Let´s Play: Master of Orion 3 -Will the Madness never stop?

[The Grey Prophet]

So, my first post, my first Let´s Play -and I picked Master of Orion 3. Well, it does sound promising, I guess. It only depends on what you expect. (I should warn right away that it will take me sometime to properly set everything up -the first posts will contain massive heaps of information, but I promise that I try my best to keep your interest.)

Warning! Warning! Large Text approaching!



The Four-Fold-Quantum War


Yesterday morning, I woke up with this weird idea in my head: “Hm, I would like to make a Let´s Play of Master of Orion III.” And because I always do what the voices in my head tell me, I started right away.
A warning before you read on: This Let´s Play will have pictures of course, I´m no sadist after all, but let´s face it: Screenshots or videos from a round-based strategy game can only do so much before boredom settles in. If you don´t play it yourselves, only looking at someone playing the game will bore you to insanity pretty fast. So I´m forced to write something interesting. I can only promise to try to break up the advancing text-walls somewhat with the odd picture here and there. But if you don´t like to read, you should run now, before they crush you.

Advanced warning: English is not my mother language, so weird spelling and grammar errors and strange word choices are to be expected. Please don´t get discouraged from my slow descent to mad rambling and read on.
If someone is still here, we will now start for real. Hopefully.

Most pictures will look like this. Bored yet?



Chapter I: Introductions

Well, maybe not all of you are familiar with the Master of Orion franchise of round-based Space-Strategy games. I will of course elaborate a bit, for the sake of those not “in-the-know”, as it is called these days. (Or those days long past, I tend to confuse the two often.)

The first two games were fun and conventional games for this genre: You colonised, you explored, you build your fleet, researched better weapons and then blew all your enemies to kingdom come. And you micromanaged all of your empire, as everyone who likes these kind of games wants to. Everyone. No exceptions. So of course all fans of Master of Orion were pretty miffed as the third title of the series changed everything: Now you could make strange “development plans” and control most of your empire with a few slide bars here and there. Some even joked that you could run your empire entirely on auto -but the joke was on them, because the AI would run your empire into the ground real fast without your help.

The idea was, that in MO3 you would REALLY be the emperor of your vast Imperium: And every decent emperor doesn´t HAVE to manage everything by himself. You have incompetent underlings for that. And boy, in Master of Orion 3 your underlings really mastered the “incompetent” part... Without tight control, you could end up with a fleet entirely composed of transport ships, or your colonies would build only Psy-Op ground units. (Something like propaganda units that somehow weakened an enemy army. Most would however prefer a real army instead of masses of propaganda specialists lurking in their reserves.) Fact is, most of the time your own AI seemed more intent on helping your enemies than actually helping you. Funny thing though, even on higher difficulty levels the enemy AI was stupid enough that I couldn´t care less.

Your vice chancellors (AI) will also prevent you from falling into insanity once you managed to colonise 100+ planets. Believe me, the first time I played MO3 I actually tried to manage every single planet without AI, but after I hit the three-digits it took me literally hours to rotate through all my worlds every round. And I had to do that because my underlings were morons. As if all my henchmen were only stupidly programmed AI and not real people. Funny that. After quite a few of these neverending rounds I simply went mad.

After my little mental breakdown was over I finally discovered a few tricks to aid the stupid AI in maintaining my worlds and I ended up with a pretty decent game. And THEN I found out about the last patch that came out before the makers of Master of Orion 3 went bankrupt or disappeared or something AND I found the Ultima Orion Mod: The army of bugs haunting the game was destroyed and I finally had a GOOD game. I rejoiced.

Concerning the bugs: The games was still playable, even without the patch, but it had this rushed, uncompleted feeling to it: Many things were simply out of whack. For example, weak shield regeneration and vastly overpowered missile technologies combined to hideously broken battles: If you had armed your self-build ships with missiles, and your enemy not, you won. Simple as that. I even found out that I could arm Longrange-Attackships with a few missiles and many, many light weapon batteries to exploit the enemy-AI: The AI never build its Longrange-Attackships with missiles nor did the enemy task forces mixed their forces. A Carrier Task Force had only Carriers and their escorts, their Attack Task Forces never had Indirect Fire Ships (Main armament: Missiles) or Carriers -and so on. My mixed Longrange-Task Forces devastated enemies with their opening salvo of overpowered missiles, then a few Carriers among my 18-ship armadas launched their fighters and harassed the enemy task forces. (With the Ultima Orion Mod, you can have 32-ship armadas, but only because someone among the team thought larger fleets are better fleets. And I wholeheartedly agree.)

And because the enemy AI seldom armed their ships with enough light weapons to destroy even a small fighter force effectively and their escorts alone could only to so much my forces with their many, many light weapons then proceed to literally rape the survivors. (Heavy weaponry takes longer to reload/cool down/whatever and a fighter that is hit is pretty much dead, regardless of fancy fighter shields or -armour. So a ship with a few heavy weapons will be pretty much bogged down with defending against a fighter strike for a long time, but a ship with many light weapons has a good chance of fighting them off in short order.)

And remember, without patch and Mod shield regeneration was almost useless, so many battles were decided by the force who could hit first. Fighters were broken, too: Even with patch and mod their spawn for infinity from their carrier ships. That was good for your ships, but very bad if the enemy had a few carrier groups of his own. At last with patch and Ultima Mod the point defence of your ships was upgradable along with your fighters.

In those battles, my forces still had the edge because of the mass of light weapons I brought into them, but throughout the game the fighters got continually stronger, the Point Defence Systems not, so in the end phases carriers and massive mobile missile launchers dominated every fleet, decimating their enemies with Macross Missile Massacres left and right.(Both parties, fighters and PDS got new weapons throughout the game thanks to research, but the fighters got additional things like shields, armour -and bigger fighters. The PDS was all you got. It was weaker then light weapon mounts but a little bit faster. Really helpful (sarcasm). Missiles just got STRONGER, period.)

Well, your fleet anyway. The AI was to dumb to exploit the imbalances/bugs. As long as you planned ahead you could steam roll every enemy fleet with laughable ease. One time, I fought down through successive battles an enemy fleet more than SIX TIMES larger than mine. They had the same technologies I had and their only weakness where a few useless transport task forces mixed up with their main forces. (Every battle is constrained to a maximum of ten task forces per side and if a side has more, they have to wait until the first task forces either flee or get destroyed in battle.)
In this epic battle fought maybe 100+ of my ships against 600-700 of the enemy. Meklar against New Antarans. The New Antarans lost EVERY SINGLE SHIP. The Meklar? Maybe a dozen. Oh, and this battle took place on difficulty level normal, by the way. The question is, what was normal in a battle lopsided as this? Answer: Nothing. The bugs in the game actively conspired against the AI to create a monumentally and boring cluster fuck of a battle system.

There were many real bugs to, not simply imbalances. But I don´t want to rant on and on like some imbecile, if you want to know more, here are some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_..._III#Diplomacy

http://apolyton.net/moo3/

In conclusion, MO3 had more bugs than stars to conquer, but patches and fan-made mods changed that.

Years later, I´am still playing occasionally -and I think it is still (or maybe finally) a fun (but complex) game.

So, let´s get started -finally: For this Let´s Play of Master of Orion III I planned something special: As MO3 is a game whose focus is on the „Big Picture(tm)“ and not on the micromanagement, like it is in many other strategy games, I will not only play a single game, I will play four of them simultaneously! (Well not really in the literal sense, because I would need four computers to do that, but you know what I mean.)

Seriously, I think only with four different species attempting to conquer the Orion Sector on the largest map available someone can truly understand the grand scope of the game. A thing on the side: I will be playing with the Ultima Orion Mod and the gigantic Ultima-Orion Map (Hundreds of stars await!) and in a attempt to not let the games go on for infinity, I will constrict the games to eight computer players (in one case, only seven because I felt like it). And only one winning condition will be allowed: Yes, it will be WAR until only one player remains. Who will effectively replace the Orion Senate. (And wipe out the Harvesters. I really, really HATE them.)

Other conditions will be: Only short and few star lanes available. That means, shorter travel time between star systems, fewer tactical possibilities. (At least to begin with. Another condition was applied through the means of the Ultima Mod: A 20% possibility for the forming of a new star lane every round.)

Four different species are chosen for every part of this huge war/insanity-of-mine: First Meklar, then Humans, Silicoids and at last the Imsaeis. The Meklar are a bunch of robots after their ancestors “cleansed” themselves of their own filthy flesh (weirdos), the Humans are... well you know. They are humans. Okay, you want more? In this game, they are good diplomats and have good spies. Their Military is average, as is the rest. Of course, a player can chose to change all that before the start of a new game. And I will...


The Meklar...



...and the Humans.


Silicoids are a crystalline species, something like semi-mobile crystal formations with their own unique and alien intelligence. (Normaly, rock-stupid would be a suitable adjective for them, because of their lack of research capabilities, but after my changes, that will be quite different...)



For a bunch of overhyped rocks they look quite pretty, I think.


The last war will be fought with the hydrogen-breathing Imsaeis. Normally, they are quite peaceful and ideal for a quick diplomatic victory through domination of the Orion Senate. After I vandalized their genetic structure, they too will strife to conquer the entire Sector. (And hopefully not be the military push-overs they are when unchanged.)


This picture was brought to you by Visualisation Inc.



A few of those “changes” will be the same overall: All will be living under a Constitutional Monarchy (average, no great bonuses, but also no great penalties, if any). Yes, I know that means that even the robots will have a monarch. (Titles for all will be: Imperator (Meklar), Emperor (Humans), Monarch (Silicoids), Monarch of the Realm (Imsaeis).) No Kings. Kings would be boring. Everyone has kings. My monarchies can live without one.

All species will be pessimistic because of the premise (will be explained shortly) and highly individual (because I don´t like anything that reeks of collectivism and as a balance to the monarchistic mindset of the populace). Pessimistic simply means that for the general population of your empire, every day will be Black Friday. Enemy spies will have a hard time infiltrating your empire, because quite frankly, your population will see spies everywhere. On the other hand, a paranoid and pessimistic public is hard on the government, so avoiding annoying the people under your rule is a little bit harder than usual. (If you don´t give a damn, worlds can and will rebel against you -you will have to conquer them back in that case. And even if they don´t rebel, they can reduce or stop your Production entirely while rioting in the streets.) Mostly, it is considered a disadvantage and will give you points for your changing experiments if selected.

Selecting the Individual option transforms your population into a bunch of free-thinking spirits. Who will also be egoists. That means your government will have a hard time containing all these carefree fairies hopping through your mighty realm. On the other hand, your people will be more creative -your research power per population will go up. Strangely, the game considers annoying the government as a greater disadvantage then the advantage of more research, so you will get points instead of losing them if you select it. To cut my rambling short, all other changes will be explained when the time is right. (When the new races begin their respective conquests.)

And all will be Utopists, just because they need at least a ray of hope in their future -pessimistic as the conquerors of the Orion Sector will be, at least they think the future will be a better place. Utopian views boosts research and creativity a bit, but also makes the your people lazier. (After all, the future will be better, why not wait until then before doing something worthwhile?)

Okay, here the premise/story I will use to weave everything together:

Long after the Orion Sector has been gone, long after the sun Orion has died, the mysterious
Narmaena are planning to invade the Milky Way-Galaxy. But the fabled CORE, a old Force
defending the Milky Way with the power of SCIENCE, counters the Invasion after the Galactic
Federation, successor of the old Orion Senate, is crumbling before the onslaught.

But soon the inevitable outcome seems clear: The Narmaena and their hideous and dramatic power
is to much for our galaxy. Doom awaits! In a last ditch effort the CORE completes the Universal
Parallel-Timejumpdevice (UPT) and sends a tome of knowledge into the past and the past of a few
parallel universes to strengthen the Federation BEFORE THE WAR EVEN BEGINS!

Now -and at the same time- long ago in the past, a few lucky bastards living in the Orion Sector are
finding the ancient tomes of knowledge, deposited by the UPT of the CORE of a far away future,
foretelling the War of Total Annihilation that awaits the galaxy, long after the current problems with
the Antarans are solved.

And with this, they aid cells of Utopists in their respective species, to slowly change their culture to
something that can and will replace the weak Orion Senate with a strong Empire, that can hold out
against Antarans, Harvesters (they are calling themselves the Ithkul, by the way) -and in the future, against the Mizarians who in a potential future will replace the New Antarans as the leaders of the Senate, and (Of course!) the evil Narmaena, who simply want to destroy everything, because they are EVIL, duh!


-And next time, we look upon the chosen races, think about things I conveniently forgot today and start maybe the first WAR. Maybe.-