Master of Orion
 

Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review and Download (if available)

What you say is a walkthrough is actually a manual I think. I didn't really take a close look at it but I think that's what it is.

I know... templates are hell :)

Haha. Okay.

YESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!! finally this gem takes it's final resting place.And where else better than in abandonia's database.An excellent update.Bravo picard!!!!

Btw, dammit you write good picard.

A superb review for an astonishing game.

I've got both the 1 and 2 on CD's
but this makes a fine addtition to out collection of gems :)

All I can say is: OOOOOOoooo
Woah this sounds nice...
Mush 64k! Mush! *sigh* Its only 5MB! Come on...

wow
 

Best.
Game.
Ever.

Guess what.
I Can't win.
Then again, when did I last win a game...

wat a review
 

Your review is really good Picard, And this comes from someone who reads reviews for a living. As soon as I read your Review I posted a topic about how good it was in the Blah Blah Blah forum. It is astonishily good.

3 THUMBS UP
:wink:

This is what i believe also... picard if you are able to write so good reviews you should apply for a job as a writer in a games magazine :) - if you are not working for one already :P

Thanks guys. What do you do for a living then I_Wanna_Be_A_Pirate? If you don't mind me asking.

ok well
 

:whops: well for a living I do ... Homework I am a student and thats all I do in english Lit.. which takes up most of my studies.. i may have streeeeched the truth a bit :whops: sorry but hell i buy so many computer revies in magazines I read em a lot ... again picard :whops: sorry for streching the truth

Lol, no problem.

Wasn't sure where to put this, but here goes anyway. I found a way to run MoO under XP ^_^ If the game window displays an error then closes immediatly, watch it. It SHOULD say something like it needs "at least 1024kb of expanded memory". What you do, is go to Properties, then Memory, and change Expanded(EMS) memory to 1024. This allows it to run under XP :D And if something else is wrong, then sorry. That's the only error I got, and now I can run it normally.

Thanks that's a great tip.

Gah! I need help. Every single game I play, after I get a bit into it, a screen pops up asking "What class ship is this?", giving a picture of the ship and the text "Pages # - #" below it. The problem is, I can never figure out what it means by "Pages"! I've looked in the manual, but I see nothing there about it. Can anyone help me, please? :?

It's a copy protection, there have to be in the manual on that page a ship portrated which lists some characteristics. If there's nothing in the manual, there must be some text-file which lists the ships...

There is a picture included in the download which contains all the ship pictures and names.

there is a .gif file in the zip that has the answers you need. As I said in the review best thing to do is print out that page.

Help
 

How do you run the DOS command MEM? And when you do the install, how do you get past the part where it says "Insert disk in drive * and press enter." ? :shock:

There is no need to. Just unzip the file and run the game.

it says I need like so much "expanded" memory when i clicked on the file called "ORION"

Read the end of page 1 of this thread 8)

This is what Aladar means

hi, really nice page you got here :)
one little problem with that great game here, is it just me or is there no sound?

If you play it in plain Windows XP, there'll be no sound. Try playing the game under DosBox, which you can download on this site under Utility - Programs, then you'll have sound and music.

More EMS help
 

Great site.

Even with the beforementioned tips, EMS still might not be available (was not for me). The solution I found here:

http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/emsxp.html

You have to disable Legacy USB support (or in my case USB Keyboard support) in your system's BIOS settings.

Now, can anyone explain to me what EMS and USB keyboards have to do with each other? no idea.. anyways, the game works now.

Have fun with a great game!

thank you very much, playing with dosbox brings me sound :roll:

I run moo under dos box but there is no sound.I'm using xr pro.Maybe i have to install VDM sound?

the legacy support for usb devices is placed somewhere the memory. Unfortunately a lot of bios makers place it at the location where the ems pageframe would be put by emm386

as emm386 can not use that part of the memory for it's pageframe it can not give any ems. (only umb)

I was browsing the strategy section and I noticed, much to my dismay, that while Ascendency is ranked 5 on 5 by the site team, MOO is ranked 4 on 5!

C'mon peeps, MOO is superior to Acendency in every aspect. Well, perhaps with the exception of graphics?

O.o <_< :sucks:

I think they are both very good games and they both deserve marks of 5, they both have their different good and bad points but it is also the people who download the game that decide the marks, not just the reviewer.

Acendency should not even have more than 3 on 5. I would understand and accept 4 on 5 because of bias of the reviewer, but 5 is an insult.

I am very glad to see others apretiate this game as much as I do. As far as I am concerned this game ranks amungst the very best of all time. Tips rush for as many stars as you can. put $ into rich colonys, and take them out @ 200 % ( leave industry maxed out, returns production to Planetary resurve) or 300% on ultra rich colonys.
and if you still cant win type "MOOLA", "GALAXY", and there's one more but i cant recall it.

This is a superb game! Try to get the black hole gun, or whatever it's called. It halves the number of enemy ships it targets. For example, if you are up against a group of 32000 ships, one shot from this gun will bring it down to 16000!

How can I install this game? The install-program tells me to insert a disk into the drive i'm installing from. if i don't install it dosbox tells me to install it. so what's left to do? :wall: :wall:

ok, i understand that the manual can be viewed with acrobat reader, but where can i find the Ship's name?

This is among my all-time fav's (Yeah old school!! )--- it's good to have an easily accessible ver. through this site ... Moo2 is almost as good ... it's really sad that Moo3 sucks so bad, this original is 10x the game that Moo3 is-- Masters of orion ----CIV in space --- it kicks @$$!!!!

Is the version thats hosted the cut-and-dried version? By which I mean, videos, sounds, etc.. have been removed to make the file smaller? :eww:

MOO3's pretty good after the patch. It was very ambitious, and much of it works well. Since you played it, try the patch, and maybe download some of the mod customizations by players.

I never even noticed a difference after the patch and allow me to tell you that if you need players mods to run a singleplayer game, then the game is automatically a failure in my book.

I first played moo3 after finding it in a bargain bin for 5 dollars, and i still felt ripped off, but then came the patch....better.

Then there was Moo2 that i also go along with moo3 for 5 dollars... thought to myself, "what the hell, sim city was always great"... and the 2nd one blew the third out of the way.

Now I found the first moo to dl here...(also dled civ 1 and 2, you guys rock!) Unfortenetley, i had also had the memory problem and fixed it...then i got a "reconfigure hardware settings" error. I run windows XP.

If there is anyone who can help I know its you guys! :OK:

Do you use DOSBox?

Master of Orion 2 was absolutly great! I wonder why they changed the gameplay in such a bad way with MoO3...

Does anybody here knoe where I can find MoO2, I have looked and can't find it anywhere.





P.S. Master of Orion Rules!

I also agree that the ratings for Masters of Orion and Ascendency should be switched. While both are nice game, the ONLY thing that Ascendency has that is superior to Masters of Orion is Graphics.l

Masters of Orion should be a full 5, a excellent classic game, while Ascendency only had the chance to be a 5, which LogicFactory messed up with Rotten AI and Micromanagement.

Masters of Orion should be a 5, Ascendency should be a 3 or a 4. God! How I love this game haha. I used to play it over and over and over, and when I downloaded it from Abandonia I played it for weeks again. I'm playing Ascendency now, love that also, but its not the same.

Haven't played Moo2 and 3, maybe in the future.

So! this is a game of = strategy of ascendancy but is more old.....

I rl like of this GAME :woot:

Thank you so much aladar iv got this game on pc but ever since i got xp i cudnt play it thanx i love this game

Any MOO 1 fan lives around here? Let's dicuss about ship design, your favorit race etc...

Forget instalation. Just unzip the zip file and run dosbox, then mount.... change directory... and type ORION.EXE count down 3 2 1 and enter then ohhh noooo I can't believe it.... :rifle: :tomato:

Hello:
Does anyone of you know if MOO2 is abandoned? It'd be great to enter one day and find it right here on abandonia. One of the best strategy games ever made in my opinion and superior to ascendancy so far.
...but maybe it's not abandonware yet.
Bye

Actually, I for me think it's more a matter of taste, as personally I feel Ascendancy is at least more fun then MoO.
I found the games in MoO too short for my tastes; my regular MoO game lasts for about three or four days, seriously stretching it, where I can stretch an Ascendancy game for almost two weeks.
Besides that (or maybe underlying that) I personally found Ascendancy to be generally more immersive, more gratifying and generally offering greater rewards the MoO. As such, for example, I found MoO actually ending very frustrating.

Should I seek shelter now? :tomato:

Great game, wasn't expecting it to be this good

Anyways, I've downloaded DosBox to use with all my older games, but I've got one problem: Moo runs waaaa-yyy too slow. I've tried adjusting the CPU cycles (CTRL-F12/F11) in DosBox.. Still slow. is there anything else I could try?

You have to play with ctrl f11 and f12 to find the right speed. I am sorry I forgot the exact number, somting around 15000-16000 but I am not sure if the right speed for my computer would work fine for yours too. If you have any question juet just let us know. I am master in master of orion.

What the hell you are saying!!!! MOO is too higer to could be compared with Ascedancy. The ship design is magneficant and sometimes you have to design a specific ship to could punish a specific race which uses a special ship design. Computer just play enough good and smart to put you in serious trouble most of the times and you have to have your own strategy, diplomacy, etc to could handle a difficult situation....

I disagree.
There are on same level,with MoO in slightly lead,becouse (instead of Ascendacy) it bringed its ideas to end.
But of course,everyone has its own opinion :)

Well you are right. Everybody has its own opinion. In fact I don't understand why I argued about his comment too, because I have never played the other game very seriously. MOO, I played it a lot. Sometimes it is matter of taste too. Now lets have a beer :cheers:

I'm all for that :cheers: !

Well you almost look like a donky, we might get good freinds.

A liama and a donkey, quite the team!
:OK: brother

I am running it in DOS box but get no sound. Any ideas on how to fix this?

Well, first run install and there choos reconfigure hardware options. After that choos SB pro for music speech. That is all.

thanks donkey.

I saw photo of MOO's cd at mobygames. Does anybody know what differences between cd and floppy versions of this great game (of course if they exists..)?

There is a fan made game in the works named FreeOrion. Might be worth checking out when it gets closer to completion. It's freeware.

Master of Orion is my favorite game. It should have a higher rating as far as i'm concerned.

I gotta say guys this IS the best site i ever visited and i have to say that you are all great!!! Thanks for this jewel MASTER Jan Luc!!!

Well I ahve to say that I agree with you, some rating like 6/5. If you like we can exchange some information, save files, etc.

Ahh this game is addictive (or im just weird, or mabye both), I just cant stop, not until all those Darlock fools will fall to the might of the sex-crazy sakkras.

I shoud have found this thread a looong time ago, kept on getting the copy-right questions and only managed to get through at times through sheer luck and some good guesswork.

Just wondering though, what is your personal playing style when fighting, loads of lil swarm ships which once they reach you they kill anything in one hit, or a few giant warships who can destroy whole colonies in one bombing run, or just a mixture of both.

Ive managed to thwart the Mrrshans who kept using thousands of tiny ships buy building faster big ships equipped with repulsor beams to always keep em out of range, albeit very slow way to kill em off. Of course then I have my own swarm of ships which are extremly fast, hard to hit with both missiles and beam weapons and cheap n quick to build.

One silly bug in the game though is that 1000 small ships equipped with pellet guns wont damage a colony/missile base on space battle but when out of space battle it can destroy colonies in a few turns. Silly bug.

Well, I used to just design huge ships because I couldn't realise the hidden power of small ships. Now I am not building the huge ships excpet if I am forced. The basic point is that a small ship is almost a flying gun rather than a ship. The main problem is the space, but that in fact is not a big deal. What you need is the best engine, best maneuver, appropriate computer and for weapon just missle. For weapon tech I do missle search if it is available and forget beam, that obviously provide me the best defence for my systems and give me devasting attack too. The main point in using the small ships instead of the big one is that you can have them when you need. You have to wait 30 turn to bulid a huge ship, but you can bulid much more powerfull swarm of small ships just in one or two trun, in the place under threat. One avarage system can easily produce around 10 little ships each turn, which means that you can gather 200 ships in few turns if you just use some of those ultra rich systems. Believe me or not, 200 ships armed with the best missle can produce 200*20=4000 point of damage and can destroy a small fleet of huge ships or big fleet of small ships in a while, even before your enemy could give you a shoot. In the end game (once I get sub space teleporter) I arm my little ships by beam especially with pulse phasor or auto blaster, and sure sub space teleporter. You can destroy whole ships in the world in few turns. If you like I can attach an one of my saved game.

I forgot to say the bug you mentioned is not a bug and in fact is due to planetary shield.

Erm, the planetary shield does work outside of space battles. I suppose you could mean the deflector shields that missile bases use, but it says that the missile base uses a cumulative of deflector and planetary shield.

Although I suppose the race I did bomb with my thousands of lil ship didnt have a planetary shield as of yet, and im not too sure I actually attacked the colony with my ships after it had no bases to check the damage (in space battle that is).

I quite like my swarms of lil ships, but it is sooo much fun having an absolutley huge ship, created 3 huge ships and was decimating all others while humming the star wars imperial march them sub-conciously, with an escort guard of 1000 lil ships to take care of other swarms.

Missiles are ok, but beams are more reliable, you have to retreat and come back into a battle after using your missiles, beams can deal with enemies straight on, also missiles suck against swarms, one missile kills one ship, woohoo 200 missile ships do 4000 damage, yet only kill 200(max) of the swarm of thousand ships coming at them, also missiles arent very good against small ships, auto-blasters are reliable, and stream weapons.

Ahh, youve got to love using Sakkras, easily the best way to get highest productivity, just terraform all the planets and steal robotics technology, boom youve got a 220 pop planet with 6 factories per mil colonists, that means a lot of productivity, especially great on rich and ultra rich planets.

Well I guess planetary shield works in both mode. Simply it absorbed all or a part of damage from bombardment in both mode. I personally checked it and I am almost sure about it.

The main point in using swarm is that you can gather them pretty fast and it is really very effective.

For using the missle instead of beam, I have to say it fits with most of the situations, excpet if the enemy's ships has very good defence against missle, like high ECM and especially if is armed with zyro or lighting shiled which can not be obtained in early game. So with my experience the missle are the best in statring and mid game, but obviously you can have much more better beam or stream in the end game. I have to say that one of nice point about this game that you always have to take care about ship design of your enemy to could design a good ships for defence or attack.

I almost played with all espices but my favourit one is Psilon. Mainly because they get most part of tech and they do research much faster. Bigger brain is always better than bigger body, but its effect appear in long range so you have to be patient for a while.

Psilons are hard to play against.

I was just building up my lil Meklar planets, got 5 planets, then get a news announcement, im waiting in anticipation to see where I am ranked in Production or another field, but noooo its the Psilons who now have 16 Star Systems.

16 STAR SYSTEMS in like 20 years, also what really sucks is how they manage to make Alliances with other races really easily (the computer that is) but for me I have to either trade for 100 years or give em all my Technology.

If you like using the swarm ships though I suppose Alkaris would be the best race choice, theyve got the added defense so you lose less ships, and they have better propulsion technology so you can be more manouverable in battle which adds to defence and helps attacking and then retreating out of range.

However when capturing Orion It would be best to use beam swarm ships as the Guardian has a lighting shield, and it can take out big ships in one hit with the death ray.

Das spiel funktioniert nicht....:sniper:

How about you a) post in English so more people can understand you and b) describe what errors you're encountering instead of just saying "it isn't working"?

Please try to be more specific, what system are you running it on? What message do you get, if any? And keep it in English please.

What difficulty level are you playing on? HORRIBLE? 16 systems in 20 years sounds a bit harsh, especially for the psilons. Playing the Meklar empire, you should have no problems with your production, as the robots get big advantages in that sector. The Psilons are a techy race, but they are friendly. As long as you don't bugger them, they will stay out of your plans. Alliances don't have any advantage IMO. Trade with other races as much as you can, also have science treaties whenever there is a opportunity. But don't sign alliances. You are lured into wars with other races too often.

If you want to colonize planets faster, use to transport colonists function often. Small colonies grow slower, so it is more profitable to spread your population equally amongst your existing colonies.

Small ships are a good choice in many cases. It is often much more profitable to build a lot of small ships with small weaponry in the early stages of the game. I myself prefer a lot of destroyers(?) (not sure, I'm talking about the second size here) with pellet guns, as they bypass the armour of enemy ships and do a lot of damage, if used in masses. This counts for the productive races as Meklar or Klackons. The psilons should use larger ships to take advantage from their advanced technology. Other races like Darloks or Humans are also fun to play, but have their own strategy.

The guardian is a hard opponent in any case. That's what it ment to be. Either you'll need masses of small or some really good equipped big ships in order to beat him. But it's always worth the effort, as Orion is the best planet to colonize in most games.

Hello...Yes, I am a guest. I might register later, I unno. I'm just here for the pie =P

I used to own an old windows 3.1, but gutted the computer and saved only the HD and the ram. I put the HD into another computer of mine, and can run the game quite fine. However, it is incredibly slow (as it always has been) and i wanted to put it on my newest computer (running XP).

I couldnt figure out how to change the EMS (click properties...where????) so I tried it with DOSbox. Every time I attempt to run the game, I get the "run INSTALL to configure ORION" error message. I have configured it many times, even completely eliminating sound, and that has not helped anything. Is there any way I can get this game running on my XP PC? Or am I stuck with my older model? SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!!!

..err..sorry about that.

I forgot to mention that I put it on my newer comp by downloading it from this site and extracting it to the "CDrive" as listen in the DOSbox tutorial. That certainly makes a difference.

Okay, this is the last time, I swear. Sincere apologies for the clutter.

Another little quirk: In DOSbox, when I changed the directory to ORION (the folder I extracted to) and used the DIR command, it listed nothing. Yet I typed in "install" and it still worked.

If anyone can help, I greatly appreciate it.

Just wanted to add a bit of an anecdote...

(Apparently. all I had to do to get ORION working was rename a folder in my C: drive labeled "program")

I started out as Psilons, on a huge map, medium difficulty, with 4 computer opponents. I focused only on technology and expanding, and soon had 20-30 colonies, and medium relations with all other opponents. Then, all of the sudden, one of my border planets were invaded, and lost to the humans. Every race then declared war on me. Since I had no fleet whatsoever, I panicked and considered restarting the game, kicking myself for not investing in some sort of defense. I decided to give it a shot, as a challenge, and immediately started production on a fleet of tiny flying guns.

My technology was moderately advanced, or so I thought; I had developed tachyon beams, (Insert engine type here that allows 9 parsecs per turn), stargates, etc etc. I decided to see how competent my competition was, and produced a couple spies (~4 for each race) and apprehensively opened the status report to find that my enemies:
...
...
...
...were still using retro engines and lasers.
I begin cracking up; I laughed for a good five minutes. I sent a fleet of 40 TINY ships, and was able to defeat over 100 medium-sized ships, I think 18 huge ships, and able to bring a swarm of 1800 tiny ships to a swarm of 300 tiny ships before my 40 were destroyed.

Moral of the story? Never give up, even when the odds are so insanely stacked in your favor you can't help but giggle occasionally.

All you need to play the game is just to unzip the file in a subdirectory and then run dosbox (latest version) then mount for the right directory and finally change the directory and run the program. If you like a specific sound setting then you should run install. If your XP is professinal then you don't even need the dosbox. I faced with the other problem you mentioned (no file appear after command dir). You have to restart dosbox in this case.

The best weapon for small and meduim ships is missile, and beam for large and huge. The reason is simple, small and meduim ships die even with one shoot, so you have to produce the most part of damage before enemy's ships can touch you. For large ship you can in fact use a lots of shield, ecm, many types of missile defence and repairing things, so your ships can stand on front line for a while and produce enough damage.

moo1 was a good game.....played it very often....

but moo2 is even better.

1. the battle was improved there.

2. MULTIPLAYER!!!

There are still many many players who play moo2 online.
http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/2004_02...792119255475969

The complete turnoff of MoO2 was the Antarian attacks. I really prefer MoO because of that.

Well.....there is also the option to play moo2 without antarans.

When it say "impossible", it´s really impossible. Too much ships!!!

The best defensive tactic when youve got advanced technology, its simply have at least one missile base on your planets (preferably the borderones first)

When you have advanced, you kill the big ships really really fast with the missile base, and the small ships dont even damage you. Obviously more missile bases the better.

And impossible is not impossible when you use the Sakkras, they breed so damned fast that thier impossible to kill. Screw building fleets of warships as well (although the more people, the better industry you get and more research so you should get some good stuff) just invade other colonies with the transports, good thing to research good personal armour/weps.

Well I have enjoyed playing Moo, seeing as I have only recently discovered what a great little gem this game is.

Ironicly, even after all these years, I end up spending most of my time playing a game that has inferior, sound, graphics and controls to most modern games, but is just overall a lot more fun.

I haven't played all that long, so I still have a lot to learn.

My favourite species has to be the Darloks. Being bad is so good. Is there anything better than letting all the other races do the hard work and spending while you just build up missile bases and then steal all their technologies? :max: One problem of course with the Darloks is, when you make an alliance, some other race frames you and of course being a Darlok means the automatically think it's you, even when it wasn't.

Second favourite species is the Psilons - all the fast technology researching gives you a great lead.

I still have a few races to play with, but some do not suit my style of play.

My general strategy at the start of the game and this goes for almost every race, is to research propulsion technologies until I get ion drives and then to colonize every half-decent planet around me that I can. Any trashy planets with 20 max population or low minerals and such I leave alone. I usually end up with around 5 or 6 planets and by then the computer opponents are already venturing near me. After that I focus on building up missile bases to prevent any attacks on my planets (around 50 or so for each planet) This strategy seems to work well for Darloks (who can then steal other technologies) or Psiolons (who are the fastest researchers). I then end up having a technology lead and I go about inciting revolt on planets and then taking over those planets.

Of course things don't always go to plan and in particular with playing the darloks, I tend to get ganged upon.

I can't remember which ships I built, I am still trying to figure out what the different weapons and such do and which are useful or not, but I managed to build really fast large ships and I had weapons that half shields ability or something like that anyway, and I managed with a group of about 70 about of these to kill the Ship that guards Orion in 1 or 2 hits - Is that a bug perhaps, usually I find killing that ship a problem?

The person who posted about alliances is right. Whenever I make an alliance I get dragged into wars and what's up with opponents not wanting to sign non-aggression pacts and then afterwards begging for peace after you leave them with only one planet even though you asked them 5 times to sign a non-aggression pact.

No one seems to want peace.

Best game of all times !!! If you did not try out please try it. In the beginning you may be pissed off by poor graphics but than you will love this game.

The thing that makes this game is designing your own spaceships. So fun when you see them at space combat.

Try to buy somewhere an archival number of a deceased Polish gaming magazine with a name meaning in translation "A World of Computer Games" which includes an English version of MOO2. Sorry, but I don't remember which one. Price - about 5$. Original name

Try to buy somewhere an archival number of a deceased Polish gaming magazine with a name meaning in translation "A World of Computer Games", which includes a full English version of MOO2, including 1.31 patch. Price - about 5$. Original name [S/]wiat Gier Komputerowych #5/02.

Hey.. I didnt get the sounds working on this game with dosbox and soundcard settings to sb pro.. any idea whats wrong? do I have to download vdm sound? or what is it :blink:

Try only soundblaster.

What do you mean with the best game!? For sure this is not the best game. As far as I know, the best game is MOO.

You can not believe, more you enjoy better you become. Just go for impossible and huge world to see how much this game challenges you. You have to try different specios to could enjoy more too. You have to know your abilities and abiliteis of other to could beat them. Ship design is another great thing in this game. You are a loser if you desing wrong ships in a specific moment for a war. You are also a loser if you make a wrong diplomacy and... So you have understand the situation to could beat the game and there is always an easier solution which means war is not always a good solution, although I know all kids prefer war rather than diplomacy, so it is up to you. All species are greate, you just should know how to use them. Some are weak in starting but greate in the end and opposite. It means that you didn't understand the game well if you think that some races are better than other. You have to have your own strategy, depnding on your specios, situation, other specios and.....

Graphics and sound, forget them. It is like to say the best woman are the most beautiful one, which obviously is not true, I would say opposit is more likely true. Sometimes you have to look for other qualities, just graphics, it is boring man. So it means you are not mature in playing the game if you still are looking for graphics.

This game is golden because it captures the imagination. The Klackons are real!!! Somehow the realism of today's games can't create the suspension of disbelief like MOO does. Pure fun.

Ok i'm new to all this abandonware malarky, so don't blame me for sounding thick, but how do i go about getting games that are ESA protected?

Try other places which are given in the links. You will find your favorite game somewhere close.

ok, i cant find the link do DL this file...

i WANT MOO1, i used to play it but i cant find the link to DL

can some 1 post it here plz?

The game is ESA, so you can't download it I'm afraid. :max:

Try this link EDIT: Other abandonware sites. Search fot your favourit game and it gives the name of other sites which is hosting the game. That is the fastest way to get the game you like.

I meant the links to other abondonware sites which you can find it in left and bottom of the home-page, not the other link. Sorry I should be more specific.

This was one of the best stratagy games out there. We only forgot it because of Orion 2. It is still a classic.

You can't play the game

read this: http://www.abandonia.com/main.php?nav=esaprotected

1) Malice - you should always read the text you see. It's usually importaint and explains how you should do something, or why you shouldn't/can't do something.

2) to other people - this is an international site, so stop with such comments (learn english and similar). You never know where the person is from and which languages that pesron speaks!

Hrm. . . No posts for two weeks. . . Maybe someone will read it anyways:

I have been playing MOO, off and on, since it came out. In fact, if it was not for MOO, I would have waited longer before getting a CD-ROM drive. I have memories of being able to go for coffee between turns on my 386. I just finished a couple of games.

Typically I play as either the Klackons or the Darloks, in a huge, hard galaxy, with five opponents. At average difficulty, I play whatever suits my whim. I have only managed to win an impossible game as the Darloks. My experience with impossible games is that as soon as I am one of the candidates for president of the republic, the republic forms against me. If I do not have the tech to drive away attacking fleets, I am rapidly exterminated. Sometimes, a race takes a dislike to me, and decides to wipe me out before the republic forms.

The Republic is apallingly bad at prosecuting wars (in my experience), so do not give up; until, they are annihilating your star systems.

About small ships: A stack of fifty-three starships with energy pulsars will destroy all stacks of small ships adjacent to them, even the unlikely scenario of small ships with class XV shields, and neutronium armor. The higher tech pulsarwill do it with a stack of twenty-seven ships. Okay, I tend to put beams on my small ships, because I am biased against missiles on my starships. At the higher tech levels, huge ships rock. If you can build the toughest ships in the game (Neutronium II armor and advanced damage control), it takes just over a thousand points of damage to even weaken it. A stack of those will easily handle The Guardian.

About The Guardian; it is very terrifying at the lower difficulty levels (when you are tempted to tackle it with inadequite weapons), but a bit of a wuss at the hardest levels (but usually because I can never get to it before I can attack it with megabolt cannon, plasma cannon, or -- in one extreme case-- maulers. I have stopped using the the Death Beam on my starships, and I only smack the Guardian to shrink all of my other weapons.

Given the problems of stack sweeping attacks, I have a fondness for medium ships. They are fast enough to build, can incorporate both beams and bombs, and still have room for state of the art targetting computers and a shield.

The wierdest game that I played was one where noone developed a better ground attack weapon than the fusion bomb. Interstellar wars were futile affairs; until, I discovered the mauler.

Master of Orion was something of a pioneering game. I couldn't believe how good it was when I first found it. It stole many hours of my life and is one of the most replayable games I have ever played.

This all came to an end when I played the first sequal. It destroyed the original game for me. I shouldn't really complain as moo2 and 3 still give me playing time even now, but I do miss playing moo1 without wishing it was the sequal.

As an afterthought, the fantastic worlds civ2 version had a fantastic scenario called Master of Orion jr that was amazingly well put together.

Mike

Master of orion, oh the fond memories of having lots and lots of hours leeched away of my life.

In other words, this game ROCKS. The gameplay is still some of the best I have seen, The visuals, tho corny aren't too shabby either. But the real bonus I love is just the interconnectingness of the races.

My typical setup is Pilson, and I research up to xortrinum armour I think it is, then I start colonising. When you are finished, you will have around 6 colonies rapidly growing, all fully terraformed and everything. Then you construct starships and destroy the smallest opponent. Not the ones zeroing in on you, but the smallest.

Its a fun game, im terrible at expanding though, thats why I win on impossible with Bulrathis by ground combat. Also once the tech gets good I build a large repulsor ship which has the best beam weapons and some stream weapons, repulsor, battle scanner and high-energy focus as specials, and should have the best engines and ECM.

The stream weapons and repulsor can destroy hordes of little ships and the high energy focus can take the biggest ships out from far away, also makes great planet defenders against bombers by parking infront of the planet.

Also a great tactic when you dont have good tech is to let a race who use death spores to attack a planet which has lots of factories, the pop will all die but all the factories remain, then wait until they colonise it, then go and use ground forces to attack and reclaim, you will get lots of nice tech back and you can repeat the process.

The big problem of game its that they kill me before i can denvelope a good tech

Great old classic!

Has anyone found a way to play this on Windows ME?

Have you tried dosbox? It is very easy to install and run (on a Win98SE machine, by a university graduate, YMMV).

I remember trying to run that a while ago and it kept closing down every time I ran it. I will give it another shot.
I can run other DOS games OK on my computer without any problems. Just not the ones that need EMS.

I get a 'Fatal signal:Segmentation fault (SDL parachute deployed)

Any sugestions???

Don't worry, driver problem.

Thinking of MoO makes me salivate. It was one of my first games as a kid, even though I'm a bit young for it to be. I got it along with X-Com (Another amazing game), however this game won't work on Window's 2000 or, for me at least, XP. I'm having some difficulty getting it going on Dosbox as well. I even have the CD. I mount my main HDD, and use the files there, but then it can't detect the CD... So, any suggestions?

@Shadow:Write into the autoexec section of the dosbox.conf.

@MoO: Yeah I still have it on my HD. I recall me taking always those damn humans being experts at diplomacy. This way I had relatively less problems with other races teaming up on me. Important: dont install an alliance to one of the other races - NAP is just fine to not being dragged into wars you dont want.

Choosing Psilons is for sissies! On the other hand they are worthy opponents.

For fleet layouts: I found ion/neutron stream projectors on three different ships highly effective... :whistling: Those nice little weapons plus the black hole generator are absolutley dominating over the other weapons.

I have a fondness for the Klackons, the Darloks, and the Sakkras. The Klackon are great for their production bonus, even if their poor propulsion research gets you down. The Darloks get others to do their research for them. Finally, the Sakkras are better at ground combat than the Bulrathi. This is counter-intuitve, but it works like this: although the Bulrathis get a 25% bonus in ground combat, the Sakkras breed twice as fast, so at the higher tech levels, the Sakkras can just send 25% of the population from a couple of worlds to a target, and if any casualties are inflicted each turn, they will eventually succeed. The Bulrathis have to build up their numbers in between attacks, but the sakkras (with eco spending) stay at max pop. The Sakkra planetology rating means that their planets are likely to be highly populated, and they can dump colonists
on a star system almost as fast as you can bring up additional attackers.

I have a fondness for huge ships with battle scanners, autorepair, and high energy foci. At the lower tech levels, they are armed with a mix of streaming weapons, megabolt cannon (for precision) and something more destructive than megabolt cannon (if I have something), plus something for taking out ground bases.
Should the game slog on long enough for me to get maulers, that is all I use, as scouring planets clean of disagreeable republicans (who formed it without me), is my primary goal and maulers are dual use, even if they are a waste on small and medium craft.

If I get stellar converters, there is the temptation to leave out the high energy focus, but stellar cobverters are useless against maxed out shielding.

Black hole generators can be a help if one of the computer players has a stack of 32000 warships, but it is easier, and takes less ships to destroy the race than those 32000 ships.

I can't personally comment on my strategies (since the last time I contemplated them I was pre-pubescent), but I always chose the Silicoids simply for the ease and early colonization... I'm certain that will change, however I still have a problem. I do what you said, then attempt to boot it from the installed files on the C: drive. I believe it is going along correctly, however... the dosbox prompt disappears and nothing happens. If you could elaborate, I would greatly appreciate it.

I find it difficult to help you because there is no CD in my version. Why dont you try the abandonia download? It works perfect with DosBox (0.63), no CD required whatsoever.

This game is ESA protected, so no download on Abandonia. First post of this discussion should say only Review!

You should use DOSBox to install and play game if you have either cracked version or CD rom version. The other day I set up mine to use CD image I've created in the order not to carry CD with my laptop. It works nicely with DOSBox and D-Fend, as you can mount image directly in DOSBox.

Also make sure you set up sound correctly by running Install.exe. ;)

Any tips for newbie to start the game? I am totally new to this(wondering how is miss this game when I used to be crazy playing civ, warcraft and dune2).
i am totally lost at this game and wondering if there is a newbie starter tips anywhere that i can read.

I have tried http://www.jonsullivan.com/misc/moo.php3 but not many stuffs for newbie. Any suggestions and tips are appreciated. :D

i dont know where to get the manual with the ship designs thing the part where you need to choose the design of the ship or else you die...

if anyone can post a link or something pls and thank you..

I dont think that the ESA people will be happy, maybe they dont mind but meybe yes. So send a private menssage with a mail direction and let´s see if i can help you.

Help...I just want to play MOO I and I am getting the expanded memory error. Where is this properties folder I need to look for to change my memory? I am running XP, and I can't find it...

You need to use DOSBox.

plenty else is wrong! but fortunately there is dosbox and a front end loader called dosshell. Now I just go to dos shell and double click the icon ...the program loads in seconds...plays like a dream.

This game sorta sounds like like Alpha Centauri, except not on one planet. Is it, I am a huge centauri fan and just curious.
Cheers

hi...

there is no any *.gif within the archive as is mentioned, so any suggestions where to look for the copy protection answers?

I also have a question about sounds - is there any sounds/music except in intro and cut scenes?

I've tried Sakkras and Humans, buut Silicoids have become my favorite. It's a whole extra step removed from establishing my empire when I choose them, since I don't have to research different environments and by seeking out and colonizing "normal" planets, I force other species to enter power struggles early on, further slowing down their expansion.

I pay the price for it, though, when they "realize" I'm a bigger threat and have covered nearly 3/4 of the galaxy and have level 50 tech within a matter of years, but by then, I'm pretty secure in defenses and have a steady supply of B.C. for bribes and fleet building.

I like the darklots(the dark guys) they fit very well to the nation against the other are allied.

i dont know, but i usualy win in any case in the first 3 difficult levels, with patience etc... at one time my opponent at average difficult level had 32000 of 2 medium ships, so 64.000 ship, but fled rather than confronting my 100 huge ships or my 60 missile bases.

i prefer the races with production bonuses. the meklar and those insects have those. though the meklar bonus takes a bit longer to actualy have an effect on gameplay, having 2 factories more per population than others are likely to have is nice. i found out this way that 2500 factories is the maximum you can have on 1 planet

silicons are usualy nice to start with, but later on they have huge problems with research and such. fast start but slow overall

in most games i played, these have been most annoying (as far as i can remember the spelling): Bulrathi, the bear people. their ground combat bonus means they usualy dont bother building their own colonies in the beginning, they just take yours

psilon, always have an incredibly fasts start, one day i will find out how they do it, since my fastest start always lags behind compared to their fast starts

Ahhh the MOO. One of my old favorites.

Some of the things that were unusual about MOO. The tech tree being randomized the way it was, made apprehending techs by spying and invasion much more important. I think this was the single thing I missed in MOO2. I mean with all the Civ clones only MOO in my experience did this.

How the computer chose what techs you would get, as I remember... Each race(except Psilons) had a 50% chance to get each tech, with a gauranteed of at least 1 tech in each science for every 5 levels.

MOO also had one of the best(if not the best) strategy guides. A strategy guide that didn't just tell you how to win, but actually broke down some of nuances of the game. It even had an argument large vs small ships, with neither a clear winner, but both having their uses.

other stuff...

Give a technology away to each race, it will give you a permanent diplomacy boost. Only the first one works like this, subsequent ones only give an immediate boost.

some of those 32000 stacks of ships are from an integer error.

I still have my strategy guide but I don't own the first game any more as the disks died years ago. Not sure about the manual. I kept MOO2 because it could be played on just the HD with a special installation.

Oh and Acendancy was just came up cold in my opinion.

Maven

No one will ever win the battle of the sexes, there is too much fraternizing with the enemy. . .attributed to kissenger or churchhill

moo is good but moo2 is GREAT, there are much more possibilities, techz and you have to play each race bit differently.. Silicoids owns there too :D with Sakkras and Psilons if they survive 2/3rds of the game are very annoying.. Anyway, I just love creating my own race there..

When I'm playing I am asked to identify "technology" in the form of ships with a long list of names. If answered wrong, my empire apparently is destroyed! This is really pissing me off! I like the game, but it burns my behind that its being wiped out based on an MCQ! What is going on with this? Is there a way around it? I NEED HELP!!! PLEASE! Help me save my empire!

-W. Arthur Buchanan

Thats copy protection.
And yes, there is a way around it. Just PM me and I'll help you out. ;)
Regards,
DarkMatter

Don't even need to PM anyone, it's included with all the reference material you should have downloaded with the game, if you got it from Abandonia... :tai:

Its not actually with the reference material, its in amoungst the game files of the zip, called: ships_1b.gif
But you are correct all the same.
Regards,
DarkMatter

This is easily my favorite game right now, and likely one of my favorites of all time. I'm SUPER happy there's still an active community at civfanatics.com. I just figured out how to get the sound effects to work, before I could only get MIDI music. Sounds are SO nice . I especially love hearing the ships warp out, when they retreat.

Anyway, as far as favorite races go, I <3 the Meklars, and Bulrathi. Meks are excellent in computer tech, and make great spies. I'd say comperable to the Darloks, when you play for it. Their bonus to production helps them take more of a tech lead than the darlocks, and everyone doesn't hate you. They also don't HAVE to be spies, as they are perfectly capable of getting high production, and out researching almost anyone. This gives you more options on how to approach any given situation. Having high level computers also helps your ships do more damage, when you mount high lvl battle computers on them. The extra expense of the computers is countered by Meklar increased production.

As for the bears, they don't have any need to build missile bases or a fleet for a LONG time. It's very hard for someone to take one of your planets, especially since they are 'good' with construction tech, and weapons tech. This not only gives them great bonuses to ground attacks, but also makes their fleets MUCH more impressive, when it comes time to build one. Higher construction tech means you can fit more weapons on each ship. Higher weapon tech means that you can put better weapons on each ship. The downside is that they are poor at comp tech, which means they won't do as much damage with their ships, unless you can steal a good battle computer, and they make crappy spies, . As long as you take planets with factories intact, you can steal enemy tech that way. Overall, they are a military powerhouse, since they can fight well with ships, and amazingly on the ground.

In the most recent patch version, the 32,000 ship bug was fixed, as were a few crashes. At least according to the raedme for the patch. I've only seen screen shots, and read about it. The most recent 'supported' version is 1.31.

OK, where to start? One of my all time fav games, but haven't played it in 10 years. A flood took the game disk years ago, but I still have the stuck-together water damaged manual. Anyway, I am ready to SCREAM frustration at the world. I have a Dell, run 'XP'... so EAGER to play for so long, now more than p*ssed off! I also, get that damned 'needs @ least 1024kb of expanded (extended) memory.

I am no cpu guru. Anyway one of you, who can understand the frustration, PLEASE take pity on me, talk/explain how I can get this game to work in XP? The download 'help' printouts are a bit beyond me.
Help? Please? E-mail Removed

The answer is extremely simple: use DOSBox. If you are willing to spare one hour of your gaming time, you'll be able to read and understand the helpfile which is bundled with it and you'll know how to make any DOS game work in XP in the future. :)

If you still don't understand how it works, just ask us in the troubleshooting forum. You can find a link to DOSBox on this site, but you could just as easily find it with your favored search engine. It's very popular.

I loved MOO but I just lost the desire to play it after MOO2 came out. It's great, but it seems to me, IIRC, that MOO2 just did everything a bit better. I remember loving the first one, but the second just stole me away from it and I never went back. Are there people out there that still prefer the first to the second?

I have all three Master of Orion originals, and I prefered Moo 1. Second came Moo 2, and more than lastly, Moo 3. Moo 3 was the biggest disappointment of any game. Too complex, and took forever to gain technology. Worst game ever. :vomit:
Regards,
DarkMatter

Thanks, Eagle, I shall try. I spent about 3-4 hours last night with the instructions printed out and in my hands. I made the files, DOSBox, Downloads, Files, & Cdrive. I then pasted the (apparently) CDrom version (of Orion) from an old MPS file into 'Cdrive', under DOSBox. I then backe dout, opened the DOSBoc autoexec.bat file, per the instructions, even typed the stuff such as:

mount c c:\DOS\CDrive
mount d D:\ -t cdrom
C:
CLS

Anyway, somethings not right, it still kicked off as 'Z' drive. Played around all night till exhaustion. Finally got DOSBox to open under 'C:' , but cannot access the game. When I CAN get the file up (i.e. C:\ORION), when I then type in ORION (again) or even orion.exe.... I get some message like (SOMETHING like) 'cannot find CD.

I loved this game, and also 'Master of Magic' as a kid (older brothers stuff and computer). I have the 'of Magic' CD and hope to also get IT to work. But want to get Orion to work, first. (I have a Dell Dimension CPU (2300?2400? model) with a flat monitor. 'XP' operatinf system. When I try to change memory (i.e. properties) to 1024kb, it still doesn't work (actually tried that before 'finding' it on this site.

At this point, with the above system info (DOSBox, CDrive, Files and Download files generated)... what EXACTLY do I need to type in/for the autoexec.bat file? Obviously, typing it EXACT doesn't work... hope the
'-t' doesn't stand for some code.

Failing that, while I am IN the DOSbox, and screen shows C:\ORION ... how do I get the game to start? My guess at this point (besides me being all hosed up) is that I am not doing SOMETHING RIGHT at the autoexec.bat file.

Sigh.

If I hadn't BELIEVED that I could finally get to play these older games again, I never would have been this FRUSTRATED!
Anyway, I'll try to find the link you speak of, and check it out. Shall check back here, too, later. TIA ~Gary

OK, here's what's up. I was attempting to use the (old) existing game (in DOSBox). Dead wrong. Finally used the DOWNLOAD version, and everything is working great (after some mods to the config's autoexec file.

DUH! on myself.
I figured it'd be something simple, obvious, etc.

Again, Duh! on me... :)
Lord, how great to re-visit these old masterpieces!

Anybody with Darlok-winning strategies? I try playing diplomatically at the start and even then my opponents' initial reaction is negative (they just attack me a little later, rather than right away). Help, please?

That's pretty much par for the course in the game. Even if you were playing the "Humans", who have a natural diplomatic trait, you'll still get attacked without warning.
You always need to prepare for sneak attacks early in the game, regardless how good your relations with a race/s is. Their usual excuse for attacking you is that they need to expand.
Regards,
DarkMatter

No, no, what I mean is, they attack me almost as soon as they meet me. I've never even gotten the "Yadda yadda know first contact is difficult yadda yadda hope we can coexist peacefully yadda yadda" spiel. Right from the start, they're hostile and any time I try my hand at spymastering, they always know it's me.

Does anyone know if MOO2 is abandonware yet?

Nope. Still sold.

OK, thanks. I'll play this for the next year or so then!

Curse you, CDAccess.com! :tai:

hey, i'm having trouble installing the game, i go to install it, and it asks me to insert the disc, and i can't get around this, any info is appreciated, thanks send replies to e-mail removed

Please don't post e-mails in public forums

After easyly winning a game on Medium mode, I lost badly in Hard now. Every single race but myself voted for those Silicoids so they won. If that wouldn't have been the case, I think the Klackons, with whom I was at war with, sooner or later would have killed me anyways.

This is simply the best game ever. Second maybe only to MoO2, but I think Moo1 had some nice feats that even MoO2 couldn't deliver. The simple battles for example. Ever brought a wave of destruction upon your enemies by using 8000 tiny ships, each equipped with a gauss cannon/disruptor/...? "Resistance is futile" gets a whole new meaning with such a fleet :)

Hey there. I've looked over a majorty of the forum to see if someone posted anything to help me through my problem. So here it goes.
I downloaded it, un rared it to its own directory "MOO" in the c:\ folder. Everything was put in there.
Next I of course tried to install, seeing as how that wasn't working, I checked the posts on here.
I learned that I juat needed to use the ORION exe. So I clicked it. I got that message that flashed my really quick. Reading up on here I saw I needed to change the EMS to 1024, so i did. STILL same problem saying i needed 1024 memory, I even changed all the executables EMS to 1024, still no luck. Next I tried using my DosBox to run it. and when I tried to run the ORION exe, it told me to install the game. If anyone can help me out here it'd really help.
Here is my computer specs, plus dosBox if it helps:
Manufacturer: Toshiba Satellite A75-S206
Processor: Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 2.80GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 512 MB DDR SDRAM
Hard Drive: 60 GB plus 60 GB external HD
Video Card: ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9000 IGP w/ 64 MB VRAM
Monitor: Built in 15.4" diagonal widescreen
Sound Card: Realtek AC97 Audio
Speakers/Headphones: Titanium built-in speakers/BF2 Headset
Keyboard: LAPTOP so built in
Mouse: Logitech MX518 Optical Mouse
Mouse Surface: Mouse pad w/ wolves on mountains w/ forest howling at the earth
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)

DOSBox shell v0.63


If anyone could help me out it'd be totally apreciated :kosta: :kosta:

before running the "orion.exe" in dosbox, run "install.exe" over again and set everthing from begining (i also had this problem btw, and after few attempts of running instal exe and changing configs it finaly stopped giving me the message)
if after install.exe you will still get errors, try my config here http://www.sendspace.com/file/1a6ekn (replace the old one in moo directory)

Use DosBox v 0.70.
0.63 is grossly outdated and not recommended.

Well, I upgraded to DOSBox 7 and it didn't work, but just now instead of mounting to the c:\
I mounted to c:\MOO
MOO is my folder
then I typed ORION and BLAM!!!
It worked, thanks for the suggestions everyone.
:brain:

OMG! A buddy of mine just gave me MOO3! It's level of depth is very impressive.

In other news, the "New Orions" are cheap b******s who need to learn their place. :sneaky:

...just as soon as I research "Behemoth" class starships... :ph34r:

Meh, I never much liked MOO3. Too much micromanagement needed. Still... behemoth ships are nice and big. And big means more guns!

Yes, the level of detail was overwhelming at first, and sometimes, even news that isn't marked with "high priority" can be empire-crushing if overlooked. :angry:

But the 3d ship battles are darn cool, and manipulating the starmap is somehow appealing to me. :ok:

Behemoths are nice, but Leviathans are better (and bigger!). I just wish they had a suitable ship model, because seeing no difference in relative size between Behemoths and Leviathans is rather unsettling.

A ways into the game, I'm asked to identify some ship models by name and if I don't answer correctly, I lose the game. Does anyone know where I can find the answers and/or bypass this test?

Um, I seem to recall downloading some type of crack that let's you put whatever you want, but most of them are pretty easy. If it's a green ship a lot of times it's a viper or serpent or whatever. If that doesn't get you anywhere I would just suggest saving every few rounds or so. I've played some looooong games of MoO and I think you only get asked 1 or 2 times in that whole time. Usually the first time is right around round 50 or so I think...

Yes, I believe there is a jpg file with the shape of ships and their name in the zip file. If not you can search it on net.

Well, that means you need diplomacy as well. You should always check diplomatic page to know if they allied. There is a big chance to lose the game if computer manage to ally a few species. Checking the number of planets are also useful.

One of the keys to winning at the harder levels is to either have one third of the votes sewn up before the first election takes place, or to stay small enough that you are not one of the two candidates for the election. To stay small, make sure that you are not increasing your population to the point that you pass the second most populous race. Once you have begged, borrowed, or stolen enough tech to face the hypothetical republic, you let your population surge and hope that the republic does not form without you as the president.

If you do lose the election, you have not lost the game; unless, one of the other races can just annihilate your planets. Biotoxin antidote is one of the must have techs.

I once had a bizarre game where none of Antimatter, Omega-V, or Neutronium bombs showed up, for any race. Planets were invulnerable to attack; until I developed the Mauler. The Death Ray could also destroy a missile base, but only one at a time.

Hey everyone :woot: . I feel like a real retard :wall: but it seems that as soon as I unzip, download bosbox, mount the drive to access the game, change the directory to the game and then initializing to run orion.exe a prompt always comes up saying I have to run install to configure orion :tai: . It wont let me play the game. Does anyone have any tips so I can enjoy this game once more? :sos:

well, worked for me on the first try but... it did say you should run 'install' didnt it? did you do that?

NVM, it started working after about the 10th attempt. Now to battle. :titan:

DOSBox is such a convenient tool, actually the default to play MOO2 on XP, Linux, Mac, Vista etc.

Check out this link for DOSBox tuning:
http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/2...box-guide.html

It is even possible to play MOO2 online games with DOSBox now.

And for those who asked. MOO2 isn't abandonware yet. Actually, Atari offered a MOO2 digital download recently.

http://www.atari.com/us/games/moo2_battle_anta/pc

Ooo, lovely!

I got the program to work fine but dos box won't maximize on my screen. DUH!!! I'm having a slow moment here.

Press Alt + Enter to switch between window and fullscreen modes

Open dosbox.conf, find the line that says fullscreen=false and change it to fullscreen=true .

While someone is mentioning sequels, I just want to say that MOO3 was one of the worst games I've ever played. Thank you for that bad memory being brought up.

Wow, i still love it! in my opinion after civilization the 2nd best round based strategy game ever!

i used to hate humans but now i think at least for "impossible" difficulty they're best (though they're very weak at ground combat)

i think in impossible difficulty the other races get a head start to the player race (or their industry grows much faster), sometimes it seems impossible how fast they build up their empires... often they already have 6 stars when i only have 3 and they're also way ahead in tech + have a fleet ( which i NEVER build in the beginning)... and it stays that way. so i think through the first half of the game you're inevitably one of the less powerful races and you'd better keep your head down.

and in this respect humans are perfect: every race has a "relaxed" attitude towards you on contact, you can immediately sign non-aggression-pacts (which i'd suggest to do with every race!) and improve your relations with trading (+tech exchange if you're lucky enough to have any tech they want).

NEVER break any treaties, your opponents remember that very well and i experienced that whenever i broke ONE treaty all further treaties were easily broken by the other races. so stay loyal to your allies. enemies will be found anyways...

only expand without attacking! keeping a scoutship at good empty planets until your colonyship arrives is useful though, as it will chase away enemy colonyships.

if all colonizeable planets are out of range, research propulsion tech (fuel cells) or, if a barren/tundra planet could give you access to more planets, research planetology. (this -the very beginning- is the ONLY time where it's useful to focus ALL research on one tech branch)

once you got 1-2 fully developed planets start researching(while still trying to colonize more planets). i think it's best to skip some cheaper technologies and research a higher-level tech instead. this will give you some chance to exchange the tech with other races (though in the beginning they're often so far ahead that they don't need any of your techs even if you skip the cheaper ones...)
other races will usually only give you inferior tech in exchange but it pays anyway if you exchange tech with more than one race. sometimes you can give one tech to 2-3 races which gives you 2-3 techs while they just get 1 tech each. (moreover exchanging tech improves relations, which is most important!)

build up a planetary reserve (30-50 bc/turn in the beginning) and transfer resources from the reserve to newly founded colonies to help them develop (also send colonists from fully developed planets of course).

start trading with everyone: humans are expert traders, after some time you should be able to get as much resources out of trading as out of a good planet... but start with small values (i.e.25BC ) as in the beginning the revenue will be negative. then with time passing increase the values, but increase them in BIG STEPS! that way you'll get most out of it... (if you want more detailed info consult the manual ;) )

usually one race gets superior to all others soon... keep this race happy by trading and even money-tribute if necessary, but don't exchange tech with them as your goal must be to catch up with them sooner or later (you can make an exception if they give you key tech's like improved robotic controls!)...
an alliance with them may be dangerous too, as they're most likely to attack another race (they know they're most powerful!) and then they may force you into war too (which will keep your resources away from research... and of course ruin your relations with one race. they won't forget it that you declared war without reason!)... usually i try to forge one alliance with one of the inferior (and if possible peaceful) races and hope that they stay out of war. (i think they give you better techs in exchange if they really like you... one more reason to be friends with everyone)
i think the key to success really is tech: focus research on economy and planet development whenever there's a good tech available( improved industrial tech/soil enrichment/etc.) but without neglecting the other tech branches...(if you completely cease research in one branch you'll completely lose "bonus research points" which you get every round for continued research in that branch...detailed info -> manual)
and try to get these key techs by exchanging. weapon tech is not soo important. don't worry to give good weapons tech! as long as they like you you're not in danger, and on the long run other techs are much more important... and as long as you don't attack you don't need a fleet, missile bases are cheaper and better for defense (so you might still want to get some missile tech to improve your missile bases in case of an attack)

later in the game (often after the first election when they realize you didn't vote for them) weapons get more important, and so do shields.

bombers make good use of cloaking devices so they're protected until they get next to the enemy missile bases.

if you build fast ships they may be able to completely evade enemy missiles.

if the enemy has lots of small ships build ships with good shields!
example:
your ship has a class 10 shield -> will absorb 10 damage from EVERY attack: if a group of 100 small ships shoots at your ship scoring 12 points of damage each, 10 of these 12 points will be absorbed -> every ship only inflicts 2 points of damage (making 200 points of damage only, instead of 1200 without shield)
(against one big ship with death ray the shield will be useless: say the death ray scores 500, 10 points absorbed -> 490 damage)

also use weapons like tachyon beam/energy pulsar/etc. against small ships (missiles are good too):
if you fire a death ray at a group of 1000 ships it only hits 1 ship! so it's useless against large groups of small ships...energy pulsar etc. hit every ship in a group which makes them perfect for large groups. tachyon beam etc. hit one ship; if it's destroyed the damage left is inflicted to the next ship in the group etc... so with a death ray(200-1000 damage) you can only kill one ship with 3 health-points but with a tachyon beam (1-15(?) damage) you can kill up to five of them(if they don't have armor))

couldn't make too much use of these "halves-effectiveness-of-enemy-shields"-weapons yet... :blink:

as soon as you're at war build spies and have them steal tech (though humans are quite bad in espionage), but make sure to have a look at your enemy's "report" screen from time to time, to make sure you know in which tech branches you want to steal... it's also useful to aquire very old techs now (which you don't really need) by tech exchange, because if you don't get these old techs your spies may end up stealing "class II deflector shields" or something as crappy... moreover these old techs add to your "tech level" in a branch which helps in miniaturization ( higher tech level in a branch -> devices from this branch occupy less space in your ship -> you can put more stuff into a ship if your tech level is higher)

well, that's about it... tech and good relations are the key to the game i think (one more reason for being friendly to other species: if you're not you may find the game is suddenly lost after an election at the high council...)

hope this mess helps some of you :)





only drawbacks of the game are in my opinion: you depend a bit on having a "good" tech tree... and if no race has sub-space-interdictor in the tech tree, you have no possibilty to protect your colonies whatsoever, the enemy may just teleport his ships next to your planet and before you're to send one single rocket flying your planet along with your missile bases is dust... and i think that missile bases/colonies are too weak in the late game anyway, don't stand a chance against a good group of bombers, they'll always destroy the colony in 1 turn...
but anyway, one hell of a game!!! :brain:

Here's the jpg for ship identification:

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j9...on/ships_1.gif

Here's a link for a slightly larger version in gif format:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j99/Rigg...ps_1_Larger.gif

Regards,
DarkMatter

oh, one more drawback, and one more thing i love about this game:

if you have a non-agression-pact with a race and they invade a colony of yours anyway, you're not allowed to reinvade that colony, they'll be extremely upset and remember forever your act of "unprovoked violence"(and i think all other races too!)... only thing you can do is to threaten them to attack... maybe you'll get a little tribute out of it if you're lucky :(

but what i love a lot is that often (in impossible mode) there are no (or almost no) races at war during ~half of the game, you just keep trying to stay friends with everyone while also trying to exploit them as much as you can, trying to snatch away planets they're about to colonize, etc... and often you're on the brink of war with one race but you can keep them happy with tribute etc... and then suddenly everyone is at war because one race declared war on another race and of course all allies of both races are asked to participate...and it's a big mess!... lovely! :)

Need Help. Do I ned dos to play this? Because it won't install it on vista. Vista sucks... :sos:

You need DOS or DOSBox. DOSBox can be downloaded via the link here
http://www.abandonia.com/main.php?nav=programs

Here you will find a tutorial on how to set it up and how to use it
http://www.abandonia.com/main.php?nav=index&FAQ=1

In my signature, you'll also find a link to another tutorial.

Read them and read the troubleshooting section for further info. Then, if there still are problems getting things working, feel free to post in Troubleshooting.

I think moo2 is slightly better than this one; but it needed too much micro management, you needed to allocate every one of your people to certain jobs, instead of using plain sliders to make that planet a research planet for example.

Weak. As a warning, IMHO MoO3 was even worse than #2 sounds.
I couldn't even figure out how to intelligently move my ships in battle. And let's be honest, the AI for autobattle usually screws you.

I disagree, autobattle worked just fine for me, most of my ship designs were intended for ranged combat; carriers and missile boats, with plenty of anti-missile/anti-fighter weaponry.

The only thing that offered me problems was fleet organization, but that was corrected with a minor design tweak for all subsequent ships.

the other possibility is i just sucked at it and never put the time in to figure out all the mechanics.

I think you were just trying too hard; MOO3 felt to me like it lent itself well to the least amount of player input when it came to combat. The fleet AI does well enough on its own if you keep the ship designs simple, like with the default defense ships, the Hawk and Eagle.

I found that MOO3 was either a very involved micromanagement game (you could go in and micromanage the regions of your colonies), or you could essentially move sliders (using the governors orders as sliders). I liked the depth of the reasearch tree and the options for setting up the galaxy (30 stars 20 opponents=fun for the harvesters). 3 (patched) is a lot like 1, but doesn't seem like it is when you first play it.

MOO2 was quite fun, but reintroduced buildings to the core of planetary infastructure. And decreased the mystery of the MOO research tree (trading was important, unless you could spy on the Psylons).

MOO was a blast, it was challenging, but wasn't too tedious even with 30 colonies (some of which were new). I've been surprised at how fun each race can be, when you use the right strategy (the Birds and Cats require that you attack a race almost on encounter). Impossible is a fun challenge win or lose.

I still play the first two, but find the 3rd one to be too long (I forget what my plans were in between 20-50 round sessions).

Okay, I don't know why, but for some reason MOO refuses to have sound. I've tried setting the sound through the install program numerous times, yet it does not seem to stick (no sound when I start the game, and the "no sound" settings are selected when I go back through the install program). At least I can atually play the game...still very frustrating though.

Check if the MOO directory and/or any of the files in it are not set to Read Only. If they are, uncheck the attribute.

Hey guys Im pritty new to DOS and need a little help!
I downloaded dosbox and every time I try to mount something it says "does not exist"
Ok example I downloaded moo and put it in its own folder in Documents ok.
I then started up Dosbox and typed in the location. mount c c:\documents and settings\owner\documents\moo
moo being the folder I put it in. And it says Does not exist. Believe me I tried alot of different locations and still says Does not exist. Only thing that did exist was mount c c:\ and that as far as I could get!
How should I type the location?!?! thanks for any help. :ok: I loved moo 2! only problem was the AI but the multi player made up for that. Im excited to play the one that started it all!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest_Jordan_* @ Nov 18 2007, 04:17 AM) [snapback]319480[/snapback]</div>
mount c "c:\documents and settings\owner\documents"
c:
cd moo

Don't forget the ""
You can add the first two lines in your dosboxconfig under [autoexec].

Well, the folder itsself is read only, however uncheking that switches back as well. Additionally, all the folders I've been using for my DOS games are marked read only, I wonder why this is the only one DOSBox is having issues with.

Then check the files inside the folder. Are any set to Read Only?

Sorry, should've specified, the folder is the only thing marked read only. None of the files within are marked as such.

Move the MOO directory to C:\OLDGAMES\ and adjust the mounts accordingly.

Still no sound. I just don't understand what the problem could be, I've tried all the sound drivers, and setting the orionbox.conf file to emulate different sound devices, I just can't understand why it wont work.

Try Sound Blaster Pro 2 and IRQ 5.

Also, are there any batch (BAT) files in the game directory? Try running them.

No go on the Pro2 with IRQ 5, and the only non.exe/.conf/.txt files in the folder are .lbx files.

Installing MOO1
 

Thanks for posting this game, I have played and loved MOO2, and I hear that the original kicks even more butt.

I am downloading the zip file onto my Mac, and then CDR-ing it over to my clunky Windows XP Dell that I use for gaming. I am having a weird problem with installing the game on the Dell, though. Please help if you can.


When I doubleclick the install.exe icon, I get the install screen. No problem. However, it soon asks me to install the first floppy into the drive, which, of course, I cannot do.

How do I get around this?

Any help would be much appreciated.

~bruisehound

I loved Masted of Orion III. Calling it a poor attempt to revive the game is an understatement.

Vista
 

I no longer own a dos gaming system. As I went from system to system over the years, having started out with a comador, graduating to 8086, 186, 286, 386, 486, p200, p400, p450, p2 800, p3 1.8, and now this new quad core duel video sli I have encounter and solved many issues with running over a thousand dos based games. But now on this new ms operating system, not sure what to do. It does not allow a "real" dos mode boot. Vista can not and will not boot in true dos mode, just the windowed cmd version of dos. I can not edit and boot under any autoexec.bat's or config.bat's, I can not assign any .bat's to the files, can not choose any dos compatabilities modes, nothing. From what I can tell, I can not run a dos based program on this operating system, let alone overcome the most common 2 errors when running this particular game, which are memory and sound card recognition.

When I run the install.exe, vista just pops up a window that says "This system can not support full screen mode. Click here to close."

When I manually set up the files to run, and execute the orion.exe, I get the ms-dos error most common to this game, "1024 memory not available" Which comes back to why I have always hated Bill Gates operating systems. Even with 3gig of ram, I am stuck dealing with a 1024 byte boot cernal, and now with vista, no way to boot without windows eating it all up and not allowing a clean dos boot configurable by me. Atleast with 98 and xp, I could tell windows to run dos games in dos mode and assign bat files with which to run them and in a window mode. Looks like a whole new ball game with vista. Anyone out there know how to fake out vista and make it run dos programs? I don't have the patience or time to do all the research myself. At some point, some one needs to code a program to run all the old dos games through that interfaces all the old dos code to windows. Something global. Either that, or someone need to re-write the original code to be windows compatible and not need dos at all. Many of the old dos games, such as Ultima or Privateer for instance, base the in-game time passage on the cpu speed of a 386. Any system which runs the game on a faster cpu makes the game unplayable. Like in Ultima, 5 sec after the game is started, you're lying on the ground dead from starvation... or in Privateer, 2 sec after leaving a base, 20 enemy ships blast you out of space before you even know they are in the sector with you. Atleast MOO is turn based, and immune to this problem, but is still noticed in the space combat window where everything happens so fast there is no way to know who shot what as it happened to fast to see. But I have never ever gotten the sound in MOO to work on a system that boots with windows, running the game in windows or through windows sound drivers. If anyone knows a fix to running these old dos games on a modern system please let me know. I don't want to have to go to ebay and buy an old 386 or 486 and set up an old dos system custom for all this. I still own over 1,000 of the original install 5" and 3.5" floppy disks, as well as many of the later cd install's, cd required in drive to play crap. If there really is no fix out there to play these games on a modern system, then what is the point of even being able to download the old games if they can not be ran? Why is someone not re-coding them to run on windows, not dos, then offering that code for download?

Instead of putting all that energy in an useless rant, put your energy in learning to work with dosbox and eventually VPC-MSDos6.22.
Runs perfect on ALL Vistas.

And if you really would like to play those ol'gems directly in Vista, why don't YOU recode them games?

It's already here. It's name is DOSBox.
That would be an interesting idea, but the person doing that would need to have in-depth knowledge of the game engine and access to the original source code.
Easy to do with Wolfenstein 3D, Doom or Quake, where the developers have released the SC a couple years after they published the game. Without it, making a functional port is very difficult.
This is far from being a new development. Been there when I tried running Mechwarrior, Space Crusade and Robocop 3 on my 486DX4/100.

http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/showthread.php?t=14406
And if you have any questions... go ahead and ask.

you sound like a skilled man, gwhunter, i think you don't need a "beginner's" guide, just download dosbox and read the documentation, it's not really difficult

the 'newbie' guide is for real 'newbies' who have a hard time installing something from cd

Master of Orion.. What a game.. For some reason I liked the first one the best.. Wish it was longer though, bigger map, etc... I could play games like that forever..

Despite i have Master of Orion 2 and enjoy it, i continue to keep coming back to Master of Orion more often.

I believe the simplicity of the gameplay that in fact lead to a deeper game that one would think is always unmatched in the 4x genre.

The only problem of MoO1 is that it does not feature a multiplayer option.
But on board like the Master of Orion dedicaced forum on civfanatics.com, you can always find people playing challenges or succession games that are very nice to play to compare with how other people are faring in those.

The AI in MoO1 is very challenging, and the incredible thing with it is that it succeeds in challenging you without even cheating.
Diplomacy is a valid option thanks to that (and making your enemies fight with each other by bribe, framing them etc... is a very interesting way to secure your borders)

For me too, Master of Orion is much superior to any other empire strategy game ever made, because it is the only one where you don't end up being bogged in a micromanagement nightmare.
The macro orientation of the title makes it really enjoyable during the whole game, and allow you to focus on the big picture. Too bad there is no multi (I'm not so sure about the AI not cheating though: it seems to get some tech bonus in impossible).

Class of ships copyright link
 

for some reason i could not find on the zip file any .gif file for the copyright protection (and yes i did buy this game and all its sequels into MOO3 at which point i shook my head at yet another weak continuation in the same way as Machievelli was last made, so technically this is me trying to find the purchased original and not a copyright infringement) see http://www.jonsullivan.com/misc/ships_1b.gif for the necessary reference.

Playing MOO again is a pure pleasure... funny how in 2008 i find myself going back 10 years for great games...

And to whomever Jon Sullivan is, you are on my heroes list! Gratis! :thumbs:

This game is REALLY cool, but I'm being overwhelmed by the learning curve. One nagging question keeps distracting me from reading the manual. How do you, from the beginning of a game of MoO, quickly get your colony ships up and mobile fast enough to compete with the computer? Last time I tried just playing, I had three colonized planets before I met one of my opponents, who showed to have like ten, wow...

deleted.

Someone had asked why moo3 stank.
I asked the same question when it came out.
To my understanding it went something like this...

Managers: "Is the game ready yet, we're past our deadline"
Game programmers: "No, it won't be finished for another six months, and we're running out of money".
Managers: "Just stick a fork in it, its done, we'll see you next week and place it into production".

So they slapped together what they had already built, marketed it, and sent it out, several patches were soon to follow, the ai fix patch, the tech patches, the new tech patches, and several others I don't remember or likely don't care about.

However the game had already lost its popularity, thoughts for moo4 were scrapped and thusly the series reached its end.

This is basicly what I had read in an article reveiwing the game many moons ago, I was probably baked then too...

Its a shame really that such a lucrative franchise had to eat dirt, but everything dies, now if only final fantasy, dynasty warriors rtk, mortal kombat, ut, quake, c&c...

I really wonder how the user rating is calculated. At the time i'm writing this post, the game has a user rating of 3.4 out of over 3000 votes. This is a game everyone loves, many people in my opinion could give it a 4 or 5. So there are some jerks that must give it a 1 or 2 !? Are they serious ? If someone doesn't like the genre, he shouldn't vote. This isn't the way to get the vote. It's not a "i like it or not" vote, it's a "rating" which means one should be respectful to many categories: was the gfx, sfx,handling,gameplay,fun good or bad for the time the game came out, or not.

http://www.dspguide.com/ch2/6.htm :p

hmm. might be worth a check-out...

DosBox is confusing
 

Gary, I have all the MoO files unzipped into a folder called "MoO" (without the quotes).
The folder is in the root directory of my C: drive.
When DoSBOX opens up it starts you out in a virtual "Z" drive.
At the Z: prompt I type in this....
mount c: c:\MoO\
Then I type in this....
c:
I am not actually in the root directory of Drive C, but in the folder c:\MoO
If I type in "dir /w/p", it will list the contents of the folder c:\MoO
(/w is just to make things wider, and /p just makes it stop at the end of a page, until you hit ENTER)
Then I just type in...
orion
...and hit ENTER
Alt ENTER will make it go full screen, and again to resize.

It is better to used DoSBox, than to try and configure the thing to run under XP or Vista. You will have sound, and a USB mouse will be supported.

MoO sound
 

First, thanks for bringing back one of my all-time favorite games. I haven't played it for over 10 years, and I find that I still remember all the moves and settings I used way back then.

The one problem I'm having is that there's no sound or music working. I've gone into the basic game controls to make sure music and sound are set to "on", but to no avail. Is there some game file I need to add, adjust or otherwise play with?

Thanks.

Just run the soundsetup ("install.exe") and choose the correct configuration.

Thing is, I didn't even have to run the install program for this. I just ran orion.exe and the game started without me having to install it after the download. Are you saying I should run a complete install instead?

I think that he is saying that you need to setup the sound. Look for install or setup or setsound or something like that (all of them with the .exe extension). Run them, and try to find the sound configuration.

Yes, that's what I meant. Run the "install.exe" and it allows you to configure the sound ("reconfigure hardware options", select Sound Blaster, address 220, IRQ 7, DRQ 1)

Hi, I need a little help. I've downloaded and unzipped the file twice just to make sure I was getting all the files in the game pack, but I didn't get any .exe .com or .bat files in the zip folder. is this normal? If so, how do I get the game to run out of dosbox? What commands do I need to imput?

PS. I've already posted another description of my situation in an old troubleshooting thread called Master of Orion, I thought I'd post here as well in case I'm more likely to get a reply on this thread. Thanks.

i decided to try and download it a thrid time, and now I see that I was missing a ton of files! Should work for me now, just a little odd to have two incomplete downloads back to back without any messages. Anyhow, false alarm, happy gaming!

Older versions (and maybe newer versions as well) of Internet Explorer could cut off downloads without a warning - I've had this happen quite a few times as well before I moved to broadband.

I just downloaded this game, and it is awesome!!!!

So here is a dumb question/request that will prolly get me laughed at, but here goes: Is there a way to change up the cheat code for getting BC's so that it gives more then the 100 BC that it gives each time you enter the code? Or, and I am not in any way shape or form a programmer so I may be horribly off base here, is there some program that I could use that would put in the cheat code with the push of a button or two, such as a macro or hot key that when pressed enters the code every time I push the hot key?

I realize that cheating, for some people, takes a way from the enjoyment of the game, but I have played through the game fairly on a number of combinations, Small/Hard, Huge/Easy, Huge/Hard, Small/Easy, and won a good portion of those. The reason I ask is because, at least for me, while i can beat the AI's a number of times out of ten, I rarely manage to make it to the end stages of the research fields. I think the most advanced weapon I was able to research/steal was a Disruptor, and because of my lack of time to research, even in a Huge ship, I wasn't able to put more than a handful.

Thanks for the read through and having this game on the abandonia site. It and others have brought a lot of enjoyment in my day. :thumbs:

And if this has already been addressed I apologize, as I haven't gone through the entire thread.

Thanks!

If you can find the memory adress where the relevant value is stored... sure.

I've spent countless hours on this beast and i still cant win. Maybe i just suck haha.

Still a fun game
 

I fondly remember giving lvl 8 factory tech to my enemy the klackons
They got a major boost to construction and outstripped me in producing ships.. But I didn’t give them the support or environment cleaning tech. so they irradiated their home world in like 15 turns and lost half the population then most of the ships because they couldn’t afford them, thats when I moved in and conquered them with my assault forces :)

Did anyone else find this game too easy? Not my favorite TBS game. Not a fan of MoO2, either. I'm trying out Ascendancy with the antagonizer patch... but MoO? Pass.

You should try out STARS! when the review will get out. ^_^

It's been, what, six months? I need an eagle-prod... :mhh:

A normal game of STARS! last in average 6 months. Give me a break. :p

Hahaha, oh dear :max:

*disregards the negative statement and puts away pitchfork* Maybe you should give Space Empires IV and Galactic Civilizations a go :)

too easy? often. however, on the hardest settings (impossible, 5 opponents, small universe) is it truly easy? that would mean you always win, never restart a game cause you're in a bad corner, etc. So, do you always win or are the games you play easy?

I admit, if there are no colonizable planets near, except one and that one is poor, i restart. If it is as easy as you say, then i shouldnt have

yes, given a few planets, fewer than my opponents but not too many less, i can keep up in tech (i design better ships) and beat em in the end. it's like many open games (no scenarios), if you wait long enough you'll get that advantageous position. It's only easy if you do not need that

I have made an unofficial patch fixing a lot of issues and trying to make the game AI better.


It can be found here:

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/s...ead.php?t=3417

I played MOO again over the holidays, and I have to admit that I am now up to a point that I find MOO rather dull and easy to beat.

When you play a strategy game against a scripted AI, then it's never really about true strategy but rather about how you can beat the AI to its own game. I never bothered to do much diplomacy against an AI, for example...

I played two games, and in the second game I had only one colonizable planet around. I simply rushed extended fuel cells and rushed for the ocean and terran planets around. Guess who won?

I have to admit that I did way more diplomacy in that game though. That's what you need to do when you are in a big disadvantage versus your enemies.

-EoF

There is a bug that prevented the AIs to settle surrounding planets correctly.
Also, the diplomacy was partially unfunctional (you could "threaten" your way to victory). I've tried to improve the AI ship designing decisions as well.
All should be corrected by now and the game should probably be less easy.


By the way, which game has such a significantly better AI in your opinion?

Unfortunately, none that I've played so far. :(

A computer will never be able to be superior to a human imagination and ability to put seemingly unlinked information into the same context. It is because of this that most AIs of good strategy games "cheat" a lot. Otherwise the game gets way too easy way too fast...

Help, I nned details on how to install
 

Hello, long time MoO fan who has not been able to play my favorite game since windows XP ruined all my fun.

I am very excited since I found Abandonia and MoO :thumbs:

I am new to the wonders of Dosbox and the commands are confusing :hypno:

Yes I read the tutorial, but it was written for someone who is already dos savy

I have tried to peice the instruction together from the scattered posts here, but alas it did not work

I (and everyone else who will read this thread in the future) would greatly appreciate it if someone could take the time to write down the directions in clear step-wise fashion

Thank you

:dunno: This tutorial looks pretty simple to me.

But in case you still have difficulties:

1. I assume you have downloaded the zip archive from AB. Extract the archive (use 7-Zip, WinRAR, whatever...) to a location of your choosing (I suggest you create a folder called Oldgames in your user folder especially if you have Vista or Win7 and extract the zip there).

2. Download and install DOSBox-0.73 (if you haven't already).

3. After installing DOSBox, go to Start menu, search DOSBox-0.73 -> Configuration -> Edit Configuration (use e.g. Notepad to open the conf file).

4. Scroll down to the end of the conf file where it says:
[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.

and type these two lines:
mount c "x:\...\Oldgames"
c:
(replace x:\... with the correct path you chose in step 1)

5. Run DOSBox, type cd moo (I assume the game files are now in Oldgames\moo) and hit enter -> type orion and hit enter.

6. If you did everything correctly the game should have started now.

7. If you want to get music/soundFX you have to run the game's setup program -> cd moo -> install -> Reconfigure Hardware Options -> SoundBlaster -> Address 220 -> SoundBlaster -> Address 220 -> IRQ 7 -> DRQ 1

This game is now being sold on www.gog.com

RIP
 

Ahhh what a great site this was. With GOG taking over the abandonware business this site put up the good fight but alas it will soon be gone. Thanks guys it was great knowing ya.

Gog's been around for year and a half and we haven't closed up shop yet. There's still abandonware, and there will be abandonware even if GOG gets all games from all major publishers in its' catalogue (which isn't happening any time soon).

Wrong Ending
 

Hello,

I'm playing from a Cd-Rom version, and I noticed recently something very bizarre by looking at a Youtube video showing the ending animation (there are 2 different endings, but it's mostly just the text that is different).

In my version (1.3), it's always the same guy that shows up (with a different color for clothes depending on the color you played). I always assumed he is human because, obviously we players are all humans (I assumed other races just hired us to control the universe for them even though we're human...yeah, I guess that was kind of idiotic..).

But, on the Youtube videos, I found out that each race gets its own
ending animation (basically, just a change of the facials within the monk
clothes). In the ReadMe file of the 1.3 version, it only mentions they were aesthetic changes to the ending animation clothes. Has anyone else been aware of this oddity/bug/whatsoever? Does anyone know if the version here or the Gog version (or anywhere) has all the "different endings" proper?

Thanks.

I finished Master Of Orion using always the "brainy" guys, the Psilons, and when it shows the endings appears a Psilon in that monk clothes. I have now a floppy version 1.0, but some time ago I downloaded a patch to upgrade it, but I don´t remember if with the new version the endings changed.

I think that at least floppy disk version 1.0 has different endings for sure but I only saw that Psilons ending.

Edit:

I just want to say that this game was very good for me when I understand the game mechanics; when you know the controls, the options, etc...playing in Easy mode tolds me each option in the game, like a tutorial, that was very good! I played in a copy, borrowed from a friend of mine, that has a lot of original games (Darkseed, Alone in the Dark, Prince of Persia 2 ...in big boxes!) but he had a copy too. This was a great one for me, I am happy to played some excellent games mixed with a lot of bored games, like always! :)

In case anyone's interested, I'm working on a game that's similar to Master of Orion. It's nearly complete in terms of gameplay mechanics, just a few screens to go before I start work on AI and multiplayer. It's called Beyond Beyaan, and can be found here:

http://beyondbeyaan.blogspot.com

I've also released a version recently for you guys to try out. My goal is to get this game published! (with professional artwork and sounds)

Is this game aimed at multiplayer? If yes then this game is more like STARS! than MOO. You should go have a look at the review I made of it a little while ago. ;)

It's actually aimed for single player, but I hope to add network multiplayer later on. I have heard of Stars! but never tried it. Your review don't really explain how the game plays, so I can't say if my game is similar to Stars!, so I'll have to try it and see.

I tried Stars!, and it's very confusing, there's way too many buttons. The UI is not streamlined. Each item (ship or whatever) requires different minerals. The gameplay is not similar to my game, aside from being able to set waypoints in empty space for your fleet.

So I'm curious, why did you think my game is more similar to Stars! than Master of Orion?

My game don't have different minerals, just one construction output, the circle thing you see on the map is actually your empire's influence, if two influences overlap, that means you're in contact with other empire. I tried to see any similiarity between my game and Stars!, and I don't see much, aside from it being 4x space game.

They just don't make 'em like this any more. :)

Here is another game being developed to be like the old MOO2 4X game of the past.

http://www.desura.com/games/stardrive

Looks awesome!!

Still in Alpha and yet they charge 20$ to play. Please wake me once they're done with the game and I can't run it on my computer anymore. Every game in development do that.

At least if there was a demo to try...

Looks cool. I like the fact that indie game developers are going "back to basics". There are so many classic games out there which I would LOVE to play in a modernized version.

think of stars! as a more complex version of MoO. If you think of yourself as a tweaking and finetuning expert, stars! is definately better. If you want it more accessible, go for MoO

Well, I didn't reply to the user above probably simply because I didn't see his post because STARS! is not confusing at all. I actually consider it quite a simple game for a 4X game. All you need to do is make sure you know what you are doing and there is plenty of documentation available both in game and on the net.

I actually like MoO very much (MoO II even more even with the Antarans) but it is too narrowed down to my taste. Too many restrictions in research make me take Psilons every single time. In STARS! you don't have that kind of problem, you have complete control over everything without any hassle.

very true, but if you want to figure some stuff out yourself and not just copy a build from the stars wiki, and also try out all different powers and stuff, it gets quite complicated, but thats just my opinion

Sorry but if you want to take that road with STARS! then you're already firing yourself in the foot because it was made entirely to be played multiplayer against human players. Not to be played alone for you to discover.

There is of course a single player mode but that's pretty much a trial mode where you can waste time understanding the logic of the game (at the very basic level of play when you start) and test out some builds to see if they hold out right.

You cannot compare STARS! and MoO on this level. It is like comparing apples with oranges.

good point and completely right, though for me the challenge is getting to master the game and such

at that, MoO doesn't really offer that much more in that respect

set myself the challeng on my ooold savegame to massive conquer planets. I'm playing Bulrathi and boosted my ground troops.
Problem now: the whole council is against me, and they quickly grew in technology! My ground troops were winning with 10 men vs over 70, but now they have equal or nearly equal tech...

will become very hard to win :( must set on spies to steal some tech now :whops:

Well, if you use Game Wizard, well you can advance very quickly. :max:

A very funny fact was that I had already conquered almost the entire galaxy, with two opponents remaining, one being located in the northwest and the other in the southeast of the galaxy.

They both had only one solar system. I offered tons of money and both built tiny ships. And one declared war on the other, but they both avoided fighting with me, for my ships were very powerful. ;)

And one traced the route to the solar system of the other and although they did not have the long-distance space technology, the game did not prevent these discrepancies. What partiality, right, dear Micropose... :p

I will compare the games between the prequel Master of Orion and his sequel Master of Orion II.

The MOO has its characters in more cartoon style and more cute while the MOOII has the more digitized style. An example would be the nice robot from GNN. In MOO, the robot has a very cute appearance; Already in MOOII, it has a more cool and distant appearance. :max:

I do not remember if MOO has its champions or heroes. Already in MOOII, you need to select and reject if necessary, the best heroes or those that best fit your needs.

Not to mention that MOOII background musics are great. Composer Laura really did a great job. I really enjoyed the BGM of the Galactic Map (except 1) and the Space Battle BGM.

In MOOII you have the fearsome and bellicose Antarians. If you have a technology that allows you to invade and conquer enemy ships, it would be very interesting to use it to invade Antarians ships (if you do not use cheat codes) to obtain technologies available to the Orions and Antarians. But be careful, for Antarians can self-destruct their ships if they are captured.

I conquered several Antarians ships including invading the planet Antares. I conquered the Space Base and all the Antarians ships, but I could not get them into my galaxy. If you retire, the Antarians ships and base will remain in the space of Antares.

One thing that confused me is that if the Galactic Council appoints you as “Master of Orion” and you refuse the title, everyone declares war on you! :wacko: XD

One sadistic thing I used to do to my opponents was to edit their Home Worlds: tiny-sized Planet; Planet of toxic radiation environment; Planet of mineral resources very poor; Only 01 Planet in the Solar System while the others are Asteroids. :mischief:

EDIT:

I forgot to mention that I have two OST versions of the MOO2 game, one that I got on the site and the other through GOG.com.

I also forgot to mention the Stellar Converter. I avoided using this powerful weapon so as not to destroy the planets. I pretty much forgot (or cannot remember) the technologies, but I had the technology of total invisibility.

I love MOO so darn much.. so this new game sounds good! Free early release you can play right now.. love letter to MOO1.. infinite techs.. dynamic AI.. wormhole/starlane game or not.. super customizable UI & gameplay. Good stuff!

https://starchart-interactive.itch.io/dominus-galaxia

Master of Orion... Hmmm... Looks like you’ve been able to find several “Remake” versions of *ahem* Good Old Games... :o :omg: Very good! :OK:

Thanks for the info, Dr. Indy Jones :whip: aka Tomb Raider of Good Old Games :loveab:!

haha yeah it's kind of my obsession lol.. still living in the world of 90s gaming haha!

Speaking of which I've found yet another love letter to Master of Orion except this one is more MOO2 like! Has anyone here tried this one? If so was it good? Was it stable? Apparently the indie team behind it consists of only 2 people haha! It looks pretty awesome so am thinking about trying it out now that it's finally on sale (it's normally pretty pricey lol).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/9...Space_Genesis/

Have been watching this dude's video series of it and am just blown away!

Wait, ISG is pretty cheap right now, I should grab it... I'm technically supposed to write something about the impact of the Greek citizenship by investment https://tranio.com/greece/passport/ on the country's economy and real estate market, but, well, I've still got a couple days left, and I'm a quick writer, so... :blush:

lol.. well I hope you enjoyed it.. you won't be able to tell me if you did as you've since been banned I see lol. Maybe I won't click on that link you posted lol!!! ;)

Well.. time is running out on the steam sale and the general response I'm getting in most places I asked was either silence or 'never heard of it so I don't know if it's good' haha.. However after watching that let's play series I previously posted that sold it for me and I hit the button lol!

As expected it’s graphics aren’t exactly revolutionary lol but damn is it addictive and fun to play. Last few days I've barely eaten, slept, worked.. it’s all gone to hell haha!!

.

It was my error with banning. Unfortunately, I can reverse the ban, but not actually _remove_ it. :|

Ha, I figured it. Ban lifted!

haha no worries.. I still won't click on his link just to be safe. ;)

As for the MOO2 like games I still haven't tried Dominus Galaxia yet (mainly because it's not fully released yet) but as for ISG I got quite addicted to that in the end lol. If people are interested in more info I've finally just written a belated steam review with a big list of the game's pros and cons (IMO).
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/...mmended/984680

Also just released some videos covering my thoughts too:
Part 1


Part 2

Alliance of the Sacred Suns (Master of Orion like game)
 

Ooooh just heard about another MOO like project called Alliance of the Sacred Suns (that seems to have been doing public betas for years under the name Imperia5x). Looks like an interesting attempt at being different from regular Master of Orion like 4x space strategy games by focusing more on you the emperor.. feels kinda of like a 'Dune - Padishah Emperor simulator' managing those pesky greedy disobedient houses haha! So maybe closer to Stellaris or Crusader Kings than MOO. Planetary management looks interesting, those separated regional environments and developments remind me of MOO3. A simple thing but I also love how the planets moons just swing past the camera while you're managing the world. Haven't seen any space battle footage so I dunno how that's managed. It's kickstarter campaign is over half way through but it's not even at half funded which is a bit worrying. It's been worked on for many years and seems so far along so hopefully the project would survive a KS failure.



https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.c...7c.600x338.jpg

https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.c...19.600x338.jpg

I have it in wishlist, but... TBD...

Whoa! Eeek! :hypno: I hope you are not Lost in WebSpace... :sos: