Hidden Ithkul, A scenario i'm about to try

So i've always enjoyed the late game aspect of Moo3, more so than actually trying to win. To me the fun isnt in winning, but rather in the development of the Orion sector and the hypothetical continuation of the story of the orion sector. Somehow it always keeps me coming back for another go.

Anyways, my latest idea was to orchestrate a sector wide crisis by loosing an over-powered Ithkul empire upon it during the mid-late game using Bhruics save-game editor. I will be using a three arm galaxy (250 stars, neutrons and blackholes removed) The "third" arm of the galaxy will be cut off from the orion sector except through a star controlled by "guardian". I'd prefer to just set a specific turn where a starlane will be created, but i havent found a way to do this so the guardian will have to do. Every planet in said arm will be placed under control of the ithkul, and their populations maxed.

The idea is that when the guardian is finally destroyed, the hopefully massive and powerful Ithkul fleet will emerge and wreak havoc on the unsuspecting Orions.

Need to keep the Ithkul from getting the Stellar Converter though, and hope that they arent so powerful that the Orions cant at least stop them through Attrition. I'm going to at least run one long Auto-run to get an idea of what will happen.

Also i will be playing as the Psilons

I kind of feel like this will give the game more of a climactic feel to the end game. Right now winning is merely becomming master of the orion sector, usually either by becoming the senate president(which i dont feel truly closes the story)or by sole survivor(which in itself is very unlikely). I feel as though the races dealing with an unseen "super power" that threatens to destroy all life in the sector and "then" becoming master is more fitting. Truly i would have preferred the Mizara and the Polarids making an appearance in the game at some point, but this will have to do.

I've changed the galaxy to a cluster, which seems more realistic given that the story is based in the orion sector, which did not include any of the galaxies arms. And the home star of the Ithkul will be Antares, which will be connected to one of the "guardian" sectors via a wormhole to simulate a trans-dimensional portal. Also the Ithkul will be able to research the stellar converter, so depending on when the guardian is destroyed they may have it.

In prior experiments with this concept i do know that the Ithkul will aquire diplomatic contact with the orion races prior to the guardian being destroyed. I dont know if this is a bug or not, but it will help to ensure that they are at war with most if not all of the orions by the time they are released from their "cocoon".

Now if only i could get Bhruics save game editor to work :|, settings doesnt seem to do anything anymore...

Wish the board was more active :\, but moo3 is way past its time i suppose xD

In any case i for one will continue to play untill i'm satisfied lol! So anyways this final goal of mine is at a bit of a stand still atm. If i had done a little more research before i started i would have found out that colonies added outside of the home star system stay outposts forever, and since heavy unrest leads to mass revolt in most of the planets in the home system i'm a little stuck.

Cutting off the "antaran sector" is easy, but setting up the Ithkul to escape from the sector considerably more powerful than the top empires in the orion sector will be much more difficult that i had hoped for. Seems the best thing i can do, is max their planetary population in their home system and grant them(via spreadsheets) all of the antaran techs including X's which makes sense anyways since they are starting out in Antares anyways, as well as starting with the ability to build colony ships(i'm playing tropical v3), and the ability to construct all research boosting buildings. Debating on if i should go as far as to grant them a few tech levels beyond the norm to give them a head start or if the antarans tech alone will be sufficient to get them going in the direction i need.

The idea is for them to escape Antares with enough power to cause serious damage to all of the orion empires, if not destroy most of them but not so powerful that it is completely inconceivable to stop them.

My view of the ideal finaly to the Moo3 era is for the Ithkul to emerge calling themselves the New Antarans and lay waste to the galaxy untill they are finally and decively destroyed, allowing the surviving orions to rebuild and eventually aquire the stellar converter technology and beginning a war of planetary attrition resulting in irrecoverable damage to whatever races manage to survive the war, and forcing loss of direct diplomatic contact. Making the Orion senate the only for sure means to sustain contact with other races. At that point any number of things could happen from an RP standpoint. The orion senate could decide to attempt to permaneantly end hostilities(victory by allied, allied victory mod will be active during this game)and eradicate anyone who is unwilling to co-exist. Or perhaps the survivors are all unwilling to co-exist and free for all to the death, leaving one survivor. Master of a broken and devestated orion sector. Effectively ending the story of the entire sector, as what interest would the mizara and polarids have in a star sector with no place to colonize and expand, no abundance of resources to plunder? No, it would be the Master of Orion to discover those empires and pave the way for another story. Master of Orion 4.

Cheesy but satisfying, at least to me.

Have Fun!

JosEPh

Thanks , kind of at a pause. Got alot of techtable modding to do *sigh*, and i just got TOR so putting most of my free time into my Sith Marauder. The rest of my time goes into trying to organize my stuff for the movers who are coming here tomorrow. I'm leaving myself on the 31st, celebrating new years on the road. After that, limited internet till i'm able to get a new job. So will be playing ALOT of old games like this one.

Just thought i'd share my ideas on the ol moo3 board, see if i could spark some activity lol.

Bhruics save game editor to work

That would be wonderful lol, the galaxy viewer seems to have stopped working even on 1.2.5, and thanks to the developers the colony adding feature really doesnt work outside of home system. (Of course i find it odd that it stopped working, since about a month ago it DID work. And i dont see how anything could have changed with the files so i imagine its something on my end but who knows)

Well finally found a galaxy suitable for this whole thing, Ithkul ended up in a decent star part of a "constellation" of stars forming a triangle pointing towards orion. Draconis is nearby which is perfect for the trans portal which will be between Keid and Draconis. I myself, started by myself on the out reaches of the sector with a pretty large number of stars to expand to. No splinter colonies though , i've played a game with 2 splinter colonies in my home star before.

Starting on Turn 2, which is best for Bhruics save game editor, though atm i'm having issues adding the worm hole to Draconis. I keep getting a dxsu error when doing so. Again i dont get it because i did the same thing earlier and it worked.

Edit: I am going to compile the events in this game into a story btw. Never got around to making one for my other games that i've posted about.

This post has been edited by Unforeseen on Dec 30 2011, 03:48 PM

So as expected it did not go well. By turn 120ish the New Orions had conquered 2/3's of the map after revolting, i was around 10 tech levels higher than everyone else with a fleet of over 200 Dreadnoughts, vs the avg 10-15 ship fleet of EVERY other race in the game.

Tropical is clearly not the mod for me.

How much have you played with base 1.25 and the basic set of Bhruic's Patches?

Vanilla, Strawberry, Tropical, and Pedxing's Chocolate and Boysenberry are all great mods but to appreciate MoO3 and How Much Bhruic saved it give vanilla 1.25 with just Bh's Patcher and Patches a run or 2.

Then you can add simple Mods like my Random Gov't to it. And Otsego's Diplomacy2.0 mod. Plus Gofur's GUI mod and Patch. They should all be here.

How about Ritchey's Ethos Mod or Otsego's Completemod 0.85? They where fun.

Have you ever played S.I. Genocide's (formerly known as Ed the 2nd) Invader Mod series? Or the Original MegaMod? Although they might need some tweaking if you use BH's Visibility patch. (They both tried workarounds to the perceived PD bug about visibility)

It's really too bad that the old AtmoO forum's threads didn't get saved as well as they should of. But it would've taken some serious effort to categorize the important data from the spam. And we had a lot of spam!

JosEPh

Well i used to play Vanilla 1.2.5 back in the day, even without bhruics mods. When i found out about the mods he'd produced i got them, as well as Quickshots UE mod. I definitely liked the UE mod except that the beam weapons added we're over powered. I've also played using Strawberry, and Chocolate. Strawberry was "ok", and chocolate's migration system at the beginning produced "unrealistic" expansion where borders failed to form in AI empires which was dissappointing. I've also at one point produced my own mod but its been lost with time.

Right now just messing around with a vanilla tech tables sheet, mainly with the ship hulls. I'm trying to ensure that it is easier to produce larger numbers of light cruisers/cruisers(now standard cruisers)/battlecruisers(now Heavy cruisers), for cheaper. And "capital" ships more difficult and more expensive but bigger. I am also working to simplify weights and weight limits in 10 based math to eliminate confusion with variable number. So 2000 instead of 1999 for example.
The idea is for cruisers to make up the bulk of AI/human fleets for most of the game, with small numbers of larger more powerful ships.
I would also like to get some work done on AI ship design, i never liked how most mods had autobuilds that produced 5, 6 or more differant variations of a single weapon on one ship. Such as a ship with 3 gravitons, full upgrade, 6 barely upgraded gravitons, 4 with no upgrades and 3-4, 2 racks of missiles and like 10 fighters. Or some ships in tropical would come up with say an even distrubution of laser cannons, each with a completely differant improvement.

I'll also be adding a few techs, and improving others. For instance, Anti-Matter Missiles. Expensive, but guranteed to destroyed a leviathon with full end-game defense tech. The stellar converter will be renamed to the Anti-Matter Charge. I've never played with Autobuild personally, but i want to make it so that each ship is guranteed a single rack with 1 Anti-matter missile, and 1 Anti-Matter Charge.

Ithkul move percentages will be adjusted to better simulate an infestation. I want them to act more like a biological weapon than a sentient race.

These are just a few things i'm doing, i hope noone thinks i'm nuts for breaking this game out again. I just cant find any game out there that is similar enough to moo3 to replace it. I dont care what anyone says Galciv 2 is NOTHING like moo3.

Honestly i feel like when i'm done the gameplay will be nothing like what tropical/chocolate/vanilla players were used to. Generally the game flows where tech is the key to success, in most situations. I am making it so that Finances and Numbers are superior to tech level, in that without money you cant even use that tech. Untill the late game of course when all that gets thrown out the window with the introduction of ship/planet killing weapons. But thats how it should be.

Always build a Mod to suit yourself 1st. Then tweak after it's had some playtime.

I would assume you have most of the Mods for MoO3 located here. Use them for reference. There was some good things made. Otsego's 3 mods all had innovations that were excellent.

JosEPh

I think the hardest part for me is balancing power with cost to get the effect i'm looking for.

I'm completely redoing the hull size system. So far i have: Corvette, Frigate, Light Cruiser, Standard Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, Battleship, Heavy Battleship, Titan, Leviathon

Atm each size is completely optimal throughout the entire game, in the late game the smaller Corvettes and Frigates will serve as picket ships, cruisers will serve as escorts, and hitters while the larger capital ships will be classified as heavy hitters. Of course hullspeeds will be in effect allowing empires unable to afford capital ships an advantage in manueverability over those that can.

The last estimate in cost for a Leviathon was up in the 130,000's so if that stays i dont expect to see to many of if at all which is acceptable given their approx. size.

Sorry for talking your ear off btw, i dont have any friends who are interested in this sort of thing, they all play racing games /sigh

I'm going to move this into a differant thread, since this has nothing to do with my Antaran Ithkul idea.