Traitor - Page 2

Malkuth · #11 February 1st, 2001, 05:37 AM

Quote ::::Just an FYI but Hasbro Interactive is no more. They were bought out by InfoGames?
Here's a link to the story::::: End Quote

You should learn to read better

they are getting the rights to Hasbro for a certain amont of years, not buying them totally out. They still have to use the Hasbro Name and will keep all current projects.

[This message has been edited by Malkuth (edited 01 February 2001).]

solamnic76 · #12 February 1st, 2001, 09:29 AM

MOO was great. MOO2 was even greater. Also CIV was great, CIV2 even greater.

Call the Power never hit me and it was meant to be CIV3. I'm afraid MOO3 will let us down. There is none (as far as i know) former Simtex-wizard around greating MOO3.

MOO3 will be same as Call "CIV3" the Power. Nothing really same but name.

Of course, despite coming of MOO3, we still have Space Empires IV and hopefully someday Space Empires V

Tenryu · #13 February 1st, 2001, 12:59 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Atrocities:
To be honest, I did not like MOO2. ... overall, it just rubbed me the wrong way.

Interesting statement Atrocities, " rubbed me the wrong way."

That was exactly my feeling about MOO2. I didn't hate it, but I felt it wasn't nearly as good as the old orginal MOO. I remember being particularly annoyed that they'd decided I didn't need to choose my own engines. For some reason that really fried me.

Well the upshot of it all is/was that I played a lot more "Stars!" and SE3 for a lot longer then MOO2.

I can't wait for the new "Stars! Supernova" to come out, but I don't expect much from MOO3. Actually, even the design overview sounded sucky to me.

It's hard for me to understand how you can make a strategic war game and then require that we 'twitch' fast to destroy our enemies.

This 'real time' stuff in war games really turns me off. It has its place, somewhere, but as far as I'm concerned that usually assures that I DON'T buy the game.

Well, LOL! Guess I got that off my chest!

Krakenup · #14 February 1st, 2001, 04:45 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Atrocities:
To be honest, I did not like MOO2. I hope MOO3 is better, but overall, it just rubbed me the wrong way.

Me too. I felt that they had removed some of the playability (ship design options, etc.) to make room for glitzy graphics that had no useful purpose. It was like they dumbed it down to appeal to a wider audience. I never finished my first game.

Barnacle Bill · #15 February 2nd, 2001, 04:57 PM

MOO was basically a computer Version of "Stellar Conquest" with tactical combat & ship design thrown in. The 8-bit members of the "Reach For The Stars" series were also essentially computer Versions of "Stellar Conquest", as were a few other games. MOO II replaced most of the "Stellar Conquest" game mechanics with ones that looked more like Civ, except for how you moved fleets around.

That being said, there were a number of things about MOO that bugged me, and I thought MOO II improved:

1) In MOO it was a viable strategy to build nothing but huge stacks of tiny ships. My preference generically is for a system in which different sizes of ships have separate tactical roles and a balanced "combined arms" approach is superior to a "pure" approach based on any size. If I can't have that, I'll take "bigger is better". I hate the swarm thing, though.

2) In MOO, population and troops were interchangable. Simtex was neither the first or Last 4X game to do that, but it is another one of my "hates". My preference is for troops to be something you build & move in transports, like in SE4. If I can't have that, I'll take how it worked in MOO2: defensive troops come from a structure you build on a planert, offensive troops come with troop transports that turn into troops when you invade. If I can't have that, rather than the MOO method I'd prefer what Stellar Conquest did: no troops, the planet surrenders as soon as you eliminate the defenses due to the threat of bombardment from orbit, you have to keep a ship there to to keep control over the conquered planet via that same threat.

As to Civ/CivII/Call to Power, I can't think of anything about CivII vs Civ that I thought was a change they should not have made. Call to Power was not by the same people, though, but somehow a different company got the rights to the game name "Civilization" and did a "look alike" intended to make the buyer THINK it was CivIII. The Call to Power folks entirely missed WHY CivII was so popular for so long, which is the ability of the players to create their own scenarios & mods. Having played with that, I can say that CivII was one of the best but could have been even better. Firaxis is doing the REAL CivIII, and hopefully they will make those improvements (from their web site, it appears they at least understand the importance and are taking steps to insure no customization ability is lost). Call to Power sacrificed customizing ability on the alter of glitz. Frankly, I never even bought it after reading enough about the game to see that. This, of course, is one of the great strengths of SE4.

On 4x games in general, I think eliminating detail in the name of reducing micromanagement is a mistake. The right approach is the one SE4 uses, of letting the player choose to micromanage or delegate. You just have to get the delegation AI good enough to be "competent". SE4 still needs some work there, but I believe that MM will eventually come through.

On the RTS thing, frankly I think RTS is totally inappropriate at any scale above the tactical. R&D and Production decisions don't get made like that in real life. The only way it becomes acceptable is if (a) it moves at a fairly leasurely pace and (b) you can pause it and while paused view reports and change orders. I consider any RTS game in which R&D or production decisions have to be made while frantically clicking to control what is essentially a tactictal battle to be just a new form of arcade game, not a strategy game. An RTS tactical module in a turn-based 4X game is OK, as long as the player does not have to excercise the level of control over units that you do, for example, in SE4. In other words, you would give the sort of orders an admiral would give, not the sort of orders a captain would give but you are acting as captain simultaneously for every ship in the fleet.

[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 02 February 2001).]

raynor · #16 February 2nd, 2001, 05:45 PM

1. MOO2 addressed the small ship problem by giving each empire a certain number of command points. Your command points were based on your number of starbases, battle stations and star fortresses combined with certain technologies. Each successively larger ship class required a greater number of command points. Once the number of command points from your fleet exceeded the number of command points from your starbases, you had to pay 10 gold per command point in maintenance--VERY EXPENSIVE after a while.

2. I think I see your point about troops/population from MOO. OTOH, troops in SEIV are a manufactured good that gets stored in the cargo bay...

I'm surprised you didn't mention Alpha Centauri as the successor to CIVII. It further expanded CIVII by allowing you to design your own units. Adding the planet itself as an additional opponent makes the game interesting as well. Plus, Alpha Centauri's build queues and ministers make the game a bit less micro-management intensive.

Civ:CTP and CivII:CTP were kinda neat in that you had points you could spend to do 'Settler' type things instead of sitting there micro-managing a couple of hundred of those guys. But CTP had many and various other problems. I think the most severe was the introduction of lots of extremely powerful specialty units such as the Slaver which steals population, Lawyers?, Bio-Terrorists, etc which really unbalanced the game.

Firaxis CivIII looks pretty interesting. It
will not be as good a game as it might have been before Brian Reynolds had a falling out with Sid Meir and left Firaxis. Still, we might get lucky. It looks like they are going to try doing 3D renderings of all the units plus animate them. Improved graphics will be neat to see but we'll have to wait and see what they do with the gameplay.

I used to really, really hate RTS strategy games after Command and Conquer came on the scene. Games like this were not about finesse. Instead, it was just a matter of constantly building tons of troops which were going to die in just a few seconds anyways.

Warcraft I changed all that by requiring supply points for all the units. Warcraft II was a little better game. Then, came StarCraft, the best game ever made. (Gee... with a callsign like Raynor, didn't you figure I probably thought the sun rose and set on StarCraft) StarCraft had three completely unique races with extremely unique and well-balanced units that make RTS a bLast to play.

raynor · #17 February 2nd, 2001, 05:53 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Malkuth:
Quote ::::Just an FYI but Hasbro Interactive is no more. They were bought out by InfoGames?
Here's a link to the story::::: End Quote

You should learn to read better they are getting the rights to Hasbro for a certain amont of years, not buying them totally out. They still have to use the Hasbro Name and will keep all current projects.

"Infogrames announced today that it has completed its acquisition of Hasbro Interactive from Hasbro Incorporated."

Unless you want to quibble over the fact that Hasbro Interactive still exists but is now owned by a different parent company, the old Hasbro Interactive is now dead. (Unless you want to claim that the new parent company will manage things exactly the same as the old company.)

Actually, maybe it would have been better to say that Hasbro Interactive is no more, long live Hasbro Interactive. Hopefully, InfoGames will be a better manager of Hasbro Interactive will be a better manager of my favorite maker of buggy games that eventually get fixed: MicroProse.

thecyclemania · #18 February 2nd, 2001, 09:47 PM

My comments on MOO2 : the best game I ever played.
I'll always remember this game by this typical phrase : "One more turn... I play just one more turn and I'm going to bed...what time is it anyway ? ARRGGHH ! 5h30 AM and I have class...guess I'm not going to that one, again..."

I'm very excited about MOO3.
The religion system looks very cool. Never seen this in any other 4X game. I look forward to see how will the "command points" (imperial focus - IF) system will work. But it looks promising.

I always thought it was very unrealistic, and boring, that you could control every single aspect of the gameplay in 4X. Of course, it can be fun to some extend to control everything, and most games let you do so, but it's just not that fun. I would love to have a game where my ministers have a real impact on the game. Their personnality and ambition could have so much impact on how the game evolves. Think about it: your security minister didn't tell you about the robbery of your new ship prototype, because it was caused by his mistakes...
The posibilities are endless. I want to manage the game, yes, but managing ministers that would be really more cool.

About SE4 in general, this game is fun in multiplayer. It has lots of possibility, but still lots of issue.
Strategic combat in particular. It totally sucks. You have to guess as to what is the best design to build within the strategic combat system. We don't have access to sufficient information to design ship successfully. You can design ships that will totally rock in tactical combat, and get wiped out all the time in strategic.
I haven't played one game yet for more than 100 hundred turns. Also, the longest play session I had is around 9 hours. That's to me really reflects my level of enjoyment. The more hours I can play in a row, the better the game usually is.
MOO2 ? How about 28 hours...
Alpha Centauri ? How about 22 hours...
Civ I ? How about 24 hours...
The 9 from SE4 tells a lot.

Hey don't get me wrong. I still love this game, but there's still way too much problem with the game right now.

thecyclemania

Atrocities · #19 February 3rd, 2001, 12:21 AM

I could not tell you why MOO2 did not appeal to me, but it just did not. I found that the game play was ok, but only having up to 5 planets in a system kinda weak.

Of all the 4X games I have had the oppurtunity to play, BOTF was, IMHO, the best for me. Sure it was based in sorts off of MOO2, designed by the same people, but it had a lot of little details that made it worth while game that has to this day provided me with hours of game play.

------------------
"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Patric Stewart as Captain Picard
UCP/TCO Ship Yards

raynor · #20 February 3rd, 2001, 12:25 AM

Interesting. You are the first person I've met who liked Birth of the Federation. I seem to remember that one having a really bad interface.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought MOO2 lacked something. I enjoyed playing it, and played quite a few games. But it did seem to lack something. I think I may have stuck with it because it was easier to get it to run under 95 than MOO1.