quote:
Originally posted by Devin D.Bass:
Ok, we all have had this game for at least 6 months now...It's time to take a poll...
1-5 with 1 being the worst and 5 the best.
8 categories
MOO2 SEIV
Graphics 4 3
Tactical AI 3 3
Strategic AI 5 3
Customization 1 5
Tac Battles 3 5
Epicness 4 5
Races 4 5
Diplomacy 4 2
TOTAL AVG 3.5 3.875
SEIV edges out MOO2 by a smidgent!
Bah...
Graphics: MOO Graphics are ok for their time, but way behind SE graphics. I just wish he had not tried to copy the 'look' of MOO II for the interface. The 'metallic' and 'dark/cool' colors don't work well when they fill the screen. Plain old pastels like the standard Windows interface -- used in SE 3! -- are much more comfortable to look at for long periods of time.
So:
Game graphics: MOO 3, SE IV 5 -- you can't get any better than 24 bit!
Interface graphics: MOO 2, SE IV 2 -- they're both bad!
Tactical AI is where SE really falls down. The MOO II tactical combat engine was reasonably clever even with the much more complicated task of managing shield facings and firing arcs of weapons. It could be tricked, but no one has yet made an AI smarter than humans, after all. The SE tactical AI is dead stupid. It ALWAYS fires at the ships with the highest total weapon power, even if those ships are PDC cruisers that can only attack seekers and units. It makes an awful mess out of any formation you give it, causing ships to get in each others' ways constantly. It ALWAYS charges straight into combat no matter how bad the odds and gets killed even faster than it needs to. As many have pointed out, the best way to even the odds against the AI in this game is to disable tactical combat.
As for the seperate rating of tactial combat, I presume you mean just the available options and how the tactical combat system works rather than how good the AI is at using it? The two-dimensional model is pretty hard to escape without a very radical new approach that would be harder to learn to use. I think that MOO II had some advantage with shield facings and weapon firing arcs but otherwise was not really that much different. It was just smarter in using the system that it had. I suspect that weapon firing arcs and shield facings could be worked into SE IV with a little effort. Unfortunately, there are just too many other things that need to be done. It will probably have to wait for SE V.
The strategic AI is better but not very smart yet. That will probably be easier to improve than the tactical AI, though. The sheer number of customizable options in ship components will probably make it near impossible to create a really smart and effective tactical combat AI but the game at the strategic level is much less affected by customizations. In MOO II there wasn't really much NEED for strategic AI. Everyone was in the same flat, open space. How much 'logic' is needed to handle that? And all resources were handled by the single "mineral abundance" attribute of a planet. No choices were necessary about how to use a given planet.
Alien races and diplomacy: The AI in MOO II was pretty clever with diplomacy, wasn't it? But it had flaws, too. I once queued up my 10 battleships for refit with 36 auto-fire shield-piercing phasors each, and the Klackons tried to put the muscle on me when I ended my turn apparently because my military strength was calculated differently while they were in refit. I then wished there were more options for replies to a demand than "refuse" and "accept" ... like "refuse politely" and "refuse angrily" and "up yours, charley" because I knew that when my 10 battleships finished refit I would slice and dice the Klackons before breakfast and move on to the Gnolams. I hope that MOO III will take ships into account if they are merely being refitted, or there could be some embarrasing mistakes...
Epicness: Oh, this one is no contest. MOO II only allowed, what, 80 systems maximum? And only had 8 races? Of course, there were those cheat programs that let you give everyone a million credits after you had refused to accept the council election so you could fight fleets of 100 ships or more...
But even accepting the cheats as part of the assessment of MOO II, SE IV has a much grander scale and the strategic movement model allows real strategic thinking while the flat space model of MOO II results in a game of checkers -- once you get a stack of battleships built up you just slide them around the board and clean up. Argh... blitzing is DAMN hard in SE IV. Even if you are out-classed you can put up quite a struggle. This is very good.
[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 20 June 2001).]
MOO2 vs SEIV
Asteroids Champion!
Hybrid Mode
