2019-10-24 16:54:46 (edited by zkline 2019-10-24 16:59:06)

Walker and Firefly,

Keep in mind that the Darloks are very, very good at finding spies sent against them. I would not expect to get very far with this tactic. That being said, the command you want is "spy Darlok sabotage." I think you can use abbreviations, but am not 100% sure. THe problem with keeping spies alive is that they have a chance every year to be detected, and that's more true of the Darloks than against any other race.

As for missile bases, they are defensive only, they will help against fleets or transports sent against your planet, but are not capable of launching offensive strikes to other star systems.

2019-10-24 16:57:15

So, when I target a base, what exactly does that do? Do I have to target them to activate them or something?

2019-10-24 17:24:48 (edited by zkline 2019-10-24 17:25:15)

I assume you're talking about the "tb," command, if not please correct me. This works with the added planetary governor feature, and all it does is set the number of bases you want to build on a planet before the governor moves on to research or whatever. It has nothing to do with targets in the sense of combat.

2019-10-25 06:28:31

Hi All,

I have to put in a good word for the Master of Orion Strategy Guide, available for download here. Despite the fact it's got OCR issues, it's a treasure trove of information about the way the game works. The info I got about spies recently came from there, among other things. In some ways I'm not sure how much of it I want to read, as it's rather spoiler heavy, but still, if you're interested in playing this game long-term at all, it's invaluable.

2019-10-25 08:21:05

Au au, ya, this guide is a damn heavy piece of bread, haha. But yes, it is useful indeed.

@Zkline: Could you give me an example for the highest value syntax you can use with the sec-command?
The entries in the emp looks a little bit strange. There are two listings of security. One tells me security 1.0 and the other 2.0
And i am not sure if 1% is the highest you can spend on security. The Explanations are a little bit poor there. thats why i ask for a syntax-example.

2019-10-25 10:42:26

Firefly,

It looks like both security, and spying, and taxes incidentally, can be treated as basically percentage sliders, the same as you would your planet production. That is, the maximum for all three is 100, although it’s 100% that means a different thing depending on which one you were talking about. That being said, it could be expensive to spend 100% on any one of them, let alone all three :-) I think with the wording in the help is trying to say is that the percentages are drawing up to a certain amount, but it could be better phrased, although I admit I’m not quite sure how at this hour of the night. :-) Hope that helps anyway.

2019-10-25 11:21:41

Oh, it's definitely a thesis to pursue!
I will do so in my next empire. I think i have to throw my momentaryon the trash.
The later acting of the races about conquering is realy realy realy nasty!
The darlocks sended out a big ship to destroy one of my colonys and the bullrathy came afterwards in the next year to colonice it. I bombed it to pieces and this mades the bullrathy very unhappy so they declared war on me.
Hello? It was my colonie from the beginning!:-) HAHA
They had no business here!

It is realy realy realy hard to find places for colonies at a certain time in the game.

2019-10-26 18:19:17

What is the command to change your tech sliders? It is in the ? command, but it is not quite clear.

2019-10-26 18:49:39

@Walker: TS, followed by, w for weapon, c for computer, f for force field, and so on. You have to check the capital letters.
Example: ts w 100
Oh and something very nice: Syntax" t=" will set all sliders equal.

Question to all: I am thinking about creating a little guide esspecialy for the Text-interface.
What would you all prefer. Audiodemos or a written guide?

2019-10-26 19:31:46

Interesting side note, the AI is designed to only focus on one area of tech research at a time exclusively. This was probably easier to code than some kind of priority system for different areas, which would have to keep changing.

I leave the audio vs text question to others, and will just say that I'm planning another release this weekend which will fix a very annoying bug with filtering planets.

2019-10-26 19:57:00

Thats a very interesting Detail about the AI. I have to keep it in mind.
Could you say something about the taxes? I dont understand what they exactly do.
And i am celebrating the new release like a bunch of whacky cheerleader!

2019-10-26 19:59:45

Taxes take money from your prduction and put it into the interplanetary reserve. This is kind of a floating bank account you can use to give planets, especially newly-colonized ones, a boost to production. It's also used to do things like pay tribute sometimes and deal with random events.

2019-10-26 20:08:39

So if i got something in my reserve all the colonys can use it? And if i set the taxes to 20% the colonys will have to pay a yearly ammount to fill it up?

2019-10-26 21:30:22 (edited by zkline 2019-10-26 21:34:06)

Sort of. The way it works is your tax is taken from planets proportionately, so that the total matches the percentage you are taxing. Sadly you lose 1 bc for every 2 you collect, so it's inefficient.
In order for colonies to use the reserve, you transfer money to them with the "res," command. Each colony can only use up to twice it's full productionin a year, but if you send more to it the remainder will be banked and used in later years. Also, in addition to taxation, if you spene more on industry after you've maxed factories on a planet, the excess goes to the reserve.

2019-10-27 05:16:31

Aaaah! Thats interesting! I have to try out the "res"-thing.

2019-10-27 18:34:41

I would say a written guide would be best,since the game is at the moment, just text. Makes things easier, but that's just me.

2019-10-28 04:53:58

Hi All,

HEre is a new release of the command line version of Master of Orion. THis is not as featureful as the previous versions, I didn't have as much energy to work on code as I thought I'd have this weekend.

Still, the fix in this release is important, so I recommend getting it ASAP. It fixes a bug in the filter command, which made it hard to find unexplored star systems. THere are also a few smaller fixes to the new rules options introduced in the previous release.

I will be updating the original post with the link, as always, and I Hope people find this enjoyable. As always I'm happy to try and answer questions.

2019-10-28 07:03:04

Thats definitely a huge huge milestone!
Now the V-Command is working absolutely perfect!
A thousand thanks to Zkline!
This is awesome!

2019-10-31 18:14:54

I have just started reading the stratagy guide.
I enjoy it, just wish there were not as many pictures. Took like an hour for my computer to convert it all to word... Pictures... Now that is somethhing I do not understand...

2019-10-31 18:25:06

YEah. I just ran the PDF through VoiceDream Reader, which helped a lot. It has the same effect and I think the text conversion is a little better.

2019-10-31 19:04:09

Yeah, it is better, but far from perfect if i remember correctly.
It is of a time where they had to scann it by hand

2019-10-31 19:06:38

To be clear, what I mean is, I run the scanned PDF, as it exists now through VoiceDream. I don't bother with using the VoiceDream scanner app to recognize it.

2019-11-01 00:52:57

It's good to know my 1990s era stratts for this game still work. I put way too many hours into the original. This is gonna suck up my free time. Gah. I wanted to be useful. Sat down for a game. Five hours later I'm engrossed in it...trying to outcolonize and outfleet the 3 opponents. Forgot how fun MOO1 was. This is absolutely awesome, and hey if you get Stellaris working, I got my mod list ready to go.

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

Jace's EA PGA Tour guide for blind golfers

2019-11-01 01:59:48

HEy,

Stellaris is, let's say a moving target. MOO at least is more or less static. I'll definitely keep everyone posted with any progress I make, however.

As far as MOO goes, one of my longer-term goals is to improve the combat display, so it's not as visual. It's certainly possible to understand with a little practice, but could be better.

2019-11-01 05:37:39

Yeah and i would say, that combat is a more important thing than i thought. If you want to learn how to design good ships, you have to partizipate in combat to see how they behave. So yes, combat is a not to be underestimated part of the game.