FreeOrion

Awesome version of MOO! I love how some things like outposts / colony ships can both breed up a normally populated planet. Personally I like that there is no battle scenes, lets me macro more. The big thing though is the AI is a push over, barely expands etc. Maybe there is a setting that will make them more likely to expand / play? IE very dense planets vs sectors? One great thing would be to be able to design a ship with unresearched parts and then be able to jump right to the research area for those parts. When looking at like the Mark 2 and then trying to find those upgrades in the tech tree it takes awhile. Also the Mark 3 requires something more then just new pod equipment which I don't know yet (new hull? tank? armor? I don't know...). I found out by accident how to group ships up. Still don't know how to produce a ship more then 1x. I do disagree with being able to build ships on planets that don't have the ship factory or whatever it is called. Also hull usage is fairly intimidating, each one requires a different set of buildings which can have a whole different set of prerequisites, and it's already bad enough keeping track of everything else. At least if it requires a building, make that building come with the hull tech and have no fancy extra requisites unless the hull happens to be "rare" (like asteroid hull stuff). I like not having any of that political stuff involved, could careless about spy management etc. I tried to terraform a few planets and nothing happened... After you own a planet it would be nice if it still said if it was "hostile" or not etc.

Welcome.

Quite possibly everything you mentioned is going to be changed before the game is finished. See the roadmap for more details. We're still on v.3.

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Honestly past knowing if the AI is hostile towards you or not, all diplomacy / spy / sabotage stuff is not worth it. I could play the game as it is now for days and days if you polished it some, got AI correct, balanced things (currently a rush strategy is unbeatable), and made a lobby server for multiplayer (or some other realistic solution to let me play some multiplayer games). Ground combat and micro space combat are failed features in my opinion. They are like unimportant side / mini games. Space monsters and random events would be good. I know your goal is to remake MOO etc but you'll exhaust your team if you redo the stupid features because you won't have much gain from them as far as player interest is.

Obviously there is no intention of a perfect remake and you shouldn't commit suicide for it. I love the FreeOrion style, stick with it. It's already a great game, you should polish it from here and then build on.

FO isn't really supposed to be a MoO remake- though it is probably more strongly inspired by MoO than anything else. As far as complexity, it's supposed to be more complex than MoO1 and less than MoO3-- where exactly it falls on that continuum depends on who you ask.

I agree we should focus on the core features, and not try to include everything and the kitchen sink. Ground combat for instance is probably going to be extremely simple: something like in MoO1.

Also space monsters are now in!

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Ya I was thinking pretty much stick with MOO 1 as your base. That was the game that started it all. When they made MOO 2 and MOO 3 they already had the previous versions and had nothing else to do but add more to it. So that doesn't mean what they added was important, it means its all they could do to make you buy a new version. So I wouldn't feel obligated to any features unless they are good. This is your game, if you wanted a total remake you should have just started with their graphics / asset base. Also I know it's not all MOO based however I've played all three well enough that when I look at the todo list you guys are pretty much making a MOO.

As a game programmer what I see is that you guys have already produced a ton of balancing and polishing todo work from a game design perspective (bug wise its fine). However the game is great. When I look at the todo list I just think you guys should play it safe and finish it now and then build on later. You have a full great game now, you should capitalize on that before an important team member gets married, has a kid, gets run over, put in jail, or just grows old and uninterested.

Some of those have already happened.