Sirian's Master of Orion Page

Sirian's Master of Orion Page

Sirian's Tutorial

Getting Off to a Good Start

Each game starts you off with the same assets. Your homeworld will be Terran class, size 100. You begin
with 30 factories. Your population begins at 50 million, unless playing higher difficulties, where you begin
with 40 million. You begin with two scouts and one colony ship.
Here is the map as shown at the start of the tutorial game.
To begin gameplay, we need to gather information about nearby stars. Our initial range is three parsecs.
That is how far from our home planet that our colony ship may travel. Our scouts carry extended fuel tanks,
granting them an additional three parsecs of range, so that they may travel up to six parsecs from our
homeworld. It is important to understand that our scouts have longer range than our colony ship, so that you
do not mistakenly believe we can colonize worlds that are, in fact, currently out of range.
So the first thing to do is to identify stars within colonizable range. Click each star near our homeworld.
You might begin with the one that seems to be the closest and work outward.
The nearest star is red class, two parsecs away. Our initial ships have Warp 1 engines, meaning they travel
one parsec per year. It would take two years (turns) to travel to this star.
Checking another star shows its range as three parsecs.
In this particular game, there are no other stars within three parsecs. Remaining stars are four or more
parsecs away. Therefore, we had better hope that at least one of the two stars within colonizable range has a
habitable world. Fortunately, red stars have a good percentage of habitable worlds, so we are likely to be in
decent shape. As the information display notes, however, red stars have increased likelihood of mineral poor
planets. (That would not be good, although it is better than no planet at all).
Yellow stars offer the best chance for habitable worlds, followed by green and red. White, blue and purple
stars are more likely to have planets with hostile environments. There are some subtleties to the star colors,
but these apply only prior to exploring the star, when guesswork may be necessary to choosing scouting
priorities. Once we know about its habitable planet, if any, the star color no longer matters.
Since we have two scouts and only two stars to explore, there's no need to prioritize in this instance,
anyway. We can send one scout to each candidate. Select our fleet by clicking on it in the map window.
When you select the fleet, all ships in that group will be displayed. Our ships begin together, but we must
separate them. Use the buttons below the ship types to increase or decrease the number of ships. The ships
that are selected will follow your orders, while deselected ships will remain behind (and can be issued
different orders).
We want to send one scout, so the other scout and the colony ship must be deselected. When we have only
one scout left active, click on the destination star and orders will be issued. A line will connect to our
destination, with the animation showing the direction of movement. You must click the Accept button in the
lower right corner to confirm these orders.
Repeat this process for the second scout. Click on the fleet in orbit of Sol. Ships in orbit are parked to the
upper right of a star. Ships with orders will be moved to the upper left of the star. Orders may be changed at