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JThomson's Master of Orion (PC)
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| [March 5, 2014 12:41:28 AM]
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Since I discussed basic mechanics in the first playthrough, I’m going to discuss broader topics in this one. I left off having wiped out the Alkari. Soon after that I met the Sakkara, a lizard race whose talent is rapid population growth. Three turns later they declared war on me. This seems to be the theme of this campaign. Their empire controlled about one quarter of the map in the upper right corner, with the Psilon scattered about in the center of it. At this point I controlled the bottom third of the map, and due to a string of uninhabitable systems except for Orion, which I’ll discuss later, I couldn’t reach the upper left corner. My fleet at that point was very large, but owing to the size of their empire and how it shared a fairly large border with mine I had to spread it out to prevent them from taking over my territory.
At its heart Master of Orion is about resource management and territory control. Every colony you own expands the area your ships can travel, as do certain technologies. Technologies also increase speed. If your speed is higher than your enemy’s and your range is far enough you can send ships to where they are not currently concentrating their fleet and damage their systems. Likewise you have to be on guard against them doing the same to you. You can also build up base defense. Practically this limits the enemy’s action as it forces them to use a large fleet to attack your planet. Meaning that by building up a planet’s defenses you have less need to use your fleet to defend it and can use your fleet to attack instead. You take over territory by spending population on planets to send troops. This means that the planets you send them from need to recover that population to be at full production, plus you need to spend resources to defend newly conquered planets. So while going all out and conquering as many planets as you can weakens your enemy, it also leaves you with a large number of planets with no defenses built up to protect.
Due to having built up the fleet in my previous wars, and due to my races higher level of production, I was able to take Sakkara territory at a fairly swift pace. I concentrated on building large numbers of small ships, so while each of their ships was stronger than mine I overwhelmed them with higher numbers and could easily replace my losses. Over time I took over the center area of the galaxy, and in doing so met the Darlok, a race with strong spies, who occupied just two systems deep in Sakkara territory, and the Humans, whose special talent in this game is diplomacy, which is something this game has, but owing to my constant state of war I honestly haven’t used much in this campaign. Once I beat the Sakkara back I was again faced with the Psilons, but since they were both in the same direction from me I basically treated them as a single enemy. Over the course of the game I was able to nearly wipe them out when the Humans declared war on me, as expected, and forced me to move some of my forces to defending from them.
The humans could only reach one of my colonies so I concentrated on building its defense up, and when I did my fleet was freed to attack the Sakkara again. They asked for a peace treaty, but I ignored it as they were at this point I had destroyed the vast majority of their fleet and was just going from planet to planet destroying its defenses and sending troops. I exterminated the Psilons during this campaign as well.
The humans attacked one of my recently conqured Sakkara colonies, but I decided to let it fall in favor of finishing off the Sakkara. Once they were done I gathered my fleet where the humans were attacking. They had a moderately large fleet, but with all of my fleets gathered together I was able to beat it and retake the planet, with significant losses.
At this point my fleet was still somewhat large, but was using outdated technology which was largely why the losses against the humans had been so high. Since you can only have six types of ship in this game at any one time keeping your fleet up to date often means scrapping large numbers of ships, especially when you concentrate on quantity over quality as I did. This posed a problem for taking over the human territory, but due to gaps in habitable planets there were only two directions they could attack from, so I concentrated on building up defenses in those planets and instead took my ships to take over the two Darlok systems. They hadn’t actually declared war, but would have sooner or later, and I couldn’t afford to have them attack so deep into what was now my territory while I was occupied with fighting the humans. They fell quickly and I began the process of scrapping my fleet and re-designing it. Owing to controlling two-thirds of the map at this point I was able to build a new fleet quickly, with each ship being on par with the human ones and having about three times their number. I sent my entire fleet for an all-out assault on the human home world, where they were holding their fleet, and destroyed most of it. I then spread my fleet out to their remaining worlds and destroyed their defenses. With their fleet destroyed I simply sent a bunch of troops in from multiple planets at once and took over their entire empire very quickly, ending the game with me as the sole survivor.
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| [March 4, 2014 11:38:47 PM]
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As Master of Orion plays can go rather long, I’ll be doing both my playthroughs on the same campaign, playing for three hours for the first playthrough, and continuing the campaign and playing to completion on the second. On the first playthrough I’ll be discussing the basics of gameplay and the interface.
On opening Master of Orion (In the dosbox emulator as it won’t play natively on windows) you’re immediately taken to a screen with four options; Continue Game , Load Game, New Game, and Quit To Dos. The first option takes you to the last turn of the last game played on your computer, Load Game allows you to go to any manually saved game, New game takes you to the options for starting a new game, and Quit to Dos quits the game.
First I selected New Game which gave me options for Galaxy Size, Difficulty, and Opponents. Galaxy size can be small, medium, large, or huge. Difficulty can be Simple, Easy, Average, Hard, or Impossible. Opponents selects the number of other races on the map and can range from one to five. I selected a small galaxy size, easy difficulty, and five opponents to make a game that would be eventful, but hopefully not too long. The game then lets you choose from 10 races. The races play identically except for one advantage unique to each of them. I chose the Klackon, an instect-like race that have increased production from workers. Then I started the game.
The game starts on a screen with three areas. The first area takes up most of the screen and shows a view of the local area of your galaxy. I’m starting near the bottom right corner of the galaxy. This can be advantageous because it means other races won’t be surrounding you on all sides, but it also means that you could find yourself stuck without many habitable planets nearby to colonize.
The second area of the screen is on the right side and shows the planet on the system you clicked on (each star has only one planet) It shows the planet type (Terran, Ocean, Jungle, Dead, Inferno, Irradiated, etc.) as well as the maximum population a colony could have and in the case of your own planets the current population, number of defensive bases, production, several bars for where you are spening your production (Ships, Defence, Industry, Ecology, and Technology) and each of these has a bar which represents the percentage of your production going to it, and a ship screen which lets you choose which ship you are building as well as relocate where your ships initially show up when built and transfer colonists.
The third area is a bar on the bottom with buttons labeled Game, Design, Fleet, Map, Races, Planets, Tech, and Next Turn. I’ll go over the functions of those buttons as they are used in the playthrough.
To start out only one world has a name under it, my race’s homeworld of Kholdan. It’s a Terran world with 100 max population, which is true of every races starting world. On the top right of the world is an icon of a ship. Clicking it brings up in the right bar a list of ships that are on the world. To start with I have two scouts and a colony ship. I immediately send my scouts out to nearby systems to explore them. The nearest system has an arid system, which is habitable, so I send my colony ship to it, and found a new colony when it reaches there.
On my home system I have my production set primarily to industry, with just enough ecology to prevent waste, which lowers your population). The game will automatically keep ecology at the lowest level that does not produce waste unless it is told to do otherwise.
After many more turns I have explored all of the local area I can reach with my current level of fuel technology (each level allows you to travel to a fixed distance from your nearest colony) and found two more habitable planets I can reach. Once my home planet has built all the industry it can I switch it over to ship building and build the two colony ships to colonize those planets, after which I switch it over to technology.
On the technology screen there are six basic types, Computers, Construction, Force Fields, Planetology, Propulsion, and Weapons. You research one upgrade, chosen from a list, for each type and all types are researched simultaneously, with an option to choose what proportion of research goes to each type. While researching a light bulb fills up representing research points , once filled a number shows up in it’s place which represents the percent chance you will gain the technology on the next turn, this number increases as further research is put into it. Once a technology in a field is gained, a new one can be selected and research begins again from zero points.
Over time I research the technology to travel farther, and I find several dead planets nearby, from researching Planetology I soon gain the ability to construct colony ships which can colonize those worlds, and I build the ships and colonize the worlds. It’s then that I meet the first two other races simultaneously. You meet a race when you have a colony in range of one of their systems. I meet the Alkari and the Psilons. On meeting them I go to the races button on the bottom menu which lets you control diplomacy and spying. You can allocate resources to spy defense which gives you a chance to destroy enemy spies, you can also allocate resources to spys for each race and choose from having them hide, conduct sabotage, or conduct espionage. I build up my spy defense and set spying to espionage for both races.
I manage to steal some technology from the Psilons, then, for no reason whatsoever, they declare war on me.
As there is only one world in their range I increase its defense, then I click the design button on the bottom menu. This lets you create a ship from your currently available technology, there are four sizes small to huge, and there are a great many options for engines, armor , computers, weapons, and special systems. You can have six designs active at any given time, and can only have ships from an active design, meaning that to create designs for ships using newer technology you need to scrap obsolete ships. This gives you a bit of a limitation in that redesigning ships often means scrapping a sizable portion of your fleet. I have some designs with no ships so I scrap them and make a newer small and medium type with better weapons and engines than the default design. I immediately change my worlds to building these new ships and move them to the star nearest to the Psilon world.
Once a decent fleet is built up I attack the world. Ship combat takes place on a grid with each ship type moving during its turn and attacking if it’s able. Multiple ships of one type are controlled as a single unit. The defender’s planet is stationary on the grid and can launch missles if it has bases. The fight ends when all ships and bases on one side have been destroyed or have retreated. I win the battle owing largely to having a much larger fleet.
I go to one of my inner worlds with high population and transfer a large number of it to the enemy world, which is how you invade worlds. While they are en route I bomb the world for several turns, reducing its population enough for the invading force to take it over and make it my colony. At this point the Alkari declare war on me, possibly from a treaty with the Psilons. My fleet has been continuing to build up while I was waiting for troops to reach the Psilon world, so I send it to the Alkari world and do the same with it. Once it is taken over there is a GNN (Galactic News Network) broadcast that the Alkari are extinct, so apparently that was their only world. The Psilons still have worlds, but they are fairly distant and can only reach the world I conqured, so I begin building up defenses and switch back to concentrating on research. Then the Sakkara contact me, and I start building up spys in their empire set to hide. At this point I have reached my time limit for the first playthough, so I save the game and leave it for later.
Overall the game has played fairly quickly. It is easy to get sucked in to it and lose track of time. In retrospect I probably should have played at a higher difficulty because I was able to defeat two other races far too easily to fully explore the battle mechanics.
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JThomson's Master of Orion (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Saturday 1 March, 2014
GameLog closed on: Wednesday 5 March, 2014 |
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