| Master of Orion | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Simtex |
| Publisher(s) | MicroProse |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS, Apple Macintosh |
| Release date(s) | September 6, 1993 |
| Genre(s) | Turn-based strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Master of Orion (MoO or MOO) is a turn-based, 4X science fiction computer strategy game released in 1993 by MicroProse on the MS-DOS and Mac OS operating systems. The purpose of the game is to lead one of ten races to dominate the galaxy through a combination of diplomacy and conquest while developing technology, exploring and colonizing star systems. The game uses a point-and-click interface as well as keyboard shortcuts to control the management of colonies, technology, ship construction, diplomacy and combat. The name is a reference to the Orion system, the game universe's conquerable homeworld of a mythical race that once controlled the galaxy.
Two sequels were created, Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares in 1996 and Master of Orion III in 2003 - as well as the free, open source FreeOrion which is loosely based on the series.[1] A prototype was developed under the name Star Lords though it was only released as freeware in 2001 as part of the promotion for MoO III.
Master of Orion was well received, and is a member of GameSpy's Hall of Fame and GameSpot Greatest Games of All Time.
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Master of Orion is a significantly expanded and refined version of the prototype/predecessor program Star Lords. Steve Barcia's game development company Simtex demonstrated Star Lords to MicroProse and gaming journalist Alan Emrich who, along with Tom Hughes, assisted Barcia in refining the design to produce Master of Orion;[2][3] and the game's manual thanks them for their contributions.[4] Emrich and Hughes later wrote the strategy guide for the finished product.[5] MicroProse published the final version of the game in 1994.[6]
A preview by Emrich described the game as "the best that galactic conquest can offer", and summarized its type of gameplay as "4X", meaning "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate".[7][8] Emrich and later commentators noted earlier examples of this genre, including Civilization in 1991,[9] and Reach for the Stars in the early 1980s.[10]
The game was reviewed in 1994 in Dragon #202 by Sandy Petersen in the "Eye of the Monitor" column. Petersen gave the game 3 out of 5 stars.[11]
Master of Orion is a member of both GameSpy's Hall of Fame[12] and GameSpot's list of the Greatest Games of All Time.[13] In retrospective reviews, Jason Osborne, Tom Chick and Bruce Geryk regarded MoO as the standard by which turn based strategy games set in space are judged, although Osborne regretted the lack of a multiplayer option.[14][15][16]
Master of Orion does not offer a multi-player mode, only contests against AI opponents on the user's computer.[14]
The game was developed to run under MS-DOS or Mac OS.[17] Running the MS-DOS version on Windows XP can be difficult, but DOSBox emulator supports the game.[18][19] Linux users can also use DOSBox to run MS-DOS programs.[20]
Master of Orion is a turn-based game in which players alternate actions and decisions with computer-controlled opponents. A mouse is needed, but hot keys can access many functions.[21]
The main screen is a scrollable map of the galaxy; clicking on a star system makes the rightmost part of the main screen display information about the planet there. If the player has not explored the system, only the word "unexplored" appears; otherwise the panel shows the planet's current and maximum population; if the player has a colony there, it also offers controls to allocate the colony's output.[22]
There is a separate space combat map, and additional screens for managing research, diplomacy and espionage. The diplomacy and espionage screen acts partly as a menu that provides access to screens about specific aspects. There is also a Planets List screen that can be used in managing an empire's economy.[22]
Lockable sliders are used to allocate a colony's output between ship construction, planetary defenses, factory construction, ecology or research.[23] Within each of these industry sectors, there is a fixed sequence of activities to which resources are allocated; for example defense effort will be used to upgrade existing missile bases if improved missile types have been discovered, then to build or upgrade planetary shields, and finally to build additional missile bases.[24] The technology screen uses a similar set of lockable sliders to allocate research spending between the 6 technology areas.[23]
The game begins with a single colonized homeworld, one colony ship and two scout ships that can be used to explore nearby stars. As the game progresses, gamers discover new worlds, encounter other races, colonize worlds, and fight wars. Despite their different backgrounds and homeworlds, all races possess legends of the Orions, a master race that once controlled the galaxy. Their homeworld contains powerful secrets and technology but is defended by a powerful robotic starship, the Guardian.
Victory is gained either by eliminating all opponents or by being elected supreme leader of the galaxy at a meeting of the High Council. Elections are held every 25 turns after two-thirds of the planets in the galaxy have been colonized, and each empire's voting strength depends on its population. To be elected High Master, an empire's leader must gain at least two-thirds of all available votes, with abstentions counting as a vote against both candidates. Some combination of conquest and diplomacy is usually necessary in order to gain such a large majority. Once a High Master is elected the player can accept the result or challenge it; the latter results in a "Final War" that is fought to the death between the High Master's supporters and the dissident.[25] Even if it is the player themselves who has been elected by the High Council, the player may still choose to challenge the results, thus placing them in a "Final War" against all the other empires. This allows the player to choose whether to win the game immediately by diplomatic victory, or to continue until complete conquest is achieved.
Despite the game's name, conquering the Orion star system is neither necessary nor sufficient on its own to win the game.[25] The planet in the Orion system is unusually large and extremely valuable, since artifacts left by its former inhabitants give its conqueror some very advanced military technologies, one of which players cannot research for themselves, and a colony there will be four times more productive in research than on most other planets.[22] Other races are also more likely to support the empire that holds Orion during High Council elections.[25] In order to colonize Orion or capture its technology one must destroy the robotic Guardian warship, a feat that requires a large, advanced fleet.[23][23]
All of a colony's outputs are based on its industrial production, including research.[24] All citizens are capable of industrial production, but are significantly more productive when assisted by factories.[26] There is a limit on the number of factories a unit of population (notionally 1M individuals) can operate, but players can increase this by researching and building upgrades.[24] The cost of upgrades rises rapidly unless the player first researches technologies that reduce factory costs.[27]
Players can allocate a planet's industrial output to various combinations of: building or upgrading factories; building or upgrading a planet's shields and missile bases; research; spaceship construction; and ecology (pollution control, terraforming, increasing population growth).[24] A planet's output can also be transferred to the planetary reserve (treasury), but with a 50% penalty.[26]
The treasury can also be increased by scrapping ships or missile bases, by gifts from other empires and by random donations from non-playable rich merchants.[22] Its funds can be used to boost the output of other planets, subject to strict limitations,[26] and to provide gifts to other empires.[22]
The need to clean up pollution is a serious constraint on economic growth in the early game. Various technologies reduce the cost of cleanup to the point that pollution may not be a significant factor in later stages.[22] Players must also pay maintenance costs for ships, missile bases and spies, which is financed by a percentage tax that is calculated by the software and applied to production at all colonies; players cannot control how this burden is allocated between colonies.[22]
The software generates a map randomly at the start of each game; the player's only influence over the map generator is the ability to choose the size of the galaxy and the number and difficulty of AI opponents.[22] Star systems have at most one colonizable planet and a few have none.[22] Planets vary in the following ways:
| Mineral wealth | Productivity in factory, defense and ship construction[28] |
|---|---|
| Ultra-poor | 33% |
| Poor | 50% |
| Normal | 100% |
| Rich | 200% |
| Ultra-rich | 300% |
The designers regard technology as the most important contribution to a player's success. Advances can be acquired through research, trading, spying or conquest. Six technology areas can be researched to produce new advances:[32]
If a ship uses a component from a particular technology area, further advances in that area reduce the cost and size of the component; this effect is called "miniaturization". When one has researched all of the technologies in an area of the tech tree, further research can discover "advanced technologies" in that area, which do not provide specific new capabilities but increase the miniaturization of ship components.[32]
Players can research several technologies at the same time, controlling the allocation of research resources by means of lockable sliders on the Technology screen.[32] Each research project returns "interest" on resources invested in it, using a formula that produces the greatest return if the project accounts for 15% of the total research budget.[31] There is a small random element in the number of turns required to achieve an advance – it may take a few more or less than one would predict on the basis of simple arithmetic.[32]
In each game each player is allowed to see a different random subset of the technologies at each level.[23] On the other hand there are often alternative technologies that provide similar benefits. These features force players to adapt rather than follow the same favorite research strategy in each game.[29] One can also make up for any important gaps by spying, technology trading or conquest.[23]
Master of Orion provides a wide range of diplomatic negotiations: gifts of money or technology; one-time technology trades; trade pacts that boost industrial output; non-aggression and alliance treaties. Players can also threaten each other, declare war and arrange cease-fires[33] Each AI player remembers others' actions, both positive and negative, and will be unwilling to form alliances with a player who has broken previous treaties with it.[34]
Hostile actions do not automatically cause war. Clashes are even expected at the opening of the game, when all sides are sending probes out into the unknown. On the other extreme, a ground assault must be knowingly targeted at an inhabited planet, and is a massive provocation.
Ships can be used to colonize planets, scout for planets worth colonizing, attack other races and defend against attacks. Only six ship designs can be used at a time; beyond that, a previous slot must be emptied and all ships of that class scrapped before a new class can be designed.[23] Ships cannot be upgraded or refitted with new technology,[23] except that increases in travel range automatically benefit all ships.[22]
There are four hull sizes; smaller sizes are harder to hit while larger ships can survive more damage and hold more components. There are eight types of components, each with different effects:[35]
Ships can travel to any star system within their range and combat always occurs in orbit over a planet - it is impossible to intercept enemy ships in deep space.[36] All ships of the same class form a single stack, moving and firing as a unit.[29] Players can control space combat manually or ask the software to resolve combat automatically.[37] Battles are almost always decided by numbers and technology rather than by clever tactics.[29] An attacker can bomb a planet during combat and, if it wins the space combat, can bomb more intensively immediately afterwards.[38]
Invading an enemy colony without destroying all defending ships and missile bases will result in the loss of some or all of the invading ground forces before they land,[39] and hostile planets can not be invaded unless attackers have technology that allows them to colonize an at least equally hostile type of planet.[24] There are no specialist invasion ships; invading forces are drawn from the population of one or more colonies, which reduces the population of the planet(s) from which they are sent.[40]
Invasions are depicted in real-time but players cannot control combat.[38] Results depend on numbers, technology and (if one of the races involved is Bulrathi) racial ground combat bonus.[41] Invasion is expensive,[7] but usually provides worthwhile advantages if successful: the production capacity of any remaining factories, plundering of technologies if enough factories survived the attack,[41] and control over a new system that extends the range of the invader's ships. A successful invasion exterminates the previous inhabitants and the surviving troops form the planet's new population.[41]
Players choose to be one of 10 pre-defined races[42] - one cannot create customized races.[43] The Klackons and Meklar have different types of advantage in industrial production; the Sakkra have very fast population growth; the Psilons are the best at research; the Mrrshans and Alkari have different types of advantage in space combat; the Bulrathi are the best at ground combat; the Humans have advantages in trade and diplomacy; the Darloks excel at spying and sabotage; and the Silicoids can colonize even the most hostile planets without any research and are not constrained by pollution, but have slow population growth.[42]
The typical race is very good in one research subject and below average in another. However, the Psilons are very good in all areas, while the Silicoids are above average in computers, which is useful for spying and sabotage, but are weak in all other research areas. The Humans excel in one area, and are good in two others. They and the Sakkra have no weak subjects.[31]
Each race has a pre-defined initial relationship with each other race, and they gradually return to these relationships unless these are improved or damaged by events. Most races start with neutral relationships to most other races, except that each has an uneasy or in some cases belligerent relationship to one other race. The exceptions are the Humans, which initially have amicable relationships with all others, and the Darloks, whose espionage skills make them objects of suspicion to all except the Humans.[34]
The races also have "personalities" which vary from one game to another when played by the AI. Their attitudes to other races can vary from honorable (reliable friend and unforgiving enemy) or pacifist to aggressive or xenophobic. Each has a major policy objective which guides their research and economic management; for example militarists build combat ships as fast as possible and prioritize technologies which have military benefits, while ecologists put a lot of effort into pollution control and terraforming.[44] Each race's behavior varies from one game to another,[44] because in both attitude and policy objective each race has a most probable trait and less probable ones.[34]
Master of Orion will sometimes produce random events which can be harmful or advantageous. These include discovery of ancient ships and technology, changes to planetary conditions that alter the planet's population or mineral richness, diplomatic blunders/assassination attempts, changes to research, industry or treasury production, planetary rebellion, space piracy and attacks by space monsters that can destroy colonies.[45] Random events can be disabled by means of a cheat code.[46]
Master of Orion is based on its predecessor game Star Lords, often called Master of Orion 0 by fans.[47] Star Lords was a prototype and never commercially released (its intro opens with "SimTex Software and Your Company present"). The crude but fully playable prototype was made available as freeware in 2001, stripped of all documentation and copy protection, in anticipation of the launch of Master of Orion 3.[47] Major differences between Star Lords and Master of Orion I include inferior graphics and interface, simpler trade and diplomacy, undirected research, a lack of safeguards to prevent players from building more factories than are usable and the use of transports rather than colony ships to colonize new planets. One feature of Star Lords that Master of Orion lacks is a table of relations between the computer-controlled races. The game is available for download on FilePlanet[48] and the home page for Master of Orion III.[47]
Two commercial sequels to Master of Orion have been released, Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares and Master of Orion III. The sequels are significantly more advanced in graphics and sound and feature large differences in gameplay, with some players claiming the original game remains the best version of the three.[46][49]
In 2008 Stardock, the creators of the popular Galactic Civilizations series, expressed interest in acquiring the rights to the "Master of Orion" series from Atari, Inc. and developing a fourth game in the series.[50]
In 2011, a clone of MoO II, "Starbase Orion," was published by Chimera Software, LLC on the iPhone.
The game setting has been the influence of Russian writer Sergey Lukyanenko's trilogy, the Line of Delirium.
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