I remember the review. I can’t remember if I bought it or not… the memorable I guess. Thank you for the clarification.
Dont mention it. Glad to have helped in whatever small way :)
What did you do exactly? I just started playing this, and it runs really badly, so anything I could do to tweak it would be awesome!
Is this the review you speak of?
I remember. Me and my friends that introduced me to MOO2 just a few months before MOO3 came out, we all went to EB Games together and each got a copy. And then we retreated to our cubby holes to play it for a few days. None of us wanting to stick our head out and admit we had all just bought a lemon.
OK so.
Find your install folder. If you need help with this, I hate you. For a Steam install, it’s /steamapps/common/Master of Orion/
Good. Now open dosboxMOO1.conf in your text editor of choice.
This next step is going to vary depending on your machine. But for me, changing the cycles=auto element to cycles=fixed 40000 got me to a good place. That’s on line 82 of the .conf file, and it changes how many virtual cycles of the bullshit processor (technical term) DOSBox assigns to the game process.
I also changed windowresolution=(somebullshit) to windowresolution=1600x900 to get a nice less-than-fullscreen window to play the game in on my 1080p monitor that I use because I’m not a Canadian patent lawyer or whatever. Your mileage may vary. I may have also changed fullscreen=true to false. This is all pretty well documented in the .conf file itself, and if you really need me to help you further I’ma need you to send me cookies at Christmas and watch my kids next time Star Wars hits the theater, because you’re apparently my grandmother.
<3 <3 <3
Jesus. That’s like 200 words of snark for 15 words of advice. It must be after 11pm.
When will this forum implement an excessive snark warning before you post?
Master of Orion 3 really suffered from being bloated and it showed that automation was not the solution to mechanic bloat.
I have no idea why so many 4x devs think automation is a solution to a mechanic being unplayable after a particular size of games.
It’s a difficult situation to face. When the other races unify, they all share all tech immediately. So essentially you are now facing a super race with a crazy economic base and potentially better tech than you in some or all areas. It’s kind of fun to try and win these scenarios sometimes, though.
Sounds like you are improving!
Thanks, that fixed it!
I normally play Small Map, Five Opponents, Hard Difficulty.
Damn that’s spot on. Never read that before.
Boy, if you lose the council vote and decide to fight on it can take a while to win on a large map - but I finally got a win on game number 3. I went on a slash and burn rampage so I wouldn’t have so many worlds to try and protect. I made a huge bomber that was fast, high defense and as many bombs as it could carry. I would have given it a cloak once it became available but by then I knew the victory would come so I didn’t bother.
I like MOO quite a bit. I’m not sure I like the slider method more than a more detailed approach, but I’m glad it exists for a change of pace. There are some nice high level decisions to be made - which planets to use for ship production vs research planets and when to change it up due to a moving enemy front, how many resources to allocate to future improvement vs building ships now, when to change ship designs… I think one of my favorite features of the game is being limited to 6 ship designs. My second favorite is random research techs.
It’s amazing that a game that is over 20 years old is still worth playing today - even with very dated graphics and some UI difficulties.
Oh the wailing and gnashing of teeth that feature caused. Gamers are a crowd who think if six designs is good, sixty designs must be ten times as good!
I think it really speaks to the underlying soundness of the design.
Gentlemen,
I respect your opinions that MOO1 may have had better mechanics than MOO2.
However.
MOO1 runs at 320x200.
THREE TWENTY BY TWO HUNDRED.
It might as well be fucking CGA.
No.
No, there is NO going back to resolution, ever. Not when MOO2 is – at the very least – 90% as good, mechanically, as MOO1. That fact that it runs above 320x200 makes it, at least 50% better, or 40% better overall, than MOO1.
That is all.
Says you. Just yesterday I was enjoying the hell out of Subwar 2050, which also runs at that resolution. You wanna cut yourself off from gaming history for so minor an issue, be my guest. It’s your loss.
DOSBox scales up, you know.
This thread inspired me to replay this great gem. Changing the setting to 1280x1024 is entirely feasible. And with a 12000 cycle (crtl+f12) makes the turns really realy spiffy!
MOO is pretty ugly for sure, but that didn’t prevent me from enjoying it. I usually have it full screen, but occasionally play it in a window where it is sharper, but tiny.
I need to pay more attention to who has a high population so I don’t lose the council vote. I also need to figure out how to get every other AI not to either abstain or vote for the other guy. Even when I have trade going on and my relationship is good they don’t vote for me. In my 1 game I won, I had still lost the council vote.
I really lie how different the races feel. Being able to settle on every planet type right from the start is a game changer.