Master of Orion

Welcome to the Master of Orion (MoO) FAQ. This is version
2.8 of that guide. Thanks to all those who contributed.

--pat traynor--
pat@ssih.com

Table of Contents:

1 What is MOO?

2 Frequently asked questions
2.A Is there any speech?
2.B How do you move the center of the map?
2.C What differences are there between the difficulty levels?
2.D When does the council meet?
2.E How do I change which ship icons I use?
2.F What affect does power have in designing ships?
2.G How powerful a machine do I need to run it?
2.H What good is the planet button in the combat display?
2.I When bombing enemies, does it make a difference how long the film runs?
2.J How do you transport troops?
2.K Is there a good way to split half of a huge fleet?
2.L How do I turn ships around in midflight?
2.M Could someone please make the combat algorithm more understandable?
2.N Why is the Internal Security percentage changed under 1.2?
2.O Is there a version to play via modem? (no)
2.P Can I build missile bases instead of shields?
2.Q What does "UPGR" mean on the defense slider?
2.P How do I stop my planet from going nova (or survive the plague)?
2.R What determines which new technologies I can research?
2.S What is MOOCE?

3 What bugs are known to exist?
3.A Bugs in 1.0
3.B Bugs in 1.2
3.C Bugs in 1.3

3.A.1 BACKGRND.LBX bug
3.A.2 Diplomat bug
3.A.3 Slow mouse response bug
3.A.4 The Gaia bug
3.A.5 The too many ships bug
3.A.6 The Doc check bug
3.A.7 The colony ship bug
3.A.8 The Orion Terra-forming bug
3.A.9 The base maintenance bug
3.A.10 The 1999 limit on Factories bug

3.B.1 The Maximum Planet Terra-forming bug
3.B.2 The Divide By Zero bug
3.B.3 The Espionage Report bug
3.B.4 The Lockup bug

3.C.1 The Biological Weapon Bug
3.C.2 The Missile Fire Bug
3.C.3 The Combat Transporter Bug
3.C.4 The Star Gate Bug
3.C.5 The Environ Bug
3.C.6 The Sixth Ship Bug
3.C.7 The Treaty Breaking Penalty Bug
3.C.8 The Empty Bribe Bug
3.C.9 The Bogus Nebula ETAs Bug
3.C.10 The Bogus Spy Rate Bug

4 Clever Tricks
4.A Ship turnaround cheat
4.B Intelligence trick
4.C Research Allocation trick
4.D Excess Trade trick
4.E Future ship building trick
4.F Combat Tricks
4.F.1 Park a repulsor today!
4.F.2 Diversionary tactics.
4.F.3 Ship Teleporting trick
4.G Ship Design tricks
4.G.1 No empty slots!
4.G.2 Always have six active designs of ships!
4.G.3 Weapons and specials with different ranges on the same ship.
4.G.4 Save a weapon slot for bombs
4.G.5 Antidote to repulsors: cloaking!
4.H Extended range colonizing
4.I Trading Upward
4.J The Best Defense is a Good Offense
4.K The Best Offense is a Good Defense
4.L Cheats
4.L.1 Cheats by design
4.L.2 Cheats due to bugs
4.M "Filibuster" to evade the Council vote
4.N Kamakazi (rather than scrap) those old ships
4.P The warp dissipator trick.


5 Strategies
5.A Introduction and caveat
5.B Beginner Tips
5.C Strategies for different stages of game
5.C.1 Opening Game
5.C.2 Middle Game
5.C.3 End Game
5.D Strategies for specific races
5.E Strategies against specific races
5.F Strategies for different size galaxies
5.G Warfare
5.G.1 Ship Design
5.G.2 Weapon Choices
5.H Technologies
5.I Diplomacy

6.0 Tables and Formulas
6.1 Technology
6.2 Weapons Comparison Charts
6.3 Ground Combat Odds
6.4 Guardian Stats
6.5 Fleet size necessary to take out Guardian with beam weapons

7 Technology Listing
7.1 Computer
7.2 Construction
7.3 Shields
7.4 Planetology
7.5 Propulsion
7.6 Weapons

8 The Future of Master of Orion
8.1 Upcoming Patches
8.2 Master of Orion Deluxe/Gold/II/Add-on???


================================================================================
1. What is MOO?
================================================================================

MOO is a game of interstellar exploration and conquest. At the start of the
game, you have just 1 planet, some population, and a few starships. From that
meager beginning, you have to explore the galaxy, create industry, colonize
other worlds, research technology, conduct diplomacy (when you run into other
alien races), deal with disasters, design and build your ever changing fleet
of starships, and eventually either get elected Emperor of the galaxy or by
military might subdue the other races. If all of this sounds quite complex,
it is and that is the appeal of this game.

In defining what it is, some words about what it is not are also in order. It
is not an arcade or action type game. All aspects of the game are conducted
at your leisure and reflexes are not an issue. Also, although it does include
ship to ship combat, this aspect of the game is not the primary focus. In
fact, it is possible to push an auto button and the game will automatically
play out the ship to ship combat. You will normally (but not always) use that
button. If a more detailed tactical ship to ship combat game is desired,
something like Rules of Engagement 2 might be a better choice.

MOO has a lot of replay-ability for a number of reasons. First, you can play
any of 10 different races. Each race has its weak and strong points. For
example, the Alkari race is a bird like species. They are excellent pilots
and they are also good at researching propulsion type technology. The Darloks
on the other hand are shape shifters and they are excellent spies good at
inciting rebellion, conducting sabotage, and stealing other races technology.
Second, each time you start a new game, the map is randomly generated. What
fate hands you can make a large difference in your approach. For example, the
presence of a nearby artifact world can help in researching technology.
Third, you have control over the # of stars in the game and the number of
alien races you are playing against. Finally, there is a difficulty setting
which affects how rapidly new technology is discovered.

You should be aware that games can take a fair amount of time; as an extreme
example, my first game took about 16 hours to complete. From my own
experience, the average game takes about 4-6 hours. Because the game is so
complex (and thus provides such a rich experience) it can be rather
frustrating to learn at first. This guide in part is intended to help you
through that learning stage. However, it does not stop there and it is hoped
that even experienced players will find something of use here.

================================================================================
2. Frequently asked questions
================================================================================

2.A Is there any speech? It mentions speech in the installation but I don't
seem to get any.

Answer: There is no speech. The speech part of some soundcards is used for
special effects but not for speech.

2.B How do you move the center of the map?

Answer: Point at a blank part of the screen you want centered and then click
the left mouse button. To move using the keyboard, see pg 4 of the Technical
Supplement and Reference. If using the 1.2 patch, ALT-C will re-center the
map on the currently selected planet.

2.C What differences are there between the different difficulty levels.

The manual mentions that it affects opponents production rates, expansion
rate, technology development, and willingness to ally with you. It is also
supposed to affect the size of your initial fleet.

It definitely affects the cost of developing new technology. New technology
costs Tech_level^2 * Difficulty_Factor * Race_Factor.

The Difficulty factor is:

20 - Simple
25 - Easy
30 - Average
35 - Hard
40 - Impossible

2.D When does the council meet?

It first meets when two thirds of the planets have been colonized. It then
meets every 25 years on the 24th, 49th, 74, and 99th years. (Example 2449).

It also bears mentioning that if you eliminate all races but one, the vote
will no longer take place. You will have to play the game out to the bitter
or not so bitter end. You then get the "Tyrant" ending.

Contributed by: Dave Chaloux


2.E How do I change the ships icons that I get? I change races but the icons
stay the same.

The icons that you get to use depend on the color of the flag you select at
the beginning of the game.

2.F What affect does power have in designing ships?

If you look at the Engine type popup, you will notice a column for number of
engines of the selected type. If you select something new which requires
power, then the number of engines will go up to provide the necessary power
for the new item. Of course if new engines are required, the cost of the
engines and space required for the new engines goes up in addition to the cost
and size of the new item. So the power is integral part of building ships.

Contributed by: P. Michael Haffley


2.G How powerful a machine do I need to run it?

You must have 2 Meg of memory. That said the following report was on the net.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm currently running MoO on a 286-12. The box says that you need at least a
386, but I took the chance and bought it and it runs fine on my 286. (I am
planning on buying a 486 this month, so I figured I could always wait for
the 486 if it wouldn't run at all on the 286)

The only problems I've had are mouse response problems. It would get to the
point that it would take a second or two to respond to mouse button actions
at times. I just downloaded the first patch, and that seems to have fixed
it. It still takes a half second or maybe a bit less to respond, but it's
not to bad. I think the delay is in the sound area, since the button
graphics tend to respond in a timely manner, but there is a slight pause
before there is sound or any other result besides the button being
depressed.

This isn't exactly a CPU hog like actions games are, so lack of CPU power
isn't crippling. You should have no problems at all on a 386-33.

Contributed by: Keith Hearn
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


2.H What good is the planet button in the combat display?

It will tell you the weapons, factories, and population of a planet. Useful
if you don't want to bomb it to dust. And useful to know when it's a lost
cause and your fleets should bug out.

2.I When bombing enemies the little film keeps continuing. Do I do more
damage if I keep it going?

Answer: NO

2.J How do you transport troops?

Click on the transport button. Take the arrow like cursor that appears and
click on the place you want to send them. It will give you a slider asking
how many to transport. Select the number you want and OK it. They will NOT
appear on the map right away but will when you go to the next turn.

This is one of those things that should have been made much clearer in the
manual.

2.K Is there a good way to split half of a huge fleet?

You DON'T have to click 500 times to split 1000 ships. It will remove over 5%
of your group of ships if it is a large group (over about 50 I think).
This is hidden in the manual somewhere. If you want to send 500 out
of 1000 ships start with 1000 ships and REMOVE 500 at 5%, if you want to
send one ship out of that 1000 then start with 0 and click +1.

Contributed by: F. Rodgers

[Editors note: The percentage is now changed to 10% in large groups under 1.3]

2.L How do I turn ships around in midflight?

You don't until you get the Hyperspace communications tech advance. Then
you simply click on the fleet and give them a destination just like you
would if they were orbiting a planet.

An exception to this is important in the 1.2 patch. If you have just given
a fleet orders or if a fleet has just retreated, a new destination can be
given even without hyperspace communications.

2.M Could someone please make the combat algorithm more understandable?

[ Editor's note: I've included a couple of corrections to the formula
that were submitted. I haven't personally tested them, but if no one
disputes them after this release, I'll alter the original text with
the corrections. ]

Ok, I have been seeing a certain amount of confusion concerning
starship battles in MOO, so I am going to attempt to explain the algorithm. If
you are not mathematically inclined, don't panic, the combat is really quite
simple.

Step 1) The computer compares your ships ATTACK to the defenders
DEFENSE rating. If you fire beams he defends at beam defense, while,
naturally, he uses his missile defense against missiles. All attack bonuses and
defense bonuses are added at this point. The resulting comparison is reduced
to an ABSOLUTE DIFFERENCE. Thus if you attack with a level 6 battle computer
and he is defending at level 3 then your attack score is (+3).

Step 2) The computer generates a random number (sic) between 1 and 100
and compares it to your attack value (found on page 58 of the manual by using
our attack score, computed in step 1). If the random number is greater or
equal to your attack roll then you hit.

Step 3) The computer uses the SAME roll to computer raw damage. A roll
of 100 indicates full damage, while your minimum attack roll indicates the
weapon strikes for minimum damage. Rolls in between do more damage as they
approach 100. For you mathematical types:

DAMAGE CAUSED = (MAX-MIN Damage) * (1-[ (100-ATTACK ROLL)) ])
| --------------------- |+ MIN Damage
[ (100-Minimum attack score)]

EXAMPLE: I hit with a Hard beam (8-12) damage. I rolled a 70, while I
needed a 20 to hit. Thus I strike for:

(12-8)* (1- (100-30))
------- + 8
100-20

or

4* (1-30/80) + 8 = 10.5 rounds to 10 damage.

+---------------------
| Mike Lemmons offers the following correction
| to the previous step:
|
| I'm writing a program to assist with designing ships. I had a moment of
| panic when I noticed that the FAQ damage equation was different than mine.
| Then I determined that the FAQ equation simplified into mine. My equation
| also makes the order of evaluation clearer.
|
| >From the FAQ:
| DMG CAUSED = (MAX-MIN Damage) * (1-[ (100-ATTACK ROLL)) ])
| | --------------------- |+ MIN Damage
| [ (100-Minimum attack score)]
|
| Mine:
| DMG CAUSED = MIN Damage + [(MAX-MIN Damage) * (ATTACK ROLL-Minimum to hit) ]
| | ---------------------------- |
| [ (100-Minimum to hit) ]
|
| The square brackets around the two big terms in my version show that the
| multiplication occurs before the addition. Everything is done in
| floating point.
|
| There is a mistake in the example that follows in the FAQ. The
| numerator should read (100-70) instead of (100-30). The final answer is
| correct, though.
+---------------------

Step 4) The computer subtracts the defender's shield level from your
computer damage. Thus a 4 point laser hit does only 1 point of damage against
class III shields. Weapons which halve opponent's shields, naturally, subtract
only 1/2 their shield strength (rounded up, I THINK).

+---------------------
| Correction on step 4 from Mike Lemmons:
|
| According to the Official Guide, shield fractions are rounded down.
| (That's what computers normally do, unless told otherwise.)
| I just realized that if you interpret this sentence as saying that DAMAGE
| should be rounded up, then SHIELDS would be rounded down and the statement
| would be correct.
+---------------------

The computer iterates these 4 steps for every weapon on every firing
ship in your attacking fleet.

So what does this mean?

1) Good shields can make poor weapons next to useless.

2) PUT ON THE BEST TARGETING COMPUTER YOU CAN! It not only determines
IF you hit, but also HOW WELL you hit and HOW MUCH DAMAGE you do.

3) Weapons which 1/2 enemy shields have a longer obsolescence cycle.

4) Note that excess damage will not carry over from target to target
UNLESS you are using a streaming weapon such as a graviton beam. What this
means is that a Death Ray will still only kill ONE small fighter.

5) Good ship designs often carry a number of top notch weapons for
general purpose work (Auto-blasters or megabolt cannons), some hard beams for
the occasional heavily armored target, and a few dozen light weapons for
fending off fighter swarms.

I hope this helps to clear up some of the confusion regarding combat.

Contributed by: Pat Casey

2.N Why did the Internal Security percentage change in 1.2?

Under versions prior to 1.2, the Internal Security percentage shown on the
Race Screen was composed of any racial bonus, any internal security spending,
and 1% per level of computer technology.

This was not wholly accurate, as the computer technology modifier is not 1%
per level of your technology, but 1% per level of the difference between your
technology level and the person attempting to spy on you.

Version 1.2 and beyond does not show your computer technology level.

2.O Is there a version to play via modem? (no)

MicroProse has stated that they will NOT be adding modem play to
MoO. Their feeling on this is that the amount of effort that would
have to be put into such a project would take away from their current
development efforts.

2.P Can I build missile bases instead of shields?

If you have developed a planetary shield, a planet MUST finish building
that shield before it will any missile bases. This can be a real problem
when you see an attack force heading for one of your colonies. The best
way to deal with this issue is just to make sure that your planets ALL
build the shield once you research it. Otherwise, it could make for a
nasty surprise later on.

2.Q What does "UPGR" mean on the defense slider?

If you have existing missile bases on your colonies and you research a
substantial missile tech advancement, your planetary bases are all
automatically upgraded with the new missiles immediately. But if you
want to build additional bases, you have to pay for the upgrade before
any new bases get built. Therefore, if you put any resources to defense,
you'll see "UPGR" in the defense slider until last upgrade has been paid.

Contributed by: Katy Mulvey

2.P How do I stop my planet from going nova (or survive the plague)?

(Expanded question) I have a planet that is supposed to go nova in
years. It says that I need 5000 research points to prevent that.
I have ALL of my colonies researching, but the planet still goes nova.

The problem is that only research done at the afflicted colony counts
towards the problem (Nova or Plague, works the same way). If you get
either of these, dump as much of that planet's production into Research
as possible. In addition, you can feed in money from your planetary
reserves to increase production at the trouble spot. To increase
reserves, either set the Reserve slider in the Planets screen higher
or allocate production to Industry in a planet that has maxed out its
factories.

Contributed by: Daniel M. Silevitch

2.R: What determines which new technologies I can research?

First of all, be aware that you have a "Limited Research list" that
determines what technologies you will *never* be able to research;
the Limited Research list is calculated at the start of the game,
and never changes.

Secondly, it does *not* depend on your "tech level", which is the
level of your highest tech in that area, plus one for each
lower-level tech. When your weapons tech level goes up by 10, you
build weapons at half the cost, and they take up half as much room
in your ship; tech levels in other areas have similar effects, so
now you know why those obsolete low-level techs are worth something
to you even thought you've advanced far beyond them.

Finally, the answer to this question is quite simple: look in the
advancement chart at the end of the manual -- see how the techs are
divided by lines every 5 levels? Well, guess what, those lines aren't
just there to make the chart easier to read! Once you develop a tech
in one box of the chart, you are allowed to research techs in the
next higher box!!!

So, if you research Hand Lasers, Anti-Missile Rockets, Scatter Pack
V Rockets, and Anti-Matter Bomb (the cheapest in each box), you can
get to Anti-Matter Torpedoes or Megabolt Cannons very cheaply,
without spending much money on researching the lower-level techs.

This trick of choosing the cheapest one in each box works really
well for weapons, propulsion, and forcefields, but in the other
categories you will find that there are two or three things in each
box that you really need, or at least that the must-have things
aren't the cheapest. Even so, it can be a big help to know this!

Contributed by: Ralph Betza

2.S What is MOOCE?

The idea behind MOOCE is simply to have many MOO addicts play the same
game and compare notes on what happened. To do this, we define a
simple way to record MOO events (lists), and some reports you have to
fill out each 10 years of your game.

Some games will be lost, other will be won. BOTH loosing and winning
games are important. It may help those less experienced MOO players to
see what the experience ones do to win, and where they diverge from
others.

This is done simply for the FUN of it! It is NOT a competition, and NO
winner will be selected. Since the caliber of the game is HARD, some
players will have difficulty completing it. That particular level was
selected to give a reasonable challenge for experience players.

REQUIREMENTS OF MOOCE

You will need Master Of Orion version 1.3, a pad of paper and a
pencil. You will also need to fill out the MOOCE Game report.

MOOCE was created (and is administered ) by: ritz@step.polymtl.ca

================================================================================
3. What bugs are known to exist?
================================================================================

Compared to many other games on the market, MOO is remarkably bug free.
However, it does have a few. The good news is that a patch exists to fix the
more serious ones. This patch is available in the following places:

A) The MicroProse Bulletin Board. The # is (410) 785-1841. You need settings
of 8,N,1 and it supports up to 14.4 Kbs. The latest patch is moov13.zip
New copies of Moo are shipping with this version.

B) The most recent patch (1.3) is also at ftp.uml.edu. It is located
in /msdos/Games/Patches as moov13.zip.

The known bugs are as follows, and are categorized by the versions in which
they appear.

3.A Bugs present in version 1.0 of Master Of Orion

3.A.1 The program bombs out with a message similar to, "BACKGRND.LBX[xx]
exceeds number of LBX entries". This problem happens on machines with 7 Megs
or more of EMS memory. The patch fixes it. Another fix is to configure your
machine to have less than 2 Megs of EMS memory available. There have been
some reports of LBX problems in 1.2, but these should be fixed by 1.3.

3.A.2 The Diplomat Bug: Sometimes the game will lock you out from access to
all diplomatic functions. This is normal after a counsel vote electing
someone else emperor. However, it occurs in other situations where it should
not. The patch also fixes this problem. It can easily be worked around by
saving and restoring the game. It is apparently linked to someone accepting
tribute.

3.A.3 Sometimes mouse response time become very slow. It stays slow until you
turn off all sound. This has reportedly been fixed in version 1.3.

3.A.4 The Gaia bug: One of the high technology discoveries is supposed to
allow for incredibly fertile plants. When you get the discovery you are
supposed to crank up the ECO bar and the planets are converted. They never
convert. This fixed in later versions.

3.A.5 The to many ships bug: If you have over 32768 ships (16 bit signed
integer) then your number of ships goes negative. This is fixed in later
versions.

3.A.6 The Doc check bug: Has anyone else noticed this - I was playing MOO when
the copy protection screen came up. It said that the picture was between
pages 27 and 27. No problem, I look up page 27 and see that it appears TWICE
on the list of choices! Uh oh, which one...

I chose the first one, and failed.

The second go around was normal and I passed.

Contributed by: James Borynec

[Editor: I have heard no reports since 1.2 of this problem]

3.A.7 The colony ship bug: When you have many different types of ships on
a planet, AND a colony ship it will NOT ask you if you want to colonize
every turn, and you have to move and come back OR move off all the other
ships. This bug is not consistent but it has happened enough to be
annoying early on but now that I know the game I only have extra colony
ships when I am waiting for greater tech range and want to grab planets
fast.

Contributed by: F. Rodgers

[editor: This bug occurs when you turn down the initial request to colonize
the planet. This was clear in the original context. I have heard no report
of this bug in some time and I think the patch fixes it.]

3.A.8 The Orion Terra-forming bug: This bug was first brought to my attention
by Pat Casey and I have also seen it. In my case I was running the 1008
patch. If you capture Orion and then terraform it you can really start
cranking out the Research Points. In my game I was up at 180 max population
because of +80 terraforming. I then got the soil enrichment technology.
Of course this is way out of order (tech 16 vs tech 38) and the game did
not handle it very well on Orion. I spent the credits to supposedly up
the population but it did the opposite. I went from 180 population to
something like 125. I did not notice this happening on any other world.

In Pat's case this happened with Atmospheric terraforming and the affect
was even more drastic dropping the max population to 50!

This was fixed in 1.2, only to run into the Max Population Bug (see 3.B).

3.A.9 The base maintenance bug: Several people have mentioned that if you
get a large number of bases, your base maintenance cost can sky rocket.
You might go from a maintenance cost of 5% to 80% or 90% in one year. This
has only been reported with really large numbers of bases like 150 or so on
a planet. Moral of the story is make sure you don't forget about a planet that
is cranking out bases. It might completely hose your economy all at once. Also,
since there is no way to scrap bases you end up having to go back to a save
file. This is fixed in all versions beyond 1.2.

3.A.10 The 1999 limit on Factories bug: It is possible with Maximum
Terraforming + Gaia to get planets with populations of 300. With Robotic
controls VII it should be possible to get 2100 factories. With Meklars and
their + 2 on controls they could get up to 2700 factories. However, the
game limits you to a max of 1999 and when you reach it does not adjust
industry spending appropriately. This is fixed in 1.2 and beyond.

3.B Bugs from version 1.2 of Master of Orion

3.B.1 The Maximum Planet Terraforming bug: Some planets (including Orion) would
stay set on Terraforming even after reaching 300 million in population.
Increased spending could result in reversion to the base value for the world's
population, or even wiping out the colony. This is fixed in 1.3.

3.B.2 The Divide By Zero bug: Under some circumstances (which seemed to be a
combination of machine configurations and the bug), the program would crash with
a Divide By Zero (in enormous letters) during ship combat. This is apparently
fixed in 1.3.

3.B.3 The Espionage Report bug: Under 1.2, you would never get any reports of
enemy spies being captured at the espionage report screen. This is fixed in 1.3.

3.B.4 The Lockup bug: Under 1.2, depending on the galaxy and the system, the
computer would lockup. This is supposedly fixed in 1.3 [It has been reported to
exist in 1.3]

3.C Bugs in version 1.3 of Master of Orion

3.C.1 The Biological Weapon Bug: Bringing ships with Biological weapons into a
system will reduce the population, even if the ships retreat immediately or
are destroyed before ever coming near the planet. Found in multiple versions
(other symptoms include biological attacks even when the Bombing option is
cancelled if bio weapons are present).

3.C.2 The Missile Fire Bug: Planetary missiles which should be destroying
incoming fleets do no damage (under some circumstances) when fired manually.
However, when the Automatic Combat is selected, the missile weapons work as
they should.

3.C.3 The Combat Transporter Bug: The Combat Transporter (level 45
propulsion tech) has no effect on enemy missile bases. Your troop
transports will slip by enemy ships, but they still take full damage
from planetary missile bases.

3.C.4 The Star Gate Bug: Star Gate travel through nebulae shows
erroneous E.T.A.'s. Star Gate travel always takes one year, but if the
line of travel passes through a nebula, the computer will display longer
travel times.

3.C.5 The Environ Bug: When listing a CP's tech's, Death Spores are listed
as "Death Environ".

3.C.6 The Sixth Ship Bug: When fighting against six different ship types
in one battle, placing the cursor on the bottom ship will display the name
and hit points of the planet where the battle is being fought, instead of
the name and hit points of the enemy ship.

3.C.7 The Treaty Breaking Penalty Bug: According the the strategy guide,
a penalty is invoked by the computer players on other players (both human
and computer) which break any kind of treaties (alliance, trade, and
non-aggression). However, I've found that this penalty is invoked by
computers players against me when they are the one that has broken the
treaty! I have had non-aggression pacts with computer players (CPs) early
in the game and then the CP pops up and apologizes for breaking the treaty.
Later, when I try to increase trade agreements or re-institute a non-
aggression pact, they complain about me not honoring my past agreements.

3.C.8 The Empty Bribe Bug: Occasionally, a CP will tell me that they
will reward me greatly for attacking another CP. If it is convenient, I
have then attacked this other CP. Once I have done "sufficient damage"
to this other CP, the first CP comes on and tells me that they really
love me, and they give me some technology of their choosing that I don't
have. The bad part is that I don't actually get this technology to use!
If it is a weapons technology, the weapon is not available for
ship-building or ground combat, etc. The first CP will even still offer
to trade that tech. to me!

Ralph Betza reports that this bug may be
in error:
This bug report in the FAQ may be wrong.
You don't get to use these techs *until*the*next*turn*! (Or you
could save and load....
Let me know what you find on this one.

3.C.9 The Bogus Nebula ETAs Bug: At any speed greater than warp 1, the
ETA calculation is invariably wrong. Very hard to calculate joint
arrival times of fleets on either offense or defense.

3.C.[7-9] contributed by Bryan Richardson

3.C.10 The Bogus Spy Rate Bug: The production rates for spies on the
race report are exaggerated by a factor of 2-4 at least. Often I see
production rates of "1y" or "2/y" or "3/y" but the next turn I have no
spies in that empire although the "C" report shows none captured either.

================================================================================
4. Clever Tricks
================================================================================
4.A Ship redirection cheat

This trick has been posted on the net, but I do not recall who originally
posted it:

Versions 1.2 and higher allow you to click on a retreating ships
fleet and redirect it, either to another planet, or back to the planet
they came from. If you build a ship with missiles or bombs, you can
attack a planet, use up your missiles or bombs, retreat, and then
re-attack next turn, with all your missiles and bombs restored.


4.B Intelligence trick

This trick was also posted on the net, by somebody. If you want to
attack a race, and you want to know the population, number of
missile bases, and number of factories on each of their planets, one
way to find out is to perform sabotage on them. Then when you are
given an option what to do to what planet, you can click on each of
their planets to find out this information about each one.

4.C Research Allocation trick

I ... eventually noticed the line in the manual [about taxing planets]
that there was a 50% penalty, so I stopped doing it. In case you wondered,
putting money into your reserve by putting money in industry on a planet that
is maxed out on factories has the same problem. However, rich planets give
you the same double bonus for industry expenditures that are going into the
reserve, so you can put money from rich planets into the reserve without any
overhead. I've never done it, but presumably with a super-rich planet you
could put the money into the reserve and get a 150% return, which you could
even plow back into the same planet! A cute feature. Also, there is one time
that it is particularly useful to transfer money from a built-up planet to
a recently colonized planet: when you are expanding your frontier very
rapidly, you should put lots of colonists on the frontier planets so that
you can transfer colonists from last turn's newly colonized planet to this
turn's newly colonized planet, thus putting population on newly colonized
planets very rapidly, without waiting for transports to move all the way
from your center planets to the fringe for every colonization. However,
due to the overhead of waste management, newly colonized planets often do
not have enough money to transport half the population to another planet,
so you need to have just a few BC in reserve to pay for it.

Contributed by: jacob@sun19.objy.com (Jacob Butcher)


Generally, I do not have rich or ultra-rich planets do any research at
all. Any excess production I plow back into reserve. For ultra-rich
planets, I continually plow it back into the planet's production (this
effectively increases the amount going into the reserve by a third.
For example, suppose an ultra-rich planet has production of 100, all
of which is going into reserve. This means we are feeding 150 into
reserve every turn. If we then double this planet's production each
turn by plowing 100 back in every turn, we are effectively feeding 200
(or 200*3/2 - 100) into reserve every turn, or an increase of 50 over
not doing any plowing back.

I also then try to feed reserve into artifact planets, doubling their
production every turn. If this production then goes into research, I
am getting effectively double the research than if I had let some rich
planet produce research rather than planetary reserve. (Note that it
does not pay to have a non-rich planet feed into reserve, which is
then fed to artifact planets. This situation is a wash.)

So every few turns, I make sure:

all research spending for each rich and ultra-rich planet ---->
planetary reserve instead.

planetary reserve ----> Orion, ultra-rich planets, artifact planets,
new planets, and rich planets producing ships (in that order)

Contributed by cox@unx.sas.com (Jim Cox)

4.D Excess Trade trick

This is one I just recently discovered. Although it is most useful
for Humans, it also works with other races.

The documentation notes that the maximum trade amount you can
establish with another race is 25% of the lesser race's total
production.

When I first meet a race, I set trade at the minimum amount possible.
Then I wait a long time until my trade is getting close to the
maximum. Then I renegotiate trade agreements. But first I do the
following: I take all my reserve and distribute it to a number of my
planets for the next turn. This fools the computer into thinking that
I have up to twice the amount of production I really have. Since I
play impossible level where the computer races have OBSCENE production
bonuses, I am usually last or near last in total production at this
point, but I have artificially dramatically increased my production for
one turn only. Then I meet with each of the other races, and increase
trade to the maximum allowed. This trick can dramatically increase
trade revenue.

(Additional note: NEVER add small increments to trading amounts often,
as the algorithm the computer uses to determine trade will work
against you. Do large increments at very infrequent intervals
instead. I usually do not increase trade until I can at least double
the previous trade amount)

Contributed by cox@unx.sas.com (Jim Cox)

4.E Future ship building trick

SHIP CHEAT (I hesitate to call it a cheat, but it is like the
production cheat in CIV). If you want to have a huge fleet "hidden"
from the enemy, design a really huge ship with all sorts of expensive
toys on it. Then dedicate 1 click to SHIPS and set the planets
producing this ship (I name it SHIP CHEAT, call me logical). Then I
forget about it because it will normally take 400+ years to build this
ship. When the time comes to "reveal" your fleet to the enemy, with
you highly advanced fleet, you change the type of ship you were
producing and presto.... instant invasion force! Personally I like
to do this around Zortium Armor. You should be able to build speedy
small ships for fodder (computer likes to attack largest NUMBERED
fleet, I THINK at least on Average) and that's from one or two planets.
The great thing about this is that you can design COOL large and HUGE
ships (that you would actually use) and get them rather quickly
without dedicating all resources to SHIPS. [cox: Just be sure you
keep up with these planets regularly to change the ship they are
building or you may find yourself with a pretty worthless fleet, when
they actually do finish building what you have told them to build!]

Contributed by: Barry Bloom

4.F Combat Tricks

I have gotten some of the following tricks from the net, some from my
own discoveries:

4.F.1. Park a repulsor today!
By putting a stack of ships equipped with repulsor beams directly
in front of your planet, no bombers will be able to get to your planet
without destroying those ships first.

4.F.2. Diversionary tactics.
When I have ships defending a planet, I like to take the battle away
from the planet. Then the opponents' ships will attack my ships
rather than moving to the planet and bombing it.

4.F.3. Ship Teleporting trick

My favorite way to crack planets with many missile bases is to use
bombers with Sub-space Teleporters. On your first move you can
teleport right next to the planet and drop a load of bombs. Even if
you don't take out all of the bases, you're still in no danger. The
planet will launch a pile of missiles that will appear directly over
the planet. If you were able to take out at least half of the missile
bases on your first drop, stick around and drop another load. This
should take out the rest of them, which will also eliminate any
airborne missiles. If you weren't able to take out half of the bases
on the first drop, you are probably better off retreating and then
coming back to the same planet for another bombing raid.

A similar trick involves situations where you've taken out the
missile bases, but there is a formidable fleet of defensive ships.
Wait on the left side of the screen until they've passed the middle
of the combat screen. Then teleport to the right of the planet and
drop a load of bombs. The defensive ships will take a step toward
you. Teleport to the left. They'll follow you. Teleport to the
right and bomb the planet, etc... Occasionally, check the 'planet'
button to see how you're doing. Once the population reaches '0',
your job is done. Scram.

These teleporting tricks will be absolutely useless if the enemy
has subspace interdicters installed.

Contributed by Pat Traynor pat@ssih.com

4.G Ship Design tricks

4.G.1. No empty slots!

Always fill up your weapon slots, unless you are putting less than
four weapons on a ship. Then you can continue firing slots of weapons
at other stacks if one stack is destroyed by one slot. For example,
suppose you build a large ship with 10 autocannons and 2 death rays.
Put five autocannons into each of two slots, and a death ray in each
of the other two slots.

4.G.2. Always have six active designs of ships!

If you really only have one type of ship you want to build, make six
copies of the same ship, and produce the different kinds on different
worlds. You have a lot more flexibility in attack and defense with
multiple stacks than with a single stack.

4.G.3. Try to put weapons and specials with different ranges on the same
ship.

This allows maximum flexibility in attack. For example, suppose you
put death rays (range 4), stellar converters (range 3), gauss
autocannons (range 1), technology nullifier (range 4), neutron stream
projector (range 2), and black hole generator (range 1) on the same
ship type. During a single attack, you can attack up to 6 enemy
stacks as follows: Move four squares away from one stack, turn off
specials, and fire at the stack (the death rays fire). Turn specials
back on, move if necessary and fire at another stack 4 squares away
(technology nullifier fires). Then fire at another stack 3 squares
away (neutron stream projector fires). Then move if necessary next to
two of those 32000 ship stacks, turn off specials, and fire
autocannons at one, then turn on specials, and fire your black hole
generator at the other.

4.G.4. Save a weapon slot for something like bombs that you don't normally
fire, on a fast high-initiative ship. Then you can move towards enemy
ships, unload your weapons, and then back away out of range of his
fire.

4.G.5. Antidote to repulsors: cloaking! Evidently (according to some
postings I have seen lately) a cloaked ship will not be repulsed by a
repulsor! I like to build cloaked bombers, i.e. smalls that have only
bombs as weapons. Their only mission is to get to the planet and bomb
it. The only time they are De-cloaked is after they have obliterated
the missile bases with their high powered bombs. And then they
retreat. (Of coarse, I send escorts to take care of any other ships
that may be lurking around).

4.G.6. Don't stack Black Hole Generators. A stack of 1000 ships
equipped with BHGs does no more damage than one ship of the same type.
To get additional firepower, design different ships that are
identical. This is a very easy thing to do, because after you design
the first one, the next time you hit the 'design' button, the last
design remains, so you just have to 'build' again.

One design that I found very useful is a Kamakazi ship. It has a
specific function, so there's no point in wasting unnecessary space.
Until you get into the latter stages of the game, you'll need a
large hull. Strap on a BHG and a sub-space teleporter. Give it
big engines so that it doesn't take long to get to the enemy planet,
but don't put any maneuverability or shields in there. It WILL be
destroyed. Create three different designs of this ship and send one
of each in on mammoth stacks of enemy ships. With the teleporter,
you will get first shot. A trio of these ships can easily reduce a
stack of 32000 large ships down to 2000. On the next turn, a second
trio can reduce that stack down to 150 or so. Of course, with the
BHG, results vary wildly. You may take out the entire stack, or you
might take out only 25%.

4.H Extended range colonizing

Wait til you have a few tech levels in construction and propulsion.
Then design a _new_ colony ship, and add the reserve fuel tanks as
well as the colony base. Tech 3 in construction+propulsion seems to
be enough to shrink the colony base and engines so that they both fit
into a LARGE hull with the fuel tanks. This will usually be _way_
before you get the range-6 or range-8 propulsion tech (or even the
warp-3 engines!).

Then your colony ship has the same range as your scouts, so colonize
away!

Contributed by Gregory Bond

4.I Trading Upward

On impossible level, the computer races (especially psilons) can get a
huge tech advantage over me. Solution: I trade low level but highly
valued techs (such as inertial stabilizer) for very high tech items.
To do this, I wait until the other race has gotten most of the
high-tech advances.

Then I try to trade with them. Usually, they will not offer me
anything valuable at first. But I keep on cancelling the trade until
they offer me something high-tech. This may take several turns, as
their diplomats often leave before I can get what I want. But
eventually, I can usually get a high-tech item in each of the six tech
types this way. Then the next time I make a tech advance in that
area, I am allowed to research any item up to the tech level of the
item I traded for. (It's nice to directly research complete
terraforming instead of +40, +60, etc. especially considering it only
takes four times the research to discover a tech 50 advance as a tech
25 advance). I can leapfrog tech levels in this manner.

Contributed by cox@unx.sas.com (Jim Cox)

Another thing to consider is to give the enemy a useless tech. If
they have researched propulsions 3 and 5, they will often accept
'4' in a trade. This does them absolutely no good.

Contributed by Pat Traynor pat@ssih.com

4.J The Best Defense is a Good Offense

Sometimes the cp starts to get the upper hand on you and it looks
like you're going to be pulverized. They will mount an attack,
sending waves of fleets down on your under-defended planets. If
it's starting to look like a losing battle, you might want to
distract them by attacking them.

Design the fastest small/medium bomber that you can. Important
things are: fast, good&plenty bombs, and if you can fit them in,
reserve fuel tanks. Don't waste money on shields or beam weapons.
If this plan is going to work, you have to hope that you don't run
into any defending ships, and that if necessary, you can outrun any
launched missiles. Send them to the enemy planets that are somewhat
remote from you. These will tend to have fewer defenses in place.
If you can get a fleet of bombers out there and destroy a colony,
the cp will often abandon its attacks on you to concentrate on
re-colonizing the blasted planet. The reserve fuel tanks are very
nice on your bombers because that could take them out to enemy
colonies that are especially undefended.

4.K The Best Offense is a Good Defense

I found this strategy to be quite handy when you're playing as
Darloks, and everyone hates you.

Build up your planetary defenses as strong as you can. It may
take a little experimentation to find out how much is enough.
Research the best missile techs that you can. And also, design
a very small, wimpy ship. This doesn't need anything, but perhaps
one small weapon, like a laser. Personally, I name this ship
"BAIT". When an enemy fleet is bearing down on one of your
planets, make sure that you have one of these ships in orbit.

When the enemy fleet arrives, they would normally see your
overwhelming mass of missile bases, and they would immediately
retreat. But there is something about a weak ship that they
can't resist. They will march across the screen to wipe out
that BAIT ship while you send wave after wave of missiles.
The tricky thing here is that you have to be sure that you DO
out-power the enemy fleet.

I've managed to reduce an entire enemy fleet to next to nothing
without ever having more than 5 ships in my fleet.

I also found a way to enhance this strategy a bit. If the attacking
fleet is large enough and/or fast enough, they'll have no trouble
taking out your ship and then escaping with many ships untouched.
If you equip your puny defense ship(s) with 5-shot low-tech missiles,
you can improve your situation. Here's what happens.

The combat screen begins. The attacking ships start advancing from the
right. When the fastest stack starts getting close, fire a shot at it
from your defense ship. The attacking stack will now retreat to the
far right again to outrun that missile. Once the missile expires, it
will start advancing to the left again. You can do this many times, or
to several different stacks of his fleet. During this whole time,
you're pummelling his fleet with your planetary missiles.

I've seen stacks of a hundred large ships retreating from one nuclear
missile. Meanwhile, my 85 planetary missile bases are equiped with
Hercular missiles are shredding his fleet.

Contributed by Pat Traynor

4.L Cheats

I hesitated to put this section in, but since this IS a frequently
asked question, it should be answered.

4.L.1 Cheats by design

-GALAXY
This will basically eliminate the need for scouts. You will be
shown the basic stats of all planets in the galaxy as well as the
location of enemy colonies and ships.

-EVENTS
This will stop all random events from happening, such as radiation
accidents and rebellions.

-MOOLA
This adds 100 BCs to your planetary reserve.
You must be in the 'Planet' screen to use this cheat.

-P
This will randomly change the personalities of the enemy leaders.

Contributed by Pat Traynor

4.L.2 Cheats due to bugs

The "Star Gate" cheat: After commanding a fleet of ships to move
between two Star Gates, you can click on that fleet and redirect them to
any planet within refueling range. They will arrive in one year,
regardless of distance or engine type. Hyperspace communication is not
required. (Only tried on version 1.3)

Contributed by Mike Lemons

The "Hyperspace" cheat: This cheat comes in handy if you have
researched Hyperspace Communications, but have not, or were unable
to research the higher "Controlled Environment" techs, such as
'Toxic' and 'Radiated', and can therefore not conquer these types
of planets. Set your transports to go to a destination that will
take at least two turns. After the first turn, re-direct the
en-route transports to the enemy-controlled colony. They will
attack it as though you had the required environmental technology.

Contributed by Jonathan Hooper

4.M "Filibuster" to evade the Council vote

Made too many enemies? Afraid that everyone will vote against you?
Roger Safian offers this possible solution:

Not sure if this is a version 1.3 bug or clever trick. I think
it's a bug, but it might be useful as well. I was playing a long,
hard fought game recently. I was in third place, and holding my own,
but not making a lot of progress. I built up a huge fleet of bombers,
and went on a scorched earth binge. Now here's the intresting thing,
I reduced the number of colonized planets below two thirds. This had
the effect of suspending the elections. So the bug is you have an
election every 25 years once you have two thirds of the planets
colonized, as long as you never have less than that.

4.N Kamakazi (rather than scrap) those old ships

It kind of hurts to destroy a bunch of ships that are outdated when
you put a lot of resources into them. When I want to scrap a design,
I usually gather all of those type ships into one place and send them
on a suicide mission. They might as well do some damage while being
scrapped.

Contributed by nclegg@io.com (Nathan Clegg)

4.P The warp dissipator trick.

The warp dissipator is a device which decreases the movement of an
enemy ship each time the weapon is fired. Now the funny thing is that
you can fire it more than one time in a round. For example, let's say
you have a planet with 25 missile bases and a medium-hull Planet
Defender. The PD is very fast, equiped with a range 1 beam weapon, a
warp dissipator, and has combat speed 4. An inertial stabilizer is
optional. First, the enemy arrives with a hugh fleet (3 differrent
bombers (each about 1000) and 3 ships with range 1 beam weapons (no
missiles :))

The war starts. Let your PD wait until some enemy ships advance to a
point where you can move close enough to them to hit them with your WD
(warp dissipator) and still have mobility to move again to use your
beam weapon. Press WAIT. There is nothing to wait for so you may
continue your turn. Then shoot again with the WD at that ship and the
combat speed of the ship is decreased by 2. After that shot press wait
again. I can freeze a whole fleet in the first turn with a medium
ship.

If they can fire missiles make the ship bigger and put autorepair on
it. Your missile base will take out the rest of the ship.

Contributed by Constantijn Enders

[Editor's note -- Boy, doesn't this sound a lot like the Civilization
trick where you are able to make a settler complete any job in one turn?]

================================================================================
5. Strategy Guide
================================================================================

5.A Introduction and caveat

Note: IMPORTANT - Many of These tips appeared on the net and have been
edited only slightly. There are contradictions real and apparent in
them. It should be realized that most rules are not 100% true or 100%
false; they work in some domains and not in others. The presence of a
tip or rule does not excuse the player from thinking. There may be
good reason to violate one in your particular situation.

In MOO, each game is very different. Games are modified not just by
what race you play and what races you are playing against and what
size galaxy you play in, but also in things such as what tech can be
developed in that particular game. Strategy can change immensely in a
game where nobody gets stack-killing weapons, or auto-repair, or
high-powered bombs, etc. For me, this is what keeps me coming back to
MOO. If the same strategy was appropriate in every game, it would get
old real quick.

5.B Beginner tips

5.B.1 It normally is better not to destroy a colony. It is better to
leave some population and then bring in transports and take the colony
over. This saves the cost of the colony ship. It is sometimes better
to bomb them to the ground. An example of this is when they have
superior technology for ground fighting and your losses would be
prohibitive.

Contributed by: Dave Chaloux


5.B.2 A good strategy for a first game is the following. Select a
medium galaxy, simple level, with three opponents. Play the Klackons.
Spend money on all tech equally. Keep factories and populations maxed
and grow only as fast as you can defend. Avoid wars, and when you
have the resources (be sure to spend lots of money on technology)
build up the missile defenses of your planets. During the time you
should have only a scout or two and a colony ship when you need one.

Now you are ready to act. You should be able to out-produce anyone.
Be sure that you have kept your internal security maxed out, and your
planets well fortified. Now design the best ships you can, pick an
opponent, and go to war!

Contributed by: Dave Weinstein


5.B.3 Just a small thing I ran across last night. If you are
expanding in an odd shape and you home worlds, where most of your
colony ships are built the quickest are far away form your frontier.
Find a planet that has an environment you don't have the tech for in
the frontier area. Then send a colony ship there. Because you don't
have the tech to colonize, it will just orbit and therefore be much
closer (and quicker) to a planet you run across that you can base. My
empire developed into a 'L' shape, laying down, with my main producers
at short end of the L as I expand out on the longer end.

Contributed by: Donald Anglin


5.B.4 Playing Out Games with Bad Planet Distributions

I've got a tip for those who want to 'play out' those games where
they are stuck with no colonizable planets within range.

Scrap your colony ship!

It's maintenance is about 10BC per year, so in 50 years you will have
paid enough to buy a new one anyway.

By scrapping it, you can build up your colony faster with the cash you
get back (transfer it to your home planet on the planet screen).

Build your planet up as fast as you can, then concentrate on propulsion
research, and you might be able to win that game yet.

This is really only recommendable if you like a challenge, but it's
doable. If you're looking for a new challenge, give it a try.

Contributed by: Bronis Vidugiris


5.B.5 Maximizing Planet Production

A few notes on what to invest in to maximize production.

At the start, for most races, this is factories. Factories cost 10BC
generate 1BC of income and 1BC of pollution (which costs 1/2 BC
initially to clean up). In 20 years, they will have paid for
themselves. This is the game default, non-surprisingly.

Colonists cost 20BC to generate (via eco spending), and generate 1/2BC
per year with no pollution. In 40 years, they will have paid for
themselves.

Other conditions may shift the balance here too. Factories tend to
get the early breaks with reductions in cost, and reductions in waste
output. Colonists get later breaks, with vastly increased
productivity (up to 2 at Planetology tech 50), cloning, advanced
cloning, etc.

Klackons start out with colonists equal in return rate to factories.
I start out with colonists for a short time, but only until I get my
planet(s) up to 50% of population where the natural population growth
rate is maxed out. Then I shift to factories, which will start to
increase in productivity earlier. (This is only with the Klackons,
other races I start out with factories).

The balance definitely shifts towards building colonists when one has
had a population decrease on a world which already has a lot of
factories (there are a lot of potential reason for such a decrease,
sending out colony fleets is the most common). The negative impact
can be minimized by cranking out those colonists by spending that
money on 'ECO'.

Contributed by: Bronis Vidugiris

5.B.6 Some General Observations:

1. TRADE. I think most important. Especially in large and huge
games. With trade and alliances I have been able to generate 1500+ BC
a turn. This provides lots of funds for spying!!! Ideally, I don't
establish them until they reach 300+ or whatever is the highest. This
may be more race specific since I got that number playing the humans,
but I still get good money playing other races.

2. EXPANSION. Noticed that some of the races will stagnate (stay on
their home world only) when I expanded as quickly as I could (actually
outstripped the rest of the races, no silicoids in the game).
However, if I gave them (oh, so many options for "sending them on a
wild goose chase") a better move, they wouldn't try and expand, even
with good planets around. Hope this is a function of the average
level AI.

3. SABOTAGE. This I think has hidden potential. I decided to try
and start a rebellion in a Mrrshan colony. I am not positive about
this, but once I got them over 15%, they really started rebelling.
The next time they went to 30%!! I got bored and invaded, and I swear
it seemed to FALL much easier to my troops. Any comments on this one?

4. DEATH FLEET. I do the three suggested methods of attacking....
capture factories (large amounts enemy pop, large invasion force)....
bomb til almost nothing.... and DEATH FLEET. This is my favorite.
By the time I use this it is pointless to take more colonies. Nothing
I hate more than trying to manage that much (kinda like 50+ cities in
CIV). What you do is just build a huge fleet with a lot of bombers
and a few capital / large ships (maybe 30+ large, 6 HUGE) and go from
planet to planet completely obliterating them. Nothing more
satisfying than seeing "100 million colonist killed" ;)

Contributed by: Barry Bloom

5.B.7 Basic whole-game strategies

It seems to me that the key to winning with any race is to build a
strong industrial base on at least 2 good-sized planets before
committing any resources to research. To grow the fastest, keep your
home planet at about 50 people for maximum growth, and ship off 2 or 3
each turn to your first colony. For at least the first 10 years,
devote all resources to factory construction.

Start your research small at first, keep devoting resources to
factories. Until you've maxed out, I keep at least 1/4 of each
planet's production in factory building, preferably 1/3 or 1/2. I try
to keep new colonies strictly devoted to factories.

Don't devote any resources to shipbuilding until absolutely necessary.
When your first two planets are nearly full, build a colony ship.
Keep siphoning off people from your home planets to the new colony,
keeping them at about 90% capacity for speed of growth. By the time
your 3rd colony is getting full, your second transport should be
ready, and you are now in the expansion phase of building lotsa new
colonies.

I build friendly relations with my neighbors from the earliest. While
they devote resources to building low-tech fleets, I build industry
and research tech. Then, when I have a strong economy (like, maxed
industry on my home world) and higher tech, I start building my
warfleet.


I devote at least 1/3 of my homeworld's production to shipbuilding,
and usually a good fraction of my first colony's. I prefer large
ships, and use heavy weapons with their 2-space range. As my tech
grows, I save a few advances and then commission a new class of ships.
I will usually have 3 different large warship designs current, plus a
colony transport design (totally unarmed), and a long-range scout. I
find that small ships are virtually useless in combat, and medium
ships nearly so (but I haven't played races that get combat
advantages, where I might prefer medium ships).

My very favorite specials are Battle Scanner (which gives you initiative and
attack advantages, plus letting you see enemy ship stats), and Automated
Repair. Combined with heavy beams (2 space range), and a combat speed of 2, I
can decimate even huge dreadnoughts by dancing and keeping them at a distance,
if they only have speed 1 and beams with range 1.

It is important to have at least beams and bombs in your ships. I also
usually add a missile or two. Missile-only ships are sitting ducks once they
expend their missiles. I put in mostly heavy beams, one or two missiles, and
fill up the rest with bombs. Of course, I max out computers, ecm, engines,
etc.

I usually take on the 2nd strongest race that is nearby. In my case, that was
the Darloks, who I really hate cause they can steal my tech. I don't attack
until I have 2 or 3 higher tech large ships, then I decimate their nearest
colonies. Bomb 'em down to 5 or so, then send in the troops, at least twice
as many as they have, preferably lots more, from your now-full homeworlds.
This gives you an advance base. Move onto the next planet and repeat, but
this time ship troops from the first planet you took. This eliminates any
need for colony ships; you just eat the opponents worlds. Meanwhile, your
homeworlds should be churning out warships every 5 years or so.

Keep the other races peaceful-like as long as possible. Especially with
Psilons, buy them off with a non-combat piece of tech as tribute; this makes
them real happy. Usually, some race has expanded like wildfire, and the
council has met to decide between me and them, with no majority. Try to
convince the other races to have a non-aggression pact with you, and declare
war on the big bad enemy.

I have found trade to be nearly useless, unless you are playing Humans. It
takes forever to show a profit, and I've never seen anything close to the
agreed-on amount. Do it to make friends, but keep the amounts low.
Especially, don't up it in small amounts over time; if you decide to be
friendlier, just it a lot very rarely. Also, don't trade lots with your
soon-to-be major enemies, just 25 or so when you first meet them, to keep them
pacified until you attack.

After you've decimated or totally eradicated your first opponent, turn your
sights on the big bad guy. Create a warfleet to do scorched-earth tactics,
just bombing each planet to (almost) nothing. Remember to leave a few left;
they're your colony base. If you have improved scanners, you may see colony
ships moving to new planets nearby. Let 'em; as soon as the colony is formed,
send in the troops. (I love eating the opponents new colonies.) If you see a
bunch of transports heading to one of your planets, send a fleet to that
planet, and you can kill most or all of them before they land.

Conquered colonies should be kept fairly small, as they may get taken back.
Devote their energies to research, not factories. If you can manage to take a
colony with factories, great, but don't get greedy. The best way to do this
is to decimate one colony to nearly nothing, then move your warfleet
elsewhere. The enemy may send a transport fleet to the decimated colony. If
so, then send your troops to take the planet that sent out the transports,
which is now underpopulated.

Build missile defenses only on your main colonies. By devoting a small
fraction of your resources to them, you should be able to build one each 5-10
turns. With proper tactics, your homeworlds may never be attacked. But if
they are, 4-10 missile bases will prevent enemies from making cheap attacks.
If you see the enemy making a major attack, get a fleet there, fast. Improved
scanners that give destination and ETA are a must in a serious war.

It is absolutely critical that your fleet be faster than your opponents.
Research speed techs in preference to range (once you have range 4 or 5, that
is). In general, high tech is critical. Ignore the 'fleet size' and 'total
power' status lines; just keep production near the best, and tech higher if
you can. (If the Psilons are an opponent, this is likely impossible. In that
case, cultivate their friendship, and exchange tech a lot. They tend to be
peaceful.) In general, exchange tech whenever possible, but I prefer to give
non-combat advances in exchange. Even if you have better stuff, trade for
advances you don't have, as it will raise your tech levels.

It is tempting to research robotics tech that allows you to build more
factories, or terraforming tech to grow worlds. Once you are in a serious
war, resist this temptation. In war, you can't afford to devote the resources
to growth, you need them for ships and research. Do these things before war
breaks out, or between wars in a long game. At any time, don't build
expensive robotics factories until you've reduced the factory costs.

On the espionage front, keep spies on every player. When you are at war,
change their missions to espionage, or sabotage only if they have no tech at
all. Your computer tech helps here. I try to keep my overall espionage and
counter-espionage spending at 10-15%.

Contributed by: Douglas Zimmerman




Phase 1: Send out scouts to two nearest worlds. Colonize all immediately
available worlds quickly. Don't worry about anything further than 5 squares
away, but make a bunch of cheap fighters and send them out to stake out
planets. This will give you perhaps 2-5 planets, while your strongest
opponents may have 3 times that number or more. Don't even think about
being influential in the council for a while.

Phase 2: Settle in. Expand if you can, but make sure you keep your tech
spending high. A good balance tends to work better than specializing. Armor
tech, ground fighting, and especially terraforming and factory control will
help you hold your planets and make them more productive than your opponent's
larger number. Trade whenever possible. Build lots of missile bases, and no
ships. Eventually you'll find yourself blocked in, probably by the groups
more powerful than yourself. Make sure you get frequent reports on their
tech.

Phase 3: Go to war with one of the more technologically advanced groups. Try
to steal tech from them (they'll start the war). Steal tech from anyone who
goes to war with you. Defend your home planets, don't attach except perhaps
with bombing raids. Concentrate on building up a fleet which could hold a
planet by itself. Then take a planet. You should have sufficient resources
to take one planet from even the strongest player and to hold it if you wait
long enough. Send transports from many colonies (not just one) and just
eliminate the missile bases and ships guarding the planet, not the factories.
Ideally, you'd like to take a rich planet, or one with artifacts. You'll
certainly want to take a developed one for the tech you'll gain.

Phase 4: Eventually whoever your at war with will stop beating on you. Put
that fleet to use on a weaker neighbour. Don't eliminate them, but steal
their inferior techs to pump up your own tech levels (make components cheaper,
smaller). By stealing from whoever wants to fight you, heavily defending your
planets, spending little on ship-building, maintaining trade, and occasionally
taking the choicest planets from your current enemies, your greater ability to
assess the value of a given path of tech advancements will make you stronger
than the computer.

Case in point: I just spent the last 600 years technologically inferior to
the Psilons. Despite the fact that they held Orion for 20+ turns (that I HAD
to take from them) and discovered a derelict, I am now (just) superior to them
technologically and militarily, and am in the process of beating them into the
ground. This is in a large galaxy which, at one point, they held over half
the planets (I had about 6 then). I'm playing as the Humans.

RULES
1.) Never take a planet you can't hold.

2.) Never eliminate a foe. Even the weakest can give you technologies you
leapfrogged, or specialize in an area where you are weak.

3.) Don't destroy many colonies in a given area unless you can keep them from
being recolonized, or you're ready for a shift in the Balance of Power.

5.) Do destroy colonies in a given area if two races you are trying to get to
fight are in that area in force.

Disclaimer: I haven't tried this with Sakkra or Bulrathi, or in Huge galaxies.
It has worked on hard on small and medium, and average on large.
The strategy is especially suited to Psilon, Meklar, Darlok, and
Human empires.

Contributed by: Michael Metzger


5.C Strategies for different stages of game

Like Chess, Master of Orion can be broken into three phases: the
opening, or the initial expansion phase (the computer does this phase
really well), the middle game, where you hunker down and develop the
worlds you have (the computer plays very poorly here), and the end
game, where you try to take over at least enough to give you the win
(again, the computer does not do this well. It does not follow up on
its victories enough). Following are strategies for the different
stages of the game:

5.C.1 Opening Game

For some reason, all of my games (Huge/5/Hard or Impossible)
develop in exactly the same way:

1) I put almost all of my tech into Planetology, (for pop. and possibly
controlled X environment if there are ultra-rich planets about)
Propulsion, (for a high enough range to reach the stars in my
corner) and Computers (for Improved production: some tech also in
Construction)
2) I colonize madly until I get 15-20 stars in a corner or edge.
3) I make peace/friendship w/ everyone else by trading and giving tech
(mainly because they're so far ahead of me in tech, etc.) and
concentrate on population and production development.
4) I block the vote in the first Galactic Council by abstaining (I've
always been in the running, but I've never ha enough votes to win).
5) 4-5 years before the next vote, I get all the other races to declare
war on each other (This has never been difficult: For some reason,
whenever the two biggest CP rivals attack each other, all of their
alliances come apart, and everybody gets into a free-for-all)
I also make NA-pacts/alliances w/ everyone except my rival.
6) 2-3 years before the vote, I attack my rival - suddenly, everyone in
the galaxy loves me and hates him.
7) Before he has a chance to attack, I win the Council vote.

This strategy works very well with Humans (because of the diplomatic
and trade bonuses), Klackons, or Mecklars (for the production bonuses).
The big problem with this strategy, as everyone can probably see
already, is that I never get to do any fun conquest - I never have enough
tech or production to win a war against anyone without sacrificing my
diplomatic situation or production.

Contributed by: js187@jambo.cc.columbia.edu (Jason Scanlin)

If a very early war is essential, you can often beat the computer early
on with a somewhat poorer ship. Build range-two weapons and a single
range-one (for movement control), and have a movement rate of two (if
you can't do this, it is too early to build a warship). If the computer
ship has range-one, you can soften it by staying at two, backing up, until
you reach the board edge, thereby doing substantial damage while not
taking any yourself. If the computer ship has range-two, it will
believe that it should fire from range two. Close on it and fire from
range one: your weapons will do more damage as there is a penalty for
range two fire! The only thing to watch out for is that you don't want
to back him into the corner so that he's forced to fire at range one.

Contributed by: mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)

5.C.2 Middle Game

Your "mid Game" starts as soon as the majority of your worlds are
industrialized and have >10 missile bases. It generally ends when the
widespread availability of good bombs and large fleets shifts the game balance
away from the defender.

>
Well, a lot depends on the size of your galaxy. I'm assuming your are
playing on large, and yes, 7 planets is a slow start. Suggestions for improving
your initial expansion follow:

1) Place scouts over every nearby world, one per. The AI tends to
colonize worlds it has explored before putting resources into arming its colony
ships. By placing a scout over a planet, you deny the AI exploration and
hopefully grab the colony yourself.

2) Build up your first two colonies and then start colonizing new
worlds. Use one world to produce colony ships, and use the other to throw
population bombs onto your new colonies. Then let them develop on their own
while you colonize past them. Exception: Rich and Ultra Rich worlds are worth
putting resources into to speed initial expansion.

3) Avoid building a fleet unless necessary. Most low-tech fleets are
not useful against planets, thus the conquest of enemy colonies becomes a very
slow process.

4) Play as the Klackons or Sakkras, both of whom will develop colonies
rapidly. Alternately, play the alkaris and build fast, long range colony ships.

Tips on Rescuing a slow start:

1) Human Turtle. This works best as the humans, but can be effected
with skillful bribery by almost anyone (yes, even the Darloks). Trade with all
your neighbors to the hilt, and build no fleet. Maximize your tech and trade
for it whenever possible. Sign non-aggression pacts with everyone and NEVER
make an alliance as it may drag you into a war. Eventually, especially on
Average or Hard, you can garner a tech advantage in this manner. Once that
happens, its all a mop up. On impossible, this tactic will only work if your
initial base is significantly larger and contains some good worlds. EXCEPTION:
MOO versions below V 1.2 are quite a bit easier.

2) Balance of power: Pick the largest power you think you can deal
with. Then induce a few nearby races (preferably the LARGEST power in the game)
to declare war on them. Once they are heavily engaged (and likely losing), move
in and stab them in the back with your own fleet. NOTE: This is dangerous
unless you are prepared to finish off the race in question. They WILL hold a
grudge.

3) Tech Raids: This is a gamble, but sometimes pays off if you are
losing heavily in tech. Find a poorly defended, high tech world, and swarm it
with troops, all of whom should arrive on the same turn. With luck, you should
steal the planet out from under the missile bases. NOTES: A) Works best when
missile techs are poor and your transports have good speed B) You will
generally lose planets thus acquired unless you follow up with a supporting
fleet, but you keep the tech.

4) Orion Hunting: Capturing Orion is a sure way to turn a losing
situation into a possible winner. If it is within range, and you have at least
the Neutron Pellet Gun, then consider making a play for it. Remember the rules
of Orion in considering your fleet. Against the V 1.2 Guardian:

The guardian has 4,000 HP on Easy, 6,000 on Av. 8,000 on Hard, and
10,000 on Impossible.

Assuming at least a battle computer Level 5, then each NPG will do 1.5
damage. Each mass Driver 4.5.

Rule 1: You must deliver > 30% of the guardian's HP per turn to kill
it. Otherwise it will Auto-repair.

Rule 2: You will lose 250 fighters to the guardian's missiles before he
runs out of ammo.

Rule 3: You will lose 125 Mediums to missiles if Titanium, 83 if
duralloy, and 62 if Zortium.

Rule 4: Every odd turn, you will lose 4 small or medium ships.

Rule 5: Every Even turn, you will lose 14 small or medium ships.

Rule 6: The cheapest way to get a weapon into space is to strap it on a
fighter. Medium, Large, and Huge ships cost more per ton of available space.

In general, on average level, 2000 fighters with NPGs will do the job. I
generally wait for the mass driver, however.

Just a few suggestions...

Contributed by pcasey@hmcvax.claremont.edu (Pat Casey)


Invading an enemy colony with Combat Transporters:

First of all. It seems that each 1M troops that you send to a planet
is in a separate transport. So if 40M troops are arriving, then
the computer must destroy 40 ships before they reach the planet.
Since this is the case, it is sometimes useful to have a larger number
of transport to overwhelm the defenders. They have very little time/rounds
to destroy these ships, so they can usually only destroy a limited number
of them unless they have a strong defensive force. So, if their defenses
can destroy 20 ships in each wave, and you send 40/year for 5 years,
then only 100 out of 200 troops arrived safely. However if you send
200 troops which all arrive at once, then 180 troops arrive safely
and the success of your raid is much more likely. Another advantage
to having the force arrive all at once is that if the computer
is slowly losing troops over time, then it has a chance to rebuild
part or all of the lost population by allocating resources to ECO or
sending troops from elsewhere. This is especially painful if he has
cloning technology. So, effectively the attacks can be worthless because
all troops the computer lost in the 1st wave might be renewed by the second
wave this wave basically starts from scratch.

In order to get an overwhelming force you usually need to send troops
from several planets. If the planets are different distances from
the target, then send the troops from the farthest planets 1st and in
later years send the troops from the closer planets. Be sure to time
it so that they all land together for maximum effectiveness.

Contributed by Jerry Derby

5.C.3 End Game



5.D Strategies for specific races

Alkari ---

Pretty easy to win with. The defense bonus is a godsend early in the
game. Expand hard and fast in the beginning, and put together a large fleet
of small, nimble fighters and frigates (with a few fusion or omega V bombs).
Then expand like a banshee. These guys work great for almost any game plan
EXCEPT the pacifist technologist game plan. You need to fight to take
advantage of their specials, so DO IT.

Bulrathi ---

I find them rather tough. You are going to lag in computer tech, but
you can offset that by stealing from more advanced races when you invade.
Your +20 ground combat tech is really nice, but ONLY if you stay current in
ground combat tech. The problem is that to use it, you HAVE to fight. You
will step on a lot of toes playing here. I suggest a hard expansion followed
by a retrenchment and then a brutal war against your most advanced neighbor.
Ignore casualties and TAKE PLANETS.

Darlok ---

Ok, I admit it, I like them because they have the coolest graphics (is
that Stormbringer the Darlok warrior is holding?). With that said, these guys
are tough to play but a blast because you can really mess with the diplomacy.
Don't expand too fast or the galaxy will turn on you since they already hate
you. Get computer techs as fast as you can, and turn up the spies. Use your
ability to frame to turn the strong races against each other (frame them for
espionage acts). Then move in to collect the pieces. Early on, you may have
to accept losing a few planets to avoid going to war with the whole galaxy.
Bite the bullet and do it since A) they DO hate you and B) they CAN kill you
and C) any excuse turns B into THEY WILL KILL YOU.

Human ---

Boring. Sorry. This is the only race I have won at through the
diplomat option... i.e. getting people to vote me into office when I have
significantly less than 50% of the galaxy. You are a pretty generic race
other than your wonderful diplomacy so expand solidly, kill the weak and use
your diplomacy to keep the strong from killing you. Eventually, you should
win. You have a unique ability to concentrate on one enemy at a time since
you can buy off other enemies cheaply, so USE IT. Remember, peace is just the
long period of retrenchment between wars.

Klackon ---

I hate these guys. You start with an insane early expansion and then
end in a whimper. Your inability to develop decent propulsion techs is
ultimately CRIPPLING. So, expand insanely in the beginning, and then
beg/plead/steal for good propulsion techs. Only THEN should you even consider
war. DON'T get involved in a premature war. No matter how strong your
industrial base is, if your ships still rely on RETROs to get around then that
inferior Alkari fleet zipping around on fusion engines will eat you alive by
concentrating both strategically and tactically. You should have your
industries up and running smoothly long before the other races do, so use the
breather thus offered to A) build good defenses and B) get a lot of cool
construction techs.

Mecklars --

I find these guys to be absolute cake, er, most of the time (grin).
Expand early, but don't crush any toes. Remember, you don't need as many
planets as all those other non-industrialized races. Keep people off your
back with diplomacy until your industrial base gets rolling, and then, well,
kill them. Your weakness in planetology can mean a huge waste of resources
going to cleaning your planets so Beg/plead/steal any waste reduction or eco
restoration techs you can. Your planets will have good defenses and you
should have a nice, compact industrial base. This allows you enormous freedom
in a war since you are virtually impregnable (50+ missile bases), and can
strike out in any direction. Take your enemy's best planets and make them
better. Research robotic controls whenever available. Fear the Doom Virus.
Get the antidote.

Mrrshan ---

The Alkari's weaker brothers. I find them harder to win with. Their
gunnery edge is nice, but not the equal of the Alkari's defense bonus. You
should go over to the offensive as early as possible, trade for good armor and
construction techs with obsolete weapons and research the gauss autocannon as
soon as it becomes available. Don't rely on your gunnery edge to win you
battles. It helps, but it won't allow you to totally ignore the laws of
numbers. Remember, you may hit them better, but THEY CAN STILL KILL YOU.

Psilons ---

I know, everybody and their brother plays as the psilons because they
get all the cool toys. Grab what you can early, and DON'T piss anybody off.
You are VERY weak early on. Buy peace for the first half of the game while
building a good tech edge, and then expand across the galaxy. If you control
15-20% of the galaxy you should be able to block anybody's election in the
council until then. An interesting alternate plan I have used is to quickly
acquire a tech edge in shields and weapons and exterminate a few low-tech
planets. It often works, but if you get stopped, their vengeance will be
terrible to behold. I usually play the former strategy.

Sakkra ---

I love these guys. You breed like rabbits, AND you get all the cool
planetology techs early. Well played, you can have 30% of the galaxy
colonized before the end of your first expansion. Sure, you will be spread as
this as, well, very thin! Anyway, as soon as your first rush in over, buy
peace as long as you can, and build up your defenses, because the whole galaxy
will come for you as you are almost definitely winning. Once you get your
defenses going, develop a good star fleet and start a relentless steam-roller
advance across the galaxy. If you fall behind in TECH, consider a few "Lizard
Wave" attacks against weakly defended High Tech worlds. You can afford the
casualties. Think of your empire like Russia in WWII ... No matter how many
troops you lose as long as they take losses too, you are winning. Once you
get cloning, and a few fertile planets, you can vat grow an invasion force
every 2-3 turns. I find these to be the easiest to win with UNLESS the
Psilons get entrenched on the other end of the galaxy while you and your
neighbors rumble. If you don't stop them they will get a huge tech lead and
Bio-Terminate your empire. If you see this happening, carve a line through
your enemies, conquering planets as you go until the Psilon empire is in reach
and then terminate them.

Silicoid --

Ok, I find these guys to be especially tough. You start out very
strongly, and colonize lots of worlds, BUT, your low birth rate is crippling.
You will have lots of poorly inhabited worlds. A well thought out counter
attack can knock you off your rocker faster than you can say "Sakkra Swarm".
So expand hard, but DON'T press your luck. Then develop planetology tech's
like a madman. All those crappy 20 Habitability Toxic worlds look a lot
better after +60 terraforming, atmospheric reconstruction, and cloning. You
face another problem in your poor tech ability. YOU MUST control a large
portion of the galaxy early on to offset this. You can continue expanding
long after the other races have run out of useful planets since you can
colonize anything. Expand as fast as your population growth will let you.
Trade for any planetology tech you can get.

OK, now, I'll say it again, these are simply MY feelings on the races.
I'm sure other people have different strategies and feelings. Don't be afraid
to improvise, and don't take what I've said as gospel.

Contributed by: Pat Casey


OK, I have a raging headache and am stuck in a lab but I'll give a quick
"this race is best" list. I don't have a manual so if I misspell a race
name (or any other words) deal with it.:-)

1. Psilons, good to play with and a tough race to play against the computer
with. Screwed if you have a sub-standard starting position. Create a
'technocore' area with high defense on the outside and little on the inside
(to save credits) get a major tech advantage and then explode outward in a
orgy of destruction. ALWAYS try to be in third in population so you can swing
the council votes and not deal with alliances.

2. Klackons, nasty to play against, nice to play with. You produce more
early on in the game so attack once you have the needed tech to do so without
major fleet lose. Send out population to new planets quickly and build up
populations before industry as each colonist is worth a factory.

3. Darloks - not great on either side but fun to play. When attacked early
in the game be sure to have the enemy home planet rebel, this usually nukes his
war effort as the computer SUCKS at getting planets back from rebellion. You
can maintain the over all tech advantage by stealing from EVERYONE. Frame
groups in alliance with each other etc. Only research computer tech after the
first few advances and defend your planets WELL. Later in the game when
everyone is fighting everyone you can start to conquest.

5. Mmrrwhaters Alkwhaters Bulwhatevers - Icky bad to play, and not hard to
beat when playing against them. Their natural combat abilities are nullified
by 2 tech levels, and thats all they have. If you play them attack early
cause you won't have much chance later. Fight kill blood and pray they don't
develop better computers propulsion or armor than you have respectively.

3. Silicoids - fun to play but hard to win with. Slow pop growth and slow
tech abilities are crushing in a war. IF you can avoid being attacked for the
first 100 turns of the game you can have a chance, but planet landing tech is
cheap, and after enhanced echo restoration and 60% pollution, who cares about
waste. IE your advantages as a silicoid are limited. PLUS the fact that the
computer can invade planets he doesn't have the tech for so even that
advantage is lost.

6. Meklars - cool to play with and hard to beat EARLY in the game. Like the
psilons being in third is not bad as you can equal or out produce the computer
even with fewer planets. (you can't lose a game in which you are equal to the
computer in strength as the computer is a moron in combat.) Meklars on
ultra-rich planets are fun.

7. Sakkras - I have to take back the bad things I said about them in the
past. These guys are the easiest race to win with. Expand like the plague
and send out about 10 colonists to a planet to kickstart growth and watch the
puppies grow. This is the one race where you can be number 1 in pop early on
and NOT loose the vote cause you have so many so early. Invest in planet tech
and robotic controls and watch the numbers grow. These guys are also the best
in ground combat (sorry bulrathi) as you can send wave after wave. My
favorite is having a race near by early on and taking all their planets and
home planet before they can build a fleet.

8. Humans - a dull boring race of semi-idiot people who have no concept of
self interest, or long term vision. Oh, they aren't that great in the game
either. You can win with them but hey you can win with any race.

Contributed by: F. Rodgers

I assume that they will all eventually
hate me, and treat them with appropriate spying and rapid buildups. I
use biological weapons as soon as I have plenty of stout missile bases on
my frontier worlds, reject all offers of peace from a nation except in
the early going (when I get none anyway), and steal them blind
technologically. I shoot up their colony ships. Jeez, if you're going
to be attacked for defending your own planet from their invasions, screw
being nice. If they establish a colony inside my 'territory', it will
eventually be used as a basing point for meanness against me, so I just
grab it and call in the navy. Once I'm strong enough, I take stock of
every insulting message, every unprovoked attack, and every other affront
committed by the computer opponents, and exterminate them (genocide
without hesitation) one by one, grabbing enough planets to keep basing
forward. Since the Darloks are the worst, if they are anywhere nearby,
they go first--and a special effort is made to burn off all their planets
as rapidly as possible (bio-bomb them into near-uninhabitability, heavy
missiles to wipe out the rest of the people). The quicker they're gone
the better. The humans are usually next, because I yearn to wipe that
smirk off Emperor Alexander's pitiful face, making out to be such a great
diplomat and peace-lover but always attack me anyway. I usually wipe
that smile off with Scatter-Packs and Heavy Blast Cannon.

I'm pretty racist in MOO. The only races I don't loathe are the Meklars
and Klackons, because at least a) you know they're ruthless, no whiny
pretenses and b) you better pack your lunch when you fight them. I
respect a dangerous opponent.

Tactics against:

Humans: don't trade with them. Blame them for spying.
Meklars: stay ahead in computer, steal from them, and grab a planet or
two with all those factories and tech.
Sakkras: high ground combat.
Klackons: biologicals, pulsars, and scatter-packs.
Psilons: pray to whatever gods you have.
Darloks: total extermination as early as possible.
Bulrathis: biologicals and decent missiles fired by large packs of
corvettes in support of a dreadnought or two.
Alkaris: same as Klackons.
Mrrshans: laugh at the puny bastards. Attack them and make friends with
others by doing so. Don't exterminate them and don't make peace with them.
Silicoids: biologicals; good ground combat; when you get Hyperspace
Commo they're dead rock-meat.

I'm not loved, but I win at the hard level.

Contributed by: Julian Flint


5.D.1 Strategy for playing the Alkari

With Alkaris, make fleets of small maneuverable bombers, and go on the
offensive early; keep up propulsion research and you'll be unhittable.

Contributed by: Drew Fudenber

I decided to try a game where I would use no bases at all and instead would
rely on missile ships for defense. This game was Hard-Medium-3 with the
Alkari. The Alkari are ideal for a baseless strategy because of the
defensive bonuses they get. Most of my ships were medium size. I would put
in 1 missile (size 5 if possible) and 1 beam (neutron pellet guns worked well).
I would then give them the best defense, computers, engines, maneuverability
and armor that I could fit. Because they were of medium size, they cost perhaps
half of what a base would cost.

In the game I played, this strategy worked extremely well. I won in 2499 with
none of the other three races voting for me. This was with the 1.2 version.
Not having to worry about bombers knocking out my bases was a big plus.
So was the fact that as my front lines changed (expanded) I could move in the
defense.

It was also kind of pleasant having the fleet section of the race status
screen showing me as a significant power instead of having next to nothing.
I did not find obsolescence to be a big problem.

Anyway, this strategy can certainly be made to work for the Alkari and may
work well for other races. Give it a try for a different kind of game. After
some 34 other games, I needed to try something new.

Contributed by chaloux@mandolin.mitre.org (Dave Chaloux)


5.D.2 Strategy for winning with the Humans

I have now managed to win as humans at hard level in medium galaxy. It may
have been luck, as the attempt to duplicate is still underway but here are
observations:

1) I now follow several others in "screening" initial galaxies - is this
cheating?

2) I attacked a few nearby weaklings in early middle game, then laid low and
tried to have at most one enemy at a time - immediately bought off anyone else
who became pissed.

3) Alkaris wasted lots of resources attacking well defended planets, allowing
me to build up technological lead.

4) Medium size bombers with cloaking device and anti-matter bombs do wonders
against all but best defense; omega bombs didn't arrive till the endgame.

5) It's probably my own fault for being too conservative, but the endgame
was boring- the last hour of play, I had my rich planets building ships,
all else doing research. Ships were huge things-with level 9 shield, level
11 missile defense, lots of beam weapons, energy focus, 50% repair, and
omega bombs. Just one of these could take on a level X shield and 20 bases,
plus some ships; problem: each bombardment took a long time to play out.
Anyway, I didn't want to risk having any of my colonies captured for fear
of leaking a tech, so I kept a few strong fast ships at home, and
tended not to colonize planets I captured- which meant I had to level a
few of them several times. too bad the computer can't be programmed
when to quit!

Contributed by: Drew Fudenberg


5.D.3 Strategy for winning with the Psilons

Hm, I've only played 3 times (on my 4th now) at Average, but I've never had a
problem as Psilon. Maybe the racial type just fits my attitude. I prefer to
leave them alone until they declare war, then wipe the floor with them -- by
then I have twice the tech of anyone else in the game. By the time a vote
comes around, I've "absorbed" one or two races with my superior ground combat
tech.

This is large galaxy, 5 opponents, and medium, 4 opponents. I suspect I'd
have a harder time of it with less space, since it would be harder to build
unassailable planetary defenses on my home planet. I've always run into
someone as I was working on my first or second colony.

Contributed by: Todd Perry


Yep. BTW, I only play medium and large galaxy, with 4 and 5 opponents
respectively. Won a huge game once but it took MUCH too long to be fun.

Someone else already posted a long list of good strategy for Psilon so I'll
just elaborate... first, I agree 100% on starting over if you don't have a
good planet close by. I've only had to do this twice, though. Usually
there's at least an Arid planet nearby with 50-60 max pop.

I start my first colony, throw about 1/2 my population at it to get it mostly
filled up, and spend as much as possible on industry for a couple decades.
However, I DO start a trickle (10RP or so) of tech going from Mentar right
away -- until you do this you don't get to start selecting tech. I don't
tweak tech spending much -- just a little extra in computers, construction,
and planetology to start, and try to pick advancements that give you more
people/factories. Be careful not to neglect ground combat advancements, in
fact, I usually give them preference when deciding what weapon to pick.

I never get very diplomatic with other races -- usually feed them a few
non-combative technologies to convince them to form an alliance, and ignore
them afterward. Trade doesn't seem worth the effort.

Once I get above a couple hundred BC's on a planet, I *always* start throwing
half my BC's back into tech. Never neglect tech; it's your primary weapon.
Don't make the mistake of ignoring tech to get those extra few factories next
turn -- there's such a thing as diminishing returns.

Anyway, by the time you hit your 5th planet, other races might have already
gotten twice that. You should still have a production level equal to theirs,
thanks to terraforming and robotic controls.

I concentrate on missile technology early in the game. Scatter packs do
enormous amounts of damage to LOWER tech ships; they become useless in a few
decades, so KEEP UPGRADING. I never make ships just to make them, usually I
have no fleet except for the ships guarding my new colonies. It's also
important to stay ahead in missile tech so your bases can wipe out incoming
fleets easily.

As soon as the first race I've met declares war on me (and they always do :-)
I pick the best looking planets they own, move in with ground forces and take
them, and park several ships overhead to protect them. I tend to make large
ships that take several turns -- with the tech advantage, you can make ships
that are near-impossible to damage. Once the planets have gotten shields and
are churning out bases, move on to the next group. If at all possible, do NOT
bomb planets you plan to take. By the time you attack, you should have many
more ground combat advances than the enemy. You can take a planet easily with
1/3 the troops they have, so don't bomb them and ruin their factories.

The most successful game I ever had was when the Meklar declared war on me a
few decades in. Just afterward, they "exploded" (sent out about 8 colony
ships all over the place). I walked in and took Meklon with 50m troops to
their 100m -- I only took 5 casualties, and got 500+ factories! I went around
and did the same thing to all their older colonies, then ran roughshod over
their new colonies. 10 turns later, they had dropped from 2nd to 4th place
and I had doubled my production.

As for Orion: I ignore it for a long time, since the computer's attempts to
take it are pretty pitiful. About the time I get Stellar Converters I build a
huge ship, fill it with converters, add adv damage control, beam extenders,
and lightning shields (or displacement device if I have it) and the best
engines/computers/etc, and take about 8 turns to build it. Then I stomp the
guardian. By that time, I don't really NEED orion, but it's better than
letting some other race get the technology. I usually win the game before
Orion is a fully-developed planet.

Contributed by: Todd Perry


5.D.4 Strategy for winning with the Silicoids

I find the Silicoids to be very easy to win with. They key word for them is
--- expand.

I tend to prefer planets with difficult environments. The other races can't
colonize them, so leaving them basically undefended seems to work.
Eventually, when other races start developing the tech to colonize them I do
have to start building bases. (Those few 'good' planets I take also have to
be defended of course).

Theoretically, I suppose, I'm vulnerable to bombing raids with undefended
planets, but I find that other races just aren't that interested in attacking
worlds they can't colonize, and they turn their attention elsewhere.

Contributed by: Bronis Vidugiris


5.D.5 Strategy for winning with the diplomatic races (Human & Darlok)

I like both the Darloks and the Humans because I like to mess with the
diplomacy screen. For the humans it's quite easy (and fun) :) to have all
the other races at war with each other while you conserve your resources.
And if you're in a good defensive position playing the Darlok's it's fun to
crank up sabotage and keep inciting the opponents' worlds to rebel.

I don't know if my strategies are very effective, but they are kind of fun.

What I do hate is the production bonus the opponents get on impossible/hard.
I don't mind losing to the computer but I want to be out-maneuvered, not
buried.

Contributed by: disciple@u.washington.edu (Matthew Amendt)


I find it easiest to win with the diplomatic races on Impossible
level. I have played 5 games on v1.3 Impossible/Large/5 with the
Humans and Darloks, and I have yet to lose any of them. One of those
games (Humans) had a horrible start, where I had but 4 planets most of
the game, yet I still won in the endgame (Yet I have won only 1 out of
7 games with the warrior races, Bulrathis, Alkaris, and Mrrshans).

Contributed by: cox@unx.sas.com (Jim Cox)

If you play as a Darlok, it's in your best interest to make contact
with the cps as soon as possible, especially Psilons (if they're in
the game). That way, you'll have all that many more techs available
to steal.

Contributed by Pat Traynor pat@ssih.com


5.E Strategies against specific races

My notes on the other races as opponents are:

Alkaris (honorable militarists) - don't attack them unless you mean business.
Bulrathis (aggressive ecologists) - usually low-tech, Make sure you
have high tech and at least 2 to 1 troops in ground attacks.
Darloks (aggressive diplomats) - the ones I love to hate. My first target,
if nearby.
Humans (honorable diplomats) - try to be friends, as they won't attack first.
If powerful, they may be favored by the Council; if so, out-flank them
and destroy their allies rather than attacking them.
Klackons (xenophobic industrialists) - no real feeling for them.
Meklars (erratic industrialists) - not worth cultivating much as friends,
as they may turn on you for no reason at all.
Mrrshans (ruthless militarists) Usually the least powerful, with few worlds
and no tech. I cultivate their friendship, then sic em on my enemies.
Psilons (pacifistic technos) - I got a lot of advances from them as Humans,
by exchange. But in the end, they were a big threat.
Sakkra (aggressive expansionist) Haven't been a threat. They do tend
to break non-aggression pacts, but they've never attacked.
Silicoids - (xeno expansionists) Usually the major enemy, with the
most worlds. Definitely an enemy.

Mind you, each opponent may differ from the standard. You need to play close
attention to their personalities in your game. Expansionists are almost
always enemies. Xenophobes are hard to get friendly; you need to bribe them.
Erratics can turn on you at any time. Honorables are better as friends.
Militarists should generally be allowed to build a huge low-tech fleet.

Contributed by: Douglas Zimmerman

5.E.1 Klackons:

In my opinion Klackons are the toughest opponent in the game. When I lose, it
is normally to them. They are just too efficient at getting an overwhelming
position in the beginning. Furthermore, since they tend to be xenophobic,
they are tough to deal with diplomatically. The two most effective strategies
I have found against them are:

1) Play games where they aren't involved!
2) On a more serious note, attack them as soon as possible in the game. This
is especially true if you have a ground combat advantage of some sort. If you
can capture their colonies early in the game, they will keep depleting the
population of their other planets to attack back. This is doubly hard on them
because their population is their strength! They lose twice as much in
production per person killed as the other races. You will find that even in
the beginning, their home worlds will be protected by missile bases. Make
sure you build some spacecraft that can take the bases out. If you can't beat
them early, you are unlikely to be able to beat them later on. A little lead
for them in production now tends to translate into a big lead in production
and technology for them later. By the way, the Sakkras have a built in ground
attack advantage that is perhaps less obvious. Specifically, they grow back
faster so if you are trading population 1 for 1, they get the better of it. I
have creamed the Klackons with the Sakkras using this strategy.

Contributed by: Dave Chaloux

I agree that klackons are toughest- see my recent post for request on others
experience. Klackons are tough because (1) they invest in factories, (2) they
will build thousands of gnats if you lack a stack-attack weapons, and, most
impressively, (3) they switch to other ships (most recently medium and
large-sized missile platforms) if you show up with a stack destroyer.
[... editor]

Humans are good for attacking Klackons, as Klackon gnats don't have strong
weapons, so shields are very effective, and propulsion tech leads to
a stack -killer.-

Contributed by: Drew Fudenberg


5.F Strategies for different size galaxies

5.G Warfare

5.G.1 Ship Design

following are different people's ideas about what kinds of ships to
design:

5.G.1.a With regard to whether it is better to build large fleets of
small ships or small fleets of large ships:

Depends on the technology that I have, and the technology my principal
adversary has. This is why good espionage is vital. If my opponent
lacks streaming weapons, drive pulsars, or black hole generators (the
principle anti-stack weapons), large fleets of tiny ships are very
dangerous. If they have them (and especially if they have good
planetary bases with high end Scatter-Pack missiles), look to build
big powerhouses.

As I said in another post, don't make the mistake of fighting the last
war.

Another tip later in the game is to build Planetary Defense Stations.
This is essentially a huge ship, with the maximum armor, and retro engines.
Max out the shields, ECM, and targeting computer. Spend nothing on Maneuver.

The specials should be Repulsor beam, High Energy Focus, and Automated Repair
or Black Hole Generator.

Then load it to the maximum with beam weapons, especially streaming weapons.
No missiles (use the planetary batteries for that). Then station one at each
planet. Its entire job is to keep bombers off the planet. Because you used
retros, you'll get a lot more weapons on board, and it doesn't need to move
much anyway.

Contributed by: Dave Weinstein

5.G.1.b This game appears to support the combined arms concept quite
well. I usually generate a fleet that consists of several regional
task forces. Each task force contains many long range missile boats
(on small or medium platforms), several dedicated bombers (on medium
or large platforms), several cruisers (beam/stream weapons on large
platforms), and a few heavies loaded with short-range heavy hitting
weapons (beams/streams/etc) (huge platforms).

In attack, the missile boats concentrate on taking out the enemy's
killer swarms (lots of small/medium platforms that attack en-masse).
The object is to prevent these ships from hitting your heavy ships
with a massed attack.

The bombers head straight for the planet and toast the defensive
systems. Usually the planet targets the larger number of missile
boats, and ignores the bombers. If the bombers strike hard enough,
the planet defenses will go down and any missiles launched will
disappear.

The cruisers escort the bombers to the planet. It is important that
the cruisers outnumber the bombers so as to make a more tempting
target for any intercepting forces.

The heavy ships usually hang back until the missile boats have killed
enough of the enemy to prevent mass attacks. They then swing out to
take on the enemy heavy ships with any ammo left in the missile boats
used for support.

Of course the plan gets modified depending on the composition of the
enemy fleet, but after playing large and huge galaxies, this seems a
good tactic to use. To take full advantage of this tactic you must
stay current in missile technology or you will get to watch them
bounce off the enemy's shields. Side note: massed missile boats make
nice raiders to go in an take out poorly escorted heavy platforms.

Happy hunting!

Contributed by: Karl S. Mathias


5.G.1.c Suggested Ship types:

The Fighter

MAX Maneuverability and Attack. Ignore shields unless
your tech level is absurd in which case strap on a low level one. Put
on Either a Neutron pellet gun or a mass driver (if possible) to carve
through armor. Inertial stabilizers are nice, so are teleporters.

Brutal early on, anti-stack weapons will butcher them
late in the game unless you have an insane tech edge. If you are the
Alkaris, ignore the above and build 'em all the time.

The Archer

Large ship with a lot of missiles. Scatter packs are
nice unless your opponents have good shields. If your battle run long,
strap on some torps and hang back. MAX Shields, + attack. If you need
to save space, scrimp on maneuverability. After all, you want to hang
back.

Vulnerable ships, but if you get some good missiles,
they can be brutal. Scatter pack VII or X are excellent against all
but the best defended enemy ships. If your missile tech is lagging,
skip this class entirely. Stick to the shooters.

The Knight

Large ship with lots of good beam weapons. Max
everything, armor, shields, etc. DON'T, however, use a double hull--
it eats too much space. Good weapons are mass drivers, hard beams,
Gauss Autocannons (You gotta love 'em), and if you are facing lots of
fighter stacks, Tachyon and Graviton rays. I avoid anything that
doesn't halve enemy shields. That way the ships will still be
effective in thirty years.

Resist the temptation to base your fleet around
knights. Your fleet should remain BALANCED. The knights role is to
clean up after the fighters and archers have chewed up the enemy. Too
many of this class will eat all your fleet resources and get mauled by
enemy fighter stacks which ate up your own, smaller, stacks.

The Gladiator

Huge, top of the line death star type ships. They're
fun, but hideously inefficient. For the price of one Gladiator you
can buy, literally, 200 small fighters. Now, which would you rather
face? The purpose of the gladiator class is to carry all the cool,
huge toys you develop. This is where you deploy the black hole
generators, the death rays, and the plasma torps. Also, ALWAYS put on
AUTO REPAIR, and DON'T skimp on armor, shields, or attack value.
Maneuverability is of secondary importance to the other three.

The gladiator is a special purpose ship. Use one with
black hole generators to eat enemy stacks, preferably AFTER they have
engaged your fighters. They are also very tough, especially with
auto-repair, so large numbers of enemies who cannot kill it in one
round are basically doomed to die of attrition.

The Bomber

Don't build one. Its vulnerable and next to useless.
Strap a few bombs on everything you build (they are small), and you
won't need to waste resources on a ship which cannot fight.

Exception 1: n the opening, you may need a few dozen
bombers as bombs are still pretty large.
Exception 2: There isn't one.

Contributed by: Pat Casey


Ship design hint: Early in the came Computer players buy lots
of ships with gatling and other lasers. A class IV shield is
relatively easy to acquire and will make you INVULNERABLE to such
weapons. The contrapositive is, of course, also true. So upgrade your
fighters to neutron pellet guns as soon as possible.

Contributed by: Pat Casey

5.G.2 Best Weapons

At any rational tech level (I have yet to exceed 70 and I have
won on impossible large a number of times), the Death Ray is an
overpriced, oversized toy with no real use.
Consider that for the space of 1 death ray I can generally
strap on some 20 pulse phasors. Against anything but a dreadnought,
the pulse phasors are a better deal.
Pulse phasors: 12.5 DAM X 3 X 20 = 750 damage MEAN
Death Ray: 600 damage MEAN
Mind you shields will tend to shift this back towards the
death ray, but you get no points for overkill! It will still only kill
1 Fighter, while my pulse phasors could kill some 60.

At insane (above 70) tech levels, the death ray may be a
better deal, but at the levels I tend to reach, it just isn't worth
it. At least not the way I see things.

Contributed by Pat Casey

5.H Vital Technologies



5.I Diplomacy

Ok, some notes on spying in MOO.

1) Just because somebody is spying on you does not mean you will get
reports. They must A) succeed at spying on you and B) get caught before your
counter-intelligence types will report to you. What this means in practice is
that really good spies like the Darloks can rob you blind and either avoid
being caught or frame somebody else for the act.

2) The fact that you do not receive reports on spying is a GOOD sign.
It means your internal security forces are on the ball and people aren't
messing with you.

3) In most Easy, Simple, and Average games, the computer doesn't use
its spies well. Since it isn't spying heavily, you won't see much successful
computer espionage. Exception: The Darloks can do wonders with a small budget.

4) In any game with the Darloks, DON'T be too prepared to trust all
those reports about the Psilons spying on you. Accept the possibility, even
the likelihood, that the Darloks are actually behind it and framing another
race.

5) In any Hard or impossible game, IF you have a tech edge then you
MUST play with a high internal security or risk losing it. If you are behind
technically, then you can save money by not cracking down with the KGB types.

6) In my opinion, the only worthwhile use of spies is for espionage.
Factory destruction is just not cost effective. Exception: IF the DARLOKS,
then try these two gambits as they tend to be cost effective. First, try
forcing enemy planets into rebellion and then invading after the invariable
ground battles weaken the defender's empire. Alternately, try concentrating on
missile base sabotage over one planet to soften it up for invasion. Again, as
anybody but the Darloks, the cheapest way to blow up a missile base is with a
cruiser.

7) Espionage is HEAVILY dependent on your computer tech relative to
your target race. IF you can keep only one tech current and are counting on
spies for the rest, then concentrate on computer widgets.

I hope this A) clears up some confusion and B) gives people some nasty
ideas about how to use the Darloks fully.

Contributed by: Pat Casey


Spying is fairly hard, because:

1) Your spies have to survive the initial launch (or roll) of the
counter-intelligence (MI6 ? :-) forces, which is not too hard if you are not
spying against Darloks or a race with much higher rate in Computer Tech.
They have a unmodified 50% chance of being not stopped in their
activities.

2) The surviving spies have a 15 % chance (modified by a difference in Computer
Tech and the 'Darlok bonus') of actually getting something done. If you
are spying a race with a difference in Computer Tech of over 15 to his
advantage, you'll never succeed!

If one of your spies 'confesses' then you loose all the spies!

I found out that spying the Darloks (bonus) and Psilons (advanced
Computer Tech) is extremely hard.

Contributed by: Petteri Bergius


Some tips on exchanging technology --

Once I develop a tech, I trade it with everybody I know. This increases
the speed of researching a lot because you can get 5 new techs for one
of yours (assuming 5 opponents). And now that you have 5 new techs you
can trade them with everybody for more new techs. See how it goes?
Obviously, make sure you don't trade your level 50 item for a level 10
item. I only never trade biologicial bombs, doom virus an warp
dissipator. I always trade that antidote. I never trade things that
you can use in ground battle like armor or guns. I never trade any
engines unless he already has even better engines.

Contributed by Constantijn Enders

================================================================================
6.0 Tables
================================================================================

6.1 Technology

6.1.1 Cost of Tech in RPs for races average at making tech

Simple Easy Average Hard Impossible

Tech level 1 = 20 25 30 35 40
Tech level 2 = 80 100 120 140 160
Tech level 3 = 180 225 270 315 360
Tech level 4 = 320 400 480 560 640
Tech level 5 = 500 625 750 875 1000
Tech level 6 = 720 900 1080 1260 1440
Tech level 7 = 980 1225 1470 1715 1960
Tech level 8 = 1280 1600 1920 2240 2560
Tech level 9 = 1620 2025 2430 2835 3240
Tech level 10 = 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
Tech level 11 = 2420 3025 3630 4235 4840
Tech level 12 = 2880 3600 4320 5040 5760
Tech level 13 = 3380 4225 5070 5915 6760
Tech level 14 = 3920 4900 5880 6860 7840
Tech level 15 = 4500 5625 6750 7875 9000
Tech level 16 = 5120 6400 7680 8960 10240
Tech level 17 = 5780 7225 8670 10115 11560
Tech level 18 = 6480 8100 9720 11340 12960
Tech level 19 = 7220 9025 10830 12635 14440
Tech level 20 = 8000 10000 12000 14000 16000
Tech level 21 = 8820 11025 13230 15435 17640
Tech level 22 = 9680 12100 14520 16940 19360
Tech level 23 = 10580 13225 15870 18515 21160
Tech level 24 = 11520 14400 17280 20160 23040
Tech level 25 = 12500 15625 18750 21875 25000
Tech level 26 = 13520 16900 20280 23660 27040
Tech level 27 = 14580 18225 21870 25515 29160
Tech level 28 = 15680 19600 23520 27440 31360
Tech level 29 = 16820 21025 25230 29435 33640
Tech level 30 = 18000 22500 27000 31500 36000
Tech level 31 = 19220 24025 28830 33635 38440
Tech level 32 = 20480 25600 30720 35840 40960
Tech level 33 = 21780 27225 32670 38115 43560
Tech level 34 = 23120 28900 34680 40460 46240
Tech level 35 = 24500 30625 36750 42875 49000
Tech level 36 = 25920 32400 38880 45360 51840
Tech level 37 = 27380 34225 41070 47915 54760
Tech level 38 = 28880 36100 43320 50540 57760
Tech level 39 = 30420 38025 45630 53235 60840
Tech level 40 = 32000 40000 48000 56000 64000
Tech level 41 = 33620 42025 50430 58835 67240
Tech level 42 = 35280 44100 52920 61740 70560
Tech level 43 = 36980 46225 55470 64715 73960
Tech level 44 = 38720 48400 58080 67760 77440
Tech level 45 = 40500 50625 60750 70875 81000
Tech level 46 = 42320 52900 63480 74060 84640
Tech level 47 = 44180 55225 66270 77315 88360
Tech level 48 = 46080 57600 69120 80640 92160
Tech level 49 = 48020 60025 72030 84035 96040
Tech level 50 = 50000 62500 75000 87500 100000


6.1.2 Formula for research

OK, so has anyone figured out the _real_ formula for research in MOO? I tried
to implement it as written, and it certainly doesn't work. The interesting
things I found is that once past the Base Cost, your breakthrough chance
seems to increase by 1% for every 4% of the Base Cost you invest, at least
under some circumstances...

I found this by researching Improved Industrial Tech 9 (tech level 3) at
average level - the cost is 270 RP's. This is fine, and I should note I had no
other new technologies in Construction. By investing 270 RP's each turn, I
found that you reach the base cost the first turn (no surprise), then the
next 270 gives you only a 25% chance of discovering the technology - not
only is there a 4% to 1% conversion, but there isn't any 15% interest on
the first year's 270 investment. The next 270 RP's gave a 58% chance. So there
is eventually interest earned (without interest it would just be a 50% chance),
but there is some kind of delay built in. I figured out vaguely how this
worked, and the code below computes it. It does seem to work for constant
invested amounts, getting very similar results to MOO (+-1%; roundoff error
near as I can tell).

However, this code does not work for various cases. For example, if you first
invested 270 RP's (and so met the base cost) and then do 27% a turn, you get
a return of:
270 - meet base cost
27 more - 3% (fine so far)
27 more - 10%
27 more - 17%
27 more - 25%
27 more - 32%

There's a 7-8% gain each time, which (using the 4 to 1 rule) translates into
about 76-86 RP gain each later turn for only 27 RPs in - you seem to earn a
lot more RPs than your small investment would warrant. Even with the full 15%
of the previous years' investments you can't get from 3% to 10%. So maybe
there is a 2 to 1 conversion at low levels of investment after all. Anyway,
I've gone as far as I'd like with this puzzle - if anyone else makes any
headway, let us know!

BTW, the mean time for completing a project given a fixed percentage is
simply 100/percentage years, e.g. if you have an 8% breakthrough level and
then fund it at 1 RP a year to keep up the research (and so add minimal new
investment), you will complete the project in 12.5 years on the average.
Given the odd compounding behavior I saw with the 27 RP investments, it does
look like a slow trickle does get you a lot of bang for your buck (as the
rules say), but it's not at all clear to me how this algorithm works.


/*======== moo_rps.c ==========*/
/* Compute technology advances given the base cost and a per year investment.
* By prefixing with the "+" sign, e.g. "+27" (or whatever), the investment
* is used for this year only and a new one can be entered.
* Seems to work for constant investments, but doesn't work for cases like
* target: 270 invest: +270 27
*/

#include
#include
#include

#define BUFSIZE 256
char Buffer[BUFSIZE] ;

#define round(a) floor((a)+0.5)

main(argc,argv)
int argc; char *argv[];
{
int val ;
float target, invest, investsum, musthave, interest, lost_int ;
float chance, not_accumchance, origsum, old_interest, avg_year ;
int doit, year, cont_flag ;
float bc_per_rp = 4.0 ; /* not 2.0, as the docs say */

TargetInput:
printf( "target technology (in RPs): " ) ;
gets( Buffer ) ;
if ( sscanf( Buffer, "%d", &val ) != 1 ) goto TargetInput ;
if ( val <= 0 ) goto TargetInput ;
target = val ;

/* Compute investments */

/* at this level, investment must be done */
musthave = round(target * (1.0 + bc_per_rp)) ;
investsum = 0.0 ;
not_accumchance = 1.0 ;
old_interest = 0.0 ;
avg_year = 0.0 ;
cont_flag = 1 ;

year = 1 ;
while ( investsum < musthave ) {
if ( cont_flag ) {
InvestInput:
printf(
"investment (in RPs/year) [do `+93' for continued input]: " ) ;
gets( Buffer ) ;
if ( sscanf( Buffer, "%d", &val ) != 1 ) goto InvestInput ;
if ( val <= 0 ) goto InvestInput ;
cont_flag = strchr( Buffer, '+' ) ? 1 : 0 ;
invest = val ;
}

if ( year == 1 ) {
printf(
"
To reach technology of cost %f, investing %f per year

",
target, invest ) ;
printf(
"year investment to min chance accum chance
") ;
}

origsum = investsum ;

/* get interest for next year */
interest = round( investsum * 0.15 ) ;

if ( interest > old_interest ) interest = old_interest ;

if ( interest > invest ) {
lost_int = interest - invest ;
interest = invest ;
} else {
lost_int = 0.0 ;
}

investsum += invest + interest ;

/* check if we've reached breakthrough stage */
if ( investsum <= target ) {
printf( "%3d %14.0f %8.1f%% ",
year, investsum, 100.0 * investsum / target ) ;
} else {
/* note that additional research goes 4 RP to 1% increase */
chance = ( investsum - target ) / target / bc_per_rp ;
if ( chance > 1.0 ) chance = 1.0 ;
avg_year += not_accumchance * chance * (float)year ;
not_accumchance *= ( 1.0 - chance ) ;
printf( "%3d %14.0f %8.1f%% %9.0f%% %9.0f%%",
year, investsum, 100.0, (float)round( chance * 100.0 ),
(float)round((1.0 - not_accumchance) * 100.0) ) ;
}
if ( lost_int > 0.0 ) {
printf( " >>> Lost interest %g RPs
", lost_int ) ;
} else {
printf( "
" ) ;
}

old_interest = round( investsum * 0.15 ) ;

if ( old_interest > origsum ) {
old_interest = origsum ;
}
/*printf( "old interest %g, origsum %g
", old_interest, origsum ) ;*/
year++ ;
}

printf( "
Average year of completion: %.2f
", avg_year ) ;
}

Contributed by: Eric Haines


6.2 Weapons Comparison Charts

6.2.1 Estimated Damage for each Hit against different shields

The following two charts show estimated damage for each turn for each
weapon against each shield level:

Beam Weapons: Shields
name tech dmg(shots) sz/pow(bon) rng 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Laser 1 1- 4(x1) 10/ 25(+0) 1 2.5 1.5 0.7 0.2 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Hvy Laser 1 1- 7(x1) 30/ 75(+0) 2 4.0 3.0 2.1 1.4 0.9 0.4 0.1 -- -- -- -- --
Gat Laser 5 1- 4(x4) 20/ 70(+0) 1 10.0 6.0 3.0 1.0 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
^Neut. Pellet 7 2- 5(x1) 15/ 25(+0) 1 3.5 2.5 2.5 1.5 1.5 0.7 0.7 0.2 -- -- -- --
Ion Cannon 10 3- 8(x1) 15/ 35(+0) 1 5.5 4.5 3.5 2.5 1.7 1.0 0.5 0.2 -- -- -- --
Hvy Ion 10 3-15(x1) 45/105(+0) 2 9.0 8.0 7.0 6.0 5.1 4.2 3.5 2.8 1.6 0.8 0.2 --
^Mass Driver 13 5- 8(x1) 55/ 50(+0) 1 6.5 5.5 5.5 4.5 4.5 3.5 3.5 2.5 1.5 0.7 0.2 --
Neutron Blst 15 3-12(x1) 20/ 60(+0) 1 7.5 6.5 5.5 4.5 3.6 2.8 2.1 1.5 0.6 0.1 -- --
Hvy Blast 15 3-24(x1) 60/180(+0) 2 13.5 12.5 11.5 10.5 9.5 8.6 7.8 7.0 5.5 4.1 3.0 2.0

---

German

---

raviton 17 1-15(x1) 30/ 60(+0) 1 8.0 7.0 6.1 5.2 4.4 3.7 3.0 2.4 1.4 0.7 0.2 --
^Hard Beam 19 8-12(x1) 50/100(+0) 1 10.0 9.0 9.0 8.0 8.0 7.0 7.0 6.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 2.0
Fusion Beam 20 4-16(x1) 20/ 75(+0) 1 10.0 9.0 8.0 7.0 6.0 5.1 4.2 3.5 2.2 1.2 0.5 0.1
Hvy Fusion 20 4-30(x1) 60/225(+0) 2 17.0 16.0 15.0 14.0 13.0 12.0 11.1 10.2 8.6 7.0 5.7 4.4
Megabolt 25 2-20(x1) 30/ 65(+3) 1 11.0 10.0 9.0 8.1 7.2 6.3 5.5 4.8 3.5 2.4 1.5 0.8
Phasor 26 5-20(x1) 20/ 90(+0) 1 12.5 11.5 10.5 9.5 8.5 7.5 6.6 5.7 4.1 2.8 1.7 0.9
Hvy Phasor 26 5-40(x1) 60/270(+0) 2 22.5 21.5 20.5 19.5 18.5 17.5 16.5 15.6 13.8 12.1 10.5 9.0
Auto Blastor 28 4-16(x3) 30/ 90(+0) 1 30.0 27.0 24.0 21.0 18.0 15.2 12.7 10.4 6.5 3.5 1.4 0.2
~Tachyon Beam 30 1-25(x1) 30/ 80(+0) 1 13.0 12.0 11.0 10.1 9.2 8.4 7.6 6.8 5.4 4.2 3.1 2.2
^Gauss Auto 32 7-10(x4) 105/105(+0) 1 34.0 30.0 30.0 26.0 26.0 22.0 22.0 18.0 14.0 10.0 6.0 3.0
^Particle 33 10-20(x1) 90/ 75(+0) 2 15.0 14.0 14.0 13.0 13.0 12.0 12.0 11.0 10.0 9.0 8.0 7.0
Plasma Canon 35 6-30(x1) 30/110(+0) 1 18.0 17.0 16.0 15.0 14.0 13.0 12.0 11.0 9.2 7.6 6.1 4.8
Death Ray 36 200-1000(x1) 2000/2000(+0)3 600. 599. 598. 597. 596. 595. 594. 593. 591. 589. 587. 585.
Disruptor 37 10-40(x1) 70/160(+0) 2 25.0 24.0 23.0 22.0 21.0 20.0 19.0 18.0 16.0 14.0 12.2 10.5
Pulse Phasor 38 5-20(x3) 40/120(+0) 1 37.5 34.5 31.5 28.5 25.5 22.5 19.7 17.1 12.4 8.4 5.2 2.8
Tri-focus Pl 45 20-50(x1) 70/180(+0) 1 35.0 34.0 33.0 32.0 31.0 30.0 29.0 28.0 26.0 24.0 22.0 20.0
Stellar Conv 46 10-35(x4) 200/300(+0) 3 90.0 86.0 82.0 78.0 74.0 70.0 66.0 62.0 54.0 46.2 38.9 32.3
Mauler Dev 48 20-100(x1) 150/300(+0) 1 60.0 59.0 58.0 57.0 56.0 55.0 54.0 53.0 51.0 49.0 47.0 45.0

~: These are streaming weapons, so damage carries over from one target to another
^: These are penetrating weapons, that halve the effects of shields.

Missiles and Torpedoes: Shields
name tech dmg(shots) sz/pow(bon) spd 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Nuclear 1 4(x1) 50/ 20(+0) 2.0 4 3 2 1 - - - - - - - -
Hyper-V 4 6(x1) 70/ 20(+0) 2.5 6 5 4 3 2 1 - - - - - -
Hyper-X 7 8(x1) 100/ 20(+1) 2.5 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 - - - -
Scatter V 11 6(x5) 115/ 50(+0) 2.5 30 25 20 15 10 5 - - - - - -
Merculite 14 10(x1) 105/ 20(+2) 3.0 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 1 - - -
Stinger 18 15(x1) 155/ 30(+3) 3.5 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 6 4 2 -
Anti-Mat Trp 23 30(x1) 75/300(+4) 4.0 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 21 19 17 15
Scatter VII 27 10(x7) 230/ 50(+2) 3.0 70 63 56 49 42 35 28 21 7 - - -
Pulson 29 20(x1) 160/ 40(+4) 4.0 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 11 9 7 5
Hercular 34 25(x1) 220/ 40(+5) 4.5 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 16 14 12 10
Hellfire Trp 40 25(x4) 150/350(+6) 5.0 100 96 92 88 84 80 76 72 64 56 48 40
Zeon 41 30(x1) 250/ 50(+6) 5.0 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 21 19 17 15
Proton Torp 43 60(x1) 100/400(+6) 8.0 60 59 58 57 56 55 54 53 51 49 47 45
Scatter X 44 15(x10) 250/ 50(+3) 3.5 150 140 130 120 110 100 90 80 60 40 20 -
Plasma Torp 50 135(x1) 150/450(+7) 6.0 135 134 133 132 131 130 129 128 126 124 122 120

Note: Plasma Torpedo stats assume that torpedo fired at adjacent stack.

6.2.2 Shield Protection

Planet shield level where weapons cease to affect:

2: Laser, Gatling Laser
4: Heavy Laser, Ion Cannon, Nuclear Missile

Planetary Shield V:
5: Neutron Pellet Gun
6: Neutron Blaster, Hyper V Rockets, Scatter Pack Vs
7: Mass Driver, Heavy Laser
8: Heavy Ion Cannon, Graviton Beam, Fusion Beam, Auto Blaster, Hyper X Missiles

Planetary Shield X:
10: Megabolt Cannon, Phasor, Pulse Phasor, Gauss Autocannon, Merculite Missiles, Scatter Pack VIIs
12: Nuclear Bomb, Hard Beam, Heavy Blast Cannon
13: Tachyon Beam, Hellfire Torps
15: Heavy Fusion Beam, Plasma Cannon, Stinger Missiles, Scatter Pack Xs, Anti-Matter Torps

Planetary Shield XV:
18: Stellar Converter
20: Heavy Phasor, Disruptor, Fusion Bomb, Pulson Missile

Planetary Shield XX:
25: Tri-Focus Plasma, Hercular Missiles
31: Zeon Missiles, Proton Torpedoes

Weapons beyond max defense: Mauler Device, Death Ray, Anti-Matter Bomb, Omega-V Bomb,
Neutronium Bomb, Plasma Torps.
(35 is maximum Planet Defense)


Ship shield level where weapons cease to affect:

4: Laser, Gatling Laser, Nuclear Missile
6: Hyper V Rockets, Scatter Pack Vs
7: Heavy Laser
9: Neutron Pellet Gun, Ion Cannon, Hyper X Missiles
11: Merculite Missiles, Scatter Pack VIIs
13: Neutron Blaster
15: Heavy Ion Cannon, Fusion Beam, Auto Blastor, Graviton Beam, Mass Driver, Stinger Missiles, Scatter Pack Xs

Following weapons beyond max defense:
Megabolt Cannon, Phasor, Pulse Phasor, Gauss Autocannon, Hard Beam, Heavy Blast Cannon,
Tachyon Beam, Hellfire Torps, Heavy Fusion Beam, Plasma Cannon, Anti-Matter Torps,
Stellar Converter, Heavy Phasor, Disruptor, Pulson Missile, Tri-Focus Plasma, Hercular Missiles,
Zeon Missiles, Proton Torpedoes, Mauler Device, Death Ray, Plasma Torps.


6.2.3 Damage per unit of space:

I have noted that if you are using current technology, the space that
a weapon takes up is pretty well denoted by the following equation.

(current size + power * (1 - current tech level/100)

at least through tech level 60.

The following tables then, show the total damage per turn (assuming
all shots hit) for each unit of space used. This is a handy means of
comparing weapons of different tech levels:



Weapon comparison for tech level 10 : Assumption: Space = size + power * .9

Beam Weapons: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) rng 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Laser 1 2/ 28(+0) 1 .089 .054 .027 .009 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Hvy Laser 1 5/ 84(+0) 2 .048 .036 .026 .017 .010 .005 .002 -- -- -- -- --
Gat Laser 5 7/ 77(+0) 1 .130 .078 .039 .013 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
^Neut. Pellet 7 3/ 35(+0) 1 .100 .071 .071 .043 .043 .021 .021 .007 -- -- -- --
Ion Cannon 10 4/ 47(+0) 1 .117 .096 .074 .053 .035 .021 .011 .004 -- -- -- --
Hvy Ion 10 11/140(+0) 2 .064 .057 .050 .043 .036 .030 .025 .020 .012 .005 .002 --

Missiles and Torpedoes: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) spd 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Nuclear 1 27/ 45(+0) 2.0 .089 .067 .044 .022 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Hyper-V 4 46/ 64(+0) 2.5 .094 .078 .062 .047 .031 .016 -- -- -- -- -- --
Hyper-X 7 81/ 99(+1) 2.5 .081 .071 .061 .051 .040 .030 .020 .010 -- -- -- --




Weapon comparison for tech level 20 : Assumption: Space = size + power * .8

Beam Weapons: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) rng 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Laser 1 1/ 23(+0) 1 .109 .065 .033 .011 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Hvy Laser 1 3/ 68(+0) 2 .059 .044 .032 .021 .013 .006 .002 -- -- -- -- --
Gat Laser 5 4/ 63(+0) 1 .159 .095 .048 .016 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
^Neut. Pellet 7 2/ 26(+0) 1 .135 .096 .096 .058 .058 .029 .029 .010 -- -- -- --
Ion Cannon 10 3/ 36(+0) 1 .153 .125 .097 .069 .046 .028 .014 .005 -- -- -- --
Hvy Ion 10 6/107(+0) 2 .084 .075 .065 .056 .047 .040 .032 .026 .015 .007 .002 --
^Mass Driver 13 6/ 74(+0) 1 .088 .074 .074 .061 .061 .047 .047 .034 .020 .010 .003 --
Neutron Blst 15 5/ 62(+0) 1 .121 .105 .089 .073 .058 .045 .034 .024 .010 .002 -- --
Hvy Blast 15 13/186(+0) 2 .073 .067 .062 .056 .051 .046 .042 .037 .029 .022 .016 .011

---

German

---

raviton 17 5/ 72(+0) 1 .111 .097 .084 .072 .061 .051 .042 .033 .019 .009 .003 --
^Hard Beam 19 12/127(+0) 1 .079 .071 .071 .063 .063 .055 .055 .047 .039 .031 .024 .016
Fusion Beam 20 7/ 80(+0) 1 .125 .113 .100 .087 .075 .063 .053 .043 .027 .014 .006 .001
Hvy Fusion 20 21/240(+0) 2 .071 .067 .062 .058 .054 .050 .046 .043 .036 .029 .024 .019

Missiles and Torpedoes: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) spd 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Nuclear 1 13/ 29(+0) 2.0 .138 .103 .069 .034 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Hyper-V 4 23/ 39(+0) 2.5 .154 .128 .103 .077 .051 .026 -- -- -- -- -- --
Hyper-X 7 41/ 57(+1) 2.5 .140 .123 .105 .088 .070 .053 .035 .018 -- -- -- --
Scatter V 11 62/102(+0) 2.5 .294 .245 .196 .147 .098 .049 -- -- -- -- -- --
Merculite 14 69/ 85(+2) 3.0 .118 .106 .094 .082 .071 .059 .047 .035 .012 -- -- --
Stinger 18 135/159(+3) 3.5 .094 .088 .082 .075 .069 .063 .057 .050 .038 .025 .013 --




Weapon comparison for tech level 30 : Assumption: Space = size + power * .7

Beam Weapons: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) rng 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Laser 1 1/ 19(+0) 1 .132 .079 .039 .013 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Hvy Laser 1 2/ 57(+0) 2 .070 .053 .038 .025 .015 .008 .003 -- -- -- -- --
Gat Laser 5 2/ 53(+0) 1 .189 .113 .057 .019 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
^Neut. Pellet 7 1/ 21(+0) 1 .167 .119 .119 .071 .071 .036 .036 .012 -- -- -- --
Ion Cannon 10 2/ 29(+0) 1 .190 .155 .121 .086 .057 .034 .017 .006 -- -- -- --
Hvy Ion 10 3/ 85(+0) 2 .106 .094 .082 .071 .060 .050 .041 .033 .019 .009 .003 --
^Mass Driver 13 3/ 52(+0) 1 .125 .106 .106 .087 .087 .067 .067 .048 .029 .014 .005 --
Neutron Blst 15 3/ 49(+0) 1 .153 .133 .112 .092 .073 .057 .043 .031 .012 .002 -- --
Hvy Blast 15 7/147(+0) 2 .092 .085 .078 .071 .065 .059 .053 .047 .037 .028 .020 .014

---

German

---

raviton 17 3/ 54(+0) 1 .148 .130 .112 .096 .081 .068 .056 .044 .026 .012 .004 --
^Hard Beam 19 6/ 93(+0) 1 .108 .097 .097 .086 .086 .075 .075 .065 .054 .043 .032 .022
Fusion Beam 20 4/ 63(+0) 1 .159 .143 .127 .111 .095 .081 .067 .055 .034 .018 .007 .001
Hvy Fusion 20 11/188(+0) 2 .090 .085 .080 .074 .069 .064 .059 .054 .046 .037 .030 .024
Megabolt 25 6/ 67(+3) 1 .164 .149 .134 .120 .107 .094 .082 .071 .052 .035 .022 .012
Phasor 26 7/ 78(+0) 1 .160 .147 .135 .122 .109 .096 .084 .073 .053 .036 .022 .012
Hvy Phasor 26 20/234(+0) 2 .096 .092 .088 .083 .079 .075 .071 .067 .059 .052 .045 .039
Auto Blastor 28 13/ 89(+0) 1 .337 .303 .270 .236 .202 .171 .143 .117 .073 .039 .016 .003
~Tachyon Beam 30 9/ 86(+0) 1 .151 .140 .128 .118 .107 .098 .088 .080 .063 .049 .036 .026

Missiles and Torpedoes: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) spd 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Nuclear 1 7/ 21(+0) 2.0 .190 .143 .095 .048 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Hyper-V 4 12/ 26(+0) 2.5 .231 .192 .154 .115 .077 .038 -- -- -- -- -- --
Hyper-X 7 20/ 34(+1) 2.5 .235 .206 .176 .147 .118 .088 .059 .029 -- -- -- --
Scatter V 11 31/ 66(+0) 2.5 .455 .379 .303 .227 .152 .076 -- -- -- -- -- --
Merculite 14 35/ 49(+2) 3.0 .204 .184 .163 .143 .122 .102 .082 .061 .020 -- -- --
Stinger 18 67/ 88(+3) 3.5 .170 .159 .148 .136 .125 .114 .102 .091 .068 .045 .023 --
Anti-Mat Trp 23 46/256(+4) 4.0 .117 .113 .109 .105 .102 .098 .094 .090 .082 .074 .066 .059
Scatter VII 27 187/222(+2) 3.0 .315 .284 .252 .221 .189 .158 .126 .095 .032 -- -- --
Pulson 29 149/177(+4) 4.0 .113 .107 .102 .096 .090 .085 .079 .073 .062 .051 .040 .028




Weapon comparison for tech level 40 : Assumption: Space = size + power * .6

Beam Weapons: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) rng 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Laser 1 1/ 16(+0) 1 .156 .094 .047 .016 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Hvy Laser 1 1/ 47(+0) 2 .085 .064 .046 .030 .018 .009 .003 -- -- -- -- --
Gat Laser 5 1/ 44(+0) 1 .227 .136 .068 .023 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
^Neut. Pellet 7 1/ 17(+0) 1 .206 .147 .147 .088 .088 .044 .044 .015 -- -- -- --
Ion Cannon 10 1/ 23(+0) 1 .239 .196 .152 .109 .072 .043 .022 .007 -- -- -- --
Hvy Ion 10 2/ 69(+0) 2 .130 .116 .101 .087 .074 .061 .050 .040 .023 .011 .003 --
^Mass Driver 13 2/ 38(+0) 1 .171 .145 .145 .118 .118 .092 .092 .066 .039 .020 .007 --
Neutron Blst 15 2/ 40(+0) 1 .187 .163 .138 .113 .090 .070 .052 .037 .015 .003 -- --
Hvy Blast 15 4/119(+0) 2 .113 .105 .097 .088 .080 .073 .065 .058 .046 .035 .025 .017

---

German

---

raviton 17 2/ 42(+0) 1 .190 .167 .144 .124 .105 .087 .071 .057 .033 .016 .005 --
^Hard Beam 19 3/ 72(+0) 1 .139 .125 .125 .111 .111 .097 .097 .083 .069 .056 .042 .028
Fusion Beam 20 2/ 50(+0) 1 .200 .180 .160 .140 .120 .102 .085 .069 .043 .023 .009 .002
Hvy Fusion 20 6/150(+0) 2 .113 .107 .100 .093 .087 .080 .074 .068 .057 .047 .038 .030
Megabolt 25 3/ 50(+3) 1 .220 .200 .180 .161 .143 .126 .111 .096 .069 .047 .029 .016
Phasor 26 4/ 62(+0) 1 .202 .185 .169 .153 .137 .121 .106 .092 .067 .045 .028 .015
Hvy Phasor 26 10/185(+0) 2 .122 .116 .111 .105 .100 .095 .089 .084 .074 .065 .057 .049
Auto Blastor 28 7/ 67(+0) 1 .448 .403 .358 .313 .269 .227 .189 .155 .096 .052 .021 .003
~Tachyon Beam 30 5/ 63(+0) 1 .206 .190 .175 .161 .147 .133 .121 .109 .086 .067 .050 .035
^Gauss Auto 32 17/123(+0) 1 .276 .244 .244 .211 .211 .179 .179 .146 .114 .081 .049 .024
^Particle 33 10/100(+0) 2 .150 .140 .140 .130 .130 .120 .120 .110 .100 .090 .080 .070
Plasma Canon 35 9/ 87(+0) 1 .207 .195 .184 .172 .161 .149 .138 .127 .106 .087 .070 .055
Death Ray 36 228/2716(+0) 3 .221 .221 .220 .220 .219 .219 .219 .218 .218 .217 .216 .215
Disruptor 37 18/153(+0) 2 .163 .157 .150 .144 .137 .131 .124 .118 .105 .092 .080 .069
Pulse Phasor 38 22/107(+0) 1 .350 .322 .294 .266 .238 .210 .184 .159 .116 .079 .049 .026

Missiles and Torpedoes: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) spd 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Nuclear 1 3/ 15(+0) 2.0 .267 .200 .133 .067 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Hyper-V 4 6/ 18(+0) 2.5 .333 .278 .222 .167 .111 .056 -- -- -- -- -- --
Hyper-X 7 10/ 22(+1) 2.5 .364 .318 .273 .227 .182 .136 .091 .045 -- -- -- --
Scatter V 11 15/ 45(+0) 2.5 .667 .556 .444 .333 .222 .111 -- -- -- -- -- --
Merculite 14 17/ 29(+2) 3.0 .345 .310 .276 .241 .207 .172 .138 .103 .034 -- -- --
Stinger 18 34/ 52(+3) 3.5 .288 .269 .250 .231 .212 .192 .173 .154 .115 .077 .038 --
Anti-Mat Trp 23 23/203(+4) 4.0 .148 .143 .138 .133 .128 .123 .118 .113 .103 .094 .084 .074
Scatter VII 27 93/123(+2) 3.0 .569 .512 .455 .398 .341 .285 .228 .171 .057 -- -- --
Pulson 29 75/ 99(+4) 4.0 .202 .192 .182 .172 .162 .152 .141 .131 .111 .091 .071 .051
Hercular 34 145/169(+5) 4.5 .148 .142 .136 .130 .124 .118 .112 .107 .095 .083 .071 .059
Hellfire Trp 40 150/360(+6) 5.0 .278 .267 .256 .244 .233 .222 .211 .200 .178 .156 .133 .111




Weapon comparison for tech level 50 : Assumption: Space = size + power * .5

Beam Weapons: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) rng 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Ion Cannon 10 1/ 19(+0) 1 .289 .237 .184 .132 .088 .053 .026 .009 -- -- -- --
Hvy Ion 10 1/ 56(+0) 2 .161 .143 .125 .107 .091 .076 .062 .049 .029 .014 .004 --
^Mass Driver 13 1/ 29(+0) 1 .224 .190 .190 .155 .155 .121 .121 .086 .052 .026 .009 --
Neutron Blst 15 1/ 32(+0) 1 .234 .203 .172 .141 .113 .087 .066 .047 .019 .003 -- --
Hvy Blast 15 2/ 95(+0) 2 .142 .132 .121 .111 .100 .091 .082 .073 .057 .044 .032 .022

---

German

---

raviton 17 1/ 33(+0) 1 .242 .212 .184 .158 .133 .111 .091 .073 .042 .020 .006 --
^Hard Beam 19 2/ 56(+0) 1 .179 .161 .161 .143 .143 .125 .125 .107 .089 .071 .054 .036
Fusion Beam 20 1/ 41(+0) 1 .244 .220 .195 .171 .146 .124 .103 .084 .053 .028 .011 .002
Hvy Fusion 20 3/121(+0) 2 .140 .132 .124 .116 .107 .099 .092 .084 .071 .058 .047 .037
Megabolt 25 2/ 38(+3) 1 .289 .263 .237 .212 .188 .166 .145 .126 .091 .062 .039 .021
Phasor 26 2/ 49(+0) 1 .255 .235 .214 .194 .173 .153 .134 .116 .084 .057 .036 .019
Hvy Phasor 26 5/146(+0) 2 .154 .147 .140 .134 .127 .120 .113 .107 .094 .083 .072 .062
Auto Blastor 28 4/ 52(+0) 1 .577 .519 .462 .404 .346 .293 .244 .200 .124 .067 .027 .004
~Tachyon Beam 30 3/ 48(+0) 1 .271 .250 .230 .211 .193 .175 .158 .142 .113 .087 .065 .046
^Gauss Auto 32 9/ 83(+0) 1 .410 .361 .361 .313 .313 .265 .265 .217 .169 .120 .072 .036
^Particle 33 5/ 66(+0) 2 .227 .212 .212 .197 .197 .182 .182 .167 .152 .136 .121 .106
Plasma Canon 35 5/ 66(+0) 1 .273 .258 .242 .227 .212 .197 .182 .167 .140 .115 .093 .073
Death Ray 36 114/1758(+0) 3 .341 .341 .340 .340 .339 .338 .338 .337 .336 .335 .334 .333
Disruptor 37 9/108(+0) 2 .231 .222 .213 .204 .194 .185 .176 .167 .148 .130 .113 .097
Pulse Phasor 38 11/ 77(+0) 1 .487 .448 .409 .370 .331 .292 .256 .222 .161 .110 .068 .037
Tri-focus Pl 45 18/139(+0) 1 .252 .245 .237 .230 .223 .216 .209 .201 .187 .173 .158 .144
Stellar Conv 46 38/302(+0) 3 .298 .285 .272 .258 .245 .232 .219 .205 .179 .153 .129 .107
Mauler Dev 48 48/281(+0) 1 .214 .210 .206 .203 .199 .196 .192 .189 .181 .174 .167 .160

Missiles and Torpedoes: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) spd 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Scatter V 11 8/ 33(+0) 2.5 .909 .758 .606 .455 .303 .152 -- -- -- -- -- --
Merculite 14 9/ 19(+2) 3.0 .526 .474 .421 .368 .316 .263 .211 .158 .053 -- -- --
Stinger 18 17/ 32(+3) 3.5 .469 .437 .406 .375 .344 .312 .281 .250 .187 .125 .062 --
Anti-Mat Trp 23 12/162(+4) 4.0 .185 .179 .173 .167 .160 .154 .148 .142 .130 .117 .105 .093
Scatter VII 27 47/ 72(+2) 3.0 .972 .875 .778 .681 .583 .486 .389 .292 .097 -- -- --
Pulson 29 37/ 57(+4) 4.0 .351 .333 .316 .298 .281 .263 .246 .228 .193 .158 .123 .088
Hercular 34 73/ 93(+5) 4.5 .269 .258 .247 .237 .226 .215 .204 .194 .172 .151 .129 .108
Hellfire Trp 40 75/250(+6) 5.0 .400 .384 .368 .352 .336 .320 .304 .288 .256 .224 .192 .160
Zeon 41 134/159(+6) 5.0 .189 .182 .176 .170 .164 .157 .151 .145 .132 .119 .107 .094
Proton Torp 43 62/262(+6) 8.0 .229 .225 .221 .218 .214 .210 .206 .202 .195 .187 .179 .172
Scatter X 44 165/190(+3) 3.5 .789 .737 .684 .632 .579 .526 .474 .421 .316 .211 .105 --
Plasma Torp 50 150/375(+7) 6.0 .360 .357 .355 .352 .349 .347 .344 .341 .336 .331 .325 .320






Weapon comparison for tech level 60 : Assumption: Space = size + power * .4

Beam Weapons: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) rng 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Fusion Beam 20 1/ 31(+0) 1 .323 .290 .258 .226 .194 .164 .136 .112 .069 .037 .015 .002
Hvy Fusion 20 2/ 94(+0) 2 .181 .170 .160 .149 .138 .128 .118 .109 .091 .075 .060 .047
Megabolt 25 1/ 29(+3) 1 .379 .345 .310 .278 .247 .218 .191 .165 .120 .082 .051 .027
Phasor 26 1/ 38(+0) 1 .329 .303 .276 .250 .224 .197 .173 .150 .109 .074 .046 .025
Hvy Phasor 26 3/114(+0) 2 .197 .189 .180 .171 .162 .154 .145 .137 .121 .106 .092 .079
Auto Blastor 28 2/ 39(+0) 1 .769 .692 .615 .538 .462 .391 .325 .266 .166 .089 .036 .006
~Tachyon Beam 30 2/ 36(+0) 1 .361 .333 .307 .281 .257 .233 .211 .190 .151 .117 .087 .061
^Gauss Auto 32 5/ 57(+0) 1 .596 .526 .526 .456 .456 .386 .386 .316 .246 .175 .105 .053
^Particle 33 3/ 44(+0) 2 .341 .318 .318 .295 .295 .273 .273 .250 .227 .205 .182 .159
Plasma Canon 35 3/ 49(+0) 1 .367 .347 .327 .306 .286 .265 .245 .225 .189 .155 .125 .098
Death Ray 36 57/1179(+0) 3 .509 .508 .507 .506 .506 .505 .504 .503 .501 .500 .498 .496
Disruptor 37 5/ 78(+0) 2 .321 .308 .295 .282 .269 .256 .244 .231 .205 .180 .156 .134
Pulse Phasor 38 6/ 57(+0) 1 .658 .605 .553 .500 .447 .395 .345 .299 .217 .148 .092 .049
Tri-focus Pl 45 9/ 97(+0) 1 .361 .351 .340 .330 .320 .309 .299 .289 .268 .247 .227 .206
Stellar Conv 46 19/196(+0) 3 .459 .439 .418 .398 .378 .357 .337 .316 .276 .235 .199 .165
Mauler Dev 48 24/185(+0) 1 .324 .319 .314 .308 .303 .297 .292 .286 .276 .265 .254 .243

Missiles and Torpedoes: Shields
name tech cost/spc(bon) spd 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 11 13 15

Anti-Mat Trp 23 6/126(+4) 4.0 .238 .230 .222 .214 .206 .198 .190 .183 .167 .151 .135 .119
Scatter VII 27 23/ 43(+2) 3.0 1.628 1.465 1.302 1.140 .977 .814 .651 .488 .163 -- -- --
Pulson 29 19/ 35(+4) 4.0 .571 .543 .514 .486 .457 .429 .400 .371 .314 .257 .200 .143
Hercular 34 36/ 52(+5) 4.5 .481 .462 .442 .423 .404 .385 .365 .346 .308 .269 .231 .192
Hellfire Trp 40 38/178(+6) 5.0 .562 .539 .517 .494 .472 .449 .427 .404 .360 .315 .270 .225
Zeon 41 67/ 87(+6) 5.0 .345 .333 .322 .310 .299 .287 .276 .264 .241 .218 .195 .172
Proton Torp 43 31/191(+6) 8.0 .314 .309 .304 .298 .293 .288 .283 .277 .267 .257 .246 .236
Scatter X 44 82/102(+3) 3.5 1.471 1.373 1.275 1.176 1.078 .980 .882 .784 .588 .392 .196 --
Plasma Torp 50 75/255(+7) 6.0 .529 .525 .522 .518 .514 .510 .506 .502 .494 .486 .478 .471

Contributed by Jim Cox (cox@unx.sas.com)

-------------

Anton makes the following observations
about the previous set of tables:

A comment on the tables in section 6.2:

They are valid as long as

attack-defense =< 5

If the attack level exceeds the defense level by more than 5, the
minimum damage of the weapon will increase. Weapons with a big damage
range (tachyon beam, death ray) will profit most, while missiles will
not profit at all.


On a related note, not every increase in attack or defense level is
worth the same. We can see this in the following chart:

+5 +4 +3 +2 +1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 5% 5%
1.0* 1.11 1.13 1.14 1.17 1.20 1.25 1.33 1.50 2.00 2.00 1.00 1.00

*) further improvements in attack increase the minimum damage of a weapon

The first line displays the difference attack-defense, the second
displays the hit probability, and the third displays, by what factor
the hit probability changes if the difference is changed by one level.

As you can see, if your adversary has defense level 6, increasing the
attack level from 0 to 1 will not do any good, increasing it to 3 will
quadruple your hits, increasing it to 4 will give you another 50% and
then the returns start to diminish. At some point it will be better to
load more weapons instead of a better weapons computer.

On the defense, you have increasing returns for every level you add
(until your defense level exceeds the attack level by 5). So, if you
put any ECM jammer in at all, it should be a good one. And if your
defense level exceeds the enemy's attack level, you should probably
put in a maneuverability of 5 instead of 4 even though it does not
increase combat speed.

This also explains Pat Caseys observation that the defense bonus of
the Alkari is better than the attack bonus of the Mrrshan: if the
basic attack and defense levels are about equal ( as they often are),
increasing the defense level is better than increasing the attack
level.

At least, that's the theory. Meanwhile, I still have to figure out why
the 45 Scatterpack-X of the (average) Guardian (attack level 10+3)
killed 70-100 of my fighters (missile defense 21), while the expected
value was 22.5 (45*10*5%).


6.3. Ground Combat Odds

[ Editor's note: I've adjusted the Bulrathi's racial bonus to match
that in patch 1.2. It was upped from 20 to 25. There is also a
"defending race" bonus for the non-attacking race (+5) as of 1.3.
Thanks to Brian Wade for this info. ]

Following is a guide for how ground combat is determined:

GROUND ROLL = d100 + Personal Combat Armor + Ship Armor Material
+ Personal Weapon + Race Bonus

(d100 stands for a die roll uniformly distributed between 1 and 100).

Individual troopers battle each other one on one. Both sides do a
ground role, highest wins and lives, the other loses a trooper. The
side that has eliminated all of the opponent troopers is the victor.


Personal Shields (from force field technology):

None(1) - 0
Personal Deflector Shield(8) - +10
Personal Absorption Shield(21) - +20
Personal Barrier Shield(38) - +30

Personal Armor (from Construction technology):

Combat Armor(1) - 0
Battle Suits(11) - +10
Armored Exoskeleton(24) - +20
Powered Armor(40) - +30

Ship Armor (from Construction technology):

Titanium Armor(1) - 0
Duralloy Armor(10) - +5
Zortrium Armor(17) - +10
Andrium Armor(26) - +15
Tritanium Armor(34) - +20
Adamantium Armor(42) - +25
Neutronium Armor(50) - +30

Weapons: (from Weapons technology)

None(1) - 0
Hand Lasers(2) - +5
Ion Rifle(12) - +10
Fusion Rifle(24) - +20
Hand Phasor(31) - +25
Plasma Rifle(42) - +30

Racial Bonus is +25 if Bulrathi, otherwise 0
+5 if you are defending (v 1.3)


To figure out ratio that is needed, add your highest bonuses in each
category together, subtract the highest bonuses for your opponent, and
consult the following formula or table for expected losses:


P(Losing) = .5 * (100-Diff)*(99-Diff)
_________________________
(100)^2

P(Tie) = (100-Diff)
----------
(100)^2

So Expected lost = Chance you lose
--------------------------------- * Opponents # of troops
(1-Chance you lose-Chance you tie)


This leads to the following table:

Differential Expected Loss as Percentage of Opponent's forces
------------ ------------------------------------------------
0 100%
+5 82%
+10 68%
+15 56%
+20 47%
+25 39%
+30 32%
+40 22%
+50 14%
+60 8%
+70 5%
+80 2%
+90 < 1% (maximum differential if not Bulrathis)

For example, you are the Bulrathis. You have discovered: hand lasers,
ion rifle, Armored Exoskeleton, Adamantium Armor. Your opponents have
made no ship armor advances, but have Personal Deflector Shields, also
Armored Exoskeleton, and Hand Lasers.

Their bonus would be 10 (for shield) + 20 (Armored Exoskeleton) + 5
(Hand Lasers) + 5 (defending). Yours would be 0 (for shield) + 25
(Adamantium) + 20 (Exoskeleton) + 10 (ion rifle) + 25 (racial bonus).

Your differential would be +40. You want to send colonists from two
colonies to take a world of the opponents with 100 pop. If you send
a total of 100 pop, you should expect approximately 78 to survive the
battle.


Contributed by Jim Cox and Dave Chaloux


6.4 Guardian Stats

Okay....I wasn't gonna post my Guardian cheat sheet, but I will
anyway.
Simple Easy Average Hard Impossible
Scatter Pack X's (5c) 5 25 45 65 85
Stellar Converters 5 15 25 35 45
Plasma Torpedos 6 9 12 15 18
Beam/Missile Defense 1 3 5 7 9
Shield Level 5 6 7 8 9
Hit Points (x1000) 2 4 6 8 10

Standard Features:
1 Death Ray
Attack Level 10
Speed 2

Specials:
High Energy Focus
Lightning Shield

Contributed by: psifire@netcom.com (Mathew Yee)

6.5 Fleet size necessary to take out Guardian with beam weapons

This is fleet size required to have about a 50% chance of success,
according to what attack computer you can fit along with 1 beam.

average 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

neutron pellet 27167 14303 7695 5439 4279 3551 3087 2737 2459 2260
mass driver 6742 3754 2181 1624 1346 1185 1036 942 896 829
neutron blaster 14303 7695 4279 3087 2459 2095 1831 1624 1485 1370
graviton beam 9387 5125 2930 2145 1737 1485 1328 1207 1108 1024
hard beam 3754 2181 1346 1036 896 800 725 663 640 590
fusion beam 6799 3783 2195 1666 1353 1191 1040 946 900 832
megabolt cannon 1329 1109 983 888 811 746 720 667
phasor 4444 2573 1558 1198 1003 891 807 737 677 655
auto blastor 2756 1666 1040 832 728 652 591 571 523 511
tachyon beam 3847 2243 1361 1046 904 806 730 667 643 593
particle beam 2459 1485 982 761 667 597 572 522 509 466
plasma cannon 4444 2573 1558 1198 1003 891 807 737 677 655

hard 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

neutron pellet 103178103178103178 53177 27742 19133 14741 12080 10306 8989
mass driver 12080 12080 12080 6628 3793 2775 2288 1961 1714 1556
neutron blaster 27742 27742 27742 14741 8045 5697 4523 3793 3306 2933
graviton beam 15685 15685 15685 8517 4781 3492 2782 2374 2116 1876
hard beam 5697 5697 5697 3306 2001 1537 1284 1140 1030 982
fusion beam 11060 11060 11060 6117 3516 2576 2128 1824 1636 1490
megabolt cannon 4446 2637 1975 1645 1412 1271 1158 1105 1021 989
phasor 6794 6794 6794 3854 2319 1778 1486 1276 1150 1092
auto blastor 4368 4368 4368 2576 1636 1265 1101 985 894 816
tachyon beam 5619 5619 5619 3266 1981 1524 1274 1132 1023 977
particle beam 3531 3531 3531 2135 1372 1104 926 871 791 722
plasma cannon 6794 6794 6794 3854 2319 1778 1486 1276 1150 1092

impossible 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

neutron pellet 129022129022129022129022129022 66492 34732 23907 18467 15137
mass driver 15137 15137 15137 15137 15137 8312 4762 3487 2877 2467
neutron blaster 55997 55997 55997 55997 55997 29347 15692 10975 8617 7147
graviton beam 25446 25446 25446 25446 25446 13686 7559 5443 4331 3685
hard beam 7147 7147 7147 7147 7147 4152 2517 1935 1617 1437
fusion beam 17286 17286 17286 17286 17286 9441 5354 3918 3173 2715
megabolt cannon 11333 11333 6355 3701 2761 2292 1966 1767 1609 1532
phasor 9805 9805 9805 9805 9805 5508 3250 2479 2066 1774
auto blastor 6735 6735 6735 6735 6735 3918 2373 1876 1572 1401
tachyon beam 7772 7772 7772 7772 7772 4464 2701 2076 1736 1543
particle beam 4434 4434 4434 4434 4434 2686 1729 1392 1168 1100
plasma cannon 9805 9805 9805 9805 9805 5508 3250 2479 2066 1774

Contributed by csmith@stoneboro.uucp.cirr.com (Chris Smith)

================================================================================
7 Technology Listing
================================================================================

7.1 COMPUTER:

Battle Scanner Reveals technical specifications of enemy
spacecraft in combat.

Ecm Jammer Mark I Adds 1 level to defense against enemy missile
attacks.

Deep Space Scanner Detects enemy ships up to 5 parsecs away from
your colonie s and 1 parsec away from your
ships.

Battle Computer Mark II Increases weapon accuracy to level 2.

Ecm Jammer Mark II Adds 2 levels to defense against enemy
missile attacks.

Improved Robotic Controls III Allows up to three factories to be operated
per population. The refit cost to upgrade to
Robotic Controls III is half the standard
cost of each factory.

Battle Computer Mark III Increases weapon accuracy to level 3.

Ecm Jammer Mark III Adds 3 levels to defense against enemy
missile attacks.

Improved Space Scanner Detects enemy ships up to 7 parsecs away from
your colonies and 2 parsecs away from your
ships. Enemy destinations and ETA can also be
accurately determined.

Battle Computer Mark IV Increases weapon accuracy to level 4.

Ecm Jammer Mark IV Adds 4 levels to defense ag against enemy
missile attacks.

Improved Robotic Controls IV Allows up to four factories to be operated
per population. The refit cost to upgrade to
Robotic Controls IV is the standard cost of
each factory.

Battle Computer Mark V Increases weapon accuracy to level 5.

Ecm Jammer Mark V Adds 5 levels to defense against enemy
missile attacks.

Advanced Space Scanner Allows exploration of planets from colony
bases up to 9 parsecs away and detects enemy
ships up to 3 parsecs away from your ships.

Battle Computer Mark VI Increases weapon accuracy to level 6.

Ecm Jammer Mark VI Adds 6 levels to defense against enemy
missile attacks.

Improved Robotic Controls V Allows up to five factories to be operated
per population. The refit cost to upgrade to
Robotic Controls V is one and a half times
the standard cost of each factory.

Battle Computer Mark VII Increases weapon accuracy to level 7.

Ecm Jammer Mark VII Adds 7 levels to defense against enemy
missile attacks.

Hyperspace Communications Allows you to communicate with ships and
transports in hyperspace, and change their
destinations while in route.

Battle Computer Mark VIII Increases weapon accuracy to level 8.

Ecm Jammer Mark VIII Adds 8 levels to defense against enemy
missile attacks.

Improved Robotic Controls VI Allows up to six factories to be operated per
population. The refit cost to upgrade to
Robotic Control VI is twice the standard
cost of each factory.

Battle Computer Mark IX Increases weapon accuracy to level 9.

Ecm Jammer Mark IX Adds 9 levels to defense against enemy
missile attacks.

Battle Computer Mark X Increases weapon accuracy to level 10.

Oracle Interface Coordinates all beam weapon attacks into one
simultaneous burst of concentrated fire,
halving the enemy's shield strength.

Ecm Jammer Mark X Adds 10 levels to defense against enemy
missile attacks.

Improved Robotic Controls VII Allows up to seven factories to be operated
per population. The refit cost to upgrade to
Robotic Controls VII is 2.5 times the
standard cost of each factory.

Technology Nullifier Scrambles enemy battle computers, reducing
the level of the computers up to 2-6 levels
each time the nullifier is fired. The weapon
has a 4 space range.

Battle Computer Mark XI Increases weapon accuracy to level 11.

------------------
7.2 CONSTRUCTION:

Reserve Fuel Tanks Extends the range of a ship by an additional
3 parsecs.

Improved Industrial Tech 9 Reduces factory construction costs to 9 BC
each.

Reduced Industrial Waste 80% Decreases factory pollution levels to 80% of
the normal rate.

Improved Industrial Tech 8 Reduces factory construction costs to 8 BC
each.

Duralloy Armor Increases the hit points of ships and
transports by 50%. Personal combat armor is
also enhanced, adding 5 to all ground
attacks.

Battle Suits Armor that not only protects but also boosts
strength. Adds 10 to all ground combat
rolls.

Improved Industrial Tech 7 Reduces factory construction costs to 7 BC
each.

Automated Repair System Reduced Undestroyed ships can repair up to 15% of
their total hit points at the end of each
turn.

Industrial Waste 60% Decreases factory pollution levels to 60% of
the normal rate.

Zortium Armor Increases the hit points of ships and
transports by 100%. Personal combat armor is
also enhanced, adding 10 to all ground
attacks.

Improved Industrial Tech 6 Reduces factory construction costs to 6 BC
each.

Improved Industrial Tech 5 Reduces factory construction costs to 5 BC
each.

Armored Exoskeleton Advanced mobile suits that not only boost
power and increase defenses but also offer
limited flight to ground troops. Adds 20 to
all ground combat rolls.

Reduced Industrial Waste 40% Decreases factory pollution levels to 40% of
the normal rate.

Andrium Armor Increases the hit points of ships and
transports by 150%. Personal combat armor is
also enhanced, adding 15 to all ground
attacks.

Improved Industrial Tech 4 Reduces factory construction costs to 4 BC
each.

Improved Industrial Tech 3 Reduces factory construction costs to 3 BC
each.

Tritanium Armor Increases the hit points of ships and
transports by 200%. Personal combat armor is
also enhanced, adding 20 to all ground
attacks.

Reduced Industrial Waste 20% Decreases factory pollution levels to 20% of
the normal rate.

Advanced Damage Control Undestroyed ships can repair up to 30% of
their total hit points at the end of each
turn.

Improved Industrial Tech 2 Reduces factory construction costs to 2 BC
each.

Powered Armor Combines high mobility, anti-grav flight, and
heavy armored plating to form the most
advanced armor available for ground troops.
Adds 30 to all ground combat rolls.

Adamantium Armor Increases the hit points of ships and
transports by 250%. Personal combat armor is
also enhanced, adding 25 to all ground
attacks.

Industrial Waste Elimination Factories cease to pollute.

Neutronium Armor Provides the best internal protection of any
armor and increases the hit points of a ship
by 300%. Personal combat armor is also
enhanced, adding 30 to all ground attacks.
------------------
7.3 SHIELDS:

Class I Deflector Shields Absorbs 1 point of damage from all attacks.

Class II Deflector Shields Absorbs 2 points of damage from all attacks.

Personal Deflector Shield Protects individual ground troops with a
directional force field. Adds +10 to all
ground combat battles.

Class III Deflector Shields Absorbs 3 points of damage from all attacks.

Class V Planetary Shield Absorbs 5 points of damage from attacks
against planet surfaces, and is cumulative
with missile base deflector shields.

Class IV Deflector Shields Absorbs 4 points of damage from all attacks.

Repulsor Beam Repels enemy ships back one space away from
the attacking ship. The special weapon has a
1 space range.

Class V Deflector Shields Absorbs 5 points of damage from all
attacks. Absorbs damage from all hand
weapons.

Personal Absorption Shield Adds 20 to all ground combat battles.

Class X Planetary Shield Absorbs 10 points of damage from all attacks
against planet surfaces, and is cumulative
with missile base deflector shields.

Class VI Deflector Shields Absorbs 6 points of damage from all attacks.

Cloaking Device Renders ships nearly invisible until they
attack. While cloaked ships receive a +5 to
their missile and beam defenses.

Class VII Deflector Shields Absorbs 7 p oints of damage from all attacks.

Zyro Shield An energy field that destroys incoming
missiles and torpedoes 75% of the time, -1%
per technology level of the missile.

Class XV Planetary Shield Absorbs 15 points of damage from all attacks
against planet surfaces, and is cumulative
with missile base deflector shields.

Class IX Deflector Shields Absorbs 9 points of damage from all attacks.

Stasis Field Freezes one group of enemy ships up to one
space away, for one turn. Frozen ships cannot
attack or be attacked.

Personal Barrier Shield Completely encases the soldier in an nearly
impenetrable force field. Adds +30 to all
ground combat rolls.

Class XI Deflector Shields Absorbs 11 points of damage from all
attacks.

Class XX Planetary Shield Absorbs 20 points of damage from all attacks
against planet surfaces, and is cumulative
with missile base deflector shields.

Black Hole Generator Creates a sub-space field that warps normal
space creating an instantaneous black hole,
destroying 25%-100% of enemy ships, -2% per
shield class.

Class XIII Deflector Shields Absorbs 13 points of damage from all
attacks.

Lightning Shield An energy field that destroys incoming enemy
missiles and torpedoes 100% of the time, -1%
per technology level of the missile.

Class XV Deflector Shields Absorbs 15 points of damage from all attacks.

------------------
7.4 PLANETOLOGY:

Ecological Restoration Eliminates 2 units of industrial waste for a
cost of 1 BC.

Improved Terraforming +10 Increases the population capacity of planets
by 10M for a cost of 5 BC per million.

Controlled Barren Environment Permits the colonization of barren planets.

Improved Eco Restoration Eliminates 3 units of industrial waste for a
cost of 1 BC.

Controlled Tundra Environment Permits the colonization of tundra planets.

Improved Terraforming +20 Increases the population capacity of planets
by 20M for a cost of 5 BC per million.

Controlled Dead Environment Permits the colonization of dead planets.

Death Spores Horrible biological weapons capable of
reducing the maximum planetary populations by
1 million per attack.

Controlled Inferno Environment Permits the colonization of inferno planets.

Enhanced Eco Restoration Eliminates 5 units of industrial waste for a
cost of 1 BC.

Improved Terraforming +30 Increases the population capacity of planets
by 30M for a cost of 4 BC per million.

Controlled Toxic Environment Permits the colonization of toxic planets.

Soil Enrichment Converts standard planets to fertile
environments, increasing population growth by
50% and raising the base planetary size by
+25% for a one time cost of 150 BC.

Bio Toxin Antidote Reduces casualties taken from biological
weapons by 1 million per attack.

Controlled Radiated Environment Permits the colonization of radiated planets.

Improved Terraforming +40 Increases the population capacity of planets
by 40M for a cost of 4 BC per million.

Cloning Allows bio engineered colonists to be grown
at a rate of 1M per 10 BC.

Atmospheric Terraforming Converts hostile planets to standard minimal
environments, normalizing population growth
for a one time cost of 200 BC.

Advanced Eco Restoration Eliminates 10 units of industrial waste for a
cost of 1 BC.

Improved Terraforming +50 Increases the population capacity of planets
by 50M for a cost of 3 BC per million.

Doom Virus Dreadful biological weapons capable of
reducing planetary populations by 2 million
per attack.

Advanced Soil Enrichment Converts standard and fertile planets to
gaias, doubling the population growth and
increasing the planet's base size by +50% for
the one time cost of 300 BC.

Improved Terraforming +60 Increases the population capacity of planets
by 60M for a cost of 3 BC per million.

Complete Eco Restoration Eliminates 20 units of industrial waste for a
cost of 1 BC.

Universal Antidote Reduces casualties taken from biological
weapons by 2 million per attack.

Improved Terraforming +80 Increases the population capacity of planets
by 80M for a cost of 2 BC per million.

Bio Terminator Abominable biological weapons capable of
reducing planetary populations by 3 million
per attack.

Advanced Cloning Allows bio-engineered colonists to be grown
at a rate of 1M per 5 BC.

Improved Terraforming +100 Increases the population capacity of planets
by 100M for a cost of 2 BC per million.

Complete Terraforming Increases the population capacity of planets
by 120M for a cost of 2 BC per million.

------------------
7.5 PROPULSION:

Retro Engines Moves ships at warp one (1 parsecs per turn),
and allows a maximum maneuverability of class
I in combat.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells (Range 4) Fuel reserves allow ships to move up to 4
parsecs away from colony planets.

Deuterium Fuel Cells (Range 5) Fuel reserves allow ships to move up to 5
parsecs away from colony planets.

Nuclear Engines Moves ships at warp two (2 parsecs per turn),
and allows a maximum maneuverability of class
II in combat.

Irridium Fuel Cells (Range 6) Fuel reserves allow ships to move up to 6
parsecs away from colony planets.

Inertial Stabilizer Generates a field that reduces the inertia of
ships, and adds 2 classes of maneuverability
in combat (+2 defense and +1 combat speed).

Sub-Light Drives Moves ships at warp three (3 parsecs per
turn), and allows a maximum maneuverability
of class III in combat.

Dotomite Crystals (Range 7) Fuel reserves allow ships to move up to 7
parsecs a way from colony planets.

Energy Pulsar A potent engine modification which generates
a sudden spherical burst of energy striking
all adjacent ships for up to 5 points of
damage plus 1 per two ships.

Fusion Drives Moves ships at warp four (4 parsecs per
turn), and allows a maximum maneuverability
of class IV in combat.

Uridium Fuel Cells (Range 8) Fuel reserves allow ships to move up to 8
parsecs away from colony planets.

Warp Dissipator Specialized weapon that disrupts the warp
fields surrounding enemy ships, reducing
their speed by 0-1 each turn the weapon is
fired.

Reajax II Fuel Cells (Range 9) Fuel reserves allow ships to move up to 9
parsecs away from colony planets.

Impulse Drives Moves ships at warp five (5 parsecs per
turn), and allows a maximum maneuverability
of class V in combat.

Intergalactic Star Gates Allows your ships to move between any two
planets equipped with star gates in only one
turn. Costs 3000 BC to build.

Trilithium Crystals (Range 10) Fuel reserves allow ships to move up to 10
parsecs away from colony planets.

Ion Drives Moves ships at warp six (6 parsecs pe r
turn), and allows a maximum maneuverability
of class VI in combat.

High Energy Focus Increases the firing range of all energy
weapons by three.

Anti-Matter Drives Moves ships at warp seven (7 parsecs per
turn), and allows a maximum maneuverability
of class VII in combat.

Sub Space Teleporter Teleports ships to any space on the combat
map and gives first initiative to the
teleporting ship.

Ionic Pulsar A powerful engine modification capable of
generating a spherical burst of phased energy
striking all adjacent ships for up to 10
points of damage plus one per ship.

Thorium Cells (Unlimited Range) Self-replenishing fuel that allows ships to
move any distance from colony planets.

Inter-Phased Drives Moves ships at warp eight (8 parsecs per
turn), and allows a maximum maneuverability
of class VIII in combat.

Sub Space Interdictor Creates an intense gravity well surrounding
colony planets and rendering sub space
teleporters useless. The device is
automatically placed in all missile bases.

Combat Transporters Transports equipped with these devices have a
50% chance of beaming down onto enemy
surfaces before the transports can be
attacked by enemy ships and bases.

Inertial Nullifier Generates a field that negates the inertia of
ships and adds 2 classes of maneuverability
in combat (+4 defense and +2 combat speed).

Hyper Drives Moves ships at warp nine (9 parsecs per
turn), and allows a maximum maneuver ability
of class IX in combat.

Displacement Device Randomly shifts the equipped ship in and out
of normal space, allowing the ship to avoid
one third of all non-area attacks.
------------------
7.6 WEAPONS:

Hand Lasers Direct-fire beam weapon that inflicts 1-4
points of damage. Heavy lasers have a two
space range and do 1-7 points of damage.

Lasers Personal lasers that add 5 to your ground
combat rolls.

Hyper-V Rockets Swift missiles that explode for 6 points of
damage and move at a speed of 2.5

Gatling Laser An advanced laser that fires up to four times
per turn for 1-4 points of damage with each
hit.

Anti-Missile Rockets Trans-light rockets capable of destroying
incoming enemy missiles 40% of the time, -1%
per technology level of the missile.

Neutron Pellet Gun Heavy particle stream weapon that halves the
effectiveness of enemy deflector shields and
inflicts 2-5 points of damage.

Hyper-X Rockets Missiles equipped with high energy warheads
that explode for 8 points of damage, move at
a speed of 2.5, and are controlled by a +1 l
evel targeting computer.

Fusion Bomb Bombs that explode for 5-20 points of damage
on planetary targets only.

Ion Cannon High intensity beam weapons capable of
inflicting 3-8 points of damage. Heavy ion
cannons strike for 3-15 and have a 2 space
range.

Scatter Pack V Rockets Mirv versions of Hyper-V Rockets, splitting
into five separate warheads that each explode
for 6 points of damage and move at a speed of
2.5

Ion Rifle Personal beam weapons that add 10 to your
ground attacks.

Mass Driver A linear accelerator that halves the
effectiveness of enemy deflector shields and
inflicts 5-8 points of damage.

Merculite Missiles Hard-hitting, swift missiles that explode for
10 points of damage, move at a speed of 3,
and are controlled by a +2 level targeting
computer.

Neutron Blaster High powered beam weapons capable of
inflicting 3-12 points of damage. Heavy
neutron blasters strike for 3-24 points and
have a 2 space range.

Anti-Matter Bomb Bombs that explode for 10-40 points of damage
on planetary targets only.

Graviton Beam Tractor-repulsor beam capable of rending
ships to pieces. The beam strikes for 1-15,
and the continuous streaming effect of the
ray allows damage to carry over from one ship
to another.

Stinger Missiles Slow, hyper-accurate missiles that do 15
points of damage, move at a speed of 3.5, and
are controlled by a sophisticated +3 level
targeting computer.

Hard Beam An energy-to-matter beam weapon that halves
the effectiveness of enemy deflector shields,
and inflicts 8-12 points of damage.

Fusion Beam High intensity beam weapon capable of doing
4-16 points of damage. Heavy fusion beams
strike for 4-30 points and have a 2 space
range.

Ion Stream Projector Fires an intense ionic blast reducing an
opponents armor by 20% plus 1% per two firing
ships. The projector has a range of 2 spaces.

Omega-V Bomb High yield bombs that explode for 20-50
points of damage on planetary targets only.

Anti-Matter Torpedoes High energy tracking torpedoes that deliver
30 points of damage but may only be fired
every other turn. Each torpedo is equipped
with a +4 level targeting computer.

Fusion Rifle Inaccurate but incredibly powerful beam
weapons that add 20 to your ground combat
rolls.

Megabolt Cannon Releases multiple bolts of pure energy in a
wide field. It has a +30% bonus chance to hit
and strikes for 2-20 points of damage.

Phasor Phased energy beams capable of inflicting
5-20 points of damage. Heavy phasors strike
for 5-40 points of damage and have a 2 space
range.

Scatter Pack VII Missiles Mirv versions of Hyper-X Rockets, splitting
into seven separate warheads that each
explode for 10 points of damage, move at a
speed of 3, and are guided by a +2 level
targeting computer.

Auto Blaster An advanced neutron blaster that fires up to
three times per turn for 4-16 points of
damage with each hit.

Pulson Missiles Powerful missiles equipped with anti-matter
warheads that explode for 20 points of
damage, move at speed 4, and are controlled
by a +4 level targeting computer.

Tachyon Beam Fires an intens e stream of tachyon particles
that strike enemy ships for 1-25 hits. The
continous streaming effect of the ray allows
it to carry damage over from one ship to
another.

Hand Phasor Potent hand held energy weapons capable of
reducing an opponent to his component atoms.
Adds 25 to your ground combat rolls.

Gauss Autocannon An advanced linear accelerator capable of
firing four explosive rounds per turn that
inflict 7-10 points of damage each. The
projectile rounds half the effectiveness of
enemy shields.

Particle Beam High intensity particle accelerators capable
of striking enemy ships up to 2 spaces away
for 10-20 points of damage and halving the
effectiveness of deflector shields.

Hercular Missiles Highly advanced missile that explodes for 25
points of damage. The hercular missile moves
at speed 4.5 and is controlled by a +5 level
targeting computer.

Plasma Cannon Fires intense bolts of energy that inflict
6-30 points of damage.

Death Ray An ancient weapon of unbelievably destructive
power that inflicts 200-1000 points of damage
with a 1 space range.

Disruptor Unleashes tremendous bolts of pure energy
that can strike enemy targets up to 2 spaces
away for 10-40 points of damage.

Pulse Phasor An advanced phasor capable of firing three
bursts per turn for 5-20 points of damage
with each hit.

Neutronium Bomb Devastating bombs that explode for 40-70
points of damage on planets only.

Hellfire Torpedoes Enveloping energy torpedoes that
simultaneously strike all shields, delivering
damage equivalent to four 25 point attacks.
They may only be fired once every other
turn.

Zeon Missiles Most advanced missile available. Capable of
striking enemy ships for 30 points of damage
and moving at a speed of 5. The zeon missile
is guided by a +6 level targeting computer.

Plasma Rifle The most devastating hand held weapon
available. Adds 30 to your ground attacks.

Proton Torpedoes High yield energy torpedoes that deliver 60
points of damage but may only be fired every
other turn. Each torpedo is equipped with a
+6 level targeting computer.

Scatter Pack X Missiles Mirv versions of Stinger Missiles, splitting
into ten separate warheads that each explode
for 15 points of damage, move at speed 3.5,
and are guided by a +3 level targeting
computer.

Tri-Focus Plasma Cannon Fires a triad of high intensity plasma beams
capable of inflicting 20-50 points of
damage.

Stellar Converter Surrounds the target with an extremely
powerful matter-energy conversion field,
inflicting four 10-35 point attacks. It has a
range of 3 spaces.

Neutron Stream Projector Fires a blast of concentrated neutrino rays
reducing an opponents armor by 40% plus 1%
per firing ship. The projector has a range of
2 spaces.

Mauler Device Unleashes enormous amounts of focused energy
at enemy targets, inflicting 20-100 points of
damage.

Plasma Torpedoes Pure energy torpedoes that deliver 150 points
of damage, but lose 15 strength per space
traveled. The launcher fires every other turn
and has a +7 level guidance computer.

-------------------
Contributed by cox@unx.sas.com (Jim Cox)

================================================================================
8 The Future of Master of Orion
================================================================================

8.1 Upcoming Patches

In early and mid December '94, Amy (MPS BBS co-sysop) stated that there
will NOT be version 1.4 of MoO, nor will there be a MoO-2. In each
case, she padded her answer with "...that I am aware of." Since
those December messages, several people, including myself, have asked
about MoO enhancements but they were ignored.

If I hear anything further, I'll pass it on.

8.2 Master of Orion Deluxe/Gold/II/Add-on???

I've come to the following definitive conclusions:

1) An updated version of MoO may or may not happen at some
indeterminate time in the future.

2) It will be named "MoO-Deluxe" or "MoO-2" or "MoO Gold" or
"MoO: Revenge of the Bulrathi", or something else entirely.

3) The release date will be somewhere between an hour ago and the
27th millenium. Or not.

4) The new game will be a completely free upgrade to existing
owners of MoO, with the possible exception that you might have
to pay for it.

5) To answer the big question, it WILL be multi-player, however
that might just mean that you play game, finish the game, and
then let your little brother on so that he can play a game.

I absolutely guarantee that the above will happen. I stake my reputation
as a highly-paid FAQ editor on it.

Currently, the word from MicroProse is that there will NOT be a sequel
to MoO, but that they are working on Master of Xylophone-tuning
(or something beginning with 'X').

--------------
End of Master of Orion FAQ
--------------
--pat traynor--
traynor@bostech.com