Meet the newest MoO member!

[Gilgamensch]

Actually, where you mention this:

I liked to use the SC for blowing up toxic planets to convert them to better onces...........

Also, you are able to make out of a tiny a huge one

[Lazerus]

Well after 3 months or so of looking around in the high street and nobody has MoO2 i've just went and downloaded it since people keep mentioning it along with my beloved smac

After 5 hours of playing with no manual, but still on easy while i learn, ive managed to wipe out 1 race, reduce another to 2 planets paying me 10% tribute and have an alliance with a third (2 races yet undiscovered). I control around 1/4 - 1/3 the systems and my core planets are really getting pumped up with 100 industry and have finished nearly every building available.


So the point of all this: could somebody give me a basic strategy for either the saakra or the cybernetic people (forgetting the names, it was 3am when i was playing it last night ). Also is there anything in the way of supply crawlers to boost production? what techs should i bline for? and i've got that orion planet near mine but im reluctant to have my main fleet wiped out without knowing how strong this guardian is?


Thanks for any help

[Lazerus]

How do i scrap buildings on all colonies ? ive started building core waste dumps at my high industry bases and rather then having to manually disband each and every atmosphere processor and the other pollution reducing building

[Iasius]

If I remember correctly (and I'm pretty sure I do ), the game does that automatically.

[Lazerus]

yes by the looks of it the old buildings become outdated and are replaced, unsure if im getting cash from this process though.
Completed the game by using my death stars (had a planet with 600 industry ) to just wipe out the enemies planets. Does anybody ever bother to travel about and collect infantry to use in an attack to capture planets ? nearly all the time in that game i just blitzed the planets to ruin and then moved on
Also it seems you can only win by military conquest ?

onward to normal difficulty !

[Iasius]

Hehe, I think I had a planet once with 1800 industry.
You'll get there.
And don't be put off by impossible, the name is not really accurate although it is difficult to win without custom races.
BTW Do you use version 1.2 or 1.31 (last one is harder, but IMO more fun).

[vmxa1]

Yes the disbanded structure is automatic and is applied to the new building.
You did not mention if you have patched up to 1.3.1 or not. This will be the best version. It will tone down some of the extortion from the AI, not eliminated it though.
If you play a race with telepathic you do not need troops to take over the planet, only defeat teh defenses. Otherwise you can bomb it to oblivion or land troops to take control. Later you could use the Stellar converter to destroy the planet altogether.
I use all of these methods.
Several thread aound that have detailed runs if you want to see how others play some settings.
These are mostly at the impossible level, but are stil applicable to most levels.
The most fun is to create you our custom race and it is the strongest for a given style.
Map size and tech start all are factors in those choices.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Lazerus
So the point of all this: could somebody give me a basic strategy for either the saakra or the cybernetic people (forgetting the names, it was 3am when i was playing it last night ). Also is there anything in the way of supply crawlers to boost production? what techs should i bline for? and i've got that orion planet near mine but im reluctant to have my main fleet wiped out without knowing how strong this guardian is?


Thanks for any help

The power of the guardian increase at each level.
Saks are a fast breeding race so expand to large planets quickly and drop massive troops on others as they are easily replaced.
Meks get an extra boost to factories and will have more than production than most. They consume some of that production. They have cyber trait and can repair damage each turn.
Lets try this for starters:

Unification- Government type pick, it gives a +50% food and production to any race. This makes any race faster, with production, and more people available to disposal for research. Since not many farmers are required with this government. It has good spy defense. What is bad about this race is it's slow assimilation, which is about 1 enemy per 20 turns.

Creative- Research type pick. It lets an empire research every available tech in any given field. It's great because creative races tend to have good defense and offense. Creative races are slow to start out, and are very hard to use. If creative races aren't used right, it can be easily beat by pros.
If a creative race is left alone for a long time, a creative race can stack up on all the good battle techs, and be ready for the enemy at anytime.

Lithovore- Max pop type pick, it gives more population to help in either tech or production, as they need no food. It's a great pick for fast tech, but Lithovore races are hard to use, since you have fewer picks left to get other boosters.

Aquatic- Max pop type pick, it treats all wet worlds as either TERRAN or GAIA.
You get more pop at wet worlds, and more food production. This pick is best used in organic rich universes.

Tolerant- Max pop type pick, it increases population sizes like subterranean, but only to certain extent. It has no pollution, so you can build fast and expand fast. This pick is best used in mineral rich universe.

Subterranean- Max pop type pick, it increases population sizes by +2x where x is the planet size. It gives more pop to every world, so you have more people to tech with, build with, and farm with.

Democracy- Government type pick it gives +50% more research and income to any race. This race is faster at tech and buys buildings instead of actually building things. It has fastest assimilation race, 1 enemy per 4 turns because of better morale. It has the worst spy defense. A lot of the techs can easily get stolen by enemies. This pick nevertheless makes any race faster in research.

Omniscient- Tactical type pick it gives a leader sight to everywhere in the map. It's a great pick to exploit the nearby natives, artifacts, splinters, and gem deposits, etc. A great pick in countering enemy attacks, or knowing where to attack an enemy.

Warlord- Tactical type pick this pick allows more ships to be produced. It's great for making big fleets while keeping the costs down. It also gives upgrades of all ship crew to regular status from green, with space academies, it makes all crew veteran status. Increases the ship beam defense and offense. Doubles the marines available at barracks for better defense.

Telepathic- Tactical type pick, with a cruiser or bigger ship, this race can mind control undefended enemy colonies. It's great because it gives instant assimilation of enemy colonies. Adds a +10 to all spy activities and +25% diplomacy against AI's.
This pick is not useful until you fight an enemy, and it's hard to find an enemy before t70-90 in a game. It's also another tough pick to use much like creative, and yes, telepathic races can be slow.

Custom races and race pick strategies:

These are good races that are known to work, of course, any race is good as long as the key components are there. The smaller the map, the more home world advantages helps, and the bigger the map, the more race advantages help. Example, in medium ladder, UNI/SUB/AQUA with rich LHW; large home world works out nicely, where as in large map, it is preferable to have the same race with +1 production over rich LHW. Sometimes, having two home world advantages doesn't help that much. Especially if you would use a home world as your main building colony and it has artifacts there, it would be wasted for the time being when you are building ships.

Unification government
Tolerant, +1 production, large
Aquatic, +1 production, +50% growth, rich, large
Aquatic, subterranean, +50% growth or +1 production
Subterranean, +1 food, +1 production, large
Creative, aquatic, large
Aquatic, omniscient, artifacts, rich, large
Aquatic, telepathic, rich, large

Democracy government
Lithovore, rich, large
Aquatic, +1 BC
Creative, aquatic

Regular government
Subterranean, Lithovore, +50% growth, large
Subterranean, aquatic, +100% growth, rich, large
Tolerant, Lithovore
Tolerant, +1 food, +2 production
Aquatic, +100% growth, +2 production, rich, large
Creative, aquatic, +1 production, artifacts, large
Creative, Lithovore, rich
Telepathic, Lithovore, artifacts, large
Telepathic, feudal, aquatic, rich, +50 ship offense, omniscient

[Whoha]

Also, don't forget that telepathic races can use captured ships/star forts immediately(though starbases/battlestations/fortresses don't survive after combat ), and assault shuttles veer off towards capturing other targets once the first craft is under your control. I found this out the hard way that this wasn't the assault shuttle's default behavior playing a non-tele race, had a doom star loaded with 56 assault shuttles all in 1 group, sent em all at a ship thinking they would just use enough to capture the ship, and move on and capture every ship around it, and it just took the first ship and jammed 200 marines into it .

So between this pick, High gravity, and the combat picks, are the best chances to get early anteran tech(and promptly have it stolen by every ai, don't worry though, i've never seen an ai design with a damper field, and in general the ai designs are very poor,though the anteran starfortress gets one and my starforts don't ). Getting a good leader and the other combat techs are probably preferable to wasting picks on combat/HG though(but you might not want to take a penalty to combat for ship capture either though) but the assault shuttle behavior, as well as the ability to use the captured ship in that combat engagement, and all the other benefits telepathic provides makes it very attractive.

Creative is a good pick,get the file that puts it do 6 points though, only the computers tech tree is designed even close to well enough for there to be a serious decision to make(what, fighter bays or reinforced hull? gee, wonder which I should get), though the computers should be better earlier(when its auto-miss currently), and worse later(when its auto-hit even with autofire).
If every pick was the sort of life and death stuff, or even if every pick was useful unlike the bioweapons, then creative would be worth 10.20 if the ai couldn't steal, and you the human player couldn't conquer/trade/demand tech.

Subterranean is good, but more often then not there will be an ai empire that has chosen this, just conquer them.

Aquatic is fairly good, as there is less need of terraforming, and you do not need to get the gaia transform tech.

Cybernetic is great, you need less farmers, so you can put more people on production, and get more production, as well as expand and not worry about food as much. You do eat your own production, but the workers you don't need farming can produce more then a surplus working as the game progresses. Autorepair without wasting a slot on it is awesome and will save ships and orbitals that would otherwise be lost, I don't know if the autorepair unit stacks with this though.

Unification is just a game killer,especially with tolerant or lithovore. at the start of the game you get an unrivaled food bonus, that in turn lets you get a research bonus(more researched) and a production bonus above and beyond the 50% you start with. Late game dictatorships can have 100% morale and some +45% morale leaders, but it will never get to any point where any government should be able to match your fleet, or your colonies(unless of course you don't defend them and started next to a telepathic warlord ). The first small impossible game I won I had Cybernetic,warlord,+2 research,unification,repulsive, and -tax. When i got Evolutionary mutation I picked +10 spying because I didn't know it was worthless, should have gotten +20 ground/boarding combat. I also every other race in my empire, notably the Sarkas who got:

Feudal(no problem for me) -4

pop growth +100%(they were the majority on just about every planet in my empire, and not by design either) +6

food production +1(good bonus that applies for me, they grew food on every planet) +4

-10 spying(didnt apply to me, i start with -billion spying anyway) -3

High gravity(no penalty on HG worlds for them, didnt get the combat bonus though for my marines ) +6

Subterranean(they fit on every planet, and gave more population) +6

Large homeworld(made a nice addition to my collection of planets) +1

repulsive(which i also picked) -6(should be +6 if not for the leader penalty)

uncreative(no problems for me) -4

Tolerant(another reason why they populated every world so fast, tolerant guys treat every world like its terran or gaia for pop growth, on Orion which is gaia, my pop and the sarka pop were even(housing as soon as both colonists arrived) but on every other world, they were the majority). +10.

they got 33 positive picks, and 17 negative picks, both above and beyond what i can get (20 picks and -10 picks) without evolutionary mutation, but im not sure if the ai uses it.

good negative picks are the -50% growth, which cloning and housing eliminate, the money tax since there will be gobs of money later in the game, repulsive(ai can't demand tribute,tech,systems, so the ai is less likely to go to war. the game I won on small impossible, I was repulsive, and the ai didnt delcare war on me when he had 600+ command points in ships and 10 1/4 systems whereas I only had 250 command points in ships and 6 3/4 systems. Though I could have just lucked out, in a larger impossible game I played the ai was much more likely to declare war on me, only the random number exploit saved me(you can influence whether or not the ai decides to send its doom fleet at you if you know how), the ship defense,ship offense, and spying negatives are all fairly painless as well, your tech infrastructure will get raped by enemy spies period, so it doesn't really hurt you, and you generally aren't going to steal anything, his 50 spies are much better then your 50 spies for whatever reason.

Combat is not a good negative pick, as stated, generally hurts ship capture, and you'll want anteran tech if you didn't get orion(I can't on impossible,Ive even missed it on average a couple of times ). Uncreative ends up with there being a chance you will get stuck with fighter bays and bio weapons . Makes for an interesting challenge though. Feudal's science penalty only applies to researchers, so at the point in the game where every planet is max industry, and your only research is from buildings, you will be fine, also a good leader early on will undo this, but thats random chance.



As for ship designs, in 1.31 the max miniaturization for disrupters at 15 space for a heavy/auto fire one makes it the best damage/space gun(even fully miniaturized steller converters don't do as well, and I think the destroying toxic worlds thing is gone from the game in 1.31, it just vapes the colony now ) in the game, of course this is after 4 of the advanced techs, so not in multiplayer. I hear about 100's of lasers on ships, but that must have been an eariler patch where lasers miniatured more, but in 1.31 a fully modded laser is 14 space at the same level where disrupters fully modded are 15.

There is the total offense setup:

Battlescanner:+50% to hit, good for Autofire weapons.

High energy focus: +50% damagee

Hyper-X capacitor:2x damage first turn(won't work after that unless you are doing the phase cloak cheese)

Structural Analizer:2x damage that pierces shielding.

Achilles targeting unit:targets structure only, 3x chance to hit internals. so between 2x and 4x damage with this one.

Rangemaster:range penalty is reduced to 1/3(I don't take this one because disrupters dont suffer a dissipation problem,but for everything else its great)

Time warp facilitatorwhich in 1.31 if both players have, does not change combat at all, ai doesn't use though)2x firepower provided the other player doesn't have them.

phase cloaking(if you want to cheese the ai even more.)
Lets you use the extra turn to charge the capacitors and not get hit, I generally dont bother with this one.

Take your Beam weapons(heavy mount, for range/damage/dissipation reasons its always worth it to go heavy), and each of the above components doubles,triples, or even quadruples their firepower(achilles targetting unit and the case where you damage a ship to 1/2 structure and it core breaches for instance)

the total defense setup:
Displacement device(The ai WILL use these in 1.31 so if it hasn't been researched, do yourself a favor and don't research it, dear god are these things annoying):30% shots miss
Damper field:75% damage block
Energy Absorber: 25% damage blocked and stored.
reflection field: (10/10+beamattack value)% damage block and sent back.
heavy armor:3x struture, prevents armor piercing.
reinforced hull:3x structure

so you get a total 81% damage reduction, AND an additional chance with the reflection field and the displacement device. You are vulnerable to ion cannons(from human players only), but thats about it, and from those you will take very little damage considering 30% of those shots will miss, and of the 70% that hit, 5/6 or at worst 1/2 the time they will be reflected back at the enemy attacker. Also damper fields protect marines against death rays more effectively then shields, as shields get pierced by death rays easily.

or alternatively you could build a shielded design and drop the damper field with:
Hard shields(+3 damage blocked, blocks shield piercing weapons, again I found this out the hard way, as I watched in horror my particle beam battleships were doing zero damage to the klackon class X hard shielded DS's and Titans ).

Capacitor: +70% recharge rate(normally 30% so I don't know if this is .3+.7 for 100% recharge rate or if its .3*1.7 for 51% recharge rate.

Multi-phased shields for +50% shield strength.

and then displacement devices,energy absorbers, reflection fields,etc.

I generally go with:
Achilles targeting,Structural analizer,BattlePods,High energy focus,hyper-X capacitor,Damper Field,Heavy armor,and reinforced hull. and as many disrupters as I can cram into the ship.

And, all of this is for the top of the tech tree, so generally it won't see the light of day in any serious multiplayer game. Early game you want nuclear missile cruisers, Mass drivers aren't so good unless you got the ship offense bonus and researched battlescanners(or dropped one of the premium research/morale buildings in the tech tree for a better targeting computer) because you just will not hit anything otherwise.

[vmxa1]

Whoha I admire your hard work to type all that in.

[Whoha]

Hmm, take that back, Assault shuttles from the same group don't veer off to new groups with telepathic, doh.

[Iasius]

Some comments:
"Rangemaster:range penalty is reduced to 1/3(I don't take this one because disrupters dont suffer a dissipation problem,but for everything else its great)"
I think rangemaster lets you hit far away ships like they were 1/3 as far away, but not concerning dissipation, but to-hit chance.
Ever noticed how you hit ships better right in front of them? Well with this you can do that from far away.
Having said that, I think I have never ever used the thing, battle scanners is way better.

"Capacitor: +70% recharge rate(normally 30% so I don't know if this is .3+.7 for 100% recharge rate or if its .3*1.7 for 51% recharge rate"
Capacitors add 70% to the standard 30% recharge rate of shields for a total 100% recharge. But note that this is still not very good against enveloping weapons because it's 100% recharge for one side of the ships.

I don't really have that much of a problem protecting myself from enemy spies unless I face the darloks. Which I hate btw so they are the race I usually pick to customize. And if I choose a spy+ (usually tele and +10 spies) race, the sakkra are my favourite target. Or any Democracy does fine, too.

I don't know why high-g world is a +6 pick. IMO that you can settle high-g worlds is not that great an advantage until I have gravity generators Anyway and you even get a 50% malus for low-g worlds instead of the usual 25%. The extra hit for my ground troops is something I consider a malus because if enemies can't conquer my worlds they just destroy them, preventing me from recapturing them. Also, I think +1 hit doesn't make a difference in ship-ship combat.
Additionally, just compare this:
High-g world <----------> Aquatic, LHW
High-g world <----------> LHW, RHW, AHW
It's just never worth it. Maybe if it was 3 picks I' try it out sometime, but I usually use low-g anyway.

[Kaptain Ken]

A lot of great advice, glad to see you guys are still hanging around, I was starting to think everyone had gone. Do use v1.31 for sure, its much better, also customize your own race, its half of the fun as is designing your own ships, but above all, have fun. Happy Mooing

[Iasius]

I think I'm going to keep playing moo2 occasionally (or more ) until there are no computers that can run it anymore.
It's one of those games that never die.

[Whoha]

the stellar converter exploit of destroying planets is still in, wierdness, occasionally ill see a message "Colony lost because of stellar converter" and the planet will still be there.


"Ever noticed how you hit ships better right in front of them? Well with this you can do that from far away."

Late game though you have elite crews, super elite crews,the +125 computer since its on all anteran ships and quite easy to get,etc so i've never had a problem with ranged combat, but yea its to-hit bonus not dissipation...

i picked the -20 ranged pick and I was watching my guys miss at point blank range .

For kicks i've tried a high-G/+20 ground combat/warlord/feudal/-tax/-shipcombat(moved to +ship combat with evolutionary mutation).

Heres why I think they put High gravity at 6 picks(asside from them not thoroughly testing everything)
Since low g worlds are relatively few and tend towards poor/ultra poor small/tiny, and high g worlds tend towards large/huge and rich/ultra rich, you can settle them eariler and not suffer the production penalties, and when it comes time to choose between grav beams/grav gens/and tractors you can pretty safely pick tractor beams(on one of my low g research worlds im losing like 50 out of 700 research to the grav penalty), while everyone else is forced to get the grav gens. Also it does make it that much easier to capture antaren ships(but they stayed the hell away from me after i got assault shuttle carriers out :P). and my battleloids have +140 combat and 4 hp, so you generally have to just bomb out the world, no taking infrastructure,population, or tech to help yourself, but still, not all that bad. Also I think the +1 hit does apply to ship combat, I lose 2 guys out of 6 to kill 12 antaren marines and ive got +140 while he has +100. Guess I'll try gifting the sarkas all my ground combat tech and then try to take over a ship.

But, aside from the combat bonus, another race can capture high-g guys and use them to colonize high-g worlds, and high-g/rich worlds aren't all that common either. I guess what i'd do for the pick is bundle large, rich homeworld, high-g, and +20 combat for just+6 picks. and put -10 combat,poor homeworld,low-g together. You would also have to rework ground combat, to maybe hide the troops,etc underground and wait until their troops land to come out. But even with all that, would you pick high gravity?

[Whoha]

Ok, heres how it went

My bonus:120 (and i'm high gravity)
Sarka Bonus:100

I sent 20 marines against 38 marines, and lost 11, to kill all 38 marines and take control of the ship.

Then against the orbital:
First assault shuttle wave:
18 marines vs 80 on the orbital
all 18 die, taking 56 with them

next wave is 32 vs 24
7 of my marines die, all 24 of his die.

the numbers would indicate that 10 of my marines should kill 12 of his, but its more like 10 of mine are killing between 30 and 35 of his.

[vmxa1]

What other factors are not equal if any? Armor, weapons, leaders and any other bonus?
If you have better guns or armor that would make it easier to win.

[Whoha]

I gifted him all my combat tech, only the racial +20 combat bonus and possibly high gravity put me ahead, no combat leader, that would be present in the bonuses listed though.

[vmxa1]

Well that is out of my experiences, I seldom pay much attention to ground combat. I don't enter into it unless I am sure to win.

[Whoha]

This was for ship capture, and really, I don't seriously pick HG, this was an average difficulty game. You would need a lucky anteran strike in just the right place, at just the right time, with just the right rolls from the random number generator to be able to take advantage of HG for anteran tech. too bad lucky doesn't help out there.

[vmxa1]

I do not capture ships any more either, too lazy. It can be fun and of course if you get Antarian ship you may get some tech, but tend ignore it.
Years ago I did a few Kzintki runs or what ever they called it then. It is just a matter of taste.

[Whoha]

Indeed, unless you are using anteran tech as a crutch like I am :P

[Lazerus]

Just completed hard in a matter of a few hours, using the custom race :

unification, tolerant, -10 ground, -0.5bc cash, -10 spying, +1 industry. (It feels very Hiverian Frankychan )

Researching straight for the automated factories, then the research labs and after that biospheres and the robo miners.
Getting industry as high as possible to use as housing to speed up growth then pumping out colony ships to get around 1/4 of the stars. After that continuing to increase industry while have a few all food planets on poor mineral sustain the growth of others. I find i tend to not bother having workers as scientists since with the available techs im researching at 1 every 6 turns anyways and i like to pump out those battleships and titans to hit any AI that refuse to pay my 5 or 10% demand until i own around 2/3 of the stars.

By then i can easily crush the AI, get elected council (defied my own presidency election once for a laugh) or go and conquer orion.

Time to see how impossible "impossible" really is

[Whoha]

Impossible can be quite impossible, I played a small/impossible game where the klackons took out my starting starbase with a spy, and the gnolams rolled in with a couple of ships the next turn that would have bombed me out if I hadn't just quit when I got word that my starbase was gone(prewarp start... and no contact from the klackons that I can remember, so the gnolams probably framed them).

Right now i'm doing a demo/lith/LHW -.5 BC -Growth -ship defense on huge impossible. All the ai except the psilons took the damned +50 ship attk/+50 ship defense, so most of them are worthless to me AND I have to put battlescanners on my ships or they get first shot from the damned initiative crap(not to mention the fact that my ships are missing shots) . Took subterranean at evolutionary mutation since none of the ais had it, gave it to all the ais and they just improved the beam defense/beam offense picks . Psilons have +2 research/+2 industry, very nice. I could have, and should have ditched lithovore at evolutionary mutation(can do that by picking cybernetic since they are mutally exclusive) and picked warlord, telepathic, and something else, or +2 production, cybernetic, warlord.

[vmxa1]

Try this race on small/impossible/normal tech start


Telepathic
Warlord
Trans Dimensional
Omniscient
Rich HW
Feudal
Repulsive

Do NO research and you will have an easy time of it.

[Kaptain Ken]

I don't know that I would go so far as to say that its easy to win small impossible with your race vmxa1, but it is certainly winnable in a relative short time frame when you know what you are doing. I have to try again to beat your time, but work and travel will delay me again.

[vmxa1]

Unlike many posters, I do not hold the believe that it is easy to win at impossible. Some feel you should more less never lose, but I don't always play optimally.
If I could never lose or at least have a couple of tight spots, I would have to stop playing.
I do not see any joy in beating the hapless.
So I did not mean to imply you could not lose, only that it may be a good way to get a win. You would have to understand what the race ia all about. That is why I mention NO research. If you tried to research you would be in trouble soon. You coul dnot out research or produce most races, so you must jump on them ASAP.
Getting a few early Home Worlds, will allow you to out produce them.

[Lazerus]

The AI seems to know exactly when to gang up on you for optimum results, i was just framed and so went to war then another AI comes in and declares war for no reason while a third flank is opened up by those damn silicoids not looking good especially since the AI is copying my scorched earth policy and just b4 i saved and quit was heading straight for my central planets with 6 battleships ......

[Whoha]

No thats alliances most likely. Until you know how to run circles around the ai like some people around here apparently do, i'd suggest just whoring techs around to make the ai like you more(even if its a horrible trade like 2000rp for a 250rp tech),and get naps/research/trade with the goodwill garnered from whoring techs. It works for me.

Doesn't mean you won't be at war with everyone, you will, it just buys you time and bumps up your research and cash for the time being. Also having a large standing fleet, getting orion fast enough(grav beams or emg/mirved/merculites if you can dig up that, its on this board somewhere) can help.

[Iasius]

That is the great diplomacy bonus of creative races, just give them all the useless tech.
If I have a halfway decent race I usually win on impossible (huge/prewarp is what I play almost exclusively). Only problem arises when the silicoid or sakkra or so spot me too early and arrive with their huge fleets before I have any decent defense/tech.
Although those games, especially if it's a close call for 200 turns or more can be the most fun.