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Master of Orion cheats / Master of Orion hints / Master of Orion faqs / Master of Orion solutions Master of Orion hints AN OPERATIONAL AND STRATEGIC PLAN TO ACHIEVE A MILITARY VICTORY IN MASTER OF ORION, VERSION 1.3 by Redmond Simonsen Edition 1.1. Copyright 1994, Redmond Simonsen, All Rights Reserved. This text may be redistributed or re-posted in electronic form (only). It may not be changed, abbreviated, or edited without the permission of the author. No fee, except normal transmission and connect charges, may be assessed for access to this text. It may not be included as part of any collective work nor published in paper form or other form without author's permission. Master of Orion; designed by Steve Barcia and published by MPS ============================================================================ Note: most of the following is applicable to any version of Master of Orion (MOO) but based specifically on playing the latest published version (1.3). This version has more aggressive computer players and some technology changes which make it harder to build very powerful small-hulled ships. The plan assumes that the player will refuse a political victory (election by the council) in favor of true victory, i.e., domination of the galaxy by force. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. PREMISE AND PROBLEM MOOPlan Red assumes that the player wishes to achieve a military victory (which requires the eventual elimination of all other competitor races in the galaxy) rather than a political victory. Plan Red is drawn to support this objective and is applicable to campaigning at difficulty levels of Hard and Impossible in a Large, Huge or Medium galaxy. The keyword of the plan is "patience": the player will have to accept a long preparatory sequence of game turns during which he is mostly submissive and subordinate to the whims and caprice of the computer players. For until the player has achieved a sufficient technological and economic momentum and mass, direct challenge to any leading computer player is a fruitless exercise. This is so because at the higher difficulty levels, the computer players (cp's) have productivity advantages which permit them to vastly out pace the human player in production and technology advance, particularly in the early stages of the game. Literally hundreds of turns of preparation and growth are required before large scale war is feasible. Happily, these turns pass quickly. Plan Red dictates a three stage approach: A. Establish the Core: find and build the initial set of planets upon which the Empire will be based. B. Hold and Grow: preserve and mature the Core and advance technology to the at least the mid-20's. C. Expand and Conquer: aggressively expand from the Core to reduce and finally eliminate all competitor races. Although the above description may seem self evident and devoid of any special wisdom, it is useful nonetheless to consider the course of the campaign in these three major stages and to discipline oneself to think of the game as proceeding by three distinct phases, each requiring its own style of play and its own approach. It is very easy in Master of Orion to "get ahead of oneself" and too-early become embroiled in un-winnable wars and excursions which only serve to blunt technological and territorial advance and consequently produce defeat. II. GAME CHOICE Master of Orion is essentially a "naval" arms race game with a political sub-theme. Productivity, mass and momentum, time-space factors, and political water-treading are the most import elements. The game is fairly brittle in respect to technological differences-- a rather small difference in overall technology can spell doom for the weaker player in a direct confrontation. On the other hand, given roughly equal technology levels, even a numerically inferior human player should always be found to prevail against the computer players. In light of the above, the player should choose a race that offers some productivity or political benefit. These races are the Klackons, the Meklars, the Psilons, and the Humans. Of course, any race can be gamed but it is felt that the characteristic advantages of the Mrshanns, Alkaris, Bulrathi, and Sakkra are not great enough to offset their drawbacks. The Darloks can be interesting to play but require a modification of this plan to take advantage of their spying talent that is beyond the scope of this document. A very important factor in establishing the Core is that initial period of the game when one is left totally alone to build. Because of this, play in Large and Huge galaxies is recommended. Playing in a Small galaxy (or to a lesser extent, a Medium galaxy) means that the player will experience multiple First Contacts quickly and that the galaxy will be quickly filled by the more productive computer players. This will almost always leave the player with a very small Core and thus a much harder game, more controlled by luck than playing skill. Not only will the game be more difficult to win, but it is much more likely in such situations that a cp will be very early elected as leader of the New Republic and you will not have the means to resist this political victory. A Final War situation before the Core is developed is almost always certain death. If the player wishes to play a Medium or Small Galaxy game, it is suggested that he reduce the number of cp's accordingly: two or three in a Small Galaxy; three or four in a Medium Galaxy. It is indeed possible to win a Small/Impossible/5 game, but the author considers such games as exercises in masochism and not relevant to mainstream play of the game. A Note on Random Events: the author usually plays with Random Events shut down (key ALT-EVENTS). Most of the Random Events are negative in nature and some of them so catastrophic as to totally upset any deliberate, planful approach to play (e.g., rebellion at one of your main planets early in the game). If you like Random Events, it is suggested that you leave them off until at least the end of Stage One. III. ESTABLISH THE CORE The Exploration Stage In a Galaxy size of Large or Huge, the player needs at least six to ten first generation planets to have a decent chance of surviving the first century of play. Unless the starting position is truly terrible, this goal is readily attainable. This first generation of planets is referred to as the Core. A. The First Colony: The game virtually guarantees that there is a decent planet within range of your first colony ship. Use this information and immediately send the original colony ship to the most likely star type within three parsec range. Don't bother scouting in advance. Immediately upon the establishment of the first colony, send 15 to 20 percent of the population of the Home World to the new colony to prime the pump of its population growth. B. Initial Scouting: Examine your position on the galactic map and rationalize your colonization based on accessibility to you and inaccessibility to competitor races. At first, in the absence of hard information on the computer players' dispositions, this will only be guesswork. As information is developed, mature your colonization plan to suit the situation. Build four or five more scout ships to assist in gathering information. When a really good world is found that will come into colonization range shortly, station a scout or a fighter ship at this world to drive off early cp incursions into your local space. Any new colony within easy range of a cp race will likely be assaulted via ground attack unless some fleet assets are present. If you have no available "space superiority" force, it is better to simply hold the uncolonized planet with a screening force until such time as you can afford some protection for a new colony. In the early going, the cp colony ships are not armed and they send only scouts to uncolonized planets. These can be scared off simply by aggressive moves on the tactical screen. C. The Second Colony: After your Home World is more than half industrialized and your Second Planet well on the way, you can build a second colony ship and deliberately choose your next site based on the scouting that has been occurring in the intervening several turns. Choose the best world in range of your first two planets. If however, there is a short term positional advantage to choosing a lesser world, you may find yourself colonizing (for example) a smaller, poorer world as a gateway to a set of good stars or to prevent some cp gaining access to your better potential colonies. D. Early Technology: As your Home World finishes its industrialization, most of the freed production should be devoted to technology. Propulsion should be emphasized above all other technologies until such time as Sublight Engines and Range Six Fuel Cells are attained. Some emphasis should be placed on Planetology (especially Terraforming and Waste Reduction) and Computer Tech related to Robotic Controls. It is important in the early going to micro-manage the tech scales on a turn-by-turn basis. As soon as a given tech is showing a 15 or 16 percent probability number, allocate some of its RP's to another category (scale it back to 11 or 12 percent). E. Completing the Core: Once you have your first three planets well along, you have one-third to half of your Core in place. You should also at this time have two to four young worlds under initial development. Use your mature worlds' population base to quickly build up the newer worlds but don't strip out more than 15% of a planet's population in any one turn unless it is a dire emergency. In first stage of technology development, it is important to maximize the population base and the productivity of that population as much as possible. War making potential and ship technology are strictly secondary at this juncture. You should trade for tech that is not being covered by your own RP effort (i.e., weapons, force fields, etc.). Do NOT trade away higher levels of Robotic Controls, Terraforming or Engines unless you absolutely must have something. If your new worlds are within ground assault range of a cp, any weapons research should be dedicated to early infantry weapons. F. First Stage Diplomatic Policy: If you should be unlucky enough to make contact with a cp race before colonizing the Core, quickly establish trade relations but do not immediately establish a treaty even if relations would permit. Reason: if you have a Non-Aggression Pact, the more productive cp will be able to colonize any world within reach even those which have your ships in orbit. If no treaty exists, he will have to fight for dominance (and will usually choose to vacate instead). In this manner, you can forestall cp colonization of your target worlds for some time. Once you have your Core colonized, you can seek to create Non-Aggression Pacts with as many cp's as will have you. Alliances are usually to be avoided since they limit your freedom of action and may draw you into an unwanted third-party war. Do NOT get involved in an early war unless the cp is actually so small and weak as to be incapable of actually damaging you. If the cp has more than a few planets, he will be able to launch a sizeable and powerful fleet against you and cause you critical harm. IV. HOLD AND GROW The Consolidation Stage After you've colonized six to ten worlds, you'll usually find yourself hemmed in by the other races and/or the edge of the Galaxy. Incidentally, it is often beneficial to colonize in the direction of a corner since the remoteness of the cul-de-sac worlds provides them a degree of cheap protection from invasion by any cp and it tends to isolate as-yet-uncolonized worlds from the clutches of the cp's. In this manner, you can grow outward and delay colonization of these buffered worlds (but be alert: the cp's quickly develop colony ships with Reserve Fuel tanks for extra range). A. Second Stage Industrial Plan The general objective throughout the game is to build up planetary industry to its maximum at the maximum rate of growth. It is particularly important that the Core planets be industrialized quickly to provide the economic base needed to attain the technological advances needed. However, in this second stage, more attention is given to the building of Missile Bases and some resources are dedicated to building a defensive fleet. Technology investment should be still be mainly on items which enhance population or industrial growth. Particular emphasis should be placed on Robotic Controls and Terraforming advances. Presuming that Propulsion technology has produced at least Sublight drives and Range Six fuel cells, some of that budget should be moved to Construction and Weapons research. If you have a large Computer Tech lead on any given cp, you can indulge in some safe spying activitiy to supplement your technology investement. Spy allocations must be carefully managed due to their expense and risk. If you have the opportunity to frame another race for your spy missions, carefully consider the implications of war between the two affected parties. B. Planetary Defense The second stage is marked by the building of Missile Bases on all planets and the creation of a defensive fleet. As planets finish their first stage industrialization, they should be building Missile Bases at a rate of one base every three or four turns. Towards the end of the Second Stage, this rate should increase to one base every two turns. When the opportunity to build Shields arises, select the "25%" option for your resource allocation and then fine tune individual planets which may be particularly vulnerable. In the first two thirds of the campaign, Missile Bases are _the_ most efficient way to preserve and protect your empire. Even one or two bases in the very early stages will eliminate the possibility of troop landings altogether. When Planetary Shields are added to the mix, planets become virtually invulnerable to beam weapon attacks until very advanced tech becomes available. Even with 100+ bases at every planet, you should not see your base maintenance cost rise into the double digits. C. The Defensive Fleet Unless you have an extremely good position with very weak cp's opposing you, there is nothing much to be gained and a lot to be lost in building a large fleet and going on the offensive at this point. Rather you should build a fleet of Small or Medium ships armed with shield-halving beam weapons such as the Neutron Pellet Gun or the Mass Driver. It may also be necessary to build a small number of Large or Huge missile-armed ships to act as mobile missile bases to defend your more vulnerable planets as they are completing industrialization and before they have bases of their own. You should not be building any bombers in this stage. You should not engage in toe-to-toe shoot-outs with superior enemy fleets: the cp's want you to do this so that their superior production will make up for their generally poor ship-handling and strategy. If your defensive fleet cannot hold a world against a cp assault, you must abandon the world rather than pointlessly lose your fleet. D. Opportunistic Growth Upon occasion, the cp's will war with each other and vaporize each other's planets in the process. You should maintain one or two ready colony ships on the frontier in order to scoot in and take advantage of such an opening. You can easily do so if you have a Non-Aggression pact with the owner of the fleet orbiting the dead world. You must then quickly build up that world and protect it from possible troop invasions by either the former owner or the cp who blew it up. Be prepared to give up such worlds if the cp presses the attack very heavily. After the first century of the game, the odds are good that you can add two or three worlds to your empire via this approach. You can also emulate the cp's by building an "LRC" (Long Range Colony Ship). There comes a point fairly early in technology development where you can fit Reserve Fuel Tanks and a Colony Base into the hull of Large ship. This is worth doing if it will result in access to open worlds beyond the reach of ordinary fuel cells. If you build an outlying colony, you must have a defensive covering fleet ready to go the moment the colony is established, otherwise you'll simply be immediately invaded and lose the planet. Non-Aggression Pacts will _not_ protect you from invasion by "friendly" cp's. E. The Conclusion of the Second Stage Although there is no sharp line of demarcation, the consolidation of the Core that is the hallmark and goal of this stage is usually reached sometime in the latter half of the second century of play. Your planets will be completely built up and you will be at Technology Level 25 to 30. You should not be at war with any of the leading cp's and you should not have a big, aging fleet. All your planets should have shields and at least a couple of dozen missile bases. The second stage is usually completed before the end of the second century. IV. EXPAND AND CONQUER The Domination Stage The third stage of Plan Red is a bit like a number of repeats of the first two stages with one big exception: now there is opposition to your moves to take a given set of planets since they are all already occupied. Therefore you should choose your first opponent carefully. It should be one of the smaller and more backward races-- someone you are confident of beating and who is not allied with the leading race. Sometimes these races will pick you: they will already be at "war" with you (but not actually doing much about it). It is also important that your first candidate for conquest be physically close to your existing empire --don't choose a weak race on the other side of the galaxy. A. Fleet Requirements Your first offensive fleet will consist of several hundred "fighter" types from your existing defensive fleet and a few to several dozen Medium or Large missile-armed ships. The basic operational plan is to select the most convenient, vulnerable, and worthwhile of the target race's planets and to take it by a war of attrition against its missile bases and defending fleet. This is done by using your missile armed ships to yo-yo into the planet's orbit, salvo, retreat, and then immediately return via course re-direction. Depending upon the your missileer power and the opposing race's planetary shield and base strengths, this will take a few to several turns to accomplish. Your attacking ships should be armed with at least Hyper X Rockets and preferably Stinger Missiles. If you can trade for even better missiles, do so at this time. Stingers are good enough to penetrate the weaker shields prevalent at this level of technology. Design using two-shot missile racks since this will put the greatest number of missiles per firing ship into the first two salvos (which is all you're going to be around for anyway). Missile salvos are used instead of bombers for the sake of economy and security. Using the Yo-Yo technique, you will take virtually no losses and the same force can be re-used to take the next planet. The slow bombers which can be built at Tech 25 will suffer heavy losses taking just one planet. Providing replacements will divert resources from research and planet building. Missile bombardment is a little slower, but much safer and more economical. Moreover, the missileers can be used in a defensive role after they've completed their bombardment tasks. After the bases are reduced, the missileers and the fighters can clear off the defending fleet in preparation for the ground attack. You must achieve local space superiority before you attempt an invasion. B. The First Invasion If you've chosen your target correctly, the victim-race will be inferior to you in armor and force fields and no better than you in ground weapons. If this is indeed the case, you can capture the target planet mostly intact by sending one-third to half as many troops as there are settlers on the planet. This of course, is variable dependent upon the technology disparity between the two of you. Send your invasion forces from multiple points of origin (to minimize the short term impact on the output of those planets) and dedicate some resources to quickly rebuilding the population of the contributing planets. If the target race has better ground forces than you, you must carefully "bomb down" the planet to a manageable size, and then you must send more population to the planet than occupies it. There is no precise way to control the effects of bombing and you will risk vaporizing the planet if you use too large a bombing force. Err on the side of too light a force at first and build it up slowly until you get the results you need. Much of your invasion force should survive and provide the seed for future growth on your newly acquired world. Since you should be capturing as many as hundreds of enemy factories intact, you can rapidly consolidate this world particularly if you salt it with some cash to begin with. A large component of your fleet (perhaps all) will be needed to fend off attempts to retake the planet. This will tie you up for at least a few turns until you get some bases established. Don't be impatient. It is important to operate within your limits in a "low risk" mode for these early wars of expansion. Later when your economic base includes more than twenty worlds or so, you can be more aggressive and free handed since any losses you'll take can quickly be replaced. It is recommended that if your missileers can pre-emptively strike at the gathering enemy fleet that they do so to reduce the enemy counter thrust before it arrives at the newly occupied planet. Do not simply passively wait to be attacked if there is an opportunity to weaken the enemy's offensive force. Once you have Improved Space Scanner technology, planning these pre-emptive raids is easy to do since you'll know with certitude if your planets are about to be assaulted or not. C. Expansion Diplomacy The thesis of Plan Red is that the player is not interested in winning the game democratically, rather that he wishes to dominate the Galaxy by force of arms. Nevertheless, once you've become large enough to show up as one of the candidates in the quarter-century Council Vote, you become more vulnerable to losing the game by vote (unless you've grown so strong as to rival the combined might of the Galaxy, Final War is still a thing to be avoided). Accordingly, you should use bribery and sabotage to keep the cp's off-balance in this regard. If you are a few years away from a vote and you are at war with one of the larger, secondary cp's, you should do a "nose count" to see if his voting against you will throw a political victory to your rival. If so, and if he is not allied to your rival, make peace and use bribery to create a friendly enough climate for a Non-Aggression Pact to be formed. If you find you can't make peace, make war instead: use sabotage against races with lower computer technology than yours to "frame" the rival cp. This may well cause them to lose their tempers with the leading cp and go to war, thus queering their vote for your rival. You may also find it necessary to simply bomb-down the population of one of the secondary cp's about to vote against you in order to change the ratio of your population to the total galactic population. Although this is a drastic solution, it is sometimes the only out. D. The Too-Soon Final War It is unlikely that you would survive a Final War in the Core Stage or even early in the Hold and Grow Stage, but you may well do so in the Expansion Stage. Nonetheless, if Final War comes early in the third stage, things may get very hot for you very quickly. If, for example, two or three of the cp's are as advanced or more advanced than you and have strong empires, you will be in trouble for each will field a huge fleet of strong ships to direct against you. One you can deal with; three is very tough. To slow them down, you need a force of fast, powerful bombers. Usually these will be Mediums filled with your best bomb and one beam weapon. They should have either teleporting (if available) or cloaking and be fast enough to reach the target planet in no more than two moves. Create four or five squadrons of such bombers (100-200 in each squadron) and use them to create a "dead zone" of destroyed planets to act as a buffer between you and the cp's. This will have a number of good effects. It cuts the productivity of the cp's; it distracts them into rebuilding these planets; and it causes them to tie up their fleet assets in "guard duty" over these re-colonized worlds. If your bombers are fast and have good ECM, you can quickly incinerate ten or more worlds. Do not send your bombers on long range missions --the idea is to deny the enemy basing and production within one move of your planets. Also, do not yield to the temptation to use them in a space superiority role and duke it out with defending ships unless those ships are ineffectual against your armor and shields. As often will be the case, the cp will recolonize the cinder-worlds and then wander off leaving them unguarded. Immediately re-bomb them (resist the temptation to colonize them unless they are Rich and immediately adjacent to your empire). Unlike the Expansion Stage approach to planet reduction, you cannot afford to spend time at each target world. Thus you must use very fast bombers in large numbers. The objective is to "hit 'em where they ain't" and quickly blast ten or a dozen worlds. Do not attack strongly defended planets; wait until the defending fleet leaves (as it usually does): then immediately whack it with a lightning stroke. This is the essence of the mobile attack (also known as the Blitzkrieg): find the weak spots and hammer them with maximum force; flow around the strongpoints and reduce them later; keep the enemy off balance and reacting to your moves rather then vice-versa; integrate all offensive forces in the local area into a single, fast-moving spearpoint. E. Methodical Incorporation of Enemy Empires The general approach to galactic domination is fairly obvious: start with the weaker opponents; absorb them completely one at a time; build up your expanded empire to rival that of the leading cp (who may still be nominally stronger and more advanced than you even at this stage in the campaign). While you are doing this, your main computer-driven rival may not be standing idly by, beaming at you with a Peaceful rating from the Races screen. He may break a Non-Aggression Pact and come at you for _lebensraum_ or may even go to war with you. You should not become involved in a full-scale war with the largest cp prematurely. If war does break out through no fault of your own, damage some of his more vulnerable planets and bribe him with technology to produce the conditions for a peace. As much as possible, you should control the timing and conditions of the start of the Big War for total control. When you grow to the point where your population is more than one-third of the galaxy, you no longer have to be too concerned about the penalties for genocide or bio-warfare since it is now impossible for you to lose a council vote. Bio warfare can be used to rapidly incorporate built up planets into your empire. Build "missile-proof" bombers armed with your best bio weapons and send them against the biggest planets of your most vulnerable enemy. Kill the population and leave the factories intact to be swept up by an accompanying "Attack Colony Ship". Or you can more carefully bio-bomb until the population is greatly reduced and use Black Hole Generators to remove the missile bases without damaging the factories. Follow this with a conventional invasion. Note that the bio weapons will not affect missile bases (indeed the entire population can already be dead and those pesky bases will keep firing at you --so be sure to constantly check the population of the planet as the raid is in progress). As soon as the kill-off of the population is complete, retreat all forces. Then immediately redirect them back to the planet so that the colony ship can take over the empty factories. Send waves of population from nearby planets to man the factories. Add money to the local economies and these new planets will be completely rebuilt in an astonishingly short time. After you've taken two or three worlds from lesser cp, he may well sue for peace. Take him up on it since the several turns of enforced "peace" will give you time to absorb and build up these new planets completely. If you don't offer tribute and normalize relations with the target cp, it is likely that he will once again develop a bad attitude about you and declare war even though he has been seriously weakened. Because of the programmatic, lock-step manner in which the computer player upgrades its fleet, you will find it easy to always field a fleet that is strategically faster than the cp's (since they will have a mix of slow and fast ships moving at only the speed of the slowest member). Superior strategic speed multiplies the effectiveness of your smaller fleet since you can reach two or three stars in the same time it takes the cp to reach just one. Thus, weak, remote cp planets can be attacked as decoy objectives to draw out his main fleet element. Once it is on its way, you will abandon bombing and harassing the weak planet (or incinerate it altogether) and drive on one of his main worlds. Suppress the missile bases and invade that planet in the several turns it will take for the cp's fleet to return from the outlying decoy planet. Every time you decoy a large enemy fleet into making a long space journey, you have effectively destroyed that fleet for that slice of time. F. Keeping the 800 Pound Gorilla Off Your Back All the while you are picking off lesser races and gathering in planets, you must still placate the largest and most dangerous cp for as long as possible. The more time you have to complete technology, the easier it will be to deal with him when war finally comes. Even though you may have a Non-Aggression Pact with him, you may find him occasionally driving a large task force at one of your planets. Usually, should he take that planet, you do not want to try to re-take it until you're ready to confront him in a full scale war. In the latter stages of the campaign, you will be large and strong enough for the "Threaten to Attack" choice in the Audience Menu to have some good effect. When a "threat" succeeds, the cp will give you some money or old technology and turn around his on-coming fleets. Examine the Total Power Scale on the Status display of the Races screen for guidence.If you are about to lose a key planet anyway, it's worth the risk of angering the cp to try the threat. If your fleet is weak or otherwise occupied, and there are numerous missile bases at the planet, remove all friendly ships before the enemy arrives and he may well decide to simply leave (even though he could easily blast the planet into dust). This peculiarity of the game logic means that several dozen missiles bases at each of your main planets can provide you with enough time to grow your empire to rival that of the biggest cp while maxxing out technology. Note that as the cp ship shields get into the teens and the average missile defense rating of his ships grows, he will be less shy about facing your missile bases. This can sometimes be an advantage if you have good missiles at your bases: you can deliberately draw him onto your missile bases by leaving an old-tech ship or two as "missile-bait". The cp will attempt to destroy these ships before leaving and you can use this opportunity to fire salvos of missiles into his most expensive ships. If you have Scatterpack VII's or X's and his missile defense is only so-so, you can use your planetary defense as an *offensive* weapon to destroy enemy fleets. A single salvo of Scatterpack X's from a planet with 50 bases represents *1500* Stinger missiles being fired (bases x 3 x 10 ). Such a wave of missiles will often vaporize whole ship groups in one shot. If the biggest cp is already at war with a sizeable but vulnerable cp, you can please the big boy by attacking his enemy --and please yourself taking those planets. This will often produce the anomaly of your biggest rival actually approving of your expansionist actions. You may even be able to sustain an alliance with your rival by ganging up on his enemy. G. When You Are the *900* Pound Gorilla When your Combat Technology Level is in the 50's or better, you will be able to produce waves of hunter-killer ships which can boldly go to the heartworlds of the enemy to destroy his warmaking potential and his standing fleet. If you are blessed with several Rich or Ultra Rich Worlds, you should now dedicate these worlds to continuous fleet production, directing the output to some convenient marshalling point. When stargates are available, they should first be built at these Shipyard Worlds so that production can be delivered instantly. The very large cp fleets are still a problem but can now be directly attacked using one or a combination of the following ship types: 1. Pulsars: Medium or Large Ships equipped with Energy or Ionic Pulsars. These must be very fast tactically and/or be equipped with Teleporters (which is highly desirable). If teleportation is not available, use Cloaking and/or Displacement Specials. Use these ships in groups of several hundred to a few thousand. A force of a thousand or so Ionic Pulsar ships can wipe out 96,000 enemy ships in one blow. Such an attack usually breaks the back of the enemy cp and you'll never again have to worry about his fleet. Do not build Pulsars in Huge ship types since there will never be enough of them to have the desired cumulative effect. 2. Black Hole Generators: Equip two or more types with Black Hole Generators and the highest tactical mobility. A few Black Hole attacks will usually result in the breaking of the large enemy fleets. Black Hole ships are also useful for reducing missile bases without destroying factories. BHG's are good attack-specials for Huge ships since their effect is not cumulative. 3. Stasis Field Generators: Another approach to reducing large fleets is to use Stasis Fields to hold them in place and "shoot-and-scoot" tactics to whittle them down. This requires some patience and finesse, but it works. "Shoot-and-scoot" refers to the general combat technique of arming a ship with beam weapons and missiles and using the missile-switch on the tactical display to control the movement capability of the ship. Shut off the missiles; use part of the movement potential to run in and fire beam weapons; withdraw out of range and fire the missiles. If you have multiple ship types equipped with Stasis Fields, you can shoot at a target as it comes out of the Stasis Field (with the Stasis Special shut off) and then immediately put it back into stasis so it can never fire its weapons at you. This technique is also a nearly fool-proof way to *defend* your home planets when the enemy has a fleet of high-tech planet busters capable of penetrating planetary shields (particularly if they are armed with Plasma Torpedos). A defensive fleet of four or five *identical* (but differently named) Large ship-types equipped with Stasis fields, Black Hole Generators, Teleportation, strong beam weapons, and one two rack missile can hold off enemy fleets that would otherwise destroy your planets with ease. H. Irresistible Domination If, as is usual in the Plan, there is no forced Final War, MOOPlan Red can continue on its main line approach: one-by-one reduction and incorporation of enemy empires. In the last half of the technology race, the productivity and size of your economy will be such that you can turn out powerful forces every turn while still doing a significant amount of R&D. Because you will be better at managing your production than the cp's, you will find that you have essentially caught or passed them (qualitatively) by the mid-point of the arms race. You will still have inferior numbers, but since the disposition of your available force can be much better controlled than the cp 's, you should be able to attain local superiority with relative ease. In Master of Orion, 1.3, the actual taking of Orion has been made much more difficult (because the Guardian creature has been made stronger). Ironically, you will not usually be able to successfully cope with the Guardian until you no longer actually need to: i.e., you will be so far along technologically that the benefit of Orion will only be incidental. But being capable of building a fleet that can easily take the Guardian and hold Orion is a good benchmark for the timing of the main campaign of the game-- the conquest of the biggest cp. Sometimes a nice-to-have technology will show up as a bonus of taking Orion, and it's worth getting this in place before instigating a war with the biggest opponent. Moreover, the offensive fleet that can cope with the Guardian can be the basis of your Grand Fleet. The Guardian is best killed in a single blow by hundreds or thousands of teleporting, beam-weapon-armed mediums. Since the Guardian at the upper difficulty levels has Advanced Damage control and a lot of firepower, you do not want to send a marginal force against him. You won't have to be much concerned with Orion being taken by a cp before you get to it. The cp's seem reluctant to take it on at all (not the case in the earlier versions of the game). Don't attempt to take Orion if it is greatly removed from your empire. Once taken, you must be able to hold it and support it. As your forces roll over the main opponent, he may occassionally sue for peace. Grant it only if you need to reorganize or build up some new acquisitions. The cp's can use the breather given to them by a peace treaty to replace the big chunks of their fleet you have bitten off. If you find yourself elected by the council while conducting the last campaign, you can toughen up the situation by refusing the result (producing a Final War deliberately). The cp's become more aggressive in Final War mode. I. Algorithms Can't Jump You'll find that as you grow to IRRESISTIBLE power and force, the cp's nevertheless still posture and threaten unrealistically from their interstellar commo screens. When you gain the upper hand in MOOPlan Red, the situation quickly becomes very favorable to you rather than the cp's. Were you facing a desperate, cornered human player, he would remain dangerous right up till his last planet-- but the cp's are pretty simple minded algorithms, and they play a really weak endgame. In a Huge Galaxy campaign, this may leave you with dozens of worlds yet to conquer even though there is no possibility that the remnants of the cp's could seriously contest them. It is unfortunate that there is no recognition of defeat by the software, but then there ain't much intelligence in "artificial intelligence" after all, right? Thus, you may choose to simply quit the game before plodding through all those planets or you might want to build nothing but fast bombers and simply forego actually incorporating all those remaining worlds. Since Master of Orion has no score differentiating mechanism, victory by any means is a 100 percent victory. There is no reward for being a constructive imperialist as opposed to a Mad Bomber. V. PRINCIPLES OF MOOPLAN RED A. Pursue quick, early discovery and colonization of six to ten worlds B. Emphasize propulsion and planet building in early technology C. Emphasize productivity and planet building in follow-on technology. D. Keep early fleets small and as fast as possible. E. Use early fleet assets defensively and sparingly. F. Do not become involved in protracted early wars. G. Grow only opportunistically until you have reached the mid-20's of technology and have built at least six to ten good Core planets. H. The first race to be conquered must be inferior to and adjacent to your empire (i.e., within one move). I. Missile bases are the key to empire defense in the first two stages of the campaign. J. Missileer ship types are the key to early offensive and pre-emptive fleet actions because of their flexibility and survivability when Yo-Yo attacks are employed. K. Build large fleets only in the last half of technology (50+) and then only when you are completely ready to initiate the war for galactic dominance. L. Use the capture of Orion as the acid test of your offensive fleet readiness for the big war. M. Pay enough attention to diplomacy to keep a Final War situation from occurring before you are ready for it. This, in essence, means you must grovel and scrape early in the game, biding your time. REMEMBER: You are a flexible, dynamic, self-reprogramming system; the computer opponents you face are not: they are lock-step, fairly simple algorithms, not really capable of "walking and chewing gum" simultaneously. The only real advantage the computer opponents have is their increased productivity. A dynamic and multi-pronged operational approach can easily defeat the simple materiel advantage of the cp's. Other Master of Orion cheats hints faqs solutions: 1. Master of Orion cheat codes 2. Master of Orion cheat codes |