guess this is a question of personal preference. I like it the way it is, but choosing many, short star lanes should make games a bit faster. You'd need a serious mod to balance everything if you chopped all times in half.

6. You can get an X win before turn 300 if you focus on it. An expedition with no lab ships is almost pointless.

QS are going to patch and you can certainly expect improvements to diplomacy, the manual, the AI passiveness and the PD hiccup. I'm not sure you'll see much on making the game faster since its all balanced to be this sort of speed.

You have to really be aggressive as an outsider race if you want to stop a Senate win. I think that actually makes it challenging at the moment. Once the AI aggressiveness ramps up I'll expect to see posts claiming its nigh on impossible to win as an outsider if the Senate win is active.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by PaulNAdhe
15. I was stunned when they announced Refit had bit the dust. This is unexcusable, I don't know what the reason for it was, but it totally blows.

It seems like the purpose of the Delay Box in the Fleet screen was for refitting purposes. Why oh why can't they put that back in?

If they took out Refit for MP purposes, then I'm doubly p*ssed.

There was huge discussion on the IG forums about it during development. Essentially it boils down to clicking to refit your main battle fleet of 20 doomstars is kind of workable. Refitting 100 LR dreadnoughts, 80 carrier dreadnoughts, 50 PD dreadnoughts, 40 recon dreadnoughts etc every 10 turns is just inviting click tedium.

The delay box is used when you disband a TF.

[egervari]

Why not just include a button that says, "refit all ships" at the empire tab. If you don't have the resources to do them all, the computer should pick the ones that bring the most benefit.

Also, this is a minor thing, but the map shouldn't scroll up if you hit the edge where the turn button is (since it's so sensitive). I find myself constantly rescrolling the screen and that's kind of dumb.

I also think colonizing planets at the survey level could be easier (like right-clicking the planet and going 'colonize here') instead of switching between task force and survery.. that's pretty gay. I know you can do it other ways, but it's easier to make a habit of looking at the new system when you discover it rather then scrolling through all the planets under the planet's tab. You could also let the AI handle it entirely, but I don't like how it chooses planets sometimes and you have to do *something* to pass the time, but I won't go there.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by McThrustin
After completing 3 games (More than 3 hours each) I have come to the conclusion that Moo3 needs a few things changed to round the game out a bit more.

5. Game Length. They need to make the game faster.

You're finishing games in three hours... and you want the game to go faster...

[Garth Vader]

Originally posted by Corentor


Thats not what we need. What we need is a macro queue which allows us to tell the empire what ships need to be built and then the Viceroy AI decides to take on a contract depending on its industrial capcity.

That is a great idea.

[Garth Vader]

Originally posted by egervari
8. In the planet's listing, there is option to only view 'green' worlds or all of them. Why not allow us to select

a) green (setting 1)
b) green + yellow (setting 2)
c) all of them (setting 3)

They could make this a slider or something.

You can sort by zone which should amount to almost what you are asking for. So you get all sweetspot at the top, then green1, then green2, etc.

[PaulNAdhe]

...snip...Also, this is a minor thing, but the map shouldn't scroll up if you hit the edge where the turn button is (since it's so sensitive). I find myself constantly rescrolling the screen and that's kind of dumb...snip...

There is a setting on the Options menu that disables this scrolling. I've never tried it, I don't know how you'd move the map around.