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AN OPERATIONAL AND STRATEGIC PLAN
TO ACHIEVE A MILITARY VICTORY IN
MASTER OF ORION, VERSION 1.3
by Redmond Simonsen
Edition 1.1. Copyright 1994, Redmond Simonsen, All Rights Reserved.
This text may be redistributed or re-posted in electronic form (only).
It may not be changed, abbreviated, or edited without the permission of
the author. No fee, except normal transmission and connect charges, may
be assessed for access to this text. It may not be included as part of
any collective work nor published in paper form or other form without
author's permission.
Master of Orion; designed by Steve Barcia and published by MPS
============================================================================
Note: most of the following is applicable to any version of Master of
Orion (MOO) but based specifically on playing the latest published
version (1.3). This version has more aggressive computer players and
some technology changes which make it harder to build very powerful
small-hulled ships. The plan assumes that the player will refuse a
political victory (election by the council) in favor of true victory,
i.e., domination of the galaxy by force.
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I. PREMISE AND PROBLEM
MOOPlan Red assumes that the player wishes to achieve a military victory
(which requires the eventual elimination of all other competitor races
in the galaxy) rather than a political victory. Plan Red is drawn to
support this objective and is applicable to campaigning at difficulty
levels of Hard and Impossible in a Large, Huge or Medium galaxy.
The keyword of the plan is "patience": the player will have to accept a
long preparatory sequence of game turns during which he is mostly
submissive and subordinate to the whims and caprice of the computer
players. For until the player has achieved a sufficient technological
and economic momentum and mass, direct challenge to any leading computer
player is a fruitless exercise. This is so because at the higher
difficulty levels, the computer players (cp's) have productivity
advantages which permit them to vastly out pace the human player in
production and technology advance, particularly in the early stages of
the game. Literally hundreds of turns of preparation and growth are
required before large scale war is feasible. Happily, these turns pass
quickly.
Plan Red dictates a three stage approach:
A. Establish the Core: find and build the initial set of planets upon
which the Empire will be based.
B. Hold and Grow: preserve and mature the Core and advance technology to
the at least the mid-20's.
C. Expand and Conquer: aggressively expand from the Core to reduce and
finally eliminate all competitor races.
Although the above description may seem self evident and devoid of any
special wisdom, it is useful nonetheless to consider the course of the
campaign in these three major stages and to discipline oneself to think
of the game as proceeding by three distinct phases, each requiring its
own style of play and its own approach. It is very easy in Master of
Orion to "get ahead of oneself" and too-early become embroiled in
un-winnable wars and excursions which only serve to blunt technological
and territorial advance and consequently produce defeat.
II. GAME CHOICE
Master of Orion is essentially a "naval" arms race game with a political
sub-theme. Productivity, mass and momentum, time-space factors, and
political water-treading are the most import elements. The game is
fairly brittle in respect to technological differences-- a rather small
difference in overall technology can spell doom for the weaker player in
a direct confrontation. On the other hand, given roughly equal
technology levels, even a numerically inferior human player should
always be found to prevail against the computer players.
In light of the above, the player should choose a race that offers some
productivity or political benefit. These races are the Klackons, the
Meklars, the Psilons, and the Humans. Of course, any race can be gamed
but it is felt that the characteristic advantages of the Mrshanns,
Alkaris, Bulrathi, and Sakkra are not great enough to offset their
drawbacks. The Darloks can be interesting to play but require a
modification of this plan to take advantage of their spying talent that
is beyond the scope of this document.
A very important factor in establishing the Core is that initial period of
the game when one is left totally alone to build. Because of this, play
in Large and Huge galaxies is recommended. Playing in a Small galaxy (or
to a lesser extent, a Medium galaxy) means that the player will
experience multiple First Contacts quickly and that the galaxy will be
quickly filled by the more productive computer players. This will almost
always leave the player with a very small Core and thus a much harder
game, more controlled by luck than playing skill. Not only will the game
be more difficult to win, but it is much more likely in such situations
that a cp will be very early elected as leader of the New Republic and
you will not have the means to resist this political victory. A Final
War situation before the Core is developed is almost always certain
death. If the player wishes to play a Medium or Small Galaxy game, it is
suggested that he reduce the number of cp's accordingly: two or three in
a Small Galaxy; three or four in a Medium Galaxy. It is indeed possible
to win a Small/Impossible/5 game, but the author considers such games
as exercises in masochism and not relevant to mainstream play of the
game.
A Note on Random Events: the author usually plays with Random Events
shut down (key ALT-EVENTS). Most of the Random Events are negative in
nature and some of them so catastrophic as to totally upset any
deliberate, planful approach to play (e.g., rebellion at one of your
main planets early in the game). If you like Random Events, it is
suggested that you leave them off until at least the end of Stage One.
III. ESTABLISH THE CORE
The Exploration Stage
In a Galaxy size of Large or Huge, the player needs at least six to ten
first generation planets to have a decent chance of surviving the first
century of play. Unless the starting position is truly terrible, this
goal is readily attainable. This first generation of planets is referred
to as the Core.
A. The First Colony:
The game virtually guarantees that there is a decent planet within range
of your first colony ship. Use this information and immediately send the
original colony ship to the most likely star type within three parsec
range. Don't bother scouting in advance. Immediately upon the
establishment of the first colony, send 15 to 20 percent of the
population of the Home World to the new colony to prime the pump of its
population growth.
B. Initial Scouting:
Examine your position on the galactic map and rationalize your
colonization based on accessibility to you and inaccessibility to
competitor races. At first, in the absence of hard information on the
computer players' dispositions, this will only be guesswork. As
information is developed, mature your colonization plan to suit the
situation. Build four or five more scout ships to assist in gathering
information. When a really good world is found that will come into
colonization range shortly, station a scout or a fighter ship at this
world to drive off early cp incursions into your local space. Any new
colony within easy range of a cp race will likely be assaulted via
ground attack unless some fleet assets are present. If you have no
available "space superiority" force, it is better to simply hold the
uncolonized planet with a screening force until such time as you can
afford some protection for a new colony. In the early going, the cp
colony ships are not armed and they send only scouts to uncolonized
planets. These can be scared off simply by aggressive moves on the
tactical screen.
C. The Second Colony:
After your Home World is more than half industrialized and your Second
Planet well on the way, you can build a second colony ship and
deliberately choose your next site based on the scouting that has been
occurring in the intervening several turns. Choose the best world in
range of your first two planets. If however, there is a short term
positional advantage to choosing a lesser world, you may find yourself
colonizing (for example) a smaller, poorer world as a gateway to a set
of good stars or to prevent some cp gaining access to your better
potential colonies.
D. Early Technology:
As your Home World finishes its industrialization, most of the freed
production should be devoted to technology. Propulsion should be
emphasized above all other technologies until such time as Sublight
Engines and Range Six Fuel Cells are attained. Some emphasis should
be placed on Planetology (especially Terraforming and Waste Reduction)
and Computer Tech related to Robotic Controls. It is important in the
early going to micro-manage the tech scales on a turn-by-turn basis. As
soon as a given tech is showing a 15 or 16 percent probability number,
allocate some of its RP's to another category (scale it back to 11 or 12
percent).
E. Completing the Core:
Once you have your first three planets well along, you have one-third to
half of your Core in place. You should also at this time have two to four
young worlds under initial development. Use your mature worlds'
population base to quickly build up the newer worlds but don't strip out
more than 15% of a planet's population in any one turn unless it is a
dire emergency. In first stage of technology development, it is
important to maximize the population base and the productivity of that
population as much as possible. War making potential and ship technology
are strictly secondary at this juncture. You should trade for tech that
is not being covered by your own RP effort (i.e., weapons, force fields,
etc.). Do NOT trade away higher levels of Robotic Controls, Terraforming
or Engines unless you absolutely must have something. If your new worlds
are within ground assault range of a cp, any weapons research should be
dedicated to early infantry weapons.
F. First Stage Diplomatic Policy:
If you should be unlucky enough to make contact with a cp race before
colonizing the Core, quickly establish trade relations but do not
immediately establish a treaty even if relations would permit. Reason:
if you have a Non-Aggression Pact, the more productive cp will be able
to colonize any world within reach even those which have your ships in
orbit. If no treaty exists, he will have to fight for dominance (and
will usually choose to vacate instead). In this manner, you can
forestall cp colonization of your target worlds for some time. Once you
have your Core colonized, you can seek to create Non-Aggression Pacts
with as many cp's as will have you. Alliances are usually to be avoided
since they limit your freedom of action and may draw you into an
unwanted third-party war. Do NOT get involved in an early war unless the
cp is actually so small and weak as to be incapable of actually damaging
you. If the cp has more than a few planets, he will be able to launch a
sizeable and powerful fleet against you and cause you critical harm.
IV. HOLD AND GROW
The Consolidation Stage
After you've colonized six to ten worlds, you'll usually find yourself
hemmed in by the other races and/or the edge of the Galaxy.
Incidentally, it is often beneficial to colonize in the direction of a
corner since the remoteness of the cul-de-sac worlds provides them a
degree of cheap protection from invasion by any cp and it tends to
isolate as-yet-uncolonized worlds from the clutches of the cp's. In this
manner, you can grow outward and delay colonization of these buffered
worlds (but be alert: the cp's quickly develop colony ships with Reserve
Fuel tanks for extra range).
A. Second Stage Industrial Plan
The general objective throughout the game is to build up planetary
industry to its maximum at the maximum rate of growth. It is
particularly important that the Core planets be industrialized quickly
to provide the economic base needed to attain the technological advances
needed. However, in this second stage, more attention is given to the
building of Missile Bases and some resources are dedicated to building a
defensive fleet. Technology investment should be still be mainly on
items which enhance population or industrial growth. Particular emphasis
should be placed on Robotic Controls and Terraforming advances.
Presuming that Propulsion technology has produced at least Sublight
drives and Range Six fuel cells, some of that budget should be moved to
Construction and Weapons research. If you have a large Computer Tech
lead on any given cp, you can indulge in some safe spying activitiy to
supplement your technology investement. Spy allocations must be
carefully managed due to their expense and risk. If you have the
opportunity to frame another race for your spy missions, carefully
consider the implications of war between the two affected parties.
B. Planetary Defense
The second stage is marked by the building of Missile Bases on all
planets and the creation of a defensive fleet. As planets finish their
first stage industrialization, they should be building Missile Bases at
a rate of one base every three or four turns. Towards the end of the
Second Stage, this rate should increase to one base every two turns.
When the opportunity to build Shields arises, select the "25%" option for
your resource allocation and then fine tune individual planets which may
be particularly vulnerable. In the first two thirds of the campaign, Missile
Bases are _the_ most efficient way to preserve and protect your empire.
Even one or two bases in the very early stages will eliminate the
possibility of troop landings altogether. When Planetary Shields are
added to the mix, planets become virtually invulnerable to beam weapon
attacks until very advanced tech becomes available. Even with 100+ bases
at every planet, you should not see your base maintenance cost rise into
the double digits.
C. The Defensive Fleet
Unless you have an extremely good position with very weak cp's opposing
you, there is nothing much to be gained and a lot to be lost in building
a large fleet and going on the offensive at this point. Rather you
should build a fleet of Small or Medium ships armed with shield-halving
beam weapons such as the Neutron Pellet Gun or the Mass Driver. It may
also be necessary to build a small number of Large or Huge missile-armed
ships to act as mobile missile bases to defend your more vulnerable
planets as they are completing industrialization and before they have
bases of their own. You should not be building any bombers in this
stage. You should not engage in toe-to-toe shoot-outs with superior
enemy fleets: the cp's want you to do this so that their superior
production will make up for their generally poor ship-handling and
strategy. If your defensive fleet cannot hold a world against a cp
assault, you must abandon the world rather than pointlessly lose your
fleet.
D. Opportunistic Growth
Upon occasion, the cp's will war with each other and vaporize each
other's planets in the process. You should maintain one or two ready
colony ships on the frontier in order to scoot in and take advantage of
such an opening. You can easily do so if you have a Non-Aggression pact
with the owner of the fleet orbiting the dead world. You must then
quickly build up that world and protect it from possible troop invasions
by either the former owner or the cp who blew it up. Be prepared to
give up such worlds if the cp presses the attack very heavily. After
the first century of the game, the odds are good that you can add two or
three worlds to your empire via this approach.
You can also emulate the cp's by building an "LRC" (Long Range Colony
Ship). There comes a point fairly early in technology development where
you can fit Reserve Fuel Tanks and a Colony Base into the hull of Large
ship. This is worth doing if it will result in access to open worlds
beyond the reach of ordinary fuel cells. If you build an outlying
colony, you must have a defensive covering fleet ready to go the moment
the colony is established, otherwise you'll simply be immediately
invaded and lose the planet. Non-Aggression Pacts will _not_ protect you
from invasion by "friendly" cp's.
E. The Conclusion of the Second Stage
Although there is no sharp line of demarcation, the consolidation of the
Core that is the hallmark and goal of this stage is usually reached
sometime in the latter half of the second century of play. Your planets
will be completely built up and you will be at Technology Level 25 to
30. You should not be at war with any of the leading cp's and you should
not have a big, aging fleet. All your planets should have shields and at
least a couple of dozen missile bases. The second stage is usually
completed before the end of the second century.
IV. EXPAND AND CONQUER
The Domination Stage
The third stage of Plan Red is a bit like a number of repeats of the
first two stages with one big exception: now there is opposition to your
moves to take a given set of planets since they are all already
occupied. Therefore you should choose your first opponent carefully. It
should be one of the smaller and more backward races-- someone you are
confident of beating and who is not allied with the leading race.
Sometimes these races will pick you: they will already be at "war" with
you (but not actually doing much about it). It is also important that
your first candidate for conquest be physically close to your existing
empire --don't choose a weak race on the other side of the galaxy.
A. Fleet Requirements
Your first offensive fleet will consist of several hundred "fighter"
types from your existing defensive fleet and a few to several dozen
Medium or Large missile-armed ships. The basic operational plan is to
select the most convenient, vulnerable, and worthwhile of the target
race's planets and to take it by a war of attrition against its missile
bases and defending fleet. This is done by using your missile armed
ships to yo-yo into the planet's orbit, salvo, retreat, and then
immediately return via course re-direction. Depending upon the your
missileer power and the opposing race's planetary shield and base
strengths, this will take a few to several turns to accomplish. Your
attacking ships should be armed with at least Hyper X Rockets and
preferably Stinger Missiles. If you can trade for even better missiles,
do so at this time. Stingers are good enough to penetrate the weaker
shields prevalent at this level of technology. Design using two-shot
missile racks since this will put the greatest number of missiles per
firing ship into the first two salvos (which is all you're going to be
around for anyway).
Missile salvos are used instead of bombers for the sake of economy and
security. Using the Yo-Yo technique, you will take virtually no losses
and the same force can be re-used to take the next planet. The slow
bombers which can be built at Tech 25 will suffer heavy losses taking
just one planet. Providing replacements will divert resources from
research and planet building. Missile bombardment is a little slower,
but much safer and more economical. Moreover, the missileers can be used
in a defensive role after they've completed their bombardment tasks.
After the bases are reduced, the missileers and the fighters can clear
off the defending fleet in preparation for the ground attack. You must
achieve local space superiority before you attempt an invasion.
B. The First Invasion
If you've chosen your target correctly, the victim-race will be inferior
to you in armor and force fields and no better than you in ground
weapons. If this is indeed the case, you can capture the target planet
mostly intact by sending one-third to half as many troops as there are
settlers on the planet. This of course, is variable dependent upon the
technology disparity between the two of you. Send your invasion forces
from multiple points of origin (to minimize the short term impact on the
output of those planets) and dedicate some resources to quickly
rebuilding the population of the contributing planets. If the target
race has better ground forces than you, you must carefully "bomb down"
the planet to a manageable size, and then you must send more population
to the planet than occupies it. There is no precise way to control the
effects of bombing and you will risk vaporizing the planet if you use
too large a bombing force. Err on the side of too light a force at first
and build it up slowly until you get the results you need.
Much of your invasion force should survive and provide the seed for
future growth on your newly acquired world. Since you should be
capturing as many as hundreds of enemy factories intact, you can rapidly
consolidate this world particularly if you salt it with some cash to
begin with.
A large component of your fleet (perhaps all) will be needed to fend off
attempts to retake the planet. This will tie you up for at least a few
turns until you get some bases established. Don't be impatient. It is
important to operate within your limits in a "low risk" mode for these
early wars of expansion. Later when your economic base includes more
than twenty worlds or so, you can be more aggressive and free handed
since any losses you'll take can quickly be replaced. It is recommended
that if your missileers can pre-emptively strike at the gathering enemy
fleet that they do so to reduce the enemy counter thrust before it
arrives at the newly occupied planet. Do not simply passively wait to be
attacked if there is an opportunity to weaken the enemy's offensive
force. Once you have Improved Space Scanner technology, planning these
pre-emptive raids is easy to do since you'll know with certitude if your
planets are about to be assaulted or not.
C. Expansion Diplomacy
The thesis of Plan Red is that the player is not interested in winning
the game democratically, rather that he wishes to dominate the Galaxy by
force of arms. Nevertheless, once you've become large enough to show up
as one of the candidates in the quarter-century Council Vote, you become
more vulnerable to losing the game by vote (unless you've grown so
strong as to rival the combined might of the Galaxy, Final War is still
a thing to be avoided). Accordingly, you should use bribery and sabotage
to keep the cp's off-balance in this regard. If you are a few years away
from a vote and you are at war with one of the larger, secondary cp's,
you should do a "nose count" to see if his voting against you will throw
a political victory to your rival. If so, and if he is not allied to
your rival, make peace and use bribery to create a friendly enough
climate for a Non-Aggression Pact to be formed.
If you find you can't make peace, make war instead: use sabotage against
races with lower computer technology than yours to "frame" the rival cp.
This may well cause them to lose their tempers with the leading cp and
go to war, thus queering their vote for your rival. You may also find it
necessary to simply bomb-down the population of one of the secondary
cp's about to vote against you in order to change the ratio of
your population to the total galactic population. Although this is a
drastic solution, it is sometimes the only out.
D. The Too-Soon Final War
It is unlikely that you would survive a Final War in the Core
Stage or even early in the Hold and Grow Stage, but you may well do so
in the Expansion Stage. Nonetheless, if Final War comes early in the
third stage, things may get very hot for you very quickly. If, for
example, two or three of the cp's are as advanced or more advanced than
you and have strong empires, you will be in trouble for each will field
a huge fleet of strong ships to direct against you. One you can deal
with; three is very tough. To slow them down, you need a force of fast,
powerful bombers. Usually these will be Mediums filled with your best
bomb and one beam weapon. They should have either teleporting (if
available) or cloaking and be fast enough to reach the target planet in
no more than two moves. Create four or five squadrons of such bombers
(100-200 in each squadron) and use them to create a "dead zone" of
destroyed planets to act as a buffer between you and the cp's. This will
have a number of good effects. It cuts the productivity of the cp's; it
distracts them into rebuilding these planets; and it causes them to tie
up their fleet assets in "guard duty" over these re-colonized worlds. If
your bombers are fast and have good ECM, you can quickly incinerate ten
or more worlds. Do not send your bombers on long range missions --the
idea is to deny the enemy basing and production within one move of your
planets. Also, do not yield to the temptation to use them in a space
superiority role and duke it out with defending ships unless those ships
are ineffectual against your armor and shields. As often will be the
case, the cp will recolonize the cinder-worlds and then wander off
leaving them unguarded. Immediately re-bomb them (resist the temptation
to colonize them unless they are Rich and immediately adjacent to your
empire).
Unlike the Expansion Stage approach to planet reduction, you cannot
afford to spend time at each target world. Thus you must use very fast
bombers in large numbers. The objective is to "hit 'em where they ain't"
and quickly blast ten or a dozen worlds. Do not attack strongly defended
planets; wait until the defending fleet leaves (as it usually does): then
immediately whack it with a lightning stroke. This is the essence of the
mobile attack (also known as the Blitzkrieg): find the weak spots and
hammer them with maximum force; flow around the strongpoints and reduce
them later; keep the enemy off balance and reacting to your moves rather
then vice-versa; integrate all offensive forces in the local area into a
single, fast-moving spearpoint.
E. Methodical Incorporation of Enemy Empires
The general approach to galactic domination is fairly obvious: start
with the weaker opponents; absorb them completely one at a time; build up
your expanded empire to rival that of the leading cp (who may still be
nominally stronger and more advanced than you even at this stage in the
campaign). While you are doing this, your main computer-driven rival may
not be standing idly by, beaming at you with a Peaceful rating from the
Races screen. He may break a Non-Aggression Pact and come at you for
_lebensraum_ or may even go to war with you. You should not become
involved in a full-scale war with the largest cp prematurely. If war
does break out through no fault of your own, damage some of his more
vulnerable planets and bribe him with technology to produce the
conditions for a peace. As much as possible, you should control the
timing and conditions of the start of the Big War for total control.
When you grow to the point where your population is more than one-third
of the galaxy, you no longer have to be too concerned about the
penalties for genocide or bio-warfare since it is now impossible for you
to lose a council vote. Bio warfare can be used to rapidly incorporate
built up planets into your empire. Build "missile-proof" bombers armed
with your best bio weapons and send them against the biggest planets of
your most vulnerable enemy. Kill the population and leave the factories
intact to be swept up by an accompanying "Attack Colony Ship". Or you
can more carefully bio-bomb until the population is greatly reduced and
use Black Hole Generators to remove the missile bases without damaging
the factories. Follow this with a conventional invasion. Note that the
bio weapons will not affect missile bases (indeed the entire population
can already be dead and those pesky bases will keep firing at you --so
be sure to constantly check the population of the planet as the raid is
in progress). As soon as the kill-off of the population is complete,
retreat all forces. Then immediately redirect them back to the planet so
that the colony ship can take over the empty factories. Send waves of
population from nearby planets to man the factories. Add money to the
local economies and these new planets will be completely rebuilt in an
astonishingly short time.
After you've taken two or three worlds from lesser cp, he may well sue
for peace. Take him up on it since the several turns of enforced "peace"
will give you time to absorb and build up these new planets completely.
If you don't offer tribute and normalize relations with the target cp,
it is likely that he will once again develop a bad attitude about you
and declare war even though he has been seriously weakened.
Because of the programmatic, lock-step manner in which the computer
player upgrades its fleet, you will find it easy to always field a fleet
that is strategically faster than the cp's (since they will have a mix
of slow and fast ships moving at only the speed of the slowest member).
Superior strategic speed multiplies the effectiveness of your smaller
fleet since you can reach two or three stars in the same time it takes
the cp to reach just one.
Thus, weak, remote cp planets can be attacked as decoy objectives to
draw out his main fleet element. Once it is on its way, you will abandon
bombing and harassing the weak planet (or incinerate it altogether) and
drive on one of his main worlds. Suppress the missile bases and invade
that planet in the several turns it will take for the cp's fleet to
return from the outlying decoy planet. Every time you decoy a large
enemy fleet into making a long space journey, you have effectively
destroyed that fleet for that slice of time.
F. Keeping the 800 Pound Gorilla Off Your Back
All the while you are picking off lesser races and gathering in planets,
you must still placate the largest and most dangerous cp for as long as
possible. The more time you have to complete technology, the easier it
will be to deal with him when war finally comes. Even though you may
have a Non-Aggression Pact with him, you may find him occasionally
driving a large task force at one of your planets. Usually, should he
take that planet, you do not want to try to re-take it until you're
ready to confront him in a full scale war. In the latter stages of the
campaign, you will be large and strong enough for the "Threaten to
Attack" choice in the Audience Menu to have some good effect. When a
"threat" succeeds, the cp will give you some money or old technology and
turn around his on-coming fleets. Examine the Total Power Scale on the
Status display of the Races screen for guidence.If you are about to lose
a key planet anyway, it's worth the risk of angering the cp to try the
threat.
If your fleet is weak or otherwise occupied, and there are numerous
missile bases at the planet, remove all friendly ships before the enemy
arrives and he may well decide to simply leave (even though he could
easily blast the planet into dust). This peculiarity of the game logic
means that several dozen missiles bases at each of your main planets can
provide you with enough time to grow your empire to rival that of the
biggest cp while maxxing out technology. Note that as the cp ship
shields get into the teens and the average missile defense rating of his
ships grows, he will be less shy about facing your missile bases. This
can sometimes be an advantage if you have good missiles at your bases:
you can deliberately draw him onto your missile bases by leaving an
old-tech ship or two as "missile-bait". The cp will attempt to destroy
these ships before leaving and you can use this opportunity to fire
salvos of missiles into his most expensive ships. If you have
Scatterpack VII's or X's and his missile defense is only so-so, you can
use your planetary defense as an *offensive* weapon to destroy enemy
fleets. A single salvo of Scatterpack X's from a planet with 50 bases
represents *1500* Stinger missiles being fired (bases x 3 x 10 ). Such a
wave of missiles will often vaporize whole ship groups in one shot.
If the biggest cp is already at war with a sizeable but vulnerable cp,
you can please the big boy by attacking his enemy --and please yourself
taking those planets. This will often produce the anomaly of your
biggest rival actually approving of your expansionist actions. You may
even be able to sustain an alliance with your rival by ganging up on his
enemy.
G. When You Are the *900* Pound Gorilla
When your Combat Technology Level is in the 50's or better, you will be
able to produce waves of hunter-killer ships which can boldly go to the
heartworlds of the enemy to destroy his warmaking potential and his
standing fleet. If you are blessed with several Rich or Ultra Rich
Worlds, you should now dedicate these worlds to continuous fleet
production, directing the output to some convenient marshalling point.
When stargates are available, they should first be built at these
Shipyard Worlds so that production can be delivered instantly.
The very large cp fleets are still a problem but can now be directly
attacked using one or a combination of the following ship types:
1. Pulsars: Medium or Large Ships equipped with Energy or Ionic Pulsars.
These must be very fast tactically and/or be equipped with Teleporters
(which is highly desirable). If teleportation is not available, use
Cloaking and/or Displacement Specials. Use these ships in groups of
several hundred to a few thousand. A force of a thousand or so Ionic
Pulsar ships can wipe out 96,000 enemy ships in one blow. Such an attack
usually breaks the back of the enemy cp and you'll never again have to
worry about his fleet. Do not build Pulsars in Huge ship types since
there will never be enough of them to have the desired cumulative
effect.
2. Black Hole Generators: Equip two or more types with Black Hole
Generators and the highest tactical mobility. A few Black Hole attacks
will usually result in the breaking of the large enemy fleets. Black
Hole ships are also useful for reducing missile bases without destroying
factories. BHG's are good attack-specials for Huge ships since their
effect is not cumulative.
3. Stasis Field Generators: Another approach to reducing large fleets is
to use Stasis Fields to hold them in place and "shoot-and-scoot" tactics
to whittle them down. This requires some patience and finesse, but it
works. "Shoot-and-scoot" refers to the general combat technique of
arming a ship with beam weapons and missiles and using the
missile-switch on the tactical display to control the movement
capability of the ship. Shut off the missiles; use part of the movement
potential to run in and fire beam weapons; withdraw out of range and
fire the missiles. If you have multiple ship types equipped with Stasis
Fields, you can shoot at a target as it comes out of the Stasis Field
(with the Stasis Special shut off) and then immediately put it back into
stasis so it can never fire its weapons at you. This technique is also a
nearly fool-proof way to *defend* your home planets when the enemy has a
fleet of high-tech planet busters capable of penetrating planetary
shields (particularly if they are armed with Plasma Torpedos). A
defensive fleet of four or five *identical* (but differently named)
Large ship-types equipped with Stasis fields, Black Hole Generators,
Teleportation, strong beam weapons, and one two rack missile can hold
off enemy fleets that would otherwise destroy your planets with ease.
H. Irresistible Domination
If, as is usual in the Plan, there is no forced Final War, MOOPlan Red
can continue on its main line approach: one-by-one reduction and
incorporation of enemy empires. In the last half of the technology race,
the productivity and size of your economy will be such that you can turn
out powerful forces every turn while still doing a significant amount of
R&D. Because you will be better at managing your production than the
cp's, you will find that you have essentially caught or passed them
(qualitatively) by the mid-point of the arms race. You will still have
inferior numbers, but since the disposition of your available force can
be much better controlled than the cp 's, you should be able to attain
local superiority with relative ease.
In Master of Orion, 1.3, the actual taking of Orion has been made much
more difficult (because the Guardian creature has been made stronger).
Ironically, you will not usually be able to successfully cope with the
Guardian until you no longer actually need to: i.e., you will be so far
along technologically that the benefit of Orion will only be incidental.
But being capable of building a fleet that can easily take the Guardian
and hold Orion is a good benchmark for the timing of the main campaign
of the game-- the conquest of the biggest cp. Sometimes a nice-to-have
technology will show up as a bonus of taking Orion, and it's worth
getting this in place before instigating a war with the biggest
opponent. Moreover, the offensive fleet that can cope with the Guardian
can be the basis of your Grand Fleet. The Guardian is best killed in a
single blow by hundreds or thousands of teleporting, beam-weapon-armed
mediums. Since the Guardian at the upper difficulty levels has Advanced
Damage control and a lot of firepower, you do not want to send a
marginal force against him.
You won't have to be much concerned with Orion being taken by a cp
before you get to it. The cp's seem reluctant to take it on at all (not
the case in the earlier versions of the game). Don't attempt to take
Orion if it is greatly removed from your empire. Once taken, you must be
able to hold it and support it.
As your forces roll over the main opponent, he may occassionally sue for
peace. Grant it only if you need to reorganize or build up some new
acquisitions. The cp's can use the breather given to them by a peace
treaty to replace the big chunks of their fleet you have bitten off.
If you find yourself elected by the council while conducting the last
campaign, you can toughen up the situation by refusing the result
(producing a Final War deliberately). The cp's become more aggressive in
Final War mode.
I. Algorithms Can't Jump
You'll find that as you grow to IRRESISTIBLE power and force, the cp's
nevertheless still posture and threaten unrealistically from their
interstellar commo screens. When you gain the upper hand in MOOPlan Red,
the situation quickly becomes very favorable to you rather than the
cp's. Were you facing a desperate, cornered human player, he would
remain dangerous right up till his last planet-- but the cp's are pretty
simple minded algorithms, and they play a really weak endgame. In a Huge
Galaxy campaign, this may leave you with dozens of worlds yet to conquer
even though there is no possibility that the remnants of the cp's could
seriously contest them. It is unfortunate that there is no recognition
of defeat by the software, but then there ain't much intelligence in
"artificial intelligence" after all, right? Thus, you may choose to
simply quit the game before plodding through all those planets or you
might want to build nothing but fast bombers and simply forego actually
incorporating all those remaining worlds. Since Master of Orion has no
score differentiating mechanism, victory by any means is a 100 percent
victory. There is no reward for being a constructive imperialist as
opposed to a Mad Bomber.
V. PRINCIPLES OF MOOPLAN RED
A. Pursue quick, early discovery and colonization of six to ten worlds
B. Emphasize propulsion and planet building in early technology
C. Emphasize productivity and planet building in follow-on technology.
D. Keep early fleets small and as fast as possible.
E. Use early fleet assets defensively and sparingly.
F. Do not become involved in protracted early wars.
G. Grow only opportunistically until you have reached the mid-20's of
technology and have built at least six to ten good Core planets.
H. The first race to be conquered must be inferior to and adjacent to
your empire (i.e., within one move).
I. Missile bases are the key to empire defense in the first two stages
of the campaign.
J. Missileer ship types are the key to early offensive and pre-emptive
fleet actions because of their flexibility and survivability when
Yo-Yo attacks are employed.
K. Build large fleets only in the last half of technology (50+) and then
only when you are completely ready to initiate the war for galactic
dominance.
L. Use the capture of Orion as the acid test of your offensive fleet
readiness for the big war.
M. Pay enough attention to diplomacy to keep a Final War situation from
occurring before you are ready for it. This, in essence, means you
must grovel and scrape early in the game, biding your time.
REMEMBER: You are a flexible, dynamic, self-reprogramming system; the
computer opponents you face are not: they are lock-step, fairly simple
algorithms, not really capable of "walking and chewing gum"
simultaneously. The only real advantage the computer opponents have is
their increased productivity. A dynamic and multi-pronged operational
approach can easily defeat the simple materiel advantage of the cp's.
TO ACHIEVE A MILITARY VICTORY IN
MASTER OF ORION, VERSION 1.3
by Redmond Simonsen
Edition 1.1. Copyright 1994, Redmond Simonsen, All Rights Reserved.
This text may be redistributed or re-posted in electronic form (only).
It may not be changed, abbreviated, or edited without the permission of
the author. No fee, except normal transmission and connect charges, may
be assessed for access to this text. It may not be included as part of
any collective work nor published in paper form or other form without
author's permission.
Master of Orion; designed by Steve Barcia and published by MPS
============================================================================
Note: most of the following is applicable to any version of Master of
Orion (MOO) but based specifically on playing the latest published
version (1.3). This version has more aggressive computer players and
some technology changes which make it harder to build very powerful
small-hulled ships. The plan assumes that the player will refuse a
political victory (election by the council) in favor of true victory,
i.e., domination of the galaxy by force.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I. PREMISE AND PROBLEM
MOOPlan Red assumes that the player wishes to achieve a military victory
(which requires the eventual elimination of all other competitor races
in the galaxy) rather than a political victory. Plan Red is drawn to
support this objective and is applicable to campaigning at difficulty
levels of Hard and Impossible in a Large, Huge or Medium galaxy.
The keyword of the plan is "patience": the player will have to accept a
long preparatory sequence of game turns during which he is mostly
submissive and subordinate to the whims and caprice of the computer
players. For until the player has achieved a sufficient technological
and economic momentum and mass, direct challenge to any leading computer
player is a fruitless exercise. This is so because at the higher
difficulty levels, the computer players (cp's) have productivity
advantages which permit them to vastly out pace the human player in
production and technology advance, particularly in the early stages of
the game. Literally hundreds of turns of preparation and growth are
required before large scale war is feasible. Happily, these turns pass
quickly.
Plan Red dictates a three stage approach:
A. Establish the Core: find and build the initial set of planets upon
which the Empire will be based.
B. Hold and Grow: preserve and mature the Core and advance technology to
the at least the mid-20's.
C. Expand and Conquer: aggressively expand from the Core to reduce and
finally eliminate all competitor races.
Although the above description may seem self evident and devoid of any
special wisdom, it is useful nonetheless to consider the course of the
campaign in these three major stages and to discipline oneself to think
of the game as proceeding by three distinct phases, each requiring its
own style of play and its own approach. It is very easy in Master of
Orion to "get ahead of oneself" and too-early become embroiled in
un-winnable wars and excursions which only serve to blunt technological
and territorial advance and consequently produce defeat.
II. GAME CHOICE
Master of Orion is essentially a "naval" arms race game with a political
sub-theme. Productivity, mass and momentum, time-space factors, and
political water-treading are the most import elements. The game is
fairly brittle in respect to technological differences-- a rather small
difference in overall technology can spell doom for the weaker player in
a direct confrontation. On the other hand, given roughly equal
technology levels, even a numerically inferior human player should
always be found to prevail against the computer players.
In light of the above, the player should choose a race that offers some
productivity or political benefit. These races are the Klackons, the
Meklars, the Psilons, and the Humans. Of course, any race can be gamed
but it is felt that the characteristic advantages of the Mrshanns,
Alkaris, Bulrathi, and Sakkra are not great enough to offset their
drawbacks. The Darloks can be interesting to play but require a
modification of this plan to take advantage of their spying talent that
is beyond the scope of this document.
A very important factor in establishing the Core is that initial period of
the game when one is left totally alone to build. Because of this, play
in Large and Huge galaxies is recommended. Playing in a Small galaxy (or
to a lesser extent, a Medium galaxy) means that the player will
experience multiple First Contacts quickly and that the galaxy will be
quickly filled by the more productive computer players. This will almost
always leave the player with a very small Core and thus a much harder
game, more controlled by luck than playing skill. Not only will the game
be more difficult to win, but it is much more likely in such situations
that a cp will be very early elected as leader of the New Republic and
you will not have the means to resist this political victory. A Final
War situation before the Core is developed is almost always certain
death. If the player wishes to play a Medium or Small Galaxy game, it is
suggested that he reduce the number of cp's accordingly: two or three in
a Small Galaxy; three or four in a Medium Galaxy. It is indeed possible
to win a Small/Impossible/5 game, but the author considers such games
as exercises in masochism and not relevant to mainstream play of the
game.
A Note on Random Events: the author usually plays with Random Events
shut down (key ALT-EVENTS). Most of the Random Events are negative in
nature and some of them so catastrophic as to totally upset any
deliberate, planful approach to play (e.g., rebellion at one of your
main planets early in the game). If you like Random Events, it is
suggested that you leave them off until at least the end of Stage One.
III. ESTABLISH THE CORE
The Exploration Stage
In a Galaxy size of Large or Huge, the player needs at least six to ten
first generation planets to have a decent chance of surviving the first
century of play. Unless the starting position is truly terrible, this
goal is readily attainable. This first generation of planets is referred
to as the Core.
A. The First Colony:
The game virtually guarantees that there is a decent planet within range
of your first colony ship. Use this information and immediately send the
original colony ship to the most likely star type within three parsec
range. Don't bother scouting in advance. Immediately upon the
establishment of the first colony, send 15 to 20 percent of the
population of the Home World to the new colony to prime the pump of its
population growth.
B. Initial Scouting:
Examine your position on the galactic map and rationalize your
colonization based on accessibility to you and inaccessibility to
competitor races. At first, in the absence of hard information on the
computer players' dispositions, this will only be guesswork. As
information is developed, mature your colonization plan to suit the
situation. Build four or five more scout ships to assist in gathering
information. When a really good world is found that will come into
colonization range shortly, station a scout or a fighter ship at this
world to drive off early cp incursions into your local space. Any new
colony within easy range of a cp race will likely be assaulted via
ground attack unless some fleet assets are present. If you have no
available "space superiority" force, it is better to simply hold the
uncolonized planet with a screening force until such time as you can
afford some protection for a new colony. In the early going, the cp
colony ships are not armed and they send only scouts to uncolonized
planets. These can be scared off simply by aggressive moves on the
tactical screen.
C. The Second Colony:
After your Home World is more than half industrialized and your Second
Planet well on the way, you can build a second colony ship and
deliberately choose your next site based on the scouting that has been
occurring in the intervening several turns. Choose the best world in
range of your first two planets. If however, there is a short term
positional advantage to choosing a lesser world, you may find yourself
colonizing (for example) a smaller, poorer world as a gateway to a set
of good stars or to prevent some cp gaining access to your better
potential colonies.
D. Early Technology:
As your Home World finishes its industrialization, most of the freed
production should be devoted to technology. Propulsion should be
emphasized above all other technologies until such time as Sublight
Engines and Range Six Fuel Cells are attained. Some emphasis should
be placed on Planetology (especially Terraforming and Waste Reduction)
and Computer Tech related to Robotic Controls. It is important in the
early going to micro-manage the tech scales on a turn-by-turn basis. As
soon as a given tech is showing a 15 or 16 percent probability number,
allocate some of its RP's to another category (scale it back to 11 or 12
percent).
E. Completing the Core:
Once you have your first three planets well along, you have one-third to
half of your Core in place. You should also at this time have two to four
young worlds under initial development. Use your mature worlds'
population base to quickly build up the newer worlds but don't strip out
more than 15% of a planet's population in any one turn unless it is a
dire emergency. In first stage of technology development, it is
important to maximize the population base and the productivity of that
population as much as possible. War making potential and ship technology
are strictly secondary at this juncture. You should trade for tech that
is not being covered by your own RP effort (i.e., weapons, force fields,
etc.). Do NOT trade away higher levels of Robotic Controls, Terraforming
or Engines unless you absolutely must have something. If your new worlds
are within ground assault range of a cp, any weapons research should be
dedicated to early infantry weapons.
F. First Stage Diplomatic Policy:
If you should be unlucky enough to make contact with a cp race before
colonizing the Core, quickly establish trade relations but do not
immediately establish a treaty even if relations would permit. Reason:
if you have a Non-Aggression Pact, the more productive cp will be able
to colonize any world within reach even those which have your ships in
orbit. If no treaty exists, he will have to fight for dominance (and
will usually choose to vacate instead). In this manner, you can
forestall cp colonization of your target worlds for some time. Once you
have your Core colonized, you can seek to create Non-Aggression Pacts
with as many cp's as will have you. Alliances are usually to be avoided
since they limit your freedom of action and may draw you into an
unwanted third-party war. Do NOT get involved in an early war unless the
cp is actually so small and weak as to be incapable of actually damaging
you. If the cp has more than a few planets, he will be able to launch a
sizeable and powerful fleet against you and cause you critical harm.
IV. HOLD AND GROW
The Consolidation Stage
After you've colonized six to ten worlds, you'll usually find yourself
hemmed in by the other races and/or the edge of the Galaxy.
Incidentally, it is often beneficial to colonize in the direction of a
corner since the remoteness of the cul-de-sac worlds provides them a
degree of cheap protection from invasion by any cp and it tends to
isolate as-yet-uncolonized worlds from the clutches of the cp's. In this
manner, you can grow outward and delay colonization of these buffered
worlds (but be alert: the cp's quickly develop colony ships with Reserve
Fuel tanks for extra range).
A. Second Stage Industrial Plan
The general objective throughout the game is to build up planetary
industry to its maximum at the maximum rate of growth. It is
particularly important that the Core planets be industrialized quickly
to provide the economic base needed to attain the technological advances
needed. However, in this second stage, more attention is given to the
building of Missile Bases and some resources are dedicated to building a
defensive fleet. Technology investment should be still be mainly on
items which enhance population or industrial growth. Particular emphasis
should be placed on Robotic Controls and Terraforming advances.
Presuming that Propulsion technology has produced at least Sublight
drives and Range Six fuel cells, some of that budget should be moved to
Construction and Weapons research. If you have a large Computer Tech
lead on any given cp, you can indulge in some safe spying activitiy to
supplement your technology investement. Spy allocations must be
carefully managed due to their expense and risk. If you have the
opportunity to frame another race for your spy missions, carefully
consider the implications of war between the two affected parties.
B. Planetary Defense
The second stage is marked by the building of Missile Bases on all
planets and the creation of a defensive fleet. As planets finish their
first stage industrialization, they should be building Missile Bases at
a rate of one base every three or four turns. Towards the end of the
Second Stage, this rate should increase to one base every two turns.
When the opportunity to build Shields arises, select the "25%" option for
your resource allocation and then fine tune individual planets which may
be particularly vulnerable. In the first two thirds of the campaign, Missile
Bases are _the_ most efficient way to preserve and protect your empire.
Even one or two bases in the very early stages will eliminate the
possibility of troop landings altogether. When Planetary Shields are
added to the mix, planets become virtually invulnerable to beam weapon
attacks until very advanced tech becomes available. Even with 100+ bases
at every planet, you should not see your base maintenance cost rise into
the double digits.
C. The Defensive Fleet
Unless you have an extremely good position with very weak cp's opposing
you, there is nothing much to be gained and a lot to be lost in building
a large fleet and going on the offensive at this point. Rather you
should build a fleet of Small or Medium ships armed with shield-halving
beam weapons such as the Neutron Pellet Gun or the Mass Driver. It may
also be necessary to build a small number of Large or Huge missile-armed
ships to act as mobile missile bases to defend your more vulnerable
planets as they are completing industrialization and before they have
bases of their own. You should not be building any bombers in this
stage. You should not engage in toe-to-toe shoot-outs with superior
enemy fleets: the cp's want you to do this so that their superior
production will make up for their generally poor ship-handling and
strategy. If your defensive fleet cannot hold a world against a cp
assault, you must abandon the world rather than pointlessly lose your
fleet.
D. Opportunistic Growth
Upon occasion, the cp's will war with each other and vaporize each
other's planets in the process. You should maintain one or two ready
colony ships on the frontier in order to scoot in and take advantage of
such an opening. You can easily do so if you have a Non-Aggression pact
with the owner of the fleet orbiting the dead world. You must then
quickly build up that world and protect it from possible troop invasions
by either the former owner or the cp who blew it up. Be prepared to
give up such worlds if the cp presses the attack very heavily. After
the first century of the game, the odds are good that you can add two or
three worlds to your empire via this approach.
You can also emulate the cp's by building an "LRC" (Long Range Colony
Ship). There comes a point fairly early in technology development where
you can fit Reserve Fuel Tanks and a Colony Base into the hull of Large
ship. This is worth doing if it will result in access to open worlds
beyond the reach of ordinary fuel cells. If you build an outlying
colony, you must have a defensive covering fleet ready to go the moment
the colony is established, otherwise you'll simply be immediately
invaded and lose the planet. Non-Aggression Pacts will _not_ protect you
from invasion by "friendly" cp's.
E. The Conclusion of the Second Stage
Although there is no sharp line of demarcation, the consolidation of the
Core that is the hallmark and goal of this stage is usually reached
sometime in the latter half of the second century of play. Your planets
will be completely built up and you will be at Technology Level 25 to
30. You should not be at war with any of the leading cp's and you should
not have a big, aging fleet. All your planets should have shields and at
least a couple of dozen missile bases. The second stage is usually
completed before the end of the second century.
IV. EXPAND AND CONQUER
The Domination Stage
The third stage of Plan Red is a bit like a number of repeats of the
first two stages with one big exception: now there is opposition to your
moves to take a given set of planets since they are all already
occupied. Therefore you should choose your first opponent carefully. It
should be one of the smaller and more backward races-- someone you are
confident of beating and who is not allied with the leading race.
Sometimes these races will pick you: they will already be at "war" with
you (but not actually doing much about it). It is also important that
your first candidate for conquest be physically close to your existing
empire --don't choose a weak race on the other side of the galaxy.
A. Fleet Requirements
Your first offensive fleet will consist of several hundred "fighter"
types from your existing defensive fleet and a few to several dozen
Medium or Large missile-armed ships. The basic operational plan is to
select the most convenient, vulnerable, and worthwhile of the target
race's planets and to take it by a war of attrition against its missile
bases and defending fleet. This is done by using your missile armed
ships to yo-yo into the planet's orbit, salvo, retreat, and then
immediately return via course re-direction. Depending upon the your
missileer power and the opposing race's planetary shield and base
strengths, this will take a few to several turns to accomplish. Your
attacking ships should be armed with at least Hyper X Rockets and
preferably Stinger Missiles. If you can trade for even better missiles,
do so at this time. Stingers are good enough to penetrate the weaker
shields prevalent at this level of technology. Design using two-shot
missile racks since this will put the greatest number of missiles per
firing ship into the first two salvos (which is all you're going to be
around for anyway).
Missile salvos are used instead of bombers for the sake of economy and
security. Using the Yo-Yo technique, you will take virtually no losses
and the same force can be re-used to take the next planet. The slow
bombers which can be built at Tech 25 will suffer heavy losses taking
just one planet. Providing replacements will divert resources from
research and planet building. Missile bombardment is a little slower,
but much safer and more economical. Moreover, the missileers can be used
in a defensive role after they've completed their bombardment tasks.
After the bases are reduced, the missileers and the fighters can clear
off the defending fleet in preparation for the ground attack. You must
achieve local space superiority before you attempt an invasion.
B. The First Invasion
If you've chosen your target correctly, the victim-race will be inferior
to you in armor and force fields and no better than you in ground
weapons. If this is indeed the case, you can capture the target planet
mostly intact by sending one-third to half as many troops as there are
settlers on the planet. This of course, is variable dependent upon the
technology disparity between the two of you. Send your invasion forces
from multiple points of origin (to minimize the short term impact on the
output of those planets) and dedicate some resources to quickly
rebuilding the population of the contributing planets. If the target
race has better ground forces than you, you must carefully "bomb down"
the planet to a manageable size, and then you must send more population
to the planet than occupies it. There is no precise way to control the
effects of bombing and you will risk vaporizing the planet if you use
too large a bombing force. Err on the side of too light a force at first
and build it up slowly until you get the results you need.
Much of your invasion force should survive and provide the seed for
future growth on your newly acquired world. Since you should be
capturing as many as hundreds of enemy factories intact, you can rapidly
consolidate this world particularly if you salt it with some cash to
begin with.
A large component of your fleet (perhaps all) will be needed to fend off
attempts to retake the planet. This will tie you up for at least a few
turns until you get some bases established. Don't be impatient. It is
important to operate within your limits in a "low risk" mode for these
early wars of expansion. Later when your economic base includes more
than twenty worlds or so, you can be more aggressive and free handed
since any losses you'll take can quickly be replaced. It is recommended
that if your missileers can pre-emptively strike at the gathering enemy
fleet that they do so to reduce the enemy counter thrust before it
arrives at the newly occupied planet. Do not simply passively wait to be
attacked if there is an opportunity to weaken the enemy's offensive
force. Once you have Improved Space Scanner technology, planning these
pre-emptive raids is easy to do since you'll know with certitude if your
planets are about to be assaulted or not.
C. Expansion Diplomacy
The thesis of Plan Red is that the player is not interested in winning
the game democratically, rather that he wishes to dominate the Galaxy by
force of arms. Nevertheless, once you've become large enough to show up
as one of the candidates in the quarter-century Council Vote, you become
more vulnerable to losing the game by vote (unless you've grown so
strong as to rival the combined might of the Galaxy, Final War is still
a thing to be avoided). Accordingly, you should use bribery and sabotage
to keep the cp's off-balance in this regard. If you are a few years away
from a vote and you are at war with one of the larger, secondary cp's,
you should do a "nose count" to see if his voting against you will throw
a political victory to your rival. If so, and if he is not allied to
your rival, make peace and use bribery to create a friendly enough
climate for a Non-Aggression Pact to be formed.
If you find you can't make peace, make war instead: use sabotage against
races with lower computer technology than yours to "frame" the rival cp.
This may well cause them to lose their tempers with the leading cp and
go to war, thus queering their vote for your rival. You may also find it
necessary to simply bomb-down the population of one of the secondary
cp's about to vote against you in order to change the ratio of
your population to the total galactic population. Although this is a
drastic solution, it is sometimes the only out.
D. The Too-Soon Final War
It is unlikely that you would survive a Final War in the Core
Stage or even early in the Hold and Grow Stage, but you may well do so
in the Expansion Stage. Nonetheless, if Final War comes early in the
third stage, things may get very hot for you very quickly. If, for
example, two or three of the cp's are as advanced or more advanced than
you and have strong empires, you will be in trouble for each will field
a huge fleet of strong ships to direct against you. One you can deal
with; three is very tough. To slow them down, you need a force of fast,
powerful bombers. Usually these will be Mediums filled with your best
bomb and one beam weapon. They should have either teleporting (if
available) or cloaking and be fast enough to reach the target planet in
no more than two moves. Create four or five squadrons of such bombers
(100-200 in each squadron) and use them to create a "dead zone" of
destroyed planets to act as a buffer between you and the cp's. This will
have a number of good effects. It cuts the productivity of the cp's; it
distracts them into rebuilding these planets; and it causes them to tie
up their fleet assets in "guard duty" over these re-colonized worlds. If
your bombers are fast and have good ECM, you can quickly incinerate ten
or more worlds. Do not send your bombers on long range missions --the
idea is to deny the enemy basing and production within one move of your
planets. Also, do not yield to the temptation to use them in a space
superiority role and duke it out with defending ships unless those ships
are ineffectual against your armor and shields. As often will be the
case, the cp will recolonize the cinder-worlds and then wander off
leaving them unguarded. Immediately re-bomb them (resist the temptation
to colonize them unless they are Rich and immediately adjacent to your
empire).
Unlike the Expansion Stage approach to planet reduction, you cannot
afford to spend time at each target world. Thus you must use very fast
bombers in large numbers. The objective is to "hit 'em where they ain't"
and quickly blast ten or a dozen worlds. Do not attack strongly defended
planets; wait until the defending fleet leaves (as it usually does): then
immediately whack it with a lightning stroke. This is the essence of the
mobile attack (also known as the Blitzkrieg): find the weak spots and
hammer them with maximum force; flow around the strongpoints and reduce
them later; keep the enemy off balance and reacting to your moves rather
then vice-versa; integrate all offensive forces in the local area into a
single, fast-moving spearpoint.
E. Methodical Incorporation of Enemy Empires
The general approach to galactic domination is fairly obvious: start
with the weaker opponents; absorb them completely one at a time; build up
your expanded empire to rival that of the leading cp (who may still be
nominally stronger and more advanced than you even at this stage in the
campaign). While you are doing this, your main computer-driven rival may
not be standing idly by, beaming at you with a Peaceful rating from the
Races screen. He may break a Non-Aggression Pact and come at you for
_lebensraum_ or may even go to war with you. You should not become
involved in a full-scale war with the largest cp prematurely. If war
does break out through no fault of your own, damage some of his more
vulnerable planets and bribe him with technology to produce the
conditions for a peace. As much as possible, you should control the
timing and conditions of the start of the Big War for total control.
When you grow to the point where your population is more than one-third
of the galaxy, you no longer have to be too concerned about the
penalties for genocide or bio-warfare since it is now impossible for you
to lose a council vote. Bio warfare can be used to rapidly incorporate
built up planets into your empire. Build "missile-proof" bombers armed
with your best bio weapons and send them against the biggest planets of
your most vulnerable enemy. Kill the population and leave the factories
intact to be swept up by an accompanying "Attack Colony Ship". Or you
can more carefully bio-bomb until the population is greatly reduced and
use Black Hole Generators to remove the missile bases without damaging
the factories. Follow this with a conventional invasion. Note that the
bio weapons will not affect missile bases (indeed the entire population
can already be dead and those pesky bases will keep firing at you --so
be sure to constantly check the population of the planet as the raid is
in progress). As soon as the kill-off of the population is complete,
retreat all forces. Then immediately redirect them back to the planet so
that the colony ship can take over the empty factories. Send waves of
population from nearby planets to man the factories. Add money to the
local economies and these new planets will be completely rebuilt in an
astonishingly short time.
After you've taken two or three worlds from lesser cp, he may well sue
for peace. Take him up on it since the several turns of enforced "peace"
will give you time to absorb and build up these new planets completely.
If you don't offer tribute and normalize relations with the target cp,
it is likely that he will once again develop a bad attitude about you
and declare war even though he has been seriously weakened.
Because of the programmatic, lock-step manner in which the computer
player upgrades its fleet, you will find it easy to always field a fleet
that is strategically faster than the cp's (since they will have a mix
of slow and fast ships moving at only the speed of the slowest member).
Superior strategic speed multiplies the effectiveness of your smaller
fleet since you can reach two or three stars in the same time it takes
the cp to reach just one.
Thus, weak, remote cp planets can be attacked as decoy objectives to
draw out his main fleet element. Once it is on its way, you will abandon
bombing and harassing the weak planet (or incinerate it altogether) and
drive on one of his main worlds. Suppress the missile bases and invade
that planet in the several turns it will take for the cp's fleet to
return from the outlying decoy planet. Every time you decoy a large
enemy fleet into making a long space journey, you have effectively
destroyed that fleet for that slice of time.
F. Keeping the 800 Pound Gorilla Off Your Back
All the while you are picking off lesser races and gathering in planets,
you must still placate the largest and most dangerous cp for as long as
possible. The more time you have to complete technology, the easier it
will be to deal with him when war finally comes. Even though you may
have a Non-Aggression Pact with him, you may find him occasionally
driving a large task force at one of your planets. Usually, should he
take that planet, you do not want to try to re-take it until you're
ready to confront him in a full scale war. In the latter stages of the
campaign, you will be large and strong enough for the "Threaten to
Attack" choice in the Audience Menu to have some good effect. When a
"threat" succeeds, the cp will give you some money or old technology and
turn around his on-coming fleets. Examine the Total Power Scale on the
Status display of the Races screen for guidence.If you are about to lose
a key planet anyway, it's worth the risk of angering the cp to try the
threat.
If your fleet is weak or otherwise occupied, and there are numerous
missile bases at the planet, remove all friendly ships before the enemy
arrives and he may well decide to simply leave (even though he could
easily blast the planet into dust). This peculiarity of the game logic
means that several dozen missiles bases at each of your main planets can
provide you with enough time to grow your empire to rival that of the
biggest cp while maxxing out technology. Note that as the cp ship
shields get into the teens and the average missile defense rating of his
ships grows, he will be less shy about facing your missile bases. This
can sometimes be an advantage if you have good missiles at your bases:
you can deliberately draw him onto your missile bases by leaving an
old-tech ship or two as "missile-bait". The cp will attempt to destroy
these ships before leaving and you can use this opportunity to fire
salvos of missiles into his most expensive ships. If you have
Scatterpack VII's or X's and his missile defense is only so-so, you can
use your planetary defense as an *offensive* weapon to destroy enemy
fleets. A single salvo of Scatterpack X's from a planet with 50 bases
represents *1500* Stinger missiles being fired (bases x 3 x 10 ). Such a
wave of missiles will often vaporize whole ship groups in one shot.
If the biggest cp is already at war with a sizeable but vulnerable cp,
you can please the big boy by attacking his enemy --and please yourself
taking those planets. This will often produce the anomaly of your
biggest rival actually approving of your expansionist actions. You may
even be able to sustain an alliance with your rival by ganging up on his
enemy.
G. When You Are the *900* Pound Gorilla
When your Combat Technology Level is in the 50's or better, you will be
able to produce waves of hunter-killer ships which can boldly go to the
heartworlds of the enemy to destroy his warmaking potential and his
standing fleet. If you are blessed with several Rich or Ultra Rich
Worlds, you should now dedicate these worlds to continuous fleet
production, directing the output to some convenient marshalling point.
When stargates are available, they should first be built at these
Shipyard Worlds so that production can be delivered instantly.
The very large cp fleets are still a problem but can now be directly
attacked using one or a combination of the following ship types:
1. Pulsars: Medium or Large Ships equipped with Energy or Ionic Pulsars.
These must be very fast tactically and/or be equipped with Teleporters
(which is highly desirable). If teleportation is not available, use
Cloaking and/or Displacement Specials. Use these ships in groups of
several hundred to a few thousand. A force of a thousand or so Ionic
Pulsar ships can wipe out 96,000 enemy ships in one blow. Such an attack
usually breaks the back of the enemy cp and you'll never again have to
worry about his fleet. Do not build Pulsars in Huge ship types since
there will never be enough of them to have the desired cumulative
effect.
2. Black Hole Generators: Equip two or more types with Black Hole
Generators and the highest tactical mobility. A few Black Hole attacks
will usually result in the breaking of the large enemy fleets. Black
Hole ships are also useful for reducing missile bases without destroying
factories. BHG's are good attack-specials for Huge ships since their
effect is not cumulative.
3. Stasis Field Generators: Another approach to reducing large fleets is
to use Stasis Fields to hold them in place and "shoot-and-scoot" tactics
to whittle them down. This requires some patience and finesse, but it
works. "Shoot-and-scoot" refers to the general combat technique of
arming a ship with beam weapons and missiles and using the
missile-switch on the tactical display to control the movement
capability of the ship. Shut off the missiles; use part of the movement
potential to run in and fire beam weapons; withdraw out of range and
fire the missiles. If you have multiple ship types equipped with Stasis
Fields, you can shoot at a target as it comes out of the Stasis Field
(with the Stasis Special shut off) and then immediately put it back into
stasis so it can never fire its weapons at you. This technique is also a
nearly fool-proof way to *defend* your home planets when the enemy has a
fleet of high-tech planet busters capable of penetrating planetary
shields (particularly if they are armed with Plasma Torpedos). A
defensive fleet of four or five *identical* (but differently named)
Large ship-types equipped with Stasis fields, Black Hole Generators,
Teleportation, strong beam weapons, and one two rack missile can hold
off enemy fleets that would otherwise destroy your planets with ease.
H. Irresistible Domination
If, as is usual in the Plan, there is no forced Final War, MOOPlan Red
can continue on its main line approach: one-by-one reduction and
incorporation of enemy empires. In the last half of the technology race,
the productivity and size of your economy will be such that you can turn
out powerful forces every turn while still doing a significant amount of
R&D. Because you will be better at managing your production than the
cp's, you will find that you have essentially caught or passed them
(qualitatively) by the mid-point of the arms race. You will still have
inferior numbers, but since the disposition of your available force can
be much better controlled than the cp 's, you should be able to attain
local superiority with relative ease.
In Master of Orion, 1.3, the actual taking of Orion has been made much
more difficult (because the Guardian creature has been made stronger).
Ironically, you will not usually be able to successfully cope with the
Guardian until you no longer actually need to: i.e., you will be so far
along technologically that the benefit of Orion will only be incidental.
But being capable of building a fleet that can easily take the Guardian
and hold Orion is a good benchmark for the timing of the main campaign
of the game-- the conquest of the biggest cp. Sometimes a nice-to-have
technology will show up as a bonus of taking Orion, and it's worth
getting this in place before instigating a war with the biggest
opponent. Moreover, the offensive fleet that can cope with the Guardian
can be the basis of your Grand Fleet. The Guardian is best killed in a
single blow by hundreds or thousands of teleporting, beam-weapon-armed
mediums. Since the Guardian at the upper difficulty levels has Advanced
Damage control and a lot of firepower, you do not want to send a
marginal force against him.
You won't have to be much concerned with Orion being taken by a cp
before you get to it. The cp's seem reluctant to take it on at all (not
the case in the earlier versions of the game). Don't attempt to take
Orion if it is greatly removed from your empire. Once taken, you must be
able to hold it and support it.
As your forces roll over the main opponent, he may occassionally sue for
peace. Grant it only if you need to reorganize or build up some new
acquisitions. The cp's can use the breather given to them by a peace
treaty to replace the big chunks of their fleet you have bitten off.
If you find yourself elected by the council while conducting the last
campaign, you can toughen up the situation by refusing the result
(producing a Final War deliberately). The cp's become more aggressive in
Final War mode.
I. Algorithms Can't Jump
You'll find that as you grow to IRRESISTIBLE power and force, the cp's
nevertheless still posture and threaten unrealistically from their
interstellar commo screens. When you gain the upper hand in MOOPlan Red,
the situation quickly becomes very favorable to you rather than the
cp's. Were you facing a desperate, cornered human player, he would
remain dangerous right up till his last planet-- but the cp's are pretty
simple minded algorithms, and they play a really weak endgame. In a Huge
Galaxy campaign, this may leave you with dozens of worlds yet to conquer
even though there is no possibility that the remnants of the cp's could
seriously contest them. It is unfortunate that there is no recognition
of defeat by the software, but then there ain't much intelligence in
"artificial intelligence" after all, right? Thus, you may choose to
simply quit the game before plodding through all those planets or you
might want to build nothing but fast bombers and simply forego actually
incorporating all those remaining worlds. Since Master of Orion has no
score differentiating mechanism, victory by any means is a 100 percent
victory. There is no reward for being a constructive imperialist as
opposed to a Mad Bomber.
V. PRINCIPLES OF MOOPLAN RED
A. Pursue quick, early discovery and colonization of six to ten worlds
B. Emphasize propulsion and planet building in early technology
C. Emphasize productivity and planet building in follow-on technology.
D. Keep early fleets small and as fast as possible.
E. Use early fleet assets defensively and sparingly.
F. Do not become involved in protracted early wars.
G. Grow only opportunistically until you have reached the mid-20's of
technology and have built at least six to ten good Core planets.
H. The first race to be conquered must be inferior to and adjacent to
your empire (i.e., within one move).
I. Missile bases are the key to empire defense in the first two stages
of the campaign.
J. Missileer ship types are the key to early offensive and pre-emptive
fleet actions because of their flexibility and survivability when
Yo-Yo attacks are employed.
K. Build large fleets only in the last half of technology (50+) and then
only when you are completely ready to initiate the war for galactic
dominance.
L. Use the capture of Orion as the acid test of your offensive fleet
readiness for the big war.
M. Pay enough attention to diplomacy to keep a Final War situation from
occurring before you are ready for it. This, in essence, means you
must grovel and scrape early in the game, biding your time.
REMEMBER: You are a flexible, dynamic, self-reprogramming system; the
computer opponents you face are not: they are lock-step, fairly simple
algorithms, not really capable of "walking and chewing gum"
simultaneously. The only real advantage the computer opponents have is
their increased productivity. A dynamic and multi-pronged operational
approach can easily defeat the simple materiel advantage of the cp's.