Master of Orion 1 + 2 on GOG

Quintin_Stone wrote:

...1 Doomstar will rarely be table to take on a Star Fortress & ground defenses all by itself.

So, just what is the best plan to take on a well defended system? Thus far, I've simply resorted to a massive fleet, but, there must be a better way. Any techs or build outs on ships that really work for cleansing a system?

Well beam weapons do very poorly against planets unless you have a lot of them. So projectile weapons are your best bet.

For taking out the station nothing beats a ship purpose built for boarding them. As much armour and hull as you can give it along with as many other defences like ECM as you can afford. Make it as fast as possible, with teleportation a bonus. Weapons optional, maybe some point defence. Troop pods if you can get em. What it does is zoom over to the starbase or fortress and captures it. Starbases are always stationary so you don't need to disable them. If you can't outright capture the station you can raid it instead which disables its equipment.

If your race isn't telepathic there isn't much of a bonus to capturing the station. You don't get to keep it when combat is over and it won't fight for you in that battle. So raiding is less dangerous for your marines.

Other than that there is possibly an enemy fleet to deal with which is a whole new ball game.

Thanks, Tamren! I'll try out a few boarding parties and see how they go down.

Tamren wrote:

If your race isn't telepathic there isn't much of a bonus to capturing the station. You don't get to keep it when combat is over and it won't fight for you in that battle. So raiding is less dangerous for your marines.

A capture still instantly disables it though, so at least it won't act against you. Again, neutron blasters and death rays to kill the marines aboard. They're all dead, it only takes 1 marine.

A stellar converter is the ultimate anti-planet defense weapon. Otherwise, brute force with missiles or send in ships that can get close enough (without blowing up) to drop bombs.

For ground attack ships do you ever use transporters to increase range? a distance of 12 isn't that far, but that can still be 2 turns of movement for a slow ship.

Also what do you think of heavy fighters? They seem pretty powerful, on paper at least. I've discovered some things though:
- Fighters can be targeted by main weapons. (Non-PD) This generally results in them getting blown away one by one. This is great in some cases because it is total overkill and draws fire away from your main ships.
- Large flocks of low tech MIRVs are essential to help the fighters survive. Otherwise point defence tends to sweep them away in a single round unless you use a ridiculous amount at once.
- Boarding shuttles are useless when launched at long range. At point blank range they can be used as disposable "boarding torpedoes" that soften up targets prior to your main marine assault. Often they can overrun a ship on their own.

Can anyone recommend a good MOO2 wiki?

Quintin_Stone wrote:

If the AI did beam defenses as much as it does missile defenses, then I'd be more inclined to go with some missile ships. As is, mid-game and later I find beam weapons just do that much better.

It depends on how much you pushed with missile ships at the start of the game. If you push hard with missile ships, the AI's missile defenses will be tough mid game. Go with beam weapons and the AI will punish you accordingly.

At the mid game mark, I tend to develop ships and fleets according to my needs, "cutting it close," as it were. Generally, I like developing missile fleets for raiding purposes - taking out small enemy fleets and undefended planets while my main fleet is defending my own planets from getting taken out.

Beam weapons are generally very, very bad for assaulting planetside defenses, until you get to the late game. Putting cheap bombs on my ships might solve that issue, but I prefer to just concentrate on anti-ship weaponry for space supremacy, leaving planet-busting to my Cruiser missile boats.

On a side note, I have several combinations of technological advances which, if I make them ahead of the pack, generally mean that I'm going to war. These are Gyro Destabilizers + Reinforced Hull or Shield Capacitors + Shield III or Shield V.

Of course, playing every race to its strengths makes the watershed techs and situations different.

I think that what's missing in my missile fleet is a super evasive ship. The missile cruisers strategy only works if you wait long enough for the missile to hit. I usually maximize the payload in order to create "deadly missile spam" I also multi slot my missiles so I can hit multiple targets when needed. Those ships run out of ammo really fast and I can have another ship take the heat until the missiles hit the targets.

The map I posted haven't changed much except for my take over on Cryslon . I generally work to clean up Klackon's young colonies while they do the same to me(they blasted about 3 of mine and I destroyed about 4 or 5 of theirs) . I'm building up tech to get better ships .My currently ship designs stink.

Neither of my enemies want peace and it's logical. If they give me some peace I could invest more resources in research and infrastructure. I'm still advancing tech pretty quick and hopefully I can upgrade my old ships . I'm mainly concentrating on Kackons because they expand rapidly and I think they have unlimited range fuel cells already ( I solve my limitations with cheap outposts)

DrJonez wrote:

Can anyone recommend a good MOO2 wiki?

I'm not sure if the wikis are any good I searched google and found this.I barely skimmed it and it looks "OK" no more. I recommend the FAQs more because in the time this game got out that was the most common way to write a game guide. The people who write those faqs are generally either obsessive about the game or they were made by whole communities of people who played the game.

Don't need a super-evasive ship. Just very fast missiles and the Fast Missile Racks special. Launch all missiles in one turn, leave one cheap ship to stick around, then go. Generally, no ships with beams will be faster getting to you than Fast Missiles - and you will generally beat missile to missile combats to the punch.

The combo is Hyperspace Communications (allows you to retreat, then attack again next turn), Fast Missile Racks, and lots and lots of Cruisers.

Missile racks take space here is my ideal missile cruiser:
IMAGE(http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/9281/idealcruiser.gif)

It's packed with missiles, and has big engine so it can run away fast ;).

Pfft. I would just have a bunch of missiles tied together with a rubber band. Who needs a ship?

That thing will light up like a string of firecrackers if point defence manages to hit even one of those warheads.

I just mod a race that are actually intelligent missiles. You can just use your population directly to defend your planets from attack.

Hmm... that actually might be pretty neat.

LarryC wrote:

It depends on how much you pushed with missile ships at the start of the game. If you push hard with missile ships, the AI's missile defenses will be tough mid game. Go with beam weapons and the AI will punish you accordingly.

Not in my experience. But perhaps the races are responding to each others designs. Generally the AI races fight each other more than me.

LarryC wrote:

Don't need a super-evasive ship. Just very fast missiles and the Fast Missile Racks special. Launch all missiles in one turn, leave one cheap ship to stick around, then go. Generally, no ships with beams will be faster getting to you than Fast Missiles - and you will generally beat missile to missile combats to the punch.

Heavy mount beam weapons will still be able to hit you right out of the gate.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Heavy mount beam weapons will still be able to hit you right out of the gate.

It'll only matter if the Heavy Mount Beam Ships can kill your "anchor" ship in one turn.

Niseg wrote:

Missile racks take space here is my ideal missile cruiser:

Missile with missles picture.

I felt like someone should say something about dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you.

Heavy fighters are nasty pieces of work, if you have good PD weapons (which is what they are armed with) and good bombs (their other armament) and good armor. Unlike direct fire weapons or missiles, you have to have all those 3 techs, and the higher the better.

I built a few Titan class starships with 4 heavy plasma cannons , lots of autofire shield piercing phasers, HE focus, battle scanner, good computer( I think cybernetic) . I sent those babies for field testing in the Orion sector and the guardian didn't last very long (it also targeted my weaker ships). Then I unleashed those titans on my Human and Klackon enemies and those things can kill 2 titans per turn. I now reduced them to 1 non-home-world planet.

I guess I should start a new game with more opposition. My last game was really bad and this one was ok. I had to rapidly adjust my population. If I had Warp Interdictor earlier and faster ships it may have helped me defend better because my limited fleet couldn't get home to defend fast enough and the planetary defenses couldn't cut it ( they lack the missile spamming capability and can't run away).

Maybe I could work on the "intelligent missile" race . I think they'll be unification, Lithovore , and Subterranean

No matter what I do, the AI always seems to outdo me. They've always got more ships, bigger ships, and better tech. I've been trying to play as Meklar because they have good research and production, but even with their bonuses I still get screwed!

I was hoping to find a good wiki or something with some other tips for a newbie. I played the crap out of MOO2 back in the day, but it's been so long that I forget all the fine details of how to play the game.

DrJonez wrote:

No matter what I do, the AI always seems to outdo me. They've always got more ships, bigger ships, and better tech. I've been trying to play as Meklar because they have good research and production, but even with their bonuses I still get screwed!

I was hoping to find a good wiki or something with some other tips for a newbie. I played the crap out of MOO2 back in the day, but it's been so long that I forget all the fine details of how to play the game.

Decent FAQ (not perfect):
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/197873-ma...

It has some suggestions for racial selection. What difficulty are you playing, DrJonez?

I played a game on tutorial difficulty in a small galaxy and won without much problem. Now I'm trying easy on a medium galaxy, and all three attempts so far have met with failure. There's always another empire that's just way bigger than me, and I have no hope of taking them out :/

DrJonez:

On general principle, I find Meklars to be a weaker race since their need to cannibalize their production for food significantly reduces production on the homeworld when the population size becomes larger. This affects speed of colonization. No research boosts, either.

The main benefit of playing Meklar is that they don't require a whole lot of food. This means that if you can find a good enough food planet, you can optimize that one planet for food and supply your entire production-focused galactic empire from just that one planet. Meklars in particular are a slow-building race in terms of momentum. Medium does not suit them well.

Choose a Large galaxy, find a good food planet, and colonize every Barren world you can get your hands on. Use Outpost ships if you have to. Terraform for more colonies, use your larger population to bludgeon the galaxy with brute force.

PS: Don't forget that the Meklars come with a small amount of auto-repair capability. Capitalize by using well-armored, reinforced ships that attack from long range. At the start of the game, using Gyro Destabilizer and running rings around enemy ships so they can't train their Heavy Mount lasers on your Battleships every turn is a major benefit.

On Planet taking:

Boarding parties have worked incredibly well at taking out the Battlestations, but damn those planet defenses! It's like half my fleet doesn't even do damage against the Psilon's planetary shields! It's the worse standoff in history, as the planet's missiles are mercilessly shot down by my anti-missile rockets, but then all of my beam weapons are absorbed by his shield!

So, I've withdrawn my fleet accept for a few cruisers, and headed back to my own nearby systems for refit work. I'm going to take a few of my Battleships and turn them into Niseg's missile carriers:

Niseg wrote:

IMAGE(http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/9281/idealcruiser.gif)

That ought to be enough to get through his shield!

Beams are the worst thing for cracking a planetary shields, missiles work, but if you have a nice bomb tech it is usually pretty cheap to toss a few of those onto one of your ships and make them a force to be reckoned with.

Heavy fighters make short work of planet defenses due to the bombs. I do recommend a few 'bombard' class ships be included in every fleet, a large ship stuffed with missiles to stand off and work over the planet during the fight. Note: use at least 5 round launchers, or 10, not 2.

There is a lot of argument about what kind of launcher to use. Some guides say to use nothing but 2 shot launchers. But the less missiles per pod the less efficient the space/shot ratio gets. Plus if you don't have dauntless guidance systems those 2 ubersalvos could be wasted. And I think dauntless only lets them retarget once.

I think 5 is certainly the sweet spot. I tend to only put missiles on disposable cruisers. In early game they are my heavy hitters. Late game they are essentially disposable. With fast missile racks my ships usually reach salvo 3 by the time the enemy starts destroying them. If the enemy is particularly tough I tend to lose one cruiser every turn from this point on. Battles generally last 2-3 turns if the tsunami of missiles overcomes the opposition. In which case 2 shot launchers is all you need. But if they don't do the job then my beam ships have to move in and take up the slack. So having 5 shot launchers gives them something to do, even if they are getting swatted like flies.

10 rounds or more per launcher seems excessive to me though. I have yet to see a combat last more than 10 rounds.

It depends on what you're using the missiles for. For normal length battles, on Cruisers, 5 is perfectly serviceable. For fast raiders, 2 is good for hit-and-run attacking. On large vessels designed to be tough rather than firepower-oriented, 10 can be useful.

You want ten shot launchers to have enough damage capacity to take down the planetary defenses. 2 shot launchers are nice, trouble is, that would kill two things. Then the remaining planetary defenses keep firing. Also, remember, you are needing these because of the planetary shields. No shields, then the beam ships work fine. Shields, you end up needing the punch of missiles, and repeated shots, since by the time the NPCs have strong planetary shields, they also tend to have strong armor, and that means the planetary bases are tougher.

For fleet engagements, if you are planning on killing ships with missiles, sure, two shot launchers are fine. Fox one, fox two, and then run away.

I'm advancing toward late game in my new game. I found out that my missile destroyers are fairly useless and phasers and plasma cannon do a better job overall against my enemies which are giving me a whole lot of trouble.

If they attack I sell stuff on other planets in order to get ground batteries up . I also rush my new heavy plasma cannon fighters . Their attacks still manage to do a lot of damage.

The Klackons, Terelians, and probably Sakkra are all allied against me. I managed to get the Alkari into various treaties including a non aggression pact. My population is fairly high and because of the constant war It's harder to develop technologies. I need to develop better ships to break planets because I can't afford another 6-8 battleship attacks and the Klackon has a strong planetary defense.

I think it's time to rush Warp Interdictor . I should also get some titans up and running. My enemies' weapons might be weaker but they do take a pounding.

I finally got around to playing MoO2 this weekend. Since this was my first time playing it ever I set it on the "tutor" difficulty and dove in. I got my ass kicked in the first game by the Klackons because I refused to flat out give them technology. I suppose that's fair. I was pretty weak from not having any idea what's going on. I then started another game, still on tutor difficulty, and was doing better since the only aliens I had contact with were the humans and they just wanted to trade stuff. Well, things were going better until the antarens showed up. Every time they warped in, they'd roll up to my colonies and do significant damage before leaving. Their ships were incredibly powerful compared to mine and I found it very difficult to fend them off. Is this game supposed to be this hard, or is tutor difficulty a joke the developers play on new players? I think perhaps I just suck. Regardless, there's a lot to love in this game and, even though I ended my second play session promptly due to frustration, I am very eager to play more.

Turn off Antaran Attacks next time you start a new game. That'll give you some breathing room to learn. Their ships are exceedingly more advanced than anything you'll have for a long time. They're supposed to choose a planet at random to attack, sometimes you just get the short-end of the stick. Races with the "Lucky" trait rarely get attacked by them.

Capturing an Antaran ship is quite the coup. It's very very hard to do, but if you can, you can use it or scrap it and reverse-engineer their tech.