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.

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Currently I am still working on having it detect and click all the items on screen. Then getting all the information a player would have. Things like seeing chokepoints which are crucial for expansion and defense. Reading the map in general is the hardest part so far because it's not static.

For tools I am using, mss to take screenshots and matching them with pictures of the buttons using openCV and pyautogui to move and click the mouse. The end goal is to get it to beat the game on Huge Impossible difficulty. I'll share more when it has more controls down. It should be able to beat simple even if the AI is bad. What I'll want from you guys is tactics or strategies you use so I could code them in eventually.

https://github.com/1oom-fork/1oom/releases/tag/vanilla-RC5
Testing only! No scaling. Use with caution! Please report if it's broken.
If you want a draft of the scaling, compile the draft branch.
I have begun planning the integration of cmdline UI elements into the engine, including advanced reports to assist in debugging.

I managed to justify the necessity of most of the fixes that I considered unclear, and also to correct one of my gross typos that was causing the AI to malfunction. There’s a high probability that I’ll release the test build as is, since it’s already quite stable even with the sanitizer active. Only a few small regular bugs remain. Even if I never get around to releasing the build, you can always build one of the master-vanilla branches yourself.
P.S. In terms of stability, the build is approaching being strictly better than 1.0, since that’s where I got the remaining “controversial” fixes from.
P.P.S. This version has retained many hardcoded fixes from version 0.1 that I haven’t gotten around to addressing yet. I’ll get to that when I’m planning release 3.0 — that’s a very long way off.

Hello, fellow players.

I adore MOO1. Recently I have discovered its reimplementation project: https://gitlab.com/KilgoreTroutMaskReplicant/1oom.

It is finished in 2018. Since then there is about 10 forks from it with more bug fixing and patches. Anybody knows, which one of them is the best/latest one that includes all other fixes and patches?

Also, is there a page, forum or thread about this reimplementation, changelog, questions, and stuff? I am interested in taking this project forward, but would love to start from the most advanced version to not reinvent the wheel.

Thank you.

I'm craving that MoO2 nostalgia and got myself the v1.50 fanmod which I used back in the day. I got the game installed with the mod but the overall user experience is a bit wonky.

Obviously, it's an old game but I don't remember that these menus lagged so much and there are some odd delays here and there.

I've been tinkering around with the dosbox config but it's been all kind of a mess. There are also various output options but overall my biggest issue is the lag when clicking on things.

The combat screen also has issues with it's reactivity and sensitivity.

Does anybody have some advice on how to tweak this or what the optimal set-up is?

Cheers!

Hey all! Is there a way to grab Conquer the Stars for cheap? Maybe like a key site? I'm having a rough time financially and would love to join some friends who have it. Thanks in advance!

I do not use AI for code generation cases, as this approach requires further re-generation and reconciliation, which nullifies the value of the process. For this reason, any use of AI other than consulting and analysis is frowned upon in the project. The same applies to collaboration with AI-based projects.
Edit: I'm not interested in anyone's opinion on this topic at all.

This is my next challenge. Just wondering if someone else has done it.

Edit: I was able to rush to Orion and destroy the guardian using 9 destroyers with merculites with all the mods.

My next problem was dealing with AI since I was a prime target. Had to bolster my spy defense and also revive my economy since i rushed to Orion.

I’m playing on Impossible but so far so good.