Comments on: Blue Space Vixens!

Blue Space Vixens!

Zarkonnen — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:52:17 -0800

Master of Orion begat Master of Orion 2 begat Master of Orion 3 begat FreeOrion and a beautiful webcomic called Outsider, whose first chapter has just been completed.

By: Tesseractive

Tesseractive — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:55:11 -0800

Oh! I played so much Master of Orion as a kid! My dad loved it too. He was way better at it than I was. I will show him this.

By: Zarkonnen

Zarkonnen — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:58:39 -0800

On reflection, the post title should have been 'PARDON ME, BUT DOES THAT EARTH VESSEL HAVE ANY [GREY POUPON]?'.

By: Bathtub Bobsled

Bathtub Bobsled — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:03:44 -0800

[Plays Cliff Burton's bass interlude in his head before clicking link] Wait... what?

By: k5.user

k5.user — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:04:07 -0800

well, the Blue Space Vixens were from Star Control.. Hard to keep those 90's games straight..

By: Justinian

Justinian — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:09:03 -0800

By: zombieflanders

zombieflanders — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:09:26 -0800

MOO? Feh! I'm a Master of Magic junkie myself. And Stardock's "Elemental" was not the so-called spiritual successor many would have had us believe. Thank heavens for DosBox and Abandonia, plus the programmers that are (still!) working on patches and gameplay updates like Insecticide.

By: BlackLeotardFront

BlackLeotardFront — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:16:07 -0800

MOO2 was the best, I think. But then the various 4X games that came after were pretty great, too. Ascendancy anyone?

By: WinnipegDragon

WinnipegDragon — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:17:07 -0800

I'm a Master of Magic junkie myself. And Stardock's "Elemental" was not the so-called spiritual successor many would have had us believe. Thank heavens for DosBox and Abandonia, plus the programmers that are (still!) working on patches and gameplay updates like Insecticide. This times a thousand. I tried playing Elemental on the 1.3 patch last night, and it just has no *charm* like MoM did. Also, MoM is on Good Old Games now, works wonderfully on Win7, etc...

By: PapaLobo

PapaLobo — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:19:28 -0800

And Stardock's "Elemental" was not the so-called spiritual successor many would have had us believe. No but Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is like as close as you'll ever get. And, on preview what WinnipegDragon said. I still play the hell out of MOO2. But FreeOrion seems to have the look of MOO3 which I think we can all agree was crap. Hmmm.

By: any portmanteau in a storm

any portmanteau in a storm — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:19:47 -0800

Free Orion looks interesting but, honestly, those sorts of quasi-successors never finish. They bog down because the contributors all work on the fun and interesting parts but nobody much works on the grindy boring parts. Free Orion may or may not finish but these projects do sometimes pan out. Probably the best example of this is FreeCiv.

By: Ironmouth

Ironmouth — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:21:54 -0800

hate to turn this into an askme, but what are the best of these games. I want a space war game to play. turn based, hard science, realism emphasis, lots of bells and whistles are fine.

By: Mister Moofoo

Mister Moofoo — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:30:05 -0800

Ascendancy anyone? Yes, yes, yes. I loved this game, and I managed to snag a free download from somewhere, and still fire that sucker up once in a while.

By: theodolite

theodolite — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:32:53 -0800

I'm the only person alive who likes MOO better than MOO2. There's something incredibly satisfying about that crappy little animation that plays when you turn an entire planet to glass.

By: Admiral Haddock

Admiral Haddock — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:33:24 -0800

I never played MOO games, but I loved Starcraft 1 (2 was ok). It really appealed to the nerd in me--I loved both the sci fi aspect, and also the grind. I always would start the game, spend two weeks assiduously mining, trading, exploring the galaxy and fitting out my ship until it was a megadestroyer feared by all. And THEN I would start playing the storyline, absolutely infuckingvincible. The farmers on Embrox-6 need two tons of iron ore? That's great, because I have 100 tons in my hold, next to that huge pile of omega torpedoes that can blow up entire alien armadas. The pay is 100 credits? Excellent, I'll add it to my 18 million credits. I am Haddock, destroyer of worlds! Are there any of these games (or their progeny) I can play in a browser at work, or on an iPhone/iPad?

By: quin

quin — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:34:06 -0800

MOO and MOO2 were my drug of choice in the mid '90s. When combined with Anthrax's Stomp 442, you have both my personal soundtrack and my primary time-killer linked inexorably to any length of time I had to be non-productive. It was wonderful. Coincidently, I just found my MOO2 manual when I was cleaning out my garage a month ago.

By: Pogo_Fuzzybutt

Pogo_Fuzzybutt — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:40:15 -0800

well, the Blue Space Vixens were from Star Control.. Hard to keep those 90's games straight.. The Elerian in MOO2 were blue space vixens.

By: curious nu

curious nu — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:41:19 -0800

First thought on seeing the comic link: Space elves. -.- Admiral Haddock, I don't think you're talking about StarCraft, which is an RTS series. Are you thinking of Star Control? re: Ironmouth's question: none are particularly hard science-y. Master of Orion 1 or 2 would probably work for you and is turn-based (see the first link in the FPP for a place to buy it; they'll run in DOSbox on any platform). Sins of a Solar Empire is a recent-ish RTS and might also work (Windows-only there, I believe). The genre you're looking for is "4X space"; that may help you track down some other leads.

By: Ironmouth

Ironmouth — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:42:37 -0800

Thanks!

By: Admiral Haddock

Admiral Haddock — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:43:12 -0800

Admiral Haddock, I don't think you're talking about StarCraft, which is an RTS series. Are you thinking of Star Control? Crap, yes! I need coffee.

By: zompus

zompus — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:43:54 -0800

Ironmouth, in a post-MOO world, I have found Galactic Civilzations and Galactic Civilzations 2 to be fine games. There are also 4X games these days that are not turn-based; I recommend Sins of a Solar Empire. Lately I have been playing AI War, which is a bit different in mechanics and is a refreshing twist on the genre.

By: hat_eater

hat_eater — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:44:06 -0800

Ah, yes, MOO was such a visual treat after the ascetic dryness of Empire and Arnhem. You are welcome to play on my lawn.

By: jiawen

jiawen — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:45:15 -0800

It always gives me a little twinkle of joy when I see that Half-Price Books still sells MOO2; $5, usually. That game has staying power. I haven't played MOO2 in a while, since it's not as easy to get working under DosBox as MOO. Both games are quite good, and having warp gates makes up for the lack of MOO2 niftiness. Ironmouth: "hate to turn this into an askme, but what are the best of these games. I want a space war game to play. turn based, hard science, realism emphasis, lots of bells and whistles are fine." If you want hard science, as curious nu said, there aren't a lot out there that work. MOO and MOO2 are the classics of the genre, though, for good reason; check them out if you haven't. I've also had a lot of fun with Space Empires IV, which has a lot more stuff to research -- maybe that'll make it feel more hard science-y? I don't recommend the GalCiv games, because they don't have the fun of designing your fleets and then sending them into battle.

By: curious nu

curious nu — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:50:20 -0800

Admiral Haddock: Cool. In case you weren't aware, there's been an open-source port made of Star Control II that you might find interesting. re: hard science 4X: do ANY of these exist? The closest I can come is Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and that's more in feel than actual gameplay (and as the tech tree advances you can make arguments it goes off into fantasy land a bit also). It's not a space game, either, so that axes it from the request.

By: Vamier

Vamier — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:51:05 -0800

I just have to say... I bought MOO for my father pretty much the day it came out in stores. It as a birthday present. The man played it pretty much every day until he died. Over 14 years. BEST. PRESENT. EVER. (He played and liked Ascendancy too). :)

By: k5.user

k5.user — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:51:50 -0800

Hmm. Wiki tells me the Star Control ones were Syreen, not vixen. hmm.. (I swore they were blue, but that mighta been my CGA monitor, since wiki says they were green..)

By: curious nu

curious nu — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:52:59 -0800

(re: Ascendancy: iOS port)

By: formless

formless — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:54:18 -0800

It always gives me a little twinkle of joy when I see that Half-Price Books still sells MOO2; $5, usually. That game has staying power. Hah! I was just jumping on to say that I picked up a copy of MOO2 for $6 I think at Half-Price Books a few months ago. I thought I was finding the proverbial gold, but it looks like it might be common there? I always thought 4X games would make killer mobile/pad games. Anyone know of a good iOS or Android app? On preview, looks like curious nu has that covered too.

By: Pogo_Fuzzybutt

Pogo_Fuzzybutt — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:59:15 -0800

I don't recommend the GalCiv games, because they don't have the fun of designing your fleets and then sending them into battle. It's been a few years, but I seem to recall that GalCiv 2 not only allowed you to design your fleet, you could (with 3DS max or whatever) design custom ship and what not. I also recommend Stardock games because they, like Valve, treat gamers as customers instead of pirates. I liked GalCiv and GalCiv2, they were very good, but they weren't MOO2 - which now I have a deep hankering to play.

By: bq

bq — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:24:11 -0800

I loved MOO and I mourn the dearth of turn based strategy games.

By: Hactar

Hactar — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:24:38 -0800

Did anyone ever play Stars! ? (Space added to avoid the suggestion of an interobang, the ! is part of the name.) I only ever played the shareware version of it and enjoyed it immensely, as at the time, acquiring a real copy required a international phone call. These days, it can be done online, of course. Still, for a 4X space turn based game, it felt incredibly epic. It also allowed for race design, which I believe is unique for this type of game.

By: bq

bq — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:28:17 -0800

An old friend wrote this piece of fiction that won a MOO3 contest. God MOO3 sucked.

By: oddman

oddman — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:28:40 -0800

I loved MOO and MOO2. Thanks for this! (Also I hate you for killing my productivity with this!)

By: vorfeed

vorfeed — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:29:30 -0800

those sorts of quasi-successors never finish. They bog down because the contributors all work on the fun and interesting parts but nobody much works on the grindy boring parts. Eh, you never know. Another good example of one of these that made it is Wing Commander: Standoff -- at 50+ missions with a branching storyline, 12 playable ships, full audio/video, and classic Kilrathi to fight instead of stupid bugs, I'd say it's a much better game than the game it's ostensibly an "add-on" for (WC: Prophecy).

By: jermsplan

jermsplan — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:30:45 -0800

oh sweet lord I played a lot of MOO and MOO2. Bought MOO3 and didn't get it. best part of MOO: spec'ing a tiny ship with a single pellet gun on it, and stacking 10,000 of them, then destroying the opponents huge ships in a single shot. best part of MOO2: then entire thing. Amazing game. Favorite tactic: rushing to troop upgrades, and capturing the first group of 3 tiny Antaren ships that come into the system (inevitbly for you). Breaking them down for tech give you an advantage that you'll never lose (this system works on literally everything, tiny-impossible to huge-impossible). Also, I hate the Darlock. It was like my scientists were just putting their discoveries out on the front lawn the way the Darlock walked away with them.

By: jiawen

jiawen — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:33:48 -0800

"re: hard science 4X: do ANY of these exist?" Depends on your definition of hard SF, of course. By some definitions, FTL is right out, which means that 99% of SF-style 4X games are also out. SMAC, as you mentioned, is a good contender (though it's premised on an FTL mission). "It's been a few years, but I seem to recall that GalCiv 2 not only allowed you to design your fleet, you could (with 3DS max or whatever) design custom ship and what not." I meant in the MOO mode, of being able to accessorize ships with different hulls, weapons, sensors, armor, etc. etc. Did GalCiv 2 have that? I may be thinking of the wrong game; I know GalCiv 1 doesn't. It allows for building fleets of pre-designed ships, but no customization that I could see.

By: vorfeed

vorfeed — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:34:01 -0800

Oh, yeah, and MOO2 was amazing. LAN games took hours, and were absolutely, positively worth it. I've never enjoyed another turn-based game quite so much.

By: Bwithh

Bwithh — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:38:19 -0800

hmmm. so I read the comic's prologue and the first few pages of the 1st chapter - does this comic really have that much to do to Master of Orion?

By: Hactar

Hactar — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:42:03 -0800

jiawen, SMAC was premised on a sub-luminal mission to Alpha Centauri (thus the name) - the trip was supposed to take more than 4 years, although the speed was more than anything possible now. The telepathy aspect is what cracked my hard scifi meter, also some things like the Bulk Matter Transmitter ("And what of the immortal soul in this transaction?"). Super-luminal travel was introduced with Alien Crossfire, which introduced a couple of neat factions, but the actually Alien factions always felt like more of a pain than an enjoyment.

By: curious nu

curious nu — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:44:22 -0800

Actually SMAC doesn't use FTL; the ship is the same booster rocket ship you build in Civilization II, and the journey takes some 30-odd years, if I remember my fiction correctly. -- ahh, Hactar got to it first. ;D Yeah SMAX (the expansion) was kind of a mess in general. But the "hard sci-fi" is the hardest part of that, yeah. FTL is the smallest bit.. You probably won't have manned space fighters, nor laser beams, nor missles. I don't know if hard science fiction could have these WW2-style space armadas at all, not for fleet-to-fleet fighting. Wing Commander: Standoff looks interesting. There are some similar projects for FreeSpace 2 but I'm not sure any of them got to a "completed" status, been years since I checked.

By: FatherDagon

FatherDagon — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:51:11 -0800

I meant in the MOO mode, of being able to accessorize ships with different hulls, weapons, sensors, armor, etc. etc. Did GalCiv 2 have that? I may be thinking of the wrong game; I know GalCiv 1 doesn't. It allows for building fleets of pre-designed ships, but no customization that I could see. GalCiv 2 has a FREAKISH amount of customization you can do on ships - not just all your weapons, armor, scanners, engines, storage, drop pods, etc etc.... you can completely alter the 3D models of the ships themselves in pretty much every way possible. While it's not required in the slightest, the lego-impulse to spend two hours rotating and scaling and coloring a billion different kinds of swoops and antennae and lord knows what else to make your fighter JUUUUUUST RIIIIIIIGHT is overwhelming. Basically, people complained that GalCiv the First lacked ship customization, so the designers said 'oh yeah? well shit, we'll get on that' and added customization down to the sub-atomic level. GalCiv 2 let me put tentacles on all my ships, and for that GalCiv is awesome.

By: dragoon

dragoon — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 13:54:01 -0800

Hactar: MOO2 allowed you to design your race. You could create some pretty game-breaking combinations of abilities. Let me throw in a recommendation for Sword of the Stars. Single-player or multiplayer. Strategic moves are turn-based, tactical encounters are real-time or you can let the computer handle it. Ship designs are highly customizable, and there's a good number of abilities you can give them - cloaking, jamming, point defense specialist, scanning, energy shields or KE shields, mines, torpedoes, drones, etc. The tech tree is the same for every race, but you don't get every tech, just the ones the RNG says you get for that game, and each species has better luck with different areas - some tend to mass-based, some towards energy, others missiles and drones. Each race has different ship designs and a different way to travel FTL - so do you want to play human and follow fixed nodelines between stars, or play hiver and travel slower than light but setup a network of instant warp gates? Even the races that just go from point A to point B have different twists. The space dolphins lose speed unless they're in deep space, while the Morrigi crows go faster the larger the fleet. It's not perfect - the planet building is pretty limited because they wanted to avoid people getting bogged down, perhaps too much, and the first release was limited - you absolutely need the various expansions for the full experience, but the digital releases available are the complete edition. Not perfect, but there's a lot of fun in throwing a doomed fleet of ships at a much larger fleet in the hope you can take out their warp gate and strand them there while you send a fleet of cloaked plague ships at their undefended homeworld. And there's a sequel due in a month or two...

By: penduluum

penduluum — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:09:48 -0800

MoO3 broke my heart. I tried so much to love that game. So many hours. You hit a wall, though, where you realize: hey. I'm not doing anything. Nothing's happening. This is a game about nothing happening, over and over again, at tedious length.

By: Iosephus

Iosephus — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:11:41 -0800

MOO and MOM may be the two games I've played the most time so far in life, they were that addictive back then. I still dust them off once a year or so for some obsessive fun (thanks GOG!).

By: danny the boy

danny the boy — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:15:22 -0800

I have here sitting 2 inches away from me, my precious MOO2 disc for the Mac. Is there any way to get this running on a modern intel machine?

By: Proofs and Refutations

Proofs and Refutations — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:16:21 -0800

theodolite: "I'm the only person alive who likes MOO better than MOO2. There's something incredibly satisfying about that crappy little animation that plays when you turn an entire planet to glass" There's at least a few of us with good taste actually. In fact there's a guy who not only agrees with us, but has spent some time working on a binary patch to MOO to fix some of the remaining bugs. It's pretty cool. He's also done a patch that's fixed a few (of the many, many, many bugs) in MOM. Pretty impressive work without access to the source.

By: jiawen

jiawen — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:40:03 -0800

"SMAC was premised on a sub-luminal mission to Alpha Centauri..." Ah, yes, you're right. STL rather than FTL. Still not hard SF, I'd say. And the telepathy and other stuff are also pretty wobbly science, yes.

By: hat_eater

hat_eater — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:57:38 -0800

Did anyone ever play Stars! ? Did I ever! For about two years there was no better strategy or role playing game for me. I especially loved the diplomacy and role playing aspect. It started to devour all my free time and even some time at work, and when people started playing mostly variants of the same race, micromanaging the hell out of it to get a better curve, I managed to ditch it. In retrospect, the fact that I lost my job (in circumstances unrelated to my Stars! addiction) and with it my internet access helped too.

By: ceribus peribus

ceribus peribus — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:19:28 -0800

Did anyone ever play Stars! ? [....] for a 4X space turn based game, it felt incredibly epic. You can have your MOO trilogy, Stars! was the game my old school clique sunk it's time into. Full version of course. I think we even preregistered for SuperNova. Proxy research into game theory, simulation testbeds developed for resource management and for tactical ship design, supplemental tactical warroom apps written for tracking your campaign and collating observed intel on your enemies, secure PGP secret sharing algorithms for pooling, cross-referencing and confirming enemy intel with third party allies, pregame editors that reconfigured the universe into real world constellation shapes and/or galactic clusters; the whole deal. It was the perfect "I can't believe I found an opponent who crunches the numbers more than I do" strategy game. Studying Sun Tzu was a prerequisite for being competitive in online play. All these years later, my 40 min daily train commute + an iPad port of Stars! would be a dangerous combination. I bet I can still throw together a "25K resources by 2050" monster from memory.

By: Sebmojo

Sebmojo — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:21:31 -0800

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident is a hardish sci fi space shooter with a Freespace 2 vibe - worth a look, though I haven't found the fun in it yet. (Freespace 2 is one of those IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THIS THEN WHY NOT games, run (don't walk) to www.gog.com and buy it for some risible price then download the Source Code project to get it all gussied up and 21st century looking. Not at all hard sci fi, but so good it really doesn't matter.)

By: Palindromedary

Palindromedary — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:52:40 -0800

Admiral Haddock, I don't think you're talking about StarCraft, which is an RTS series. Are you thinking of Star Control? Actually, I can't help but think he was thinking of Starflight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight

By: Hello, I'm David McGahan

Hello, I'm David McGahan — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:57:42 -0800

GalCiv 2 let me put tentacles on all my ships, and for that GalCiv is awesome. posted by FatherDagon at 1:51 PM on August 4 [+] [!] Indeed, to quote from the game's manual (Gold Edition incld Dark Avatar expansion): "Make your ships look like robots or some fighter from a sci-fi movie or like a space spider or whatever" I'm trying to remember the details of a real bare-bones space 4x game, might have been a shareware title, the only details I strongly remember was that when you had a fleet battle there was a side on 2d animation of the two fleets shooting at each other.

By: dubitable

dubitable — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:58:45 -0800

I couldn't care less about these kinds of games (sorry) but that comic was pretty entertaining, thanks.

By: happyroach

happyroach — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:05:42 -0800

I've been following Outsiders for a bit; nice artwork, slow as hell pacing. I also hope that if the comic really is based on MOO, that the Human will start exhibiting some of that game-breaking diplomatic ability.

By: heathkit

heathkit — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:53:32 -0800

Admiral Haddock, I don't think you're talking about StarCraft, which is an RTS series. Are you thinking of Star Control? Actually, I can't help but think he was thinking of Starflight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight Yup. Actually, he's thinking of Starflight 2 which had a much more developed trading mechanic. I'm pretty sure in the first one you could only return resources to your base, but in the second there were actual markets. I seem to remember the second one being more fun, but I remember nothing of the story. The first Starflight has such an amazing plot twist that I still marvel at it. It's the only game box I've kept from childhood, for more than two decades now.

By: Joe Chip

Joe Chip — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:43:04 -0800

MoO 1 & 2 were great. I think the original made it easier to manage massive games because ships of the same type stacked, and the planets could be managed just from the side panel. The music when you made a discovery was also awesome. In number 2 it got a bit annoying having to go build a pleasure dome on five McStar IIIs every turn, and sometimes the combat took forever as several screenfuls of ships had to be maneuvered around. Using the stellar converter to blow up your enemy's planets was very satisfying, however.

By: Joe Chip

Joe Chip — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:44:41 -0800

Also, we need an entire post about the travesty that was MoO3.

By: Pendragon

Pendragon — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 03:08:52 -0800

Also, we need an entire post about the travesty that was MoO3. No we really don't. The less said about that pile of bits, the better.

By: A Thousand Baited Hooks

A Thousand Baited Hooks — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 04:45:26 -0800

Also, we need an entire post about the travesty that was MoO3. I remember trying to play that a few times. It was the second most disappointing game sequel experience I've ever had, just below the time I loaded my Pool of Radiance characters into Hillsfar. I loved MOO2. I eventually worked out a strategy for winning the game semi-reliably on Impossible: unification government, heavy research and some industry advantage, spying and ground combat penalties, aquatic. The combination of unification and aquatic meant that every ocean or terra planet was a high-population paradise with a vast food surplus and ridiculous amounts of research. Sometimes the silicoids or someone would choose just the right tech path and get a large enough fleet to crush me early on (the only way to play these games is instant-death, no saving and reloading) but after a certain point my Zortrium-armoured underwater communist-utopian juggernaut was unstoppable by anything short of the fleet of stasis-equipped Meklar doom stars I ran into once. I remember there was a bug with the difficulty levels: the Antarans on Impossible were really lame, much weaker than on Hard. Sadly I never managed to successfully capture one of their ships; they always self-destructed before I was able to dash enough space marines against their internal defences. After MOO2, everything else was a disappointment. Reach For The Stars, Ascendancy, Star Empires, Pax Imperia, Empire of the Fading Suns... none of them had the magic. Galactic Civilizations looked promising but the inscrutable mechanics and horrible blocks of error-strewn flavour text everywhere killed my hope after twenty minutes with the demo. On Star Control.

By: Zarkonnen

Zarkonnen — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 07:45:16 -0800

@A Thousand Baited Hooks I always find it fascinating what people's eventual default chosen species fitout is. Mine is: Unification, Subterranean, +2 Industry, Large Homeworld, -10 Espionage, -0.5 Income, -10 Ground Combat. Subterranean means lots of room, and the massive industry bonus means I can powerlevel the planets with "Build Housing". :)

By: zueod

zueod — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 10:31:15 -0800

Oh, but this is a trip. Way back in another lifetime, I designed most of the aliens and the ships for MOO2, while working for Simtex/Microprose. I think most of the nostalgia being expressed here for the game has to do with the gameplay rather than the (dated/derivative) graphics, but that's to be expected. So this comic is a nice bit of fun for me. I can actually see a few of the old designs reflected in the artwork which makes it even more of a hoot. It'll be interesting to see where he goes with this. In any case, thanks for sharing.

By: Admiral Haddock

Admiral Haddock — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:27:07 -0800

Admiral Haddock, I don't think you're talking about StarCraft, which is an RTS series. Are you thinking of Star Control? Actually, I can't help but think he was thinking of Starflight. GRAR! I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore! Can someone please just come to my house with all of these game and let me play them for a couple of months? I'm so confused, I need to recreate my childhood to get my head straight again.

By: Admiral Haddock

Admiral Haddock — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:29:54 -0800

OK, yes, judging by these videos, I am thinking of Star Flight. Please still come to my house and let's play games.

By: A Thousand Baited Hooks

A Thousand Baited Hooks — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:44:27 -0800

Oh, but this is a trip. Way back in another lifetime, I designed most of the aliens and the ships for MOO2, while working for Simtex/Microprose. Awesome! Well, I for one really liked the ship designs. Especially the creepy Antaran ships and the oddly cute little insectoid Klackon ones. Unification, Subterranean, +2 Industry, Large Homeworld, -10 Espionage, -0.5 Income, -10 Ground Combat. Hm, subterranean. I never tried that. Sometimes I'd go with Democratic and Creative, but although that ended up ridiculously powerful the start was always savagely hard thanks to the relative lack of industry.

By: Zarkonnen

Zarkonnen — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 12:36:05 -0800

@zueod : Actually, I think the alien and ship graphics are great. They're very clean and have aged much better than most graphics of that era.