Master of Orion 3

I purchased this game used on Amazon.com a few months ago and since then it has sucked up a lot of my time. I played Master of Orion 2 first and it was great, much has changed between the two games but moo3 manages to hold its own. This game runs fine on my system but tends to get a little laggy when there are many capital ships involved in a battle.

MOO3 makes some much needed changes to the 4x strategy genre. In most games of this type I've played you end up with many planets and must tend to each of them to be efficient (micromanagement). MOO3 has revolutionized this, you have an AI assistant that will take care of all the little things for you. In this way, you are the emperor and deal with macromanagement unless you choose to turn off the AI for a certain planet. I only do this when I want to have direct control over what a planet produces, such as building ships to protect my empire.

The interface can be confusing at first but once you learn the ropes you'll find it very helpful. The planets screen gives you the information you specify at a glance. You can see what planets are producing, their capacity for production, how much research they generate etc. This is important for management as you can end up with hundreds of planets spanning many star systems. Everything you need for taxation and empire settings is accessible through a couple panels. You don't feel rushed to do all this as this is a turn-based game.

There are hundreds of technologies to research and after all I've played it I'm still not sure I've posessed every tech in the game. The player has a choice of what fields to focus their research in thanks to efficient sliders which let you specify what percentage of your research points to spend in a certain field. For example, most weapon technologies are found in the physics and energy fields. Some technological advances will require levels in certain fields in order for them to be utilized.

Ship design is well implemented in MOO3, much like its predecessors. Your vessels will have a certain amount of space available to place whatever technologies you've researched. There are three ship types in MOO3. Starships will have the least hull space available because they need extra room to put their warp engines. System ships will have extra space because they are bound to a certain system so do not need the massive warp engines starships do. You will use these for defense. Orbitals are the biggest type available because they do not move, rather they orbit a planet or its moon so you can load these down with sensors, shielding and weapons. They are very expensive, however. Once you've chosen a ship type, you can choose its class. There are many ship classes from small police ships to massive leviathans. The more advanced the ship class the more space available.

There are many components available to your ships. You will start with lasers and mass drivers, but later move on to more advanced weapon types like the phaser, mauler and stellar converter. You can choose which type of mount you want the weapon to be. Point defense mounts can pick off fighters, missiles and foolish ships that get too close. Heavy mounts and spinal mounts will deliver more damage, but the larger a mount the weapon is placed on the slower its rate of fire. Shielding and armor are available to protect your ships and of course they get better with your technology levels. Sensors to detect enemy ships and Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) to hide your ships on enemy sensors can be used also.

Combat in MOO3 is different than most 4x games, as it is real-time. You can still issue orders to your fleets of course and tell them where to go. You will see how effective your ship designs are when you put them in combat situations. Are you getting pummeled by missiles and fighters? Then you did not put enough point defense weapons on your ships. Can't see the enemy? try adding some more sensors. Much of this is trial and error as sadly there is no simulator (I think, corrections?) in which to test your ship designs. Real combat will have to do. After the space combat phase you can bombard the planet you attacked or even land ground troops to capture the planet if you brought transports.

The diplomacy system is innovative. You can choose treaties and trades, but you will be able to choose the tone in which you speak to the other emperor. Some races might like you being polite but others will expect strength from you and be more likely to respond to demands. You can, of course, recruit spies to go on missions in the enemy (or friendly) empire of your choice. Several types of spies are available and they will carry out different missions depending on their specialty. By far the most useful, in my opinion, is the scientific spy who can slow enemy research and even steal technology.

I recommend this game! It isn't all that expensive nowadays, it's packed with features and technology and can keep you busy for hours. They even included a reminder timer so if you get addicted you can be warned that you've got other things to tend to. Buy it here. If you need more information, please visit moo3.com.