Main page

So, after playing the new Master of Orion, I must say that I overall liked it. The transistion from Moo2 to MooRemake was made rather well. I have a few minor changes to suggest, but I will focus on the one big change I want to see: The colony management screen.

 

So, first of all, it needs a list of structures already build, obsolete ones and system unique ones should be highlighted. Also how much research can be done on a particular planet should appear on the galaxy screen as well.

 

Now, what I dislike is the autobuild and the auto-citizen assignment. Let's takle the citizens first. I think, you should make three kinds of "textmarkers" with which you can highlight the citizen slots - green, yellow and red.

If a new citizen is produced, it gets placed an a greenly highlighted slot, if possible. On the red slots, a citizen never gets placed unless there's no other option. Yellow actually has no effekt aside from beeing neither red nor green.

If a citizen could be placed on multiple slots this way, the slot most left gains prefference, if that doesn't resolve the try prefer production to food to research.

This simple marker system can repleace the presets for auto citizen placement.

 

The next thing I would like to suggest is to have a design colony screen similar to the ship design screen. Bascially you choose an order in which structures are build in a colony. Each colony then gets the option to choose that preset. This can replace the auto-build button.

 

While custom colony management is fun in the early game, in the lategame, when you have 10+ to manage it gets annoying. Also the changes can significantly reduce the turn time in multiplayer.

 

What I would also do, is have the player design a colony or a ship outside the regular game. Then, when ingame, you still have the blueprints and also while researching technoloy you can mark those ships as a goal you want to research to.

 

Other than that, I found only a pacing problem with the game. Early ship design is kind of boring as you don't have many options, late ship design gets annoying as once your research skyrockets, you get a new tech every other turn and have to adjust the designs. The fun part that feels really good as if you have reached the meat of the game falls too short in between.

@GrimToadstool

 

I started the game and had the same opinion about the colony management screen. The big planet with it's structures on it and I hardly could find anything on it.

 

After about 20 hours in the game that changed. I can find everything on that planet with one single look and I bet that I am a lot faster than you with a list. I agree that it is a matter if you are refusing using it (hint: the colours of the building types are the key and after knowing all the buildings in the game after a few playthroughs it is really helpful) or not.

 

I agree with you that such (in my opinion very good) concepts depend on people accepting it from the start and I diden't do that. So for me it took far longer to adapt to the concept.

I doubt that a lot of people would adapt at all as this seems to be counter intuitive and a horror at the moment when you start playing. You think: what... where is this building? Have I built this already? What the...

 

As I said after a few playthroughs that changes. You memorized the colour of the type of the building and you see it with one look.

 

I agree with you that autobuild is much useless at the moment. I really don't know who thought that buildorder was a good idea...

 

I agree that some sort of developmentplan is a good idea. They could stay with the current concept and chose your defined development plans as you would chose any building. So you are not forced to start with developmentplans at the start... you still CAN micromangement everything but you have the OPTION to take a plan if you want that and that option should be configurable.

 

MOO3 never got this right they plunged the player into a brilliant concept but they gave the player no chance to get the concept and diden't give the players enough options to configure the developmentplans.

 

I agree that techprogress is way to fast and you never have time to play with the toys you create. That is a real problem as everything feels "ah... I will replace that in a few rounds anyway, so why bother?"

 

 

Edited by Idinyphe, 18 March 2016 - 12:45 PM.