[Ghostavo]

That game looks really promising, but one thing that stops it cold is that technology can't be shared, stolen or salvaged... that's HUGE!

MOO2 will apparently always be the end-all 4X galaxy game... just for an example, when using a custom race who happened to be uncreative, I'd make 'capture fleets' with ships having as many tractor beams as possible then a number of support ships with troops to steal all the technology I could from other races' ships.  I've not seen a (space-based) 4X allow that kind of strategy since.

By golly gee whillaker george, I'm going home and firing up MOO2 in DosBox.

Try Space Empires IV or V.

[Ace]

That game looks really promising, but one thing that stops it cold is that technology can't be shared, stolen or salvaged... that's HUGE!

Ermm... that's what a Repair and Salvage ship is for.

When one is in your fleet there is a chance each combat of salvaging technology, which appears as a 'secret project' in the research screen. Begin work on the project and you unlock the technology you salvaged as a research topic.

The Zuul have a very high chance of salvaging technology and don't even need to have a salvage ship in the fleet.

[DiabloRojo]

I'm just going by what I read in the wiki, and sorry, I see that I worded my last post incorrectly.  I was specifically talking about:

Race Specific Technologies

Your available technologies are determined by the race that you are playing. For example, Tarka players cannot research Human specific technology nor gain it from salvage.

It has been stated that technologies will diverge according to race very quickly i.e. after the end of the first turn.

Some technologies have no corollary in other race's technology trees, effectively giving a race distinctive special abilities. In addition, some general technologies (especially ship technologies and power technologies) will have different effects for different races.

Race-specific techs (initially) are all fine and dandy, but I think it's crazy that another race would have no chance to steal, share, salvage or reverse-engineer *anything* to augment their own race/ships/etc.  One example: Ramscoops are race specific to Hivers.  Honestly, how obvious of an advancement is that?  While I like (and think the idea is quite unique and fresh) races starting with vastly different FTL travel methods, how in the hell would a race completely ignore other potential avenues to the one of the most, if not THE most fundamentally important advancement an intelligent species could make?

Sure, it's just a matter of keeping some measure of uniqueness for each side, but why not have actual racial traits that make sense based on how they evolved, not by having a race that perfectly understands X form of travel, but the Y form of travel is completely baffling and unusable while they all can figure out the exact same methods for killing each other?

[Ace]

The techs that are species-specific are quite rare and limited to propulsion. Ramscoops for instance are Hiver-only because they're the only race that travels via slower than light. A Ramscoop to gather fuel makes no sense or is useless if you're travelling in Nodespace, using stutter-warp, etc.

Races also do have unique traits based on culture and biology. Liir are very good at bioweapons for instance but their population growth is extremely slow.

Also not all races use the 'exact same methods for killing eachother.' Once again if you're Liir you're going to use bioweapons. If you're Human you can use Node-missiles and Siege Drivers. The Zuul take slaves and have techs specialized for that as well as ship boarding. (which ship boarding can be done by other races, but the Zuul do it better)

The specific techs add flavor to each race, but 95% of all techs are sharable/stealable.

[Dagolith]

That game looks really promising, but one thing that stops it cold is that technology can't be shared, stolen or salvaged... that's HUGE!

Ermm... that's what a Repair and Salvage ship is for.

When one is in your fleet there is a chance each combat of salvaging technology, which appears as a 'secret project' in the research screen. Begin work on the project and you unlock the technology you salvaged as a research topic.

The Zuul have a very high chance of salvaging technology and don't even need to have a salvage ship in the fleet.

No ****ing way! thats how you do that, i never figured that out before. But still, allies should be able to share tech, and i think that the tech tree should be constant.

[Polpolion]

Well, I was playing this game, and I must say I don't like it. The Combat system is actually really dull, and the other mode is just to simple to do anything fun. I'd rather play Galactic Civilizations 2 and Homeworld 2 PDS. I may not be able to combine the two into one game, but at least they're great at the single mode they're meant for.

...

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You know what? Screw it. I'm gonna go play GTA2 while listening to classical music.

[Ace]

*shrug*

The combat system allows for some pretty amazing things. (deflector phalanxes, wild weasels combined with point defense escorts, good 'ol B5 style beam slug outs)

Similarly there are plenty of strategic options.

It is a combat focused game (even the trade and diplomacy systems are still focused around combat) that rewards experimentation very much in the vein of MOO1.

[Dagolith]

back to that tech salvage thing, how do you do that, is it under special after a battle, cause i never seem to get if, and i know weapons that i don't have were used.

[Ace]

After a battle if you have repair and salvage in the fleet there is a chance to salvage the new tech. It appears under special projects. (which includes other special research topics like asteroid monitor control)

If you have Born of Blood and the current patch, researching the language of the race you're fighting adds to that salvage chance. Similarly the Zuul have a higher salvage chance than other races. (but really poor research on their own so you really have to board and/or salvage ships for tech)

[Dagolith]

oh, so it is a chance thing.

[TrashMan]

*HAAX!!*

Spoiler:

D/L ed the ISO but I can't friggin start the game..... no matter..I'll get to the bottom of this...one way or another.
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