Master of Orion

aka: MOO, Master of Orion 1, Master of Orion Classic
Moby ID: 212
DOS Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/23 11:32 AM )
Included in See Also

Description official description

Master of Orion overlaps with Civilization insofar as you are the leader of one of several races. Technological advance, realm expansion and combat are all key elements. Where it differs is in being set in space.

The planet Orion itself is a lush, fertile planet with vast mineral resources. It is guarded by the Guardian - a powerful vessel which you have to defeat in order to plunder Orion's riches.

As you attempt to expand your empire, you will have to trade and steal technologies form rivals, again much like Civ. Your ships can be improved over the game, in terms of engine power, shields, cloaking devices and weapons, and different combinations of these can be integrated. Resource management is largely set using sliders, which reduces the amount of time spent on micro-management.

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

43 People (29 developers, 14 thanks) · View all

Designer
Programmers
Sound Software
Artists
Music Producer
Music Composer
Lead Testers
Manual Art
Package Design
Manual Writer
Manual Design & Layout
Producer
Director of Publications
Product Manager
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 76% (based on 16 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 111 ratings with 10 reviews)

A great game.

The Good
First of I liked the gameplay, it is just wonderful. You can pick from about 9 different races, all with their various strenghs and weaknesses. You then pick your name and your homeworld's name, and a color for your flag and ships. You then go into the main gamescreen where you control the game. There you can colonize worlds and build ships and send fleets to do war on the other races. You win by being elected govener of the universe. If you like strategy games you'll like Master of Orion.

The Bad
At times it was irritating that the diplomacy was as limited as it is, but thats a small complaint.

The Bottom Line
Master of Orion is a great game, that is easy to learn, but hard to master, as the old maxim goes. Definently a game that any strategy gamer should own, and if you like sci-fi games, this should be in your game library.

DOS · by Wolfang (155) · 2001

The pinnacle of 4x gaming, infinitely playable even today, and one of the only empire games that eats formulaic players for breakfast

The Good
Master of Orion is brilliant. Genius. An absolute and inarguable classic. One of a handful of games that never leaves my hard-drive. What's so great about another nineties empire builder? Isn't it just Civilization in space? Not by a long shot. Its true mastery lies in its never-surpassed focus on variety and flexibility, and to that end it brought much needed innovation to anemic aspects of the empire-builder genre such as diplomacy and research. It also is the only 4x game ever that casts the player as a galactic emperor in a satisfying way.

One way to determine the unique excellence of MOO is to look at its peers. What kills the vaunted replayability of 4x empire games? What kills the wonder, the excitement? The formula player, excessive micromanagement, and a drab, impersonal, spreadsheet presentation of the world.

Civilization and nearly all its kin must bow in time to the formula player, the fellow who sits his ass in a chair long enough to learn the "One Strategy." Once found, it always beats the game dead barring only a small degree of variance from randomized maps and starting locations. The best formula players can even triumph from the lousiest of starts. After this formula is mastered, the once wide-open gameworld that seemed so free, varied and "alive" becomes dead and empty. There are no more surprises. Beating the game becomes like solving the same crossword puzzle over and over. MOO dodges this bullet through the ingenious design of its playable races, research system, and diplomacy.

Oh, the races of this game! Superficially the ten playable races are mostly unimaginative anthropomorphisms (kittens, insects and bears, oh my!), but the personality and balance of these sci fi cliches are a major factor in the game's success. Usually 4x games either make their races too wildly different or too drably alike. The result is a total failure of balance or bland, impersonal sameness. Orion's balance isn't perfect--there are strong and weak races, and while any race can become dominant you will see a few that regularly run away with the game. The shining beauty of MOO's races, however, is their -variety-.

From the player side, there are hard-coded advantages possessed by each race. Each race has a unique bonus and some accompanying weaknesses that demand a slightly different style of play: the rock-creature Silicoids can colonize any planet and don't have to worry about waste, but their birth rate is very low; the Darloks are shapeshifters and thus supreme spies, but as a result every race mistrusts them from the start, resulting in often-precarious relations with one's neighbors. This forces the player to play each race differently--if you play the Darloks with a Silicoid strategy, you are going to lose. The elegance of this system is not only the usual "advantage/disadvantage" balance, but the fact that those inherent advantages may be duplicated or overcome by the other races. Want to match the Silicoid advantage of colonizing everything? Research planetology. Want to master espionage and render the Darlok spy network toothless? Research computers. Research, research, I hear you say--what about the Psilons, whose advantage is superior research ability? Take a few of their factory-rich planets, spend lots to spy on them, or bomb them to extinction, and you will steal enough of their tech or otherwise negate their advantage.

This focus on personality and variety extends to the AI's handling of these races as well. In addition to the static advantages/disadvantages, each AI race is given a personality and purpose. One affects their diplomatic actions, the other affects their research and production choices. This isn't static, however--each race has dominant personalities/purposes and subordinates, one of each being assigned randomly each game. Thus one game you may be squaring off against Aggressive Ecologist Bulrathi, but the next you might encounter the same race as Honorable Industrialists. Moreover, if enough of their worlds go into revolt or they are losing badly, there will be a coup and a new emperor will come in with a production/personality style that is better suited to the situation at hand--brilliant! These traits are not wholly random, either--each race has a defined range of personalities and purposes. Thus they retain unique identities without becoming static or predictable formulas, -and- since there is a controlled random element you can never be sure what kind of Bulrathi you are dealing with until you meet them. One personality set can be strong in one situation, and yet in another can be helplessly weak. Viva variety!

Speaking of which, the tech tree is almost a greater work of genius than the races. Each race researches the same tech tree for each of the 5 disciplines, but nobody's trees are complete--each race is missing techs from their trees, and in each game what's missing changes. This is random, but carefully controlled to prevent any game-breaking lack of tech. The result is -variety-. Your neat little formula for explosive expansion will hit a huge snag if you lack a necessary propulsion tech and therefore don't have the range to get any colony ships beyond your interstellar backyard. You might have a huge population, but be behind in production if you are missing factory controls tech from your computers research tree.

Thankfully, the tech system allows for you to mediate the damages. First, you can steal tech by invading worlds or by spying, and secondly the disciplines compensate for each other. If you can't get the range you need in propulsion tech, a little construction research will allow you to miniaturize reserve fuel tanks enough to increase your range anyway. If you can't get factory controls in computer tech, you can research planetology to reduce the cost of cleaning up waste, pouring the savings back into production. The tech system is flexible, it's robust, and it makes every game different. You can't just waltz to victory using the same research path every game as you can in Civilization--one crucial tech missing can thoroughly wreck any pre-planned strategy. MOO is situational. You need to adapt, and it makes the game incredibly exciting and fresh on each playthrough. It also will eternally frustrate formula players. :-)

Diplomacy is yet another area in which MOO excels. In Civilization, if you attack or an enemy attacks, that's it. You're at war. Not so in MOO. You and the AI will often have -cold wars-, where ships battle and spies plot, but trade continues and nothing hostile is declared. The AI will often "test" your weaker border worlds in this way when the galaxy is mostly colonized and there's nowhere else to expand but in your backyard.

Naturally, such tension will strain relations, which is a defined by a simple bar ranging from red (feud/hate) to green (amiable/calm, etc.). There are starting relations defined between races (the birds and cats hate each other, for example, and everyone hates the Darloks), but can be modified through player/AI actions. All of the actions that change relations make sense and feel remarkably intelligent. Gathering a fleet on the border will raise tensions, as will having your spies caught in an act of espionage or sabotage. Personality of the AI race also is a factor--negative diplomatic actions will have their impact doubled and positive actions will be halved in impact when dealing with a Xenophobic race, for example. If a race is pacifistic, the opposite holds true. So much variety! You can bribe and threaten to hold off war or invasion, you can collapse a delicate network of AI alliances into a total free-for-all of war by manipulating one of the allies, and you can make solid friends with trade and tribute or by attacking races they hate.

This works brilliantly. Meklars running away with the game? About to send a thousand-ship death fleet against your most valuable planet? No problem. Grease the wheels with some bribes and get the whole galaxy to declare war on them--they'll soon be too busy to concentrate on you. Silicoids marching to a diplomatic victory in the Senate? Steal some tech from the other races and frame the Silicoids until even their best friends mistrust them, denying them valuable votes. The diplomatic model is beautifully flexible.

There are so many other wonderful features to this game. Spying, ship design, the concept of Orion itself--this review is too long already to mention them all. So many great stories can be told within its framework--I'll always remember the game where an unstoppable Meklar fleet full of the population-nuking Doom Virus was approaching and I only triumphed through creative ship design. The "good" of this game is beyond the scope of any readable review, and this is longwinded and didactic beyond any standard of readability already. :-)

I will say however that MOO masters one last thing that is crucial--limiting micromanagement to acceptable levels, yet still allowing a fine degree of control. Its sequel missed out on this (as do many other space empire games) completely. I'm the flippin' galactic emperor! I don't want to be bothered with building individual farm buildings on each planet in a multi-parsec empire! Yet if I -do- decide to tweak a planet's production to a specific degree, I want to be able to do it without a lot of red tape or bureaucrats. MOO's simple, abstract slider production system allows for this. It maintains scope and ease without sacrificing control.

The Bad
With such a vast game, there are always going to be flaws. Some are serious bugs. The negative ship bug (when a 16 bit unsigned integer flips over) can break the game, for example. Some of the technological variety gets overwhelming and confusing, and the in-game descriptions often need to be carefully read from the tech screen before you know what you're doing. The tactical ship combat AI needs a -lot- of work, as the computer does some very stupid things. Given the variety of all the ship gizmos, that shouldn't be too surprising. :-D

The diplomatic penalty for being too huge and powerful is fair but a bit excessive--it's not as bad as Master of Magic's, though. Also, it would be great to set a cap on missile base production, since if you leave the slider up for a few turns you can get huge unnecessary numbers of bases that drain your funds most thoroughly.

But these are all minor complaints! Forget them!

The Bottom Line
For flexibility, variety and elegance MOO can't be beat. Each game tells a meaningfully unique story that is truly emergent from a few well designed variables: the difficulty levels, the galaxy sizes, the present opponent races (and their personalities!), your chosen race, the unique tech trees, the quality of planets (poor, rich, artifacts). Each experience can feel fresh and full of possibilities, and the game is unique in its capacity for rewarding adaptation and situational thinking rather than rote formulaic play. Genius!

DOS · by J. P. Gray (115) · 2008

Space Conquest just got much better

The Good
I loved the motivation to stay up past 5 AM trying for that last turn that would bring my victory! Then having to keep playing because there was just too much to this game! The balance between all the technologies and races. The ability to randomly generate new galaxies that may or may not give me a starting advantage.

The Bad
The only problem I can see is with the AI. They all use basicly the same system of building up massive fleets and going at it. There really isn't anything missing without comparing it to the improvements in the sequel.

The Bottom Line
The 4X space strategy title that built the genre. Even though this game has been beefed up with the release of the 2 sequels, it is still worth playing to see where it all started. I still play it today.

DOS · by MaiZure (59) · 2003

[ View all 10 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Help me get into this game Mobygamesisreanimated (11069) Apr 29, 2009

Trivia

Jerry Pournelle

Famous Sci-Fi novelist and long time technology columnist Jerry Pournelle frequently mention his appreciation for Master of Orion i his Chaos Manor columns. He's often stated its one of his all time favorite games.

References

When playing against the Meklars, one of the names for the leader (picked randomly from a pool in the NAMES.LBX file) is TX-1138. Likely a reference to George Lucas's movie THX-1138, which he himself has referred to in little in-jokes throughout the Star Wars movies.

Star Lords

Star Lords was a sort-of prototype game for Master of Orion. It was released as freeware in 2001.

Spaceward Ho!

Master of Orion borrows several game elements from Spaceward Ho!.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • June 1994 (Issue #119) – Strategy Game of the Year
    • April 1996 (Issue #141) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #33 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
  • Game Bytes
    • 1993 - Strategy Game of the Year
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #64 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • Gaming World
    • 1993 - Premier Award Computing
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2000 - #37 in the "Readers All-Time Top 50" poll
    • October 2001 - #31 in the "Top 60 Games of All Time" list (They go on to credit the game for the creation of the '4X' genre of strategy gaming ('explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate').)
    • April 2005 - #44 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • Pelit Magazine
    • 1994 - Best PC Game
  • Strategy Plus
    • 1993 - Strategy Game of the Year

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Entorphane, Michael Palomino, PCGamer77, Scott Monster and Technocrat

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Master of Orion 3
Released 2003 on Windows, Macintosh
Orion: Prelude
Released 2013 on Windows
Orion Quest
Released 1984 on Commodore 64
Orion Burger
Released 1996 on DOS, Macintosh
Star Wraith 3: Shadows of Orion
Released 2002 on Windows
Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares
Released 1996 on DOS, Windows, 1997 on Macintosh
Invasion Orion
Released 1979 on Apple II, TRS-80, Atari 8-bit
Master of Magic
Released 1985 on Commodore 64, 1986 on ZX Spectrum

Related Sites +

  • 1oom
    unofficial game engine recreation under GPLv2 - requires a copy of the Master of Orion (v1.3) LBX files.
  • Fan-made Patch 1.40m
    fan-made patch for Master of Orion (v1.3)
  • Master of Orion on the Mac
    An article on Low End Mac about the Macintosh version of the game. The writer describes his experiences originally running the game on his PCs when it was released and his attempts to enjoy the game on his Macs. The article effectively takes the form of a retrospective appreciation of the game, with an underlying point regarding the backwards compatibility of Apple's hardware (Jul. 1st, 2008).

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 212
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Tomer Gabel.

Macintosh added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: Kalirion, Zeppin, Patrick Bregger, Plok, J D.

Game added August 13, 1999. Last modified January 28, 2024.