Stalking Jarhead through time

[undercovergeek]

I play the first tutorial mission on Warhammer Armageddon and like the voice over intro - 'the planet, an industrial powerhouse is the envy blah blah blah.........'

oh man a game that models planetary invasions would be pretty cool, find the jewel of the enemys planets, steal it, colonise and on and on

TO GOOGLE!!!!

'games that model planetary invasions'

scroll, scroll, scroll - this looks like a good discussion............. mention of MOO3 and its planetary invasions, requesting similar in Endless Space forums in 2012, read through it, liked what i saw - author?

Jarhead

no answers to his questions, few more searches and no decent answers

TO GOG.com

scroll, scroll, scroll, MOO3 - bad review, bad review, bad review - heres one from 2010 giving it 5 stars, read, read - sounds pretty good - author?

Jarhead

at least i know we like similar games

[Jarhead0331]

LoL...that's pretty funny. Post enough stuff, and some of it will stick, standing the test of time!

We definitely have the same taste in games.

EDIT: I strongly feel that MOO3 is completely underrated and does not get the credit it deserves. To this day, it shines in so many areas that no other space 4x game has even tried to touch.

I think MOO3 was very different from MOO1 and MOO2 and people hated it instinctively for that. It also didn't help that it was severely bugged at release. it has been patched and modded, and I really wish there wasn't so much hate floating about on the internet because it definitely keeps newcomers away.

[son_of_montfort]

I also wonder if it was too "grognard" or "wargamer" for the regular MOO2 crowd. MOO3 was trying to be, in many ways, what Distant Worlds was lauded for - a super complex, highly economics driven, detailed social simulator on top of a 4X shell. I never got into it because it was too buggy, and by the time they squashed those bugs, I had moved on to greener pastures. I regret that greatly, because some of the ideas in MOO3 (particularly planetary management) were really interesting.

The RTS battles sort of sucked, though.

[Jarhead0331]

I don't find the RTS portion to be bad at all.

It's not a click-fest, and with the ability to build complex task force and fleet formations, it's quite deep. I've heard it referred to as a "thinking-man's space/naval combat simulation with maneuver on the Task Force and Fleet level."

This is a description from the Guardian:

Before every space battle, there is a planning segment where both sides select their strategy in approach and intensity to the battle (among other things). After that planning phase the REAL-TIME combat starts and of course you'll be able to make adjustments if you feel they will help you achieve your goal in that battle.

You'll have fleets bigger than anything you ever saw in MoO2. They'll be organized into task forces, and so on. Every ship has its own captain, who has his or her affect on the battle (you don't need to select the captains by yourself - they are a product of your race, government, military traditions, etc.). How rapidly your task forces and their individual ships respond is a function of many things, including training/doctrine, Leadership, and morale.

Combat will occur at a thoughtful pace. Often, the best thing to do at a particular moment will be nothing but just keeping your eyes open and your mind working and watch the situation develop for a little longer before committing to some change in plan - MOO3 is a game about keeping your focus...

Each weapon has it's own unique visual effect, sound and visual effect associated with impacting on shields. The battle will not only be an amazing light show, but because of all the effects having a concrete game meaning in terms of firepower, damage, etc. it'll give you real game feedback.

Still, at least they give you options. If you don't want to control your fleet in battle, you can choose to sit back and watch the action unfold, or simply auto-resolve the combat. It's the best of both worlds with an in between option.

[Boggit]

To be honest I thought MOO2 was far better than MOO3 - IIRC, I hated it in comparison. Maybe it was because I was quite settled with MOO2, and didn't like the way it shook my comfort zone.

I found Distant Worlds quite hard to get into, but having played it for a bit now, it is growing on me - the same could be said of Rome2 TW, which I hated with a passion when it first came out, but which I'm now gradually growing to like.

[JudgeDredd]

lol

I went to look at Masters of Orion 3 and was surprised 9under shopping in Google) to see disks!!

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Reading the title i am thinking - Darwin award.

Reading the thread, MOO3 sounds pretty good.

[Nefaro]

I liked a lot of the concepts in MOO3.  But it was released prematurely and in a poor state.  Even the developer(s) eventually admitted to how much of a mess it was. 

Fortunately the community eventually fixed up a lot of stuff.  Don't think I ever tried the final fixed-up version, though, as I had moved to other things and forgot about it.  Did try an earlier modded version and it certainly made it appealing.