27.7.05

Master of Orion II - Bugs

1.31 and 1.4

This overview contains following sources: Lord Brazen's faq, 4381's bugs list, Gontzol's faq, the old Mooniac's Guide, antaren newsgroup, several moo2 boards and some further bugs, which were observed recently. I have verified almost all of these bugs. Exceptions are the bugs with the "reported by" comment. When you are aware of further bugs you can add them here under comments or in this thread. I will try to update this post.

Fixed in 1.4
Arti If you discover a system with artifacts you will loose the artifact bonus on the planet if you are not the 1st player to Turn. However you will still keep the technology discovered.
Blackhole Generator Doesn't work with ship initiative. It just immobilizes ships. Fixed in 1.4b23
Colony/Outpost Ship It is possible to land a Colony Ship or Outpost ship and still have it intacted the next turn.
Credit cheat If you have nothing in your build queue the excess production will be counted twice. You will get the extra BCs and the production is still stored
Last race LAN games crash when a player presses the Last Race button. Also, it is possible to pick the same race picture as an opponent in multiplayer games.
Leaders The game crashes when you go to view you ship leaders and you have no ships.
No Orion bug The noorion switch can cause crashes on FLEETS and LEADERS screen. Fixed in 1.4b20
Phasing Cloak (battle) Only one side decloacks after 10 turns in a MP-battle.
Repeat build It is possible to cancel the production of a repeat build item after it has been bought. This allows money to be converted to stored production. It can be exploited to purchase expensive items by cancelling multiple cheaper repeat built items over the course of several turns. Fixed since 1.4b19
Stealth field, Cloaking Device and Phasing Cloak (main map) Ships equiped with these technologies are still visable on the galaxy map by your opponents. They are visable at the same range as regular ships.
Tractor Beams
There is often a crash to desktop for one of the both players, when:
a) A ship with activated tractors moves.
b) An "immobile" opponent ship moves.
Gusset's hypothesis seems to be true: "If I get to move a tractored ship, and the ship armed with the TB is OFF-SCREEN when I am moving, the result is a crash." So in both cases (a and b) OFF-SCREEN tractor beam is the cause of the crash. Fixed in 1.4b23

SERIOUS BUGS (exploitable or without workaround)
Annihilation Under certain circumstances, annihilation can result in a planet with zero population. It is impossible to invade or bomb. Also, if an invader remains in orbit of this system it can prevent the invader from entering combat at other systems as well. This can be exploited to create a permanent outpost. Probably fixed in 1.4b22
Don't annihilate the whole pop. Click at the red sentence at the top of the colony screen to stop the annihilation when there is just 1 pop on the planet.

Arti When two players get an arti on same turn one doesn't get the special. reported by dirt-bag
Double Monsters Sometimes after you kill a monster it will return the next turn and you will have to kill it again.
Engage Battle & Settle Cship/OP -Pop up Sometimes it causes crashes to desktop. (Especially in the end game.)
Feudal bug MP-Opponents can receive the feudal ship bonus.
Fuel Cells, Warp Int Sometimes Fuel Cells and Warp Ints won't work (immediately) after stealing them (spying, invasion). You have to build a new colony or outpost in an uncolonized system to get the fuel cells update. (Warp Int fix unknown.)
Leaders Gizmo, Cyr, Draxx (?) etc. don't work properly. Gizmo and Cyr reported by Sky Bandit, Draxx reported by Mooniac-Guide
Navigator not working Travel distance is not calculated correctly if there is a nearby wormhole and your ships are not located at one of your own systems. You will have to return to your own system and then travel from there. reported by Lord Brazen
Navigator (Retreat) Retreating from combat can result in loss of your entire fleet if there is a wormhole in the retreat path even if you have a navigator. reported by Lord Brazen
No Outpost While Colony Ship Present Bug See also the "Not asked to land colony ship after choosing not to land outpost" bug mentioned by LB. This bug here occurs on pure asteroids/gas giant systems. Sadly, in this case there is no comfortable workaround. The Cship has to leave the system.
Optronics Computer Does not appear in the demand/offer or tech exchange list. Network Multiplayer only. Since tech exchange is generally banned this is just an issue for 2vs2.
Outposts (strategical combat) It is impossible to defend outposts. Even when the opponent lost the battle the outpost is always destroyed.
Phasing Cloak (battle) Using a Time Warp Facilitator, you can re-cloak in the same turn you de-cloaked, so the main limitation of cloaking devices / phase cloaks gets disabled.
Ship Capture When you capture several ships the battle can freeze. Similar lock up also occurs because of excessive use of stasis fields. So far, I observed this only against AI opponent. (Probably, autocombat issue.) Nevertheless, there are battles against Ais in xWays.
Soils (also with Autofacts/Rlabs)
In the round that you produce a building which creates a food production bonus, moving workers can result in the bonus being lost temporarily or a game crash. (This can also happen with autofacts and rlabs.) Doubleclick corn cobs (planet surface screen). Then move farmers again (in the table under COLONIES). Crashes reported by Lord Brazen
Travel distance Even without navigators the travel distance is sometimes inaccurate, f.e. you need just 2 turns with ion drive for a 9 parsecs distance. (Corrupted Maps.)

MINOR BUGS (comfortable workaround and/or exploits are easy detectable)
Androids Under certain circumstances it is possible that androids generate extra space on a planet. Note, that this extra space is not related to their tolerant feature!
Antares A Network-Game (not hotseat) doesn't finish after you won the battle at antares.
Autobuild Exploits similar to the credit cheat are possible. As long as this is unfixed autobuild should be banned.
Auto Factory This is whereby when scrapping a building from the Colony Screen, as soon as the mouse is moved over the building icon the game will crash. 90% of the time it is scrapping the Auto Factory that causes the crash. Do not scrap the Auto Factory. Avoid this screen.
Converted Lithovores When you are lithovoric and research Evolutionary Mutation, you can drop the "lithovoric". All you do is turn cybernetic on and off when you get to the race screen - then you have 14 new race picks to spend.
Display Bugs Several display bugs can appear. For example: System info when there is more than one colony ship present. The food per farmer entry in the planet info is generally incorrect for a race with food malus.
Intermittent Crashing Sometimes at the end of turn in Multi-Player the game will crash. Try running without sound. Run Setsound.exe and set Midi and Digital to "None". If the problem goes away then there is an issue with the sound driver / card. An AC97 sound based card is know to work well with Moo2. reported by 4381
Not asked to land colony ship after choosing not to land outpost When you choose not to land an outpost ship you will not be given the option to land your colony ship when present. You must select Colonize Planet manually after you cancel.
Orion Sometimes you gain some further non-xenon tech by defeating the guardian. It is not listed in the pop up.
Overpopulation Under certain circumstances, it is possible to overpopulate a planet with androids or captured races. This can be exploited to create a super planet.
Phantom missiles Sometimes there are missile stacks with a quantity of zero. This stack will proceed to target but cannot be shot down. It seems to do no damage.
Retreat from battle field Retreating from a battle can result in a game crash. It seems to only occur in LAN games when you retreat from the left edge of the combat area.
Shield Generator When your ship's shield generator is destroyed, and you're capable of repairing your ship, if your ship survives several next turns, the generator (as other items like comp or drive) will be repaired. But the repaired shield works incorrectly: it still blocks damage (e.g. class 5 blocks 5 damage from each attack), but it has no strength and it does not recharge.
SubspaceComm-range is due to rounding errors just 5 parsecs (the Online help states 6 parsecs). The fleet which leaves the starbase with 5 parsecs/turn is almost always out of subspacecomm-range. Details here.
Transport colonists+change profession bug When transporting colonists to a different job field on a different colony, the game checks the maximum of workers for the source planet, not for the target planet.

INACCURATE ONLINE HELP
Alien Management Center The Alien Management Center (AMC) removes the -20% morale penalty on multi-racial colonies. The Online Help does not mention that. Instead it states that the AMC assimilated aliens twice as fast and made them "work harder". This is not true. The manual is accurate: "This facility assimilates conquered populations at the rate of 1 per 2 turns, regardless of government. The adjustment for a Charismatic or Repulsive race is applied to this base rate."
Anti-Missile Rockets Contrary to the description, the chance to shoot down a missile is approximately 60% - 1% per square traveled.
Augmented Engines and BeamDefense Augmented Engines add +50 BD to the listed BD in the ship design screen, but only +25 BD is listed on the main map and in battle.
Beam Defense Racial Bonus For BD racial bonuses, the same value is also added to Missile Evasion. The listed value on the main map only uses half of this Missile Evasion bonus, but the full bonus (listed in battle) applies.
Fighters The Online Help does not provide or gives wrong information about the speed of fighters, which is 6 + 2x drive level for Interceptors, 2 + 2x drive level for Shuttles and 4 + 2x drive level for Bombers and Heavy Fighters. Basis hitpoints for interceptors (2) and bombers (4) are missing. Fighters' hitpoints are multiplied by your best armor, the same as for ships. The reduced armor bonus (mentioned under armor in the online help) for fighters does not exist.
Inertial Nullifier The Inertial Nullifier also adds +50 to missile evasion.
Inertial Stabilizer The Inertial Stabilizer also adds +25 to missile evasion.
Missiles The Online Help does not give any information about the speed of Missiles (which is 8 + 2x the empire's drive level). BTW also the manual is misleading: Missiles do not profit from better Armor technologies. Even with Xentronium, a Nuclear Missile can only take 4 points of damage, a Merculite 8, a Pulson 12, a Zeon 16.
No Instant Assimilation Bug You have to assimilate feudal colonists.
Psionics Psionics provides a +10% morale bonus on all planets under Feudal, Dictatorship, Confederation and Imperium governments. The Online Help states that the bonus only applied to Dictatorship and Imperium.
Scout Lab Bonus Bug Against monsters and when Defending against Antarans it provides always +20 beam attack, not +10 per ship size class as stated in the manual. And no Bonus during Battle at Antares.
Ship Crew Level The ship crew level (green, regular etc.) doesn't affect the ground combat value for raiding/boarding as it is mentioned in the manual.
Space Academies The Online Help states that Space Academies add +2 experience points per turn for every friendly ship in the system. In fact the number is +1 (and a further +1 is even added without academies). Also, the experience-points-per-turn-bonus (but not the starting level bonus) of Space Academies is cumulative: if you have a ship in a system with 4 Academies, this ship will get +4 experience points every turn. Since this is explained nowhere, I do not know whether this is a bug or just missing Information.
Spatial Compressor Damage ranges from 4 to 32 as listed, but is NOT increased by the target ship's size class.
Spies The 1 BC maintenance cost per spy is not mentioned. (Building Screen)
Spy Bonus/Penalty The Online Help states about the spy racepicks: "All offensive spies sent on mission will receive the full bonus/penalty, while defensive spies receive one-half the amount." This seems incorrect. The whole bonus/penalty is listed in the RACES screen.
Star Fortresses The Online Help states that Star Fortresses add +20% to offense and Defense of all friendly ships in combat. In fact this bonus applies to beam offense only. (or at least there is no *listed* beam defense bonus in battle)
Tolerant The Online help states that tolerant races treat all planet environments as Terran for purposes of maximum population. This is not correct. The correct max pop values are explained in the manual: "Races that are tolerant can use 25% more of a planet's surface for habitation, living in places no other race would dare and boosting the planet's maximum potential population. Thus, for example, while a typical race could live on 25% of a Barren planet, a Tolerant race could use 50% of the same planet."
(Just a 20% surplus for terrans -80% is already habitable - and no surplus for gaias.)
Torpedos The description for anti-matter torpedos lists an incorrect speed of
20; anti-matter torpedoes have a speed of 18.
And also Plasma Torpedos have a speed of 22 (instead of 24).

BUG OR FEATURE?
Android Morale Bug Android workers get morale bonus contrary to what is said in the manual or online help.
Battle Pods "Bug" Ships are faster when there is more unused space on them. This Unused space speed bonus is apparently calculated by the formula Bonus = (10 * ( unused space / hull size ) ) for every ship. The hull size in the formula is the base hull size of ships of that size class in the empire. By equipping your ship with battle pods, even a further speed increase is possible (details here under I.c) ). Be aware that megafluxers are treated differently than battlepods. This means that there is no DIRECT speed increase caused by "just adding" megafluxers on an empty ship. The intention of the game designers is unclear but I see no convincing reason for this difference (maybe there is a inactive battlepods malus) - (i.e. bug). See also here.
Beam Offense "Bug" When a Star Base is present, there is no bonus, but when there is a colony or outpost present that has no orbital base, the bonus is +10 BA.
Freighters Building a freighter generates an income of 5 BC.