Welcome to the Master of Orion (MoO) FAQ. This is version 2.8 of that guide. Thanks to all those who contributed. --pat traynor-- pat@ssih.com Table of Contents: 1 What is MOO? 2 Frequently asked questions 2.A Is there any speech? 2.B How do you move the center of the map? 2.C What differences are there between the difficulty levels? 2.D When does the council meet? 2.E How do I change which ship icons I use? 2.F What affect does power have in designing ships? 2.G How powerful a machine do I need to run it? 2.H What good is the planet button in the combat display? 2.I When bombing enemies, does it make a difference how long the film runs? 2.J How do you transport troops? 2.K Is there a good way to split half of a huge fleet? 2.L How do I turn ships around in midflight? 2.M Could someone please make the combat algorithm more understandable? 2.N Why is the Internal Security percentage changed under 1.2? 2.O Is there a version to play via modem? (no) 2.P Can I build missile bases instead of shields? 2.Q What does "UPGR" mean on the defense slider? 2.P How do I stop my planet from going nova (or survive the plague)? 2.R What determines which new technologies I can research? 2.S What is MOOCE? 3 What bugs are known to exist? 3.A Bugs in 1.0 3.B Bugs in 1.2 3.C Bugs in 1.3 3.A.1 BACKGRND.LBX bug 3.A.2 Diplomat bug 3.A.3 Slow mouse response bug 3.A.4 The Gaia bug 3.A.5 The too many ships bug 3.A.6 The Doc check bug 3.A.7 The colony ship bug 3.A.8 The Orion Terra-forming bug 3.A.9 The base maintenance bug 3.A.10 The 1999 limit on Factories bug 3.B.1 The Maximum Planet Terra-forming bug 3.B.2 The Divide By Zero bug 3.B.3 The Espionage Report bug 3.B.4 The Lockup bug 3.C.1 The Biological Weapon Bug 3.C.2 The Missile Fire Bug 3.C.3 The Combat Transporter Bug 3.C.4 The Star Gate Bug 3.C.5 The Environ Bug 3.C.6 The Sixth Ship Bug 3.C.7 The Treaty Breaking Penalty Bug 3.C.8 The Empty Bribe Bug 3.C.9 The Bogus Nebula ETAs Bug 3.C.10 The Bogus Spy Rate Bug 4 Clever Tricks 4.A Ship turnaround cheat 4.B Intelligence trick 4.C Research Allocation trick 4.D Excess Trade trick 4.E Future ship building trick 4.F Combat Tricks 4.F.1 Park a repulsor today! 4.F.2 Diversionary tactics. 4.F.3 Ship Teleporting trick 4.G Ship Design tricks 4.G.1 No empty slots! 4.G.2 Always have six active designs of ships! 4.G.3 Weapons and specials with different ranges on the same ship. 4.G.4 Save a weapon slot for bombs 4.G.5 Antidote to repulsors: cloaking! 4.H Extended range colonizing 4.I Trading Upward 4.J The Best Defense is a Good Offense 4.K The Best Offense is a Good Defense 4.L Cheats 4.L.1 Cheats by design 4.L.2 Cheats due to bugs 4.M "Filibuster" to evade the Council vote 4.N Kamakazi (rather than scrap) those old ships 4.P The warp dissipator trick. 5 Strategies 5.A Introduction and caveat 5.B Beginner Tips 5.C Strategies for different stages of game 5.C.1 Opening Game 5.C.2 Middle Game 5.C.3 End Game 5.D Strategies for specific races 5.E Strategies against specific races 5.F Strategies for different size galaxies 5.G Warfare 5.G.1 Ship Design 5.G.2 Weapon Choices 5.H Technologies 5.I Diplomacy 6.0 Tables and Formulas 6.1 Technology 6.2 Weapons Comparison Charts 6.3 Ground Combat Odds 6.4 Guardian Stats 6.5 Fleet size necessary to take out Guardian with beam weapons 7 Technology Listing 7.1 Computer 7.2 Construction 7.3 Shields 7.4 Planetology 7.5 Propulsion 7.6 Weapons 8 The Future of Master of Orion 8.1 Upcoming Patches 8.2 Master of Orion Deluxe/Gold/II/Add-on??? ================================================================================ 1. What is MOO? ================================================================================ MOO is a game of interstellar exploration and conquest. At the start of the game, you have just 1 planet, some population, and a few starships. From that meager beginning, you have to explore the galaxy, create industry, colonize other worlds, research technology, conduct diplomacy (when you run into other alien races), deal with disasters, design and build your ever changing fleet of starships, and eventually either get elected Emperor of the galaxy or by military might subdue the other races. If all of this sounds quite complex, it is and that is the appeal of this game. In defining what it is, some words about what it is not are also in order. It is not an arcade or action type game. All aspects of the game are conducted at your leisure and reflexes are not an issue. Also, although it does include ship to ship combat, this aspect of the game is not the primary focus. In fact, it is possible to push an auto button and the game will automatically play out the ship to ship combat. You will normally (but not always) use that button. If a more detailed tactical ship to ship combat game is desired, something like Rules of Engagement 2 might be a better choice. MOO has a lot of replay-ability for a number of reasons. First, you can play any of 10 different races. Each race has its weak and strong points. For example, the Alkari race is a bird like species. They are excellent pilots and they are also good at researching propulsion type technology. The Darloks on the other hand are shape shifters and they are excellent spies good at inciting rebellion, conducting sabotage, and stealing other races technology. Second, each time you start a new game, the map is randomly generated. What fate hands you can make a large difference in your approach. For example, the presence of a nearby artifact world can help in researching technology. Third, you have control over the # of stars in the game and the number of alien races you are playing against. Finally, there is a difficulty setting which affects how rapidly new technology is discovered. You should be aware that games can take a fair amount of time; as an extreme example, my first game took about 16 hours to complete. From my own experience, the average game takes about 4-6 hours. Because the game is so complex (and thus provides such a rich experience) it can be rather frustrating to learn at first. This guide in part is intended to help you through that learning stage. However, it does not stop there and it is hoped that even experienced players will find something of use here. ================================================================================ 2. Frequently asked questions ================================================================================ 2.A Is there any speech? It mentions speech in the installation but I don't seem to get any. Answer: There is no speech. The speech part of some soundcards is used for special effects but not for speech. 2.B How do you move the center of the map? Answer: Point at a blank part of the screen you want centered and then click the left mouse button. To move using the keyboard, see pg 4 of the Technical Supplement and Reference. If using the 1.2 patch, ALT-C will re-center the map on the currently selected planet. 2.C What differences are there between the different difficulty levels. The manual mentions that it affects opponents production rates, expansion rate, technology development, and willingness to ally with you. It is also supposed to affect the size of your initial fleet. It definitely affects the cost of developing new technology. New technology costs Tech_level^2 * Difficulty_Factor * Race_Factor. The Difficulty factor is: 20 - Simple 25 - Easy 30 - Average 35 - Hard 40 - Impossible 2.D When does the council meet? It first meets when two thirds of the planets have been colonized. It then meets every 25 years on the 24th, 49th, 74, and 99th years. (Example 2449). It also bears mentioning that if you eliminate all races but one, the vote will no longer take place. You will have to play the game out to the bitter or not so bitter end. You then get the "Tyrant" ending. Contributed by: Dave Chaloux 2.E How do I change the ships icons that I get? I change races but the icons stay the same. The icons that you get to use depend on the color of the flag you select at the beginning of the game. 2.F What affect does power have in designing ships? If you look at the Engine type popup, you will notice a column for number of engines of the selected type. If you select something new which requires power, then the number of engines will go up to provide the necessary power for the new item. Of course if new engines are required, the cost of the engines and space required for the new engines goes up in addition to the cost and size of the new item. So the power is integral part of building ships. Contributed by: P. Michael Haffley 2.G How powerful a machine do I need to run it? You must have 2 Meg of memory. That said the following report was on the net. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm currently running MoO on a 286-12. The box says that you need at least a 386, but I took the chance and bought it and it runs fine on my 286. (I am planning on buying a 486 this month, so I figured I could always wait for the 486 if it wouldn't run at all on the 286) The only problems I've had are mouse response problems. It would get to the point that it would take a second or two to respond to mouse button actions at times. I just downloaded the first patch, and that seems to have fixed it. It still takes a half second or maybe a bit less to respond, but it's not to bad. I think the delay is in the sound area, since the button graphics tend to respond in a timely manner, but there is a slight pause before there is sound or any other result besides the button being depressed. This isn't exactly a CPU hog like actions games are, so lack of CPU power isn't crippling. You should have no problems at all on a 386-33. Contributed by: Keith Hearn ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.H What good is the planet button in the combat display? It will tell you the weapons, factories, and population of a planet. Useful if you don't want to bomb it to dust. And useful to know when it's a lost cause and your fleets should bug out. 2.I When bombing enemies the little film keeps continuing. Do I do more damage if I keep it going? Answer: NO 2.J How do you transport troops? Click on the transport button. Take the arrow like cursor that appears and click on the place you want to send them. It will give you a slider asking how many to transport. Select the number you want and OK it. They will NOT appear on the map right away but will when you go to the next turn. This is one of those things that should have been made much clearer in the manual. 2.K Is there a good way to split half of a huge fleet? You DON'T have to click 500 times to split 1000 ships. It will remove over 5% of your group of ships if it is a large group (over about 50 I think). This is hidden in the manual somewhere. If you want to send 500 out of 1000 ships start with 1000 ships and REMOVE 500 at 5%, if you want to send one ship out of that 1000 then start with 0 and click +1. Contributed by: F. Rodgers [Editors note: The percentage is now changed to 10% in large groups under 1.3] 2.L How do I turn ships around in midflight? You don't until you get the Hyperspace communications tech advance. Then you simply click on the fleet and give them a destination just like you would if they were orbiting a planet. An exception to this is important in the 1.2 patch. If you have just given a fleet orders or if a fleet has just retreated, a new destination can be given even without hyperspace communications. 2.M Could someone please make the combat algorithm more understandable? [ Editor's note: I've included a couple of corrections to the formula that were submitted. I haven't personally tested them, but if no one disputes them after this release, I'll alter the original text with the corrections. ] Ok, I have been seeing a certain amount of confusion concerning starship battles in MOO, so I am going to attempt to explain the algorithm. If you are not mathematically inclined, don't panic, the combat is really quite simple. Step 1) The computer compares your ships ATTACK to the defenders DEFENSE rating. If you fire beams he defends at beam defense, while, naturally, he uses his missile defense against missiles. All attack bonuses and defense bonuses are added at this point. The resulting comparison is reduced to an ABSOLUTE DIFFERENCE. Thus if you attack with a level 6 battle computer and he is defending at level 3 then your attack score is (+3). Step 2) The computer generates a random number (sic) between 1 and 100 and compares it to your attack value (found on page 58 of the manual by using our attack score, computed in step 1). If the random number is greater or equal to your attack roll then you hit. Step 3) The computer uses the SAME roll to computer raw damage. A roll of 100 indicates full damage, while your minimum attack roll indicates the weapon strikes for minimum damage. Rolls in between do more damage as they approach 100. For you mathematical types: DAMAGE CAUSED = (MAX-MIN Damage) * (1-[ (100-ATTACK ROLL)) ]) | --------------------- |+ MIN Damage [ (100-Minimum attack score)] EXAMPLE: I hit with a Hard beam (8-12) damage. I rolled a 70, while I needed a 20 to hit. Thus I strike for: (12-8)* (1- (100-30)) ------- + 8 100-20 or 4* (1-30/80) + 8 = 10.5 rounds to 10 damage. +--------------------- | Mike Lemmons offers the following correction | to the previous step: | | I'm writing a program to assist with designing ships. I had a moment of | panic when I noticed that the FAQ damage equation was different than mine. | Then I determined that the FAQ equation simplified into mine. My equation | also makes the order of evaluation clearer. | | >From the FAQ: | DMG CAUSED = (MAX-MIN Damage) * (1-[ (100-ATTACK ROLL)) ]) | | --------------------- |+ MIN Damage | [ (100-Minimum attack score)] | | Mine: | DMG CAUSED = MIN Damage + [(MAX-MIN Damage) * (ATTACK ROLL-Minimum to hit) ] | | ---------------------------- | | [ (100-Minimum to hit) ] | | The square brackets around the two big terms in my version show that the | multiplication occurs before the addition. Everything is done in | floating point. | | There is a mistake in the example that follows in the FAQ. The | numerator should read (100-70) instead of (100-30). The final answer is | correct, though. +--------------------- Step 4) The computer subtracts the defender's shield level from your computer damage. Thus a 4 point laser hit does only 1 point of damage against class III shields. Weapons which halve opponent's shields, naturally, subtract only 1/2 their shield strength (rounded up, I THINK). +--------------------- | Correction on step 4 from Mike Lemmons: | | According to the Official Guide, shield fractions are rounded down. | (That's what computers normally do, unless told otherwise.) | I just realized that if you interpret this sentence as saying that DAMAGE | should be rounded up, then SHIELDS would be rounded down and the statement | would be correct. +--------------------- The computer iterates these 4 steps for every weapon on every firing ship in your attacking fleet. So what does this mean? 1) Good shields can make poor weapons next to useless. 2) PUT ON THE BEST TARGETING COMPUTER YOU CAN! It not only determines IF you hit, but also HOW WELL you hit and HOW MUCH DAMAGE you do. 3) Weapons which 1/2 enemy shields have a longer obsolescence cycle. 4) Note that excess damage will not carry over from target to target UNLESS you are using a streaming weapon such as a graviton beam. What this means is that a Death Ray will still only kill ONE small fighter. 5) Good ship designs often carry a number of top notch weapons for general purpose work (Auto-blasters or megabolt cannons), some hard beams for the occasional heavily armored target, and a few dozen light weapons for fending off fighter swarms. I hope this helps to clear up some of the confusion regarding combat. Contributed by: Pat Casey 2.N Why did the Internal Security percentage change in 1.2? Under versions prior to 1.2, the Internal Security percentage shown on the Race Screen was composed of any racial bonus, any internal security spending, and 1% per level of computer technology. This was not wholly accurate, as the computer technology modifier is not 1% per level of your technology, but 1% per level of the difference between your technology level and the person attempting to spy on you. Version 1.2 and beyond does not show your computer technology level. 2.O Is there a version to play via modem? (no) MicroProse has stated that they will NOT be adding modem play to MoO. Their feeling on this is that the amount of effort that would have to be put into such a project would take away from their current development efforts. 2.P Can I build missile bases instead of shields? If you have developed a planetary shield, a planet MUST finish building that shield before it will any missile bases. This can be a real problem when you see an attack force heading for one of your colonies. The best way to deal with this issue is just to make sure that your planets ALL build the shield once you research it. Otherwise, it could make for a nasty surprise later on. 2.Q What does "UPGR" mean on the defense slider? If you have existing missile bases on your colonies and you research a substantial missile tech advancement, your planetary bases are all automatically upgraded with the new missiles immediately. But if you want to build additional bases, you have to pay for the upgrade before any new bases get built. Therefore, if you put any resources to defense, you'll see "UPGR" in the defense slider until last upgrade has been paid. Contributed by: Katy Mulvey 2.P How do I stop my planet from going nova (or survive the plague)? (Expanded question) I have a planet that is supposed to go nova in years. It says that I need 5000 research points to prevent that. I have ALL of my colonies researching, but the planet still goes nova. The problem is that only research done at the afflicted colony counts towards the problem (Nova or Plague, works the same way). If you get either of these, dump as much of that planet's production into Research as possible. In addition, you can feed in money from your planetary reserves to increase production at the trouble spot. To increase reserves, either set the Reserve slider in the Planets screen higher or allocate production to Industry in a planet that has maxed out its factories. Contributed by: Daniel M. Silevitch 2.R: What determines which new technologies I can research? First of all, be aware that you have a "Limited Research list" that determines what technologies you will *never* be able to research; the Limited Research list is calculated at the start of the game, and never changes. Secondly, it does *not* depend on your "tech level", which is the level of your highest tech in that area, plus one for each lower-level tech. When your weapons tech level goes up by 10, you build weapons at half the cost, and they take up half as much room in your ship; tech levels in other areas have similar effects, so now you know why those obsolete low-level techs are worth something to you even thought you've advanced far beyond them. Finally, the answer to this question is quite simple: look in the advancement chart at the end of the manual -- see how the techs are divided by lines every 5 levels? Well, guess what, those lines aren't just there to make the chart easier to read! Once you develop a tech in one box of the chart, you are allowed to research techs in the next higher box!!! So, if you research Hand Lasers, Anti-Missile Rockets, Scatter Pack V Rockets, and Anti-Matter Bomb (the cheapest in each box), you can get to Anti-Matter Torpedoes or Megabolt Cannons very cheaply, without spending much money on researching the lower-level techs. This trick of choosing the cheapest one in each box works really well for weapons, propulsion, and forcefields, but in the other categories you will find that there are two or three things in each box that you really need, or at least that the must-have things aren't the cheapest. Even so, it can be a big help to know this! Contributed by: Ralph Betza 2.S What is MOOCE? The idea behind MOOCE is simply to have many MOO addicts play the same game and compare notes on what happened. To do this, we define a simple way to record MOO events (lists), and some reports you have to fill out each 10 years of your game. Some games will be lost, other will be won. BOTH loosing and winning games are important. It may help those less experienced MOO players to see what the experience ones do to win, and where they diverge from others. This is done simply for the FUN of it! It is NOT a competition, and NO winner will be selected. Since the caliber of the game is HARD, some players will have difficulty completing it. That particular level was selected to give a reasonable challenge for experience players. REQUIREMENTS OF MOOCE You will need Master Of Orion version 1.3, a pad of paper and a pencil. You will also need to fill out the MOOCE Game report. MOOCE was created (and is administered ) by: ritz@step.polymtl.ca ================================================================================ 3. What bugs are known to exist? ================================================================================ Compared to many other games on the market, MOO is remarkably bug free. However, it does have a few. The good news is that a patch exists to fix the more serious ones. This patch is available in the following places: A) The MicroProse Bulletin Board. The # is (410) 785-1841. You need settings of 8,N,1 and it supports up to 14.4 Kbs. The latest patch is moov13.zip New copies of Moo are shipping with this version. B) The most recent patch (1.3) is also at ftp.uml.edu. It is located in /msdos/Games/Patches as moov13.zip. The known bugs are as follows, and are categorized by the versions in which they appear. 3.A Bugs present in version 1.0 of Master Of Orion 3.A.1 The program bombs out with a message similar to, "BACKGRND.LBX[xx] exceeds number of LBX entries". This problem happens on machines with 7 Megs or more of EMS memory. The patch fixes it. Another fix is to configure your machine to have less than 2 Megs of EMS memory available. There have been some reports of LBX problems in 1.2, but these should be fixed by 1.3. 3.A.2 The Diplomat Bug: Sometimes the game will lock you out from access to all diplomatic functions. This is normal after a counsel vote electing someone else emperor. However, it occurs in other situations where it should not. The patch also fixes this problem. It can easily be worked around by saving and restoring the game. It is apparently linked to someone accepting tribute. 3.A.3 Sometimes mouse response time become very slow. It stays slow until you turn off all sound. This has reportedly been fixed in version 1.3. 3.A.4 The Gaia bug: One of the high technology discoveries is supposed to allow for incredibly fertile plants. When you get the discovery you are supposed to crank up the ECO bar and the planets are converted. They never convert. This fixed in later versions. 3.A.5 The to many ships bug: If you have over 32768 ships (16 bit signed integer) then your number of ships goes negative. This is fixed in later versions. 3.A.6 The Doc check bug: Has anyone else noticed this - I was playing MOO when the copy protection screen came up. It said that the picture was between pages 27 and 27. No problem, I look up page 27 and see that it appears TWICE on the list of choices! Uh oh, which one... I chose the first one, and failed. The second go around was normal and I passed. Contributed by: James Borynec [Editor: I have heard no reports since 1.2 of this problem] 3.A.7 The colony ship bug: When you have many different types of ships on a planet, AND a colony ship it will NOT ask you if you want to colonize every turn, and you have to move and come back OR move off all the other ships. This bug is not consistent but it has happened enough to be annoying early on but now that I know the game I only have extra colony ships when I am waiting for greater tech range and want to grab planets fast. Contributed by: F. Rodgers [editor: This bug occurs when you turn down the initial request to colonize the planet. This was clear in the original context. I have heard no report of this bug in some time and I think the patch fixes it.] 3.A.8 The Orion Terra-forming bug: This bug was first brought to my attention by Pat Casey and I have also seen it. In my case I was running the 1008 patch. If you capture Orion and then terraform it you can really start cranking out the Research Points. In my game I was up at 180 max population because of +80 terraforming. I then got the soil enrichment technology. Of course this is way out of order (tech 16 vs tech 38) and the game did not handle it very well on Orion. I spent the credits to supposedly up the population but it did the opposite. I went from 180 population to something like 125. I did not notice this happening on any other world. In Pat's case this happened with Atmospheric terraforming and the affect was even more drastic dropping the max population to 50! This was fixed in 1.2, only to run into the Max Population Bug (see 3.B). 3.A.9 The base maintenance bug: Several people have mentioned that if you get a large number of bases, your base maintenance cost can sky rocket. You might go from a maintenance cost of 5% to 80% or 90% in one year. This has only been reported with really large numbers of bases like 150 or so on a planet. Moral of the story is make sure you don't forget about a planet that is cranking out bases. It might completely hose your economy all at once. Also, since there is no way to scrap bases you end up having to go back to a save file. This is fixed in all versions beyond 1.2. 3.A.10 The 1999 limit on Factories bug: It is possible with Maximum Terraforming + Gaia to get planets with populations of 300. With Robotic controls VII it should be possible to get 2100 factories. With Meklars and their + 2 on controls they could get up to 2700 factories. However, the game limits you to a max of 1999 and when you reach it does not adjust industry spending appropriately. This is fixed in 1.2 and beyond. 3.B Bugs from version 1.2 of Master of Orion 3.B.1 The Maximum Planet Terraforming bug: Some planets (including Orion) would stay set on Terraforming even after reaching 300 million in population. Increased spending could result in reversion to the base value for the world's population, or even wiping out the colony. This is fixed in 1.3. 3.B.2 The Divide By Zero bug: Under some circumstances (which seemed to be a combination of machine configurations and the bug), the program would crash with a Divide By Zero (in enormous letters) during ship combat. This is apparently fixed in 1.3. 3.B.3 The Espionage Report bug: Under 1.2, you would never get any reports of enemy spies being captured at the espionage report screen. This is fixed in 1.3. 3.B.4 The Lockup bug: Under 1.2, depending on the galaxy and the system, the computer would lockup. This is supposedly fixed in 1.3 [It has been reported to exist in 1.3] 3.C Bugs in version 1.3 of Master of Orion 3.C.1 The Biological Weapon Bug: Bringing ships with Biological weapons into a system will reduce the population, even if the ships retreat immediately or are destroyed before ever coming near the planet. Found in multiple versions (other symptoms include biological attacks even when the Bombing option is cancelled if bio weapons are present). 3.C.2 The Missile Fire Bug: Planetary missiles which should be destroying incoming fleets do no damage (under some circumstances) when fired manually. However, when the Automatic Combat is selected, the missile weapons work as they should. 3.C.3 The Combat Transporter Bug: The Combat Transporter (level 45 propulsion tech) has no effect on enemy missile bases. Your troop transports will slip by enemy ships, but they still take full damage from planetary missile bases. 3.C.4 The Star Gate Bug: Star Gate travel through nebulae shows erroneous E.T.A.'s. Star Gate travel always takes one year, but if the line of travel passes through a nebula, the computer will display longer travel times. 3.C.5 The Environ Bug: When listing a CP's tech's, Death Spores are listed as "Death Environ". 3.C.6 The Sixth Ship Bug: When fighting against six different ship types in one battle, placing the cursor on the bottom ship will display the name and hit points of the planet where the battle is being fought, instead of the name and hit points of the enemy ship. 3.C.7 The Treaty Breaking Penalty Bug: According the the strategy guide, a penalty is invoked by the computer players on other players (both human and computer) which break any kind of treaties (alliance, trade, and non-aggression). However, I've found that this penalty is invoked by computers players against me when they are the one that has broken the treaty! I have had non-aggression pacts with computer players (CPs) early in the game and then the CP pops up and apologizes for breaking the treaty. Later, when I try to increase trade agreements or re-institute a non- aggression pact, they complain about me not honoring my past agreements. 3.C.8 The Empty Bribe Bug: Occasionally, a CP will tell me that they will reward me greatly for attacking another CP. If it is convenient, I have then attacked this other CP. Once I have done "sufficient damage" to this other CP, the first CP comes on and tells me that they really love me, and they give me some technology of their choosing that I don't have. The bad part is that I don't actually get this technology to use! If it is a weapons technology, the weapon is not available for ship-building or ground combat, etc. The first CP will even still offer to trade that tech. to me! Ralph Betza reports that this bug may be in error: This bug report in the FAQ may be wrong. You don't get to use these techs *until*the*next*turn*! (Or you could save and load.... Let me know what you find on this one. 3.C.9 The Bogus Nebula ETAs Bug: At any speed greater than warp 1, the ETA calculation is invariably wrong. Very hard to calculate joint arrival times of fleets on either offense or defense. 3.C.[7-9] contributed by Bryan Richardson 3.C.10 The Bogus Spy Rate Bug: The production rates for spies on the race report are exaggerated by a factor of 2-4 at least. Often I see production rates of "1y" or "2/y" or "3/y" but the next turn I have no spies in that empire although the "C" report shows none captured either. ================================================================================ 4. Clever Tricks ================================================================================ 4.A Ship redirection cheat This trick has been posted on the net, but I do not recall who originally posted it: Versions 1.2 and higher allow you to click on a retreating ships fleet and redirect it, either to another planet, or back to the planet they came from. If you build a ship with missiles or bombs, you can attack a planet, use up your missiles or bombs, retreat, and then re-attack next turn, with all your missiles and bombs restored. 4.B Intelligence trick This trick was also posted on the net, by somebody. If you want to attack a race, and you want to know the population, number of missile bases, and number of factories on each of their planets, one way to find out is to perform sabotage on them. Then when you are given an option what to do to what planet, you can click on each of their planets to find out this information about each one. 4.C Research Allocation trick I ... eventually noticed the line in the manual [about taxing planets] that there was a 50% penalty, so I stopped doing it. In case you wondered, putting money into your reserve by putting money in industry on a planet that is maxed out on factories has the same problem. However, rich planets give you the same double bonus for industry expenditures that are going into the reserve, so you can put money from rich planets into the reserve without any overhead. I've never done it, but presumably with a super-rich planet you could put the money into the reserve and get a 150% return, which you could even plow back into the same planet! A cute feature. Also, there is one time that it is particularly useful to transfer money from a built-up planet to a recently colonized planet: when you are expanding your frontier very rapidly, you should put lots of colonists on the frontier planets so that you can transfer colonists from last turn's newly colonized planet to this turn's newly colonized planet, thus putting population on newly colonized planets very rapidly, without waiting for transports to move all the way from your center planets to the fringe for every colonization. However, due to the overhead of waste management, newly colonized planets often do not have enough money to transport half the population to another planet, so you need to have just a few BC in reserve to pay for it. Contributed by: jacob@sun19.objy.com (Jacob Butcher) Generally, I do not have rich or ultra-rich planets do any research at all. Any excess production I plow back into reserve. For ultra-rich planets, I continually plow it back into the planet's production (this effectively increases the amount going into the reserve by a third. For example, suppose an ultra-rich planet has production of 100, all of which is going into reserve. This means we are feeding 150 into reserve every turn. If we then double this planet's production each turn by plowing 100 back in every turn, we are effectively feeding 200 (or 200*3/2 - 100) into reserve every turn, or an increase of 50 over not doing any plowing back. I also then try to feed reserve into artifact planets, doubling their production every turn. If this production then goes into research, I am getting effectively double the research than if I had let some rich planet produce research rather than planetary reserve. (Note that it does not pay to have a non-rich planet feed into reserve, which is then fed to artifact planets. This situation is a wash.) So every few turns, I make sure: all research spending for each rich and ultra-rich planet ----> planetary reserve instead. planetary reserve ----> Orion, ultra-rich planets, artifact planets, new planets, and rich planets producing ships (in that order) Contributed by cox@unx.sas.com (Jim Cox) 4.D Excess Trade trick This is one I just recently discovered. Although it is most useful for Humans, it also works with other races. The documentation notes that the maximum trade amount you can establish with another race is 25% of the lesser race's total production. When I first meet a race, I set trade at the minimum amount possible. Then I wait a long time until my trade is getting close to the maximum. Then I renegotiate trade agreements. But first I do the following: I take all my reserve and distribute it to a number of my planets for the next turn. This fools the computer into thinking that I have up to twice the amount of production I really have. Since I play impossible level where the computer races have OBSCENE production bonuses, I am usually last or near last in total production at this point, but I have artificially dramatically increased my production for one turn only. Then I meet with each of the other races, and increase trade to the maximum allowed. This trick can dramatically increase trade revenue. (Additional note: NEVER add small increments to trading amounts often, as the algorithm the computer uses to determine trade will work against you. Do large increments at very infrequent intervals instead. I usually do not increase trade until I can at least double the previous trade amount) Contributed by cox@unx.sas.com (Jim Cox) 4.E Future ship building trick SHIP CHEAT (I hesitate to call it a cheat, but it is like the production cheat in CIV). If you want to have a huge fleet "hidden" from the enemy, design a really huge ship with all sorts of expensive toys on it. Then dedicate 1 click to SHIPS and set the planets producing this ship (I name it SHIP CHEAT, call me logical). Then I forget about it because it will normally take 400+ years to build this ship. When the time comes to "reveal" your fleet to the enemy, with you highly advanced fleet, you change the type of ship you were producing and presto.... instant invasion force! Personally I like to do this around Zortium Armor. You should be able to build speedy small ships for fodder (computer likes to attack largest NUMBERED fleet, I THINK at least on Average) and that's from one or two planets. The great thing about this is that you can design COOL large and HUGE ships (that you would actually use) and get them rather quickly without dedicating all resources to SHIPS. [cox: Just be sure you keep up with these planets regularly to change the ship they are building or you may find yourself with a pretty worthless fleet, when they actually do finish building what you have told them to build!] Contributed by: Barry Bloom 4.F Combat Tricks I have gotten some of the following tricks from the net, some from my own discoveries: 4.F.1. Park a repulsor today! By putting a stack of ships equipped with repulsor beams directly in front of your planet, no bombers will be able to get to your planet without destroying those ships first. 4.F.2. Diversionary tactics. When I have ships defending a planet, I like to take the battle away from the planet. Then the opponents' ships will attack my ships rather than moving to the planet and bombing it. 4.F.3. Ship Teleporting trick My favorite way to crack planets with many missile bases is to use bombers with Sub-space Teleporters. On your first move you can teleport right next to the planet and drop a load of bombs. Even if you don't take out all of the bases, you're still in no danger. The planet will launch a pile of missiles that will appear directly over the planet. If you were able to take out at least half of the missile bases on your first drop, stick around and drop another load. This should take out the rest of them, which will also eliminate any airborne missiles. If you weren't able to take out half of the bases on the first drop, you are probably better off retreating and then coming back to the same planet for another bombing raid. A similar trick involves situations where you've taken out the missile bases, but there is a formidable fleet of defensive ships. Wait on the left side of the screen until they've passed the middle of the combat screen. Then teleport to the right of the planet and drop a load of bombs. The defensive ships will take a step toward you. Teleport to the left. They'll follow you. Teleport to the right and bomb the planet, etc... Occasionally, check the 'planet' button to see how you're doing. Once the population reaches '0', your job is done. Scram. These teleporting tricks will be absolutely useless if the enemy has subspace interdicters installed. Contributed by Pat Traynor pat@ssih.com 4.G Ship Design tricks 4.G.1. No empty slots! Always fill up your weapon slots, unless you are putting less than four weapons on a ship. Then you can continue firing slots of weapons at other stacks if one stack is destroyed by one slot. For example, suppose you build a large ship with 10 autocannons and 2 death rays. Put five autocannons into each of two slots, and a death ray in each of the other two slots. 4.G.2. Always have six active designs of ships! If you really only have one type of ship you want to build, make six copies of the same ship, and produce the different kinds on different worlds. You have a lot more flexibility in attack and defense with multiple stacks than with a single stack. 4.G.3. Try to put weapons and specials with different ranges on the same ship. This allows maximum flexibility in attack. For example, suppose you put death rays (range 4), stellar converters (range 3), gauss autocannons (range 1), technology nullifier (range 4), neutron stream projector (range 2), and black hole generator (range 1) on the same ship type. During a single attack, you can attack up to 6 enemy stacks as follows: Move four squares away from one stack, turn off specials, and fire at the stack (the death rays fire). Turn specials back on, move if necessary and fire at another stack 4 squares away (technology nullifier fires). Then fire at another stack 3 squares away (neutron stream projector fires). Then move if necessary next to two of those 32000 ship stacks, turn off specials, and fire autocannons at one, then turn on specials, and fire your black hole generator at the other. 4.G.4. Save a weapon slot for something like bombs that you don't normally fire, on a fast high-initiative ship. Then you can move towards enemy ships, unload your weapons, and then back away out of range of his fire. 4.G.5. Antidote to repulsors: cloaking! Evidently (according to some postings I have seen lately) a cloaked ship will not be repulsed by a repulsor! I like to build cloaked bombers, i.e. smalls that have only bombs as weapons. Their only mission is to get to the planet and bomb it. The only time they are De-cloaked is after they have obliterated the missile bases with their high powered bombs. And then they retreat. (Of coarse, I send escorts to take care of any other ships that may be lurking around). 4.G.6. Don't stack Black Hole Generators. A stack of 1000 ships equipped with BHGs does no more damage than one ship of the same type. To get additional firepower, design different ships that are identical. This is a very easy thing to do, because after you design the first one, the next time you hit the 'design' button, the last design remains, so you just have to 'build' again. One design that I found very useful is a Kamakazi ship. It has a specific function, so there's no point in wasting unnecessary space. Until you get into the latter stages of the game, you'll need a large hull. Strap on a BHG and a sub-space teleporter. Give it big engines so that it doesn't take long to get to the enemy planet, but don't put any maneuverability or shields in there. It WILL be destroyed. Create three different designs of this ship and send one of each in on mammoth stacks of enemy ships. With the teleporter, you will get first shot. A trio of these ships can easily reduce a stack of 32000 large ships down to 2000. On the next turn, a second trio can reduce that stack down to 150 or so. Of course, with the BHG, results vary wildly. You may take out the entire stack, or you might take out only 25%. 4.H Extended range colonizing Wait til you have a few tech levels in construction and propulsion. Then design a _new_ colony ship, and add the reserve fuel tanks as well as the colony base. Tech 3 in construction+propulsion seems to be enough to shrink the colony base and engines so that they both fit into a LARGE hull with the fuel tanks. This will usually be _way_ before you get the range-6 or range-8 propulsion tech (or even the warp-3 engines!). Then your colony ship has the same range as your scouts, so colonize away! Contributed by Gregory Bond 4.I Trading Upward On impossible level, the computer races (especially psilons) can get a huge tech advantage over me. Solution: I trade low level but highly valued techs (such as inertial stabilizer) for very high tech items. To do this, I wait until the other race has gotten most of the high-tech advances. Then I try to trade with them. Usually, they will not offer me anything valuable at first. But I keep on cancelling the trade until they offer me something high-tech. This may take several turns, as their diplomats often leave before I can get what I want. But eventually, I can usually get a high-tech item in each of the six tech types this way. Then the next time I make a tech advance in that area, I am allowed to research any item up to the tech level of the item I traded for. (It's nice to directly research complete terraforming instead of +40, +60, etc. especially considering it only takes four times the research to discover a tech 50 advance as a tech 25 advance). I can leapfrog tech levels in this manner. Contributed by cox@unx.sas.com (Jim Cox) Another thing to consider is to give the enemy a useless tech. If they have researched propulsions 3 and 5, they will often accept '4' in a trade. This does them absolutely no good. Contributed by Pat Traynor pat@ssih.com 4.J The Best Defense is a Good Offense Sometimes the cp starts to get the upper hand on you and it looks like you're going to be pulverized. They will mount an attack, sending waves of fleets down on your under-defended planets. If it's starting to look like a losing battle, you might want to distract them by attacking them. Design the fastest small/medium bomber that you can. Important things are: fast, good&plenty bombs, and if you can fit them in, reserve fuel tanks. Don't waste money on shields or beam weapons. If this plan is going to work, you have to hope that you don't run into any defending ships, and that if necessary, you can outrun any launched missiles. Send them to the enemy planets that are somewhat remote from you. These will tend to have fewer defenses in place. If you can get a fleet of bombers out there and destroy a colony, the cp will often abandon its attacks on you to concentrate on re-colonizing the blasted planet. The reserve fuel tanks are very nice on your bombers because that could take them out to enemy colonies that are especially undefended. 4.K The Best Offense is a Good Defense I found this strategy to be quite handy when you're playing as Darloks, and everyone hates you. Build up your planetary defenses as strong as you can. It may take a little experimentation to find out how much is enough. Research the best missile techs that you can. And also, design a very small, wimpy ship. This doesn't need anything, but perhaps one small weapon, like a laser. Personally, I name this ship "BAIT". When an enemy fleet is bearing down on one of your planets, make sure that you have one of these ships in orbit. When the enemy fleet arrives, they would normally see your overwhelming mass of missile bases, and they would immediately retreat. But there is something about a weak ship that they can't resist. They will march across the screen to wipe out that BAIT ship while you send wave after wave of missiles. The tricky thing here is that you have to be sure that you DO out-power the enemy fleet. I've managed to reduce an entire enemy fleet to next to nothing without ever having more than 5 ships in my fleet. I also found a way to enhance this strategy a bit. If the attacking fleet is large enough and/or fast enough, they'll have no trouble taking out your ship and then escaping with many ships untouched. If you equip your puny defense ship(s) with 5-shot low-tech missiles, you can improve your situation. Here's what happens. The combat screen begins. The attacking ships start advancing from the right. When the fastest stack starts getting close, fire a shot at it from your defense ship. The attacking stack will now retreat to the far right again to outrun that missile. Once the missile expires, it will start advancing to the left again. You can do this many times, or to several different stacks of his fleet. During this whole time, you're pummelling his fleet with your planetary missiles. I've seen stacks of a hundred large ships retreating from one nuclear missile. Meanwhile, my 85 planetary missile bases are equiped with Hercular missiles are shredding his fleet. Contributed by Pat Traynor 4.L Cheats I hesitated to put this section in, but since this IS a frequently asked question, it should be answered. 4.L.1 Cheats by design -GALAXY This will basically eliminate the need for scouts. You will be shown the basic stats of all planets in the galaxy as well as the location of enemy colonies and ships. -EVENTS This will stop all random events from happening, such as radiation accidents and rebellions. -MOOLA This adds 100 BCs to your planetary reserve. You must be in the 'Planet' screen to use this cheat. -P This will randomly change the personalities of the enemy leaders. Contributed by Pat Traynor 4.L.2 Cheats due to bugs The "Star Gate" cheat: After commanding a fleet of ships to move between two Star Gates, you can click on that fleet and redirect them to any planet within refueling range. They will arrive in one year, regardless of distance or engine type. Hyperspace communication is not required. (Only tried on version 1.3) Contributed by Mike Lemons The "Hyperspace" cheat: This cheat comes in handy if you have researched Hyperspace Communications, but have not, or were unable to research the higher "Controlled Environment" techs, such as 'Toxic' and 'Radiated', and can therefore not conquer these types of planets. Set your transports to go to a destination that will take at least two turns. After the first turn, re-direct the en-route transports to the enemy-controlled colony. They will attack it as though you had the required environmental technology. Contributed by Jonathan Hooper 4.M "Filibuster" to evade the Council vote Made too many enemies? Afraid that everyone will vote against you? Roger Safian offers this possible solution: Not sure if this is a version 1.3 bug or clever trick. I think it's a bug, but it might be useful as well. I was playing a long, hard fought game recently. I was in third place, and holding my own, but not making a lot of progress. I built up a huge fleet of bombers, and went on a scorched earth binge. Now here's the intresting thing, I reduced the number of colonized planets below two thirds. This had the effect of suspending the elections. So the bug is you have an election every 25 years once you have two thirds of the planets colonized, as long as you never have less than that. 4.N Kamakazi (rather than scrap) those old ships It kind of hurts to destroy a bunch of ships that are outdated when you put a lot of resources into them. When I want to scrap a design, I usually gather all of those type ships into one place and send them on a suicide mission. They might as well do some damage while being scrapped. Contributed by nclegg@io.com (Nathan Clegg) 4.P The warp dissipator trick. The warp dissipator is a device which decreases the movement of an enemy ship each time the weapon is fired. Now the funny thing is that you can fire it more than one time in a round. For example, let's say you have a planet with 25 missile bases and a medium-hull Planet Defender. The PD is very fast, equiped with a range 1 beam weapon, a warp dissipator, and has combat speed 4. An inertial stabilizer is optional. First, the enemy arrives with a hugh fleet (3 differrent bombers (each about 1000) and 3 ships with range 1 beam weapons (no missiles :)) The war starts. Let your PD wait until some enemy ships advance to a point where you can move close enough to them to hit them with your WD (warp dissipator) and still have mobility to move again to use your beam weapon. Press WAIT. There is nothing to wait for so you may continue your turn. Then shoot again with the WD at that ship and the combat speed of the ship is decreased by 2. After that shot press wait again. I can freeze a whole fleet in the first turn with a medium ship. If they can fire missiles make the ship bigger and put autorepair on it. Your missile base will take out the rest of the ship. Contributed by Constantijn Enders [Editor's note -- Boy, doesn't this sound a lot like the Civilization trick where you are able to make a settler complete any job in one turn?] ================================================================================ 5. Strategy Guide ================================================================================ 5.A Introduction and caveat Note: IMPORTANT - Many of These tips appeared on the net and have been edited only slightly. There are contradictions real and apparent in them. It should be realized that most rules are not 100% true or 100% false; they work in some domains and not in others. The presence of a tip or rule does not excuse the player from thinking. There may be good reason to violate one in your particular situation. In MOO, each game is very different. Games are modified not just by what race you play and what races you are playing against and what size galaxy you play in, but also in things such as what tech can be developed in that particular game. Strategy can change immensely in a game where nobody gets stack-killing weapons, or auto-repair, or high-powered bombs, etc. For me, this is what keeps me coming back to MOO. If the same strategy was appropriate in every game, it would get old real quick. 5.B Beginner tips 5.B.1 It normally is better not to destroy a colony. It is better to leave some population and then bring in transports and take the colony over. This saves the cost of the colony ship. It is sometimes better to bomb them to the ground. An example of this is when they have superior technology for ground fighting and your losses would be prohibitive. Contributed by: Dave Chaloux 5.B.2 A good strategy for a first game is the following. Select a medium galaxy, simple level, with three opponents. Play the Klackons. Spend money on all tech equally. Keep factories and populations maxed and grow only as fast as you can defend. Avoid wars, and when you have the resources (be sure to spend lots of money on technology) build up the missile defenses of your planets. During the time you should have only a scout or two and a colony ship when you need one. Now you are ready to act. You should be able to out-produce anyone. Be sure that you have kept your internal security maxed out, and your planets well fortified. Now design the best ships you can, pick an opponent, and go to war! Contributed by: Dave Weinstein 5.B.3 Just a small thing I ran across last night. If you are expanding in an odd shape and you home worlds, where most of your colony ships are built the quickest are far away form your frontier. Find a planet that has an environment you don't have the tech for in the frontier area. Then send a colony ship there. Because you don't have the tech to colonize, it will just orbit and therefore be much closer (and quicker) to a planet you run across that you can base. My empire developed into a 'L' shape, laying down, with my main producers at short end of the L as I expand out on the longer end. Contributed by: Donald Anglin 5.B.4 Playing Out Games with Bad Planet Distributions I've got a tip for those who want to 'play out' those games where they are stuck with no colonizable planets within range. Scrap your colony ship! It's maintenance is about 10BC per year, so in 50 years you will have paid enough to buy a new one anyway. By scrapping it, you can build up your colony faster with the cash you get back (transfer it to your home planet on the planet screen). Build your planet up as fast as you can, then concentrate on propulsion research, and you might be able to win that game yet. This is really only recommendable if you like a challenge, but it's doable. If you're looking for a new challenge, give it a try. Contributed by: Bronis Vidugiris 5.B.5 Maximizing Planet Production A few notes on what to invest in to maximize production. At the start, for most races, this is factories. Factories cost 10BC generate 1BC of income and 1BC of pollution (which costs 1/2 BC initially to clean up). In 20 years, they will have paid for themselves. This is the game default, non-surprisingly. Colonists cost 20BC to generate (via eco spending), and generate 1/2BC per year with no pollution. In 40 years, they will have paid for themselves. Other conditions may shift the balance here too. Factories tend to get the early breaks with reductions in cost, and reductions in waste output. Colonists get later breaks, with vastly increased productivity (up to 2 at Planetology tech 50), cloning, advanced cloning, etc. Klackons start out with colonists equal in return rate to factories. I start out with colonists for a short time, but only until I get my planet(s) up to 50% of population where the natural population growth rate is maxed out. Then I shift to factories, which will start to increase in productivity earlier. (This is only with the Klackons, other races I start out with factories). The balance definitely shifts towards building colonists when one has had a population decrease on a world which already has a lot of factories (there are a lot of potential reason for such a decrease, sending out colony fleets is the most common). The negative impact can be minimized by cranking out those colonists by spending that money on 'ECO'. Contributed by: Bronis Vidugiris 5.B.6 Some General Observations: 1. TRADE. I think most important. Especially in large and huge games. With trade and alliances I have been able to generate 1500+ BC a turn. This provides lots of funds for spying!!! Ideally, I don't establish them until they reach 300+ or whatever is the highest. This may be more race specific since I got that number playing the humans, but I still get good money playing other races. 2. EXPANSION. Noticed that some of the races will stagnate (stay on their home world only) when I expanded as quickly as I could (actually outstripped the rest of the races, no silicoids in the game). However, if I gave them (oh, so many options for "sending them on a wild goose chase") a better move, they wouldn't try and expand, even with good planets around. Hope this is a function of the average level AI. 3. SABOTAGE. This I think has hidden potential. I decided to try and start a rebellion in a Mrrshan colony. I am not positive about this, but once I got them over 15%, they really started rebelling. The next time they went to 30%!! I got bored and invaded, and I swear it seemed to FALL much easier to my troops. Any comments on this one? 4. DEATH FLEET. I do the three suggested methods of attacking.... capture factories (large amounts enemy pop, large invasion force).... bomb til almost nothing.... and DEATH FLEET. This is my favorite. By the time I use this it is pointless to take more colonies. Nothing I hate more than trying to manage that much (kinda like 50+ cities in CIV). What you do is just build a huge fleet with a lot of bombers and a few capital / large ships (maybe 30+ large, 6 HUGE) and go from planet to planet completely obliterating them. Nothing more satisfying than seeing "100 million colonist killed" ;) Contributed by: Barry Bloom 5.B.7 Basic whole-game strategies It seems to me that the key to winning with any race is to build a strong industrial base on at least 2 good-sized planets before committing any resources to research. To grow the fastest, keep your home planet at about 50 people for maximum growth, and ship off 2 or 3 each turn to your first colony. For at least the first 10 years, devote all resources to factory construction. Start your research small at first, keep devoting resources to factories. Until you've maxed out, I keep at least 1/4 of each planet's production in factory building, preferably 1/3 or 1/2. I try to keep new colonies strictly devoted to factories. Don't devote any resources to shipbuilding until absolutely necessary. When your first two planets are nearly full, build a colony ship. Keep siphoning off people from your home planets to the new colony, keeping them at about 90% capacity for speed of growth. By the time your 3rd colony is getting full, your second transport should be ready, and you are now in the expansion phase of building lotsa new colonies. I build friendly relations with my neighbors from the earliest. While they devote resources to building low-tech fleets, I build industry and research tech. Then, when I have a strong economy (like, maxed industry on my home world) and higher tech, I start building my warfleet. I devote at least 1/3 of my homeworld's production to shipbuilding, and usually a good fraction of my first colony's. I prefer large ships, and use heavy weapons with their 2-space range. As my tech grows, I save a few advances and then commission a new class of ships. I will usually have 3 different large warship designs current, plus a colony transport design (totally unarmed), and a long-range scout. I find that small ships are virtually useless in combat, and medium ships nearly so (but I haven't played races that get combat advantages, where I might prefer medium ships). My very favorite specials are Battle Scanner (which gives you initiative and attack advantages, plus letting you see enemy ship stats), and Automated Repair. Combined with heavy beams (2 space range), and a combat speed of 2, I can decimate even huge dreadnoughts by dancing and keeping them at a distance, if they only have speed 1 and beams with range 1. It is important to have at least beams and bombs in your ships. I also usually add a missile or two. Missile-only ships are sitting ducks once they expend their missiles. I put in mostly heavy beams, one or two missiles, and fill up the rest with bombs. Of course, I max out computers, ecm, engines, etc. I usually take on the 2nd strongest race that is nearby. In my case, that was the Darloks, who I really hate cause they can steal my tech. I don't attack until I have 2 or 3 higher tech large ships, then I decimate their nearest colonies. Bomb 'em down to 5 or so, then send in the troops, at least twice as many as they have, preferably lots more, from your now-full homeworlds. This gives you an advance base. Move onto the next planet and repeat, but this time ship troops from the first planet you took. This eliminates any need for colony ships; you just eat the opponents worlds. Meanwhile, your homeworlds should be churning out warships every 5 years or so. Keep the other races peaceful-like as long as possible. Especially with Psilons, buy them off with a non-combat piece of tech as tribute; this makes them real happy. Usually, some race has expanded like wildfire, and the council has met to decide between me and them, with no majority. Try to convince the other races to have a non-aggression pact with you, and declare war on the big bad enemy. I have found trade to be nearly useless, unless you are playing Humans. It takes forever to show a profit, and I've never seen anything close to the agreed-on amount. Do it to make friends, but keep the amounts low. Especially, don't up it in small amounts over time; if you decide to be friendlier, just it a lot very rarely. Also, don't trade lots with your soon-to-be major enemies, just 25 or so when you first meet them, to keep them pacified until you attack. After you've decimated or totally eradicated your first opponent, turn your sights on the big bad guy. Create a warfleet to do scorched-earth tactics, just bombing each planet to (almost) nothing. Remember to leave a few left; they're your colony base. If you have improved scanners, you may see colony ships moving to new planets nearby. Let 'em; as soon as the colony is formed, send in the troops. (I love eating the opponents new colonies.) If you see a bunch of transports heading to one of your planets, send a fleet to that planet, and you can kill most or all of them before they land. Conquered colonies should be kept fairly small, as they may get taken back. Devote their energies to research, not factories. If you can manage to take a colony with factories, great, but don't get greedy. The best way to do this is to decimate one colony to nearly nothing, then move your warfleet elsewhere. The enemy may send a transport fleet to the decimated colony. If so, then send your troops to take the planet that sent out the transports, which is now underpopulated. Build missile defenses only on your main colonies. By devoting a small fraction of your resources to them, you should be able to build one each 5-10 turns. With proper tactics, your homeworlds may never be attacked. But if they are, 4-10 missile bases will prevent enemies from making cheap attacks. If you see the enemy making a major attack, get a fleet there, fast. Improved scanners that give destination and ETA are a must in a serious war. It is absolutely critical that your fleet be faster than your opponents. Research speed techs in preference to range (once you have range 4 or 5, that is). In general, high tech is critical. Ignore the 'fleet size' and 'total power' status lines; just keep production near the best, and tech higher if you can. (If the Psilons are an opponent, this is likely impossible. In that case, cultivate their friendship, and exchange tech a lot. They tend to be peaceful.) In general, exchange tech whenever possible, but I prefer to give non-combat advances in exchange. Even if you have better stuff, trade for advances you don't have, as it will raise your tech levels. It is tempting to research robotics tech that allows you to build more factories, or terraforming tech to grow worlds. Once you are in a serious war, resist this temptation. In war, you can't afford to devote the resources to growth, you need them for ships and research. Do these things before war breaks out, or between wars in a long game. At any time, don't build expensive robotics factories until you've reduced the factory costs. On the espionage front, keep spies on every player. When you are at war, change their missions to espionage, or sabotage only if they have no tech at all. Your computer tech helps here. I try to keep my overall espionage and counter-espionage spending at 10-15%. Contributed by: Douglas Zimmerman Phase 1: Send out scouts to two nearest worlds. Colonize all immediately available worlds quickly. Don't worry about anything further than 5 squares away, but make a bunch of cheap fighters and send them out to stake out planets. This will give you perhaps 2-5 planets, while your strongest opponents may have 3 times that number or more. Don't even think about being influential in the council for a while. Phase 2: Settle in. Expand if you can, but make sure you keep your tech spending high. A good balance tends to work better than specializing. Armor tech, ground fighting, and especially terraforming and factory control will help you hold your planets and make them more productive than your opponent's larger number. Trade whenever possible. Build lots of missile bases, and no ships. Eventually you'll find yourself blocked in, probably by the groups more powerful than yourself. Make sure you get frequent reports on their tech. Phase 3: Go to war with one of the more technologically advanced groups. Try to steal tech from them (they'll start the war). Steal tech from anyone who goes to war with you. Defend your home planets, don't attach except perhaps with bombing raids. Concentrate on building up a fleet which could hold a planet by itself. Then take a planet. You should have sufficient resources to take one planet from even the strongest player and to hold it if you wait long enough. Send transports from many colonies (not just one) and just eliminate the missile bases and ships guarding the planet, not the factories. Ideally, you'd like to take a rich planet, or one with artifacts. You'll certainly want to take a developed one for the tech you'll gain. Phase 4: Eventually whoever your at war with will stop beating on you. Put that fleet to use on a weaker neighbour. Don't eliminate them, but steal their inferior techs to pump up your own tech levels (make components cheaper, smaller). By stealing from whoever wants to fight you, heavily defending your planets, spending little on ship-building, maintaining trade, and occasionally taking the choicest planets from your current enemies, your greater ability to assess the value of a given path of tech advancements will make you stronger than the computer. Case in point: I just spent the last 600 years technologically inferior to the Psilons. Despite the fact that they held Orion for 20+ turns (that I HAD to take from them) and discovered a derelict, I am now (just) superior to them technologically and militarily, and am in the process of beating them into the ground. This is in a large galaxy which, at one point, they held over half the planets (I had about 6 then). I'm playing as the Humans. RULES 1.) Never take a planet you can't hold. 2.) Never eliminate a foe. Even the weakest can give you technologies you leapfrogged, or specialize in an area where you are weak. 3.) Don't destroy many colonies in a given area unless you can keep them from being recolonized, or you're ready for a shift in the Balance of Power. 5.) Do destroy colonies in a given area if two races you are trying to get to fight are in that area in force. Disclaimer: I haven't tried this with Sakkra or Bulrathi, or in Huge galaxies. It has worked on hard on small and medium, and average on large. The strategy is especially suited to Psilon, Meklar, Darlok, and Human empires. Contributed by: Michael Metzger 5.C Strategies for different stages of game Like Chess, Master of Orion can be broken into three phases: the opening, or the initial expansion phase (the computer does this phase really well), the middle game, where you hunker down and develop the worlds you have (the computer plays very poorly here), and the end game, where you try to take over at least enough to give you the win (again, the computer does not do this well. It does not follow up on its victories enough). Following are strategies for the different stages of the game: 5.C.1 Opening Game For some reason, all of my games (Huge/5/Hard or Impossible) develop in exactly the same way: 1) I put almost all of my tech into Planetology, (for pop. and possibly controlled X environment if there are ultra-rich planets about) Propulsion, (for a high enough range to reach the stars in my corner) and Computers (for Improved production: some tech also in Construction) 2) I colonize madly until I get 15-20 stars in a corner or edge. 3) I make peace/friendship w/ everyone else by trading and giving tech (mainly because they're so far ahead of me in tech, etc.) and concentrate on population and production development. 4) I block the vote in the first Galactic Council by abstaining (I've always been in the running, but I've never ha enough votes to win). 5) 4-5 years before the next vote, I get all the other races to declare war on each other (This has never been difficult: For some reason, whenever the two biggest CP rivals attack each other, all of their alliances come apart, and everybody gets into a free-for-all) I also make NA-pacts/alliances w/ everyone except my rival. 6) 2-3 years before the vote, I attack my rival - suddenly, everyone in the galaxy loves me and hates him. 7) Before he has a chance to attack, I win the Council vote. This strategy works very well with Humans (because of the diplomatic and trade bonuses), Klackons, or Mecklars (for the production bonuses). The big problem with this strategy, as everyone can probably see already, is that I never get to do any fun conquest - I never have enough tech or production to win a war against anyone without sacrificing my diplomatic situation or production. Contributed by: js187@jambo.cc.columbia.edu (Jason Scanlin) If a very early war is essential, you can often beat the computer early on with a somewhat poorer ship. Build range-two weapons and a single range-one (for movement control), and have a movement rate of two (if you can't do this, it is too early to build a warship). If the computer ship has range-one, you can soften it by staying at two, backing up, until you reach the board edge, thereby doing substantial damage while not taking any yourself. If the computer ship has range-two, it will believe that it should fire from range two. Close on it and fire from range one: your weapons will do more damage as there is a penalty for range two fire! The only thing to watch out for is that you don't want to back him into the corner so that he's forced to fire at range one. Contributed by: mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) 5.C.2 Middle Game Your "mid Game" starts as soon as the majority of your worlds are industrialized and have >10 missile bases. It generally ends when the widespread availability of good bombs and large fleets shifts the game balance away from the defender. > Well, a lot depends on the size of your galaxy. I'm assuming your are playing on large, and yes, 7 planets is a slow start. Suggestions for improving your initial expansion follow: 1) Place scouts over every nearby world, one per. The AI tends to colonize worlds it has explored before putting resources into arming its colony ships. By placing a scout over a planet, you deny the AI exploration and hopefully grab the colony yourself. 2) Build up your first two colonies and then start colonizing new worlds. Use one world to produce colony ships, and use the other to throw population bombs onto your new colonies. Then let them develop on their own while you colonize past them. Exception: Rich and Ultra Rich worlds are worth putting resources into to speed initial expansion. 3) Avoid building a fleet unless necessary. Most low-tech fleets are not useful against planets, thus the conquest of enemy colonies becomes a very slow process. 4) Play as the Klackons or Sakkras, both of whom will develop colonies rapidly. Alternately, play the alkaris and build fast, long range colony ships. Tips on Rescuing a slow start: 1) Human Turtle. This works best as the humans, but can be effected with skillful bribery by almost anyone (yes, even the Darloks). Trade with all your neighbors to the hilt, and build no fleet. Maximize your tech and trade for it whenever possible. Sign non-aggression pacts with everyone and NEVER make an alliance as it may drag you into a war. Eventually, especially on Average or Hard, you can garner a tech advantage in this manner. Once that happens, its all a mop up. On impossible, this tactic will only work if your initial base is significantly larger and contains some good worlds. EXCEPTION: MOO versions below V 1.2 are quite a bit easier. 2) Balance of power: Pick the largest power you think you can deal with. Then induce a few nearby races (preferably the LARGEST power in the game) to declare war on them. Once they are heavily engaged (and likely losing), move in and stab them in the back with your own fleet. NOTE: This is dangerous unless you are prepared to finish off the race in question. They WILL hold a grudge. 3) Tech Raids: This is a gamble, but sometimes pays off if you are losing heavily in tech. Find a poorly defended, high tech world, and swarm it with troops, all of whom should arrive on the same turn. With luck, you should steal the planet out from under the missile bases. NOTES: A) Works best when missile techs are poor and your transports have good speed B) You will generally lose planets thus acquired unless you follow up with a supporting fleet, but you keep the tech. 4) Orion Hunting: Capturing Orion is a sure way to turn a losing situation into a possible winner. If it is within range, and you have at least the Neutron Pellet Gun, then consider making a play for it. Remember the rules of Orion in considering your fleet. Against the V 1.2 Guardian: The guardian has 4,000 HP on Easy, 6,000 on Av. 8,000 on Hard, and 10,000 on Impossible. Assuming at least a battle computer Level 5, then each NPG will do 1.5 damage. Each mass Driver 4.5. Rule 1: You must deliver > 30% of the guardian's HP per turn to kill it. Otherwise it will Auto-repair. Rule 2: You will lose 250 fighters to the guardian's missiles before he runs out of ammo. Rule 3: You will lose 125 Mediums to missiles if Titanium, 83 if duralloy, and 62 if Zortium. Rule 4: Every odd turn, you will lose 4 small or medium ships. Rule 5: Every Even turn, you will lose 14 small or medium ships. Rule 6: The cheapest way to get a weapon into space is to strap it on a fighter. Medium, Large, and Huge ships cost more per ton of available space. In general, on average level, 2000 fighters with NPGs will do the job. I generally wait for the mass driver, however. Just a few suggestions... Contributed by pcasey@hmcvax.claremont.edu (Pat Casey) Invading an enemy colony with Combat Transporters: First of all. It seems that each 1M troops that you send to a planet is in a separate transport. So if 40M troops are arriving, then the computer must destroy 40 ships before they reach the planet. Since this is the case, it is sometimes useful to have a larger number of transport to overwhelm the defenders. They have very little time/rounds to destroy these ships, so they can usually only destroy a limited number of them unless they have a strong defensive force. So, if their defenses can destroy 20 ships in each wave, and you send 40/year for 5 years, then only 100 out of 200 troops arrived safely. However if you send 200 troops which all arrive at once, then 180 troops arrive safely and the success of your raid is much more likely. Another advantage to having the force arrive all at once is that if the computer is slowly losing troops over time, then it has a chance to rebuild part or all of the lost population by allocating resources to ECO or sending troops from elsewhere. This is especially painful if he has cloning technology. So, effectively the attacks can be worthless because all troops the computer lost in the 1st wave might be renewed by the second wave this wave basically starts from scratch. In order to get an overwhelming force you usually need to send troops from several planets. If the planets are different distances from the target, then send the troops from the farthest planets 1st and in later years send the troops from the closer planets. Be sure to time it so that they all land together for maximum effectiveness. Contributed by Jerry Derby 5.C.3 End Game 5.D Strategies for specific races Alkari --- Pretty easy to win with. The defense bonus is a godsend early in the game. Expand hard and fast in the beginning, and put together a large fleet of small, nimble fighters and frigates (with a few fusion or omega V bombs). Then expand like a banshee. These guys work great for almost any game plan EXCEPT the pacifist technologist game plan. You need to fight to take advantage of their specials, so DO IT. Bulrathi --- I find them rather tough. You are going to lag in computer tech, but you can offset that by stealing from more advanced races when you invade. Your +20 ground combat tech is really nice, but ONLY if you stay current in ground combat tech. The problem is that to use it, you HAVE to fight. You will step on a lot of toes playing here. I suggest a hard expansion followed by a retrenchment and then a brutal war against your most advanced neighbor. Ignore casualties and TAKE PLANETS. Darlok --- Ok, I admit it, I like them because they have the coolest graphics (is that Stormbringer the Darlok warrior is holding?). With that said, these guys are tough to play but a blast because you can really mess with the diplomacy. Don't expand too fast or the galaxy will turn on you since they already hate you. Get computer techs as fast as you can, and turn up the spies. Use your ability to frame to turn the strong races against each other (frame them for espionage acts). Then move in to collect the pieces. Early on, you may have to accept losing a few planets to avoid going to war with the whole galaxy. Bite the bullet and do it since A) they DO hate you and B) they CAN kill you and C) any excuse turns B into THEY WILL KILL YOU. Human --- Boring. Sorry. This is the only race I have won at through the diplomat option... i.e. getting people to vote me into office when I have significantly less than 50% of the galaxy. You are a pretty generic race other than your wonderful diplomacy so expand solidly, kill the weak and use your diplomacy to keep the strong from killing you. Eventually, you should win. You have a unique ability to concentrate on one enemy at a time since you can buy off other enemies cheaply, so USE IT. Remember, peace is just the long period of retrenchment between wars. Klackon --- I hate these guys. You start with an insane early expansion and then end in a whimper. Your inability to develop decent propulsion techs is ultimately CRIPPLING. So, expand insanely in the beginning, and then beg/plead/steal for good propulsion techs. Only THEN should you even consider war. DON'T get involved in a premature war. No matter how strong your industrial base is, if your ships still rely on RETROs to get around then that inferior Alkari fleet zipping around on fusion engines will eat you alive by concentrating both strategically and tactically. You should have your industries up and running smoothly long before the other races do, so use the breather thus offered to A) build good defenses and B) get a lot of cool construction techs. Mecklars -- I find these guys to be absolute cake, er, most of the time (grin). Expand early, but don't crush any toes. Remember, you don't need as many planets as all those other non-industrialized races. Keep people off your back with diplomacy until your industrial base gets rolling, and then, well, kill them. Your weakness in planetology can mean a huge waste of resources going to cleaning your planets so Beg/plead/steal any waste reduction or eco restoration techs you can. Your planets will have good defenses and you should have a nice, compact industrial base. This allows you enormous freedom in a war since you are virtually impregnable (50+ missile bases), and can strike out in any direction. Take your enemy's best planets and make them better. Research robotic controls whenever available. Fear the Doom Virus. Get the antidote. Mrrshan --- The Alkari's weaker brothers. I find them harder to win with. Their gunnery edge is nice, but not the equal of the Alkari's defense bonus. You should go over to the offensive as early as possible, trade for good armor and construction techs with obsolete weapons and research the gauss autocannon as soon as it becomes available. Don't rely on your gunnery edge to win you battles. It helps, but it won't allow you to totally ignore the laws of numbers. Remember, you may hit them better, but THEY CAN STILL KILL YOU. Psilons --- I know, everybody and their brother plays as the psilons because they get all the cool toys. Grab what you can early, and DON'T piss anybody off. You are VERY weak early on. Buy peace for the first half of the game while building a good tech edge, and then expand across the galaxy. If you control 15-20% of the galaxy you should be able to block anybody's election in the council until then. An interesting alternate plan I have used is to quickly acquire a tech edge in shields and weapons and exterminate a few low-tech planets. It often works, but if you get stopped, their vengeance will be terrible to behold. I usually play the former strategy. Sakkra --- I love these guys. You breed like rabbits, AND you get all the cool planetology techs early. Well played, you can have 30% of the galaxy colonized before the end of your first expansion. Sure, you will be spread as this as, well, very thin! Anyway, as soon as your first rush in over, buy peace as long as you can, and build up your defenses, because the whole galaxy will come for you as you are almost definitely winning. Once you get your defenses going, develop a good star fleet and start a relentless steam-roller advance across the galaxy. If you fall behind in TECH, consider a few "Lizard Wave" attacks against weakly defended High Tech worlds. You can afford the casualties. Think of your empire like Russia in WWII ... No matter how many troops you lose as long as they take losses too, you are winning. Once you get cloning, and a few fertile planets, you can vat grow an invasion force every 2-3 turns. I find these to be the easiest to win with UNLESS the Psilons get entrenched on the other end of the galaxy while you and your neighbors rumble. If you don't stop them they will get a huge tech lead and Bio-Terminate your empire. If you see this happening, carve a line through your enemies, conquering planets as you go until the Psilon empire is in reach and then terminate them. Silicoid -- Ok, I find these guys to be especially tough. You start out very strongly, and colonize lots of worlds, BUT, your low birth rate is crippling. You will have lots of poorly inhabited worlds. A well thought out counter attack can knock you off your rocker faster than you can say "Sakkra Swarm". So expand hard, but DON'T press your luck. Then develop planetology tech's like a madman. All those crappy 20 Habitability Toxic worlds look a lot better after +60 terraforming, atmospheric reconstruction, and cloning. You face another problem in your poor tech ability. YOU MUST control a large portion of the galaxy early on to offset this. You can continue expanding long after the other races have run out of useful planets since you can colonize anything. Expand as fast as your population growth will let you. Trade for any planetology tech you can get. OK, now, I'll say it again, these are simply MY feelings on the races. I'm sure other people have different strategies and feelings. Don't be afraid to improvise, and don't take what I've said as gospel. Contributed by: Pat Casey OK, I have a raging headache and am stuck in a lab but I'll give a quick "this race is best" list. I don't have a manual so if I misspell a race name (or any other words) deal with it.:-) 1. Psilons, good to play with and a tough race to play against the computer with. Screwed if you have a sub-standard starting position. Create a 'technocore' area with high defense on the outside and little on the inside (to save credits) get a major tech advantage and then explode outward in a orgy of destruction. ALWAYS try to be in third in population so you can swing the council votes and not deal with alliances. 2. Klackons, nasty to play against, nice to play with. You produce more early on in the game so attack once you have the needed tech to do so without major fleet lose. Send out population to new planets quickly and build up populations before industry as each colonist is worth a factory. 3. Darloks - not great on either side but fun to play. When attacked early in the game be sure to have the enemy home planet rebel, this usually nukes his war effort as the computer SUCKS at getting planets back from rebellion. You can maintain the over all tech advantage by stealing from EVERYONE. Frame groups in alliance with each other etc. Only research computer tech after the first few advances and defend your planets WELL. Later in the game when everyone is fighting everyone you can start to conquest. 5. Mmrrwhaters Alkwhaters Bulwhatevers - Icky bad to play, and not hard to beat when playing against them. Their natural combat abilities are nullified by 2 tech levels, and thats all they have. If you play them attack early cause you won't have much chance later. Fight kill blood and pray they don't develop better computers propulsion or armor than you have respectively. 3. Silicoids - fun to play but hard to win with. Slow pop growth and slow tech abilities are crushing in a war. IF you can avoid being attacked for the first 100 turns of the game you can have a chance, but planet landing tech is cheap, and after enhanced echo restoration and 60% pollution, who cares about waste. IE your advantages as a silicoid are limited. PLUS the fact that the computer can invade planets he doesn't have the tech for so even that advantage is lost. 6. Meklars - cool to play with and hard to beat EARLY in the game. Like the psilons being in third is not bad as you can equal or out produce the computer even with fewer planets. (you can't lose a game in which you are equal to the computer in strength as the computer is a moron in combat.) Meklars on ultra-rich planets are fun. 7. Sakkras - I have to take back the bad things I said about them in the past. These guys are the easiest race to win with. Expand like the plague and send out about 10 colonists to a planet to kickstart growth and watch the puppies grow. This is the one race where you can be number 1 in pop early on and NOT loose the vote cause you have so many so early. Invest in planet tech and robotic controls and watch the numbers grow. These guys are also the best in ground combat (sorry bulrathi) as you can send wave after wave. My favorite is having a race near by early on and taking all their planets and home planet before they can build a fleet. 8. Humans - a dull boring race of semi-idiot people who have no concept of self interest, or long term vision. Oh, they aren't that great in the game either. You can win with them but hey you can win with any race. Contributed by: F. Rodgers I assume that they will all eventually hate me, and treat them with appropriate spying and rapid buildups. I use biological weapons as soon as I have plenty of stout missile bases on my frontier worlds, reject all offers of peace from a nation except in the early going (when I get none anyway), and steal them blind technologically. I shoot up their colony ships. Jeez, if you're going to be attacked for defending your own planet from their invasions, screw being nice. If they establish a colony inside my 'territory', it will eventually be used as a basing point for meanness against me, so I just grab it and call in the navy. Once I'm strong enough, I take stock of every insulting message, every unprovoked attack, and every other affront committed by the computer opponents, and exterminate them (genocide without hesitation) one by one, grabbing enough planets to keep basing forward. Since the Darloks are the worst, if they are anywhere nearby, they go first--and a special effort is made to burn off all their planets as rapidly as possible (bio-bomb them into near-uninhabitability, heavy missiles to wipe out the rest of the people). The quicker they're gone the better. The humans are usually next, because I yearn to wipe that smirk off Emperor Alexander's pitiful face, making out to be such a great diplomat and peace-lover but always attack me anyway. I usually wipe that smile off with Scatter-Packs and Heavy Blast Cannon. I'm pretty racist in MOO. The only races I don't loathe are the Meklars and Klackons, because at least a) you know they're ruthless, no whiny pretenses and b) you better pack your lunch when you fight them. I respect a dangerous opponent. Tactics against: Humans: don't trade with them. Blame them for spying. Meklars: stay ahead in computer, steal from them, and grab a planet or two with all those factories and tech. Sakkras: high ground combat. Klackons: biologicals, pulsars, and scatter-packs. Psilons: pray to whatever gods you have. Darloks: total extermination as early as possible. Bulrathis: biologicals and decent missiles fired by large packs of corvettes in support of a dreadnought or two. Alkaris: same as Klackons. Mrrshans: laugh at the puny bastards. Attack them and make friends with others by doing so. Don't exterminate them and don't make peace with them. Silicoids: biologicals; good ground combat; when you get Hyperspace Commo they're dead rock-meat. I'm not loved, but I win at the hard level. Contributed by: Julian Flint 5.D.1 Strategy for playing the Alkari With Alkaris, make fleets of small maneuverable bombers, and go on the offensive early; keep up propulsion research and you'll be unhittable. Contributed by: Drew Fudenber I decided to try a game where I would use no bases at all and instead would rely on missile ships for defense. This game was Hard-Medium-3 with the Alkari. The Alkari are ideal for a baseless strategy because of the defensive bonuses they get. Most of my ships were medium size. I would put in 1 missile (size 5 if possible) and 1 beam (neutron pellet guns worked well). I would then give them the best defense, computers, engines, maneuverability and armor that I could fit. Because they were of medium size, they cost perhaps half of what a base would cost. In the game I played, this strategy worked extremely well. I won in 2499 with none of the other three races voting for me. This was with the 1.2 version. Not having to worry about bombers knocking out my bases was a big plus. So was the fact that as my front lines changed (expanded) I could move in the defense. It was also kind of pleasant having the fleet section of the race status screen showing me as a significant power instead of having next to nothing. I did not find obsolescence to be a big problem. Anyway, this strategy can certainly be made to work for the Alkari and may work well for other races. Give it a try for a different kind of game. After some 34 other games, I needed to try something new. Contributed by chaloux@mandolin.mitre.org (Dave Chaloux) 5.D.2 Strategy for winning with the Humans I have now managed to win as humans at hard level in medium galaxy. It may have been luck, as the attempt to duplicate is still underway but here are observations: 1) I now follow several others in "screening" initial galaxies - is this cheating? 2) I attacked a few nearby weaklings in early middle game, then laid low and tried to have at most one enemy at a time - immediately bought off anyone else who became pissed. 3) Alkaris wasted lots of resources attacking well defended planets, allowing me to build up technological lead. 4) Medium size bombers with cloaking device and anti-matter bombs do wonders against all but best defense; omega bombs didn't arrive till the endgame. 5) It's probably my own fault for being too conservative, but the endgame was boring- the last hour of play, I had my rich planets building ships, all else doing research. Ships were huge things-with level 9 shield, level 11 missile defense, lots of beam weapons, energy focus, 50% repair, and omega bombs. Just one of these could take on a level X shield and 20 bases, plus some ships; problem: each bombardment took a long time to play out. Anyway, I didn't want to risk having any of my colonies captured for fear of leaking a tech, so I kept a few strong fast ships at home, and tended not to colonize planets I captured- which meant I had to level a few of them several times. too bad the computer can't be programmed when to quit! Contributed by: Drew Fudenberg 5.D.3 Strategy for winning with the Psilons Hm, I've only played 3 times (on my 4th now) at Average, but I've never had a problem as Psilon. Maybe the racial type just fits my attitude. I prefer to leave them alone until they declare war, then wipe the floor with them -- by then I have twice the tech of anyone else in the game. By the time a vote comes around, I've "absorbed" one or two races with my superior ground combat tech. This is large galaxy, 5 opponents, and medium, 4 opponents. I suspect I'd have a harder time of it with less space, since it would be harder to build unassailable planetary defenses on my home planet. I've always run into someone as I was working on my first or second colony. Contributed by: Todd Perry Yep. BTW, I only play medium and large galaxy, with 4 and 5 opponents respectively. Won a huge game once but it took MUCH too long to be fun. Someone else already posted a long list of good strategy for Psilon so I'll just elaborate... first, I agree 100% on starting over if you don't have a good planet close by. I've only had to do this twice, though. Usually there's at least an Arid planet nearby with 50-60 max pop. I start my first colony, throw about 1/2 my population at it to get it mostly filled up, and spend as much as possible on industry for a couple decades. However, I DO start a trickle (10RP or so) of tech going from Mentar right away -- until you do this you don't get to start selecting tech. I don't tweak tech spending much -- just a little extra in computers, construction, and planetology to start, and try to pick advancements that give you more people/factories. Be careful not to neglect ground combat advancements, in fact, I usually give them preference when deciding what weapon to pick. I never get very diplomatic with other races -- usually feed them a few non-combative technologies to convince them to form an alliance, and ignore them afterward. Trade doesn't seem worth the effort. Once I get above a couple hundred BC's on a planet, I *always* start throwing half my BC's back into tech. Never neglect tech; it's your primary weapon. Don't make the mistake of ignoring tech to get those extra few factories next turn -- there's such a thing as diminishing returns. Anyway, by the time you hit your 5th planet, other races might have already gotten twice that. You should still have a production level equal to theirs, thanks to terraforming and robotic controls. I concentrate on missile technology early in the game. Scatter packs do enormous amounts of damage to LOWER tech ships; they become useless in a few decades, so KEEP UPGRADING. I never make ships just to make them, usually I have no fleet except for the ships guarding my new colonies. It's also important to stay ahead in missile tech so your bases can wipe out incoming fleets easily. As soon as the first race I've met declares war on me (and they always do :-) I pick the best looking planets they own, move in with ground forces and take them, and park several ships overhead to protect them. I tend to make large ships that take several turns -- with the tech advantage, you can make ships that are near-impossible to damage. Once the planets have gotten shields and are churning out bases, move on to the next group. If at all possible, do NOT bomb planets you plan to take. By the time you attack, you should have many more ground combat advances than the enemy. You can take a planet easily with 1/3 the troops they have, so don't bomb them and ruin their factories. The most successful game I ever had was when the Meklar declared war on me a few decades in. Just afterward, they "exploded" (sent out about 8 colony ships all over the place). I walked in and took Meklon with 50m troops to their 100m -- I only took 5 casualties, and got 500+ factories! I went around and did the same thing to all their older colonies, then ran roughshod over their new colonies. 10 turns later, they had dropped from 2nd to 4th place and I had doubled my production. As for Orion: I ignore it for a long time, since the computer's attempts to take it are pretty pitiful. About the time I get Stellar Converters I build a huge ship, fill it with converters, add adv damage control, beam extenders, and lightning shields (or displacement device if I have it) and the best engines/computers/etc, and take about 8 turns to build it. Then I stomp the guardian. By that time, I don't really NEED orion, but it's better than letting some other race get the technology. I usually win the game before Orion is a fully-developed planet. Contributed by: Todd Perry 5.D.4 Strategy for winning with the Silicoids I find the Silicoids to be very easy to win with. They key word for them is --- expand. I tend to prefer planets with difficult environments. The other races can't colonize them, so leaving them basically undefended seems to work. Eventually, when other races start developing the tech to colonize them I do have to start building bases. (Those few 'good' planets I take also have to be defended of course). Theoretically, I suppose, I'm vulnerable to bombing raids with undefended planets, but I find that other races just aren't that interested in attacking worlds they can't colonize, and they turn their attention elsewhere. Contributed by: Bronis Vidugiris 5.D.5 Strategy for winning with the diplomatic races (Human & Darlok) I like both the Darloks and the Humans because I like to mess with the diplomacy screen. For the humans it's quite easy (and fun) :) to have all the other races at war with each other while you conserve your resources. And if you're in a good defensive position playing the Darlok's it's fun to crank up sabotage and keep inciting the opponents' worlds to rebel. I don't know if my strategies are very effective, but they are kind of fun. What I do hate is the production bonus the opponents get on impossible/hard. I don't mind losing to the computer but I want to be out-maneuvered, not buried. Contributed by: disciple@u.washington.edu (Matthew Amendt) I find it easiest to win with the diplomatic races on Impossible level. I have played 5 games on v1.3 Impossible/Large/5 with the Humans and Darloks, and I have yet to lose any of them. One of those games (Humans) had a horrible start, where I had but 4 planets most of the game, yet I still won in the endgame (Yet I have won only 1 out of 7 games with the warrior races, Bulrathis, Alkaris, and Mrrshans). Contributed by: cox@unx.sas.com (Jim Cox) If you play as a Darlok, it's in your best interest to make contact with the cps as soon as possible, especially Psilons (if they're in the game). That way, you'll have all that many more techs available to steal. Contributed by Pat Traynor pat@ssih.com 5.E Strategies against specific races My notes on the other races as opponents are: Alkaris (honorable militarists) - don't attack them unless you mean business. Bulrathis (aggressive ecologists) - usually low-tech, Make sure you have high tech and at least 2 to 1 troops in ground attacks. Darloks (aggressive diplomats) - the ones I love to hate. My first target, if nearby. Humans (honorable diplomats) - try to be friends, as they won't attack first. If powerful, they may be favored by the Council; if so, out-flank them and destroy their allies rather than attacking them. Klackons (xenophobic industrialists) - no real feeling for them. Meklars (erratic industrialists) - not worth cultivating much as friends, as they may turn on you for no reason at all. Mrrshans (ruthless militarists) Usually the least powerful, with few worlds and no tech. I cultivate their friendship, then sic em on my enemies. Psilons (pacifistic technos) - I got a lot of advances from them as Humans, by exchange. But in the end, they were a big threat. Sakkra (aggressive expansionist) Haven't been a threat. They do tend to break non-aggression pacts, but they've never attacked. Silicoids - (xeno expansionists) Usually the major enemy, with the most worlds. Definitely an enemy. Mind you, each opponent may differ from the standard. You need to play close attention to their personalities in your game. Expansionists are almost always enemies. Xenophobes are hard to get friendly; you need to bribe them. Erratics can turn on you at any time. Honorables are better as friends. Militarists should generally be allowed to build a huge low-tech fleet. Contributed by: Douglas Zimmerman 5.E.1 Klackons: In my opinion Klackons are the toughest opponent in the game. When I lose, it is normally to them. They are just too efficient at getting an overwhelming position in the beginning. Furthermore, since they tend to be xenophobic, they are tough to deal with diplomatically. The two most effective strategies I have found against them are: 1) Play games where they aren't involved! 2) On a more serious note, attack them as soon as possible in the game. This is especially true if you have a ground combat advantage of some sort. If you can capture their colonies early in the game, they will keep depleting the population of their other planets to attack back. This is doubly hard on them because their population is their strength! They lose twice as much in production per person killed as the other races. You will find that even in the beginning, their home worlds will be protected by missile bases. Make sure you build some spacecraft that can take the bases out. If you can't beat them early, you are unlikely to be able to beat them later on. A little lead for them in production now tends to translate into a big lead in production and technology for them later. By the way, the Sakkras have a built in ground attack advantage that is perhaps less obvious. Specifically, they grow back faster so if you are trading population 1 for 1, they get the better of it. I have creamed the Klackons with the Sakkras using this strategy. Contributed by: Dave Chaloux I agree that klackons are toughest- see my recent post for request on others experience. Klackons are tough because (1) they invest in factories, (2) they will build thousands of gnats if you lack a stack-attack weapons, and, most impressively, (3) they switch to other ships (most recently medium and large-sized missile platforms) if you show up with a stack destroyer. [... editor] Humans are good for attacking Klackons, as Klackon gnats don't have strong weapons, so shields are very effective, and propulsion tech leads to a stack -killer.- Contributed by: Drew Fudenberg 5.F Strategies for different size galaxies 5.G Warfare 5.G.1 Ship Design following are different people's ideas about what kinds of ships to design: 5.G.1.a With regard to whether it is better to build large fleets of small ships or small fleets of large ships: Depends on the technology that I have, and the technology my principal adversary has. This is why good espionage is vital. If my opponent lacks streaming weapons, drive pulsars, or black hole generators (the principle anti-stack weapons), large fleets of tiny ships are very dangerous. If they have them (and especially if they have good planetary bases with high end Scatter-Pack missiles), look to build big powerhouses. As I said in another post, don't make the mistake of fighting the last war. Another tip later in the game is to build Planetary Defense Stations. This is essentially a huge ship, with the maximum armor, and retro engines. Max out the shields, ECM, and targeting computer. Spend nothing on Maneuver. The specials should be Repulsor beam, High Energy Focus, and Automated Repair or Black Hole Generator. Then load it to the maximum with beam weapons, especially streaming weapons. No missiles (use the planetary batteries for that). Then station one at each planet. Its entire job is to keep bombers off the planet. Because you used retros, you'll get a lot more weapons on board, and it doesn't need to move much anyway. Contributed by: Dave Weinstein 5.G.1.b This game appears to support the combined arms concept quite well. I usually generate a fleet that consists of several regional task forces. Each task force contains many long range missile boats (on small or medium platforms), several dedicated bombers (on medium or large platforms), several cruisers (beam/stream weapons on large platforms), and a few heavies loaded with short-range heavy hitting weapons (beams/streams/etc) (huge platforms). In attack, the missile boats concentrate on taking out the enemy's killer swarms (lots of small/medium platforms that attack en-masse). The object is to prevent these ships from hitting your heavy ships with a massed attack. The bombers head straight for the planet and toast the defensive systems. Usually the planet targets the larger number of missile boats, and ignores the bombers. If the bombers strike hard enough, the planet defenses will go down and any missiles launched will disappear. The cruisers escort the bombers to the planet. It is important that the cruisers outnumber the bombers so as to make a more tempting target for any intercepting forces. The heavy ships usually hang back until the missile boats have killed enough of the enemy to prevent mass attacks. They then swing out to take on the enemy heavy ships with any ammo left in the missile boats used for support. Of course the plan gets modified depending on the composition of the enemy fleet, but after playing large and huge galaxies, this seems a good tactic to use. To take full advantage of this tactic you must stay current in missile technology or you will get to watch them bounce off the enemy's shields. Side note: massed missile boats make nice raiders to go in an take out poorly escorted heavy platforms. Happy hunting! Contributed by: Karl S. Mathias 5.G.1.c Suggested Ship types: The Fighter MAX Maneuverability and Attack. Ignore shields unless your tech level is absurd in which case strap on a low level one. Put on Either a Neutron pellet gun or a mass driver (if possible) to carve through armor. Inertial stabilizers are nice, so are teleporters. Brutal early on, anti-stack weapons will butcher them late in the game unless you have an insane tech edge. If you are the Alkaris, ignore the above and build 'em all the time. The Archer Large ship with a lot of missiles. Scatter packs are nice unless your opponents have good shields. If your battle run long, strap on some torps and hang back. MAX Shields, + attack. If you need to save space, scrimp on maneuverability. After all, you want to hang back. Vulnerable ships, but if you get some good missiles, they can be brutal. Scatter pack VII or X are excellent against all but the best defended enemy ships. If your missile tech is lagging, skip this class entirely. Stick to the shooters. The Knight Large ship with lots of good beam weapons. Max everything, armor, shields, etc. DON'T, however, use a double hull-- it eats too much space. Good weapons are mass drivers, hard beams, Gauss Autocannons (You gotta love 'em), and if you are facing lots of fighter stacks, Tachyon and Graviton rays. I avoid anything that doesn't halve enemy shields. That way the ships will still be effective in thirty years. Resist the temptation to base your fleet around knights. Your fleet should remain BALANCED. The knights role is to clean up after the fighters and archers have chewed up the enemy. Too many of this class will eat all your fleet resources and get mauled by enemy fighter stacks which ate up your own, smaller, stacks. The Gladiator Huge, top of the line death star type ships. They're fun, but hideously inefficient. For the price of one Gladiator you can buy, literally, 200 small fighters. Now, which would you rather face? The purpose of the gladiator class is to carry all the cool, huge toys you develop. This is where you deploy the black hole generators, the death rays, and the plasma torps. Also, ALWAYS put on AUTO REPAIR, and DON'T skimp on armor, shields, or attack value. Maneuverability is of secondary importance to the other three. The gladiator is a special purpose ship. Use one with black hole generators to eat enemy stacks, preferably AFTER they have engaged your fighters. They are also very tough, especially with auto-repair, so large numbers of enemies who cannot kill it in one round are basically doomed to die of attrition. The Bomber Don't build one. Its vulnerable and next to useless. Strap a few bombs on everything you build (they are small), and you won't need to waste resources on a ship which cannot fight. Exception 1: n the opening, you may need a few dozen bombers as bombs are still pretty large. Exception 2: There isn't one. Contributed by: Pat Casey Ship design hint: Early in the came Computer players buy lots of ships with gatling and other lasers. A class IV shield is relatively easy to acquire and will make you INVULNERABLE to such weapons. The contrapositive is, of course, also true. So upgrade your fighters to neutron pellet guns as soon as possible. Contributed by: Pat Casey 5.G.2 Best Weapons At any rational tech level (I have yet to exceed 70 and I have won on impossible large a number of times), the Death Ray is an overpriced, oversized toy with no real use. Consider that for the space of 1 death ray I can generally strap on some 20 pulse phasors. Against anything but a dreadnought, the pulse phasors are a better deal. Pulse phasors: 12.5 DAM X 3 X 20 = 750 damage MEAN Death Ray: 600 damage MEAN Mind you shields will tend to shift this back towards the death ray, but you get no points for overkill! It will still only kill 1 Fighter, while my pulse phasors could kill some 60. At insane (above 70) tech levels, the death ray may be a better deal, but at the levels I tend to reach, it just isn't worth it. At least not the way I see things. Contributed by Pat Casey 5.H Vital Technologies 5.I Diplomacy Ok, some notes on spying in MOO. 1) Just because somebody is spying on you does not mean you will get reports. They must A) succeed at spying on you and B) get caught before your counter-intelligence types will report to you. What this means in practice is that really good spies like the Darloks can rob you blind and either avoid being caught or frame somebody else for the act. 2) The fact that you do not receive reports on spying is a GOOD sign. It means your internal security forces are on the ball and people aren't messing with you. 3) In most Easy, Simple, and Average games, the computer doesn't use its spies well. Since it isn't spying heavily, you won't see much successful computer espionage. Exception: The Darloks can do wonders with a small budget. 4) In any game with the Darloks, DON'T be too prepared to trust all those reports about the Psilons spying on you. Accept the possibility, even the likelihood, that the Darloks are actually behind it and framing another race. 5) In any Hard or impossible game, IF you have a tech edge then you MUST play with a high internal security or risk losing it. If you are behind technically, then you can save money by not cracking down with the KGB types. 6) In my opinion, the only worthwhile use of spies is for espionage. Factory destruction is just not cost effective. Exception: IF the DARLOKS, then try these two gambits as they tend to be cost effective. First, try forcing enemy planets into rebellion and then invading after the invariable ground battles weaken the defender's empire. Alternately, try concentrating on missile base sabotage over one planet to soften it up for invasion. Again, as anybody but the Darloks, the cheapest way to blow up a missile base is with a cruiser. 7) Espionage is HEAVILY dependent on your computer tech relative to your target race. IF you can keep only one tech current and are counting on spies for the rest, then concentrate on computer widgets. I hope this A) clears up some confusion and B) gives people some nasty ideas about how to use the Darloks fully. Contributed by: Pat Casey Spying is fairly hard, because: 1) Your spies have to survive the initial launch (or roll) of the counter-intelligence (MI6 ? :-) forces, which is not too hard if you are not spying against Darloks or a race with much higher rate in Computer Tech. They have a unmodified 50% chance of being not stopped in their activities. 2) The surviving spies have a 15 % chance (modified by a difference in Computer Tech and the 'Darlok bonus') of actually getting something done. If you are spying a race with a difference in Computer Tech of over 15 to his advantage, you'll never succeed! If one of your spies 'confesses' then you loose all the spies! I found out that spying the Darloks (bonus) and Psilons (advanced Computer Tech) is extremely hard. Contributed by: Petteri Bergius Some tips on exchanging technology -- Once I develop a tech, I trade it with everybody I know. This increases the speed of researching a lot because you can get 5 new techs for one of yours (assuming 5 opponents). And now that you have 5 new techs you can trade them with everybody for more new techs. See how it goes? Obviously, make sure you don't trade your level 50 item for a level 10 item. I only never trade biologicial bombs, doom virus an warp dissipator. I always trade that antidote. I never trade things that you can use in ground battle like armor or guns. I never trade any engines unless he already has even better engines. Contributed by Constantijn Enders ================================================================================ 6.0 Tables ================================================================================ 6.1 Technology 6.1.1 Cost of Tech in RPs for races average at making tech Simple Easy Average Hard Impossible Tech level 1 = 20 25 30 35 40 Tech level 2 = 80 100 120 140 160 Tech level 3 = 180 225 270 315 360 Tech level 4 = 320 400 480 560 640 Tech level 5 = 500 625 750 875 1000 Tech level 6 = 720 900 1080 1260 1440 Tech level 7 = 980 1225 1470 1715 1960 Tech level 8 = 1280 1600 1920 2240 2560 Tech level 9 = 1620 2025 2430 2835 3240 Tech level 10 = 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 Tech level 11 = 2420 3025 3630 4235 4840 Tech level 12 = 2880 3600 4320 5040 5760 Tech level 13 = 3380 4225 5070 5915 6760 Tech level 14 = 3920 4900 5880 6860 7840 Tech level 15 = 4500 5625 6750 7875 9000 Tech level 16 = 5120 6400 7680 8960 10240 Tech level 17 = 5780 7225 8670 10115 11560 Tech level 18 = 6480 8100 9720 11340 12960 Tech level 19 = 7220 9025 10830 12635 14440 Tech level 20 = 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000 Tech level 21 = 8820 11025 13230 15435 17640 Tech level 22 = 9680 12100 14520 16940 19360 Tech level 23 = 10580 13225 15870 18515 21160 Tech level 24 = 11520 14400 17280 20160 23040 Tech level 25 = 12500 15625 18750 21875 25000 Tech level 26 = 13520 16900 20280 23660 27040 Tech level 27 = 14580 18225 21870 25515 29160 Tech level 28 = 15680 19600 23520 27440 31360 Tech level 29 = 16820 21025 25230 29435 33640 Tech level 30 = 18000 22500 27000 31500 36000 Tech level 31 = 19220 24025 28830 33635 38440 Tech level 32 = 20480 25600 30720 35840 40960 Tech level 33 = 21780 27225 32670 38115 43560 Tech level 34 = 23120 28900 34680 40460 46240 Tech level 35 = 24500 30625 36750 42875 49000 Tech level 36 = 25920 32400 38880 45360 51840 Tech level 37 = 27380 34225 41070 47915 54760 Tech level 38 = 28880 36100 43320 50540 57760 Tech level 39 = 30420 38025 45630 53235 60840 Tech level 40 = 32000 40000 48000 56000 64000 Tech level 41 = 33620 42025 50430 58835 67240 Tech level 42 = 35280 44100 52920 61740 70560 Tech level 43 = 36980 46225 55470 64715 73960 Tech level 44 = 38720 48400 58080 67760 77440 Tech level 45 = 40500 50625 60750 70875 81000 Tech level 46 = 42320 52900 63480 74060 84640 Tech level 47 = 44180 55225 66270 77315 88360 Tech level 48 = 46080 57600 69120 80640 92160 Tech level 49 = 48020 60025 72030 84035 96040 Tech level 50 = 50000 62500 75000 87500 100000 6.1.2 Formula for research OK, so has anyone figured out the _real_ formula for research in MOO? I tried to implement it as written, and it certainly doesn't work. The interesting things I found is that once past the Base Cost, your breakthrough chance seems to increase by 1% for every 4% of the Base Cost you invest, at least under some circumstances... I found this by researching Improved Industrial Tech 9 (tech level 3) at average level - the cost is 270 RP's. This is fine, and I should note I had no other new technologies in Construction. By investing 270 RP's each turn, I found that you reach the base cost the first turn (no surprise), then the next 270 gives you only a 25% chance of discovering the technology - not only is there a 4% to 1% conversion, but there isn't any 15% interest on the first year's 270 investment. The next 270 RP's gave a 58% chance. So there is eventually interest earned (without interest it would just be a 50% chance), but there is some kind of delay built in. I figured out vaguely how this worked, and the code below computes it. It does seem to work for constant invested amounts, getting very similar results to MOO (+-1%; roundoff error near as I can tell). However, this code does not work for various cases. For example, if you first invested 270 RP's (and so met the base cost) and then do 27% a turn, you get a return of: 270 - meet base cost 27 more - 3% (fine so far) 27 more - 10% 27 more - 17% 27 more - 25% 27 more - 32% There's a 7-8% gain each time, which (using the 4 to 1 rule) translates into about 76-86 RP gain each later turn for only 27 RPs in - you seem to earn a lot more RPs than your small investment would warrant. Even with the full 15% of the previous years' investments you can't get from 3% to 10%. So maybe there is a 2 to 1 conversion at low levels of investment after all. Anyway, I've gone as far as I'd like with this puzzle - if anyone else makes any headway, let us know! BTW, the mean time for completing a project given a fixed percentage is simply 100/percentage years, e.g. if you have an 8% breakthrough level and then fund it at 1 RP a year to keep up the research (and so add minimal new investment), you will complete the project in 12.5 years on the average. Given the odd compounding behavior I saw with the 27 RP investments, it does look like a slow trickle does get you a lot of bang for your buck (as the rules say), but it's not at all clear to me how this algorithm works. /*======== moo_rps.c ==========*/ /* Compute technology advances given the base cost and a per year investment. * By prefixing with the "+" sign, e.g. "+27" (or whatever), the investment * is used for this year only and a new one can be entered. * Seems to work for constant investments, but doesn't work for cases like * target: 270 invest: +270 27 */ #include #include #include #define BUFSIZE 256 char Buffer[BUFSIZE] ; #define round(a) floor((a)+0.5) main(argc,argv) int argc; char *argv[]; { int val ; float target, invest, investsum, musthave, interest, lost_int ; float chance, not_accumchance, origsum, old_interest, avg_year ; int doit, year, cont_flag ; float bc_per_rp = 4.0 ; /* not 2.0, as the docs say */ TargetInput: printf( "target technology (in RPs): " ) ; gets( Buffer ) ; if ( sscanf( Buffer, "%d", &val ) != 1 ) goto TargetInput ; if ( val <= 0 ) goto TargetInput ; target = val ; /* Compute investments */ /* at this level, investment must be done */ musthave = round(target * (1.0 + bc_per_rp)) ; investsum = 0.0 ; not_accumchance = 1.0 ; old_interest = 0.0 ; avg_year = 0.0 ; cont_flag = 1 ; year = 1 ; while ( investsum < musthave ) { if ( cont_flag ) { InvestInput: printf( "investment (in RPs/year) [do `+93' for continued input]: " ) ; gets( Buffer ) ; if ( sscanf( Buffer, "%d", &val ) != 1 ) goto InvestInput ; if ( val <= 0 ) goto InvestInput ; cont_flag = strchr( Buffer, '+' ) ? 1 : 0 ; invest = val ; } if ( year == 1 ) { printf( "\nTo reach technology of cost %f, investing %f per year\n\n", target, invest ) ; printf( "year investment to min chance accum chance\n") ; } origsum = investsum ; /* get interest for next year */ interest = round( investsum * 0.15 ) ; if ( interest > old_interest ) interest = old_interest ; if ( interest > invest ) { lost_int = interest - invest ; interest = invest ; } else { lost_int = 0.0 ; } investsum += invest + interest ; /* check if we've reached breakthrough stage */ if ( investsum <= target ) { printf( "%3d %14.0f %8.1f%% ", year, investsum, 100.0 * investsum / target ) ; } else { /* note that additional research goes 4 RP to 1% increase */ chance = ( investsum - target ) / target / bc_per_rp ; if ( chance > 1.0 ) chance = 1.0 ; avg_year += not_accumchance * chance * (float)year ; not_accumchance *= ( 1.0 - chance ) ; printf( "%3d %14.0f %8.1f%% %9.0f%% %9.0f%%", year, investsum, 100.0, (float)round( chance * 100.0 ), (float)round((1.0 - not_accumchance) * 100.0) ) ; } if ( lost_int > 0.0 ) { printf( " >>> Lost interest %g RPs\n", lost_int ) ; } else { printf( "\n" ) ; } old_interest = round( investsum * 0.15 ) ; if ( old_interest > origsum ) { old_interest = origsum ; } /*printf( "old interest %g, origsum %g\n", old_interest, origsum ) ;*/ year++ ; } printf( "\nAverage year of completion: %.2f\n", avg_year ) ; } Contributed by: Eric Haines 6.2 Weapons Comparison Charts 6.2.1 Estimated Damage for each Hit against different shields The following two charts show estimated damage for each turn for each weapon against each shield level: Beam Weapons: Shields name tech dmg(shots) sz/pow(bon) rng 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15 Laser 1 1- 4(x1) 10/ 25(+0) 1 2.5 1.5 0.7 0.2 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Hvy Laser 1 1- 7(x1) 30/ 75(+0) 2 4.0 3.0 2.1 1.4 0.9 0.4 0.1 -- -- -- -- -- Gat Laser 5 1- 4(x4) 20/ 70(+0) 1 10.0 6.0 3.0 1.0 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ^Neut. Pellet 7 2- 5(x1) 15/ 25(+0) 1 3.5 2.5 2.5 1.5 1.5 0.7 0.7 0.2 -- -- -- -- Ion Cannon 10 3- 8(x1) 15/ 35(+0) 1 5.5 4.5 3.5 2.5 1.7 1.0 0.5 0.2 -- -- -- -- Hvy Ion 10 3-15(x1) 45/105(+0) 2 9.0 8.0 7.0 6.0 5.1 4.2 3.5 2.8 1.6 0.8 0.2 -- ^Mass Driver 13 5- 8(x1) 55/ 50(+0) 1 6.5 5.5 5.5 4.5 4.5 3.5 3.5 2.5 1.5 0.7 0.2 -- Neutron Blst 15 3-12(x1) 20/ 60(+0) 1 7.5 6.5 5.5 4.5 3.6 2.8 2.1 1.5 0.6 0.1 -- -- Hvy Blast 15 3-24(x1) 60/180(+0) 2 13.5 12.5 11.5 10.5 9.5 8.6 7.8 7.0 5.5 4.1 3.0 2.0