Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares

Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares
Master of Orion II Box cover
Developer(s)	Simtex
Publisher(s)	Microprose (PC), MacSoft (Mac)
Platform(s)	MS-DOS, Windows 95 and later Windows versions, Apple Macintosh
Release	October 31, 1996 December 16, 1996
Genre(s)	4X, Turn-based strategy
Mode(s)	Single player, Multiplayer

For the chemical MoO₂, see Molybdenum dioxide.

Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares (MOO2) is a 4X turn-based strategy game set in space, designed by Steve Barcia and Ken Burd, and developed by Simtex, who developed its predecessor Master of Orion. The PC version of the game was published by Microprose in 1996, while the Apple Macintosh version was published a year later by MacSoft in partnership with Microprose. Master of Orion II won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1996, and was well received, although reviewers differed about which aspects they liked and disliked. Master of Orion II is still used as a yardstick in reviews of more recent space-based 4X games.

The PC version is still available as a download, and still played online. One group of enthusiasts has developed a patch, which fixes some bugs and adds more game set-up options, and mods which adjust the game balance. This group recommends the use of DOSBox to avoid difficulties in running the game under recent operating systems.

Victory can be gained by military or diplomatic means. Major elements of the game's strategy include the design of custom races and the need to balance the needs for food, production, cash and research. The user interface, which is mainly mouse-based but includes keyboard shortcuts, provides a central screen for most economic management and other screens that control ship movement, combat and warship design.

A sequel, Master of Orion 3, was published in 2003, and was less well received by reviewers and players.

Backstory

Long before the time in which the game starts, two extremely powerful races, known as the Orions and the Antarans, fought a war that devastated most of the galaxy. The Orions were triumphant and, rather than exterminate the Antarans, imprisoned them in a "pocket dimension". The Orions then departed from the galaxy, but left behind a very powerful robotic warship, the Guardian, to protect their homeworld. Whoever beats the Guardian gets: some military technologies which players cannot research for themselves; the allegiance of Loknar, the last remaining Orion, who commands a very powerful battleship; and the opportunity to colonize the Orions' homeworld, which is usually the best planet in the galaxy in all respects.

Some time after the start of a game, the Antarans, breaking out of the prison dimension to which the Orions banished them, begin sending increasingly powerful fleets against players' colonies, simply to destroy rather than to invade. The only way to stop the Antarans' campaign of terror is to carry the battle to their home universe through a Dimensional Portal.

Game play

Victory conditions

Despite the game's name, conquering the Orion star system does not automatically win the game. There are three routes to victory: conquer all opponents; be elected as the supreme leader of the galaxy; or make a successful assault against the Antaran homeworld. To be elected, a player needs two-thirds of the total votes, and each empire's votes are based on the population under its control.

Stars and planets

Star systems have at most five colonizable planets, and a few have none. Players can colonize all types of planets excepts gas giants and asteroids. Colonizable planets vary in several ways, making some more desirable than others:

• Population capacity, which on most planets can be improved by terraforming. "Toxic" planets cannot be terraformed.
• Ease of growing food, which is important for the reasons described below. At the start of the game most planets are incapable of supporting agriculture, but terraforming can remedy this, except on "toxic" planets.
• Mineral resources, which determine how quickly the player can build things there.
• Gravity, which reduces productivity in farming, industry and research if it is outside the colonists' preferred range .
• Natives, who can only grow food but do that very efficiently.
• Occasionally gold or gem deposits, which increase the revenue from colonies there.
• In a few cases, artifacts left by long-departed advanced races. These make research more productive, and may provide one or two technologies for free.
• Very rare "splinter colonies", which automatically join the empire that discovers them and acquire its racial advantages and disadvantages.

The most desirable systems are usually guarded by space monsters, much less powerful than Orion's Guardian but still a severe challenge in the early game, when fleets are small and low-tech.

How planets' economies work

Without food, a colony will starve to death. If an empire as a whole has a food surplus, it can prevent starvation by sending food in freighters, but using these costs money. Just one tiny hostile warship can prevent this by blockading a whole system.

Players can change a colony's output by moving colonists between farming, industry and research, except that natives can only farm. This economic management system came almost directly from an earlier Simtex game, Master of Magic. All normal colonists pay a standard tax to the imperial treasury and in emergencies one can set a higher tax rate, but this reduces industrial output. One can use surplus money to accelerate production of an item, but not to increase agricultural or research output.

Maintaining buildings costs money and so does running an excessively large fleet. Ships of different sizes require different numbers of "command points". These are provided by orbital bases, which are major construction projects for small colonies. This severely limits the size of empires' fleets in the early game, where one can have only one frigate (smallest type of ship) per starbase or one battleship (largest type of ship in the early game) per 4 starbases without having to "buy" command points, which is very expensive.

Research, usually followed by construction of appropriate buildings, can improve all types of productivity including cashflow and command points, and can also reduce or eliminate pollution, which is a serious constraint on industrial output in the early game.

The technology tree

File:Moo2ResearchMenu472.png

Research Menu, showing the eight divisions of the tech tree, and highlighting the subject currently chosen

Falling behind in technology is likely to be fatal. There are eight research areas:

• Engineering makes possible: industrial buildings; planet-based defenses; and larger types of orbital bases and ships.
• Chemistry covers: armor; missiles; pollution-control buildings; and upgrades to the range of an empire's ships.
• Computers provides: research buildings; other technologies that increase all productivity by raising morale; and targeting systems for warships.
• Physics makes available: "beam" weapons; scanners for ships and orbital bases; and upgrades to the numbers of command points provided by orbital bases.
• Power includes bombs; torpedoes, weapons which are somewhat similar to missiles; and upgrades to the speed and firepower of ships.
• Sociology covers: relations with alien races; improving the performance of warships' crews; improving cashflow; and upgrading an empire's government.
• Biology makes possible: improvements in farming productivity; biological weapons; technologies that increase population growth rates and reduce the damage done by biological weapons; and terraforming.
• Force Fields provides: shields; ship weapons that resemble machine-guns; ship components which improve maneuverability and make them harder to hit; and cloaking.

Each technology area is divided into several levels, each of which contains one to four technologies. To research a higher-level technology, one must first have researched the previous level. "Creative" races get all the technologies at a particular level by completing one research project at that level; most races must choose only one technology from each level; "uncreative" races get no choice and the game software randomly selects a technology for them at each level. Players can also acquire technologies by trading, spying, planetary conquest, or capturing and dismantling enemy ships.

All weapons and some other combat-related components benefit from miniaturisation, in which further advances in the same technology area reduce the size and production cost of these components. Miniaturisation also makes available modifications for most weapons, which usually entail a significant increase in their cost and size but can greatly improve their effectiveness in the right situations.

Diplomacy

Master of Orion II provides a wide range of diplomatic negotiations: gifts of money or technology or even all the colonies in a star system; opportunities to demand such concessions from other players; technology trades; trade, non-aggression and alliance treaties. The diplomacy menu, called "Races" in the game, also enables the player to allocate spies between defensive duties and spying or sabotage against other empires, and to check opponents' technological progress and diplomatic relationhips.

Spaceship design

The designs of colony ships, outpost ships and troop transports are fixed, although they benefit from technology advances which increase the travel range and speed of all of an empire's ships free of charge. These three ship types will be destroyed instantly if they travel without an escort and are attacked by anything, even the weakest combat ship.

Players can design warships, provided they choose the "tactical combat" option in game set-up. One can design a maximum of 5 classes at a time, but can have an infinite number of classes in operation. One can also refit ships to take advantage of technology improvements which do not provide free upgrades.

Combat and invasion

File:Moo2SpaceCombat400.png

Master of Orion II's space combat screen. In this example the battleships on the left are attacking the colony on the right, which is defended by a starbase. The space combat screen shows part of a larger, scrollable map.

Ships can travel to any star system within their range, unlike games such as Space Empires or Master of Orion III where interstellar travel is possible only or mainly via "wormholes" and it is possible to set up easily-defended choke points.

Space combat occurs only within star systems, either over a planet one side is attacking or on the outskirts of a system, if one side is driving away the other's blockaders or tryng to prevent a an enemy build-up. If the defending side has warships and several colonies in a system, they automatically scamble to defend whichever colony is attacked. Limitations on the size of empires' fleets mean that most battles involve only a handful of ships on each side. Ships do not form stacks as in Master of Orion, but move and fire individually.

At the start of a game the user chooses whether all space combat should be "tactical" (controlled by the player) or "strategic" (controlled by the software); but choosing strategic combat prevents players from designing their own ships. In tactical combat the screen has an "Auto" button which makes the software take control of the player's ships and finish the battle.

Enemy colonies can be taken over only after all orbital and planet-based defenses have been destroyed and all defending ships have been destroyed or forced to retreat. Telepathic races (see "Playable races") can mind-control enemy populations, but mind-control is thwarted if the defending system belongs to a telepathic race or is governed by a telepathic leader. In other cases the only way to seize control of an enemy colony is by invading. In order to do this, the attacking fleet must include some troop transports, which will be lost if the invasion fails, and at least one will be permanently deployed on the planet if the invasion succeeds. A player cannot control ground combat: the result depends on numbers, ground combat technologies, racial ground combat bonuses, and some Leaders (if present), but the game displays the progress of the combat and the ground combat technologies and bonuses used by each side.

Mind-controlled colonies are instantly loyal to their new owners. However recently-invaded colonies are disaffected, have poor productivity, and may rebel and rejoin the empire which founded them. Productivity slowly improves and the risk of rebellion slowly recedes, and there is a way to speed up these improvements.

Instead of invading, a victorious attacker may destroy an enemy colony by various means.

Leaders

From time to time players get opportunities to hire leaders, for a hiring fee and usually an annual salary. Colony leaders improve the farming and / or industrial and / or research and / or financial productivity of all colonies in the system to which they are assigned, and some improve the efficiency of defensive or offensive spies. Ship leaders improve the combat effectiveness of their ships and sometimes their travel speed. A few leaders of both types also improve the performance of warships and / or ground troops under their command, or contribute directly to a player's finances, or attract other leaders, usually for a reduced hiring fee.

Random events

From time to time there are lucky breaks, disasters or emergencies which are not caused by any player's actions. These can be disabled in the game start-up menu.

Playable races

File:Moo2RaceDesignMenu.png

The Race Design screen. It highlights options already chosen, and grays out those that are no longer available. The bottom shows the number of picks still available.

Master of Orion II provides 13 pre-defined playable races, three of which are additions to those available in Master of Orion. The game also allows players to create custom races, and race design is regarded by players as a crucial element of strategy. Each player starts with 10 "picks" (race design points). Choosing advantageous traits reduces the number of picks available, while choosing disadvantages increases them, but players cannot choose more than 10 picks' worth of disadvantages. Most of the options are major or minor advantages and minor disadvantages in farming, industry, research, population growth, money, space combat, espionage and ground combat.

Races from high-gravity homeworlds are fully productive on high-G and normal-G planets, and only mildly handicapped on low-G worlds; low-G races are severely handicapped on normal-G planets and practically helpless on high-G worlds. In ground combat, high-G races' troops are significantly tougher, while low-G races get a minor disadvantage in their combat efficiency.

"Creative" races research all the technologies at each level by completing one research project; all other races must choose one technological application to develop out of a given research project; "uncreative" races get no choice and the software randomly selects an application to be developed out of each research project undertaken. "Creative" is the third most expensive option.

"Subterranean" races have a higher population limit on colonized planets, and have a bonus in defensive ground combat.

"Tolerant" races have a higher population limit on colonized planets than most other races, and their industrial productivity is not reduced by pollution. This is one of the two most expensive options.

"Aquatic" races have more productive farming and higher maximum populations on "wet" planets (Tundra, Ocean, Swamp, Terran) than most other races. Although quite a lot of types of planet are "wet", at the start of a game the great majority of planets cannot support farming at all.

"Lithovores" feed on the natural minerals of a planet, and do not need to farm. This is one of the two most expensive options.

"Cybernetic" races need half as much food as non-cybernetic races, but each population unit also "eats" half a unit of industrial production. They can also repair ships during combat from the start, while other races must research Automated Repair Units and install them in their ships (reducing the space available e.g. for weapons) if they want their ships to repair themselves during combat.

"Transdimensional" races travel through space a little faster than other races at the same propulsion technology level. They can also travel through space (very slowly) without researching any ship drive technology, or when all interstellar travel is otherwise prevented by a "hyperspace flux" random event.

"Charismatic" races receive a large advantage in diplomacy, and more opportunities to hire leaders and at lower cost. "Repulsive" races have disadvantages in diplomacy and in choice and cost of leaders. Repulsive races cannot form alliances or treaties, and their only diplomatic options are declaring war and surrendering.

Telepathic races have advantages in diplomacy and espionage, and can also conquer planets by mind control when they have overcome the defenses, instead of having to use troop transports to invade. Mind-controlled populations are instantly assimilated into the new owner's empire. Telepathic races also can instantly control captured ships and starbases during combat.

Omniscient races can see all planets and ships, even those with cloaking devices or inherent stealth capabilities.

"Fantastic traders" do better out of trade treaties than most, and make double income from trade goods.

Lucky races get more favorable random events than most and far fewer disasters or emergencies, and tend to be overlooked by marauding Antarans.

Warlord races have advantages in space combat and defensive troop production, and produce more command points per orbital base, so that they can run larger fleets without financial penalties.

One can also choose the empire's form of government, which has almost as much influence on how it performs as the choices described above, but the "best" governments cost a lot of picks. Dictatorships are the most common governments for the pre-defined races, and cost no picks. Democracy provides major advantages in research and money, but is the most vulnerable to spying and sabotage. Unification government provides advantages in farming, industrial production and spy defense but does not benefit from morale. Feudalism provides a large reduction in spaceship construction costs, but suffers from very slow research; the race design menu treats it as a significant disadvantage. Each government can be upgraded once by research, but the upgrades generally increase the advantages of each without decreasing its disadvantages.

User interface

The main screen: the pop-up window displays information about a specific star system, while the large window under it displays the galaxy as a whole.

This is mainly mouse-driven, but some screens also have hotkeys for important functions.

The main screen consists mainly of a zoomable but not scrollable map of the galaxy. Stars have names which are color-coded to show which empires have colonies round them. Clicking on a star that the player has already visited produces a pop-up window which shows the planets round that star. Clicking a fleet allows the player to give orders and displays a pop-up which shows each ship in the fleet, and dotted lines show friendly and enemy ship movements. The buttons along the bottom give access to various menus, and the icons on the right provide information about the status of the empire and access to additional menus.

Colony List, with sort buttons along the bottom. The cursor (hand) on the right is about to open a colony's Build Menu.

Players can manage their economies almost entirely from the Colony List, which can be sorted by any of one of: Name, Population, Food production, Industrial production, Research production, the item currently being built, or Cash (BC) generated. The Colony List allows the player to access any colony's Build Menu, and to change a colony's output by moving colonists between Farmers, Workers and Scientists.

The Build Menu allows the player to queue up to 7 items (buildings, ships or spies) for construction at a colony, to refit ships in that colony's system and to design ships which may then be built at any colony.

At the end of each turn Master of Orion II shows a report in which items link to the appropriate display, usually to a colony's Build menu when a construction project has been completed.

The Information menu gives access to: a History Graph which shows how the player's empire compares with rival empires; the racial characteristics of all empires with which the player is in contact; the technologies the player has researched; and descriptions of all technologies, including the exotic ones which the player cannot research but may gain by beating Orion's Guardian or by capturing an Antaran ship and scrapping it afterwards.

Publication and reception

The game was designed by Steve Barcia and Ken Burd, and developed by Simtex, which had previously developed Master of Orion. Microprose released Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares for IBM-compatible PCs in 1996, and an Apple Macintosh version was published a year later by Microprose in partnership with MacSoft. Master of Orion II offers both single-player contests against AI opponents and online multi-player games.

Reviews shortly after publication were generally very favourable, and the game won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1996. However reviewers' detailed comments on aspects of the game differed, especially in comparisons with its predecessor Master of Orion. Some liked the additional gameplay features in Master of Orion II, while others preferred the simpler approach of Master of Orion. The level of micromanagement was criticized by some, but Tom Chick found it fairly easy to control. Opinions also varied about: the single-player AI, tactical combat, warship design facility, and custom races. There were complaints that the loading of copious artwork from the CD made the game run slowly, and enthusiasts now advise players to avoid this by loading all of the files on to their hard disks. A review specifically for the Mac version complained that the user interface was "clunky", as this PC port lacked features common in programs originally developed for the Mac. However reviewers appreciated the replay value provided by the wide range of galaxy, race and other options.

A retrospective review by Tom Chick in 2001 described Master of Orion II and its predecessor Master of Orion as "looming large" in any discussion of space-based strategy games. Master of Orion II has been used as the standard for comparison in reviews of more recent space-based 4X games such as Space Empires IV (2000), Galactic Civilizations II (2006–2009) and Lost Empire: Immortals (2008).

Atari still sell the PC version of the game as a download, and provide trouble-shooting pages. The game is still played online, and one group of enthusiasts has developed a patch for the MS-DOS version, which fixes some bugs and adds more game set-up options, and a few mods which adjust the game balance. Difficulties have been reported in running the game directly under Windows XP, Windows Vista and Mac OS X, and the same enthusiasts recommend running the MS-DOS version under the control of the emulator DOSBox, which they say also offers some advantages for online multi-player games and works equally well for Linux and Mac OS users.

Sequel

So far there has been one sequel, Master of Orion 3. Comments by reviewers and players have mostly been unfavorable. Despite the similar names, there are large differences in gameplay between Master of Orion II and Master of Orion 3.

References

Bibliography

• Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares. Chipping Sodbury, South Gloucestershire, England: MicroProse. 1996.

External links

• Moo2, slower speed run - brisk video tour of the game
• MOO2 demo
• Master of Orion II - links to FAQs and guides
• Bladrov's Palace, a fan site hosting a number of resources for the series (I-III)
• Master of Orion II - StrategyWiki Strategy guide, with details of useful techniques.