Master of Orion
Developer(s)	Simtex
Publisher(s)	Microprose
Release date(s)	1993
Genre(s)	Turn-based strategy
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	MS-DOS, Apple Macintosh

Master of Orion (MOO or MoO) is a turn-based science fiction computer strategy game designed by by Steve Barcia, developed by Barcia's company Simtex and published by Microprose in 1993. Although Alan Emrich coined the term "4X" (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) in his review of the game, Master of Orion was not the first in this genre - Civilization was published in 1991 and Reach for the Stars in the early 1980s.^[1][2] Master of Orion is a member of Gamespy's Hall of Fame. ^[3] Cover of the Master of Orion manual. ... A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates video games. ... Simtex was a video game developer established by Steve Barcia in 1988. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... MicroProse Software, Inc. ... Notable events of 1993 in computer and video games. ... Video games are categorized into genres based on their gameplay. ... A turn-based game, also known as turn-based strategy (TBS), is a game where the game flow is partitioned into well-defined and visible parts, called turns or rounds. ... In computer games and video games, single-player refers to the variant of a particular game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. ... Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... The first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac. The Macintosh or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple Computer. ... A turn-based game, also known as turn-based strategy, is a game where each participant plays in turn. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Strategy games are typically board games, video or computer games with the players decision-making skills having a high significance in determining the outcome. ... Steve Barcia known tale in the computer game industry begins with the founding of Simtex Studios Inc. ... Simtex was a video game developer established by Steve Barcia in 1988. ... MicroProse Software, Inc. ... Notable events of 1993 in computer and video games. ... Alan Emrich is now best-known as a writer about and designer of computer games. ... 4X refers to a genre of strategy game, usually a computer game, with four primary goals: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate. ... Sid Meiers Civilization is a turn based strategy computer game created by Sid Meier for MicroProse in 1991. ... Reach for the Stars is one of the earliest of the 4X (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate) computer games, written by SSG of Australia in early 1980s for the Apple II and Commodore 64 platforms which used the MOS Technology 6502 series microprocessors. ...

The "Orion" of the title is a star system which contains an extremely valuable planet - it is the most productive planet in the galaxy for both industry and research, and artifacts left on it by an ancient race provide the secrets of very advanced military technologies. But to colonize this planet, players must conquer the Guardian, a very powerful robotic battleship.

Computer system environment

The game runs under MS-DOS or Mac OS. The MS-DOS version uses memory management techniques which are incompatible with all versions of Windows, but users of Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME or Windows XP can run it under a DOS emulator such as DOSBox. There is no need for a CD-ROM or DVD drive as the game was distributed on 4 floppy disks. Microsofts disk operating system, MS-DOS, was Microsofts implementation of DOS, which was the first popular operating system for the IBM PC, and until recently, was widely used on the PC compatible platform. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Memory management is the act of managing computer memory. ... Windows redirects here. ... DosBox emulates the familiar command line interface of DOS. An emulator duplicates (provide an emulation of) the functions of one system with a different system, so that the second system behaves like (and appears to be) the first system. ... DOS Version of Z running in DOSBox in Debian. ... The CD-ROM (an abbreviation for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory (ROM)) is a non-volatile optical data storage medium using the same physical format as audio compact discs, readable by a computer with a CD-ROM drive. ... Size comparison: A 12 cm Sony DVD+RW and a 19 cm Dixon Ticonderoga pencil. ... A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible (floppy) magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. ...

The game's screens are 320x240 pixels and in 256 colors - in the early 1990s computers had very limited graphics capabilities, and most monitors were only 12-inch (30cm) or 14-inch (35cm). Sound was also simple - weapons effects and a few MIDI tunes. A pixel (a contraction of picture element) is one of the many tiny dots that make up the representation of a picture in a computers memory. ... Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI, is a system designed to transmit information between electronic musical instruments. ...

There is no multi-player mode, only contests against AI opponents on the user's computer. // This disambiguation page covers alternative uses of the terms Ai, AI, and A.I. Ai (as a word, proper noun and set of initials) can refer to many things. ...

Game play

Victory conditions

There are two ways to win - exterminate all opponents, or get elected as the supreme leader of the galaxy. To get elected, you need two-thirds of the total votes (abstentions count as votes against both candidates), and each empire's votes are based on its population. So getting elected requires some combination of conquest and diplomacy (see below).

Despite the game's name, conquering the Orion star system does not automatically win the game - but to beat the Guardian you need a large and advanced fleet, so whoever beats the Guardian generally has a winning advantage already.

Stars and planets

Star systems have at most one colonizable planet - a few have none.

Planets vary in three ways:

• Population capacity, which can be at least doubled by various kinds of terraforming.
• Resources. How rich a planet is in minerals has a great influence on its industrial productivity. Some planets with "normal" mineral wealth contain artifacts left by a long-departed advanced civilization, which double research productivity and usually provide one free technology advance to the empire which discovers it.
• Habitability. "Fertile" and "Gaia" planets increase population growth rates, while "hostile" planets halve them; all planets can eventually be terraformed into "Gaia" planets. There are 6 types of hostile planet, which require increasingly advanced research to colonize. This has the effect of extending the exploration and colonization phases well into the game, and thus forcing players to engage in war or diplomacy with others instead of claiming a territory and then turtling.

Artists conception of a terraformed Mars in four stages of development. ... Gaia or Gaea (from the Greek words Ge (γη) = Earth (Pelasgian), and *aia (αια) = grandmother (PIE)) thus Gaia (γαια), can refer to any one of the following: Gaia as myth, Greek goddess (her equivalent in Rome is Terra), in Sumerian mythology she is refered to as Ki; Gaia as metaphor - set of philosophical... In computer and video games the term turtle, named after the turtle animal, has different meanings depending on the genre but all share the same main characteristic of the tactic, a form of defense. ...

How planets' economies work

Everything, even research, is based on industrial production. All citizens are capable of industrial production, but are several times more productive when assisted by factories. There is a limit on the number of factories a unit of population (notionally 1M individuals) can operate, but you can increase this by researching and building upgrades.

Players can allocate a planet's industrial output between: building more factories or upgrading them to allow more factories per citizen; building or upgrading the planet's defenses (shields and missile bases); research; spaceship construction; or "ecology" (pollution control, terraforming, increasing population growth).

Pollution is a serious constraint on economic growth in the early game, but you can research technologies which reduce the cost of cleaning it up.

The technology tree

There are 6 technology areas: computers (combat systems, factory controls, scanners); construction (reduced factory costs, armor, systems for reducing combat damage to ships); force fields (mainly shields, plus a few weapons); planetology (pollution control, terraforming, colonizing more hostile planets, increasing population growth); propulsion (upgrades to ships' range and speed, plus a few weapons and other combat systems); and weapons. Each technology area is divided into several levels, each of which contains 1 to 5 technologies which must be researched individually. To research a higher level technology, you must first have researched at least 1 technology from the previous level. In theory one could research all levels of one subject area and neglect the rest, but this would be very unwise.

Players can research several technologies at the same time, controlling the allocation of research resources by means of lockable sliders on the Technology screen. You will generally obtain more advances for a given expenditure by researching a few technologies at the same time than by spending all your resources on one technology at a time; except that in the very early stages you generally have too little resources to research more than one technology at a time.

In each game each player is allowed to see a different random subset of the technologies at each level. This is meant to force players to adapt rather than follow the same favorite research strategy each time.

Players can also acquire technologies by trading, spying or conquest.

Diplomacy

Master of Orion provides a wide range of diplomatic negotiations: gifts of money or technology; one-time technology trades; trade, non-aggression and alliance treaties. But the most effective way to gain favor with an AI player is to attack another AI player with whom the first is at war.

The game attempts to give the AI players a degree of personality by varying their facial expressions on the Diplomacy screen and by making them refer to past favors or misdeeds you have done them.

Spaceship design

Players are allowed to have a maximum of 6 classes of ship active. A player who wishes to create another class must first scrap a class and all ships of that class. Each player starts the game with 5 pre-defined designs, all at the most basic level of technology; but has actual ships of only 2 classes, colony ship (for non-hostile planets) and scout.

Ships cannot be re-fitted (upgraded). The only free upgrades are increases in the travel range and scanning range of your ships; to take advantage of other new technologies you have to design a new class.

Combat and invasion

The space combat screen. The numbers beside the ship icons show how many ships are in each stack.

Ships can travel to any star system within their range, unlike games such as Space Empires or Ascendancy where interstellar travel is possible only via "wormholes". Hence in Master of Orion you cannot create easily-defended choke points. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The Space Empires series is a long-lasting series of 4X turn-based strategy games by Malfador Machinations that allows the player to assume the role of the leader of a space-faring civilization. ... // Ascendancy is a 4X science fiction turn-based strategy computer game for DOS. It was released in 1995 by The Logic Factory. ... A wormhole, also known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge, is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that is essentially a shortcut from one point in the universe to another point in the universe, allowing travel between them that is faster than it would take light to make the journey through... In geography terms it is a narrowing of an international waterway to a distance of less than 24 miles (38 km), necessitating the drawing of a median line (maritime) boundary. ...

Space combat always occurs in orbit over a planet - it is impossible to intercept enemy ships in deep space. All ships of the same class form a single stack, moving and firing together (unlike Heroes of Might and Magic, Master of Orion does not allow multiple stacks of similar units). Space combat is always tactical (hands on), but the "Auto" button makes the software take over the player's ships and finish the battle. Heroes of Might and Magic II Heroes of Might and Magic (sometimes called simply Heroes or HoMM) is a series of turn-based computer games developed by New World Computing, a division of The 3DO Company. ...

You can only invade planets when all defending ships and / or missile bases have been destroyed or forced to retreat. There are no specialist invasion ships (like Stars!; unlike Master of Orion II, Space Empires or Ascendancy); instead you simply send a large number of your own citizens, which reduces the population of the planet(s) from which you sent them. It has been suggested that Mystery Trader be merged into this article or section. ... Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares (MOO2) was the first sequel to Master of Orion. ... The Space Empires series is a long-lasting series of 4X turn-based strategy games by Malfador Machinations that allows the player to assume the role of the leader of a space-faring civilization. ... // Ascendancy is a 4X science fiction turn-based strategy computer game for DOS. It was released in 1995 by The Logic Factory. ...

You cannot control ground combat; the result depends on numbers, ground combat technologies and (if one of the races involved is Bulrathi) racial ground combat bonus. But you see a display which tells you the number of units and the ground combat technologies used by each side.

The races

Players choose to be one of 10 pre-defined races - you cannot create customized races. The Klackons and Meklar have different types of advantage in industrial production; the Sakkra have very fast population growth; the Psilons are the best at research; the Mrrshans and Alkari have different types of advantage in space combat; the Bulrathi are the best at ground combat; the Humans have advantages in trade and diplomacy; the Darloks excel at spying and sabotage; and the Silicoids can colonize even the most hostile planets without any research and are not constrained by pollution, but are poor at research and have slow population growth.

Each race is above average in one research subject and below average in another, except that: the Psilons are above average in all areas; subject; the Silicoids are weak in all research areas except that they are above average in computers, which is useful for spying and sabotage.

Each race has a pre-defined initial relationship with each other race, varying from fairly comfortable to spoiling for a fight.

The races also have "personalities" which vary from one game to another when played by the AI. Their attitudes to other races can vary from honorable (reliable friend and unforgiving enemy) or pacifist to aggressive or xenophobic. And each has a major policy objective which guides their research and economic management; for example militarists build combat ships as fast as possible and prioritize technologies which have military benefits, while ecologists put a lot of effort into pollution control and terraforming. Their behavior varies from one game to another, because in both attitude and policy objective each has a most probable trait and two less probable ones (9 possible combinations per race).

Since a single game can include at most 6 of the 10 races and each race's behavior can vary so much, the early part of a game can range from quite peaceful to a whole series of wars. But any race will go to war if it thinks it has a significant advantage in production and technology.

Random events

From time to time there are disasters or emergencies which are not caused by the player's actions. These can be disabled by means of a cheat code. Cheat codes (also called debug codes or backdoors) are codes that can be entered into a video game to change the games behavior, alter characters looks and abilities, skip levels, or access other hidden features. ...

User interface

Initially the game was completely mouse-driven, but the version 1.3 patch introduced hot keys for many functions. In computing, a patch is a small piece of software designed to update or fix problems with a computer program or its supporting data. ... ...

The main screen. Color coded names indicate which empire owns each a star system. Red dotted lines warn of enemy fleets moving to a planet. All of the planetary management controls are displayed on the right.

Most of the main screen is a scrollable map of the galaxy. To the right of that is information about the last planet the player clicked on the map: "unexplored" if the player has not visited it; the maximum population and current owner if the player has visited it; the planet management controls if the player owns it. The buttons across the bottom access other screens. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...

Players use lockable sliders to allocate a planet's industrial output between ship construction (the icon for the selected type of ship is shown at the bottom of the panel), defenses, factory construction, ecology and research.

The Technology screen uses a similar set of lockable sliders to allocate research spending between the 6 technology areas.

Prequel and sequels

Star Lords, dubbed "MOO 0" by fans, was the foundation of Master of Orion.^[4]. Star Lords was an unpolished prototype and never commercially released (its intro opens with "SimTex Software and Your Company present"). Steve Barcia demonstrated it to MicroProse and to gaming journalist Alan Emrich, who got so enthusiastic that he and his friend Tom Hughes helped Barcia to refine the design.^[5][6] Emrich and Hughes later wrote the strategy guide for the finished product. Steve Barcia known tale in the computer game industry begins with the founding of Simtex Studios Inc. ... MicroProse Software, Inc. ... Alan Emrich is now best-known as a writer about and designer of computer games. ...

The prototype was made available as freeware in 2001, stripped of all documentation and its copy protection, in anticipation of the launch of Master of Orion 3.^[7] Though crude, Star Lords is fully playable. Major differences to the finished game include inferior graphics and interface, simpler trade and diplomacy, undirected research, a lack of safeguards that e.g. prevent the player from building more factories than he can use, and the use of transports to colonize new planets instead of designated colony ships. It does have a table of relations between the computer-controlled races, which Master of Orion lacks. The game is available for download on FilePlanet [1]. The term Freeware refers to gratis proprietary software with closed source. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... Copy prevention, also known as copy protection, is any technical measure designed to prevent duplication of information. ... FilePlanet is a video game download service that provides free game patches, mod files and media downloads to its users. ...

So far there have been 2 "sequels", Master of Orion II and Master of Orion 3. Despite the similar names, the differences in gameplay between the 3 games are about as significant as the similarities. And despite the sequels' more sophisticated graphics, sound and gameplay, some players prefer the original Master of Orion.^[8][9] Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares (MOO2) was the first sequel to Master of Orion. ... Master of Orion (MOO) is an intergalatic turn-based computer strategy game that was released in 1993. ...

References

1. ^ 5, 10, 15 Years Ago in CGW September 2003
2. ^ Master of Orion III Developer Chat
3. ^ Gamespy - Hall of Fame - Master of Orion
4. ^ Master of Orion: The History of a Game Series — Star Lords
5. ^ Master of Orion: The History of a Game Series — One Man's Telling of a Cosmic Tale
6. ^ MobyGames Star Lords page. Retrieved on 2007-03-08.
7. ^ Alan Emrich, Master of Orion: The History of a Game Series - Star Lords, Master of Orion 3 official site. Retrieved on 2007-03-08.
8. ^ Sirian's Master of Orion Page
9. ^ MOO Resources

External links

• Star Lords a pre-release version of the Master of Orion download
• Master of Orion series at MobyGames
• Sirian's Master of Orion Page includes resources and full game narrations for the first Master of Orion
• Bladrov's Palace, another fan site, hosting a number of resources for the series (I-III)
• FreeOrion, an open-source, platform-independent galactic conquest game in the tradition of the Master of Orion games.
• MOO Resources, original disk files, ship codes, editors, etc.