Hey Guys. I decided to give MOO2 an other chance and playing with human. However, technology advancement seemed a little weird to me. You can choose only one from possible options and then you cant find the other technology.

Forexample.
Tech that gives you farm which produces +2 food.
Tech that makes your workers produce 3 food instead of 2.

Now, I choosed the first one to satisfy my urgent need for food. I thought I could research the second one when my empire gets bigger. But it disappeared. I cant choose it again. Is this the case or am I doing something wrong?

2nd question is about how technology is researched. In MOO there were 6 different categories and they were all separate. But in MOO2, it seems like you can advance in one of them and then jump to an other while its in the middle and it would continue as if you were researching there from the beginning. And I cant research more than one catagory at the same time. That is very annoying. Its a downgrade from MOO.

a 3rd side question. in MOO I was able to create like 1000 ship and crush my enemies. Will I be able to see this in MOO2 or will I always be stuck to 5-6 ships in total. Also, the ships that take damage stay damaged after the battle. So I am able to travel at light speed but not able to fix my ships after battle. This is a question without a question mark.

Tnx.
Engin.

#1: If you do not pick the "creative" trait, you will only research one tech in the actual tech field, with creative you get all at once.

#2: You can switch tech tree because you generate research points and those are used for the actual field you did choose

#3: The ammount of ships you can handle depends on your cash and command points, the more star bases you build, or the higher you upgrade them, the more command points you get. Every ship takes its ammount depending on size. If you used all, you can build more, but then it gets very expensive in upkeep. So 1000s of ships are not likely, but you can get over 100 if you want easily
The damage is healed if you have them on starbase or the right leaders on ships of your fleet ;)

Thank you very much. That was very helpful. +1

That means I am going to start a new game with creative feature. I am a tech guy afterall.

A really nice trait is Unification, too .... lower spying and ground combat to get both.

What i like most is then getting subterran, too. For this you would need low g world which gives quite malus till you get gravity generator, but then wow ...

Hey Engerek welcome to the wonderful world of Moo2.

Now I never played Moo1 so didn't have anything to compare Moo2 to, in fact Moo2 was one of the first games I every played on PC. Along with Heroes 3 and Master of Magic :P You can see how terribly spoiled I was right from the beginning of my gaming lol

I want to clear something up from your description it seems that you are playing a Mod version and not the original is this so? The reason why is the first category of research you mention seems like Hydroponic Farms and Soil Enrichment which are not in the same one in the original.

Normally for 80 Research points you have the choice between Hydro Farm and BIO SPHERES which give +2 Max Population and are the choice you should take.

Creative is an ok pick for beginners but beware because it is not actually that good as it seems since it takes 8 picks. You end up with a LOT of stuff that you will not use or that will be quickly replaced. There are of course several extremely good times Creative comes to the rescue though like very early choice between Auto Factories and Heavy Armor.


SHIP DAMAGE - Your Ships can be repaired but only if they stay 1 turn in one of your systems with a Star Base, which makes sense to me. Later on you will be able to learn a tech called Advanced Damage Control which will repair your ships after each battle fully no matter where they are.

Another way around this is a racial trait that I never play without anymore called CYBERNETIC and only costs 4 picks. This pick actually repairs your ships IN BATTLE along with fully repairing after battle. It also makes it so that your population uses 1/2 Food per population and 1/2 Production so you never need as many farmers.


FLEET SIZE - There are various ways to increase your "Command Points" that allow you to maintain a bigger standing fleet without paying through the nose. Each Star Base you have for instance gives +1, Tachyon/Subspace/Hyper Space communications will increase that to +2/+3/+4 each.
WarLord pick makes each COLONY give +2. However I do NOT advise you to do this.

In Moo2 your better off with QUALITY > QUANTITY. If you build your ships wisely then you will be happy. For example in the start my ships can take on 2-3 of the computers ships of the same size no problem.

Thank you very much Loynis. Actually I played MOO2 atleast 30 times before but got bored really fast. Only finished the game once on easy and that was with 1 ship only. I didnt enjoy it as much as I enjoyed MOO1.

I am not using any mods. I probably said something wrong.

I will add Cybernetic into my selection. Thank you for your suggestion.

I understood how to fix ship damage now. Thank you.

Question: Does that mean I can colonize ANY planet with my colony ship? Dont I need to first research "Colonization on Toxic planets" before i am able to colonize these planets?

You can colonize every planet, but toxic planets arent really juicy choices while other planets still around.

Toxic are the worst planets in MoO2 as there is a penalty on upkeep and they can never be terraformed unlike every other kind of planet.

Thank you Hohiro. I am guessing different planet types produce different amounts of resources. Is there a table where i can see it like...

Terran : Food = 2, Industry = 3 , Research = 3


like this for other planet types so i can know which planets are better suited for my needs.

Right clicking on a planet in the system screen will show that info. Mind that by default all planets have the same production/research output per population (though the presence of planet anomalies will change that) and the main effects of planet's fertility are food production and max population.

Ship repair have nothing to do with Star Bases. It require any colony or outpost, nothing more.

Calling the Cybernetic being of only 4 picks is, well, exaggerating. It cost a whooping 4 picks, not "only".
And actually Cybernetic not fully repairing the ships after battle (and neither IN BATTLE too, of course, thought it wasnt claimed). Good man Rocco had a special paper on that issue, in case you're actually a Cyber's fan - it could be interesting for you: http://www.spheriumnorth.com/orion-forum/nfphpbb/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=33507

Oh thank you Avo, I should make use of right click more often.