Rant: Things that sucked about...

[Tim_Ward]

Have you tried the moo3 patcher? At the risk of being flamed, I'll just mention that after I applied the moo3 patcher and a few mods moo3 was insanely fun... http://bhruic.dyndns.org/patcher/

No. But the time I've heard of it, I'd pretty much lost any interest in playing Moo3. Maybe one day I'll give it a go.

[AngleWyrm]

MOO3:
3-D galactic map was a bad idea. There's a patch to flatten the galaxy so that distances seen on-screen are correlated to how far apart stars are in game.

Enforced fleet composition was a joke. Imposing rules about which kind of ships can go in what part of the fleet, and how many, turned into just design a ship that SAYS it's a picket scout.

SEV:
There's a little bit of that going on with SEV, where the programmers are doing the DesignType field for the player. Recent changes also include programmers doing the research choices for the player, and older ones as insisting on some of the ship components for the player. This is a failure to recognize--player choices should not be overtly chosen by the game designer.

A good game designer changes the outcomes. Hey, when's the last time you heard the expression "Of course, it's up to you..."? By the time you hear that, the 'correct' choice is obvious, right?