IMO, those fan mods only work to improve the gaming experience for those who have already been enjoying MoO3 as what it was.
But those mods are not going to help at all for gamers who pick the game up because they enjoyed MoO and MoO2.
Like some have mentioned, the dev basically throw almost everything good from MoO and MoO2 out of MoO3 and try to re-invent the game into some kind of Empire-macro-management game, which backfired as most MoO fans are not asking for a re-invented MoO game in the first place. Not to mention the macro-management and spreadsheet play style is also not appealing enough to attract the interests of main stream gamers.
So the game actually fail to score a hit with the MoO fanbase and also fail to score a hit with the gaming masses even though MoO3 does managed to capture it's own cult of supporters and followers. This is why no fan-made mods are ever going to save this game by making it more fun and enjoyable for both the old-time MoO fans and also the mainstream gamers. They just improve the game for those who already like the way MoO3 was played.

I also come from a military history Board adn Computer game background, so I understand the concept of the above. (Combat Mission is totally based on the give commands then watch how they play out concept and that is a favorite game fo mine)
The problem is MOO3 does not do it very well, and a horrid interface does not help matters.
Yes, the mods make the game better, but better is not the same as good.
I am finding that any game, no matter how badly received, is going to have a following. That is fine, to each his own, etc, but they are often such fantatics about it, and use one of the worst tactics on the internet to defend it.... the "if you don't like it it's because you are too stupid to understand it" routine, which I have come to despise.

I would be prepared to give MOO 3 another chance, but like others here, I would certainly be much more interested in doing so if it had been priced at $5.99. I'm not angry about the price being as high as it is, but I think it shows that whoever made that decision (probably someone at Atari) don't really understand how much their stuff is actually worth. I mean, MOO 3 might not be a total disaster with the patches and all, but it is the clearly weakest Atari game on GOG, so it's quite strange to say the least that it is also the most expensive.
So it's the business decision that I don't understand. I'm pretty sure that they would have made a lot more money of it if they priced it at $5.99, simply because a lot more people would give it a chance at that price. Atari would have made less per customer, but the extra amount of customers would probably have made it worth it in the long run.
(though TBH, with so many genuine classics in their library it's a bit surprising that MOO 3 was released so soon in the first place. There are dozens of Atari-owned games that we'd go nuts for, so I don't really understand why this was in the first batch of Atari-releases at all)

When playing a 'Grand Strategy' style of pc/boardgame are you sitting there doing nothing? Are you not watching the opposition moves and gambits and working out your own counter strategies for your go?
When i play chess, it may look like im sitting there like a lobotomised monkey but im thinking and making choices. With MOO3 my complaint was lack of choice, or at least lack of informed choice. I WAS sitting there doing nothing except maybe thinking about what i was gonna cook for dinner.
If MOO3 is a deep strategy game (and it may be) i think it's biggest failure was a lack of good, solid tutorial scenarios that educated the player about which choices they could make, how it affected the game and so forth. If you have a reason to sit there for 20 turns because you are waiting to employ a particular game tactic, then that is fine, but when you have no idea how anything is affected or why you should or shouldn't be doing something, then it gets boring very quickly.
What MOO3 needed more than a patch was a clear, well constructed manual (Good God i sound like Bearcat) and a walkthrough of all the game concepts. Aside from any other faults the game may have, i still think that was the worst.

Yeah, I have memories of the first few games I played of MOO3; they are not good ones either. I think I played countless games, over the span of a couple weeks, just figuring out WTH was going on. Most people are not going to spend that kind of time with it, though. Probably the only reason I stuck with it is because I have a predilection to figuring out how things (especially computer programs) tick.

I agree with org post MoO3 is a great game after you patch it and gt one of the player made patches/mods it is a very good game and fun to play.
Go to http://www.moo3.at/ and that is a good place to start...

It's fun to play if dealing with spread sheets is your idea of fun.....

The original poster has it right.
Question: Why can't the negative posters just leave the game alone?
Most of them mouth the same mindless mantra over and over. If you didn't like the game leave it alone and go away. Let those that Do Like it and those that Would like to try it have a chance at it.
JosEPh

I was also burned at MoO3 initial release, and I tend not to forget: I won't buy the game ever again.
My two cents here are from the customer's point of view. I base my purchase decisions on reviews, and I want to hear the good and the bad before I decide. Now, there's a difference between a rating and a review. I tend to ignore the overall ratings, which may be skewed one way or the other, and only trust those people who actually cared about a game enough to write about it. If, however, all reviews on this site were only positive, the review system would become worthless. So keep those negative reviews coming; they are just as important to me as a customer as the positive ones.

Welcome to GOG and the boards. I agree with you that both positive and negative reviews are necessary to get a true picture of what is closer to reality. Thanks for making this point.

I think the negative reviews are a little unrealistic though 1 and 2 stars out of 5 do not reflect the quality of this game yes it was buggy when it came out but that doesn't show the current game for me reviews should be about the game(and on gog how it is now) not personal vendetta's
and to be open with the community Moo3 was the very first 4x game I ever played so that might taint my opinion but I still think that 1 and 2 star reviews are ridiculous this isn't superman on the n64 or some crap like that perspective ! its all I ask
/rant

I tried to like it, and later with tropical I tried to like it again.. this time it even worked a little bit. There are a lot of nice ideas and all the macromanagement is really cool (and a must with 150+ colonies). But afterall it just don't have the MoO personality anymore. No GNN, No heroes, No funky specials. The Dev did not improved the MoO series by adding the cool stuff, they, dramatic spoken, sacified its soul in favour of new stuff. I would understand that move if MoO2 was a flawed game nobody liked. Sure, than complete change was needed, but it wasn't. It is still the reference by wich all new 4x space games are judged, and considering its age devs & publishers alike should be ashamed... ok I'm drifting off. IMO this "MoO3" game is, fully fan patched, not bad. The macromanagement and how it is implemented is something other 4x devs should think about to implement (Yes, I'm looking at you GalCiv2), but not if it means to sacrifice other elements which are the charm of a francise.
Yes and no. The situation is that it is named "Master of Orion 3". I expected to play the third Master of Orion game & with that I expected it to be a vastly improved version of MoO2 (Just like MoO2 was to MoO1). What I saw was a game which accidently was named MoO3. I'm pretty sure overall reception of the game would have been better if it was called something else... and had not been rushed.

even with the latest mods the game is a total turd.
Mods can't fix this sort of disaster... they make some improvements to the graphics, solve bugs, etc... but the underlying utter failures of this game cannot be fixed with mods.
And I have tried the latest version of every mod, strawberry, vanilla, raspberry, tropical, and even chocolate.
the reviews do not do justice to just how bad the game is...

This pretty much sums up everything I hated about MoO3. I heard about how different the game was before it launched and was hesitant to pick it up. I ended up losing interest quickly and completely disgusted. I returned the game to Gamestop less than an hour later and have never touched it again.
If the game had been $5.99 I MIGHT have given it another shot but $9.99 was too rich for my blood after my experiece with it.
The game's strongest point during the lead-up to it's launch was how in-depth they tried to make the back story. I was simply in awe of how deep they went in explaining things. I hated that they removed some of the races, but they gave a reason plotwise why they were gone. I would have overlooked some of the flaws in the game had they not been as obvious due to the background in fact.

After giving MoO3 a try, I found that people were overreacting. It wasn't that bad.
However, I had gotten curious and tried MoO2 recently.
...
Uhm. Wow. MoO3's biggest flaw is its name. MoO2 is a completely different game, and damn, it is brilliant. I do understand the hurt reactions people have been giving to MoO3. To have your hope for MoO2-but-then-More-Awesome crushed and being almost tricked into buying a game that does something completely different and doesn't even do it that well.. yeah, I'd be pissed. In a way those one star reviews are right.
However, those reviews are only useful if you are actually hoping for MoO2-but-then-more-awesome. And honestly, I think those people do already know MoO3 is not what they're looking for. So I'm not sure if there is any point in posting hurt reviews like that these days. MoO3 is different, sort of mediocre (not bad! I had fun with it! You just have to find the right balance between playing the game and making the game play itself), but it's not a 1 or 2 star game.