Talk:Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Knight chess piece This article is within the scope of WikiProject Strategy games, an effort by several users to improve Wikipedia articles on strategy games. For more information, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.
Strategy games To-do:
Famicom style controller This article is within the scope of WikiProject Video games. For more information, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.
Mid This article is on a subject of Mid priority within gaming for inclusion in Wikipedia 1.0.
VG To-do:

Contents

[edit] Background story

The Pax Humanica and new dark age sound suspiciously like MOO3 contamination. The relationship between backstory and gameplay can often be strained, but this breaks it entirely: it would mean each race regressing from a galaxy-wide republic to pre-spaceflight technology on the exact same worlds as before, the spontaneous reappearance of the Guardian, not to mention that the setting starts off unexplored. Someone who owns the manual should check. --Kizor 18:27, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Agreed. All of that stuff is from MOO3, and was never mentioned in the manual (or the game). I've rewritten this section to reflect MOO2 better. Vivisector9999 08:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

You seem right about the MOO3 contamination. Here is a quote from the MOO2 manual (introduction) AFAIK the whole background:

"ORIONS AND ANTARANS

(Excerpted from "Pre-Psilonic Galactic Civilizations" Vol. II, by Ectron Victor, retired Master Adjudicator, Psilon Central History Institute.) As a story is told and retold over the course of generations, no matter the attention paid to detail and no matter the importance of the tale, the truth is gradually nibbled away by little mistakes and innocent exaggerations. Carried off on these well-intentioned, tiny feet, the facts deteriorate softly and painlessly into a condition generally referred to as "shrouded by time."

The legends concerning the Orions and Antarans are shrouded by time. What is certain is that at one time both races coexisted in the galaxy. The scope of their power and technical advancement has surely been enhanced by hyperbole, but that they were far superior to anything now known is indisputable. Perhaps it was inevitable that two such behemoths meet in violence. The legends paint the Antarans as ruthless, xenophobic killers, but we all know that history is written by the victors. The Orion-Antaran war was a protracted holocaust of galactic proportions. While we can never know if they truly flung entire star systems across deep space as weapons (as the storytellers claim), our astrophysicists have uncovered evidence of directed energy bursts the power of which staggers the imagination. That both races had the ability to raze planets no one contests. The Orions eventually defeated the Antarans. Rather than exterminating the race, as the stories claim the Antarans would certainly have done, the Orions chose to imprison their enemies in a "pocket dimension" a volume the size of a single star system, formed and carved somehow out of the fabric of space-time. Physicists to this day puzzle over the theory and the technique, but the result was obvious; the Antarans were banished one and all from this dimension.

At this point, even the storytellers admit that the legends become vague. Some time after the war, the Orion race inexplicably disappeared. They left only two legacies for the galaxy's future inhabitants. One was the tales of their power and legends of the Antaran war; the other is the Orion system itself. One planet circles this star, and it is reputed to be the original home world of the Orion race. Despite the incredible potential this abandoned world must hold, no one has yet plundered or colonized it. The reason for this is that the system is only uninhabited, not undefended. The Orions left a single Guardian to protect their home. Perhaps they intend to return some day.

Perhaps the Antarans intend to return, too."

[edit] Cthulhu Mythos

This is just a random point, so I don't know if people will feel like including it, but MOO2 (and MOO1/3 for all I know) has a surprising number of references to the Call of Cthulhu mythology. Star systems Rlyeh and Dunwhich are directly copied from important places in HP Lovecraft's stories and the Trilarians are pretty much modeled on Cthulhu himself, at least in terms of appearance (and racial attributes to a certain extent).

Your observation is right. It was verified by Russ Williams in this small interview: http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/2006/09/moo2-devs-10-years-later-russ-williams.html Various of us developers contributed names to the list of random starsystem names; I took a lot of place names from the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft.

[edit] Rewrite needed

The article currently gives too much emphasis to superficial changes from the original Master of Orion and says nothing about major changes in gameplay, e.g.: food is an important part of the economy (except for Lithovores); one tiny combat ship can blockade a system, and possibly cause population declines due to starvation; you can only research 1 tech per level, except that Creative races get all of that level's techs in one go; you can only research one tech at a time; the economy works completely differently (more like Civilization); while you can only use 6 ship classes as a basis for design, you can have an indefinite number in operation, and you can re-fit ships; upgrades to ships' speed are free; ships don't stack in combat; invasions require special ships, so they don't reduce the population of your existing colonies; if you conquer an enemy planet, the previous population survives and retains all racial advantages / handicaps which are "genetic" rather government-based; different government types; custom races; while the pre-defined races are true to the spirit of the original game's, the details are very different because of the other differences mentioned above. It should also mention that the game is still played online, and one group of fans has developed a patch (fixes some bugs, adds game set-up options) and a few mods (changes to game balance).Philcha 00:21, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

An earlier version contained information about the unfinished 1.4 patch project. Someone just denied its notability.McLar eng 23:00, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
The patch has been in use by the players on Kali for quite a long time [1]. The rest of that site contains news, forums, strategy guides, links to other fan sites - that should be enough for notability.Philcha 19:30, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
Very nice effort! Just 2 cents: (a) My impression is that almost no MOO2 fan uses Kali any longer. DOSBox made Kali ($20 for serial) simply obsolete. They meet on Quakenet (irc.quakenet.org#moo2) now. (b) And you start with 10 positive picks and can invest in 10 negative picks to get 20 positive picks. Maybe you already fixed these parts. (I am a slow reader and you are still in progress.)McLar eng 20:44, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks - you may have noticed that I like the game!
The source I quoted (AFAIK the MOO 2 web site) recommends DOSbox for technical reasons but did not go so far as to say Kali's obsolete.
You're right about the race design picks, I'll fix that.
Please suggest or implement any other improvements you can think of. I'm concerned about the length of "Playable races" but can't think how to shorten it without omitting important information or making it less intelligible.Philcha 23:57, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
OK. One further thing I noticed. I think that MOO2 DOS version can run under XP when there is no hardware trouble (but DOS version won't run under Windows 2000 in any case). It doesn't run on my XP but regarding this site it should be possible: http://www.pixelexiq.com/moo2/DOSSetup.asp McLar eng 08:48, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Fair comment. What I've read suggests problems are so common that it's hardly worth trying run MOO2 under Win XP w/o DOSbox, but a few people manage it. I'll edit.Philcha 10:06, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Evil Egg's recent edits

I think Evil Egg's recent edits are a mixed bunch, some good and some bad:

  • Backstory: "simply to destroy" is accurate but probably needs to be extended to "... destroy rather than invade." "Players with little territory should be wary" is just an opinion and does not reflect how the game plays - the Antarans apparently select targets at random, so the largest empire is most likely to be hit; and the effect is to make it risky to colonise / conquer more systems than you can defend, especially as the Antarans can strike behind the lines. I would prefer to delete that comment.
  • Victory conditions: The shorter description of defeating the Antarans is an improvement. But "getting elected requires some combination of power and diplomacy" is wrong - the point is that to get elected you need more votes than you can generate just by colonising, so you need to gain supporters and / or conquer / annihilate other empires' colonies.
  • Combat map image: The new caption omits the vital point that the full map is quite large, and scrollable. The fact that the planet is of the Terran type is irrelevant.
  • Main screen image: I deliberately kept captions of screen shots brief, to minimise the risk that the images would be longer than the associated text. "The main screen: the pop-up window displays information about a specific star system, while the large window under it displays the galaxy as a whole" is accurate, and brief enough. "The icons down the right displays information concerning the player's empire" is IMO less important than the fact that the bottom row of the screen contains menu buttons.

I have not changed any of these items yet because I'd like to know what others think. Any comments?Philcha 19:51, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Good. How about adding Barcia and Burd in the introduction? McLar eng 00:31, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Done.Philcha 15:19, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I've made the changes listed at the start of this thread.Philcha 15:29, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Difficulties under XP

I did not notice a source for the claim that "most users" have difficulty running MoO2 under XP. I realize I am only one example, but I never had difficulty running it under XP using the final official patch. Similarly, it worked fine under Win95 and Win98. Frankly, the claim surprised me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.243.129.136 (talk) 16:30, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I've seen lots of forum threads which started with "How to run MOO2 under XP?" and ended with "Use DOSbox".Philcha 21:09, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
Having just got XP(!), I tried running the Windows version of MOO2 without adjustments, and it crashed so badly (when I ALT-TABbed) that I had to restart XP. So I searched the Web and found the compatibility-mode tips which I've incorporated into the article.Philcha 00:58, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Worked a bit in this section the last days. Will add references to the most common 2k/Vista issues in the next days.McLar eng 01:13, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
Well done!Philcha 11:44, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Further experience on my machine is that the screen colours go horribly wrong after about 20 turns, and quitting then restarting the game does not help. DOSBox is AFAIK the only reliable solution. Philcha (talk) 01:01, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] MOO2 release date

Skuczera mentioned November 22 1996 as release date. Any source except MobyGames? I found Oct 31 mentioned on GameSpot, IGN, metacritics etc. McLar eng (talk) 19:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Kudos

Props to whoever added a disambiguation link to molybdenum oxide. It made me grin. Maxgleeson (talk) 00:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)