Master of Orion IV

oha - i loved MoO2 - and still playing it from time to time - way to go - i'd totally love this

last I heard (a long time ago) this is going nowhere. The license wasn't available and Galciv 3 is more likely to fill the gap that Moo2 left. (read elemental development journals for some comments on this).

Same as Master of Magic. Elemental may not be the official sequel, but it'll be as close as you are ever likely to get.

I would love to see a master of Orion 4

Anyone played FreeOrion?

http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/Main_Page

Hmm. That looks a bit too much like MoO3 to my tast. Too much detail and not enough game?

I will give it a go at some stage, but I personally like the 'lighter' 4X games that have been coming out.

MOO2 is the game I keep hoping to find in the new crop of 4X games.  Some come close but nothing matches the original MOO and MOO2.  I just DL SOTS today but I am having issues with it.  Hopefully will be able to get it worked out and give it a try.

FreeOrion is just version 0.3, we'll have to wait a little longer before playing it

MOO3 isn't playable as it is, at least I can't, but a number of mods improve the user GUI and the AI, they are available here : http://www.moo3.at/mods/index.php

I'l definitely give a try to MMO4, conversely I'd like a turn based combat system in GalCiv3, custom ships and bigger fleets ...

That's what Brad was thinking off. But we'll need patience. First elemental. The a few expansions for that. and THEN... maybe... galciv 3.

ohh id so love to have moo4 based on moo2.. i still play it often even tho it hates vista and crashes my system all the time.. its my absolute favorite game of all time.. then moo3 totally sucked they took and changed everything that made moo2 fun and easy to play, like how ships upgraded, how ships moved, how planets were colonized and given orders for upgrades.. dont get me wrong i like galciv alot, and light of altair and some other games but how id love moo4 that actually worked on vista 64 with just updated graphics and the same basic moo2 game.. sure add some stuff if u want to,.. but keep it the same for menus and controlling things as in moo2.. omg please please do it:)

btw i tried free orion recently, i have to say its ok, the research tree sucks,, they have it so its pretty complicated and difficult to understand and know which trees and things to choose first, .. and it scrolls all over the screen and is a mess.. theyneed to clean it up and make it so its more like the moo2 tech tree that pages into new pages not try to list it all on one page.. and the interface is ok.. but i thinnk the game needs a lot of work and then some polishing to be really playable.. it is hopefully gonna be a fun and enjoyable game some time in the future tho, i will definately be keeping a eye on it.

MoO2 was one of the greatest 4X games of all time. I think the addictive qualities of "just one more turn" are astounding. My two cents

I think MoO3's biggest problems were making it too complicated to perform the turn by turn tasks, but more importantly making an individual planet or ship meaningless. You feel no attachment to your creations; this was always the appeal, making a fleet that was so different and then seeing it in action, controlling all of the details.

With that said a large tech tree, with distinct differences in the different paths, can add variety. The graphics are also very important, you want to be able to see the massive fleet you've carefully constructed engaging in cool battles. It's about pride in creation.

- Jonathan

Additionally I think the turn based mechanic made a big difference - I liked GalCiv but I think the charm of the turn based game is similar to chess or the like. You have the time to sit back and consider, carefully plan strategies. It's less about a spreadsheet like MoO3 and more about timing.

Umm, Moo3 was the reason I bought GC2 and it's expansions. I'd been following Moo3 development having loved Moo2. Then it comes out and it's frankley rubbish, broken and unplayable.

The biggest sin of Moo3 was it wasn't any fun to play, it was like playing with dozens spreadsheets, the game could also play itsef without any player involvements. Space battles where rubbish, ugly and unrewarding. The tradgedy is they had some good ideas, the way races and species worked was fun the diplomatic animations where good but he game was awful.

So looking for a new 4x space stratergy game I found GC2. Frankly I think GC2 with ToA is much better than Moo2 was, although there are still things I liked about that game.

That said I would love to see Moo4 made by a good company like Stardoc, but I want and lookforward to GC3 more. I'm going to check out free origion though.

I've thought about trying my own hand at a 4x space stratergy game recently written in Java, who knows maybe I'll have a go.

Well GC2 should have been better the Master of Orion II, considering the years between the two. The only thing Master of Orion II was better at was multiplayer, in that it had multiplayer. My friends and I spent hours and hours playing that game together. It was great. Course now turned based is a little trying for our tastes (simul turn is so much better, thank you Civ IV). Unless GC looks at multiplayer, I say there is plenty of room for Master of Orion IV. I would not want Stardock to do it if they want to push multiplayer to the side line though. They can focus on GC for a strong, and only, single player experience.

MOO3 as released was terrible. It was terrible in a tragic way because you could see so much work done, so much in it that could have led to one of the best space empire games of all time. But it failed to mesh together, and they broke the 2 things which had made Moo2 fun. First, the techonology in moo3 was so bland, so boring and generic, with no discovery alone having much effect, that you were never excited to get the new discoveries. Tech development should be one of the most exciting things in a space empire game. In MOO2 every tachnology pretty much had a big effect. New ship components that you wanted to immediately put on your ships, ground facilities that made a big difference to how your planets worked. MOO3 didnt have that, yoi barely noticed if youd researched anything.

Second, MOO3 made the ship design much less fun. Partly because the fleets were so large, that individual design of ships was less fun, as you didnt build ships in small numbers. You also had far less control over the combat so you couldnt really fire that nice new weapon yourself from your new ship.

With the player patches and mods, moo3 does become playable. they dont really address the issues above but what they do is give you a game thats playable accoding to its original design. Its a true empire game. You could see MOO2 as being small star kingdoms fighting with a dozen star systems in each. MOO3 gave your empire dozens and dozens of star systems. Each empire had hundreds of them in fact by mid game. It was fun after you got used to it. But it did take work to get there and you really had to forget it was anything to do with MOO2 to enjoy it.

I couldn't agree more aurore it was tragic, I'd been following MOO3's development for over a year when it came out and seen all the great ideas they had. Yet some how they couldn't make it all come together into a game that was any fun to play.

I agree that there was a lack of reward for tech.

Comabt was awful, ugly, and broken.

The whole game felt bland and lacked the character of MOO2.

I would love to see a MOO4 which was patterened more on an updated MOO2 than MOO3.

This old gamer still plays MOO2 from time to time; love it! MOO2 and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri are my two favorite games.

I'd love to see an up-to-date remake of MOO2.

OMG OMG that would be uber super awesome   ok enough of that.

MoO2 was the game that hooked me forever into pc games i loved i mean really loved that game.

I played that about 90% of my gaming time not only for days but months and months and when i was tired i would still come back to it.

I was still playing it a few years after it was first out.

MoO3 was terrible to say the least it had a good start but the bugs and flaws with AI just ruined it.

MoO2 lead me to GalCiv and i have been here ever since

Hello all! I see lots of you like Moo... I loved moo 2 aswel. Tried moo3 demo, bought galciv but hated it. Sins of solar empire is awesome but I find it unsatisfying due to no story line and lack of feeling as if you are actually there. Homeworld had much potential until HW2 ruined it. And eve online... well ill just leave it at that...

Oops, sorry, getting ahead of my self. I been looking for a satisfying game for ages now. Ive gone through many, picking one up with joy only to leave it behind hours or days later. I been thinking how come old simple games vere so much funner than todays newer ones? So far, my conclusion is that today games are just too messy and lacking the ambience their predecessors had. Half life and team fortress 1 were SO MUCH better than what we got today. The negative simply outweights the poor graphics of yesterday... (I hope starcraft 2 is not as badly butchered)

Erm again, sorry, I meant to post a fun game I discovered recently... Its called "Starships Unlimited". You can find a demo somewhere on the web. It reminded me of moo2 somewhat...

Currently Im hoping to get my hands on "nexus the jupiter incindent" Hope thats good...

I personally think MOO2 was the best of the MOO series. MOO3 was okay but the second one was better.

MOO3 was far from ok it was the biggest failure in gaming history, the developer seemed to have no idea what makes a game fun, and that is ignoring all the major bugs they never fixed.

It's a pity because they had some good ideas, they just failed to bring them together into a fun game with no critical bugs.

Moo2 was a great game though I agree, that's why Moo3 was such a let down.

I'm probably one of the few people that actually preferred Moo to Moo2.

I hated that Moo2 went more towards a CIV style interface and play, particularly I much preferred the sliders in Moo1 VS having the people icons in Moo2.

Moo1 for me had a grander sense of epic space opera feel, where populations in the 10 of millions would be in a galactic war, where as Moo2 felt like Civ in space and hence smaller scale.

I'm sure there is more - but it's oh so long ago, I can't recall what other misgivings i had at the time. Just that general gripe of I wanted more of the original Moo taking those ideas further, and less of making a CIV in space.

If Moo had a modern AI and interface, it's present rule set would make for an elegant game.

(then again i enjoyed the abstractions in Reach for the Stars 2)

I am one who agrees with the above post (#21). I also enjoyed MoO way more than MoO2.

The strongest feature in MoO was that large empires were still manageable. It sacrificed a bit of detail. But all information was easily obtained by a click and a quick glance at the sliders and some numbers. Often fully developed planets could be ignored, drastically reducing the number of planets to look at, instead turning the players attention towards warfare, expansion, espionage, research, shipdesign and diplomacy. The sum became greater than its parts. I have some feelings of nostalgia related to it, but I started to play it about 10 years after its release, and even though it looks a bit old the gameplay made up for it easily.

With MoO2 the needless managemental details overshadowed the rest, at least in my opinion. Having to plan each individual building made it take a lot longer, especially when handling many planets. The game included a governor that could use some buildorders, but I felt the governors were doing a poor job for the tasks that I had in mind for my planets. The technology tree didn't feel as slick as in MoO either, what I remember the most was how uneven the weapons development was, with the discovery of plasma weapons (think it was plasma) everything else became obsolete junk.

I have tried Stardocks Galactic Civilizations but was never hooked by it, although I have heard many were/are. The bad parts was that it felt clumsy and each turn was too timeconsuming, it was clearly not desgined to handle the control over large empires. The free movement in 2D space felt a little awkward too and removed chokepoint tactics completely (unless the AI was stubborn enough to always use the same route of attack). The open map did present some interesting things though, like the importance of having scoutships out and keeping intercept fleets near vulnerable places. The good parts were especially the carefully paced researchtree, the three types of different weaponry with specific defenses for that extra strategical edge, the beutiful and intuitive shipdesign, and last but not least the great diplomacy and interaction with the other races. Had the gameplay been 2-4 times faster, and less emphasis been placed on micromanagement, I would have prefered GC over the classic MoO.

that reminds me the first time i saw the original moo.. my husband and I were at a friends house playing the old paper and pencil D&D, after the d&d session the friend said guys come check out this new game i just got its awesome, it was Moo.. I sat down beside him and immediatly fell in love with a Moo, I watched him play for 3 hours telling my hubby call around to find out where I can get a copy of this game today huni please.. back then they didnt have many software stores and I wanted Moo right away, I played that game every day for hours until moo2 came out, then I fell in love with it:LOL its been about 20 years since it came out and I still play it often.. Iv found games like SOASE and GC that i enjoy and like alot , but I never fell in love with them like Moo and MOO2.. I sure hope someone somewhere makes a sequel for MOO2 one day keeping the movement and commands easy for designing ships, having the tech apply itself to your ships as soon as they orbit a planet or starbase.. the ease of colonizing and upgrading colonies.. the wonderful way you can scroll thru your planets and give orders to them.. ship movement.. ship battles.. the ease of the tech tree.. all I really need to make me happy is a game that runs well doesnt crash my 64bit vista, .. if u wanna put icing on the cake make more races, and make MP that works without having to have kali:LOL.. further icing more tech, more races.. a lil better Ai for alliances and a huge universe:) .. Im not sure if I would ever play anything else again if they did make it tho:P All my friends in EQ2 would have coniptions:P

The thing that was missing from MOO3 was Steve Barcia ...

Moo 3 was just pure garbage.   Even with all the ice cream mods (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, etc) it still was a messed up piece of coaster trash that NEVER EVER deserved the Moo name.   Just a real shame to mess up the Moo franchise legacy with the donkey doo doo that 3 was.  

As for Stardock & Generalisimo Wardell doing Moo4 in the spirit of Moo2.....all I can say is:  FREAKING AWESOME!!! 

Moo2 was one of the best games ever made.  Period.   Anything that comes close is pure gamer heaven.  

(On that note, just ponder for a moment on all the wonderful games that came out of the Microprose studios:  XCOM, Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Pirates, F-15 Strike Eagle Series, F-117, M1,  Gunship, Gunship 2K,  Covert Action, Master of Magic, Darklands, Moo1/2, Silent Service Series, Lightspeed, Hyperspeed, Starship Troopers, Gran Prix series, Star Trek TNG, Sword of the Samuri, Worms Amageddon, etc etc)

Reading this Moo 4 info today made my day!  Thank you, Grand Master Chi.