Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares/Starting a game

This page tels you how to start a new game. At present it covers only single-player games against AI opponents on your own computer. Start-up instructions for multi-player games depend on the the server and "clan" with which you're playing and are not yet covered - hopefully instructions for the major clans will be added later.

Start the right executable
Most of the available mods include a separate executable file. It's particularly to start the right executable if:
 * You're continuing an adjourned game.
 * You're starting or continuing a multi-player game.

If you opted to run MOO II via DOSBox (see Installation) make sure you start the right DOSBox configuration file.

When the program loads
You can skip the splash screens and go straight to the start menu by hitting the ESC key. The start menu's options all have hot keys:
 * C = Continue: MOO II automatically saves every 4 turns, and when you close the game down. "Continue" loads the automatically saved game.
 * L = Load game: Loads a saved game.
 * N = New game: Starts a new single-player game by displaying the New Game Menu.
 * M = Multiplayer: This displays the Multiplayer Setup Menu
 * H = Hall of Fame: Displays the 10 highest scores.
 * Q = Quit: Closes the game down.

New Game Menu
All of the New Game Menu's options work by clicking until it cycles round to what you want - there are no drop-down lists or radio button groups. It asks you to specify:
 * Difficulty level - "Tutorial" is easiest, "Impossible" is hardest. On the harder levels the other empires are stronger and more likely to be hostile.
 * Galaxy size. Small galaxies lead to very early contact and probably combat and / or attempts to steal technologies from you.
 * Galaxy age. The manual says "old" galaxies have more planets that allow farming but fewer rich or ultra-rich planets; while "young" galaxies are the opposite. But in practice there seems to be little difference.
 * Number of players. The greater the number, the sooner you make contact.
 * Tech level. MOO II has 3 starting tech levels:
 * "Pre-warp", where you have just 1 colony and no ships, and you have to research everything, including the basic interstellar travel techs.
 * Average, where you start with a small fleet and a few technologies. Note that if your race is not Creative the game gives you a random selection of technologies and they might not be what you would want. On the other hand a Creative race gets all the technologies in the levels that have been "researched".
 * Advanced, where you start with a slightly larger fleet and a few more technologies. Being Creative is an even greater advantage in Advanced starts.
 * Tactical or strategic combat. Always choose tactical combat, otherwise you can't design your own ships and can only use those generated by the game software, which are usually pretty poor. If you don't want hands-on control of combat, just click the "Auto" button at the beginning of each battle.
 * Whether random events are allowed. Most of these are bad news, unless you play with a race that has the "Lucky" attribute.
 * Where the Antarans are allowed to attack colonies. If they are not, you can't conquer them, which is the highest-scoring type of victory.

Race Selection
The next screen is the Race Selection Menu, which invites you select one of the pre-defined races or design your own. If you select a pre-defined race, no enemy empire will be of the same race.

If you select "Custom Race", you will see the "Select Race Picture" Screen. You have to choose one of the pre-defined race pictures, and you will not meet another empire of that race in the game.

Then you get one of the most important screens in the game, the Race Design Menu. The Game overview gives a very brief description of the options this offers, but you need to know a lot about the game to design an effective race.

Naming your ruler and home system
These 2 screens are easy - you can just click "accept" unless you want the Hall of Fame screen to contain a unique ruler name for each entry. The Ruler Name and Home System Name screens have a small bug - the maximum length of the name varies from one game to another and sometimes is as short as 6 characters.

Then you see the game's Main Screen, which is described in Game controls.

Get your colonies working
When the game starts, your workers are producing nothing and your scientists are researching nothing. If you just click "Next Turn" immediately the game asks you what you want to research and what you want each colony to build - but you've wasted a turn, and that could cuase you difficulties, especially in a small or crowded galaxy where you're likely to make contact with opponents very early in the game/