I've been trying to get into MOO2, and as much as I enjoy the game, I'm terrible at it even on easy. I haven't managed to win a single battle. This problem goes a bit further than MOO2 to just about any 4X game I've ever played. I really like them, but equally, I really suck. I think my biggest problem is research. No matter how hard I try, I always seem to end up getting left behind in the research race, and not only that, there's so many different things to research that I find it hard to decide what I should get. I'm not sure if this is the only reason I find the battles hard, or whether it's because I'm also terrible at designing ships.

So many weapons and equipment that, again, I just can't figure out what I should use. I've read the manual a few times over, but it's not very enlightening. Any tips you guys might have that could help me out a bit? Cheers.

You might try looking at these (if you haven't already):

[url=http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion_II ]MoO2 on StrategyWiki[/url] (this is mostly concerned with muliplayer games - you may not want to pick "Repulsive" as much in single player)

really useful FAQ

another FAQ

I've found the game is easier when playing a custom race, rather than one of the stock ones.

Regardless, you want to make sure your earliest research includes Research Lab (this is the first thing I get if not on Pre-Warp) and Automated Factories. The research and production boosts for those are vital in the early stages. Planetary Supercomputers is another good one to get quickly. After that it really depends on the race you're playing - for example, high pop races (Subterranean and many Tolerant ones) may want to head for Soil Enhancement to keep everyone fed (and free up population for production/research).

If you have other decent planets in your home system, it's a good idea to colonize those as well. For that matter, a system with two or more planets is generally a more attractive choice for colonization than a single planet system. You can use colony bases to grab the other ones, and it's much easier to defend say, three planets in one system, than three planets in three systems.

In the beginning, you'll want to keep 1-2 guys producing (colony base, colony ship, battleship - anything that'll take a while to build) while everyone who isn't farming researches. Once you've got a new building (like the Research Lab), put it on top of the build queue. The production that's been built up will transfer to the new item - often this may mean it's finished in one turn.

Scout every planet you can reach to find the best place to colonize. Never send a colony ship to an unexplored system. Scouting can also give you bonuses if you're the first one to visit a system (marooned leaders, money, tech from Artifact worlds). If you get Battle Scanners, it's not a bad idea to refit your scout design to include these, as the scanners increase detection range. I often keep one or two scouts out at my maximum range; with luck, they'll allow me to spot alien ships before I've come into contact with them. It's very useful regardless of whether you want to make contact or avoid it.

Armor is really useful. I can't count the number of times I've slaughtered AI fleets because they were still using Titanium armor in the mid to late-game. Usually, I go for Zortium after getting the stuff mentioned above.

The weapons I use vary, but generally early on I'll rely mostly on frigates and maybe destroyers armed with MIRVed nuclear missiles. Those may be back up by a cruiser or battleship armed with lasers (you'll want Battle Scanners on those). After that, it's usually Fusion Beams or Neutron Blasters on the heavier ships. The smaller stuff will get either MIRVed Merculites or Anti-Matter Torpedoes (once I can put all the mods on those). Sometimes the Battleships will be armed with torps as well - depending on tech and what special equipment you include, you can cram from 5-7 fully modded AM Torps (plus some point defense fusion guns) into a battleship hull. It's like throwing sledgehammers at people :)

Another interesting way to outfit a ship is with Neutron Blasters plus Transporters. Kill all the marines on the target, beam aboard and just capture it. Those are great for stealing tech (and scrapping 'em gets you extra cash). I may still put an anti-matter torpedo on those for the extra firepower.

If you haven't seen it, there's a thread on Early Weapon Design that ought to be useful.

On the Diplomatic front, never enter an Alliance unless you are dead certain you have no chance of surviving without it. Your "Ally" will often drag you into wars, then make peace with the yahoo he asked you to attack. :P Tech trades are usually a good idea, though you should never, ever trade stuff that gives a Spying bonus.

Hope that's of some help.

In addition to all the great advice Techromancer gave you can also start with an easier race like Psilons or a custom race with the creative attribute - under custom races you can also give yourself more "picks" than are allowed (negative picks), but you take a hit at the end of the game when you get your score for doing so. However, if you are having difficulty just learning the ropes of the game, that might not be such a bad thing to do to give yourself an initial edge.

Different ships go with different play-styles. For instance, on a number of games I like to use mass drivers and missile ships early on, with a combination of fighters/bombers + beam weapons mid-way, and torpedoes + beam weapons late game. I then outfit my ships with lots of inertial dampers and speed. Others may have very different builds depending on what tactics they want to use in battle. The important thing is to check your weapons and ships and try to build ships that complement or supplement your current fleet. Unfortunately nothing replaces sheer familiarity with the weapons tech in this regard, but in general you'll find it pretty straightforward to figure out what counters what. And you can always refit a ship if you change your mind. :)

Thank you for taking the time to write all that, Techromancer and crazy_dave, it's very helpful. I will start up a new game tonight maybe and give it another shot. Perhaps I will also try a custom race. I've been playing as humans simply because I'm a xenophobe and don't like the idea of playing as an alien race, but I don't think they get very good bonuses, at least for me, as my play interests revolve less around diplomacy and more about wanting to invade planets and destroy.

Yeah, the Humans are better as diplomats, though it's MoO1 where they really want to stay at peace. It's simple to set up a custom race to replace 'em though.

One variation I use occasionally are the SubTerrans (humanity crawled out the fallout shelters and then leapt for the stars!):

Democracy (7), Subterranean (6), Large Homeworld (1), penalties to Ground Combat (-2) and Ship Defense (-2).

A huge population helps out a lot, especially combined with Democracy (extra cash and research). They need Soil Enhancement (and Terraforming helps out later) to feed everyone as well as techs to overcome Demo's -10 defensive spy penalty. There's nothing fancy about 'em, but they make a respectable research race.

That is the problem people tend to have with moo2, they are used to "easier" games like the civ-series, where technology is just king, in moo2 i can easily defeat you navy with class IV shields and high tech proton missiles, with simple class II shield, mass-driver(continous) battlecruisers (given u use the +50% beam ability).

This game is very much about 2 things:
1: ship design and management, you have to try/fail to learn how you want your ships, back when i was a kid i tended to play on only easy or average, and at that time it worked fine just using missiles and anti-missile rockets.
These are easy to manage, seeing as all you need for your ship is the simple weapons, maybe the reinforced hull if you'd like, but its not neccecary.

2: THe empire management aspect, this is quite simplistic, the planet part follows the civ modell, build buildings for their bonus, no upkeep of buildings etc, easy peaz.
Diplomacy in this game is rather simplistic, focus on getting non-agression pact with all races that you dont want a lot of war with, the AI is very friendly in the sense that it tends not to backstab, and it follows the rules of diplomac quite accurately.
Alliances however, is a very dangerous path, they drag you into ALL kind of wars, i tend to play without allying.

At the first stage which your at right now, you don't really need to focus on what race you pick or customizing, you first should just feel out the game and learn to win, psilions is the race id advice you, they have "creative" meaning basicly you dont have to think about the technology you pick for research as you will eventually get them all.
Their negatives are also quite easily negible 1's like groundcombat, which allmost allways is overpowering victory on 1 of the sides anyway.

Focus on production in the early stages, you want to expand and grab as many good planets as possible. I play with unification to help this along. My first few research picks are usually: research lab, automated factory, biospheres and deuterium fuel cells. By turn 100 or so, you'll want at least one battleship with MIRV nukes (research two levels of chemistry above standard tech level to get that upgrade) to avoid being an easy target, especially on impossible or hard difficulty.

Mye Favored Race design goes so.
Subterran / Kreative / Unification.
Malus to Reproducing / Space and Ground fight and Spying.

Techwise i go 1. Res.Lab than 2. Farms ( because you can save 1 person for research so you loos not a singel turn to get 3 Automatet Faktories.
4: Mostly a Rocket for better deff and good offence for your ships with better armor.
5. Next Research Lab ( forgot the Name ) than to . Cloning for better pop. Sometimes Terraforming too.
7. Rockest and other low techs. Maybe a better Faktory too.
8: Auto Lab = 100% Win because than you can take all researchers to produce Ships or enhance Pop growth and so on.
You can research anithing you desire between the points i gave.

PS: In the beginning without Cloning facility dont build Homes for Pop groth. Build Starbase with idle workers because you can save produktion for your Faktories/Labs to build them really fast after research.

I play like that in the hardest level and its mostly easy even if you start bad with location or eraly wars. Rockets for the Win. :P
BTW dont put in the beginning armor enhancments in your ships. Take better more Rockets and only 2 Shots each with seperated stacks ( 4-5 mostly enough to kill all early ships).
After Autolab tech to Graviton Ray + Shield 3 and build many ships its a very exelent Tech and take out easily the Guardien. When lucky you get the Deathray and are now Victorius.

Everyone above has better tips than I can offer but I'll try to put out a blurb or two:

- as your tech advances, check into redesigning or retrofitting existing craft. Even if you're not going to change the basic loadout, you can usually add more weapons or get the same ship for less cost. This is because subsequent tech advances in the related field also comes with a decrease in size and cost for older techs within that same field. Kinda nice when you find a ship design that works well, and maybe the newest tech advance doesn't give you better weaponry, but you can now add a few more fusion beams and save some credits in the process. I find this especially important for colony ships, since tech advances will shrink systems enough that you'll be able to make a couple significant changes to that design: extended range fuel tanks so you can colonize those distant planets your scouts find, and you'll soon enough be able to mount the colony planet system into a smaller hull, making for a much cheaper colony ship.

- do not ignore the special systems for your ships such as scanners, hull armor boosts, research labs, etc.

- As you're designing ships, pay attention to the results of the changes you make, for things such as maneuvering speed, missile defense, turn rate, etc. Even though a choice might be an 'upgrade', it may not actually change those calculated values.

- In combat, note that you don't have to fire all weapons at once. You can click on each weapon to turn it on or off, so if you're targeting a ship that's nearby and almost dead there's no point in firing missiles AND beam-type weapons. Turn off the missiles, fire the beam weapons to destroy the ship, and then use the missiles against a different target. Likewise, you can turn off individual beam and missile weapon types in case you've mixed your design with, say, mass drivers and lasers.

- You also target incoming missiles and torpedoes manually, though not all beam-type weapons are capable of this. You do not need the Point Defense option to do this. Just target the missile group like you would a ship, and the beam weapons will take a shot at the group. This is handy if you have an incoming salvo of missiles and the opposing ships are are out range of your beam weapons. You may take out only a couple missiles but it's better than having your beam weapons do nothing for that turn.

- Add a weapon to your colony ship designs, but you won't need to mount many weapons. Kinda sucks, in the early game when you don't yet have the economy to escort your colony craft with warships, to have your colony ships parked / staged at the edge of your range and a lonely laser-equipped fighter comes along and forces your colony ship to retreat back to the nearest friendly system just because the ship can't fight off that tiny craft. Likewise, add a weapon to your scouts once 'technology shrink' allows you to do so in the tiny hull. This can be handy in the early game to force your enemies' unescorted colony ships to retreat back home (though they may retreat even if you're unarmed).

Just wanted to note that MOO2 is 100 times easier to get the hang of if you turn off "strategic combat" (or "tactical combat," I can't remember) for the first few games. That way you can focus on learning how to manage colonies and familiarize yourself with the technology/research options, as well as diplomacy. You won't have to worry about ship design or combat, so you won't have to learn everything at once. Games are also a lot shorter so you can explore more options in a relatively short period of time.
I was totally overwhelmed when I first started playing, but having colony management down before getting into the more tactical stuff made it much easier for me to get into. Hope this helps.

Except that the AI builds crap ships most of the time, so you really want to have tactical combat on.

On the other hand when the Player does not know what he/she/it is doing then the design can be much worser.
The Ai only places to many unneccecary items/weapons in their designs like when they have Antimater Torps they put a few heavy Neutronblaster too in their design with targeting comps for ray weapons and such obvius silly things.

Can there be made a value for weapons so that the AI is not tempted to put good Weapons with weakweapons in the same design. Ok i know that a Nukrocket with the instant kill upgrade ( Emission Guidiance ) can be really dangerous but only Graviton+ weapons are much more dangerous eaven without enhancements. Ok you need a good targeting comp for that. :P

Yes, but you can also take advantage of the fact that the AI opponents ship designs are sub-optimal. You aren't going to figure out ship designs and fleet combat by ignoring it. Besides, it's one of the best features of the game.

Yep youre complete right.
it would be awesome when someone could code an AI which would be able to make things like to fire a few normal Rockest together with an Emission Guidance Rocket.
The normal Rockest for Shieldbreaking and Emission Guide Rocket for Finishing.
Maybe its possible to make Templates for it ? I think i dream to much. ;P

If the AI bothered to use stuff like Inertial Stabilizer and Achilles Targeting Unit more, it would be a good start...