I picked up the early access on Steam last week. Played two games on it spending about 10 hours total so far.
Feels like a graphically updated version version of MOO2. Basic game play is similar, races are familiar,tactical combat supported, ship designer there, and the technology tiers are the same as well.
The races have minor bonuses that don't seem to have a large impact as MOO2. But in the old game some of the traits are game breaking so it's not that bad of a change. Diplomacy is pretty limited. You can have trade agreements, non-agression pacts and trade tech. AI gets angry with you for having a large empire and there doesn't seem to be a way to make them happy after that. Would like the diplomacy options to be more fleshed out.
Combat can be simulated or tactical. Tactical combat is not turn based. Instead you can pause combat and issue commands as needed. Currently feels a little clunky when selecting ships and issuing orders. Abilities like, black hole or subspace teleporter can be manually activated. Missile boats and kiting enemy ships seem stupidly over powered. In the end though, brute force wins out over tactics.
There is a standard tech tree which anyone can research but on some techs you will need to make a decision over one or another. Such as you can only pick reinforced armor or reinforced hull. You will not be able to get all the technologies so you will need to plan for what you need and trade for the rest.
Ship designing is there as well. You can select how to load out each class of ship that you want from weapons, armor, shields, special equipment. You have the ability to specialize ships into missile boats, gun ships, carriers and planet destroyers. Interface could be better though and right now the only way to upgrade ships is to spend money while in MOO2 you could have a planet refit each ship in the production queue.
Over all the early access game is playable and and fun. They still need to implement spying, fleshing out the ship designer, some of the other races, and other game victory conditions. There are some bugs as it is an early access but I haven't run into anything game breaking.
In short, if you liked MOO2, you will probably like the New MOO. If you pick up the early release it also comes with MOO1, MOO2 and MOO3 and an extra race on the standard release.
Feels like a graphically updated version version of MOO2. Basic game play is similar, races are familiar,tactical combat supported, ship designer there, and the technology tiers are the same as well.
The races have minor bonuses that don't seem to have a large impact as MOO2. But in the old game some of the traits are game breaking so it's not that bad of a change. Diplomacy is pretty limited. You can have trade agreements, non-agression pacts and trade tech. AI gets angry with you for having a large empire and there doesn't seem to be a way to make them happy after that. Would like the diplomacy options to be more fleshed out.
Combat can be simulated or tactical. Tactical combat is not turn based. Instead you can pause combat and issue commands as needed. Currently feels a little clunky when selecting ships and issuing orders. Abilities like, black hole or subspace teleporter can be manually activated. Missile boats and kiting enemy ships seem stupidly over powered. In the end though, brute force wins out over tactics.
There is a standard tech tree which anyone can research but on some techs you will need to make a decision over one or another. Such as you can only pick reinforced armor or reinforced hull. You will not be able to get all the technologies so you will need to plan for what you need and trade for the rest.
Ship designing is there as well. You can select how to load out each class of ship that you want from weapons, armor, shields, special equipment. You have the ability to specialize ships into missile boats, gun ships, carriers and planet destroyers. Interface could be better though and right now the only way to upgrade ships is to spend money while in MOO2 you could have a planet refit each ship in the production queue.
Over all the early access game is playable and and fun. They still need to implement spying, fleshing out the ship designer, some of the other races, and other game victory conditions. There are some bugs as it is an early access but I haven't run into anything game breaking.
In short, if you liked MOO2, you will probably like the New MOO. If you pick up the early release it also comes with MOO1, MOO2 and MOO3 and an extra race on the standard release.