I've never played the game due to the negativity surrounding it, but could mods improve the horrid parts of the game?

I found one such site here: http://www.moo3.at/mods/

Let me know if there are any mods that can take a bad game and make it good.

I'm also curious about applying mods to Empire Earth III, but I don't know if there are any out there.

Given how awful everyone says it is, I'm surprised anyone has bothered to make mods for it.

While I can't vouch for the above linked mod creator, it's stated how one such mod there literally changes the whole game and even adds visual enhancements, effects, and sound improvements.

If anyone owns Master of Orion 3, and your willing and trusting to download a mod there, let me know how it goes.

If it's good I'd like to suggest it to other people, or even have GOG add it to their game to make the purchase seem that much more viable.

I hate seeing bad games on GOG. Just trying to see if I can help improve it. If not, that's ok too. At least I tried :)

I'd agree that maybe GOG should make a small mod spotlight for it, suggesting "Don't enjoy the way current game? Change it up here!" then link to a sticky post in the MoO forum explaining how to dramatically improve it. (I'd send a suggestion to Support. http://www.gog.com/support/contact/other_questions_issues

I also agree that, imo, GOG works best when they weed out the good from the bad. They can't always do that because of contractual obligations, but I've gotten better about not just parroting "bring more old games!". I'm here for the old stuff, but I'd rather see good games appear here than bad old games. (Of course, we've seen many good old games appear here recently, like Anvil of Dawn, Wizardry of course, and now Chaos Overlords; that's my personal favs to see appear.)

I agree that they should try to weed out bad games. On the other hand, given that MoO 1+2 really are true classics, I do think that the third game belongs here, regardless of how poor it is, just to have the complete series. Many GOG customers have a collector's mentality, and I imagine that many have bought MoO 3 even though they have no intention of ever playing it, just to complete their collection. The same thing applies to Simon the Sorceror 3D, and probably others as well. If one game in a series belongs here, then the whole series belongs here.

I completely agree! I too have the collectors mentality :D

Collecting games digitally is much like organizing a bookshelf, and when one book in the collection (whether it be by author, genre, or something else) it feels out of place to have one book in the collection with a big ol' coffee or tea stain soaking the pages or with a cover that's falling off it's bindings, or perhaps even missing pages or something else to deface the value. The same applies to wanting to improve upon the sour apples on a GOG collection.

I played MoO3 for a ages in college, never realised how shit it really was till i played MoO2

If you ever get the chance to load it up, let me know how it goes. To be honest, I've never played any of them. That said, I just purchased Master of Orion 1+2, as well as Master of Magic, just a few hours ago. I can't wait to get around playing them after all I've read and seen.

What your experience tells me is that MoO 3 CAN be enjoyable, especially when you don't have a previous game to judge it by.

I would think then, in theory, adding an extensive mod would improve the game and make it more enjoyable, like getting an old book an update with a new cover and restored pages.

Taking a moment to coast through the pages of MoO 3's reviews, I found some that are actually quite positive. I hadn't bbthered doing this before due to how bad the average review was, but I thought I'd post some here to show how other people viewed the game. Multiple people of which do point out the site and mod's I mentioned above in the original post:

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Fans saved this game.

Posted on 2010-08-04 00:20:53 by Incubuspawn's avatar Incubuspawn:

This game was released unfinished, we can only guess why. So it has a ver poor reputation. However there are 2 places you can go to get files to make this game a most worthwhile one to play.
http://www.moo3.at/ and http://bhruic.dyndns.org/patcher/ is a must to get fixes and great patches for the game. Without a visit to these 2 sites, you will be disapointed. I rated 5 stars to let you know how well the fan version is. 2 stars for released vanilla version.

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Flexible Strategy Game

Posted on 2010-09-06 15:40:46 by Aeiri's avatar Aeiri:

It seems the strategy game market is all into complex tech trees and insane amounts of learning. Master of Orion 3 has an AI for practically everything, which makes the game sort of unique.
While games such as Hearts of Iron 3 have automation in them, they don't really invite you to go ahead and allow the AI to control those parts of the game because ceding control of anything in that game cedes control of the gameplay experience.
Master of Orion 3 is much different. You control what you want to control (and you can micromanage basically everything), and you get as reward what effort you put into the game. For instance, I personally don't like tech trees, so I let the AI do that for me. I do all the scouting, do about 30% of the resource management, and do all of the combat. This provides me with a unique experience for myself that others might find less enjoyable. For others, they can let the AI control OTHER things, and have fun that way. For this reason, I call this a flexible strategy game.
One reviewer mentioned that you can just hit "Turn" constantly and still win. This is pretty much true, but this is a game about learning your own boundaries and expanding your strategy skills through taking control. Likening the mindless atitude toward the game to platforming games, would you like Super Mario Brothers if there was a pipe at the beginning of the first world that led you to the end of the game? Chances are, you'd try to play the game by going through the levels and not put up a stupid review saying it was too easy for you because you knew how to jump and press down.
For all those complaining about the game being buggy on release, this is the latest version (1.2.5), so those comments are only relevant to year 2003.
As for modding the game, there are a lot of bugs that were fixed by the community as well, which means that you probably should go through a little effort to play this game to it's highest potential, but isn't that the same as say Freespace 2, which is highly acclaimed as one of the best games ever?
If you want to play it right from GOG.com, here's a little list:
1) Install GOG's package; this installs MOO3 1.2.5
2) Download the Tropical Mod from http://www.moo3.at/mods/
3) Extract the contents of the Tropical Mod into a NEW DIRECTORY.
4) Delete "MOO3.exe", as this is a modified version of the original, CD checking EXE. They installed a bunch of patches, but those patches and patch software are included in the package.
5) Copy the contents over to your MOO3 directory.
6) Run "Moo3Patcher.exe"
7) Hit "Install" on the DLL installer.
8) Step through all the patches one by one, hitting "Patch" to patch GOG's EXE.
9) Run MOO3.exe
This worked fine for me even in Linux using Wine 1.1.42.

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Needs 3rd party patches and mods to work well

Posted on 2011-09-04 17:16:49 by OrionStyles's avatar OrionStyles:

The meta game-play is complicated to understand, and this game has a crippling bug that prevents the AI from using troop transport fleets.
You can fix many problems using Bhruic's 3rd party patching (sort of complicated)
http://bhruic.dyndns.org/patcher/
Or you can play the ultimate version of Moo3 by using Pedxing's chocolate mod (which revamps gameplay and uses Bhruic's fixes) and is installed with a simple copy paste.
http://www.gamefront.com/files/14237421/chocolatev0.999.zip/
I would give this game only 2 stars if it wasn't for the modding fixes, but with these, it's a 4 star game if you like to run empires.

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So there has been support for MoO 3 in this fashion.... I might just take the leap and buy it soon to see if such mods really can make it work and appeal to my tastes. I'll be sure to soak in 1+2 well before I attempt 3, however.