about 4. well, i suspect this is just a misrepresentation of the challenge, unlikely you arrived at Orion with only 2 battleships and kill the Guardian the way as described since 1 BB explosion doesn't break Guardian's shield unless you had a quantum detonator and some other end-game tech like phase-cloak to get close safely, which would mean you were very deep in the game turn-wise, or you came with a larger fleet than 2 BB's. anyway, mercs indeed do 1 damage to the Guardian (14 dmg - class X - hard shield), so you'd need to get at least 30 actual hits from at least 8 MIRV EMG mercs. btw, I called this strat a 'funky way', because it's not the most efficient route to victory and you need to walk a very specific tech path to pull it off early. so it's not about imbalances, it's about balances, meaning previously the Guardian (with WAJ fitted + higher initiative from Augmented Engines and EMG very high in tech tree) was harder to take down, which made that path even less optimal.

about 5. VDC has an elaborate spreadsheet describing changes made. you can find it under 150/mods/VDC/docs.

about 6. check: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/master-of-orion-2-unofficial-patch.562652/page-18#post-15523107

Yea it might be that I'm forgetting something or missed some details regarding the EMG+merc vs Guardian thing. Maybe I had one or two officers with damage bonuses or something.

I do distinctly remember 1 battleship taking out the shield on one side of the Guardian by self-destructing. I think it did between 140 and 150 damage. Anyways I can't remember exactly. It also didn't have a quantum detonator on it.


I know there's the patch update notes and everything but it isn't so easy to compare VDC stats and gameplay changes to non-VDC but anyways...


Regarding that link to depth386 and what the mod is like, thanks a lot! This mod is basically exactly what I'm looking for! I have to test this mod out. The creator at least seems to want to address the exact same grievances I have with other mods or stock MoO2 (or whatever you call it, vanilla? unmodded MoO2? standard MoO2?) So that is GREAT news!


Can you read and respond to the other stuff in my post when/if you have the time?
Thanks a lot.

BB exploding for 140-150 damage sounds about right. However the ICE Guardian can soak up to 300 damage on a side.... something wrong with distinct memory, I'd say. :)

Didn't respond to the other stuff coz I had not much constructive to say about it, but since you ask explicitly:
- No clue what's the improvement of a flat pop growth over current system.
- No-production-stockpiling is not a good idea. If you had proposed halting of a production item that keeps stored production, and when switching back you continue from where you halted it, then it would be something. Plain loss of production is just terrible. It makes the game less fun and promotes risk aversion. Also, I guess under your system you should abolish buying a product with money too, since money also acts as a form of stored production in MOO2, just not localized like stored PP's.
- Spying system you describe resembles that of MOO1, which had aging of reports. Dunno why devs decided not to implement it in MOO2, it would have been nice indeed, but it's not in there.

Thanks a lot for the response, you make some good points.

-The improvement of a flat pop growth (when it comes to how the amount of population on the colony affects population growth on it) would be for people like me who don't really enjoy the finetuning and number crunching when it comes to optimizing the management of the empire (pop growth, job switches, build list organizing, managing the amount of androids to produce and where, and in this case especially, population transfer between colonies.) I prefer concentrating on more intuitive stuff rather than moslty pure arithmetic.

-Your solution to have multiple item-specific stockpiles is immersive and I'm totally fine with a compromise like that. That sounds even better I'd say. Great idea.
Also good point that it would reduce the high risk/high reward playstyle too, you're probably right about that.

I disagree when it comes to the money aspect, as that is a unique strength of a "money race" and that is also a playstyle or race type that should be a thing. The cost of buying something from 0 is also much less efficient economically than taking advantage of the default universal stockpile. Other than that, there is a lot of similarities superficially function- or playstylewise (or managementwise), but in practice it's a different thing.

-Is there any way of making some of that work in MoO2. Maybe just 1 spy for report info with 10 turn delay and 2 for 5 turn delay. Also I think a better thing would be if the delay was between up-to-date reports instead of between the report and the timeliness of the report, which was my previous suggestion. So instead of you getting a report every turn that's 10 or 5 turns old, you would get an up-to-date report every 10 or 5 turns.

Fundamentally the intention behind these suggestions has to do with 2 things. One is to minimize management and optimization in the management of the empire without sacrificing too much variety in the strategic gameplay, more like the opposite. The other is to shorten the turns, at least when it comes to optimizing the output of production, research, tax income, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...

I hope but I guess only you know whether these things are implementable into a mod, hopefully so. Thanks a lot anyways.

EDIT: Actually I did have the same idea regarding the age-of-the-report thing previously, it's just that I included the ability of getting an up-to-date report every turn with 3 spies that I wanted to get rid of.

Also now that I think about it, I'm kind of second guessing my acceptance of your argument regarding how removing the pp stockpile entirely would impoverish the gameplay by reducing the usefulness of risky playstyles. However, maybe if it doesn't mean turning to producing trade goods or housing right until the last turn you need to have a battleship ready for example, never needing smaller ships or whatever then maybe. However I actually don't know why this would be bad even if riskier playstyles, when it comes to producing stuff, were not a thing. I would be interested in trying it out. I don't see the problem.
Not to mention that this is mostly a singleplayer game anyways, at least for me, and abusing the ability to load a saved game whenever you have risked something and lost greatly because of it, makes the whole thing kind of moot.

Did you try the first and the latest MoO games? You sound like you would enjoy those.

Thats not a very correct description actually. He's only a fake, figurehead, SMM, stuff like that. We hired him to work as a middleman to speak with regular users instead of us, expecting redundant conversations about irrelevant/stupid/already covered etc things (this certain and other similar threads shows that was a pretty wise move); that we'd detest to do on our own (tho he expanded it into hosting a site of his own dedicated to it). Actually there was expected some other work from him beside mentioned ones: to provide a throughout descriptions to config's options, but he skipped it, instead fully immersing into playing "the patch developer" for forums audience and welding some mod of him. So as the current state of patch development went pretty much into the way the VDC mod of yesteryear was: an ignorant "modder", who just change some variables in game for "balance" and bubbling with various "ideas for improvement", while mostly working on PR, as a frontman (ofc its not direct analogy here, as Rocco is way better than mentioned counterpart); and obscure technical savvy guy, who do all the actual work for him, while keeping low profile due to actual lack of interest to the game. So more correct description would be like: "he know whom to ask if those things are implementable or not" , or in more real words: "to ask if he would want do it for him or not" (as total majority of such things are implementable, of course; just usually not worth even a time discussing them, not mention some actual work spent on).

Ну прямо всем сестрам по серьгам. Без публичных разборок-то никак? Хочешь назад -- всего-то извинись перед рокко и ждём с объятиями.

Well I did play MoO3, it sucked donkey balls. MoO1 seems to have its own strengths, though MoO2 has more variety as far as I know: tactical space combat, ground combat etc. Though I'm not sure what MoO1 has specifically. Aside from the in my opinion out-dated early DOS era graphics and sound, I might I even like some of it and could try it out since I have it too (GOG MoO series gamepack.) I guess I'm sort of looking for a middleground between the two.


Oh well, I knew there were other people involved with the 1.50 patches but I'm not exactly sure on who does what or who runs the show. I had an idea that you were prolly involved with it at least. Sounds a little harsh to say that about Rocco though but I don't know how the development is even run so....

Anyways, thanks for the effort into the mod, I appreciate it at least.

When it comes to VDC, are you saying Rocco is doing the work for that guy who leads the development of that mod or what I'm getting lost here.


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Anyways as a kind of alternative to what I suggested regarding the possibility of removing the stockpile, to Rocco or you, Rocco's alternative when combined with 2x or maybe 2.5x higher costs for battleships compared to cruisers for example is maybe one way to do that thing if the option of removing the stockpile would turn out to make the game worse than it could be.

I did not even mention MoO3 in my post... It is slow and heavy with either way too much micro-management or just clicking next turn. If you want something similar to it (space lanes and stuff) that is more fun, go play FreeOrion instead.

Here on GOG we play the DOS version of MoO 2.

FreeOrion didn't really interest me. I prefer modded MoO2. Also I didn't mean DOS per se but the graphics and sound of early 90's DOS and PC games compared to Amiga games or later DOS games for example.

Darza was working on the 1.50 patch from the beginning of the project until early 2018, when he left the team.
Currently the team consists of Alex.150 and myself.

There are several mods running on the 1.50 patch, like ICE, which I made, and VDC, from another mod creator, and a few 1.50 config options have been made specifically for his mod (note this is not what our former team member meant with his 'VDC mod of yesteryear' comparison, but whatever).

You can tweak ship cost and stats all you like with 1.50's config.
About the stockpiling, I don't see value in making such changes/options so I won't be asking Alex.150 to do that work for me... ;)

Patch version 1.50.16 has been released!

Changes are described in the changelog:
http://moo2mod.com/patch/CHANGELOG_150.TXT

Install instructions:
http://moo2mod.com/patch/install.txt

I am playing MoO2 again and loving it, but I have questions about mods that might be available.

First, it has always bothered me that using exclusively bio-weapons (like death spores) is not one of the options on the orbital bombardment screen. Are there any mods that add a button for just using bioweapons? (and then let you decide to keep bombing or invade or simply wait until next round like normal.) Right now bioweapons don't seem at all worth it, but they might be if it were easier to use them to get free buildings.

Second, is there a mod to make exterminating colonists bad for relations with AIs? It doesn't appear to be that way now. (I would also love to see a penalty for shipping off colonists to die by sending them to over populated worlds – either damage to relations with AIs or -10% morale per colonist shipped for X turns or make it so the piracy problem much more likely to happen in multiple systems. All those stranded, supposedly dead colonists will surely have it in for the government that shipped them off to die. Maybe a random chance of one or all three.)

Third, I would like to take tech like Scout Labs and make them much more appealing - for example increase the toughness of monsters incredibly and increase the bonus from Scout Labs as well, making them highly desirable if you are going after any of those protected planets.

Last, is there a mod that allows you increase the number of bad events that happen for all "non-Lucky" races? It would be fun to play a game with a little more nature generated chaos in it.

I am just asking if anyone knows if changes like these have already been attempted or completed.

Thanks!

1. there's no mod for a separate button.
2. no mod for it.
3. with 1.50 config you can increase monster hit points as well as the scout lab beam offense bonus.
4. there is no such mod afaik, but you can create one with config that tweaks the events.

Hi! My friend tried to install the 1.50.x patch on his Mac - but running install-macosx only brings up a white window (the MOO2launcher). Apparently the two text input fields (paths) are there and if he's lucky he can click on "Browse" to open a folder selector.. But the folder selector doesn't allow him to go inte the game folder (installed by Gog Galaxy).

What to do? Anyone else had this?