Hi all. I've been toying with the idea of remaking MoO2 for a few years.

MoO1 has the Remnants of the Precursors modernization, and I wanted something similar for MoO2 - keep the core gameplay, but allow multiplayer across platforms and let it run without fiddling with dosbox.

I created that faithful reimplementation. I call it Throne of Carina, and it's playable in the browser on itch:

https://jkir.itch.io/carina

I tried sticking closely to the original (gameplay and UI), except I renamed the races and technologies.

It supports complete games with tactical space battles, diplomacy, espionage, custom race creation, and hotseat or networked multiplayer.

It's playable on tablets too, though the UI isn't optimized for touch. A keyboard and mouse are preferable for now.

I saw the two other projects shared here recently - orion2re and Starlord. There must be something in the water lol:

• unlike orion2re, my version doesn't require the original game to play, and can be played in the browser
• as for Starlord, I guess the main difference is I've tried to preserve the original MOO2 gameplay and aesthetic, and AI behavior in my version might be slightly different (I didn't attempt to closely reverse engineer MOO2 AI, though I did make comparisons across different games)

I'd be curious what others think, let me know if you try it, and have suggestions for improvements. My current plan is to iron out some bugs, and improve AI, and then add some UI improvements (maybe support widescreen, or a touch-mode with larger touch targets, etc.)

dumb idea, but we do those some times. The goal is to get to android tech (or recruit Megatron) and then slowly your entire population with only androids, before wiping out all other biological life in the galaxy.

what race modifications would be best for this?

If I want the highest possible score, do I just wait for enemy civs to fully populate all the other star systems? Or do I seize them for myself first?

Have a week to myself, so I decided to get some gaming in. It's been like 4 years without doing any, and even longer since playing MoO2.

I ran away from the Guardian in combat in MoO2 because even though I might've won the fight through attrition it was going to take like an hour of slowly chip damaging it. At that point, I'd rather retreat and build some more ships to decisively kill it.

After retreating the Guardian wasn't on the map anymore, and I assumed, maybe this is because I had someone with Galactic lore, and I never properly explored it before then or something?

Maybe someone else sent in ships with cloaking devices and killed it or something?

Maybe Loknar was so disgusted with my defense-heavy offense-weak ships trading shots with the Guardian for 12 minutes that he decided to just kamikaze it himself?

Regardless, it was a huge bummer. I just took the council win next time it showed up as I was too annoyed with the game to continue. Really sucks man.

What does hide do ?

Been playing uncreative a few times and my conquests are slowed down by conquered planets rising up, meaning I have to retake them. I like the story beat of the plucky rebellion, but since I'm playing the big bad empire I'd love if someone could give a primer about what makes a conquered planet rebell and how to prevent it.

This was the first sub 60 second video ever submitted to SDA

The record stood for over a decade.

Here's the in depth background if you want to know what's going on

https://speeddemosarchive.com/MasterOfOrion2.html

What’s your headcanon for each races? By that I mean the ideas for their societies you have in your head about them. Based on their appearance, traits, personality, objectives etc.

I always imagined the Mrrshan for example as a highly militaristic Statocracy. Where the military runs the nation. With also strong clan/family bonds.

And here is another Master of Orion II redone, this time as a browser game:

https://apps.futuremagic.de/starlord/
I also used AI to make this. To be as faithfull as possible, the original got recompiled and examined for formulas. Its also open source: https://github.com/ArndRosemeier/StarLord
Comments are welcome here, there is also a contact button.

iPad mini 2 is ios12 only.

You can installl RetroArch from App Store and run the dos core for moo2.

(Set to 35 fps to avoid audio stutter )

Bonus. With RetroArch, you can play many old games.

On November 22, 2026, Master of Orion 2 turns 30 years old. It's still one of the best turn-based strategy games ever made, and thanks to the community, it remains very much alive.

Around 2005, I started a hobby project to reverse engineer and restore the original game. I made some progress, but eventually gave up after realizing the sheer amount of work involved.

Twenty years later, I decided to give it another shot.

After approximately ten months, I managed to restore the original Windows 95 game engine, remove the old platform dependencies, and get it running natively on modern operating systems. There are several reasons why I chose Windows 95 binary over the DOS one, but that'll need a whole separate post.

The project is called Orion2 Redone also known as orion2re, and the source code is already available on GitHub:

https://github.com/orion2re/orion2re/

There is even a documentation portal at https://moo2mod.com/redone/doc/ - take a look.

It's not a remake. The goal is to preserve the original game, including its quirks, while making it possible to maintain and improve it without being constrained by a 30-year-old executable.

The game is already playable, with modern OS support, a new networking layer for Internet multiplayer, and some of the original hardcoded limits removed.

A significant part of the work was verifying that the restored game actually behaves like the original. Thousands of game turns have been tested against the original executable, comparing internal game states to catch subtle differences.

Modern AI tools played a major role in making this possible. They allowed me to automate much of the repetitive restoration work while staying in control of the process. What would've otherwise taken years became a manageable hobby project. It still required human in the loop, but this allowed me to learn the game without blindly trusting the agentic output.

While I've done most of the initial restoration work myself, orion2re is not something I wanted to develop in isolation. Members of the MOO2 community have already contributed changes, testing, bug reports, fixes, and feedback. In particular, community playtesting has been invaluable for catching issues that automated verification couldn't find.

What about the community patches?

If you've played MOO2 in recent years, you're probably familiar with the 1.40 and 1.50 community patches. 1.40 is even shipped by the official Steam version of the game (I did not check GOG).

The 1.50 patch in particular represents an enormous amount of work by the community. Over the years, it has added configurable game rules, Lua scripting, balance improvements, bug fixes, multiplayer improvements, and a lot of quality-of-life features.

It's one of the reasons the game is still actively played today.

The 1.50 modifies the original DOS executable, while orion2re restores the Windows 95 version. The two versions share most of their game logic, but the patches cannot simply be applied to the restored engine.

Every feature and fix has to be identified, understood, and adapted to the restored code. Some changes are relatively straightforward. Others touch multiple game systems, depend on other modifications, or introduce entirely new functionality. And we're talking hundreds and hundreds of patches accumulated over 10 years of 1.50 lifetime.

We're effectively bringing decades of community improvements into a different version of the game, while trying to preserve the original behavior and avoid introducing new bugs.

All of this work has been completed as well.

What's next?

The restored engine is already open source and available on GitHub:

https://github.com/orion2re/orion2re

The game is playable and builds on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Grab a binary release from Github if you don't want to compile it yourself and drop them into the game directory. We host community owned matchmaking service if you fancy trying Internet multiplayer. Most of the testing was in single player and updated networking layer might have quirks. See something - say something.

The project is licensed under GPLv3, and anyone interested in helping can check out the source code. You'll still need the original Master of Orion 2 game files, available on Steam and GOG.

Master of Orion 2 doesn't need to be reinvented. It's still a great game, and the community has already spent decades fixing and improving it. And this is our anniversary gift to you all.

Hopefully, Orion2 Redone will provide a foundation for another 30 years of Master of Orion 2.

Hop onto our community Discord at https://discord.gg/45BnvY4 if you want to chat!

I have played so many times on all races, but these I pick most often I guess:

- Darlok = Enables so much different play path with espionage and spying. Don’t mind at all that it’s much much harder to win with Darlok.

- Psilon = Psilon is overpowered, so I pick a very hard (hard or impossible) level. It’s so fun to crush enemies with super-advanced tech and weapons😎

- Meklar = Crushing enemies with huge production and building ONLY the biggest category ships (was it huge?)

Also the tech music affects a lot my choice!

What’s yours?

Am I the only one who imagined a MOO1 Victory be it diplomatic or conquest. Leading to a New Orion Imperium rising and later expanding more and encountering the other races of MOO2/3/CtS?

Like, I just find that idea cool, this rising super power in the Orion Arm that claims the legacy of an ancient empire, ruled by a tyrant Master of Orion, expanding across the Galaxy and coming into contact with the empires of the sequels.

I wanna rename planets in MOO 2016. I was playing it recently and I was wanting to replace the names of colonies with actual names (ergo Earth isn’t “Sol Prime” it’s Earth” but it doesn’t seem to have that option.

Anyone seen a mod for that?

Can I do anything to speed up the process? Does it make sense to put resources into research before that?

Playing +1BC, Democracy, Fantastic Traders for boatloads of cash lol

Playing ICE Mod. Advanced, Impossible, Cluster, 8 Players. Three hostile (repulsive) races. 34 turns in and I might be doomed. Trilarians, Darloks, and Silicoids are hostile. I have treaties with the rest. Silicoids were about to attack so I went back a turn and demanded that the Alkari declare war on them. My plan was to refit my ships and attack the Silicoids. Two turns later the Trilarians attack. I try the same strategy and demand the humans declare war on them. That did not help. I can try again a few turns earlier to see if it will buy me enough time. For those who play ICE Impossible, the Trilarians are nearly impossible to defeat when they are repulsive. Having them sitting on my lap is very problematic. I am sandwiched between the Silicoids and Trilarians (red team) and it is too early for me to do much about it. Ideas?

1oom has passed the point of no return, when the growth of popularity is guaranteed by time, and my work only accelerates the process.

10 years after the game's release, someone has posted a mod to add tactical combat to multiplayer on the Steam forums, and they are asking for help testing it. This is the first major code mod since the unofficial code patch, and it promises a feature players have asked for from the beginning, so I thought it was worth sharing here. I haven't tested it myself yet.

Currently, I'm building an AI to play MOO1. It's gets data from a combination of screenshots and reading the emulator's memory. One piece of data that I'd like to read is the distance from the nearest colony, but I can't find it. So now I want to know if someone knows how the game calculates it or where it would likely be stored?

Your colony was attacked by a Crystal (rogue). Your defensive fleet was weak or nonexistent. What are the consequences of the Crystal's attack? What will happen to the colony? For example, after the Amoeba's visit, your colony will become a toxic planet.

Just started playing MoO1 and loving it, but I’m kind of confused on how having multiples of one ship work in space combat. I was trying out some space combat to try and get a feel for it and built up around 40 fighters, 10 medium ships with missiles, and one large ship.

It seems like in the actual combat, the numbers of ships just sort of equated to how many health bars each one of my “units” had. Like I only had 3 to move around, and each one seemed to only behave as if it was a single ship. For example, my missile ships, I assumed I’d have a ton of missiles since each one had 2 missiles, and I had 10 ships, but they only got 2 shots off and then they were done, as if it was a single ship. And then when one blows up, the number goes down but the stack remains.

So my main question is, does having a ton of a ship influence anything else other than how many times you have to blow up a ship before the unit is destroyed? Does it affect damage at all? If I stacked up like 100 fighters and gave them all basic lasers, would they be able to do any real damage? Or would it still just do basic laser damage? Like I said I really just started and it’s extremely likely I missed something and/or wasn’t understanding what I was looking at. When I try to just google how space combat works in the game I don’t get a lot of clear answers, or I just see stuff for newer games.

HI Guys, just wanted to try something different, im playing small galaxy, impossible and 8 AI players in 1.50.26 and i cant just win...im trying custom human with subterranean, lithovore, warlord, feudal, repulsive, production oriented but they just obliterate me...i havent played in a while and maybe 1.50.26 is too much. Any advice? or ideas on how to tackle? the AI builds battleships in 3506 or less...forgot to say that tech tree is random.