Subj: Re: MOO : exploring planets

>It greatly irritates me that I have to establish "naval" superiority over
>a planet before invading it.  (otherwise it won't be "explored")  but once
>I've explored it once, then I can perform a "mob it with transports and
>who cares how many get toasted" attack.  Is there a way around this that
>doesn't involve getting into an alliance or getting the advanced space scanner? 
> The reason is I want to try an interesting strategy: while playing
>the Bulrathi, don't research any tech but propulsion: just steal it all from
>neighboring races by taking their planets intact.
>Comments?

Well...if you try this strategy, you're going to have one major problem
that I can see at this moment.  By not establishing "naval" superiority,
your transports are going to get shot to pieces by any orbiting fleets
or missile bases.

If you do want to try this strategy anyway, you could conceivable get away
with it if you made a great many fast, long-range scouts that got into
orbit before any sort of defense was put up.  The problem with this is that
you'll get clobbered by the computers production advantage at the higher
levels.  I would suggest that you work on at least a split of propulsion
and computers, this way you could get the advanced space scanner.  I know
you said that you wanted to avoid this, but I don't see how this is possible
otherwise, unless you edit a save file.
==========
: Yes!  Please upload it somewhere.  I get bored in the beginning and
: mid-game.  I'd love to try out a good fight.  Either e-mail or upload
: it to a public FTP site.

OK. I'll upload this to wuarchive when I get home. The game starts off with a
fleet on the system Concordia, ready for use on the Guardian (Orion is on the
top of the screen, the system that's avoided by every race :-)). Alliance with
the Sakkras has just been broken: prepare for a crack assault on Parallon or
Saria (shoot the ship that moves first, not the largest fleet, or they'll
crush you!). Once you scare them off they won't attack anymore :-)

Here's the things that I think you should get (which at that point of the game
I didn't have):

	Neutron Stream Projector
	SubSpace Interdictor
	Ionic Pulsar
	Hyper Drive
	Oracle Interface
	ScatterPack X
	Inertial Nullifier

Things like Maulers, Plasma Cannon, Pulse Plasma Cannon will be built by
Meklars later on. You might want the Tri-Focus Plasma thingy for the "flea"
fleets, but I never use it.

You could keep killing the Guardian over and over till you get the stuff you
need, or trade/steal for them (Bulrathis will trade you some of the stuff
above for stupid insignificant equipment). Make sure you bring along the
transport with the attack fleet so you can colonize the planet as soon as you
beat the Guardian (unless you want the other races to colonize it and take the
DeathRay from you :-)) 

Get the scatterpack X so no one will want to mess your colonies which averages
350 base defense per system. 

I'll post the name of the file and location later on today...

==========
Subj: Re: MOO Space Monsters

> Wouldn't it be cool if you could obtain the weapons of the  
crystal/amoeba
> after you kill them?

Well, I did find an editor called edmoo, which allowed me to get the  
Amoebae ray and the Other weapon. It is on Wuarchive.wustl.edu (at least it  
was). If you find it get it.
==========

While we're on the topic, I discovered a few bugs regarding planetary reserves
recently... Get a rich or ultra rich world and max its population and industry.
Now set its production to as much industry as you can -- it will say 'RESERVE'
next to the bar.  Now transfer all your reserves to that planet and, viola, you
get them back doubled or tripled, plus the planet's production. More if you're
the Klackons.
A related semi-cheat: Use your reserves on a world with artifacts (or better
yet orion) and put all your rich and u-rich into building up your reserves. You
get the production from the u-riches tripled, then it goes into the reserve,
then as it comes out and is used for tech it is doubled (or quadrupled) again.
Plus, as before, racial bonuses if you are the Klackons or Psilons.

Interesting, huh? The main drawback is that it takes time to build up your
reserves this way, since they are not used all at once.. about 5y per cycle.
----------
yet. The manual isn't much help either so -

  i) What's the best way to build reserves? Through the Planets screen setting?
     This is has a parasitic effect on ALL your planetary economies, like
     the "internal security" slider right?

 ii) RE: The "add to reserves" slider in the Planets screen:
     Is this a straight off-the-top skim of your planetary production or is
     it halved as the excess industrial production is?
        i.e. Is the formula    
             Amount added to reserves (BC) = %of raw production (BC)
                                        OR  = (%of raw production (BC))/2

iii) When you spend reserves on a planet what happens? Does just the 
     industrial capacity (Ind) go up? What about ships or bases?
     Can you specify to which production line you want to money transferred
     to?

> i) What's the best way to build reserves? Through the Planets screen setting?

No.  The best way is to build Rich and Ultra-Rich planets up to MAX
factories.  Then further investment in IND will go to RESERV.  Because
the planet is Rich or Ultra-Rich, your expenditure on IND will get
multiplied by 2x or 3x, then get divided by 2 when it is put into the
reserve.  So you will get either 1x (Rich) or 1.5x (Ultra-Rich) of what
you spend on RESERV put into your reserves, instead of 0.5x which is the
normal amount if you adjust the tax bar on the Planets screen or buy
RESERV at non-Rich planets.

> This is has a parasitic effect on ALL your planetary economies, like
> the "internal security" slider right?

Right.  Another reason it's not a good idea is that it taxes your
fledgling planets (which need their production to grow) just as much as
the fully developed ones which can afford it more.

> ii) RE: The "add to reserves" slider in the Planets screen:
> Is this a straight off-the-top skim of your planetary production or is
> it halved as the excess industrial production is?

It is halved.

>iii) When you spend reserves on a planet what happens? Does just the 
> industrial capacity (Ind) go up? What about ships or bases?

The total production goes up.  You can see this just by looking at the
production reported for the planet before and after transferring the
reserves.  You can then allocate the increased production however you
want, by using the slider bars.  So effectively you can increase just
one category by readjusting the sliders so that all of the others are
back where they were.
==========

Subj: Master of Orion v1.3 questions

I have the MOOv1.3 patch for about a week, and found out that there are few
bugs.  Unless these are new features being introduced.

1.  When you have SubSpace interdictor, then your ships with subspace
teleporter cannot teleport even at your own planets.  Someone mentioned
this being a feature since v1.2.  I don't remember this in v1.2.  Could
some one confirm this being a feature, b/c it render subspace teleporter
useless for defense?  I have found that the CP ships w/ teleporter are
still able to whip my butt with their teleporter.  SO it is more likely
a bug, unless off course this is a feature to make the game harder.

2.  NEGATIVE money offering and NEGATIVE CP ships.  I thought this bug
was fixed in v1.2.

I really haven't seen many bugs fixed in v1.3 at all...  planets still 
blow up (population evaporates) when trying to terraform over 300... however
now we also have the addition that planets will blow up when factories go 
over 2500 (with meklars, this is simple). Sometimes when you tell the 
computer to start planetary shields on all your planets and you have a 
great number of these planets, not all will automatically report-and-reset
once the shields are completed. Found quite a few planets with 300+ missile-
bases that completed their shields long ago but never said anything. 

I think I also might have found a new(?) bug dealing with researching very
old techs. While playing the psilons(average/large/3) I was not researching
all the techs in order but instead the 'best' of what was available; I 
managed to skip over Battle Computers II (or was that ecm? computer tech thing).
When I was finishing off my last researchable techs, I came down at last to
researching Battle Computers II with a very healthy empire with a VERY 
healthy research capability. Turns out BCII (or whatever) required 600 rp's 
to research and I was producing in excess of 20k a year divided evenly 
between the 6 techs (20,000/6 = 3,333 per tech a year... 2,733 more than 
what was needed to research BCII... first time I had ever seen any tech with
a 99% chance of breakthrough ;-). Anyway, when I hit next-turn the game 
locked. After a little bit of trial and error I tried bumping my computer
research down to 1 notch thinking perhaps the crash was a result of 
massive research-overflow. Researching BCII gently seemed to do the trick
and I was able to move on in the game. 

: still able to whip my butt with their teleporter.  SO it is more likely
: a bug, unless off course this is a feature to make the game harder.

It's been like this since 1.0. It works like this. If the enemy fleet has
SubSpace Teleporters, than the Interdictors are on. That means that if you
have no teleporters, and attack them, they will leave the Interdictors off,
and visa versa.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO v1.3 Guardian upgrade

: 	I think you're right about the shield protecting the ships.  Also,
: I don't think that the all the pulsars work all the time.  I have tested
: a stack of about a 1000 fighters with pulsars on a group of about 3000 small
: fighters whose hit points are 70 (or so) each;  to my surprise, the pulsar
: does not wipe out all of the enemy ships; instead, it wipe out about 1/2 a
: and the rest has their hit points reduced down to about 15.  

I've been using huge amounts of small ships, too, usually. I felt like
experimenting yesterday, and made a new design that was equipped with
one (1) photon (?) torpedo while the other equipment was quite crappy. I
had been developing weapons _very_ much, thus the use of photons. The
ship cost around 100 units, and thus I could manufacture a big pile of
them in relatively short time. After I had more than 600 of them, I sent
the horde for Guardian. The ships got to fire just before Guardians
first 'bullets' hit them, and to my surprise the Guardian died after the
first hit. I'll test this later with worse eq, but it might well be that
a smaller stack of ships that have one extremely powerful missile could
make it better than thousands of smaller ones.

>    Doesn't the Guardian have Lightning shields anymore? I'm surprised
>the torp. made it through the anti-missile shield.
> 

   The Guardian still has a Lightning Shield, but no longer has
   damage control.  It does have (at impossible level) a shield
   level of 9 making the classic lots of little neutron pellet gun
   ships ineffective.  Plus it has 45 scatter pack X's with five shots
   which can really rack up the damage.

   My favorite way of taking it out so far is 3 stacks of medium ships
   with a combat speed 4, and a shield having weapon bigger than the
   neutron pellet gun.  When the Guardian shoots the scatter packs
   at a stack that stack retreats until the missiles are out of fuel.
   That's why you want more than one stack the other 2 stacks can 
   keep blasting the guardian.  

   I haven't figured out the exact number of ships needed for which
   weapons yet.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Interesting Ship Designs

: My favorite ship to build near the end of a game is a small with pulsar
: , neutronium bomb, best of all computer,shield..., inertial nullifier, or
: teleporter if they don't have interdictors.  A big stack of these puppies
: can take out three stacks of their ship and toast a planet before they
: even move.	

: Along with that I usually build a huge with high energy focus and 4 banks
: of stellar converters.  I like to park them in the middle of the battle
: and watch them take out ships from 6 spaces away.

Personally I like to build smalls with mauler devices. But to do that you have
to pretty much max your tech, especially level 99 weapon tech. Advanced * tech
really does do something - it raises your level, contributing to
miniaturization. Even adv. planetology will miniaturize your colony bases...
Of course if you have that much tech you can build a large with about 20 death
rays, 40 mauler devices, 40 plasma torps, and 50 scatter pack Xs. Those are
pretty nasty... :) Especially with class XV shields, ADC, and inertial
nullifiers.
==========

Going back to the realm of realism: I discovered an interesting missile tactic
the other day. Build a whole bunch of ships with missiles and not much else,
and a few beam-armed ships. As soon as you enter combat, fire all your
missiles, then have your missile boats retreat. If you don't have the beam
ships, combat will end and your missile hits will not be resolved; with them,
even though they will probably get wasted, your missile boats will be intact
and your missile shots will waste the enemies (assuming they don't have zyro
shields or anything like that.)
==========

Does anybody know how to avoid skipping soil enrichment? I keep getting
advanced soil enrichment w/o the first one, which causes bugs. (I realize this
is a little off-topic, but it would really help to actually be able to get
gaias, instead of just wishing I could.) Or how to avoid missing certain
techs, in general? I had a game once where I missed ALL the drive techs until
I finally got impulse... By that time I had been pretty severely weakened.
(Of course, two turns later I stole sublight from the Psilons.)
==========

> you can -- it will say 'RESERVE' next to the bar.  Now transfer all
> your reserves to that planet and, viola, you get them back doubled or
> tripled, plus the planet's production.

This is not a bug, it is a well-known strategy.  First of all, it
doesn't gain you anything at rich worlds, because the doubling for the
rich world cancels out with the halving for buying reserves.  Secondly,
you can't more than double the production of any planet with reserves,
so even at ultra-rich worlds there is a limit to how much you can gain.

It certainly is a good idea to spend your reserves at ultra-rich
planets, though.

> A related semi-cheat: Use your reserves on a world with artifacts (or
> better yet orion) and put all your rich and u-rich into building up
> your reserves. You get the production from the u-riches tripled, then
> it goes into the reserve, then as it comes out and is used for tech it
> is doubled (or quadrupled) again.

Yes, putting the output of rich and ultra-rich worlds into reserves and
then spending them at artifact planets and orion on research is another
well-known strategy.  It's still not a bug though.  And you still didn't
mention the halving when your industry is converted to reserves.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO v1.3 introduces new bugs, reintroduces old one

Here's a bug I found while playing impossible. I was on friendly terms
with the Alkari. I quickly colonized a planet, but I colonized it after
the Alkari's sent a colony ship to colonize it, too. However, once his
ship was in orbit, Alkari troops were sent to the colony, and I was
squashed! How annoying! No declaration of war, nothing!

Some other minor points are the (I believe) unsigned integers they use. In
two cases I have seen it go negative. The first is if your fleet
maintenance gets too large, i.e. 32768, then it goes negative. Same thing
when aliens offer you money to renege on an alliance, also over 32768.

Also, another thing I noticed is if you get advanced propulsion techs,
your older engines are actually larger than your newer ones, but I'm not
sure if you just get more power out of the older ones, and so they're
larger, but it just doesn't make sense.

I hope the next version comes out soon. I really hate this screen lockup
bug!

Subj: Re: Bugs in MOO 1.3 ???

It's not a bug at all. Look at the readme file which came with 1.3, the
function keys changed around a bit. 
==========

Subj: WANTED:  Master of Orion save files.


If you have an advanced or medium game saved, please consider
uuencoding and mailing a copy to me.

WHY?

I'm trying to rework the Master of Orion FAQ Strategy Guide FAQ
and want to play around with small vs large ships.  Using the
editor and your saved games, I can test out various fleet 
configurations against a variety of computer player fleets.  

It will be interesting to see how well high-tech smalls go up
against computer fleets, then see how well a smaller number of
huges face up against the same computer fleet, then perhaps a
mixed fleet battle.

Oh, perhaps upload them to wuarchive.wustl.edu in
pub/msdos_uploads/games/moo so that others can also experiment,
but make sure to rename them to something apart from the standard
SAVE_.GAM and put a .txt file detailing the status of the game.


- Jim

PS.  I'll be taking over the MOO FAQ from Dave, as he is losing 
net access.  Thanks Dave for all the great work!
==========

Subj: Re: MOO v1.3 Guardian upgrade

: 	I think you're right about the shield protecting the ships.  Also,
: I don't think that the all the pulsars work all the time.  I have tested
: a stack of about a 1000 fighters with pulsars on a group of about 3000 small
: fighters whose hit points are 70 (or so) each;  to my surprise, the pulsar
: does not wipe out all of the enemy ships; instead, it wipe out about 1/2 a
: and the rest has their hit points reduced down to about 15.  

I've been using huge amounts of small ships, too, usually. I felt like
experimenting yesterday, and made a new design that was equipped with
one (1) photon (?) torpedo while the other equipment ws quite crappy. I
had been developing weapons _very_ much, thus the use of photons. The
ship cost around 100 units, and thus I could manufacture a big pile of
them in relatively short time. After I had more than 600 of them, I sent
the horde for Guardian. The ships got to fire just before Guardians
first 'bullets' hit them, and to my surprise the Guardian died after the
first hit. I'll test this later with worse eq, but it might well be that
a smaller stack of ships that have one extremely powerful missile could
make it better than thousands of smaller ones.

Subj: Re: MOO v1.3 Guardian upgrade

)> experimenting yesterday, and made a new design that was equipped with
)> one (1) photon (?) torpedo while the other equipment ws quite crappy.
)    Doesn't the Guardian have Lightning shields anymore? I'm surprised
)the torp. made it through the anti-missile shield.

Lightning shields loose some small fraction of their effectiveness (1%?  
It's in the manual, not sure my memory is spot-on) depending on the
incoming tech level of the missile.

Anti-matter torps (probably what the original poster meant) are a high enough
tech level to have a reasonable chance of penetrating a lightning shield.  The
shield does help - some.  Enough anti-matter torps are still bad news.  From
what I recall, the shields should only let about 40% of the damage through for
this particular weapon (i.e.  60% effective) - but check the manual for the
exact figures (tech level of weapon and derating factor) if you want to be
positive.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO Cheat(s)

>	The what?  <I haven't paid much attention to cheats
>'til now, because I prefer winning 'fair', but... This sounds 
>interesting.

I haven't tested it in MOO 1.3, it definitely worked in v 1.2 (and
lower).

Spoiler:




Press the ALT-key and keep it depressed while entering the characters
GALAXY . You can now look at the whole galaxy and see everything. The
only drawback is that you don't get random discoveries when you find a
artifact-planet.

The main use of this cheat is therefore to check the position in the
beginning of the game, and the restore the save-game you did before
entering GALAXY. It's of course possible to do it every turn, or
playing without getting random discoveries when you find
artifact-planets.
==========

Subj: MoO: No absentee ballots

I found this rather interesting.

I was playing a  psilon/average/medium/3 game this past weekend.
A vote came up and I barely stayed in it with my 14 vs. their 27 votes.
Some turns later I acquired propulsion range 6 which allowed me access
to two new unclaimed terran planets.  I colonized one of them and sent
70 colonists on their way.

While they were in transit, another vote came up.  This time I only
had 13 votes to cast and I lost!  Apparently, the colonists in the
transports weren't counted.  I didn't accept the ruling.

I did manage to win, but it was a bloody battle.  Here's my latest
strategy:

I build bombers with the best possible bombs, good computer, fast engines.
No shields, armor, maneuverability, or anything else, but I install the
sub-space teleporter.  Then I attack their planets.  

On the first couple of turns on the combat map, I just stay put.  They
send all their ships after me.  After those first turns, their ships
are starting to close in.  I teleport to the planet and drop the
bombs.  Then I teleport back to the left, then back to the planet and
bomb.  I keep doing this until the population is zero and then retreat
and move on the next planet.

This strategy stops being effective once they attain warp 5 or 6, but
it's great fun in the beginning.  And it usually causes this news report: 

"The Bulrathi civilization has been completely eliminated by the Bulrathis."
==========

> During the early goings I've come to depend on the Neutron Pellet Gun
> to keep me protected while I'm developing Planetology and Propulsion.
> Occasionally, I don't get to develop the NPG tech and I've yet to find
> anything that is as effected at such a low tech level.  It's also nice
> that it's so small and can fit in a gnat.
> 
> If the NPG is unavailable, what is the next best choice for a first
> major weapon?

	1) Ion Cannon
	2) Hyper-V/X Rocket
	3) Mass Driver (pretty expensive)
	4) Planetary shield V (Skip the fleet)


	Basically, the NPG is a VERY important tech advance for anyone wanting
to go to war early in the game. If you don't get it, don't go to war if you can
help it!

	Other VITs (Very Important Techs) i.e. things you REALLY want to be
able to research early in the game.
	
	Duetrinium Fuel Cells
	Nuclear Engines !!!!
	Planetary shield 5
	Robotic Controls III

   > >	Duetrinium Fuel Cells
       Is this range 4? If so, yes, it's vital, but you can live without
   it (if you're lucky on planet placement) until you get range 5.

Not absolutely needed, range five comes through soon enough. If you have
two planets you can colonize (one with your original colony ship), you
can survive.

   > >	Nuclear Engines !!!!
       Yes - if you can't get it, trade for it, by all means.

Nice, but hardly VIT.

   > >	Planetary shield 5
       No! Nice, but hardly VIT - I've often played without it.

ABSOLUTELY necessary! (We seem to have rather different strategies... :-)
I usually play at Impossible (have won with every race except Darloks
and that is coming through), and you simply have to hunker down, build
missile bases and research techs. No way you can compete with the
computer players in the beginning.

   > >	Robotic Controls III
       Yes - if you can't get it, trade for it, by all means.

Yes. One of the most important techs.
==========

My usual strategy: at Impossible, Large, Five game, spread as fast as
possible in the beginning. After you meet the CPs, start building bases -
in the beginning, one base will protect the colony pretty well.
At Impossible, I have found that you will be at war for most of the
first half of the game.

I have won a game where I managed to keep just six worlds in the beginning
of the game and only one of them was anything special - rich, max size 10.
I was the Mrrshans.

I research the techs pretty evenly, but give priority to missiles, armor,
planetary shields, robotic controls and _especially_ ground combat stuff.
If necessary, I build some ships with 2-shot missile launchers to snipe
at the CP stacks, shamelessly moving them back to the planet from where
they just retreated.

Serious shipbuilding starts after I have either
	- some goodish energy weapon (preferably auto blaster)
	- high energy focus

A good bomb and a repair system are very helpful, but not necessary yet.
Usually if I have survived this far, the rest is just mopping up. The
CP's fleets are outmoded and it does not concentrate its forces, wasting
them in futile assaults against planets. Leave one scout to hold the fort
and the CP braves the fire of 20+ bases to kill it. Sad.

The problems with this strategy: 
1) Unlucky random events can _really_ hose you. There is nothing quite
as irritating as getting one of your two fully-developed worlds hit
by a meteor that you can do absolutely nothing about - no fleet.
2) CPs with biological weapons are a pain in the posterior. Shields
do not protect against bios and you probably cannot kill the ships
before they get next to the planet. Hope you can research the anti-
dotes in time...
3) If one race gets away with murder and gobbles up half of the known
galaxy you can do absolutely nothing about it. The CPs have to keep
each other in check for a longish time.
==========

Possible bug:
I was playing Bulrathis (Imp, Large, 5) and was seriously behind
in tech and losing badly against Klackons (no planetary shield V or X,
no Robotic Control III or IV), when I managed to exchange my
ECM Jammer I to Robotic Controls V from the Meklars. Later I
got High Energy Focus and Technology Nullifier from them with
some <10 tech stuff.

In the same game, I found that the Meklars had taken over the destroyed
Silicoid homeworld. I could have sworn I had checked the empty planet
not ten turns previously, and now there are 200+ pop and 2000+ factories
there. No bases, either. So, of course I took it.
The planet had been maxsize 120, now it was maxsize 300. Later on I
got Advanced Soil Enrichment and after I enriched the planet, the maxsize
dropped to 210 (the correct amount, I believe). The factories remained.
Weird.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Interesting Ship Designs

>)It usually depends on the situation.  If the CPs don't have sufficient
>)shields, then an autofire weapon is usually a better bet since it will
>)cause more damage.  In the case of the high end, a tri-focus plasma
>)can be nasty, but a pulse phasor will work better since you can place all
>)your guns in one stack and still shoot at multiple targets.

>Without sufficient shields, repeat-fire weapons are indeed nasty and pulsed
>phasors are one of the best, IMO.
>Against high shields (esp lvl 15) though, they are fairly useless.  This is both
>from calculation, and experience.
>
Actually, the pulse-phasor is the best autofire weapon in the game if my 
memory serves me correctly.

I will agree that against lvl 15 shields, they become less useful, but
then, if you have Oracle interface on a fighter along with HEF, they can
be nasty.   I think  you can fit as many tri-focus plasma cannons on a
fighter as you can pulse phasors at the top end, so these are also good,
the problem is that against a stack of 9 point fighters, you end up kill 
fewer since a tri-focus will only kill one fighter, and a pulse-phasor
can kill 3 for every two guns.  This means that a stack of tri-focus
fighters will be able to kill 2 for one if armed with two guns, and a
stack of pulse-phasor will kill 3 for one if armed with two guns.  Just
food for thought.  Of course, against mediums and larger, this no longer
holds.
==========

Subj: Re: MoO Final Battle query

>>>	I have a problem if you agree with the final vote. My ally throughout
>>>the whole game won the voting. I agreed with the verdict, after all it
>>>was my ally, and I was in no shape to challenge, and after my ally won,
>>>I was banished! Geeze, there was even harmony between our races. I found
>>>this to be silly.
>>
>>I agree that this is very silly.  You could at least be something like
>>Prime Minister. :)
>>
>>>> As far as I can tell, all "final" war does as follows:
>>>> 
>>>> 1)  All races are at war with you
>>>> 2)  All races share their current technology with each other
>>>> 3)  All trade is stopped
>>>> 4)  All diplomatic relations are severed
>>>> 5)  No infighting is done among the races
>>
>>Scratch #5 on my chart, I've seen the races fight amongst themselves, and 
>>someone reported that a race they were not currently fighting got wiped
>>out.  The rest of my list still seems to hold true.

>	Could this explain the slow response the computer has after
>final war has been declared?  It seems the computer never gets around
>to attacking you after final war has been declared.  Possibly someone
>will send a fleet with 32000 ship stacks latter in the game, but
>usually I can build up a bomber fleet to hamstring their production
>base.
>
Yes, this probably does explain the slow response.  I believe I said something
to the effect (in an earlier post) that it looks like the programmers just
copied the code for normal war into the final war code with the front end
changed to do what my first 4 items above say.

Subj: Re: MoO Final Battle query

  Sounds like what happened to me last game at average/medium/5.   I was
at final war about halfway through, and thought I'd put in a final will and 
testament right there.  First, you are correct about all of the above, 
except 2 and 5 need modification. 
  What happens w/ 2 is that at the beginning of the final war what seems to
happen is that they share their techs with each other, but anything after that
they are on their own to develop.  Many examples, i noticed in this last game
that the psilons didn't give their black hole tech. to anyone else, nor did the
Bulrathi share my tech that they stole from me when they took my planet.

  5 - what happened there is that they still compete for who gets new planets, but 
don't go to war w/ each other.
  
  I think final war needs work, at least at the average level.  First, i notice that they 
didn't really try to kill me, they only sent small fleets to my outer
planets which were easily repulsed.  They don't engage in much of common 
protection of other's planets, i.e. a meklar fleet usually doesn't help the psilons 
defend it's planet from attack.  Also tech needs work, something happened, 
i am not sure what, that slowed up their tech development in final war.  
They had 3/4 of the galaxy, i with 1/4, yet i was easily able to expand and
produce tech to surpass their levels (course, active stealing and planet
invasion sure narrowed the tech gap fast, but once i bridged that gap, i 
developed tech much faster than they (i was playing Alkari, the birdsmen).
  Maybe it's just the average level AI, I'll try hard next.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Q about Researching Techs

>next time.  Well, I discovered the Range 4 Cells, and was offered
>Range 6 and Range 7. I chose Range 6, thinking that I just had bad
>luck.  When I discovered the Range 6 Cells, I was just offered the
>Range 7 Cells! I understand that not all techs are available every
>game, but I'm curious about this sequence of events.  I seem to
>remember this happening in previous games, too.

>So, I'm wondering has anybody else has seen similar behavior?  Is it
>because I was choosing the cheapest tech?  Was it just bad luck?  Maybe
>you're only offered new techs if you research the most advanced tech
>in the list?  I usually have quite a list of weapons to choose from,
>and I usually go for the more advanced weapons.  Is this coincidence?
>Is there a correlation?  Anybody?  Bueller?
>
As far as I can tell, it looks to be just bad luck.  If I may ask, who
were you playing?  If you were playing the Psilons, then this is very
strange behavior.

From the tech level listing I have in my lap, you could have been offered
the following:

Range 5
Warp 2
Inertial Stabilizers
Warp 3

Considering that most races don't get many options, you should have just
gotten the Range 7 since this you needed a calculated tech level of 18 to
even be offered Warp 4.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Ship design

>	I was just thinking that a stack of 4000 to 5000 ships carrying
>energy pulsar or ionic pulsar and a sub-space teleporter should be 
>almost invincible.  As far as I can tell, the maximum hit point that
>a ship (except the Guardian, the amoeba, and crystal) can have is 3600;
>The tech description for the pulsar is that it does 1-5 or 1-10 points
>of damage to all surrounding ships +1 for each firing ships; so 4000 ships
>firing the pulsar does around 4000 points of damage to ALL surrounding
>ships (This would wipe out any stack of ships regardless of stack size
>and ship size).  The sub-space teleporter would get your stack within
>striking range and give you the first attack.  So 3 to 4 stacks of the
>ships described above should beat anything.  Right???

Nope, this isn't how the pulsars work.  The description is somewhat vague,
so you have to work with the pulsars to see what they are really doing.

Here's what happens:

You have a stack of 4000 ships with ionic pulsars.  This means you get 1-10
points of damage plus 4000 for the ships.  Given a total of 4001-4010 points,
you new proceed to divide this up amongst the defending ships.  If you 
are attacking a stack of fighters with shield class 13 shields and 8
hit points, you'll kill around 190 of the suckers.  Basically, the 
pulsars are useless.
==========

>	BTW, what does it means when a weapon is said to "hit all four
>shields"?

I presume you are talking about the stellar converter.  The "hits all
four shields" means that, presuming you hit, you will do 4 attacks of
10-35 points for a possible 40-140 points.  Since the explanation is
once again unclear, I'm not sure if each attack is calculated separately,
or if all attacks are calculated once.  What this does mean is that you
get penalized for the shield in each attack.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Interesting Ship Designs

>Nope.  Once you get maulers, bombs become next to useless.
>I'd rather have a ship that can kill _and_ bomb.  Adding
>a cloaking device, max movement, and inertial nullifier
>makes a very nice bomber!
>
  Yeah, but what if you have planetary shield 20?  Maulers won't do much against 
that.  Actually, I like small ships.  Screw those huge ones with 20 zillion whatever 
that are outdated the day they are produced.  I'd have 3 classes, usually.

1)  Little fighter w/ (in decreasing order of importance) max computer, max 
engine and maneuver, best gun that will fit (just one will do), then if you
have space, you concentrate on cloak/anti missile (or something higher, like
inertial nullifier), shield, and armor.

2)  Little missile w/ best computer and a good missile (doesn't have to be
the best, 2nd best will do (note you can usually only fit the 2 shot variety
on it, unfortunately), everything else is whatever you prefer.  These things
aim one shot at the computer's best stack, second shot at second best stack.
However, these are extremely tech. dependent.  Your missiles have to be able
to a) hit the other guy b) penetrate his shields.  You can launch 1000 missiles
and do 100 damage if they 'out-tech' you.

3)  (most agree to this)  Little bomber.  One guy w/ best defense he can afford,
best computer, most speed, and most imp. best bomb.  The idea is if you get
600 of these guys and 300 make it through, then you are doing good, but are 
wasteful because your bombers are taking too long to get to the planet to 
smash missile bases or are getting creamed by defenders.  (repulsers might
be good here if you have a cruel sense of humor)

I've noticed that there is no best weapon until you stop making new tech advances 
(i.e. advanced weapon tech).  You just have to be able to hit the other guy
better and cheaper than he can hit you.  Computers are vital.  So what your 
attack level is 10.  His beam defense is 15.  Won't do too much good.

OH, streaming attacks.  Tachyon beams are good until they are outdated.  Note they 
are only good for stacks of ships, be them med, small, or whatever.  Black
hole generators are deadly to the above three ships, don't know a good defense
against them (run?).  Pulsars are deadly against the above unless you have 
shield of 5.  Then they are in for a shock!

Actually, my favorite gun of all time is the Gauss gun.  Seems to be the best for the 
little fighter above.  (yes, I've tried them all).  Your little fighter can go in and kill 4 
stacks in one shot, provided there are alot of you and a little of them.

Finally, small's are cheaper and can put more stuff on than a  huge.  You can
put say 120 smalls per one huge?  That's 120 guns (assuming one gun per ship), and 
they are easier to scrap if out-teched.  I'd rather scrap 1000 smalls than
10 huges, wouldn't you?
==========

Subj: Re: Useless MOO tech? - repulsor

> OK...  Is there ANY use at all for the repulsor beam???  I've had it used on me
> by the computer, and it seems like the most useless tech I've seen.  Just
> wondering...
> 
a. In version 1.0, repulsor is useless against high maneuver ships because the
approaching fleet could move again once repulsed - and re-attack the ship
equipped with repulsor.  In version 1.3 a repulsed fleet has its turn 
terminated, thereby immobilizing that fleet.  This renders short range weapons
useless against fleets equipped with repulsor.

b. Well, when you get this tech in a early middle part of the game it can be very 
useful! If you combine this Tech. with a range 2 beam weapon you can defeat a 
much larger force. This is especially great for the defense of planets, where 
you don't have to worry about enemy missiles and your own missiles help out a 
lot in a long battle. 

It does, however, have a short period of usefulness. It becomes less important 
if your opponents develop high energy focus or build lots of ships with 
powerful range 2 weapons. It still help with those stacks of 32000 small ships 
with a neutron pellet gun, though. :-) They never get to fire at you.

The repulser beam technology has really helped me in the in between part of 
the game where I am still pretty much in the expand and protect mode. a fleet 
of 10 large ships with a heavy neutron beam (or whatever), level 3 shield,  
and a repulser beam has defeated a much larger fleet because the only range 2 
weapon they have is a heavy laser. :-)

c. The computer uses it in very stupid ways.  The repulsor beam can be 
devastating if used the right way.  If the enemy has no range 2 weapons 
on its ships, they will never hit your ship if you have range 2 weapons 
and a repulsor beam.  Just hold still and pound on them, the computer 
does not adjust well to this, and you can destroy huge fleets this way
(especially when fighting with the Alkari).

You can also use it to keep bombers or bio weapons from reaching your bases.  
It is not the best weapon in the game, but it does have its uses.

d. > -- You're joking , right???? Repulsor Beams are one of the more useful
>weapons in the game -- particularly around the middle of the game.....
>They can be used very effectively to wipe out any ship/fleet of ships
>without ranged 2+ weapons (and the computer in my experience builds
>a lot of these). They can also keep enemies away from your planets
>a while longer, allowing your planetary defenses more time to wipe
>out fleets trying to destroy it.....

e. Like many things in the real world, the Repulsor Beams are only 
useful if you know how to use them.  I tried them once and found
that they didn't help me at all.  I never used them again.  But just
last weekend I was playing a game where I was behind considerably
and then developed Black Hole Generators.  I started sending out
my very favorite of all fleet arrangements -- three different ships
that are identical in design, but different in name so that they
don't stack on top of one another.  Each has a BHG, max warp, a
subspace teleporter, and nothing else.  They are expected to be
completely disposable kamikazes.  I send lots of these fleets of
three ships each to wipe out the enemy fleet, and it was working
well until he deployed repulsor beams.  Since the BHG only has a
range of 1, suddenly my glorious fleet was absolutely worthless.

Now that the computer has shown me how to use them effectively,
I might give them another try.

f. I have wondered about that too.  It seems repulsor beam requires at least
a large ship to carry it.  And it should be useful against ships with
lower initiative factor.  Against tiny ships with higher
initiative it's no good.

Am I right on this?  Tiny ship fly to 2 space range to a large ship with
repulsor beam.  Large ship gets to fire its 2 space beam, and it's too far
for the repulsor beam.  Tiny ship fly to 1 space range to a large ship.  Since
tiny ship has higher initiative, it gets to fire first.  Then the large ship
fires its 1 space beam, and repulsor beam.  Tiny ship is now at 2 space
range.  The process repeats itself.  It seems it's an even trading of fires.

What do other people who have used repulsor beams extensively think of them?
==========

Subj: MOO: Bombing Planets

In my last game, I sometimes had problems while bombing a planet.  I
would kill off all of the defenders, and then expect the bomb/cancel
option at the end of the turn.  I never got that option.  At the time,
I had several huge ships parked in orbit around the planet.  Also,
each ship had several Neutronium Bombs equipped.  I was forced to
move in some other ships that only had neutronium bombs on board.
It then let me bomb the planet.  The only thing that I could see that
might affect this is that each of the huge ships had the bombs in
bay #4, while the bombers had them in bay #1.  Any ideas?

a. Hmm.  Until you mentioned the neutronium bombs, I was tempted to say that
the planet's shields were sufficient to keep you from damaging anything.
(That happens to me often near the start of the game--I've got a couple of
fighters in orbit, and a couple NPGs can't possibly do the 50 points of
damage required to destroy a factory.  And if you can't do any damage, it
doesn't bother asking you if you want to attack.)  What version are you
playing?  Another obscure bug, p'raps?
==========

Subj: Re: Best Weapon (was Re: Useless MOO tech?)

My favorite weapon is Gauss Autocannon.  It does great damage and is
relatively small.  If you can get it fit into smalls 1000 of these is
unbeatable with teleporter (I love small ships, so not sure how this
will work on larger ships).

>So, what is the best(and most powerful) weapon in the game?

What is the best weapon?  It depends on what stage of the game you are in,
what tech level you got, what kind of toys your enemy got, your favorite
strategy and tactic, and so on.

In general, I found those weapons to be most useful for my own game style
(I usually use small/medium ships against enemy large/huge ships):

 - early stage: neutron pellet gun, mass driver
 - middle stage: auto blaster, gauss auto cannon
	(they are also good for killing the Guardian in v1.3)
 - later stage: disrupter, mauler, etc.

Subj: Re: What is the most useless weapon? (MOO)

>I've played lots of games with MOO version 1.2 and found that the most
>useless weapon to be....
>
>the Stasis Field Generator. I've developed it and never wanted to use
>it since basically the fleet that I use it on can not be fired at. Dumb
>since while that ship disable that particular fleet, all the rest of his
>friends can vaporize the ship that has the field generator and free his
>friend. 
>

A.  I do everything I can to get the Stasis Field for my ships.  It's great. 
When I have a bunch of different stacks attacking my planet, I can freeze
the biggest one and pick off the others.  My three all-time favorite
specials are Stasis Field, Black Hole Generator and SubSpace teleporter. 
Love 'em!

B.  Actually, I've had some good luck with it.  A stasis field takes
one of the opposing stacks out of play, cutting the combat odds a
bit -- something that can be very significant when you're opposing
the cp's Really Big Stacks with relatively few ships.  When I have
them I put them on colonies (when I'm building colonies) or whatever
ship class seems to have the space for it.  Putting them on colonies
gives these otherwise useless (in combat) ships something to do
when things drop in the pot.

==========

Subj: MOO strategies

All the reports of games here on the net seem to imply that games last long
enough to get all these neat-o technologies... In the games I've won or
lost (playing at average so far) everything has been over, that is to say
the outcome is pretty clear, by the time I've reached tech 20 or so.
Most of my games don't last much beyond 2400. 
Orion has NEVER been a factor in any of the games I've played. In fact
I've only ever bothered to take it once. The computer never has. 

So, what's going on?

Do games last longer the more difficult it gets? I've found that
things depend A LOT on your starting position. If one of the CP's
isn't boxed in they very quickly eat most of the galaxy, often
taking most of the best planets. This either ends up in a long losing
battle (because they out produce you 2:1) or, more often a quick victory
in the high council. How do you stop a CP from hosing the galaxy early on?
The only workable defense I've found is to do the same to him. You then
control the vast majority of the galaxy, have bought off the other CP's
and win the vote instead.
==========

Subj: MOO, interesting ship designs

In the 2nd quarter of the game I start to build huge ships with Auto Repair,
best shields, best armor, best drives, lesser maneuver, lesser ECM and battle
computer, a battle scanner -- AND a repulser beam and the best Heavy Beam
I have. With that combination I usually wipe away most enemy ships. But watch
out for enemy ships with heavy weapons, too!
It's harder with one missing technology -- like Planetary Shield X, Repulsor
Beam or Auto Repair. Then I have a diplomatic phase first.
In most cases I don't touch enemy planets with 20 bases or more at this time.

Later I build a lot of small ships with one good rocket each. That means
two points better then the shield of the enemy ships -- mostly stinger missiles.
Because of the space needed, that's available when I get the Pulson Missile 
tech or the Omega V Bomb tech. These ships usually have the best Battle 
Computer, maximum engines and maneuver and to fill up space a moderate
ECM-Jammer or shield. That ship costs about 22 BC and used in numbers of
300-2000 (about 1000 against the Guardian). This ships wipes away enemy ships
-- not in a single turn, but who cares? -- and sometimes enemy bases, too. 
Later in the game with maneuver 4 they can fire their missiles and destroy
ships/bases before they can move or fire themselves. Very nice is it, to
place a Zyro Shield in these hornets, later its space is about 10 in the small
ships.

In most cases I take good enemy planets with MANY bases with a dozen of 
ships I call "Anarchist". It usually carries about 40 bombs of the best type
Fusion is good, Omega is better. This ship have to move very fast to close up
to the planet -- maneuver 4 is recommended, but in most cases not available at
this point -- I hate Inertial Stabilizer. Some other ships attack too, because
sometimes the computer fires its missiles on them.

I would say the best way to win a game is to have a high Force Fields tech 
level. With a Planetary Shield X, Repulsor Beam and a good Beam Weapon I would
say the game is won early in the most cases. 
BUT normally at the levels Hard or Impossible it is not easy like that. You do
not get these techs, you have to be diplomatic. And you have to invent the 
other techs, too: Robotic Control, Improved Space Scanner, Armor, Industrial 
Tech, Reduced Waste or Waste Elimination, Suits, Terraforming, Hostile Bases, 
Cloning, Antidotes, Deflector Shields, Engines, Fuel, Beams, Missiles, 
Bombs and Hand Weapons -- you have to invent all these technologies.
==========

Subj: Moo negative ship #

    OK, last week end I played a game of huge/imposs/5 and the following
happened.
    I had the Klackons and managed to take over the left half of the
universe w/ 40 planets and had the darlok and remains of Alkari in the
middle w/ the psilon controlling the lower right w/ 16 planets.
    The Psilon had as much production more fleet than me and were way
ahead in all tech except computer and construction. (i stole all his cp
tech)
    What happened is that I saw a fleet of psilon several hundred of
each type by observing them I saw later that one of the stack of ship
turned negative then later it became 32000. Sometime later that 32000
stack turned to be several hundred but the other ship became negative
and later the one that were negative became 32000!!!!
     I mean I had more production than him by that time all my planet
were Gaia and I had 3 ultra rich and an artifact planet. He had only 15
16 and started to eat  up the humans which I feed with as much tech as
possible. I max out in spy, had more computer tech than him but could
==========

Subj: Re: MoO:  What to do without NPG?

Just as a dissenting vote, I rarely use the N.P.G. -
it's hardly a "make or break" weapon. If you don't have it,
you probably have the Hyper-X and/or Ion Cannon - either/both of
those will do you just fine.
==========

Subj: Re: Useless MOO tech?

>What do other people who have used repulsor beams extensively think of them?

	The repulsor beams work automatically -- they don't need to
be fired -- the small ships I believe, will never get to fire at you.....
==========

Subj: Re: What is the most useless weapon? (MOO)

>Yup.... I would love to go up against that guy who thought the statis
>field was useless.  My teleporting black hole statis ships ( I call them
>"Death Holes" in the game) would vaporize him before he knew what
>happened!
>

My huge ships with repulser beams, high energy focus and gauss autocannons 
would easily take out this ship design when I also have interdictors.

I also think stasis field is useless, and I win consistently on the impossible
level (just to brag a little :->).
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Fun Ship Names!

: |> The Kramer
: |> 
: |> Smallest ship I can build with high powered beam weapon, teleporter
: |> and good computer. It just appears next to the enemy and blows him away.

: That will be toast trying to attack one of my planets. Interdictors,
: Zeon Missiles/Scatter X behind level XX shields, and huge ships carrying
: 300 pulse phasors and a HEF.

Ever seen what ISPs and NSPs can do to a planet? Ever had 500+ bases destroyed
equipped w/class XV deflectors, XX planetary shields, Zeons in ONE turn, by
just 100 large ships, equipped w/NSPs and Plasma/Hellfire torps and lightening
shield? By the time you acquire those defense items, the enemy would of had
the stuff I mentioned above :-)

|> shield? By the time you acquire those defense items, the enemy would of had
|> the stuff I mentioned above :-)


The planetary bases just act as backup for my fleet. I generally go with
Large ships, armed w/ large numbers of Pulse Phasors, HEF, and high speed.
100 opposing ships will be toasted in a single round by not-very-many of
my ships. In the endgame, they're also rather inexpensive considering capability,
so I can turn them out by the 100s.

Not really. Before the level XX shields, there were the level X (I never
seem to get XV for some reason. I steal it from the comp.) Before the Scatter
X and Zeons, there were Scatter V/VII and Hercular/Pulson bases. Etc, etc.

I believe in incremental base building, just leaving a planet with 1 tick on
defense and letting it work for 50 years.

Besides, the Kramer, as described, is essentially useless for attacking planets,
since the planet-capable beamers, i.e. Maulers and Death Rays, don't fit into
small hulls, and you didn't mention any bombs.

Given that, your fleet of n thousand Kramers will appear near one of my
planets, and engage in a duel with the 10m Huge ships that star-gated in
the turn before. At the same time, you'll be constantly attrited by the
missiles. I hope that you've also got a good bomber class...
==========

>tech past 11, never even *seen* neutronium anything, never *seen* the black-hole
>generator, or [...]

Well, I've only been playing it for a couple weeks, and only recently
moved up to impossible difficulty.

Anyway, I just won a game at impossible/4/large (v1.2) as the Darloks.
It was a long game, and by the end I had "Advanced Tech" 4 or 5 in all
areas.  Maybe my tech level was unusually high because I stole
everybody else's tech while developing a lot myself, but in general
all of my games tend to get to high tech levels as a matter of course.

It sounds like you play a different kind of game than I do?  I put a
lot of emphasis on tech, and don't build a lot of ships (I always have
the smallest fleet through most of them game).  I also try to use
diplomacy and not be at war with everybody.

Incidentally, this game had Bulrathi, Sakkra, Alkari, and Mrsshan.  I
never even met the Mrsshan, and the Alkari have always been wimps in
any game I've played against them (they're wimps, but they always want
to go to war with me).  Sakkra got a huge jump (as usual) and came
very close to winning in council, but I got past some close votes and
eventually made very good friends with the Bulrathi (needle pinned all
the way to the very far end of "friendly"!),  Even once I knew the
game was won, I had to play for another 50 years or so to win the
council vote.  In fact, I had to keep the Bulrathi strong enough to
support me, but not so strong that they would surpass the Sakkra and
mess things all up.  I beat down the Alkari so that their vote
wouldn't have any weight.

(I got to the maxxed out tech at least 50 years before the end, and
then cut way back on my tech research to build fleets for wiping out
the enemy planets... Otherwise, I would have been at higher Advanced
Tech levels by the end...).

So, anyway, besides wanting to brag about winning my first
Impossible/Darlok game, my point is that I often get to very high tech
levels -- certainly to the level X computers and shields.  Usually
once I get much past there the game is won, but I definitely get there.
==========

Now this would be an interesting thread (as opposed to how many maulers you
can get on a huge when you control the whole galaxy with tech 99 and one 
opponent w/one planet left :-)

I try to keep either 3 or 4 different designs being built and the other 2 or
3 slots for designs being phased out.  I always have a huge w/all the latest
gizmos being produced by the "besets" planets (i.e. rich/ultra rich, high 
production), a large by the secondary planets, and a small or medium by 
planets that are mostly dedicated to something else (i.e. tech) with a click
or two on ship production.  The 4th slot could be filled by a specialty ship
depending on my needs. (almost always a small or medium as you usually need 
these in a hurry).

The other two slots are "phase out" slots on non-producing designs, so when
I design a new huge or large and don't have to scrap a large number of 
ships. Usually you can "sense" when designs are becoming obsolete and cut 
back (and eventually cut out) designs to minimize "scrappage".  I also try
to always put best shields on whatever to increase the life expectancy (I had
a design the other night that never really went obsolete.  It was a large
w/best shields at time and ion stream projector.  I had scads of them and
didn't worry about loses too much, and used them to compliment the huges) ,
except for smalls and meds.  I kind of use them as disposable weapons.
Put the best or second best beam or missile and/or bomb on them, put in 
best engine (and manuv. if applicable to that design), a decent targeting
computer, then armor and shields lastly, as space will allow.

>the outcome is pretty clear, by the time I've reached tech 20 or so.

Absolutely.  Sometimes it lasts a bit longer, but I always play at impossible
(except one game at hard recently so I could relax and develop everything
under the sun to see how they compared against live targets ... and even
then I never got farther than megabolt because I got bored) and it *isn't*
that the game gets much longer at that level of difficulty.

>So, what's going on?

I think partially it has to do with level of aggressiveness.  I play VERY
aggressively, in that I try to grab planets quickly.  Despite what everyone
says about balance, I often pile factories onto my home planet as fast as
they'll come (stopping only to build two or three basic technologies, at
most) and spend what I think of as the midgame outcolonizing the computer.
Yes, with Psilons too.

This means giving up the tech edge for a while, and not building many
ships or bases to defend.  I *never* build bases until what I think of
as the end game, and even then it depends an awful lot on the techs on
both sides.  

So, while many posters are fortifying half a dozen planets and praying
no one wins an election before they can break out, I've already either
broken out or been crushed.

Being crushed isn't so bad, you can just start over, right?
(I know, I know, shades of Balance of Power...)
==========

>Do games last longer the more difficult it gets? I've found that
>things depend A LOT on your starting position. If one of the CP's
>isn't boxed in they very quickly eat most of the galaxy, often
>taking most of the best planets...
>The only workable defense I've found is to do the same to him. You then
>control the vast majority of the galaxy, have bought off the other CP's
>and win the vote instead.

Yep.

And on the subject of vital technologies, I'm amazed that nobody has
mentioned 3:1 cleanup.  Along with Improved Robotics, but usually earlier;
it saves all factories, built and about to be, one sixth of their output.
That's as big a leap as Improvement *8*, if you already have factories
in place.  If you wait a while before trying to industrialize, I can
see that cheaper factories have the advantage of helping with refits,
and besides you reach 5:1 cleanup fairly soon so 3:1 can become redundant
quickly once you have a research machine running ... I guess this choice
may be heavily early-strategy-dependent.

(And yes, some sort of range increase is the other tech vital to quick
expansion, with Nuclear engines being nice but actually skip able, since 
speeding up *colonist* movement is really almost as important as colony 
*ship* movement and won't happen at warp(2-1).)
==========

Subj: MOO: Repulsor Beams (was Re: Useless MOO tech?)

>Am I right on this?  Tiny ship fly to 2 space range to a large ship with
>repulsor beam.  Large ship gets to fire its 2 space beam, and it's too far
>for the repulsor beam.  Tiny ship fly to 1 space range to a large ship.  Since
>tiny ship has higher initiative, it gets to fire first.  Then the large ship
>fires its 1 space beam, and repulsor beam.  Tiny ship is now at 2 space
>range.  The process repeats itself.  It seems it's an even trading of fires.

No, what should happen (in auto mode) is something like this:

1. a stack of tiny ships move to one space range to a large ship (equipped
   with repulsor beam)
2. large ship activates repulsor beam to push back that stack, then fires
   all its range-2 weapons
3. Goto 1. Repeat until all tiny ships have gone bye-bye  ;-)

The repulsor beam can be activated multiple times within the same round, so
even two of three stacks of tiny ships can't do any better.  On the other
hand, I have also observed rare cases where the repulsor beam failed to
activate, allowing the tiny ship to take a shot at it. 
==========

Subj: Re: Useless MOO tech?

>What do other people who have used repulsor beams extensively think of them?
>

The one game where I needed repulsors (at the very end no less), they were
relatively useless.

The Psilons had 32000 Bio Terminator ships and 32000 particle beam mediums
(all with shield 15 and with 60+ hits).  The particle beamed ships are
cloaked.  So I make a ship with repulsors and range two weapons.

The particle beam ships pull up next to my repulsor armed ship, uncloak
and fire.  Result, my stack is vaporized and my planet is bio terminated.
Black hole generators don't knock off these stacks fast enough to help
and ionic pulsars do not do any good, damage is done but the stack is
still there.

Any thoughts other than to kick the Psilons economic base out from under
him.
-----
I use the repulsor beam a lot.  Some enemies develop strong weapons that attack
only from the adjacent space.  I have protected a planet against strong large
numbers of enemy ships by placing two ships with repulsor beams adjacent to my
planet.  The ships can't get to my planet to bomb it and can't approach my ships
because of the repulsor beam.  The enemy ships try to attack my planet and shipsfor 
50 turns and then have to retreat.
--
Subj: Re: Useless MOO tech?

Is it possible to get by *without* repulsor beams?  I never go on the
offensive without them if I can help it...

Huge hull, best 2-space beam weapon, best damage control, repulsor beams,
best inertial gadget/battle scanner.

Only real vulnerability - huge fleets of missile carriers or planetary
bases.  Excellent defensive ship, as it keeps the bombers away from the
planet while the bases carve them up...

A.  I totally agree. Repulsor beam are a must when you know that the cp has
huge fleet of short range weapon/bomb/bio.  I was converted when once a
single huge ship of mine managed to destroy 15 cp huge while saving my
planet !

==========

Subj: Re: Best Moo weapon

No matter who I play, no matter what size galaxy, a Medium
ship armed with 1 Hyper-X/Mercury has _always_ been extremely
valuable.

>Any thoughts other than to kick the Psilons economic base out from under
>him.
>
 
Yes, put alot of missile bases on your planet, then create another ship type 
with a 5-pack of some low tech missile (hyper x maybe). Then in combat, 
fire your low-tech missile at the particle-beam ship when it gets close. 
The stupid computer will back up to avoid your hyper-x. In the mean time aim 
all your missile base missiles at this ship pounding him all the while he keeps
backing up to avoid the little hyper-x. 

While this is going on, send the bio terminators into a big black hole while they are 
being repulsed away from your planet.
==========

	That's a neat trick, you're building 500-5000 ships for the
price of one with death rays -- I'm real interested in how you'd do that.
More realistically, if you're at the stage of the game where you get
the death ray, you probably have most of the techs. Thus, assuming
you cram gauss autocannons on a medium ship-- (they probably
won't fit on a small -- but the math would be about the same) -- you'll
get roughly 40-50 ships to 1 huge. The huge is likely to have 
high energy focus, roughly 10 shields, 10 computer, 1500+ HPs, high-speed
and high maneuverability, and auto-repair (among other things). 
It's also likely to have the fire power of roughly 3 death rays. 
These are not likely to be all death-rays -- but supposing they are, 
in roughly 15 turns you're toast. Your ships are unlikely to do more
than a couple hundred in damage a turn, most of which will regenerate.
The odds you'll win are slim. More likely, the ship would have
1 death ray, 5-10 maulers, and some weaker weapon in multitude. If
this is the case, you're toast much quicker, and the odds you win even
slimmer.
==========

Subj: MoO ship designs?

I have had great success against the computer by using the Bulrathi
style of ship design:  huge ships packed with as many weapons as she
will hold.  I also include the best battle computers available, and the
best engines, but I never include shields or ecm.  The sheer size of the
ship is its defense, as it is at least 600 hp.

Also, I always obtain torpedoes as soon as possible, as they have enough
punch to eliminate the need for bombers.  I use this capability to
destroy enemy colonies, only taking over about 1/4 of the enemy colonies
as my own.  This will keep the count of settled systems down, and avoid
the first meeting of the Galactic Council.
==========

Subj: Bio weapons in MOO

There's been some threading about the most useless weapons in MOO, and
for my two bits I'd have to nominate the biological weapons.  It seems
to me that there is no advantage whatsoever in reducing a planet's
ecology to ruins.  If you're eventually going to take the planet, why
ruin it?  If you just want to devastate it, large masses of bombs do the
trick fine while leaving you the option of colonizing it later.

A.  It also leaves the option of others colonizing it, too.  If you've got a 
good position, and know you're going to win anyway, take the planets out 
of the game completely (like a nice razing run in Warlords II...)

B.  Two reasons.

	1)  If truly conducting strategic warfare, making the opponent's
	life miserable in an area you don't actually plan to occupy, 
	this is more devastating than "merely" wiping out the colony.

	2)  If you happen not to have overwhelming forces, it's worth
	noting that biological weapons sail right through planetary
	shields.  Think of them as an unpleasant variety of superbomb,
	that comes earlier, and in a different field of research from,
	the explosive equivalents.

C.  It's not the first time I see this come around
I used to think that way too :"bio-weapon , non-sense..."

But here is what I find out , 
When you trash a colony with those , 
you don't destroy its precious industry ...
So you have two choice here :
1-leave a minimal of population on the planet before your
  troops arrive and capture the planet and its industry
2-trash the colony and send a colony ship there , and you'll
  see that you have all the industry the previous race had
  
D.  >you don't destroy its precious industry ...

You can also do this with a straight military takeover, especially if you
have superior troop units, especially if you have some Cloning tech which
allows you to recover the losses quickly, and you don't even damage the
biosphere, which allows you to send more people over (higher max pop).

>2-trash the colony and send a colony ship there , and you'll
>  see that you have all the industry the previous race had

Yeah.  But won't you reduce the planets max pop to about 10 (I've had this
happen to me, never done it personally) ??

Granted you can re-terraform it and eventually get the max pop back up,
but is it really worth the effort??

I guess if the race you are attacking is killing you in ground combat advances
it might be feasible.  

>I suppose that you could use bio-bombs if you wanted to reduce the population
>without destroying the factories. That's the only thing I can think of. 

   Yes that is exactly what they are for, but you have to be careful
   or you will kill off the entire colony (which isn't really that bad
   since the factories will still be their when you land a colony ship).

   What I do is destroy almost all of the enemies offensive fire power
   while in combat then use the bio bombs.  Then click on the planets
   button to see how many I killed and keep doing that until most of
   the population is gone.  Then follow up with ground troops and get
   free tech and a planet with lots of factories, it should only take
   a few turns to max out the planet and build bases.

   I usually don't bother with this unless I'm behind in ground combat
   tech.

E.   I'd have to agree with your assessment that bio-bombing planets to 
make them useless to -everyone- is not one of my favorite tactics, but if you
just wanted to reduce a race in strength to where they'd be off your back a 
bit, and didn't think you could ever HOLD the planets involved, maybe...

> On a related note, does anyone happen to know what happens if you try to
> reduce a planet's pop size to 0 with bio weapons?	

	Yep.  The maximum population allowed for the planet (sans 
terraforming) goes down to 10, then no lower.  You -frequently- find a LOT 
of these 'bio-contaminated' planets lying around after an extended war 
between computer players.  :-)

F.  Well, I found a good use for Bio Weapons, I was playing
human/huge/4/impossible when Mechlon(sp?) colonized over 1/3 of the universe
and I was behind in population and production, I got the death ray, but
not enough production rate to crank up large numbers ships with death ray,
etc.  

So I made 3 huge with death ray and good shield and 100 small bomber with
best engine and computer each with a few death spores and went killed almost
all his planets with huge draw the fire and the biobomber will finish the
population one or two turns then retreat without killing many missile bases
but the colony was gone.  And things became really easy after that.  Small
bio bombers are cheap to make, but if they have antidote, it's almost
useless.

Oh, after the colony was killed, the max pop. becomes 10, but you can
terraform it later if you need it.

G.  Bio Weapons useless??? You gotta be kidding me. Here one use for it:
bomb the planet leaving very few colonist and send you troop over
(tricky) and guess what? tons of free tech!!! 
note: Have a colony ship ready above just in case you kill of all of
them. You still get to build that planet real fast since all the
factory are still there, hehehe.
    It's important to note that you use the bio weapon as a last
resource since your diplomatic rating take a serious beating but if
they are all at war or in final war they it's no problems..
    Last time I used it. I was behind in tech and started to loose. I
bio his planet took it with troop then before his superior fleet had
time to come I had send the max population plus spend reserve money in
it to build tons of missiles bases(rich planet). After doing that
several time I caught up in tech and was big enough to suck my way up
in the voting booth by 'spreading some on the earned tech' hehehe...
    At impossible, it's hard to keep up with the cp tech (especially
psilon) due to it enormous production advantage. So stealing it from
spy and invading enemy planet is a must for me.
==========

Subj: MOO --- Lightning Shield vs. Scatter Packs

I am getting ready to post an analysis of weaponry in MOO, along
with comparisons of efficiency, etc. (and a determination of what
is REALLY best against the guardian).

But I have a question I have been unable to find the answer to.
When a scatter pack missile is used against a lightning shield
(or zyro shield), its effectiveness is supposedly determined by
the tech level of the missile.  Is this tech level the tech
level of the scatter packs, or of the missiles that make up the
scatter packs?

For example, if Scatter Pack X missiles are used against a Lightning
Shield, is their tech level 44 (that of Scatter Pack X) or 18 (that of
Stinger Missiles, which make up the individual warheads of Scatter
Pack X)?

A.  I'm pretty sure it's the tech of the individual missiles.  I have a huge
game where my adversary developed lightning shields (damn!) and they were
way too effective for level 44 missiles.
==========

Subj: Re: Black Hole Generator

Is it just me or does this weapon seem to be little unbalanced?
I mean one of my medium ships with this device was able to half
any size stack of enemy ships with one shot, regardless of size
and hull points. Yes sure, the shield tech is supposed to make
a difference, but it seems minimal at best. I cut one stack
from 32,000 to 16,000 in one shot! Another stack of 20 really
huge ships was reduced to about 3. Do multiple black hole
generating ships in the same stack increase the damage (ala the
neutron stream projector?) or does one ship do the same damage
as 32,000? The generator also works great on planets too! Wish
my planets could have Black Hole bases instead of stupid
missile bases. 

In short, the combat system with it's "stacks" of ships
fighting each other gives the side with more TYPES of
ships more of a tactical advantage than the side with the 
actually has a greater NUMBER of ships, I think that the 
black hole generator is much too powerful, even at high 
tech levels.

Oh, does anyone know if good battle computers help at all with
the Black Hole Generator?
==========

Subj: Re: Best Weapon (BIG SHIP VS. SMALL SHIP)

>I won't tell you that 64 death rays on a huge ship is optimum (for most
>purposes, it isn't), but I will say that I looked into the argument, and
>am convinced death rays (energy cost 1500, damage 200-1000) are a better
>deal than maulers (energy cost 300, damage 20-100) for pure damage.

I think there's more to it than just the cost of the weapon.  You have
to examine what it will take to house these weapons.  I don't have the
figures in front of me, but if memory serves, the death ray is quite a
bit larger than a mauler.  I suspect that you need a huge ship to hold
a death ray (unless you have an extremely high weapon tech level), but
a mauler can fit in smaller ships.  So once you add in the cost of the
ships (and what-not) necessary to carry these weapons, the mauler
may be a better deal.

A.  Basically, a death ray is about 5x as big as a mauler and does about
10x as much damage at a sufficiently high tech level, as I mentioned
before.  (Bigness is about 5x for both size and energy consumption ->
energy space).

That's a small-ship vs big ship argument, though, rather than a
mauler vs death-ray argument.

BTW, I agree - a smaller ship with a single mauler has a definite
utility.  There's also a place for the large ship with a death ray, IMO
(it doesn't take much tech advance to fit it into a large).   This
is probably most useful if the enemy has a lot of huge or large ships IMO.

B.  What we really need (but not enough that I've bothered to do it) is
a relatively straightforward but data-intensive spreadsheet.  Make it
3D if you have a reasonably modern spreadsheet program, and create the
following pages:

	1) A set of global constants for a given comparison of weapons.
	Enemy shielding, defense and missile defense, size (for overkill).	 
	A list of weapons, and their statistics (size, tech level, power, cost).
	You should include current tech level (at least in weapons) as part
	of the scenario so you can adjust a cell containing "actual size"
	to make accurate comparisons between weapons.
 	Make them one row or probably column each, and extend below for 100
	cells listing the amount of damage that would actually be done by
	that weapon against that target given a roll of 1 to 100.

	At the bottom of these columns you could then have totals, deriving
	interesting numbers for damage done per unit cost/size/power.

	2) Ship design screen.
	Here you should have listed all the various tech levels and 
	characteristics for every system that can be put into a ship.
	This is especially important for accurately reflecting the 
	requirement to power the various weapons, but will also keep
	you honest on the cost of providing shields, computers e.t.c.

	3) Opponent's ship.

	4) Running tally, given X of your ships and Y of the opponent's
	of how many are likely to be left after each round of exchanged
	fire.

This will, among other things, let you work out EXACTLY the best design
for fighting the Guardian, with whatever your current technologies might be.

C.  >this is the case, you're toast much quicker, and the odds you win even
>slimmer.

I think you can build at least 100 with gauss for the price of 1 huge.
I tested it out last night, dragged a meaningless war to the very end.
I was able to build smalls with gauss autocannon, best computer/engine
at 14 BC.  While a huge with all the stuff you talked about at about
2500.  If we take no computer level stuff into consideration, each ship
w/ autocannon can do 20 points of damage on the average against level 10
shield.  So 100+ of these smalls can kill a huge if hit first, which
isn't too hard at that stage with high energy focus or teleporter and a
good engine.

>isn't too hard at that stage with high energy focus or teleporter and a
>good engine.
>

NO.  NO.  NO.  Now you are putting High Energy Focus and Gauss on a small??

I don't think so.  The huge will have HEF, Auto repair, some type of 
streaming weapon and possibly missiles.  If I have interdictors your smalls
are toast before they get close.

==========

Subj: Re: MoO: How to deal with BAD neighbor in the early stage.(Help)

A. : 	Give them tech(preferably useless stuff) till they are willing
: to sign a Nonaggression pact. At that point they won't attack any of your
: established colonies (add a few bases to each -- and they won't for sure...)
: On your brand new colonies, if you really want to protect them, generally
: all you need is a fighter ship which is more powerful than their
: scouts (and possibly more powerful than their colony ships). I would guess
: a large with a lot of heavy lasers, high computer, high speed, high armor,
: high shields (possibly battle scanner) would suffice.....

B. You're kidding right? Where are you going to get the "high" techs that early
in the game? BTW, battle scanner is a shield? Where have you been?

A.	You misread my intent on that.... It was something else to add --
not meant as a shield.... And any tech you get has some possibility of
being one they don't.....

B.  Avoid non-aggression pacts in the beginning. Why? If you have fighters
guarding prospective planets, you can't drive the colony ships of other races
away (the one you have non-aggression pact with). Never give them tech, even
useless ones because that will enable them to build more advanced techs
FASTER instead of wasting time on the useless techs. Set up trade agreements
with them to cool their jets and to enable you to build faster (it's a win-win
situation).

A1.	If you're wasting your BC's building ships strong enough to 
keep the enemy colony ships away from planets you want to colonize, why 
not just build a colony ship instead and colonize the planet right off the
bat....

B1.  Because colony ships costs a lot, not to mention that they take forever to
build in the BEGINNING, whereas you could build say 20 fighters in no time...
It's delay tactic, and works quite well.

A2.	Giving them useless tech doesn't seem to me to help them much --
if the difference between you or them winning is your giving them a tech
that cost you 2000 or less BC to develop, I really wonder.... I agree
with the trade agreements, however, and on impossible that is sometimes
the only way to go..... You won't be able to get Non-aggression pacts 
as a general rule though, using only trade. Trade, at the beginning
can be very costly to your development, too.....

B2. If they're developing them at the same time, then you just allowed them to
jump onto the next tech.

B.  In a huge-impossible-5 races game I usually just colonize 10-15 systems and
then do nothing but build factories and terraform to boost production and
population. I sign trade agreements like hell and after I got enough systems,
I would then go for the non-aggression pacts. There I start stealing tech and
framing other races (yes, I like Darloks :-)) till the entire galaxy is up in
arms busy fighting each other. I then capture the "hot spots" and gradually
have remote systems all over the galaxy in an effort to search out Orion.

A1.	I'm assuming you save the game a lot to avoid getting captured.
Although only a pseudo-cheat, I still find that rather unsatisfying....
Also stealing tech can be very expensive too.....

B1.  Not if you're a Darlok :-) It's very common to be able to steal 2-4 techs from
the races (1 per race of course) with the Darloks. Just boost the internal
security up a bit and it's close to impossible for them to snag tech off you.

A2.	I'm very curious how you keep everyone else happy with you
if you never give them tech??? Trade agreements don't do it (certainly not
with any amount of speed). Since you're backstabbing others, others are
framing you, you're not voting for some leaders, and other get
envious of you -- how do you keep computer players from declaring war on
you????? Giving tech is the only diplomatic way I know of to get others
to like you. The only other way I can think of is attacking their
enemies -- but in the beginning of any impossible game, that's unlikely to
be feasible.....

B2. Wrong. Trade agreements gets them happy: I renew them ever so often to keep
them happy. Because of the spy bonus you could almost frame another race for
every tech you steal (Darloks again). I'd usually avoid votes since for any
race to obtain 2/3 majority in the BEGINNING is a very hard thing to do. I
never give ANY ONE TECH, unless I need a race to have some technical edge when
I ask them to declare war on a bigger, more advanced race. In situations like
this I would still keep the critical techs to myself (i.e. Black Hole
Generator, Neutron Stream Projector, Hyper Drive, Inertial Nullifier, etc) and
give them just the techs they need. This never happens in the beginning, more
like half way and/or toward the end of the game...

Although this works better for the Darloks, I've been able to use Meklars and
win a few using the same tactic (except I would not be able to steal tech as
often or frame anyone). I just keep building and trading and ask the other
races to declare war on each other (and sweeten the deal w/BCs if necessary).
Works fine in impossible (I have yet to play the other settings :-)), version
1.3. I save the butt-kicking till I get the death ray :-)

C.  )avoid WAR in the early stage. THANKS.

I recall some games like that.  I've got a few comments:

1)  Don't spy on paranoid xenophobes, even if you don't try and steal
their technology.  It upsets them :-)  [Actually, don't think paranoid
is a term the game uses, but it fits.]

(This has been the cause of a number of my 'early wars'.  If you've been
spying on the enemy, you might want to reconsider - it could be the cause
of your diplomacy problems, even if you don't do anything but 'hide').

2)  Early on, a huge double hull without shields can be useful.  Stick
the best beam weapons you can on it (heavy lasers or possibly Neutron
Pellet guns if you have them), some bombs, a battle scanner, and not
much else.  (Shields and computers tend to be too expensive when you
start out).  The idea is you can have something a lot more spaceworthy
than a large hull for not that much more expense.

In version 1.2, I found that having this monster show up on scanners would
occasionally inspire the enemy to sue for peace!  It was only one game, but
it happened a couple of times - as soon as my huge ship got within scanner
range, the enemy would have second thoughts.

D.  	A trick I've found works *really* well at the very onset of
the game, is to build a small fleet of fighters and throw them into
orbit around every star within reach. That makes the other races leave
when they start exploring the area. I build my first colony as far
out as possible, then stretch my fighter screen to cover as big a
chunk as I (hope) I can hold.
==========
 
Subj: MoO: How do I get the big populations?

I'm a little confused as to how to create the largest possible population
on a planet.  I've seen several people talking about how they got up to
300, but the highest that I've ever seen was 280.  The thing that REALLY
puzzles me is that this was a Minimal planet that I stole from an enemy,
and my Terran planets were only maxxing at 240-260 with Gaias and Complete
Terraforming.

A.  A planet with base-size of 120 gives you a max-size of 300 (Gaia + 60,
Complete Terraforming +120). These planets do exist, and since Orion
has a base-size of 120 there is always at least one in the galaxy.

I have seen planets with a base-size of 125, and that planet would
have had a total size of 307 unless there had been a limit of 300.
Sometimes accidents can give you planets with really high base-size.
At least in v 1.2 (and older) you sometimes could terra-form the
planet to a lot higher values than that planet could have previously.
-----

Is there an order that I should do this in?

Assuming that all planetary techs were available to me, is it a mistake
to skip "Improved Terraforming +50" and "+60" and jump to "+70"?

A.  Probably not. It saved some BC-s but to be effective you have to be
able to put out enough BC's so the wait for the more advanced (and
more costly) improvement isn't to long.
-----

Soil Enrichment and Advanced Soil Enrichment increase the base population
by 25% and 50%.  So let's take an example...

My home world is a Terran planet with a max population of 100.  If I didn't
do ANY terraforming but took Soil and Gaia, would that mean that I would
have:
	A)   100 base pop +25% = 125, +50% = 187
or
	B)   100 base pop +25% = 125, +50% = 150

A.  Answer:  B.
-----

Also, is the base population including all the terraforming, or is it
what you started out with?  And assuming that you were offered all 
planetary techs, is it smarter to Gaia your planets AFTER you've 
completely terraformed them, or does it make a difference?

A.  Base-population is the original size of the planet before ALL
modifications (exception: Accidents may change it). The only reason to
do improvements in any special order is that Soil Enrichment and
Advanced Soil Enrichment increases the population growth. The max
population is independent of the order of improvements.
==========

(FLEET BUILDING STRATEGY)

>>I usually end up with just two classes:  small
>>missile boats with reasonable maneuverability and low shielding, and 
>>a large (or huge) ship with range 2 weapons, max. shield and repulsors.
>>The large ships are there to keep enemy ships from crossing the screen
>>and wiping out the missile-boats.  I usually only institute a bomber class
>>when about to take over another planet.

Interesting .. I follow a different strategy. Usually only building smalls 
or mediums VERY early in the game, I try to accrete enough planetary reserve 
to "pump" my planets which are building HUGE ships until they can reach 
satisfactory levels on their own. I usually run around with fleets of 15-20 
huges with the best tech and re-make a design after each SIGNIFICANT tech 
advance. i.e. HEF, Teleporter, Interdictor etc.

I have found that a few of these fella's do just as much damage to worlds as 
fleets of 1000's of small ships.

A.  I think we are talking about different stages of the game.  Once HEF, 
Nullifiers and BHG's are around, it pays to build ships that can carry them.
I refer to that point in the game where the Inertial Stabilizer and Repulsor
are the best thing you have going for you.  I can think of only a couple
games that I've lost when I had the HEF tech, so I don't worry about losing
if I can last that long.
The advantage of using missile boats is that they can serve in both an 
offensive and defensive role.  I tend to shuttle a pack between my border
planets to deliver a punch to enemy fleets.  It's cheap defense.
This assumes of course that you always have a good missile tech.

B.  I was following the "Fun ship names" thread.  It seems to me that what
kind of ships you have is totally dependent on your strategy.  I play
Psilon a lot and my strategy for the most part is pacific technologist
:-)  And I love small ships, so I would normally use two designs: small
ship with best beam weapon(preferably something that halves shield
strength), best engine, best computer and strap on a teleporter is it's
available; another one is small with the best bomb, best engine and
computer.  I name them TIE bomber and TIE fighter :-).  Sometimes I
would have a 3rd design: a medium ship w/ a battle scanner just to see
what the other guy has.

But when situation is not ideal, like when the other guys developed
subspace interdictor.  I'll build large/huge ships with a lot of
torpedoes and best armor/shield/lightning ship etc.  But thankfully I
can wipe most of them out before they get interdictor.  So far it's
working OK on impossible.  The fighters are still useful even though they can't use
teleporters.  I use them to attack planets with no base and very little
fleet orbiting.

==========

Subj: Re: Best MOO Weapon  (ION/NEUTRON STREAM PROJECTOR)

Funny that I haven't seen this mentioned: Neutron Stream Projector.
You can kill any one stack with 6 of these in just one turn. And yes, even
those 32000 stacks of 2400 hit points monsters.  Just design all 6 type of your
ships to carry this, with the highest possible initiative so that you'll move
first.  

Best thing about it, is that NSP has range 2, and you don't really need to
carry any weapons (I believe you still need to put at least one regular weapon
on board, otherwise, you don't get to move at all.)  Also, you only need around
40 of each to achieve maximum effect.

I have to confess that I haven't tried this in full.  I did test it out by
designing two ship types with NSP, and successfully kill a stack of 32000 small
10-hits missile boats using just 50 of each of my ships, and in just one turn
too.  (first strike takes the hit point down to 2, and second one finished it)

With all other weapons mentioned here, death rays, BHGs, autocannons, etc.,
you still need to roll the dice. With NSP, it's just cold mathematics.

>on board, otherwise, you don't get to move at all.)  Also, you only need around
>40 of each to achieve maximum effect.

Don't try this at home.  The computer did this once (It was Ion Stream, not
neutron stream, but the argument is the same), put in ion stream but no weapon.

I laughed at him.  Didn't even go after the stream ships until all others were
dead.  Why??  Ion/Neutron streams reduce your armor (total hit points to kill
you).  You can eventually take some out by reducing their armor to zero, but
it is a long process.  Include some streaming weapons with you Ion/Neutron 
stream and see how long those stacks of fighters last when they are reduced 
to 1 hit point each to kill.

BTW.  You can take out a planet eventually with Ion/Neutron stream.  Just
reduce its hit points to <0.

A.  Big ? I am playing version 1.3 and the CP *is* able to reduce your
planetary defense within 1 or 2 turns using NSP. This happened to
a planet with > 500 missile bases. Believe me I learned this the
hard way :-}.

B.  A devastating <g> strategy for reducing planets with shields (and not /too/ 
many missile bases, as one finds in typical mid-game situations) is a Huge 
with Ion Stream, Auto-Repair, best Armor, Shields and ECM available.  He 
thumps you, you zap him, you repair (he doesn't), his hitpoints eventually 
reduce to 0, and his defenses collapse -- send in the marines!

C..  >It takes much shorter time than you think (TO REDUCE PLANET HIT POINTS 
TO 0):
>
>     2             3             4              5               6
>(1/4) = 1/16, (1/4) = 1/64, (1/4) = 1/256, (1/4) = 1/1024  (1/4) = 4096
>
>So if you have 3 ship types designed with NSP, you can take out most medium
>stacks, and any small stacks, in just one turn.  You might want to change the
>word "eventually" to "instantly" :)

Not sure exactly what you are saying here.  I'm also not sure of the limiting
quantities or multi ship bonuses for NSP, but then again NSP comes late in the
game, so I'd rather talk about ISP.

# ISP is 20% armor reduction +1% per ship (not sure if enemy tech level, i.e. 
# shields or such is taken into affect) up to 50% max.  Since mostly ISP is
# outfitted on larges or huges, stacks of 30+ are rare (at least for me :-)

No, {N,I}SP does not depend on other tech on either side.

# 
# So, at 50% on a planet with 200 hit points, hit points remaining go:
# 
# 100 after first strike
# 50
# 25
# 13
# 7
# 4
# 2
# 1
# 0
# 
This is true if you only have one ship type with {N,I}SP, that's why I keep
stressing that for this technique to work well, you need more than one ship
type that carries {N,I}SP.  Besides, by the time the enemy bases can get 200
hit points on their bases, and you still can't fit ISP on a medium ship, then
I think you're losing the tech race.  Usually, on a hard/huge/5 game, I see at
most 100-150 hit points on the enemy bases when I reach the tech level of
things like hellfire torpedo.

==========

Subj: Re: MoO ship designs?

Here are my early designs.  Neutron pellet gun with small ship is an obvious
choice, but I would recommend research on ion cannon instead.  You get
ion cannon, and heavy ion cannon for the price of one tech.

Long Arm:
 Medium ship, speed 2, heavy laser, nuclear missile - don't use up the missiles

Buggy:
 Small ship, No shield, laser - inexpensive, but don't like gattling lasers

Bug Killer:
 Large ship, Many gattling lasers - deadly earlier on

Shield Bug:
 Small ship, Shield level 3, laser - good against bug killer

Claim Jumper:
 Reserve fuel tank, many lasers or gattling lasers - scare away colony ship

Mayflies:
 Max speed and ECM, bomb only - suicide bomber

Dream:
 Huge ship, most expansive everything, is never actually built, used as bank
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Fun Ship Names!

)That will be toast trying to attack one of my planets. Interdictors,
)Zeon Missiles/Scatter X behind level XX shields, and huge ships carrying
)300 pulse phasors and a HEF.

Huge ships have a lot of utility for a long time - but they loose most of
it when the technology needed to put a death ray in a medium ship along
with a high-energy focus appears.  (Also desirable - and eventually possible 
- inertial compensator or nullifier and battle scanner.)

I've recently been playing a game that dragged on long enough for this
level of tech to develop - I was behind most of the game, but the Psilons
weren't able to make any headway in spite of their tech lead.  One
complicating factor was the lack of any powerful bombs on either side.

Eventually I did take Orion - (I played tag with the 85 scatter-pack XV's
in version 1.3 - you just can't afford to let those hit you, but fortunately
they are slow enough to be able to avoid) - and was able to hold it, which
was what turned the game around.

The real key is the initiative advantage, and perhaps range.  He who
fires first tends to win, unless there is a truly overwhelming numerical
advantage.  That's the problem with the huge ships with the pulse phasors -
the large size will lower their initiative.  And they are vulnerable to
just a few (maybe as many as six with double-neutronium hulls) death
beam hits.

So the 'death mite' (medium ship, death ray, inertial nullifier, high
energy focus, battle scanner) will get the jump on a huge ship - then
boom.  Large ships become sitting ducks at this point.

I'll have to try a small ship, mauler, nullifier, battle scanner - if it
all fits - that should be even faster.  (So far, the psilons have been
foolishly sticking with larger ships, so it isn't really important to
the game which is all over but the mopping up).

SubSpace teleporters haven't been a problem so far - if they were, I gather
that taking in a ship class with a subspace teleporter would turn on the
interdictors (both sides have them), so that it would nullify their
effect on both sides (?).
========== 

Subj: Re: MOO: attacking planets with many bases

>	Title sort of says it. I'm trying to crack a couple of
>planets that have next to no air cover, but about 20 bases on
>each. They're at the same tech level as me: HEF and so on. I
>assume they have anti-bio-toxins and whatnot. I've tried making
>fleets of cloaked ships with biobombs but they do nothing to
>the planet. Nukes don't scratch its shields. What are the
>commonly accepted techniques??

A.  I finally got the Black Hole thingy.  That screws up the planets, and just
about anything else it hits.  Unfortunately, the damned Psilons got a
weapon called the Heavy Mauler (or something like that).  The Psilons
completely wiped out 7 of my Dreadstar type ships (BHG, 2350hp,
15%Repairing and the missile protection field) with one shot and did over
9000 points of damage (20 bases) to my planet I was defending with another
shot!  Then the SOBs left.  Of course, they had like 1248 stacked ships with a
couple HM's on each.  

B.  One possibility, if you've got good spies: Sabotage. First, incite a
rebellion on the target planet. Once you've done that, sabotage the
missile bases; since the planet's in rebellion, it won't rebuild the
bases. Then move in.

C.  My favorite way 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.  Now you teleport to the far left.  The
missiles will travel their max distance (let's say '5') toward you.
Now you teleport back to the right of the planet and drop another
bundle of bombs.  The missiles on the left will travel their max
distance back to the right but will max out over the planet, one
space too short.  The planet will launch another barrage of missiles.
Teleport back to the left, etc., etc...  Either you will ultimately
eliminate all bases (which will also eliminate all airborne missiles),
or you'll run out of bombs, in which case you should 'retreat' while
next to the planet.  Then on the next turn, return to the planet with
a fresh load of bombs (pretty realistic, huh?) and finish the job.

D.  Hmm. After a few months of MOO, I *finally* got into one of those protracted
games in a Huge/hard/5 as the Meklars. I was third in, basically, everything and
had to sit back until, seemingly all at once, I developed all of the Soil
Enrichments/Atmospheric Terraformings at once. Boom! Suddenly, we're a player
in the galactic game instead of someone hiding in the corner. It was in this
game that I discovered the ME (missile evasion) technique mentioned above. 
However, I found that you needed *2* different groups of bombers because. With 
only 1 group, you teleport (TP) next to the planet, bomb/BHG and missiles appear 
over the planet. You TP away, the first salvo follows you (to middle of screen) and
a *NEW* group forms right over the planet. If you go right back in, salvo #2
tags you. But with 2 groups, you both TP in and bomb/BHG, salvo #1 appears
oriented at one of your two stacks. You retreat *that* stack only and bomb with
group #2. Salvo #2 appears trained on group #2. Group #2 TP's out to far edge
and group #1 TP's back in. Salvo #1 turns around and follows, but only as far
as the planet, exactly where salvo#3 appears, trained on group #1. Repeating
this pattern with 2 bomber sets insures your never getting blown away.
==========
-- 
Subj: Re: MOO; when do they shoot?

>Sometimes, when I move my ship next to theirs, they get to shoot
>at me before I can. Sometimes, they don't.  Yes, I know they can
>only shoot at one target/turn, but that's not the issue here - suppose
>each side only has 1 ship type. I have A, they have B. Sometimes I get
>	[move A next to B], [B fires at A], [A can now fire at B]
>and sometimes I get
>	[move A next to B], [B doesn't fire] [A can now fire at B]
>why?

Its all a matter of initiative.  Whoever has the higher initiative shoots
first.  I'm not sure I remember the exact formula but I think it is:
Initiative=Battle_Computer_Version + Maneuverability + 2 (if you have
	     a Battle Computer in the ship)
==========
 
Subj: Re: MOO: Sabotage

>When you specify Sabotage on the Races screen, is there any way	
>to select which planet?	

Yes!
When the screen of sabotage comes up(you know what I am talking about
:-), click on the planet flag to change target planet.
==========

Subj: MOO: Space Rubble

Has anyone noticed that some missiles seem to get destroyed when going
through space rubble?  I didn't see this anywhere in the docs, and
it's usually pretty subtle, so I was wondering if anyone can confirm
this, and if so, to what extent?

This is version 1.3.

A.	I've run in to this also.  The computer AI was operating at its usual
level, so it's planet was firing at my stack of 500 NPG smalls instead of my 
15 large fusion bombers _despite the fact that it had level X planetary 
shields and the NPG's were useless_.  I started sending in packs of 50-100 of 
these with all my bomber fleets - worked like a charm.
	Back to the subject at hand, the computer was launching many missiles
at a time, so I moved back and inadvertently led the 25+ missiles through a
rubble square.  Only 4 or 5 came out the other side, so I started using the
NPGer's (which were fortunately much faster than the missiles) to distract and
destroy all the missiles.  Only got hit once when I accidentally clicked the
wrong mouse button.

	Is this new to v1.3 or just something they forgot to mention?
==========

Subj: Moo editor: saved-game file information

In the Masters of Orion save file format, planet entries occupy
the first portion of the file.  Each planet entry is 184 bytes long,
and begins with the planet's name.

In this discussion, assume that bytes are numbered from 0, starting with 
the first byte of the planet's name.  If you're editing a game file, and 
position yourself at the first byte of the name, you need to advance 40 
bytes to get to the planet quality, for example.

Most things are short ints--two bytes, LBF--and so unless otherwise noted,
the following is a list of the starting byte of a two-byte int.

bytes 0-11 contain the planet's name
      12 is x_location 
      14 is y_location
      16-25 are unknown
      26 is the base planet size
      28 is the fertilized/gaiafied planet size (1.25 or 1.50 times the base)
      30 is the terraformed (final) size: fertilized size+terraforming
      32 is the planet type:
		0d == terran            06 == barren
		0c == jungle            05 == tundra
		0b == ocean             04 == dead
		0a == arid              03 == inferno
		09 == steppe            02 == toxic
		08 == desert            01 == radiated
		07 == minimal           00 == none
      34-37 are unknown
      38 is the planet fertility, from 0==hostile to 2==gaia
      40 is the "planet quality":
		0 == ultra poor
		1 == poor
		2 == normal
		3 == artifacts
		4 == rich
		5 == ultra rich
		6 == "Orion"-class planet with 4x artifacts
      42-55 are unknown
      56 is the planet owner
      58 is the current population
      60 is the old population (pop change is calculated as a difference)
      62 is the number of factories 
      64 is the 'usable production' (after deducting planetary expenses)
      66 is the 'total production' 
      68-89 are unknown
      80 is the % of resources allocated to ship building (out of 100)
      82 is the % of resources allocated to defense (out of 100)
      84 is the % of resources allocated to industrialization
      86 is the % of resources allocated to ecology
      88 is the % of resources allocated to technology 
      90 is the ship being built
      92-93 are unknown; believed to be some sort of index
      94 is the number of missile bases
      96-99 are unknown
     100 is the stargate flag (0==no stargate, 1==stargate)
     102-103 are unknown
     104 is believed to be the planetary shield
     106-123 is unknown
     124 is the player's 'seen the planet' flag (change from 0->1 and you'll
	 have explored the planet)
     126-173 are unknown; first several sets of bytes are *thought*
         to be other player's 'seen' flags.
     174 is the level of robotic controls (or level+2 for Meklar); think
	 refitting
     175-183 are unknown

caveats to the covetous:
	- if you 'give' yourself a planet, don't forget to set the 'seen' flag.
	- if you swipe another player's planet that is building 'enemy
	  ship design number 6' (that's 0x05 for you non-C programmers)
	  and you don't have a 'design number 6' of your own, MoO will halt.

limitations:
	- where does the record indicate what kind of missiles the bases fire?
	

Player 0's planetary reserve is a long int (4 bytes) at 29716.  Don't
know if this is signed, not avaricious enough to find out.

Ship info is 68 bytes long.  Player 0's designs start around 50400.  
I've misplaced the exact bytenumber, and the offset between each 
races' ships (after six 68-byte records describing each of a race's 
ships, there's something like a hundred bytes of (unknown) 
information, and then the next race's ships.)

Assuming that byte 0 is the first byte of the ship's name,
byte  20 is the ship cost (this gets recalculated by the program)
      22-23 are unknown
      24 believed to be ship size, with 0/1/2/3 for small/medium/large/huge.  
	 icons seems to be stored somewhere else, because pictures don't change
      26 unknown; space left?
      28-34 weapon type
		05 == heavy laser
		06 == hyper V rockets (2 count)
		07 == hyper V rockets (5 count)
		08 == gatling laser
		09 == neutron pellet gun
		0a == hyper X rockets (2 count)
		0b == byper X rockets (5 count)
		0c == fusion bombs
		0d == ion cannon
		0e == heavy ion cannon
		0f == scatter pack V rockets (2 count)
		10 == scatter pack V rockets (5 count)
		11 == death spores
		12 == mass driver
		13 == Hercular missiles (2 count)
		14 == Hercular missiles (5 count)
		15 == neutron blaster
		16 == heavy blast cannon
		17 == anti-matter bomb
		18 == graviton beam
		19 == stinger missiles (2 count)
		1a == stinger missiles (5 count)
		1b == hard beam
		1c == fusion beam
		1d == heavy fusion beam
		1e == omega V bomb
		1f == anti-matter torpedo
		20 == megabolt cannon
		21 == phasor
		22 == heavy phasor
		23 == scatter pack VII missiles (2 count)
		24 == scatter pack VII missiles (5 count)
		25 == doom virus
                etc.
      36-42 weapon count for weapons in 28-34
      44 unknown, probably maneuverability or warp (0==warp 1, 1==warp 2)
      46 unknown
      48 unknown
      50-54 specials
		01 == reserve tanks
		02 == standard colony base
		03 == barren colony base
		04 == tundra colony base
		05 == dead colony base
		06 == inferno colony base
		07 == toxic colony base
		08 == radioactive colony base
		09 == battle scanner
		0a == anti-missiles
		0b == repulsor beam
		0c == warp dissipator
		0d == energy pulsar
		0e == inertia stabilizer
		0f == zyro shield
		10 == auto repair
		11 == stasis field
		12 == cloaking device
		13 == ion stream
		14 == high energy focus
		15 == ionic pulsar
		16 == black hole generator
		17 == combat teleporter
		18 == lightening shield
		19 == neutron stream
		1a == advanced damage control
		1b == technology nullifier
		1c == inertia nullifier
		1d == oracle interface
		1e == displacement device
	        etc.
      56 shield
      58 unknown
      60 computer level
      62 unknown; perhaps armor?
      64 unknown, probably either warp or maneuverability (0==1, 1==2, etc)
      66 hit points

caveat:
	- additional technology advances decrease the cost of things on
	  the ships you've designed, as well as on any new designs---and
	  so the computer recalculates ship cost each turn.  Changing
	  the 'cost' field in the saved game file won't buy you much.
	- serious abuses possible here; disarming all opponent's ships,
	  eradicating nearly all opponent hit points, and of course
	  building 'fighters of doom' (or even putting colony bases
	  on your scouts) can make the game much less fun very quickly.

limitations:
	- lots, I haven't played with this much (build one small fighter 
	  with warp 9 engines, serious weapons and all the specials you 
	  can fit, and you've made them all...)
	- would really like to know where fleet sizes, movements are stored.


Emperor names begin at position 57765.


global limitations:
	- where is technology stored, both what has been acquired, and
	  what is available to research?  For opposing players?
	  'Lobotomizing' players would be an excellent way to permanently
	  ban biological weapons, for example.
	- where is the index that says player 1 is the Mershan, player 2
	  is the Meklar?
	- where is diplomacy?  Trade level, treaty level, and of course
	  'relations' would be nice to locate.  
	- where are leader personalities?	
	- where are disasters?  (or, "how do I summon the space amoeba
	  to vanquish my foes, or entertain my fleet?")


Finally, a word as to what you can use all this information for...  
While it's all well and good to 'assist' your games through the power 
of what's been termed '_very_ advanced computer tech,' there's more 
possibility here than just perverting your game.  You should be able 
to create entertaining variations of the game, if you have (or write)
a sufficiently flexible tool.

I've been playing with or considering the following conditions:  
	- start by randomly giving everyone 1/n of the minimal and 
	  better worlds, each with two colonists.  diplomacy is 
	  important from the start, and there's less time 'wasted' 
	  getting to what I think of as the more interesting part of 
	  the game... where you can actually do things.  random 
	  starting positions theoretically should make battle lines 
	  more fluid.  Sakkra tend to dominate though.
	- the above, with everyone getting a missile base on each planet
	  at the start as well, discouraging immediate assaults.
	- create two galaxies by divvying up halve the planets into
	  the NW corner of the map, half into the SE corner, separated by
	  enough distance that they're not reachable until you have very
	  good range.  Put everyone in one quadrant.  Hopefully the game 
	  should evolve along like a 'small' galaxy into mid or late 
	  game, and then a whole other round of colonizing can begin.
          (Might not be so fun if you can't discover/trade for/steal 
          propulsion technology, though.)

Consider using the above save-file information to create some variations,
and not just save a game you would have lost.  Think of a 'scenario editor,'
if you will, and not just a 'save editor.'
==========

Subj: Re: MoO ship designs?

In my experience the best single ship design in the early-mid game is the 
"missile-boat" :   usually a medium hull with your best missile weapon (I 
usually prefer 5 shots over the 2 shot variety), best combat speed, best 
attack computer AND preferably some sort of beam weapon (usually the 
smallest).  Anything else (shields, jammers etc) you just do the best you can 
with the remaining space.  Early in the game you may not be able to fit all 
the above onboard, and may have to choose between having the beam weapon or a 
better computer.

In combat the idea is to move forward so that the opposing ships can't run out 
of your missile range, then fire off a salvo.  Sometimes you have to fire a 
salvo that he can back away from, then follow up to make sure the second or 
third salvo hits.  The idea off having the beam weapon is not really to use it 
as an offensive weapon (though if you can fit in an NPG it can be effective), 
but rather to enable your missile-boat to keep moving after having fired its 
missiles (and so enable you to move closer, fire, then retreat out of range 
again).  The good things about missile-boats are:
    * They are relatively cheap (medium hulls only), so they can be mass 
produced
    * They can generally avoid taking many losses, because they can
usually stay out of enemy beam range, or can run away before enemy missiles 
reach them (but combat initiative is important here)
    * They can wear a large enemy force down by firing a few salvos, 
retreating when the enemy gets too close, then coming back next turn (with 
v1.3 (and v1.2?) that is)
    * They are often (but not always) also useful against missile bases
....*.Plus, computer ship try to outrun the missiles by backing away. When On
planetary defense, I use these to keep the ships that have death spores,
or bombs away from the planet, as the planetary base womps on them with
missiles.

The disadvantages are:
    * Against a big enemy force they have to "hit and run" - not good if you 
are defending a planet (though they can allow you missile bases to get in 
extra shots by deliberately firing your missile-boats so that the enemy forces 
back away)
    * They lose a lot of effectiveness late in the game when zyro and/or 
lightning shields arrive
==========
Subj: Re: Useless MOO tech?

>Here are the situations in which I've had repulsor beams not work
>(v1.3):
>
>-when an enemy ship with cloak or teleporter comes up to my ship.
>They get 1 shot at me after they uncloak or teleport.
>
This is because a decloaking or teleporting ship has the initiative by
definition.  Apparently, repulsors automatically get initiative except in
this one case.

>-when I move my ship beside two stacks, and fire upon one stack.  The
>other stack does not get repulsed.
>
Seems that a repulsor can only fire once per move (no matter who's moving).
Hmm, empty spaces in the Force Field tech progression...how about "Gatling
Repulsor", which can push up to 4 stacks per move...?

>-random situations which I can't determine. (I think they're bugs).
>
One that I'm sure you're running into:  If the stack to be pushed has no
space to be pushed into that's 2 spaces away from the pushing ship, the
repulsor won't fire.  This is only a problem near asteroids and the edges of
the map.

>Note that if the majority of your fleet has repulsors, then the cp's
>will counter with missals or long range weapons.  Likewise I usually
>have the majority of my fleet use range 2 weapons; this makes the cp's
>far less likely to build repulsor equipped ships (unless they are at
>war with someone else).

Yes, the CPs will build new ships based on what will work against yours
(or whoever they happen to be fighting) better than their current ones do.
Moral:  vary your designs fairly often, and never fall into a pattern.  (At
least, not until the late stages of a very long game, when your smalls can
carry 10 maulers or whatever ridiculous design strikes your fancy....)
==========

Subj: Re: Best Moo weapon

)It takes much shorter time than you think.
)
)     2             3             4              5               6
)(1/4) = 1/16, (1/4) = 1/64, (1/4) = 1/256, (1/4) = 1/1024  (1/4) = 4096
)
)So if you have 3 ship types designed with NSP, you can take out most medium
)stacks, and any small stacks, in just one turn.  You might want to change the
)word "eventually" to "instantly" :)

Interesting idea.

Mediums and smalls can be taken out with a moderate size pulsar stack
in one turn, though.  What about repulsors?  I haven't confirmed this
personally, but one poster reports that cloaked ships can get within
range 1 of a ship with repulsors.

So, combine the NSP with the Ionic Pulsar and a cloak.  (Weapon?
what weapon? :-)).  Against larger stuff, stay out of range until the
NSP's have gotten the hit points really low.  2400 / 64 is less than
40, so one has some chance of blowing away a huge stack in only 3 attempts
(but one probably needs more than 40 ships per stack to do this).

Unfortunately, this leaves no room for an inertial nullifier or a 
battle scanner, meaning that initiative may be a problem.  A defense of
9 + 5 (cloaked) should help, that's still hittable with a top-notch
battle computer, the inertial nullifier would help a lot (+4) but
there is no room.  Oh well.
==========
-- 
Subj: Re: MOO; when do they shoot?

)Sometimes, when I move my ship next to theirs, they get to shoot
)at me before I can. Sometimes, they don't.  Yes, I know they can
)only shoot at one target/turn, but that's not the issue here - suppose
)each side only has 1 ship type. I have A, they have B. Sometimes I get
)	[move A next to B], [B fires at A], [A can now fire at B]
)and sometimes I get
)	[move A next to B], [B doesn't fire] [A can now fire at B]

A.  This is based off of initiative.

I was just reading that section of the manual and experimenting.
Your initiative depends on the sum of:

1) the 'maneuverability' of your ship
2) the attack computer level
3) a +3 bonus for a battle scanner
4) possible racial bonuses (Mrrshan).

Initiative of enemy ships should be able to be computed from information available
from a scan.

Before I go into that, I should add that I've seen bugs in v1.3 initiative.  I
had a *less maneuverable* ship go before a *more maneuverable* ship consistently.
Conditions were hyperthrust drive, inertial nullifier, battle scanner.  The highest
maneuverability class would move after one level lower!  I.e. maneuver 12 would
go before maneuver 13.

Also, I should add, even if you have the initiative, if you wait for them to move,
then move close, they will be able to shoot.  You have to move within range and 
shoot first to use your initiative advantage.

Back to computing initiative of enemy ships.....  The formula is:

Beam defense + size modifier + attack level -- with a +2 bonus for a battle computer.

BTW, maneuverability does not depend on ship size (in some other post, I indicated
I thought it did, I was wrong).

The size modifier above compensates for the fact that beam defense has a modifier
based on ship size in it, whereas maneuverability doesn't.

The size modifier above is -2 for small, -1 for medium, 0 for large, +1 for huge.  This
corrects beam defense back to maneuverability.

Since one gets a +1 attack bonus for a battle scanner, one only adds +2 to the 
initiative
computed as above to enemy ships that have this device.

Note that specials like inertial compensators/nullifiers increase the maneuverability
directly, but this shows up in the beam defense.

I'm not sure if this works for Mrrshans or not - probably it does, I think the scan
for the attack computer includes the racial bonus.  (It does/used to for Alkari, 
anyway).

I've seen enemy ships move before they should too, BTW - more bugs in initiative
like the one I mentioned before.

B.  This is a case of who has higher "initiative".  Initiative is determined
by your battle computer level (with a bonus for having a battle scanner),
and it does two things:

1)  Stacks move in order of initiative level, high to low.  Ties are resolved
randomly, I believe 50-50.
2)  If a stack moves into weapon range of an enemy stack, and the enemy stack
has both higher initiative and unfired beam/projectile weapons, the enemy
stack fires automatically.
==========

Subj: Re: [MOO] Shield-halving energy weapons

: 	I'm playing this game now where I got NSP and some sort of 
: streaming weapon.  I was planning on cutting down the hit points on 
: planetary bases and wipe them out with tachyon beams.  But it just so 
: happens that the cp's have level 10+ shields and level 15+ planetary 
: shields that renders my tachyon beams utterly useless.  I'm thinking of 
: installing some shield-halving energy weapon such as particle beams.  But 
: I'm not sure if the shield-halving is effective only when the particle 
: beams fire or leaves the shield at half strength for the other weapons.  
: And does each successive firing halve the shields again?  Thanx

They shield halving is done only for the weapons that have that ability.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Fun Ship Names! (SMALL VS BIG SHIPS, cont.)

I rechecked the initiative equations, and there is no difference in
initiative between ship sizes, unlike my earlier impression.

I'm still suspect that smaller is better in cost effectiveness for
fielding more weapons per unit cost.  In addition, they are harder
to hit.  I have yet to do a completely rigorous analysis of the
cost effectiveness, though.  (I am sure about the difficulty in
hitting).  I've seen posts on the net which remarks smalls and mediums
are better for weapons per cost, which matches my experience (haven't
confirmed this specifically yet).

A.  Attrition also has to be taken into account, a huge ship with good armor
and auto repair plus all the defensive toys (repulsors negate any range
one weapons), are very good at surviving. If out classed and can survive
one round then they can retreat without loss. More importantly the huge
can 'nibble' away the smaller ships.

The smaller ships do need the advantage in numbers, though.  But it is
fairly easy to have a significant advantage in numbers when one is matching
mediums against (say) larges.  When the mediums can on the average destroy
the large with one shot, and one designs the mediums so that they get the
first shot, building large ships is likely loosing proposition.  IMO.  It may
take 4 mediums to destroy a huge - but the 4 mediums are a lot cheaper.
Unless one can design the large to get the first shot, that is the 
key question I think.

Against intelligent opponents, though, weapons become deadly enough where
initiative is the key factor - it would be fair to compare large and medium
for weapons per unit cost given maximal initiative (highest level of
drives, inertial nullifier, battle scanner, highest level of computer).

BTW - if a death ray will fit on a medium, a BGH or whatever will
most likely fit too.

Pulsars are deadly to large stacks of smalls or mediums, though.  But
they can't get within range on the first move phase.  BHG's have
the same problem.  This means they have to take at least one volley,
possibly two (if they loose the initiative advantage, and they probably
will need to if they want a cloak) before they can fire their own weapons.

A.  Yes they can, teleportors.
Also steamer weapons plus high energy focus(adds 3 to range) and a high move (5)
means that on turn one the only row you can't hit is the back row so
all you do is WAIT.

B.  Re: med/large/huge  ongoing debate.
  Lets get some numbers here.  I wrote some down, but don't have them here.
  Something like best speed,manuever,armor,autoblasters ships:
    cost/hits/#blasters for med:large:huge ranged about 4.5-6.
    Maneuver(or init?) went down one for each size up.
  So in this case, there was not overwhelming advantage to one kind.
  I was using single Huge with autorepair/HEF/Ablasters/high shields,ecm
    to take out planets(20 bases) and defending ships pretty easily,
    until planetary shields X.

C.  same with me, I build the biggest ships I can (best tech of everything,
computer ECM, Armor (except for the xxx II armors, which I don't use)
and even maneuverability (sp.)
Then I give them repair and whatever it is that makes your weapons
shoot longer distances..
Then I add best beams and rockets (or just best beams, several types)
These beasts never get destroyed and kill just about everything on sight
(later on even the guardian... one ship only)
I always build 5 or so of the (3 different types, because of tech advances)
and then scrap the oldest ones) and send on to each fleet I want to attack.
Usually they destroy most of the fleet (whatever does not flee in time..)
==========

Subj: Re: Moo: High Tech Weapons (was Re: MOO: Fun Ship Names!)

>Do people use the star-gates much?  I used them in the first game that
>I played, but have since just relied on my speed.  Of course, I haven't
>had a game where I've been really spread out.  Usually, I have a clump
>of planets and try to expand that clump.

In huge galaxies, Stargates and improved/advanced space scanners are a
terrific force multiplier.  Not only can you collect all of your
production in a single star system in one turn, but you can use this
one fleet to defend widely scattered points.

For example:

"Sir, we've detected 3 enemy fleets inbound.  One on the coreward
frontier due in 4 years, another to rimward in 2 years, and the third
comming in from antispinward in 3 years."

"Order the 1st Battle squadron and all new production to assemble at
<foobar>.  Proceed to antispinward and coreward once the enemy fleets
have been crushed."

A.  I read somewhere that Stargate cost 300BC/turn in maintenance, sic!
So I don't use them except in final war when you have to transport ship
from one side of the galaxy to the other. Even then only have Stargate
on some strategic location.

B.  That is true, it's in the manual somewhere, but good luck finding where... :-)

Anyway, I find that a comprehensive Stargate network is well worth the trouble
in a Huge galaxy, especially if the computer has Thorium Cells (Unlimited Range),
meaning that every point in the empire is vulnerable. Stargates let me maintain
3 or 4 defense squadrons that blink around the empire, stopping fleets, killing
pirates, etc., while the rest of my ships are available for attack. In other
words, Stargates are a very effective force multiplier since they allow your
defense forces to be smaller and still have the same combat potential.

It also seems that the computer doesn't use Stargates effectively. If I attack
a computer-held planet with a Stargate, I've found that it is rare for the
computer to shift additional forces into the system to oppose me, even if said
forces are available at other stargated systems.
==========

Subj: Re: MoO: existing research points ... (was Re: How to deal with BAD neighbor 
in the early stage)

# Related question:  If you give them, or vice versa, and they are currently
# developing it, what happens to the research points already invested??  Are
# they lost, or go toward the next tech?????  This could be a very key question,
# as I often forget what I am researching :-)

I believe you lose all existing research points for that tech.  I remembered
noticing that one tech is already pretty far along, i.e. the bulb is almost
fully lit, and then I stole the same tech from someone else, and the next turn
I checked the tech screen, the bulb for that tech was no longer lit.
==========

# Semi-agree.  I usually "expand like hell", which is usually 10 - 15 systems.
# Races seem to hesitate (not stop totally) to invade a colonized world.  Unless
# it is rich or ultra rich, then try to defend it like hell, because they will
# come.  Also, if someone that is fairly far away from their "outposts" takes 
# a planet I kinda "skipped over", I'll invade it.  Figure they won't venture 
# far out to try to retake it, or sometimes you lose contact with them when
# the planet is gone.  Figure I can smooth things over when I re-establish 
# contact.

One method I like to use, especially when playing Human, is to colonize about
10 and then get into alliances with neighboring races. Then I concentrate on
developing the colonizing tech, especially inferno, so that I can take all those
rich and ultra-rich planets deep inside enemy territory which they can not yet
use.  Because they cannot use these, they'll leave you alone for the moment,
and by the time they became interested, I can usually hold them back.
Later in the game, these planets also serve as great staging points for
invasion.  Needless to say, this doesn't work when Silies are in the game.
==========

Subj: Re: Another MoO bug?

>: >Does this happen to anyone?  In the ship design screen, some of my old
>: >weapons disappear from the weapon list.  In fact, all the top of the
>: >list disappear.  So by the time I get disruptors, everything from
>: >nuclear bombs to merculite missiles is gone!  Now is that normal?

	Have you looked for the (admittedly almost invisible) scroll bars on
the right side of the weapons list window?  There should be two arrows 
pointing up and down there.  The arrows don't appear until you have enough 
weapons to more than fill the window.  Also, the game highlights only the
arrows which you can use at any one time - if you're at the bottom of the 
list, for instance, the down arrow will be darkened.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO:  When is the best time to take Orion?

>	 At what time in the game is it most worthwhile to capture Orion?  Are 
>there any techs that are especially effective against the Guardian?  When I
>play I never know if it is worth the resources to build up a large enough
>fleet to defeat the Guardian.

A.  It depends mainly on your weapon-tech level.  In version 1.0 to 1.2, the
Guardian (at "average") can be taken out by a stack of 1000 small ships 
with neutron pellet guns.  You can therefore attempt to capture Orion
quite early in the game.

In version 1.3, however, the above stack will get slaughtered in no time
by the Guardian's 45 Scatter Pack X missiles.  The key now is to give more
powerful beam weapons, plus good missile-defense and high maneuverability
to your ships.

From my personal experience, I found it necessary to wait until I got either
autoblaster or gauss-autocannon.  Typically, I need a stack of 400 medium
ships with autoblaster (300 with gauss-autocannon), maneuverability 5 or
above, plus the best combat computer and ECM jammer I can fit.  The only 
thing I can skip is shield, since it does nothing against missiles, and the
Guardian's beam weapons are too powerful anyway. 

This is the one "improvement" in version 1.3 which I don't like, since by 
the time I can capture Orion, I already know whether I am winning or losing
the game.

B.  On v1.3 of Master of Orion, I have been ignoring Orion, as it doesn't seem
worth it strategically.  It can still be fun if you want to though, here
are some tips on weapons and technique.

The Guardian has high shields (6-9?) and lots of ScatterpackX (35-55?),
I forget the details, but it has been posted.  Also some deathrays,
Stellar Converters etc., take in a high init ship with a Battle Scanner
to see what you are facing.
  Using many kinds of ships is helpful, as G can only shoot at 2 at a time.
  Get speed of 3 or better, so you have a chance of outrunning the missals.
  Sometimes missile ships are good for decoys.  I you have several fleet slots
    available, you might try sending in one of several different designs
    and see which gets shot first, to experiment with the cheapest decoys.
    If you don't have speed to outrun, maybe you can get G to shoot
    a "bazillion" missals at your stack of 3 decoys.
  Best computer of course.  Attack level equal to Beam defense will
    only get you 50% hit probability, so take this into account.
  If you are going to get hit with missals, use a big enough ship and armor
    and shields? to survive 'one more' missile, but better to fly around.
  Three stacks of mediums with >=4 mobility, and Hard beams are good.
    One stack runs from missals, the others keep firing.
  You can do some calculations after writing down G specs.  Assume it can
    kill one ship for every weapon it can fire (or figure it closer),
    then build enough ships to kill G's number of hitpoints before it
    kills your stacks.  Flying around the Scatterpacks really helps.

I took out the ave/hard guardian with a few hundred mediums hardbeams,
some larges and 1000 fleas.  It started missals at the fleas, etc.,
then the mediums took it out in 2 shots.  Fleas never saw battle.
Kind of overkill on my part.
==========

Other interesting general strategies against Computer Players.
  If cp ships have missals (and beams?) they often wont fire missals
if you are right next to them.  Even though my Huge would be toast for
multiple hits of 75 missals, they didn't fire when I moved right next
to them, so I could eat them away one by one.
  Repulsor beams make 1space weapons near useless.
  Then I got HEF and made repulsors nearly useless.
  Autoblasters/HEF/high shields/ECM work great against planets until
    shield level X or so. (Should have worked even then but didn't?)
==========

  When I was building my huges  I tried to schedule them to be completed all at 
once, 15 turns or so.
  Then the turn before they were completed, I updated the design with
  additional weapons that could be put in due to incremental tech increase
  during the building turn.  If you scrap the bottom/newest fleet design,
  for the current design, you don't have to change ship built on all those
  planets.  If you scrap a different one, and forget to change ship build
  you might end up with 2000 fighters or scouts or something. Oops.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: idea for moov1.4 anyone?

>Must have for moov1.4:

>  ability to fire selectively fire your weapon in combat
>  ditto for specials
>  bug fixes on negative ship# and negative money offering in moov1.3
>  bug fixes for subspace interdictor.  This must be a bug, since computer
>ships can still use their teleporter at their home planet with interdictors,
>while players cannot.
----------
I would like to be able to see how many more research points are required
before a tech is "discovered."  Maybe you can already do this, I'm not sure.

A.  it would be difficult to do this.  discovering a tech requires 
a minimum base-research investment (which could be tracked) which then
leads to an increasing "probability" that the breakthrough of discovery
will be made.  probability of discovery increases each turn/year.
the probability portion of discovery isn't particularly deterministic...

----------
I'd like to click and see how many missals my stacks have remaining during
a battle (I hate trying to count).

A.  You already can do this. Simply click the cursor on one of your own ships, and
you get a screen similar to the view provided by the scanner. If you look at
the weapons list, there is a number next to each expendable weapon (missiles,
bombs, bios). This is the number remaining of that weapon.

You can also see the same info on the enemy ships IF you have a battle scanner,
or the battle is at one of your planets w/ at least one base (bases have 
scanners).
----------
 >WISH list:
>  Multi-MoO
>  better AI for computer player, not just higher production bonus for computer
>players at harder levels
>  aggressive computer play level control:  anyone notice that computer players
>AI is rather weak at end game.  While a computer fleet has enough power to 
>destroy a player's world(s), most of the time it doesn't do so, but choose
>to run away.  Most human player would have gone in to REVENGE RAMPAGE 
and
>taken out computer worlds one by one at any cost (suicide mission, etc.).
 
Agreed.  The one time I went into the final war mode, the other races
sabotaged me to death instead of slaughtering my fleets.  
----------
> My suggestion : 
> The possibility to send transport ship even if the planet isn't colonized.
> If the planet is empty, they die. If not, it will take less time to get a good
> planet.

   Absolutely.  There have been a number of times when I have sent out a colony
ship to a world I knew (due to scouts) was colonizable.  I would have liked to
have had the transport ships trailing by one turn, so that they could land right
after the colony got put up.  Obviously, if someone chases your colony ship away,
the transports are dusted, but that's the chance you take.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Repulsor Beams (was Re: Useless MOO tech?)

: Can repulsors be fired multiple times in a turn?  If that's the case, then you
: can use a high speed repulsor ship to push enemy bombers away from the planet.
: Also, you can repulse multiple ships to cause them to lose their turn.
: 
: Can I turn off repulsor for me to fire my 1 space weapon?
: 
Repulsors will work against multiple targets so long as they can be moved, so stay
away from edges, rubble, planet and clumps of other ships.

To get to use range one weapons you have to use the wait button.

Some of my more successful ships have been
Huge+Repulsor+Auto Repair+High Energy Focus+1/3 range 2 weapons+2/3 range 
1 weapons
(Also highest Shields/Armor/ECM/Engines/Comp)

These are very difficult to take out early on, large stacks of missile ships
are about the only danger.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: attacking planets with many bases

Hi: I just found this in the last weekend. I play average/five/huge/5, and
Kla. become a strongest race ( occupied 40 star system once ). Most of
their star system equipped with XX shield and around 30 Scatt Pack X.
I lost about 1000 bomber ( equipped with anti-matter bomber and light shield ),
to try to eliminate one of their star and get NOTHING. :-( 

And you see what! I find out star system miss. defense is about 10 but its
beam defense is ONLY 1 !!. So, I change my strategy. I make 2 kind of ship,
one is medium and the other is large, equipped with teleport ( TP ); The
medium one ( bomber-4 ) I add light shield and Mauler device, and the large
one ( Big-Head ) I add Tech. Nullifier. My bomber squad is one hundred bomber
with 3 or 4 big head. And IT WORK!!! The big head put Tech. Null. to break
star system's computer first, then those bomber go and eliminate star base by
their beam weapon. I found out I might lost 50 bomber-4 to eliminate a star
system with about 30 Scatt Pack X and XX planetary shield. After I found this,
I take about 12-15 star system from Kla. and become a high leader :-).

I hope this help!

PS. I always protect my own planet with highest shield and about 100 miss. base.
I never see any computer player defense their own star  by this way. but I
think my approach still work for XX shield and 100 base. ( cost me about 
150 bomber-4 )
==========

Subj: Slow MoO - You Too?

about midway into yesterday's game (medium, simple, 3 opponents - hey, I'm just a 
beginner) things started to get VERY SLOW. Mouse clicks were taking several 
seconds and auto-combat just barely crept along (and eventually hung - but that's 
another matter - or is it?).

Anybody else experience this? Anybody have a cure for the slows? [And please 
don't tell me to buy a 486 - if I could, I already would ;^) ]

A.  I discovered that in some slow response situations moving the 
mouse back and forth gets the game to carry on with the next 
operation.

Examples:

Click on next year and it takes a long time for the star map
to come up. If you move the mouse during the delay the starmap 
seems to come up more quickly.

When the display of ships built in a given year comes up and 
you click with the mouse to continue it takes a long time to 
go on to the next screen. Move the mouse and the next operation begins more 
quickly.

My guess at what is happening...

The program is written so that at some places it is waiting for
input in a certain order. Lets say keypress / mouse button press
followed by cursor tracking. In some situations it waits for mouse
movement and only continues after a time-out. By moving the mouse
you by-pass the timeout and the game can continue. Alternatively,
it might never continue on it's own. but sooner or later you
wiggle the mouse and that breaks it loose.
==========

Subj: MOO: Amoeba Stream/Crystal Ray

Why is it that we cannot acquire the tech for these weapons? The race that
defeats it/them should get the tech!!!!

Anyway, I was bored one day and decided to play with the savegames: I changed
the mauler device I had on my 70 ship stack of dreadnoughts to Amoeba Streams:
20 Amoeba Streams (per ship) took out an entire stack of 32000 fighters, WITH
ONE SHOT (not even finished with the 1st turn yet..). Definitely much more
effective than the Black Hole Generator :-)

Amoeba Stream is the ultimate streaming weapon, think of it as Tachyon Beam on
steroids!!! It has a 3 space range (hits ships 3 spaces from me w/out High
Energy Focus) and I have yet to measure it's power, although I've been able to
knock out 2 dreadnoughts (2400hps) with two ships each armed with one/two
Amoeba stream and class XI BC..

Think the Stellar Converter is awesome? It's nothing compared to the Crystal
Ray! Same range as the Amoeba Stream (I think), best used on dreadnoughts,
though it also knocks out a fair share of fighter/medium stacks.

If you guys decide to have some fun w/these weapons, just remember that THEY
COST AN HEFTY SUM TO MAINTAIN! If you did like me and change 20 maulers 
to
Amoeba Streams for every ship in your fleet, prepare to watch your ship
maintenance costs go negative! :-) It was so bad to the point that I had
0/xxxx production for all my planets :-)

The Amoeba/Crystal could easily defeat the Guardian, if they just had an
inertial stabilizer! Imagine Space Crystals/Amoebas with inertial nullifiers!
Ouch!

Actually, I had already tested the Amoeba Stream and Crystal Ray on the
Guardian: the Amoeba Stream had less effect on the Guardian than the Crystal
Ray. I had 20 meds armed with 2 Amoeba and 2 Crystal Rays and I did 
little damage with the Amoeba Stream while the crystal ray killed the
guardian.. Luck of the roll I guess :-)

Yes, I know, this is cheating, but I was really, really bored :-)
==========

Subj: Stargates

>>Do people use the star-gates much? 

They're also great for moving population around. If you launch a lot
of troopers from one of your border planets, you can (on the same
turn) move population from your interior (fertile? gaia?) worlds to
that border planet, keeping it at max population.
==========

Subj: Re: [MOO] Shield-halving energy weapons

Shield halving weapons only means the specific weapons designated penetrate
shields better.

However, you must remember that beam weapons and torpedoes are at 1/2
effectiveness when attacking planets (it is in the manual somewhere or other).
So particle beams won't cut it against those 25 level shields, because
the particle beam will get cut in half, starting at 20hp.  So even though
the shields get cut in half, they'll still be too weak.

The good news is that 4 shots with a 40+ stack of Neutron Streams will
destroy all the missile bases on the planet - you don't need to penetrate
the shields.  (You probably want more than 1 stack attacking).  It
goes like this, assuming a maximal 200hp missile base.  You need 40+
streamers to get maximal 75% armor reduction per shot.

200hp
50hp
12hp
3hp
0hp

With two stacks attacking, this will go pretty fast - you can probably get
the jump on the missile bases in initiative, so all  you have to do is
close within range 2 on the first round.  If this isn't quite possible you
may need 3 stacks - one to serve as a decoy.
==========
 
Subj: Using SubSpace Communications in Colonist Transport

-   On a by-the-by, did anyone notice that, although the transports can't return
-if they get to an uncolonized planet, sub-space communicators allow you to 
-redirect them.  

a.  It may be a design flaw, but it's a *blast* when you use it. I remember playing
one game where I had sent off 100+ transports to invade an enemy world, but then
they sent a massive fleet there to protect it. So, I redirected to another enemy
world and they protected it, too. I must've gone through 4 or 5 course changes 
before
finally getting the transports to crash *someone's* world. :-)

b.  This is sort of possible if you have hyperspace comm.  Send transports
for one planet to another, making sure that they WON'T reach in one
turn, then the next turn, redirect those colonists to where you REALLY
want them to go...  This is useful, but only in special
circumstances...
==========

Subj: Tracking Research Investment

 >> it would be difficult to do this.  discovering a tech requires 
 >> a minimum base-research investment (which could be tracked) which then
 >> leads to an increasing "probability" that the breakthrough of discovery
 >> will be made.  probability of discovery increases each turn/year.
 >> the probability portion of discovery isn't particularly deterministic...
  
So just show us both 1) how many points required for base level
                and  2) how many points invested so far.

A button to set current investment equal to 15% of total invested so far
would be even more ideal.
Remember that techBC=techBC+invest+min(invest,0.15*techBC),
according to the manual.  Has anybody checked this with the savegame file?
Seems like techBC is the only place to get interest on BC.
----------

Does anyone else cut their tech spending on one area to very small as soon
as it reaches 5-10%?  I figure, why spend the money when you can get
it in a few turns by chance, plus it lets your investment work for you.
  Has anyone analyzed if this conserves BC, or is it better to keep
investing in high % techs?
==========

Subj: Re: MOO Help on Hard Level

>	I am a little upset here.  the game is a piece of cake on the 
>medium level and is impossible on the next higher level.  Usually I start 
>out in some corner with only one direction to expand in.  I tend to run 
>into a race that was fortunate enough to start out in the middle and he 
>barricades my expansion.  What can I do about this?  I have devoted all my 
>efforts to expansion, leaving me close to defenseless, even then the 
>computer always manages to out expand me.  Any advice would be appreciated.
>
Except for the Darlocks, you want to start at a corner because:

1) it lengthens the time before first contact.  Once contact has been
established with other races, then you waste effort on defensive
fleets, etc.

2) you only need to defend the planets at your front.  1/2 to 1/3 of
you planets can be totally defenseless with no shields or missiles.
This also lets you concentrate your fleets into a smaller area which
means you can get away with fewer ships.

On your first tries at a harder level, play the Klackons.  My
favorite races are the Psilons & Meklars.  The Psilons get most of the
neat stuff to play with and the Meklars seem to be the only race that
gets the Oracle Interface consistently.  These three races are the
prime choice because MOO is about the tech race.  To win consistently,
you need to possess superior tech.  To get superior tech you need to
make research points.  The Psilons get the research bonus, and the
Klackons and Meklars get the production bonuses.  Superior tech feeds
back on itself, for example:  reduce industrial waste 80% increases
the amount of BCs available for research.

A good strategy that works with the strengths of the above races is to
initially colonize enough planets (about 16 on huge) so that you can
get at least 1/3 of the total galactic population.  The cp's don't
seem to spend a lot of effort maximizing their pop, so spend all your
research effort into increasing the population & production of your
colonies.  As stated above, this lets you put more BCs into research
which will soon allow you to match the cp's production bonus.  Once
you do this, you can then put BCs into the "attack" techs and you'll
get breakthroughs every 1-3 turns.  You will then be able to put out
a superior fleet which can take on far greater numbers.

I don't like to steal tech or get them by invading because it takes
forever for the cp's to get stuff, I don't like to wait.  The longest
game I've played was with the Darloks where I played them like they
are supposed to be played i.e. they should steal everything.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Bombs and Computers

>Do battle computers have any effect on the effectiveness of bombs??  

Yes.  That was suppose to be in one of the update patches to force you to 
use at least some kind of BC on a bomber
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Can colonize planets w/ out appropriate tech

> I colonized two Dead planets and a earthlike (Desert) environment with three of
>these Inferno Colony containing ships.

a.  Yes, it's true, and it's not a bug.  If you think about it, it makes sense.
Each successive hostile environment is nastier than the one before; i.e.
barren = no water, tundra = no topsoil (or something), dead = no oxygen,
and so forth.  Surely, if a colony's bio-dome can keep millions of people
alive when the only gas outside is chlorine (toxic world), it can deal with a
relatively minor problem like no liquid water (barren), hmm?

Which means that, given a choice of multiple controlled environments, you
should always take the most advanced (unless you need it *now*, in which case
you take the cheapest).  The less advanced ones also make dandy tech gifts
for alien leaders, if you can afford to increase an opponent's overall
planetology level--if someone has Radiated, Barren won't do him a whole lot
of good, and you'll get the positive diplomatic push anyway, as has been
well documented.

b.  This is definitely a feature; see p. 67 of the manual. Note that

(1). An Inferno base (e.g.) costs more, and is larger, than a Dead base.
   So if you're building a ship specifically to colonize a dead world,
   it's worthwhile to just put a dead base on the ship, if you can.

(2). If you decide to skip over lesser techs and go straight to (e.g.)
   "Controlled Radiation Environment", all the other races will most
   likely fill up the barren, tundra, etc. worlds before you get it.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Destroying Comets

>I don't know how to destroy a comet in MOO. I cannot scan it nor
>any missile bases or fleets on the planet helps. (The other races can! :-( )
>How can my fleet fly to the comet and destroy it.

a.  Just move ships into the system with the comet. You won't see any combat,
but your fleet will automatically attack each turn. Every so often, the
GNN guy will tell you how much of the comet is left.

I'm not sure whether or not missile bases get used.

b.  Actually, I was playing MOO last night and the comet posed quite a problem
for me. I recall that in versions 1.2 and lower, you never actually saw
the comet.

In v1.3, you see on-screen combat with the comet, the comet has 10000 hit
points (like the Guardian) and 10 crystal rays (?) a lightning shield, and
a black hole generator.

In addition, it would intelligently choose planets where my bases were
underbuilt (i.e. it would have an advantage).
==========

Subj: Re: MOO SubSpace question

>Quick question:  Do your own SubSpace interdictors keep friendly teleporters
>from working?  Teleporters have saved my butt more than once against enemies
>without interdictors, but I've never gotten both the teleporters and
>interdictors in the same game.

No, teleport indicators not prevents your own ships on your own planet.
It is also possible to get teleporters and indicators in the same game.
==========

Subj: Most Effective "Special" 

>(The ship design:  Large, max armor and computer, black hole, repulsor,
                                                               ^^^^^^^^
a.  Advanced Damage Control is IMHO much more effective then repulsors.

b.  Advanced Damage Control is of course very good, but it's even better
to use both (if you have). What's best in the last slot of a
huge/large ship is harder to determine, and depends on what kind of
ships you enemy uses. Two stacks of repulsor armed ships can be invaluable to 
defend a colony, since as long as they are alive there is no way to use bombs
and bio-weapons.

c.  I think it is safe to say that there probably is no single optimum 
combination of specials to put in a ship.  The best combination depends 
on the choices of your enemy.  As well, it depends on your production base.
If you have the capability to produce 5 Huge ships each turn, then you 
probably treat the ships as throw-aways and max-out their attacking ability.
If you can't produce them fast enough to deal with enemy fleets then you'll
have to toss in the Damage Control, Displacement device, jammers etc.
==========

Subj: MOO: Bug/Feature (possible spoiler)

I had a ship with Warp dissipaters, Repulsors, some RNG 2 weapons and a RNG 1
weapon.

Having fired at a ship at range 2 I then WAIT, when the ship is highlighted
again I find I can fire the warp dissipaters again and again and ...

I wonder if this would work if you had missiles that you did not fire.
Does it work with other specials (Black Hole Generator would be nasty).
==========

Subj: MoO: Planetary Reserve Strategy

Is anybody else using the planetary reserve constantly? Haven't found
anything in the FAQ about it.

I usually have one or more planets that are far away from the enemy
spending all their production into the planetary reserve. Then I transfer
the money on the planets screen into those planets that I need to have
more production.

Advantages: Faster than building and relocating ships. Use the increased
production to build ships on the front. You can also build shields/bases
or pop faster where you need it. Also its the fastest way to get rid of
disasters like the plague.

Disadvantage: You can only double the production of a planet with the
planetary reserve. So its no use as long as you don't have any factories
and pop there.

>Useful trick: (Is it a bug? Is it a feature?) You can "invest" your
>reserves on super-rich worlds, making a profit. If (e.g.) a super-rich
>world is spending all its production on "reserves", and you double its
>production with reserves, you'll make a 50% profit. Suppose the world
>has a production of 100, and you spend 100 BC on the planet:
>
>100 BC tripled = 300 BC (super-rich worlds triple production of
>                         "industry", i.e. reserves)
>300 BC / 2 = 150 BC     (Only half of what you spend on reserves goes
>                         into the treasury; the rest is lost)
>
>And so you make a 50% profit. (If your world is spending BC on
>something else, e.g. bases, the return will be less). This only works
>with *super*-rich worlds (on rich worlds, the rich-doubling is
>balanced by the 50% loss in making reserves). But it makes it
>worthwhile to keep your super-rich worlds always maxed out on
>production.

a.  Although I'm sure you do it, and it's strongly implied by "maxed out on
production," you've left out the important final step.  The above example
shows no "profit," since industrial output of Ultra Rich worlds is tripled
to begin with.  The point is to triple it *again*, by using the planetary
reserve to boost production on Ultra Rich worlds even as they pipe their
output into the Planetary Reserve.  Even after the dreaded 50% Tax, there's
a profit to be made by "recycling" your Planetary Reserve.

So, if you have a 100 BC Ultra Rich world, you get 300 BC of production from it.
If you suck 100 BC out of Planetary Reserve every turn to double that planet's
production, it produces 600 BC, only 200 of which are needed to "pay back"
the Planetary Reserv.  That leaves 100BC "profit" which can be freely spent
on defense bases, ships, or 50BC worth of Planetary Reserve to be spent
somewhere else.  (You do NOT have to pump ALL the production from Super Rich
worlds into the Reserve to have a stable setup which reaps the maximum benefit
from this "bug", just one third of it!)

b.  What nobody seems to realize is that it is pointless to actually have
the ultra rich world pay taxes.  You make the same profit from any world,
because for every 100bc spend you get 50BC in the reserve and therefore
50BC production  on the ultra rich world.  So it really doesn't matter
who pays the taxes as long as you pump it to the ultra rich world
(which is beneficial, but certainly not a bug).

example: you have one ultra rich and two normal worlds, each 100bc net
so if you do nothing you get 500 BC production.

scenario one:  the two normal worlds ideally bring 100bc in the
reserve, where it is then spend on the ultra rich world.  
Net effect = 600bc production.

scenario two: the ultra rich world uses 200bc of the increased 
production to put into the reserves which gives 100bc to be pumped back. 
The net effect is 400bc production on the ultra rich world plus 200 
from the normal worlds.  So in either case you get 600bc, which is
still more than if you don't do anything.  

scenario three: You can also see that 
if you have the ultra rich world pay more taxes you actually
loose money (e.g.  all of the maximum of 600bc, giving 300bc in the 
reserves which have to be distributed over all three worlds. Giving
200bc production on the two normal worlds and no production
on the ultra rich world  = 400bc net).

Therefore having your rich or ultra rich worlds pay taxes is 
pointless and normally you loose money.  Putting money from
the planetary reserves on those worlds is a good thing though.

But all this is certainly not a bug, but simply a feature that
ultra rich world can use their money better.

c.  In addition to this, is if you have Orion.  If you have Orion maxxed out
in tech research, (and why wouldn't you?) you can make an awesome "profit" in
terms of research by transferring reserves.  

d.  >	Another interesting planetary reserve strategy works well for
>artifact and other worlds where you are spending the majority of your
>BC on research.  Doubling the production on these planets gets you
>an incredible amount of RP's, for an extended period of time.

Well, yes, but between the 50% tax and the fact that it never matters where
you do research (unlike ship production), there isn't much point to using
the reserves on artifact worlds for "doubled" research because you can get
the same amount of research with that money on any other planet.  Unless
you're in the quirky situation of not wanting to build ships at your rich
or ultra rich planets, in which case you can convert their doubled or
tripled output into research at an artifact planet at a profit over having
the engineers try to come up with stuff at home.
==========

Subj: Weapons List Scrolling

>Did you notice the scroll arrows at the side....

a.  Assuming he did, the very old techs do in fact get removed from the
list.  I think it does this due to a design limit on the # of items in
a list.  It should not be because the weapon gets outdated.  Even very
late in a game with tech > 50, you still get new planets with no or
class V shields where nuclear bombs are still effective.  As well, the
cp's (and myself as well) can build ships with very low shields i.e. < 4
because shields take up a lot of space.  In fact, when particle
weapons are being extensively used (ie. mass drivers, hard beams,
etc.), shields become suboptimal to put in a ship; the space is better
used for higher maneuverability, more weapons, etc.  Therefore, heavy
lasers and npgs can be still useful especially considering the low cost.

b.  This can be very annoying!  In my last game, some of the advanced
bomb tech were skipped.  The best I had was either fusion bombs(5-20) or
anti-matter bombs(10-40), I can't remember.  Anyhow, I had a ship
designed that used some of the bombs along with other weapons.  I tried
to create a more up-to-date version of the ship and guess what?  No
bombs!  By this time I had the Death Ray, so I used it.  Later I got
the mauler device and used it.  Finally, I stole Neutronium Bombs and
the game was finished much more quickly.

==========

Subj: Black Hole Generator Mechanics

If I have say 10 ships with Black Hole Generator, and assume that I can hit 50% 
(Black hole can hit 25% to 100%)
then how many turn would I need to kill 1000 ships?

       would it be
                1        2         3       4           (Turns)
             1000/2    500/2    250/2    125/2  ...... etc.

        or
               
                  1
             1000/((2)^10) = 0.977   ?
==========

Subj: Re: MoO: idea for moov1.4 anyone?

    I think a neat thing to add to MOO would be to make the council have
more power during the game rather than just decide when the game is
basically over.  For example, make the council more like the UN.  Alkari
forces break a treaty and invade the human home world.  
    An emergency session of the council is called by the Humans, and
they propose a resolution condemning the action.  If passed by a 2/3
vote, all races will dislike the Alkari's a bit.
    You could also have the council decide on dues, and spend the money
on research benefiting everyone, or on peacekeeping forces that go to
the defense of any attacked planet.
    Another thing I would like to see in MOO is the occupation of enemy
planets, rather than the wiping out of the indigenous population.  For
example, in WWII, when Germany invaded Poland, they didn't kill off all
the Poles and send in settlers to make it a friendly country - they
chose the cheaper route and maintained soldiers to keep order and force
the factories to produce for Germany.  On the other hand, in some of the
places the USSR took by force, they first occupied, then sent in
masses of Russian immigrants to get more of a hold on the region.  In
MOO, when you take over a planet, you could fight the military forces,
but there would still be civilians left over.  After successfully
invading a planet, you could choose to kill off the civilians (in which
case everything would be like it is now,) or you could keep the
population on.  What you would then have would be two populations - one
of your race and one of the old race.  I suppose that on planets that
are constantly being taken back and forth, there could be populations
from many races on the planet.  Enemy races on your planet would of
course not be as productive as your own people because you've got to
expend resources to keep them in line, but after taking over a planet,
it would initially be cheaper, not to mention allowing you to take all
of a given enemies planets without committing genocide.  Then, later on,
when you have enough of your own people at a "liberated" planet, you can
kill off the others.
    Both of these ideas are probably too far off the current version to
be implemented in patches, but one can always hope for a newer, better
MOO (with network support, of course.)
==========

Subj: Re: Slow MoO - You Too?

>I ran into this also - after a few hour of playing. I simply saved
>my game, quit, reboot and type Orion again. kind of an elaborate 
>work around, but the time is saved compared to waiting for the 
>damn buttons to come back up after you click them. 
>

I've noticed that simply exiting to the main menu (you're game will
automatically be saved on the way out as the current game) and 
then Continuing will fix things.  Seems to flush the memory manager, or
whatever it is that is suddenly causing a drastic decrease in performance.
==========

Subj: MoO: Why did they give up so easily?

I played a game last night, Psilons/large/3/hard.  I was rather boxed
into a corner right from the start by the Silicoids and the Sakkras.
I was only able to secure 6 planets, but I managed to fend off the
first wave of attacks by both races.  None of the attacks were very
intense.

Then came that long wait while you desperately struggle to build
techs ("Oh please don't attack me before I can build the planetary
shields...").  The Sakkras could have wiped me up with a sponge if
they'd made the effort.  I could see their stacks of 32000 mediums
parked only 3 parsecs away from my weakling planets.  They were
WAY ahead of me in all techs.  I didn't dare to try to steal from
them because I couldn't have handled the retaliation.

Then I finally developed sub-space teleporters.  I designed a 
medium bomber with the teleporter and a handful of fusion bombs
(best I had).  All my planets were producing these, and in a few
turns, I had about 150 of them.  I sent this fleet to one of the
neighboring planets to see how they'd do.

When I got to the combat map, I was faced with a stack of 32000
mediums, 3 stacks of several hundred larges, and a stack of 30
huges.  I waited for one turn to see what kind of mobility they
had...  And they ALL retreated!!

I teleported right next to the planet and took out all the missile
bases in one drop.  When I was asked if I wanted to bomb the planet,
I said 'yes' and the colony was destroyed.  I sent the fleet to
the next planet and found a similar fleet (but not the same one)
waiting for me there.  And the same thing happened.

By now, I had another fleet of bombers waiting for orders so I
sent them off to do the same thing.

Not only did the defending ships not try to attack my bombers, but
the Sakkras never even tried to retaliate by attacking my planets.
They basically just sat back and let me obliterate them.

Why did the Sakkras do nothing to stop me?

a.  What shields did you have? If your shields are better than the maximum
damage they can do, they had to retreat! This usually happens when you
have class IV shields and the enemy has gatling lasers.
==========

Subj: MOO: weird bug

Yesterday, I was playing MoO (as usual :-)). huge/hard/5/humans.
I had taken Orion quite some time ago when the space crystal appeared, 
right next to Orion. I sent my main fleet there to deal with it. When the
crystal actually attacked, it said Guardian attacks humans, and it was the
guardian, which I previously destroyed, of course. I took him out in one 
well placed shot and I thought all was well, but oh no. The news cast said
that the space crystal had destroyed all life on Orion, and the space 
crystal was still on the map. When it left Orion, I sent transports there
to re-colonize it. A news cast appeared with a symbol I've never seen before
and the word Orion. The symbol looked something like two hands holding a 
sphere. The actual news cast was blank. A few turns later, my fleet destroyed
the space crystal at another planet.
My theory is that MoO can't handle space monsters over Orion. Anyone else
seen this?
==========

Subj: Game Strategy (You Against the Universe)

Play against the Psilons and/or get yourself into a final war when you
have about 1/4 to 1/3 of the galaxy.  Don't go for any of this
diplomatic crap, that's for sissies and is not a real win.  The only
way to win is get the 2/3 vote yourself or to terminate every other
race (my choice).  If you do this, then "hard" IS really hard.

My last game Meklar/5/Hard/Large was a good one in that the Psilons
were my main competition.  They were 20 levels higher in tech, had
more planets, had 3x the fleet size, and were about equal in
production.  I was constantly being attacked (he was a Pacifist Tech,
hah hah) on half my planets and the only way I survived was that I had
the biotoxin antidote and then I got the repulsor beam.  He had class
6 to 13 shields so I could not hit him and I waited for the 50 turn
limit to expire and "win" the battle.

In this game, I was on the verge of destruction for almost the entire
length of the game (until I captured two of his lightly defended
planets and got his tech).  This is the key to having fun, if you find
that you feel that you are going to win, then on the next council vote
you should vote for the other guy and not accept the ruling.  You'll
get final war and some good bloodshed will follow.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Killer Combo!!!

That combo is commonly named : "Death Hole" or "Tele-Hole."

It is also great to put a couple ship types in action that BOTH have
stasis shields.  Then those ships freeze your opponent whilst you
vaporize another stack.

BTW, now that I've begun playing only smallish galaxies, it is weird to
have to fight with only LASERS.  You don't get all that cool stuff
unless you are playing HUGE games.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO:  When is the best time to take Orion?

a.  	Hey, I wasted the Guardian without loss. I stole teleporter and plasma
for the Psilons. I got mauler device when I took one of their planets.
Created a huge teleporting ship with 10 plasmas, 15 maulers, and some other
weapons. Made 13 of them, teleported next to the Guardian, the maulers did 9000+
damage, and the plasma weapons finished it off!

b.  >From my personal experience, I found it necessary to wait until I got either
>autoblaster or gauss-autocannon.  Typically, I need a stack of 400 medium
>ships with autoblaster (300 with gauss-autocannon), maneuverability 5 or
>above, plus the best combat computer and ECM jammer I can fit.  The only 
>thing I can skip is shield, since it does nothing against missiles, and the
>Guardian's beam weapons are too powerful anyway. 

ACK Phooey.  Don't use the above to take out the guardian.  Much simpler
to get a combat speed of 4 or greater and out run those nasty scatter packs.
The guardian only has 5 shots.  Dodge until he is out of missiles then go 
finish him off.  ECM jammers use to much space on small and mediums ships.
==========

Subj: Yes! Another moo bug.

I think I just found what might be another bug in moo v1.2. In a game which 
had been going on for ages, all techs maxed out etc. but no one had developed
any planetary scanners so I didn't know what was going on 1 parsec away.
Anyway, I decided to stir up some emotions on a klackon planet and incited
a revolt. This caused me to get all the planetary data. Fair enough I thought,
if my spies can cast an entire planet into rebellion, they probably can find out
one or two things about the planet. But I could see that the information was
updated continuously, even after the rebellion was crushed. Not only that, I tried
another planet, where I didn't incite a revolt, I only got sort of 17% but I
could still get planetary data. I suppose it's fair to say that my spies can
get that sort of information on planet but why do I have incite a revolt, and
why can't I get information on all the planets? I didn't try it with factories
or bases though. Anyone else care to comment?
==========

Subj: MOO: amoeba stream-AWESOME

Just now I was playing around with moo and tried putting 4*60 amoeba streams
in a huge hull with max shields, BC etc. This was one killer ship. With a 
HEF installed, stack of maybe 300 of these could handle stacks with thousands
of large ships. Cool I thought and tried what 10 or so could do. About the same
 damage....I actually got six figure damage points firing at a stack of 
smalls. It wrapped around to the left hand side of the screen when they were
on the right hand side, the damage points I mean. The only bad thing was the
firepower of single ship could slice through any planetary defense and utterly
destroy a colony. Oh, and one other thing, these babies don't come cheap.
At this point in the game, a maxed out ship with normal weaponry would cost
~2500 BC. One of these babies cost around 15000 BC! Anyway, it was fun.
==========

Subj: MOO: Tough pirates!

  Playing small/impossible/1 game, I came across an unusual problem. I had some
trade going with my CP opponent when I got the annoying "pirate" random event
that cuts down on 75% of my trade. The amusing thing was that the pirates were
based at Orion! Now just how does the computer expect me to push the pirates
off of Orion when they're strong enough to live with the Guardian?!! :-) 

a.  How did you manage to trade ? When playing this set up (a lot of times :-) I
never succeeded to live in peace long enough. Were you playing the Humans ?
==========

Subj: MoO stream projector bug

Did anyone try put both the neutron stream and ion stream projector in
one ship?  Well, don't because only one will work!

a.  )Doesn't one exclude the other, just like autorepair/adv. damage, zyro/lightning
     )shield etc.?

Nope.  You can combine them, it just doesn't do you any good.  Perhaps
an oversight, perhaps not, I don't know.
==========

Subj: Destroying Transports

>      I am wondering, how come transporter can land on planet ever when 
>there are fighter ships orbiting the planet? I thought it would make more
>sense if the ships can shoot down the transporter(No, I don't think this
>happen when they have teleport Tech.)  The only way to avoid this is
>to build missile bases.....True?

They do.  Trying sending some transports to a planet orbited by a huge
enemy fleet and you will get a message saying all your transport are
destroyed.

However if you have only 2 laser fighters, no base and the other guy send out
100 transports equipped with the best armor, chances are you not going
to shoot down any.  Also, if the enemy has combat transporter, there is
50% chance that troops will beam down before the attack on the transport
==========

Subj: "Death Environ" Technology

:     I spied on the Darlok's and noticed that they had a Planetology
:     technology called "Death Environ".  What is that ?  I developed
:     "Controlled Dead Environment", and it says "Controlled Dead Env."
:     on my TECH screen ( and on other race's spy screens ).

Death spores. (But it puzzled me too for a little while...)
==========

Subj: Removal of Old Techs From Ship Design Screen

: Assuming he did, the very old techs do in fact get removed from the
: list.  I think it does this due to a design limit on the # of items in
: a list.  It should not be because the weapon gets outdated.  Even very
: late in a game with tech > 50, you still get new planets with no or
: class V shields where nuclear bombs are still effective.  As well, the
: cps (and myself as well) can build ships with very low shields i.e. < 4
: because shields take up a lot of space.  In fact, when particle
: weapons are being extensively used (i.e. mass drivers, hard beams,
: etc.), shields become suboptimal to put in a ship; the space is better
: used for higher maneuverability, more weapons, etc.  Therefore, heavy
: lasers and npgs can be still useful especially considering the low cost.

I agree, although I use "obsolete" weapons for another reason: they
are small, and can be used just to give your ship the fire-and-move
capability.  For example, I put in my small missile boats just one nuclear
bomb (the smallest weapon).  This allows me to fire my missiles while
evading theirs.  This becomes more useful as my ships have higher
mobility.
==========

Subj: Re: Multiple Firing of Specials (BHG, Warp Dissipator)

: I had a ship with Warp dissipaters, Repulsors, some RNG 2 weapons and a RNG 1
: weapon.
: 
: Having fired at a ship at range 2 I then WAIT, when the ship is highlighted
: again I find I can fire the warp dissipaters again and again and ...
: 
: I wonder if this would work if you had missiles that you did not fire.
: Does it work with other specials (Black Hole Generator would be nasty).
: 
Also a ship armed with a Black Hole Generator and 4 slots of beam weapons can
fire the BHG up to 4 times (if different targets).
==========

Subj: Re: MoO Repulsors

|> Hmmm, I'm running 1.3, and have noticed that my ships have additional moves 
|> after getting hit with a repulsor beam (either moving next to one or if a ship 
|> with one moves next to me).

Yes, that's right, I can move after being 'repulsed', too. (Ver. 1.3)
Sometimes enemies with repulsors are very useful, especially when I 
try to outrun enemy missiles :-)
==========

Subj: Most Effective "Specials"

a.  Usually when designing a huge (even a throw-away :-) the first thing I'll do is 
"max-out" engines, shields, battle computer, maybe manuev, hardly ever ECM (esp 
if I have Zyro shield), then load specials, then weapons as I see fit.

Specials vary according position in game, offense or defense, what your enemy
is using, will you need to bomb planets?

Some specials almost always used are Zyro/lightning shield (if attacking enemy
planets w/bases), damage control, Ion/Neut Stream (great all purpose), BHG if
that late in game (did MPS lower the damage BHG does to bases in 1.3?  Did
anyone else notice this??) and battle scanner if you don't have the neat
toys yet.

b.  : >(The ship design:  Large, max armor and computer, black hole, repulsor,
:                                                                ^^^^^^^^
: Advanced Damage Control is IMHO much more effective then repulsors.

ADCs are useless for small/med ships, and repulsors are useless against
weapons with 2+ range (or w/high energy focus). I personally don't use either
one. I go for initiative, so I load my ships with battle scanners and inertial
nullifiers/teleporters, and depending on their job, a HEF, BHG, OI, NSP, or
TN for the third special.

I don't like fighter stacks: streaming weapons can potentially wipe out your
entire 32k stack in one shot (or two, unless the attacking fleet also has
NSP.. Then you're in some serious sh*t!)
==========

Subj: Re: MoO: Planetary Reserve Strategy

If I'm not actively fighting a war, I have my rich and super-rich
worlds spend almost all their production on "industry" (i.e. reserve).
(When I'm fighting a war, they build ships.)  When I capture a planet,
I spend the reserves on it to double its production until it has some
bases & is maxed out on industry and population.

Never have your rich and super-rich worlds spend anything on tech;
you're better off having them produce reserves, which you can always
transfer to a research world (pref. and artifact world).

Useful trick: (Is it a bug? Is it a feature?) You can "invest" your
reserves on super-rich worlds, making a profit. If (e.g.) a super-rich
world is spending all its production on "reserves", and you double its
production with reserves, you'll make a 50% profit. Suppose the world
has a production of 100, and you spend 100 BC on the planet:

100 BC tripled = 300 BC (super-rich worlds triple production of
                         "industry", i.e. reserves)
300 BC / 2 = 150 BC     (Only half of what you spend on reserves goes
                         into the treasury; the rest is lost)

And so you make a 50% profit. (If your world is spending BC on
something else, e.g. bases, the return will be less). This only works
with *super*-rich worlds (on rich worlds, the rich-doubling is
balanced by the 50% loss in making reserves). But it makes it
worthwhile to keep your super-rich worlds always maxed out on
production.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO Diplomacy

>>After playing the game eight-ten times, I still can't quite lick the
>>diplomacy problem. No matter what I try to do, multiple species end up
>>declaring war on me very early in the game.
>
>For any race you don't want to attack soon,
>* Start a trade pact as soon as possible (+ve effect on relations)
>* Sign a non-aggression pact (+ve effect on relations)

Be careful w/option 2 here.  If you are still expanding and colonizing, he can
colonize a good planet you are guarding, because non-aggression ships won't 
fight over neutral worlds.
==========

Subj: Re: MoO question

>Current Situation:  I didn't accept the council ruling on who should
>be emperor of the galaxy, so the Psilons, Sakkra, Silicoids and Alkari
>(I'm the Darloks) are attacking me.

>Question:  I have my planets guarded with some stout ships, and most of the
>time the enemy runs away after showing up and seeing my ships, how do I get
>them (or trick them) into staying long enough for me to wreak havoc on them?
>It seems only the Alkari are will to stay long enough for me to destroy
>~80 out of 90 or so ships.
...
Build ships fast enough to fire beam weapons before the other side can
retreat.
==========

Subj: MoO: Favorite races

I have been playing MoO for a month now ( 32 games) and have come to average
level. Now my favorite races are Sakkras and Bulrathis. I would like to hear about 
other peoples opinions about their FAVORITE race not the BEST but the one that 
you like to play with most.

a.  Well I like to Psilon because they can boot up the tech level rather quickly.
With practice, Psilon can develop deadly weapons (ion cannon or fusion 
beam) way before any CPs.  Also, if you buff up your computer tech, you can 
steal more techs from other race. It worth the trouble to put a higher 
priority in Computer tech and Weapon tech to gain the edge in the early game.
==========

Subj: Re: MoO: Why did they give up so easily?

>>What shields did you have? If your shields are better than the maximum
>>damage they can do, they had to retreat! This usually happens when you
>>have class IV shields and the enemy has gatling lasers.

>They were ahead of me in ALL technologies.  I didn't examine their
>ships too closely, so don't know if the ships were carrying only
>lasers, despite the fact that they had developed Plasma Cannons.

All these stacks: i.e. 32000 mediums, hundreds larges, or 30 huges
would have required a long time to build up.  This implies that they
are using outdated technology.  I've noticed that cp's are reluctant
to scrap ship designs, in one case a Psilon cp had ~30 tech level
researched but still kept 14000 smalls carrying nuclear missiles which
were totally useless against me, it's biggest threat.
==========

Subj: Obtaining Tech in Final Battle

When final war is declared and every cp gets the latest tech, you may
feel that you are sunk, this is not the case.  For at least 20 turns
you will not see large stacks of high tech ships.  To get the latest
tech, either spy on the weakest race (as far as production is
concerned) or just do a mass troop invasion on 3 or 4 lightly defended
planets, which will get you most of their tech.
==========
 
Subj: Same Planet = Artifacts AND (Ultra) Rich?

# Anybody ever get neutronium deposits discovered on artifact worlds?

Isn't this impossible since both "Artifact" and "(Ultra) Rich" are considered
mineral properties (look at the "Map" screen) and each planet can have at most
one such property, unless you mean a planet CHANGES from an artifact to a
rich/ultra-rich one.
==========

Subj: Using Weak Fleet for Bait

Well, I was playing a medium/hard/3 game yesterday.  I had just lost
the galactic vote and didn't accept the ruling.  Things were looking
pretty grim when a sizable fleet attacked one of my planets that had
7 missile bases defending it.

There were 5 stacks of hundreds and thousands, but they were slow.
They marched sector by sector from right to left as my planet
gallantly eliminated maybe 2% of the fleet with scatter V's.  Did I
mention that I DID have a defending fleet there?  Yes.  One scout.
I didn't bother to retreat because scouts were useless at this point,
and I'd just never gotten around to scrapping this last one.  

When they got to my planet, they didn't attack it, but stepped around
it and took out the scout.  Then they retreated!

So I said to myself, "Hmmmm..."

Several turns later, the same fleet (or at least a very similar one)
showed up at the same planet.   This time they found 40 missile bases
and one measly defending ship.  Across the screen they marched.  The
40 bases were doing a fine job.  When they were almost within striking
range of my one ship, surprise!  It teleported to the right side of
the screen.  The entire fleet turned around a started marching to the
right, while my planet's missiles kept picking them off.  About 5
teleports later, I completely wiped out the enemy fleet.

I outfitted all of the my border planets in this fashion and was able
to keep the enemy busy until I'd developed a decent bomb and then
wiped up the galaxy.

This game is great, but some of the AI could use a little improvement.
==========

Subj: Re: [MOO] ship design

	Well, I think the Warp dissipater is quite useful when you are out 
to destroy the computer player fleets in the earlier game.  Most of the 
time, the computer players' fleets warp out before you have a chance to 
blast them into pieces.
	To reduces CP fleets are very important if you want to bring them 
into peace talk.  Also, the fleet strength is a very large contributor in 
the overall total power standing between each race (populations and techs 
are also very important). And fleet strength is measure by the numbers of 
ships and the fighting power of the ships.  If you can make the CPs 
lose more ships than you in each round, pretty soon you can be up the 
nomination for the president of the universe.
	Also the tech Nullifier can decrease the CP ship attack value thus 
make you harder to hit and give your fleets the first moves in every round.  
This is important in the later game because it is usually the one fires 
first win.
	I have a very simple fleet development tactic.  Build large 
ships with as many beam weapons as possible.  Battle scanner are useful in 
the early game because you can find out weather or not you can beat your 
enemy in the very first round.  This information will enable you to reduce 
losses in a hopeless battle.  As soon as the Auto Repair special is 
developed (or stolen from another race), build HUGE ship with the latest and 
the baddest techs you can put in it.  Make your most productive worlds to 
make them.  It does not matter the ship production will take 10 to 20 yrs to 
complete. Once the Huge ship is completed, it can either destroy enemy 
fleets or just scare them off from their orbiting planet.  With these huge 
ships fleet (they will fare much better if these ships equipped with the 
latest bombs and Anti-rockets missiles or other devices that will increase 
their missile defense capability), you can sent them out to occupy CP world 
orbit and then sent transports to take over the colony.  This tactic can be 
a very time consuming process, but it worth the time spend because you can 
capture more colony with their factories intact thus more techs you can 
steal.	I found HUGE ships with the best armor, best shield and Auto Repair 
capability are next to invincible because Huge ships have more hit points 
and the Auto Repair unit will repair 15% of the ship's total hit point.  
Which means if you ship has a hit point of 1200 and sustain 180 points of 
damage from a round of firing, your Auto-Repair unit will complete heal your 
ship in the very next round.  Since your ship is still attacking and 
assuming that your ship is destroying the enemy ships in each round, your 
ship's chance of survival increase in each passing round.  If your ship is 
taking too much heat, move it out of the your enemy's firing range for one 
or two turns and then re-engage the enemy after the Auto Repair unit fixed 
your ship.  One setback in huge ships is that the ships are slower and more 
subject to missile fire than the nimble medium ships, that why a inertial 
stabilizer and anti-rocket missile (it is better to have Stasis shield or Zyro 
Shield) are very important for the huge ships.   
==========



Subj: Development Strategy

A.   i have been following something similar to Barry's plan, except that i 
don't use the "cheat" to see the worlds AND my variant is that i put 
everything i have in the beginning game into developing the 5 or 6-space 
propulsion and producing as many colony ships as possible and hence 
getting as many planets as possible.  that's because I've found that any 
war you might have with another race usually centers around one or two 
planets max, so once i have 8 or 9 worlds I've really spread out my 
industrial base and now just grow those worlds, again grabbing as many 
new planets as possible, even the barren 10-pop max type.  by the time 
the other races start to get aggressive I've often got double their 
production capacity and can bribe them into staying away, mostly.  i find 
I'm often behind in the tech race, yet when the galaxy finally fills up 
I've got a HUGE block of votes.

B.	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 have 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 Meklars (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.
	I've been trying to win a game by conquest, but so far, no luck.
Anyone have advice on how to win a huge/5/impossible game by conquest?

C.  I recently just won an impossible/5/HUGE game.  I used a really neanderthalic
way to do it, but hey.  =)  I used klaxons, btw.

1) Expand like mad.  Work industries to max, and then immediately make scouts
to scour the countryside.  I always have scouts as far as they go.
make the smallest colony ship possible and then colonize the nearest
planet.  repeat till I start getting blocked in by other races.  (note - 
races don't usually attack immediately, so wild expansion is pretty safe).
If I need to, I put all my colonies on studying propulsion, so I can get
to the closest planet.  Depending on how fast you are, and (to an extent)
to how lucky you are, you can get a lot, or a little planets.  I think in
my last game I got around 15-20 planets, before I got encased by other people.

2) Sit, and develop.  Make friends with someone.  Mrrshans in my case.
Start building defenses, but put everything into production, or Planetology,
almost.  build up the industries till you are maxxed out.  then go for all
techs, or Planetology only, if you are at one of the 'improve terrain' thing.

3)  In fact, it reached the point where the Bulrathis were kicking EVERYONE's
rear, (well, actually, they were teamed up with Meklars and Alkari).  So,
having developed quite a bit of tech, by this point, I immediately began 
trading like crazy with the Mrrshans.  I basically gave them all my tech, and
got unity with them.  So, soon, the Mrrshans were doing pretty well.  Also, when
things were fairly secure I put spies on full, and robbed tech from the 
Bulrathis, and then gave/exchanged them with the Mrrshans.

4)  continue for a while.  Eventually, When tech is doing pretty well, start
making some ships, and taking over Bulrathi and Alkari bases ala infestation)
This also helps me rob some tech.  They're weakened by the Mrrshans so no big 
deal.

5)  Originally I wanted the Mrrshans to be of high enough population so their
vote would push  me over 2/3, but before I  knew it, they were #2.  Hmm.
So, I pump production all the way up, and then make some ridiculously 
powerful ships, and destroy every planet in sight until I'm the only one
left. yay.  =)
==========

Subject: Diplomacy / High Council Vote

	This brings up one of the annoying things about the computer AI:
I just can't picture a race who can obviously crush the galaxy (like the 
Psilons in my last game) voting for me (the friendly little Klackons in the 
corner) just to spite their blood enemy, the Silicoids (the biggest empire 
by population).  
	If a race is that far ahead of everyone else, it should 
just abstain from the vote and bash one of the presidential contenders to 
get in the running.  Hell, why not bash everyone and take over the whole
galaxy?  
	In the first place, though, the Silicoids and Psilons were in a 
long-standing alliance with each other.  Why are they so eager to backstab
for the Presidency if they are just going to give it away to whoever is 
staying out of the free-for-all galactic war?
	
	What the diplomatic scene needs here is some consistency - Ruthless,
militarist, expansionist, etc. leaders should only vote for someone if they 
have no chance to win in the future themselves (by war or diplomacy).  If a 
CP race has dreams of galactic conquest, it shouldn't be interested in 
voting in anyone but itself.  These type of CPs should also be able to 
ignore the vote and go to final war with everyone if they have a chance 
to win.  Peaceful/diplomatic CPs should probably behave more or less like
they do now - they're not so much interested in winning as in having a secure
position in whatever galactic regime comes out of the Council vote.
	
	Along these lines, I'd also like it if my long term allies didn't 
banish me for voting them in.  Something like an honorary prime-ministership 
or ambassadorship would be a nice touch - i.e. you didn't win, but at least
you secured your race from mass genocide.
==========

Subj: Bug With Human Diplomacy

I hate playing the humans, cause there is a rather stupid "bug" when playing
them.

Get this:  You agree to break an alliance with race X if race Y gives you 
a sum of money.  Then before the turn ends, make an alliance with race X
again.  You lose nothing, you get money easy and for free!  Put this money
into buying bases on your most attacked planet and the game is a breeze.
==========

Subj: Re: MoO: Fun with teleporters

What kind of weaponry did they have, and what kind of shields did
your planet have? If they were unable to even harm your planet
why should they try? 

A.  They had nothing that could attack my planet.  I just didn't realize
at the time that they were taking all that effort (and destruction)
to take out my one scout.
=========

Subj:  Favorite races

I already know that this is going to be a popular choice and reason, but
here it goes:  I like the Psilons best because they get all the neat toys.
I also have been playing for about a month.  I played one game Simple, and
then jumped to average, which is where I play now (and win) in a large
with 3 opponents.  When I play with them here's my strategy (note:  I know
that I play with a cheat, but it is only at the very beginning.  I can
live with this, and am working towards not using it).  

On the very first turn, I save the game, do an Alt- G A L A X Y, and look
for nearby artifact worlds, and where Orion is.  I also refuse to play if
the Silicoids are among my enemies.  I then restore the saved game (to
remove the cheat)  and launch out to the artifact worlds, where I save the
game again immediately before I "discover" the artifact world.  I discover
and restore until my free technology is something useful, such as Ion
Cannon.  I then expand as much as I can, and work towards taking Orion.  I
only defend myself against other races, as I have bigger fish to fry. 
Only after I have Orion do I stop expanding, max out on research, get all
the toys, and then SMITTEN (sp?) all other races.  Note that this is my
diplomacy scheme also (diplomacy? P-Shaw!)
==========

Subj: MoO v1.3 bug - Trade Income

I had an interesting bug come up the other night that I had not seen
before.  I was playing as humans in a Large/Impossible/5 galaxy.  
I have never lost a game before as humans in this configuration, but
it looked like this was to be the first.  I was totally surrounded in
the early-going by unsettlable worlds, and spent the majority of the
game with just 4 planets!  I played a very diplomatic game, and ended
up winning, after being the third race to max out in tech.  But along
the way, I discovered the bug.  My trade income went up very high in
the game, I think until it exceeded 32,000 BCs.  At that point, my trade
went to -29,000 BCS  (Appears to be an integer overflow problem). 
Has anybody else encountered this?
==========

Subj:  Planetary missile launchers...

: I notice that whenever I click on one of my planets with missile bases,
: I see the text "3 <whatever missile> launchers".  This occurs no matter
: how many missile bases I have.  Does this mean that every time I launch
: missiles from a planet, I am actually launching 3 * #missile bases missiles
: each time?

Yes. Which means if you have 50 Scatterpack X missile bases, you are launching
1500 Stinger missiles per volley.
==========

Subj: Planet Both "Artifact" AND "(Ultra)Rich"? 

># Anybody ever get neutronium deposits discovered on artifact worlds?
>Isn't this impossible since both "Artifact" and "(Ultra) Rich" are considered
>mineral properties (look at the "Map" screen) and each planet can have at most
>one such property, unless you mean a planet CHANGES from an artifact to a
>rich/ultra-rich one.

Yes, that's what I mean, you get the GNN news robot saying mineral
deposits have been found on a planet.

As far as having multiple planet properties, I've noticed that on the
planet screen you don't get the fertile & gaia ratings if the planet
is mineral poor, rich etc.
==========

Subj: Re: MoO question

>Question:  I have my planets guarded with some stout ships, and most of the
>time the enemy runs away after showing up and seeing my ships, how do I get
>them (or trick them) into staying long enough for me to wreck havoc on them?
>It seems only the Alkari are will to stay long enough for me to destroy
>~80 out of 90 or so ships.

Depending on what tech level you're at and what size your opponents are you can
do any number of things.  I like to build large ships with max maneuver, max
computer and a battle scanner.  For weapons, if the opponents are larger ships,
use as many maulers as possible with a high energy focus.  For lots of small 
ships a lot of Tachyon beams with a high energy focus.  

For both of these configurations you should be able to move within range of
your weapons on the first turn.  I use this to mop up when I know I'm going
to win.  I love to use missiles but they are pretty worthless for killing 
stuff that's going to run away ASAP.
==========

Subj:  Favorite races

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.  
==========

Subj: MoO: Fun with teleporters

-> When they got to my planet, they didn't attack it, but stepped around
-> it and took out the scout.  Then they retreated!

I have noticed this also. The CP will rarely retreat if there is a ship
present "defending" the planet.  I thus always defend my planet with MB
and an unarmed ship with good movement which will survive long enough
for the MB (missile base) to wipe out the enemy ship. (AI bug)
==========

Subj: MoO spying

Since I'm playing on hard level, I can't seem to get any espionage done.
How many spies does one need to have a reasonable chance, if not playing
the Darloks? (Manual is uninspiring.) Last game I set my spies to "hide"
until I acquired 16 of them. Then I set them to espionage, clicked on next
turn and discovered that they ALL got caught without delivering anything.

A.   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 lose all the spies!

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

Subj: Re: MOO v1.3 bugs

: >    I've found three bugs while playing Masters of Orion, using the
: >1.3 patch. 

: >1.  When you develop or exchange either the Improved or Advanced
: >    Deep Space Scanner, it doesn't show you the details on any worlds
: >    that are within your existing colonies' range.  As soon as you
: >    establish or take over another colony, then the scanner activates
: >    and shows you all unexplored worlds within that new colony's
: >    range only.

: >2.  On the planet resource distribution gauge "widgets", when you
: >    diminish any of the values, the gauge's value "bar line" displays
: >    a few pixels too far to the left, so that it eats into the area
: >    where the "<" symbol is.

:     3. I had one time that Psilon offer me to give me some good reward
:         if I attack his enemy(can't remember who), and I did, and
:         he did give me the NFS but when I tried to design new ship and
:         wanted to put the NFS in, the tech is not there. So I end up
:         using exchange Tech. with Psilon to get the NFS.

4. If your trade income exceeds 32000, it becomes negative! In my
case, it became like -31233 roughly, deducting most of my production BC.

5. Your ship cost maintenance can go negative too!  I did not keep
track of the evolution, but my guess is that it exceeds the 32k
'limit'.  Once this happens, in the planet screen, you can see the
percent load as '0.-490%'.

6. Minor bug: on a complete terraformed Orion (capacity 300), if the
population size reaches 300m, there is no message displayed for that.
I think it is displayed for all other planets with capacity less than
300.

7. I'm not sure whether this is a bug or a feature, but if you play is
Silicoids, you cannot atmosphere terraform, nor fertilize (or
gaia-ize) your planets.
==========

Subj:  ship design (Shields)

>Much later on, shields become of marginal effectiveness because powerful 
weapons
>obsolete them, and combat takes on a flavor of 'he who fires first wins'.
>Shields could be useful against scatterpacks, but it's rare they will actually
>get a chance to hit at this late point in the game.

If you get class XV shields and a defense rating around 20, zenon
missiles are totally useless against you.  Late in the game, I use
maulers to take out planets because I can't be bothered to make
bombers and planets always have a beam defense of 1.  The maulers can
take out any ships in orbit and then (with the high shields) sit and
destroy the missile bases.

>expected damage =   (max+min)/2 - shield                          min >= shield
>                    (max + 1 - shld)(max - shld)/2*(max+1-min)   min < shield
>                    0                                            shield < max
>                    
>(think this is right, it's from memory).  Let's see - a laser vs class
>3 shields will do {0,0,0,1} = 1/4 poÿÿt, and the formula gives 2*1/2*4 = 1/4
>point, for level 2 shields {0,0,1,2} = 3/4 point, formula gives 3*2/2*4 = 3/4
>yep.
>
I did a spreadsheet once on this, can't remember the formulas, but I
remember a funky formula for the min < shield similar to the above.
One important thing missing from the above is the fact that the
minimum damage can be raised if your attack rating is much higher than
the opponent's defense rating.  If you have a negative "to hit" value,
you will always score more than the minimum damage.

What I remember from the tables & graphs generated is that shields are
worthwhile if they take at least 1/2 the damage from a weapon,
otherwise increasing the defense value (i.e. maneuverability) is better
for reducing the damage taken.  This comes into play when you are
deciding whether to add one extra level of shielding vs. adding an
inertial stabilizer.

The other "gems" I found out:

1) Megabolt cannons are surprisingly effective due to their +3 attack
bonus.

2) Gauss Autocannons are very effective because they 1/2 shields and fire
4 times.  Pick them over Pulse Phasors.

3) Neutron Pellet guns aren't that great.  They are marginally more
effective than Ion cannons at high shield levels, but during the years
in which they come into play, its better to use ion cannons.  In pre
v1.3 games, NPGs were great because you could fit them into a small,
but now that computers take up more space, NPGs are in practical terms
not worth getting.

4) Ion drives are the most cost/space effective drives you can get.
==========

Subj: win in MoO with help from pirate

   I have won in MoO for one time with the very strange strategy.
GPS reports somewhere are pirates. So all trades are blocked.
I use this chance to trade the maximum value with all races and lose
zero productions. Soon all races are relaxed to me. So they all voted
me in the council. So I win around mid in the 5/large/impossible with
Klackon.
==========

Subj:  MoO Strategy guide (Part 1)

] 1.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.

    This is _not_ a trick! First of all, it only shows you the information
for planets which you have already discovered. If you click on a planet
which you haven't discovered, then the _next_ time you do sabotage,
that planet, and that planet only, also has its information shown.
==========

Subj: Re: MoO: Favorite races

IN>I hate playing the humans, cause there is a rather stupid "bug" when playing
IN>them.

IN>Get this:  You agree to break an alliance with race X if race Y gives you 
IN>a sum of money.  Then before the turn ends, make an alliance with race X
IN>again.  You lose nothing, you get money easy and for free!  Put this money
IN>into buying bases on your most attacked planet and the game is a breeze.

Well, I don't consider that as a bug, it's the ability/specialty of the
humans, they can maneuver diplomatically
==========

Subj: Fast Way to Equalize Spending

>It would be nice to have a button in the tech screen that would put all
>spending on the same level, i just hate having to even them out manually.

A.   Version 1.3 at least has such a button (almost).  It's actually the "="
key on your keyboard.  I too agree with the necessity of this.

B.   There already is. Just hit the '=' key. This is mildly broken in that it 
ignores locking. By this I mean that if you lock a tech spending level, 
pressing = will still change its value to the average. Not a big deal, 
considering how rare I use locking, but a nit.
==========

Subj: MoO ( win by human )

I just won higher lever as human. I found that human is maybe
the only race that can win the game without "superpower".

The strategy is simple.

1. Expand like hell until you meet another race.

2. make friends with other people, and develop computer and weapon first.

3. after I get advanced weapon ( eq. NPG ) make a bunch of fighters
that are good enough to defense my territory. ( I always make 400-800 medium 
ships and 30-40 large ship to protect myself ), keep signing trade and non-
aggression pact with other race.

4. After I have enough ships, concentrate on Planetology and construction. Raise 
your population into #1 or #2 .

5. 5-7 years before high council, bribe/ally/trade( increase) and Oa Wa!  All other 
races like you and vote for you!!

As a Psilon player, I always have to win a game while my tech. are all over
level 60, but I can win a game by human even if my tech. level ( except
 planetology ) is only around 40 ( Zzzz ), and even if my opponents ( Psilon, 
Klackon, etc. ) are much stronger than me.
==========

Subj: Re: MoO ( win by human )

> As a Psilon player, I always have to win a game while my tech. are all over
> level 60, but I can win a game by human even my tech. level ( except
>  planetology ) only around 40

Just won a game with Humans/Large/Impossible so that my best tech was 
something like 15 (Second vote that ever came). I was _way_ behind in tech, but had
spread like a maniac, and had the most population. Only Darloks and Sakkras
voted against me in the council, and they didn't get more than 11 votes
altogether to my 26 votes (all allies etc. counted to this also of course).
None abstained.

	I've been wondering why do people think Humans to be a weaker race?
Can't see a reason for that, for there is only one race which invents better
than Humans, and that is Psilons, and with increased incomes from the trade,
you can make quite a production too. To top this all, allies are easier to get
and wars are easier to end than with any other race... Just wondering... I've
won more games with Humans than with any other race, and I've played them all 
about equal amount of times.
==========

Subj: Racial Tech Development Advantages

"...there is only one race which invents better than Humans, and that is Psilons..."

a.   No, no, population=industry=tech.  The Meklars, Sakkras and Klackons all
invent better than the humans do.  But I agree that humans are one of
the easiest races to win with.

b.   > No, I can't agree. If we establish a 'tech development cost' arbitrarily
> set to 600 for standard cost in everything, then apply modifiers for
> extra industry, population or other bonuses, we get the following
> scores for the races:
> 
>                        Cost     Mod      Mod Cost
> 
>         Alkari          585                585
>         Bulrathi        585                585
>         Darlok          580                580
>         Human           520 <-             520
>         Klackon         585     /1.2       488
>         Meklar          585     /1.5       390
>         Mrrshan         585                585
>         Psilon          480 <-  /1.5       320
>         Sakkra          560     /1.1       509
>         Silicoid        705     /0.9       783

c.   How do you get the tech development cost in your table here? I've been under
the impression that this 50% for Psilons is the same, which is stated
differently in the table at the support card (Or is it in the manual?).

	Anyway, it still also ignores the increased income from trade, which
Humans also get...

> So anyway, the ranking of ability to research new techs is:

<Psilons first, Humans fifth>

Still, the _point_ was, that Humans are often considered an inferior race,
which is stupid, for with all the abilities they have, together those make a
quite strong race. 

> Which I believe is what I said in the first place.

True, but I was originally speaking of the base tech cost, which is even in 
your list second-best (marked with an arrow in the table). So obviously we have
been arguing about different things ;) ... One thing still, I don't consider the Meklars 
ability to have more factories or Klackons ability to produce more/worker that 
strong a thing, for quite often (Almost always) when the initial spreading phase 
ends, I have spread most (When playing Humans, and some other races, not 
Meklars though) so that means I have most population, and also that I have as many 
factories as Meklars and produce as much as Klackons, so _then_ the basetech cost is 
which counts, even if it takes some time, to take back the tech they had time to 
invent when I spread.
==========

Subj: edmoo.zip

I just discovered edmoo.zip and am now experimenting with it :)

I noticed that it was the pre-release version or something. Anybody know if
the author has released the complete version? Not that the pre-release
version doesn't work. It does work but causes some hangups or anomalies in
the game. I suspect that edmoo was written for some earlier version of MOO.
I'm playing v1.3 so perhaps there have been some mods.

Anyway, the Amoeba Stream weapon is REALLY POWERFUL!! Anybody know the 
specs for it? From observation it seems to have a 2-3 space range and does
about 300 points of damage. I prefer it over the Crystal Ray.
==========

Subj: MoO, Making Alliances

I have won on the HUGE galaxy setting and the SMALL galaxy setting with 5 other 
races. I found that alliances come and go in this game no matter what you do. But 
the easiest way to win is to have alliances with everyone. Sure when one race 
declares war on another they will ask you to break your treaty with that race but if 
you say NO they will just get upset with you, it has never led me to war.
==========

Subj: MOO strategy - Repulsor Beam/Stasis Field Combo

If your facing something like 5000 large ships and 20,000 small ships etc., 
something I have faced many times: The best defense is a ship that will move 
the enemy ship back one space and will also destroy that ships movement. I 
know that you don't get that tech for quite sometime but I have never seen a CP 
with over 100 ships of any type at the start of a game. This type of ship will 
defend your missile bases by repelling the enemy ships away from the bases. 
This is really helpful against bombers as they usually have hopeless 
ship-to-ship weapons but powerful ship-to-ground weapons. I usually have 3 or 
4 types of these ships so that they all don't get destroyed by missiles from 
enemy ships. Ships which only have missiles and the ship repeller are also 
good as they are usually cheap to produce due to the fact that they can afford 
to have hopeless armor.
==========

Subj:  MoO Cheats

>>You can turn off random events and get to see the whole galaxy.  Those
>>are the only ones I know of.

>I'd like to have that first cheat; in every game I play 2 of my 5 first
>planets get 'radiated' or 'plague' etc. Is there somebody who want to mail or
>post this cheat to me?

 You can toggle random events off and on by holding the ALT key 
   down and typing 'EVENTS'.

This is mentioned in the readme.txt file for MOO 1.3 (I think it was
in the readme.txt file of 1.2 too).

To look at the whole galaxy you

Hold down the ALT key and type 'GALAXY'

The only misfeature is that you don't get any discoveries when you find
artifact-planets (since you already know of them). To fix this you have
to save before using the cheat, and then either exit the program and
start it again, or possibly exit to the main menu and reload the game.

Simply using Game->Load is NOT enough, even thought it does remove the
knowledge you have about other planets. You still can see others
fleets, and you don't get new discoveries when you find artifact
planets.
==========

Subj: [MoO] ship design

When I design my ship, I am faced with what equipment to put in.
Currently I never use any ECM, except on my dedicated suicide bomber.
ECM seems to use up a lot of space, and it's not always useful.

A.   ECM + manu???( what ever ) = missile defense level. If your CP player's
att level is 5 and your missile def. level is also 5, then only 50% of
cp's missile can hit your ships. On the other hand; If CP player's
att. level is 5 and your ships' missile def. level is 0, then their
missile can almost hit your ships 100%. :-(. ECM seems doesn't work fine
when it deals with a bunch of scatter pack, but, in my experience, it really
works fine to deal with other kinds of missiles.

B.	If you're attacking planets with lots of bases -- These almost
seem essential to me....
-----

Being able to get the first shot off is important to me.  I always try to
have good speed and battle computers.

A.   Late in the game, this is critical.  Weapons are so powerful that
the best defense is a good offense.  Earlier on, fights last longer.
-----

Battle scanner versus inertial stabilizer is an interesting issue.
Battle scanner fits better on large ships, it also gives higher initiative
bonus.  Inertial stabilizer fits better on small ships, it gives a smaller
initiative bonus.  I usually pick either one or the other to fit in my
special slots.
-----

Shield level 4 can obsolete laser weapons, but when computer players
show up with better weapons my designs all end up with 0 shield and lots
of fire power.

A.	I personally don't like this strategy -- if you meet a fairly
large fleet of enemies, that will take you several turns to defeat,  
the shields are extremely valuable -- suppose 600 ships fire at
you with 3 weapons (lasers or better  in a given turn). Each level
of shields will protect you from over 1000 pts of damage.  No
weapon you can put on your ship instead can come even close to dishing
out this kind of damage to them.... 

B.   Sometimes shield level 0 makes sense.  Other times it doesn't.  The thing
to do, IMO, is to look at your enemies current weapons.  Early on in the
game, it makes sense to use huge double hulls and no shields!  This is
the 'cold iron' approach - hitpoints are cheaper than anything else one
can buy - initially.

Much later on, shields become of marginal effectiveness because powerful weapons
obsolete them, and combat takes on a flavor of 'he who fires first wins'.
Shields could be useful against scatterpacks, but it's rare they will actually
get a chance to hit at this late point in the game.

I attempted to formulate the issue mathematically once, but I rarely actually
go through the calculations.

The basic figure of merit for a ship vs a *specific* enemy is (IMO)

Attack factor * Defense Factor / cost

The attack factor is dependent on the amount of damage one can actually
'dish out' to an enemy.  First step is to specify an appropriate weapon
(given the enemies shields) and appropriate battle computer level (given
the enemies maneuverability).  Then the attack factor is simply proportional
to the available space given armor, computer, shields (if present), ECM
(if present), etc.

The defense factor depends on one's hitpoints divided by the amount of damage 
one will actually receive (from the specific enemies weapons).
A higher shield level can reduce damage significantly - but it reduces the
attack factor, and increases the cost.  Mobility can contribute to a high
defense factor (hard to hit) - this depends on the enemies battle computer.
Higher mobility also in general reduces the available space, and makes power
to run the weapons more expensive. ECM can help one's defense factor - IF the 
enemy uses a lot of missile weapons.  (Bombers are certain to face missiles,
so ECM makes a lot of sense for them, almost always).  If the enemy
has scatterpacks, it may make sense to shield the bombers, though.  Usually,
large ships are better off concentrating on hitpoints (good armor,
state of the art or one below) rather than mobility and shields, and smaller 
ships favor mobility.  Not really surprising.

Finally, cost is equal to a fixed cost (for a specified defense factor) plus
some constant times the attack factor (for a specified weapon type, the
cost of all weapons that will 'fit').  Don't forget cost - ultimately, this
is the goal - to devise a cost-effective ship!  Sometimes the cost of the
weapons can be ignored, which makes calculation simpler, but I put it in the
formula for completeness because it can sometimes be important.

In the mid-game, shields are usually useful, IMO, especially on large/huge
ships, even though they can be expensive.

If you don't have a table of expected damage vs weapon type and shield level, 
get one.  It helps a lot in making intelligent decisions - both for offense and
defense.  (I can email one if anyone is interested, if there is enough interest
I'll repost).  If you really want to, you can also use a formula:

expected damage =   (max+min)/2 - shield                          min >= shield
                    (max + 1 - shld)(max - shld)/2*(max+1-min)   min < shield
                    0                                            shield < max
                    
(think this is right, it's from memory).  Let's see - a laser vs class
3 shields will do {0,0,0,1} = 1/4 point, and the formula gives 2*1/2*4 = 1/4
point, for level 2 shields {0,0,1,2} = 3/4 point, formula gives 3*2/2*4 = 3/4
-----

Repulsers are very useful.  It basically takes the small ships and the
bombers out of the game for a long time.  Repulsers works well with ships
with all range 2 weapons.  But an alternative design is possible.  This
'Charger' ship has repulser, high initiative, and graviton beams.  It would
rush up to a stack, fire the graviton beams, then repulse the stack back
one square.
-----

I like heavy ion beam.  The maximum 15 points damage rating can penetrate
shield for a long time.  Its low tech rating means you can fit a lot of them
on a ship.  My huge ship with repulser, auto repair, battle scanner, and
4 banks of heavy ion cannon stayed around for quite a long time.

A.   If a better range 2 weapon is available, I would include at least some.  If
you look at the tables for average damage through a shield, you'll see that
upgrading the weapon can make a big difference.  Look at a typical enemy
ship design, and note the shield levels.
-----

Enemy large ships are vulnerable to a stack of medium fighters with heavy
weapons.  Enemy's repulser beam can be defeated this way.

A.   As someone pointed out to me (and it's now a favorite trick of mine)
the cloak technology can also defeat the repulsor ship.
-----

So far, warp dissipator does not seem to be very useful to me.  A ship with
no movement can still fire at you, so I think this special is a complete
waste of space.

A.   Actually, Warp Dissipators and Technology Nullifiers are quite useful adjuncts
to planetary missile bases. Even the deadliest ship (now that bombers need
computers) can't do much with an attack modifier of -60, so nullifiers are
useful, and if you can stop the attacking ship away from the planet, all
you need to do is move your ships out of range.

B.    I used to use warp dissipators all the time for defense, but now
that they only have a chance of working, I find them less useful.  (They
were too powerful in v1, probably, but I think they need a higher hit
probability to make them really worthwhile in 1.3.  IMO, of course.

I've never tried technology nullifiers for defense, but they sound handy
(esp. with range of 4).  Usually, though, by the time I get them, I am
out of the defensive stage of the game.  How bad is an attack factor
of -60?  I would assume 5% of the shots hit anyway, would there be any
reduction beyond this (say a damage reduction effect)?  From what I
recall of the rules, there is a damage boost effect, but the base 
to-hit is 5% no matter how bad the mismatch is.

C.	I don't usually use these either -- but I don't think they're a waste 
of space. Many times the enemy has destroyed me with these..  They let
you attack enemies from out of their firing range, without penalty. They
can stop a ship from attacking your planet. They can take a ship out of the
battle (allowing you to concentrate on one group at a time).... And they might
(I'm not sure of this) prevent retreat.... In any case they're far from useless,
and if you have several ships with them, they can become fairly deadly....
==========

Subj: Optimum Size Drive

"4) Ion drives are the most cost/space effective drives you can get."

The optimum drive depends on tech level.  Given a specified propulsion
tech level, there will be an optimum drive for lowest ship cost, and
an optimum drive for lowest space.  Sometimes these are the same
drive, sometimes they are not.  Experimentation is suggested.  At tech
99, (maximum allowed) the most advanced drives (hyper drives, I think) are also 
the most cost and space effective.   At lower techs, I've seen retro,
nuclear, and fusion (among others) be the most cost/space effective at any
given time.

I usually go for small fast ships and big slow ones, BTW.  If the cost
penalty isn't too severe, I will often go for a slightly higher than optimum
drive just to get the tactical benefits of better warp speed.
==========

 Subj:  MoO Diplomacy

>After playing the game eight-ten times, I still can't quite lick the
>diplomacy problem. No matter what I try to do, multiple species end up
>declaring war on me very early in the game.

>Do I have to keep up a constant stream of tribute? Halt expansion? The
>trade routes just don't seem to do it. How come the computer players
>are so good at forming alliances with each other?

A.	Give them useless tech till they're on the happy side --
then consider non-aggression pacts, alliances, and attacking other
races with them .....

	These should work in making friendships, unless you're
doing nasty things to them (like stealing their tech....)

B.   The manual does give a fairly good description of the diplomatic effects of 
various actions.  To summarize, and to describe what works for me:

For any race you don't want to attack soon,
* Start a trade pact as soon as possible (+ve effect on relations)
* Sign a non-aggression pact (+ve effect on relations)

(The computer player will generally agree to these if your existing relations 
are neutral or a little better.  You may have to offer tribute (tech. has 
greater effect than money) to improve relations to that point.)

The best, and most cost effective way to improve your relations with another 
race, is to attack their enemies.  To do that you have to make sure they HAVE 
enemies :)  If the computer players are not fighting each other, you should try 
to start a war between some of them by "Propose treaty - declaration of 
war on another race).  Anytime you get a major tech. advance (e.g. Robotic 
Controls III) is a particularly good time to try this, as the computer player 
will often agree provided you give them the tech.  (And if you start the right 
war it is well worth the cost).
==========

Subj: Rebirth of the Guardian

 For the second game so far, the Guardian has been reborn.  Basically, the
  Space Amoeba appeared after I had taken Orion.  Unfortunately, it
  showed up near Orion and attacked it.  But the Space Amoeba wasn't in
  the attack.  Instead, the "Guardian attacks Orion" message came up.
  The first time this happened (several weeks ago), my Orion fleet was
  still there, and I managed to kill it again.  This time, my fleet was
  gone, but ~250 Scatter Xs did the job.  The results were the same as
  the first time: GNN comes up with two messages: 1) the Space Amoeba
  utterly destroyed Orion (I _killed_ the darn Guardian), and 2) the
  Guardian has been defeated, landing parties (more technology at least!),
  etc.  Argh.  Orion a radioactive cinder.  The first time I didn't
  have Radioactive colony tech, either.  Grr.  Weird.
==========

Subj: MOO 1.3 quirks

Has anyone else noticed that ver 1.3 has a few quirks (or is it just my copy)

1.  The deadly BHG no longer appears as a weapon option

A.  According to my manual, this is a force field tech as opposed to a weapon
tech. Playing Psilon [usually] on impossible [almost always], I don't get
offered this tech to develop all that often, but if I do get it, it shows
up in the ship design screen under "special devices" rather than weapons

2.  Playing any other race but human, it is almost impossible to get a
substantial trade surplus.  Even with a couple 2,000 BC trade arrangements
going on for 50 odd years, my positive balance seems stuck in the 100-200 BC
range.

A.   Playing as Psilons on huge\impossible\5, I recently had a 2750 BC trade
agreement hit max. The only trade problems I usually have occur because
the computer races almost always seem completely incapable of going more
than about 20 years or so without declaring war on me, thereby voiding all
trade. as a result of this attitude problem on their part, I often don't
bother to trade with them at all . . . . .
==========

Subj: Moo Strategy guide (Part 1)
 
MOO Strategy Guide v. 1.0

The original MOO FAQ contained a strategy guide, which has been
omitted from subsequent versions of the FAQ.  Here is my attempt to
restore some of the gems from that original, as well as to add other
discoveries since then, as well as some of my own insights.  This is
the resulting strategy guide.  If anybody has other strategy insights
they would like to send me, I would be glad to include those in future
editions of this guide.  Each of the hints in this guide apply to
version 1.3, unless specified otherwise.

1. Clever Tricks
1.A Ship turnaround cheat
1.B Intelligence trick
1.C Research Allocation trick
1.D Excess Trade trick
1.E Future ship building trick
1.F Combat Tricks
1.F.1. Park a repulsor today!
1.F.2. "Baiting" the enemy.
1.F.3. Diversionary tactics.
1.F.4. Ship Teleporting trick
1.G Ship Design tricks
1.G.1. No empty slots!
1.G.2. Always have six active designs of ships!
1.G.3. Weapons and specials with different ranges on the same ship.
1.G.4. Save a weapon slot for bombs
1.G.5. Antidote to repulsors: cloaking! 
1.H Extended range colonizing
1.I Trading Upward

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

3.0 Tables and Formulas
3.1 Technology
3.2 Weapons Comparison Charts
3.3 Ground Combat Odds
3.4 Guardian Stats
----------
1. Clever Tricks
=============================================================
==1

.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
reattack next turn, with all your missiles and bombs restored.

NOTE: I do not use this trick personally because I consider it a
cheat, just as I do not use the save game cheat, or the ALT-GALAXY cheat.

1.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.

1.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.

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 ultrarich planet ---->
planetary reserve instead.

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

1.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)

1.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).  The[n] 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 on[e] 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!]

1.F Combat Tricks

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

1.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.

1.F.2. "Baiting" the enemy.
   I like to keep my first scouts around for awhile and keep them at
my planets.  Then if the computer attacks the planet with ships that
cannot penetrate the planetary shield they will continue moving
forward until the scout is destroyed, being torn apart by planetary
bases the whole time.

   However, I am not sure this is wise.  I have recently stopped doing
this, because it is really nice for the computer opponents to be
keeping big fleets of outmoded designs around a long time.  Each turn,
maintenance is being paid on those ships.  In addition, if the
computer opponent continues to have a large fleet of these outmoded
ships, maybe he won't design a brand new ship to replace it!

1.F.3. 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.

1.F.4. 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.  Now you teleport to the far left.  The missiles will
travel their max distance (let's say '5') toward you.  Now you
teleport back to the right of the planet and drop another bundle of
bombs.  The missiles on the left will travel their max distance back
to the right but will max out over the planet, one space too short.
The planet will launch another barrage of missiles.  Teleport back to
the left, etc., etc.  Either you will ultimately eliminate all bases
(which will also eliminate all airborne missiles), or you'll run out
of bombs, in which case you should 'retreat' while next to the planet.
Then on the next turn, return to the planet with a fresh load of bombs
(pretty realistic, huh?) and finish the job.

[Editor's note: As commented in further posts on net, this only works
if opponent does not have subspace interdicters]

1.G Ship Design tricks

1.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.

1.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.

1.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.

1.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.

1.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 decloaked 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).  

1.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!

1.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 canceling 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.

=============================================================
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2. Strategy Guide
=============================================================
===================

2.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.

2.B Beginner tips

2.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.

2.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 outproduce 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!

2.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.

2.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.

2.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'.

2.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" ;)

2.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%.
-----

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 neighbor.  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.

2.) 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.

2.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:

2.C.1 Opening Game

2.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.


2.C.3 End Game


2.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.

        Meklars --

        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.

-----
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 substandard 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.

2.  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 that's 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
ultrarich 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.
-----

2.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.
-----

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.
-----

2.D.2 Strategy for winning with the Humans

2.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.


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.


2.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.


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

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).

2.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, outflank 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.


2.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.
-----

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.-


2.F Strategies for different size galaxies

2.G Warfare

2.G.1 Ship Design

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

2.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.

2.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.


2.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.
-----

        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.
-----

2.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.


2.H Vital Technologies



2.H 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 Darlocks 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 Darlocks can do wonders with a small budget.
        
        4) In any game with the Darlocks, DON'T be too prepared to trust all
those reports about the Psilon's spying on you. Accept the possibility, even
the likelihood, that the Darlocks 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 DARLOCKS,
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 Darlocks, 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 Darlocks fully.

3.1.2 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.

3.4 Guardian Cheat Sheet

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
==========

Subj: Racial Tech Advantage

Bleeeeeeb, wrong answer. Look up at the manual invention bonus. if average = 0
and good = 1 and excellent = 2 and poor (or was it weak?) = -1, then,

Psilons     = 6 (good in each six areas = 6 * 1 = 6)
Humans      = 4 (good in two, excellent in one and average in the rest 1 * 2 +
		 2 * 1 + 3 * 0 = 4)
most others = 1 (excellent in one/good in two and poor in one 2 * 1 + 4 * 0 + 
		 1 * -1 = 1
one race    = -4 (Either Silicoids or Meklars, can't remember which) (1 * 2 +
		  5 * -1 = -4)

So the total is population*industry*techmodifier=tech (not this simple, but one
gets the idea).

A.   No, I can't agree. If we establish a 'tech development cost' arbitrarily
set to 600 for standard cost in everything, then apply modifiers for
extra industry, population or other bonuses, we get the following
scores for the races:

                       Cost     Mod      Mod Cost

        Alkari          585                585
        Bulrathi        585                585
        Darlok          580                580
        Human           520                520
        Klackon         585     /1.2       488
        Meklar          585     /1.5       390
        Mrrshan         585                585
        Psilon          480     /1.5       320
        Sakkra          560     /1.1       509
        Silicoid        705     /0.9       783

Notes on modifiers:  The Psilons get a straight 50% advantage.  I
figure the Klackons' extra production from population to be worth a 20%
production bonus, the Meklars' extra factories to be worth 50%, the
Sakkras' extra population growth to be worth 10% and the Silicoids'
slower population growth to be worth a 10% penalty.  I have ignored the
Silicoids' extra ability to colonize planets, and lack of need of some
techs, but they're not in the running anyway.  I have also ignored the
Darloks' spying as we're talking about research, not acquisition.
Note that I have assumed those races that have increased production for
one reason or another split it evenly between tech and everything else
- if the put it all into tech the bonuses get bigger.  There is
obviously room for some debate about these modifiers.

So anyway, the ranking of ability to research new techs is:

        Psilon
        Meklar
        Klackon
        Sakkra
        Human
        Darlok
        Alkari, Bulrathi, Mrrshan
        Silicoid
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Which things can I invent?

The fact that various races in various games get chances to develop 
different technologies, and that even a dominant technological power may 
'miss' a few tech advances is part of the game. It even says on pg. 35 of 
the manual (under winning the game): "If you are missing a key piece of 
technology... attempt to steal the technology..."

Consider it all an incentive to either spy on the other races, or to 
invade their planets, as that too will give you the tech. You could even 
EXCHANGE technology with them -- another way to get the 'missing' tech. 
All-in-all, I think this is a 'feature', not a bug.
==========

Subj: A strange MOO v1.3 game

I don't know how typical the game I'm going to describe is, but of all the 
moo games I've played so far, this is the first time I've seen a game like this,
and I have already played at least 10 impossible games.

I was playing Human in a Large/Impossible/5 game.  The other races are Mech,
Psy, Sili, Sak, and Alk.  Alk was eliminated mid-game.  Almost all races are at
or near advanced tech.  As in most impossible games, lots of intermediary techs
are skipped, e.g., the first robotic improvement I got to chose was IV instead
of III, and then I got to chose V, and that was it.  I had to exchange VII with
the Mech.   This is not unusual.  What is unusual is in the Field techs.  All
races except the Silies (of all races!!) never got to develop planetary shield
higher than V (and even then, Silies only gets X).  So the current situation,
with all races' field tech at the maximum (i.e. all have reached at least
deflector shield XV), both the mech's and the psy's planets have no planetary
shield at all.  And these are not just some newly occupied planets.  They are
well developed, maxed pop, maxed factories, at least 30 bases, and some with
stargate.   This is the first impossible game that fusion bombs are still
effective at this stage of the game.

I'm used to seeing techs being skipped, but usually you get at least some of the
best ones, or else some other races have them.  This is the first time I've seen
this kind of complete absence of "important" techs.
Anyone else have similar experiences?
==========

Subj: MoO: How do I spy better? (and other questions)

In a couple of games that I've played recently, I haven't been offered
several of my favorite weapon techs -- in particular, scatter packs and
bombs of any kind.  My weapon tech is way up there.  I'm researching
Tri-Focus Plasma Cannon.

The Meklars have scatter-V's and Omega-V's, and I've been spying on
them heavily, but with very little luck.  About once every ten turns
I infiltrate and steal a weapon tech such as Gatling Laser, or
something else as primitive.

I've heard that upping your computer tech will help things.  My computer
tech level is considerably higher than the Meklars, but I'm still not
getting much.  I have my spy level set at 5/yr.

Another question --
Which weapon techs will automatically be incorporated into the planets'
defense system?  Which are the better ones?
==========

Subj: MOO computer cheats on range?

>There's something that's been bugging me about MOO 1.2
>I am not sure if it's a bug... but
>at times, the computer player will send 
>a scout to one of my colonies... so far so good.
>(we still haven't established contact)
>then SOMEHOW they send tons of colonists to take it over.
>Now, they don't have the range to reach me...
>somehow the computer is ignoring it.
>And yes, I am sure they didn't have the tech 
>cause usually, after they take over my colony, I spy 
>on them a couple of turns later, and ends up
>they have range 4 or something

This is not a bug. ( Neither is it confined to any particular version,
unfortunately). There are two ways that I am aware of that this can occur.
First, if two or more races are in an alliance, each can use the
others' planets as bases for range determination. Therefore, while the
race attacking you did not have the range to get to you from its own
worlds, another allied race might have been able to support them with a
world within the range limit from your world.

The second possibility is a LOT less fun.

Microprose seems to have trouble with game AIs. In order to increase the
difficulty level for the human player, instead of improving the game AI, they let the 
computer cheat. So the computer is less constrained by ranges, things don't cost as 
much for the computer, etc. etc. etc. This is not something they only do in MoO, they 
also did it in Civ. Unfortunately, while some of these cheats are invisible to the
user, some of them AREN'T . . . . .
==========

Subj: MoO - Races Eliminate Themselves!?

While playing a game today, I was merrily destroying the Bird-dudes 
who were so cruel as to attack me without provocation, and had made a side trip to 
weaken the humans and Bear-dudes.  Anyway, the humans had been reduced to a 
single planet and I was leaving them alone (wouldn't want to be a genocidal maniac
or anything) when I get the message that the Humans had been eliminated
by the Humans.  Now, how this is possible I don't know.  They weren't
at war with anybody, no bio-weapons had been dropped on them, and
they hadn't been hit by any special event (plague, crystal, etc.).
Anyone else see this - and any thoughts?

A.   It's a known bug. It works sort of like this. Whichever fleet is in
orbit (and it seems to check for the player first) when the last planet
gets it, that race gets the blame.

So if you are orbiting the last Alkari planet, and your Klackon allies
turn them into guava jelly, you get blamed.

By the same token, if you (or another race) get in, and smear the Alkari
planet and then retreat (leaving the Alkari fleet in orbit above it),
the Alkari are blamed.

B.   Spies - Incite Rebellion.

I do it all the time, so I wont be accused of genocide.
==========

Subj: Colonizing Orion

BTW, the manual says that if you keep a ship in orbit, no other race can 
colonize it.  One time I defeated the Guardian, and kept ships in orbit until
a colony ship arrived.  When it arrived the Psilons had colonized Orion.
So what happened.  Were they able to colonize because I had friendly 
relations with them.

A.     Yes - if you have non-aggression pact or alliance, you won't
'bounce' other colony ships. This is particularly important at the start of the game, in 
the initial 'land rush' - don't sign a pact/alliance until you're _sure_ that there are no 
planets between you two that you still want to grab.
    I usually put a colony ship in the force invading Orion just
for this reason.
    BTW, I find that (on level Impossible), the megabolt cannon
is the necessary and sufficient level of weaponry to beat the Guardian.
Build masses of small fighters armed with 1 megabolt cannon, speed greater than
that of Scatter Pack X (the Guardians shoo-fly weapon), and the best
battle computer, and you'll do fine. Of course, you need a lot of 'em...

B.   Must have been a bug. To colonize the planet your opponent would have 
had to have sent a colony ship of some sort. If you had ships in orbit 
you should have had to fight no matter what peace conditions exist.

B2.   Nope. Both Non-Aggression Pacts and Alliances will allow someone to colonize
a planet out from under you with no combat.
==========

Subj: Effect of Comet on Planetary System

> BTW does failing to destroy a comet approaching a planet destroy the 
>entire planet ? In my current game the Mrrshans had a comet announced in 
>the news, a few turns later it said the comet had hit. Since I had top 
>quality scanners I looked around to see if I could grab the planet 
>myself. However according to my scanners the solar system had no 
>inhabitable planets. Is this right ?

'Fraid so, mate. Enter comet, exit planet. Period, end of statement. <SIGH!>
==========

Subj: MoO: 32000 HUGE ships!!!

I've faced numerous stacks of 32000 small ships and medium ships (at 
huge/hard galaxy), but now I've had to face the Sakkra with fleets that 
included 32000 HUGE ships (any one of which was somewhat better than any 
of my huge ships--e.g., second series torpedoes instead of first series, 
black hole generators, etc.)   How in the Galaxy could the Sakkra build 
32000 HUGE ships?!?  

Fortunately, I was the Bulrathi.  Although they out-teched me, I managed 
to get combat teleporters to transport my ground troops in--and took every 
single Sakkra planet out from under those massive fleets.  Yeah!    You 
know, the nice thing about being substantially out-teched is that you don't 
have to defend all the planets you take just to keep the computer from 
getting your tech toys.  

by the way, they also had several other 32000 ship fleets of large and 
medium ships.  

A.    I'm not sure how they did it but if you want you can do it!!!
 It will take some time though.

 There's a bug, well I wouldn't call it a bug, cause I like it,
 but when the cost of maintaining your fleet gets over a certain number,
 it turns into a negative number.  That negative number gets
 smaller, i.e. -3333 -333 -33 -3, and eventually becomes 0, where the
 whole cycle starts all over again.

 I usually like to get 5 x 600 Huge and 32000 mediums.  The Huges armed
 with either 45 Death Rays or around 100 Maulers.  I don't need a
 fleet that large to kick butt, but hey, who said massacres aren't'
 fun.
==========

Subj: MOO: Fast missile-boats...the recipe for success!

I am a big fan of using medium sized ships carrying the best possible
missiles, and now I am convinced that it is the recipe for success.

Currently my favorite ship design is as follows:
Medium Hull
One missile of the best type (2 shot variety, always; add 2nd later if it fits)

[A.  I tend to prefer the 5 shot variety - particularly in the early game when 
ships are slower (so you have more time to get the extra shots off) and 
missile bases are fewer.]

Best Computer
Best Engines
Good maneuverability (At least Class-2; depends on enemy initiative levels)

[B.  Early in the game this sounds like a good idea.  The only problem I see is
that if I stick this in a retro-ship with only class 1 maneuverability I
have to take 2 steps forward before I'm in range of the bases.  This
would almost ensure having to take a hit from the missile bases.  By
using the 2 shot variety, even the lowly Hyper-Vs are effective.]

Battle computer (only if necessary to ensure first shot when late in game)

[A.  I always try to add a beam weapon of some sort, so as to be able to move 
AFTER 
firing a missile salvo (normal tactic is to move towards the enemy, fire 
missiles, then move away IF necessary)]

Now, the reason why this is such a good ship depends on two things:
1) Having good initiative lets you get a free shot and run away without
   receiving a hit.
2) A feature in MOO V1.3 (I don't know about previous versions) lets you
   change the location of the planet to which you retreat (when chased
   away).  So, I just keep retreating to the planet I am attacking.

The 2 shot missile varieties have a faster speed and a greater range than
the 5 shot versions.  This means that you can shoot the planet from
the left side of the screen and have the missiles hit the planet
before you retreat.  What I do is build these ships and just keep sending
them to the planet I want to take over.  The enemy tends to bring its
whole fleet to bear against this armada of ships so they leave my 
planets alone.  They never succeed in destroying my ships because I just
appear, take 2 steps forward, shoot once at the planet (or fleet if I
feel like) and then retreat after the one shot.  Maybe I take out only
one base, sometimes I take out a dozen.  It doesn't matter because
I don't lose any ships.  The key is to have the highest possible
initiative.

This scheme is sure-fire at least until the arrival of fusion drives.
Then the enemy ships with fusion drives and Inertial stabilizers can
make it across the screen and get a shot in before I get away (or take
them out).  Of course, there may be away around this too, but I haven't
explored it yet.  Naturally when HEF or Teleporters are around, all bets
are off. This technique can keep the game from dragging on that long though.

[A.     I have not yet seen HEF or teleporters but your probably right.  Usually the 
technology which neutralize this is when the enemy develops planetary shields 
and force fields stronger than your best missiles warhead.  By this time fast 
bombers (small, speed 3+, best computers, best ecm, fusion bombs or better) 
becomes the base crackers.  Brawlers (huge, auto repair, beam weapon, best 
shields, best computer, spd 2+) handle anti ship duties.]

I currently use this method on the Small/Five/Impossible games with success.
I think I'll try I game where I research only missiles, Computers and 
propulsion and see if I can obtain the rest by conquer.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subj: Re: MOO: Fast missile-boats...the recipe for success!

  I use a similar ship design with the following:
	Large hull		(room for battle scanner, extra hp for errors)
	Missile H-V or better   (2 shot magazine)
	Battle scanner          (insures initive vs planets
					and provides intelligence)
	1 beam weapon (for movement after second shot)
	best computer
	nuclear engines or better  (decrease time between waves) 
	Sp 2+		           (allows launch during first turn)

  In the present game I am the Psilons and have wiped out the Meklar and nearly 
the Alkari with this ship type.  The Alkari have been using 5 shot missile 
ships.  Whenever they attack one of my systems I can normally survive by out 
running their short range missiles and by force their ships to retreat by 
firing a salvo of missiles.  This gives me time to loose their missiles or more 
time for my missile bases to damage their fleet.

	Their systems with 30-40 missile bases normally take a few turns to 
destroy by sending in waves of missile boats each wave eliminative between 1 to 
10 bases.  They can normally attack once every 4 turns.  This way I always have 
some ships ready to defend my systems from their attacks.

	The main disadvantage is either their planetary shield gets to strong 
and makes the ships outdated except in nebulas.  Defending planetary systems 
against bomber fleets especially when more than two bomber types exist and the 
planetary missile bases have not been built up enough (warp dissipators help 
here).  When trying to protect a invasion force, so you can't retreat and 
they attack with stacks with large number of beam weapons (warp dissipators 
help here too).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subj: Re: MOO: Fast missile-boats...the recipe for success!

In play I tend to find that the missile boats are VERY effective against enemy 
ships, but have mixed effectiveness against missile bases (in the mid game 
planetary shields are often strong enough to make a missile attack 
ineffective).   Also, to keep your missile boats effective, you have to keep 
bringing in new designs with the latest missiles.  The previous types are 
still useful though, even if only for making the enemy ships keep backing away 
(the silly computer players will always back away if they can back out of 
range of a missile salvo AND none of your ships are in range to be hit).

[A.  Missile boats are good against bases too.  I always choose the highest
missile whenever one becomes available.  Most of the time I can stay ahead
of the shield tech.  The planetary shields do throw wrinkles into my
plans.]

The one reservation I would have with the fast missile boat strategy is to 
wonder how they would cope with enemy ships with Zyro Shields and the like.
Personally I've found the missile boats to be so effective that no game has 
lasted long enough for the enemy to acquire them :)

[A.   Zyro shields are a problem.  My solution right now is to simply shoot at
them with the 25% effectiveness and take several turns to wipe out their
fleet of Zyro-equipped ships.  This is not the most efficient use of 
resources, but it does not necessitate changing my missile-boat
strategy.  It just requires a little more patience when taking over
planets.

Along with the missile boats I usually build one or two "stick-around"
ships.  These are large or huge ships with maximal shielding.  Their
purpose is to simply stick around alive after the fight and finish off
whatever is left after the MBs have done their work.  They are equipped
with any useful specials too.]
==========

Subj: Re: '=' in MOO

|> 	I've noticed that pressing the '=' key while on the technology
|> screen equalizes the amount spent on the various technologies.
|> 
|> 	If I press the '=' key while on a planet screen, the only
|> effect is that one of the two numbers on the ( I think it is the
|> Production line ), anyway the numbers change from, say, ???(XXX) to
|> ???(YYY). YYY seems to be XXX + some value. What is happening here?

This is a shortcut to transfer funds to the planet.  This has the same effect as
hitting the equal sign while on the planet screen after selecting the planet to
transfer funds to.  It transfers as much as the planet can use that turn (or all
that is left).
==========

Subj: Re: MOO: Stasis Field

>What's a good use for the stasis field (this lets you place
>one stack in 'limbo' for one turn)?
>At first blush, it seems pretty worthless.

It is good to isolate your opponent and defeat him in detail. I had one
game were the computer player ( Meklars, I think) Had large stacks of
several different ship types. Using stasis fields on a couple of ships
In one battle, I was able to defeat a Meklar fleet of 30 huge ships 
and 300+  large ships with minimal losses by concentrating on one stack 
at a time and letting auto repair do its thing. I also teamed it up 
with the technology nullifier and was able at times to hit a stack two 
or three times before it was able to return fire. With attack levels 
of -8 to -12 its hard to hit anything. At the time weapons and computer 
tech were about equal. I did have an edge in propulsion tech with the
subspace teleporter. This gave me initiative.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO - short treaty

> I must have reached the shortest ever treaty. I formed a non-aggression 
>pact with the Bulrathis to go with my trade. The very next turn they told 
>me they were going to kill me.

This has happened to me more than once too. Aren't erratic leaders fun?
[NEVER make a treaty with an erratic. It ain't worth it!]
==========

Subj: Re: MoO 1.4 suggestion (Biological Weapons)

|>  I don't know if someone has suggested it but how about a depopulating 
|> bomb - renders a planet radioactive for a short time.

You can use the biobombs (Death Spores, Doom Virus, Bio Terminator) to
achieve much the same effect. With enough of them, the population is gone,
the factories are untouched, and the planet will need to be terraformed again
because max pop has been reduced down to 10 or so.

Note that biobombing a planet tends to upset _all_ of the computer players
when you do it. They don't seem to mind when you are the victim....
==========

Subj: Colony Ship With Orion Task Force

Whenever I go out to kill the guardian, (I think most people, myself
included, build up an armada for the sole purpose of defeating the guardian
once they find it) I include a colony ship with it.  It can just hang
around in back and do nothing while the other ships take the guardian out. 
Only once has the guardian fired on my colony ship, but on the same token,
you can always send a colony ship to Orion the turn after you send your
fleet, to arrive immediately after you kill the guardian.  That way you can
colonize immediately and don't have to worry about rivals taking Orion.

A.   Retreat the colony ship on the first turn of combat.  It will remain in 
orbit if you win, and survive if you lose...  This way, the only way it
will be destroyed if the Guardian AI decides to shoot at it, rather than
at the 5000 mediums with gauss autocannons...
==========

Subj:  MOO Diplomacy - Audience Bug?

>        I've been playing MOO for about two days and have noticed a
>really annoying trend.  I can only get an audience with an alien race
>one or two times at most, after which I can't get any race to grant me
>an audience.  Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong (I know
>that the manual says the leaders get tired of granting audiences after
>awhile, but one or two times?!?).  BTW I'm using V1.0 but have the
>V1.3 patch (just haven't installed it)...does the patch change/add/fix
>much (i.e. should I install it)

 A.     Make sure you offer them a tribute or treaty/trade agreement every time
 you meet with them (if you plan to talk again).  As for easier levels, you
 might not need to do that as much.  If you are holding audience with a race,
 then exchange tech, then hold audience and exchange tech, etc. that race
 will soon get tired of you and you will lose your diplomat.
      A good start on average-hard level would be to offer tech, make a non-
 aggression pact, and trade agreement of smallest amount.  Then wait till
 next turn and trade tech.  On Impossible level, you might try offering tech
 or the most BCs allowed, then wait, then offer more and treaties, then wait,
 then trade.  Also, never call for an alliance till a race has become
 "peaceful" and never before about 5-10 turns away from the first high
 council meeting.
      One last topic: contact is broken from a race, by means of an alien race
 taking over a planet between the two of you.  Psilons/Klackons/Sakkras kick
 but to play, but Humans have some good points in a 5 race game.

B.   It's a bug in 1.0. Go to 1.3.
==========

Subj: MoO: Opening strategy

  What is the most effective way to begin a game in MoO?

  I always start by sending scouts to orbit every planet in range to scare
off scouts and colony ships.  I then build colony ships and expand as much
as possible and then start studying.  

[A.   I put a small trickle (about 3cr or so) into research right away, and set
research to 100% propulsion.  (This small amount will not do anything
if it is spread out).  The small amount of research goes up as my production
capacity goes up, though I often switch to a percentage base (about 5-10%
or so by eyeball) of my total GNP on research spending.  After a few
propulsion advances, I tend to even out spending, though I will concentrate
on really key technologies that my situation might demand.  Oh - the
propulsion research goes for extra range (usually this is required, sometimes
one might have a choice).  Usually I go for the cheap extra range when
I'm given a choice (say between range-4 and range-5).]

After a few advances I build a few hundred tiny ships, then missile bases, then study 
some more until some race declares war on me.  This technique is really dull, but I 
haven't found a more effective one.  I can win on average difficulty, and hard only 
on
small and medium.   Is it useful to build fighting ships early?  The manual says the 
Mrrshans and Alkari should, but I find it is useless because they can't get anywhere
to fight.

[A.   I've had the same problem trying to fight early, even with the earlier
research into extra range.  I've won with Mrrshans, but not by fighting
early (at least not on higher difficulty levels).  I prefer impossible/large,
am playing some with impossible/medium.]

B.   Opening Strategy:

  1) Immediately seed 1st colony with half my first world's pop.

   2) All funds go factories until fact.= 4/turn, then:
      On world 1 surplus goes to new colony ship
      On world 2 surplus goes to research.  90% on propulsion

  This assumes that there is a colonizable world within range.  If not, then
all BC's over what needed for 4 factories/turn go to research.
==========

Subj:  MoO slowdown bug

>  Once in a while when I am playing MoO the game will suddenly s-l-o-w
>d--o--w--n.  It takes a long time to respond to mouse clicks or keyboard
>commands.  The only cure is to quit and restart the game, but it is not
>necessary to quit to DOS.  I am using version 1.3, smartdrive, MS-Mouse v2
>with the v8.2 driver, ATI Stereo F/X (Soundblaster clone).
>  Any ideas?

It's not necessary to quit...just turn off the sound 
==========

Subj: MoO: annoying spies

      Worst luck with spies:

      Playing Humans/Huge/5/Impossible.  I have about 1/3 all the planets,
 alliance with the Alkari race (xenophobic/expansionist), 60 level in most
 all tech, war with Psilons/Klackon/Sakkra (all of which are naturally
 peaceful.. ironic, huh?), and equal on total power with other races.

      Now, apparently all other races have many, many spies out doing sabotage,
 which leaves me about every other turn having factories destroyed.  Well,
 thing is, it says that the Alkari are doing the attacks (probably just a
 mix-up).  Later on the same turn, the Alkari will say something along the
 line of "quit sabotaging our factories", and I'll lose my diplomat.
      I could understand a bad role one turn, but this happens about every
 2/3/4 turns.  What gives?  I've even re-loaded a game and this still pops
 up.  Would this be a bug, or is impossible level a real pain in the *ss?

A.   No, its when the opposing players have a sufficient advantage in spying. They 
are
framing each other(and you) for the sabotage.....

In my current game, I've kept the Bulrathi and Psilons at war with each other for
100+ years due to my (Oarlok) outstanding spy network...

B.   When ANY race successfully completes an act of spying, there is a chance that 
it can FRAME another race for doing the act. What is happening to you is that 
the other three races are consistently framing you for acts against the 
Alkaris and the Alkaris for acts against you.

C.   The computer players are *deliberately* framing you and the Alkari for 
sabotage. It's part of the game. The AI is trying to break up the alliance.
Turn your internal security up for a bit, and give the Alkari some computer
tech.
==========

Subj:  MOO: Space derelict only for CPs?

> Has anyone every gotten the "Discovered space derelict with xxxx technology
>random event?  I've only seen the CPs get the benefit of this.

 A.     Yes... it's given me once a neutron blaster, gatling laser, and duralloy
 armor.  It was quite a nice feeling :)  .. and it will say "scouts have
 discovered...", showing the picture of your scout just as if you landed on
 an artifacts system.

 B.   You're the first I've run across.

   Lewchuck@cs.ulaberta.ca has suggested that the derelict is a game balance
mechanism to help out if a race gets far behind in technology.  Do you recall
if you were sucking wind tech-wise when your scouts found the space hulk?
==========

Subj:  MOO spies - Security Allocation

>Do you MOO players out there use any money on security (to make it harder to
>spy on you)? 

As soon as I run into the first alien race, I crank the internal security
slider up halfway [20% level]. This is because the strategy I pursue
requires a large tech edge to work well. I usually leave security at that
level all game, unless I start getting sabotaged a lot, in which case I
max it out for a few turns.

>I usually don't, except if I have contact with the Darloks, I crank up the
>security to max for one to two turn every now and then. Somehow I don't think
>that's very smart though (dunno why, I just... "feel" it).
>
>And do you spy on allies?
>
I spy on EVERYONE. All the time. However, I usually tell the spies to hide
unless the race has irritated me recently. Of course, at `impossible' they
seem to do this once every 15 to 20 turns . . . . .
==========

Subj:  MOO spies - Waste of BCs?

After many games I have come to the conclusion that unless you're the Darlocks,
spying and security are a waste of BC's.  They bleed off a substantial
percentage of your gross intergalactic product, and even 5-10% really adds up
over time.

  It seems like 90% of the time espionage gets me something really useful like
ECM II or Range 4 propulsion tech, instead of what prompted me to spy. and the
diplomatic cost can be severe.  As for general intelligence, I pulse my hidden
spy investment every 25 turns or so, just to find out what everyone's got, then
turn it back to zero.  Ditto with security.

  On the other hand, I trade tech like mad (except for Robotic Controls and
terraforming)  and capture planets by invasion to seize enemy tech
==========

Subj:  MOO: Force fields and ECM?  Just say no!

:  I have concluded that putting force fields and ECM on your warships (whatever
:their size) is wasting space far better used for weapons and specials.  Does
:the net concur?

A.   Nope. Shields and ECM are quite useful (shields moreso). It's very useful
to have ships the computer can't even hit...

 B.   NO! It is very useful to have ships with high shielding on them. Often, when the
computer realizes that it can't hurt you, will often retreat.

C.     At the highest of levels, ECM and force fields may not be as
  useful but that's because you should be able to take out the entire
  enemy fleet with them not being able to get a shot on you.
  But usually the good weapons, i.e. Mauler and Death Ray are much
  larger than ECM or force fields so you can probably put a good set on
  without losing a single weapon.
==========

Subj: Re: Force fields and ECM?  What's your ship strategy?

The thing about not having fields is that a fleet of 5000 smalls armed 
with, say, Gatling Lasers can't kill you if you have force fields.  W/o 
them, each ship will do 4 to 20 points damage.  Same w/ scatterpack X's.  
With shield 15, you are immune, and even with 10 you only take 50 points 
damage (each).  With no shields, each Scatter 15 does 150 points damage.  
-----

>Re: Massive "boo!"/"hissing"  over my suggestion that ECM/shields were a waste.

>  My view stems from my ship building strategy, which doesn't have a role for
>them.  Simply put, I always, but always, put in the best computer and
>propulsion I own, and as the game (I'm playing mostly impossible these days,
>unless I feel lazy) progresses it goes like this (modified, of course, but what
>my opponents are building):

>  Early game: fighters, i.e. small ships with laser/NPG/ion cannon,  Good for
>defending planets in those "undeclared wars" over disputed colonies, but no
>space for ECM/shields

>  Mid game: destroyers, i.e. medium ships with stinger/pulson/xenon, etc.
>missles and then the best beam weapon that'll fit.  Assuming you're on a tech
>track that allows your missile tech to stay ahead of the CP's planetary
>shielding, these are versatile high value ships, but there's no room for
>shields.  OTOH, if you hit then with 250 Pulson missles, the bag guys' aren't
>around to be shielded from.

>  Late game: dreadnoughts:  One I get the high energy focus I start building
>huge ships lots of beam weapons (especially he DR, once I 86 the Guardian)  Now
>I've the room for ECM/shields, but my opponents (the Guardian, and the CP's)
>all now have weapons that make them of dubious value.  I'd rather put in Tech
>Nullifier's and Death Rays.  And what's the point of XV shields if the bad
>guys've got Maulers?
>  
>  But there's plenty of ways to skin the Mrrshan.  I'm sure other folks have
>developed equally good (better?) strategies. 

A.   As the game progresses it appears that weapons start to outperforming the
corresponding shield tech.  As you point out, Class XV shields aren't that
good against Maulers (20-100hp?) and these techs cost about the same.
I think the key late in the game is initiative.  Whoever gets to deliver
the first punch often wins the fight.  In this case Battle Computers and
maneuverability are important.
I follow a strategy of using medium missile boats with max initiative
throughout the game with a great deal of success.  If they don't kill
me early, then they don't kill me at all.  I've explained this strategy
more fully in the "Fast Missile Boats: The Recipe for Success" thread
in this group.

B.   This all makes sense.  For the midgame, though, destroyers are not so
good at holding one's own planets.   One usually needs to use the fastest
missile around to keep the enemy from dodging them.  This means 2 shot
magazines.  If one is attacked by large or diverse groups, this
may not be enough staying power.  (Having more than one class of destroyer
in a battle group helps).  Leaving one's planet to the mercy of the enemy
can be a very bad thing.  Huge ships with the best shields and
repulsors/range-2 weapons/auto repair (preferably) are handy.  They're
also handy for keeping large squads of small bombers away from one's
home planet.

In addition, shields make sense on ships that have to be large to fit
in specials (IMO).  For instance NSP's usually require large ships, at
least initially.  Also, I've had games where the NSP's were the first weapon
I found that could penetrate planetary shields.  (2 stacks of 50
NSP wielding ships can take out all missile basses in 2 combat rounds
unless the enemy has superior armor in which case it may take 3 combat
rounds (6 shots) or 3 stacks.

C.   Nope.  Shields usually make sense on large/huge ships, IMO.  Especially near 
the
start of the game.  At truly massive tech levels, they do make less sense
but this is a special case.  IMO.

I've been playing more with the 'missile boat raider strategy' recently,
however.  Here the idea is not to have enough speed not to get hit at
all.  This works best with medium ships, though.
==========

Subj:  MOO: Space derelict only for CPs?

#    Lewchuck@cs.ulaberta.ca has suggested that the derelict is a game balance
# mechanism to help out if a race gets far behind in technology.  Do you recall
# if you were sucking wind tech-wise when your scouts found the space hulk?

I think it's more like one of the "disasters", (to the human player, of
course), at least in the impossible level.  Yesterday I was playing a game, and
the race with the second highest tech (behind only Psilon) found a derelict.
Having won with most other races, I was playing the Mrrshan (the cat people),
and was way behind in tech.  So I should be more deserving to get it.
I'm guessing that finding derelict is just as random as other events.

>Reread Slayer's post.  It sounded like he was referring to scouts discovering
>tech at an artifact planet.

      Sorry if it sounded that way - but I said when you *do* get a derelict,
 it shows scouts as the life forms who discover it, not your normal
 scientists discovering a new tech from research points.
      This happened on version 1.2 (now I use 1.3), when I was playing the
 Silicoids.  It was a long game, lasting well past 5 or 6 high council
 meetings.  I'm just trying to help who ever wanted to know about it... you
 can believe me or not, but I know it happened.

A.   I've never seen a derelict.  I have found tech at an artifact planet.
In version 1.2, one can get tech by _scanning_ an artifact planet.  I.e. if
one discovers or steals the long range scanner, one may get a new tech.  If
one colonizes a new planet and extends one's scan range, one may get a
new tech.

I am unclear as to the status of 'discovering tech by scanning' in version
1.3

I also suspect that's what happen to Slayer here, but it's hard to be sure 
from even his revised description above.
==========

Subj: MOO engine bug???

MOO 1.3 late in the game, all my techs are on average level 68, so 
currently I have my huge ships with interphased drives that supposedly 
warp at 8.  Yet when I move them to a star that is less than 8 parsecs 
away, the computer says it will take 2-3 turns to get there!?!?!?!?!?!?!

I lost two VERY expensive planets because I thought my killer fleet would 
get there in time for the rescue!!!!

A.   Did you go through a Nebula?

B.     I've had somewhat the same thing happen to me, but when the turns rolled
 around, the ship arrived on time according to it's engine specs.  Well,
 turns out that Moo's AI for the Est.TimeofArrival is sorta flaky.  It might
 say 2 turns for something when a ship will get there in one.
     Only other reasoning I could come up with is that it's adding a turn for
 orbit time.  But who knows?

C.   I found if you go thru a nebula it does this.  It doesn't estimate the time
you are in the nebula correctly.

thanks everyone for all the help.  yeah, i was flying thru a nebula.
==========

>Subject: Re: MOO v1.3 CRACK

>>Anybody have a working crack that I can apply with a hex editor for MOO
>>v1.3? I'm getting pretty damn sick of looking in my manual everytime I'm in
>>the middle of a game.

A.   Try ftp.uwp.edu in the directory /pub/msdos/games/romulus/cracks.  This 
still asks you the questions put any answer is correct.

B.   In starmap.exe search for:    F6 75 0D C7 06 E2
                              == ++ ++ == == ==
             replace with:    F6 90 90 C7 06 E2
==========

Subj: MoO:  The Death Ray -- What's the big deal?

>Hehe well shield 15 wont help much if you've managed to get past the guardian
>of orion and get the death ray. Now the death ray is what you call one HELL
>of a lethal weapon.

A.   IMHO, the death ray isn't worth the trouble.  Sure, it makes it easier to
pick up intergalactic babes with one of them on your ship, but it's so
expensive and it takes up so much space that I'd rather design a ship
with 1/10th the fire-power and produce 10 of them.

For one thing, you can build a destructive fleet faster by having
several planets share in the production.  With the Death Ray, unless you
have an ultra-rich terran gaia producing them, it will take years to
build just one, assuming that you include all the normal options like
advanced damage control, battle scanner, rear-window defogger, etc.

Another thing that I don't like about the death ray is that it only
takes out one ship.  Sure, if your problem is one mega-gladiator, a
death ray comes in handy, but so wouldn't 10 ships with mauler devices.
If your Death Ray ship goes head to head with 30 mediums armed with
one plasma cannon each, you don't have a chance.

Also, a fleet of smaller ships can be split up.

I'd trade a sub-space teleporter for a death ray any day.

B.   My sentiment exactly!  When playing the weaker races in the impossible level,
I'm always behind in tech, so I usually trade my death ray for something much
more useful.  The overhead of carrying a deathray is just too much.

C.   However, if you're fighting a race (especially Psilons) that's way ahead in tech, 
they
will probably have stronger shields that your better weapons. In this case, you
really need that BF weapon, to overload his shields. 

One strategy, either a few huge ships, or flocks of baby ships, will not win too often.
You need to be flexible in your ship/weapon picks in order to defeat them where 
they
are weak.

D.   )Death ray is just the most powerful weapon in the game PERIOD! I've got a
)ship called Hydra, with 32 death rays, a hi focus energy device, oracle
)interface and other stuff. If you don't believe me, here's my savegame for
)moo v1.3 :)

(deleted).

If you load your savegame up, I'll bet you find that if you put one death
ray in a medium ship (assuming it's possible - it should be close if you
can fit 32 in a huge), skip the oracle interface (totally redundant),
keep the HEF plus the best drives and maneuverability that will fit - you will 
find that you can get more Death-rays per dollar than you can by putting
32 in one hull.

You may also discover the role of initiative - in such a match, he who
fires first, wins.  (This means high manueverability, inertial nullifiers,
and battle computers, basically).

Of course, for a 'combined arms' fleet, you may want to add to this a bunch of
small ships, armed with "only" a mere mauler.  Or the pulsar stacks,
or the Neutron Stream projector stacks.
==========

Subject: Strategies to Counter High Shields (Was Death Ray)

)Clearly, if you're ahead in tech, you really don't need Death ray.  If you're
)too far behind, then death ray won't help you much either, since the computer
)can usually produce much more ships than you can produce death rays, especially
)with the production bonus in the more difficult levels.  If you're
)not too far behind, then you have (at least) 3 alternatives to counter
)computer's high shield: 

)1. use a decent shield-halving weapon, gauss autocannon
)is my favorite in this respect, particle beam is not too bad either. (I usually
)starts plotting against the guardian after I get either mass drive or hard beam)

)2. use a special weapon that shields has no effect against, namely, the stream
)projectors, and the pulsars (I'd put black hole generator also, except that
)BHG is less effective the higher the shield level).  To use the projectors more
)effectively you need to have more than one ship-type that carry them.
)The pulsars are more useful against small and medium ships, but I rarely find
)the computer puts significant shield on these ships.

)3. use hard hitting weapons (the brute-force way).  This means most of the
)higher tech beam and missiles, missiles higher than stinger, stellar c.,
)mauler, death ray, etc.
)
)Of all the alternatives, I still think that death ray is the most inefficient
)way.  It's just a feeling, I don't have any hard numbers like kill/BC, i.e. how
)many enemy resource you kill per BC you invested in producing the weapon.
)This might be an interesting number to have.
)
)One thing death ray is marginally good for in the middle stage of a game is
)against missile bases, when the computers have good planetary shield and you
)don't have good enough bombs.  But because of the high overhead of the death
)ray, I usually invest the BC in research instead, and wait for a better bomb.

A.   I think alternative 2 has the potential to be the most cost effective
solution.  However, it won't always work.  Neutron stream projectors
are great, and have a range of 2.  However, it takes a while for them to
completely destroy an enemy.  When they destroy an enemy, they destroy the
entire stack, but this takes up to 6 shots.

Pulsars only have a range of 1.  Thus one needs pulsars plus a cloak to attack
repulsor armed ships.  In addition, one cannot close to range 1 on the first
turn no matter how fast one is.  The cloak will offer a lot of protection (I
figure maneuverability 9, +4 for an inertial nullifier, +5 for a cloak, +1 for
a medium ship = 19 defense - while cloaked, after pulsing defense drops to a
saner 13).  Max attack level is 12 normally, so one is in the 5% to be hit
range while cloaked.  However, facing an extremely large stack, that 5% 
incoming (unavoidable if the enemy has a decent speed plus a HEF)) could
be enough to cause serious damage.

In addition, Mrrshans with megabolt cannons. could be problematical, as they
would have somewhere around a +6 to +7 bonus, putting them at attack 
factors of 18 or 19 or so.

The nicest thing about death rays is that they do take care of
planetary missile bases nicely.  2 or 3 stacks of NSP equipped ships will
do the same job (before the missiles can impact).  But this takes more
than one stack.

Another issue with NSP's is that they do take up a slot.  Maximum initiative
means battle scanner + inertial nullifier, leaving one slot free.  This leaves
NSP ships without a HEF, or subject to an initiative disadvantage.  This is
probably not a problem against the computer, but is a vulnerability a human
player could exploit via the brute force approach (maximal initiative plus
mega-beams and a HEF).  Beam weapons become powerful enough to more than
destroy an equivalent ship class in the very late game, which suggests that in
a really even match, initiative is the key.  Taking advantage of the computer's
foibles (non-even match, but stupid) suggests that some of the alternate
approaches might have a lot of merit.  One could argue that they might not
always succeed, but would be able to take out more than their worth in the
enemy because only moderate stacks are needed.  It'd probably still be good to
have some standard 'beam' ships along with the NSP's though (IMO).  (Or one
could combine the two, at the cost of lower initiative if the computer is not
maxing out on initiative).  In addition, there appears to be some discrepancies
in the V1.3 initiative calculations as actually carried out - I had ships with
a lower maneuverability act first for some reason (??).

One final point - the suggestion is made that if one wants better bombs,
one can just research them.  This isn't always possible  - I've had games
where they just were not available.

B.   I've had several games where powerful bombs have not been discovered, and
shields techs are high/maximum.  It's usually possible in such a case to get
the death ray before the mauler.  (A sneaky alternative is the Neutron Stream
Projector).  So the death ray is sometimes the expedient way to break down
planetary shields.  It doesn't take long before one can fit a death ray on a
large ship.  (In really high tech games, I've been able to put one on a
medium, along with a HEF.  This is nasty).

Especially with version 1.3 (which changes the specs on the death ray
for the worse), the efficiency of mediums with maulers vs large with
death rays would have to be evaluated on a case by case basis.  Assuming
both techs are available that is -one nice thing is the death ray can
be found in any game as long as one can get to Orion.  Bang
per buck is probably the best metric for comparison.  

C.  I've had one game where it seemed no one was developing bomb tech. I
was playing the Bulrathis and I was offered the opportunity to develop
anything beyond nuclear bombs. -- Couldn't research, steal or trade
for better bombs.  In the mid game, no one had maulers, any beam weapons,
missles or torpedoes capable of penetrating existing planetary defense
shields. I got the death ray fitted on a huge hull, cranked up the rich
and ultra rich planets, and let the invasions begin.

In that game the death ray was definitely an asset. First time I really
used it in about 20+ games though. Maybe that game was an anomaly.
Like someone else posted, use the tactics and weapons that work for
the situation.
==========

Subj: Re: MOO spies

I cut down on my spying a lot, but not completely.  I try to keep just one
click on spies if not in need of spies at the present time.  If I have a tech
lead or am being sabotaged alot, I'll pump up security to 15-20%.

If you keep one click and keep your spies hidden, then there should be some
there when you need them.  If it is a weak race, I'll keep espionage all the
time in case the develop something I need, or missed.

Its very important to keep track of who has developed what, so you don't steal
something worthless.  Hand in hand with that, trade for useless techs, so that
when you steal something it is worth it.  EG is psilons have 10 things listed
under "Weapons" and you don't have #2 and #9,10 - if you steal a weapon you
will get #2, something you probably don't need anymore.  If you had previously
traded something worthless for it, you would get #9.
==========

Subj: Maximum Size of Invasion Force

You got 430 troops to a p[lanet, huh?  I'm playing Rel 1.3, and I'm finding
that if I send over 300 the invasion gets truncated to 300.

I've always found the Sillies easy to win with, for precisely the reason you
state:  The universe is mine.  The real problem if that you get every one
p*ssed off at you because you snag so many planets.

A.   Every time I've sent more then the planetary max population to a planet,
my invasion force gets truncated to that.  I've always assumed that this
was a hard-and-fast rule, but if you're talking about 300, you either
play a *lot* longer than I do, or my assumption was untrue.

B.   This has changed with the version.  Early versions acted as you describe.
I know 1.3 allows over planetary max, though (survivors are truncated).
I never tried over 300.  I'm not sure about version 1.1 or 1.2

C.  I think we're looking at slightly different assumptions here. DBLUMGART is
saying that no matter how many troops he sends to a planet, he can only
use 300 of them to assault it. Since I've never sent more than 250 or so
troops to a planet myself, I can't vouch for the truth of this statement,
but it seems reasonable given that planetary capacity will not exceed 300
even when terraforming should allow this. In my experience, whatever
troops you send that survive the naval defenses at that planet will
participate in the subsequent planetary assault. HOWEVER -- if you win
that planetary assault, and you have more troops left over than the
current [non-polluted] carrying capacity of that planet, the excess
troops-cum-colonists are immediately lost, which is what you are seeing.
Personally, I've always wished you could ship them back home . . . . .

D.   Yup...regarding the total troop truncation to 300 when they reach the
surface of the planet - this is quite possible.  When I posted, I just
did it from memory about the total number I coordinated to arrive at
a single turn.  As I don't sit through those massive troop battles (just
click the mouse and see the final tally) it was quite possible that
they were truncated.  I just didn't check to see.  That would be quite
a shame, actually.  Wasn't there some other truncation thing fix back
with v1.0 (before my time of purchase of MOO, but I recall reading about
it) where you couldn't have more than 1999 ships of each type in a
fleet?  Just curious.
==========

Subj:  MOO BUG? 1.3?  (Taking Over Planet From Silicoids)
>
>	has anyone ever had this happen to them??
>	at the 2nd half of a game.. when i send troops to 
>	take over a certain planet.. after i win.. the very next
>	round. the planet.. no matter what it is (terran, radio... etc.)
>	would only have 10 pop max.. but if i send naval to destroy 
>	the enemy guys.. and set up a new world.. it will have 100
>	pop for terran ( the normal number) anyone know of this bug
>	or does anyone know how to fix it?

Had you taken the planet from the Silicoids? Silicoid planets
accumulate a lot of toxic waste (since toxics don't hurt the
Silicoids, they never bother to clean up). For other races, the toxics
lower the max. population level. So when you take a planet from them,
the max. population level drops (for you) until you clean it up.

I *think* (though I'm not sure) that when you completely destroy a
colony, all the toxic waste goes away.
==========
 
Subj:  Bug? Computer Cheats

>  HOW do the other races get such large fleets so early in the game;
>I find myself under siege by Large ships when I'm still struggling with
>Mediums. (Perhaps I'm just strategically challenged :)

The computer cheats with reckless abandon.

When I use the <alt>-GALAXY cheat, I see that by turn 10, a cp will
have 3 colonies and 3 more colony ships flying.  If you combine all
of the bonuses of all the races, you still wouldn't be able to build
4 colony ships in ten years at the beginning of the game.

Another big cheat is that the cp's range limitation is rather vague.
When they have a max range of 5, and I strand one of their fleets
about 12 sectors from their nearest colony (by capturing a couple
of their nearby colonies), their "stranded" fleet doesn't have any
trouble bombing the bejezus out of my newly captured planet for
several turns.

Another annoyance that I have is that sometimes, genocided races hang
around long after they die.  I killed off one race, and then, several
turns later, I sent in a fleet of bombers to wipe out another race's
planet, but I couldn't get to it due to a fleet of fighters owned
by the (supposedly) eliminated race.  And yes, they were definitely
eliminated.  The robot newsman reported it.
==========

Subj: Re: Moo - retreat as a tactic

>  Anyone else ever found retreat to be a necessary tactic ? I don't mean 
> being confronted by a superior force and having the choice of run or die. 
> I mean when the opponent is using bio weapons on your planet.
>  I have found myself in situations where I've only got one ship to 
> protect a planet with, my ship is powerful enough to win except that the 
> opponent will take a while to kill and they are spending their time 
> bombing the crap out of my planet. Thus the only acceptable tactic is to 
> run from a winning battle and spend the next turn bringing in ships to 
> smeg the opponent.
>  By this I feel that bio weapons should not be usable in battle.

A.   I THINK (don't quote me on this) that if you retreat they can bomb you're
planet for free anyway, so you may as well take 'em out if you can.

B.   A retreat "tactic" (read "cheat") that I have used is to wipe out an
opponent's task force in stages.  Say QK-373 has a whack of ships and missile
bases defending Meklon.  Now I waltz in with a few hundred pea-shooters with the
best two-pack missiles I can get.  Battle begins: I fire missiles at a group
of ships or the planet, QK-373 replies and advances his ships.  I fire again
and move around to delay the impact of his volley of missiles.  My missiles
hit, then I bravely run away.  At the end of the turn I select my retreating
ships and tell them to try again.  A few turns later Meklon is defenseless.
  This tactic is even more effective if you have a second group of ships
that are less appealing to the planetary missile bases.  In this case you
can fire off the two volleys of missiles and retreat immediately.  Now the
missiles chasing my pea-shooters disappear and the other group, which
currently has nothing trained on it, can hang around until my missiles hit
and then they too can bugger off.
  I think this is cheating as a group of ships that retreat should not be
allowed to immediately return to where they just left ... but sometimes
I just can't resist.
==========

Subj: NEW MOO v1.3 BUG - Ion Stream Multiple Firing 

I'm putzing around trying not to get my butt wiped by the Bulrathi (sp),
and I happen to notice the following situation.  I've got a ship with
a repulsor beam, ion stream, and assorted beam weapons.  I parked this
ship in the middle of the screen to keep the opponents at bay from my
anti-matter torp gunboats.  This involves firing the stream whenever a
ship gets in range, and then waiting (since I still have movement left).
The bug appears to be that, I can wait for an infinite number of clicks
(i.e. - the general turn is not over until this ship clicks on done) and
I can fire the ion stream after each wait.  Thus, it's a simple process
to whittle the opposing ships down to nothing in a single turn.  I'm sure
the Bulrathi were not pleased with this tactic.  Although I returned to
treating them fairly after finding that out, it's nice to have around.
Anyone else seen this bug (I know the ion stream is not a popular weapon)?
Is this a known bug that's escaped my notice?  If not, how do I go about
reporting it to Microprose (perhaps a little more incentive for a v1.4!?)
==========









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