Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares is a 4X turn-based strategy game set in space, designed by Steve Barcia and Ken Burd, and developed by Simtex, who developed its predecessor Master of Orion and Master of Magic. The PC version was published by MicroProse in 1996, and the Macintosh version a year later by MacSoft, in partnership with MicroProse. The game has retained a large fan base, and is still played online.
Master of Orion II won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1996, and was well received by critics, although reviewers differed about which aspects they liked and disliked. It is used as a yardstick in reviews of more recent space-based 4X games.
Plot
Long before the time in which the game is set, two extremely powerful races, the Orions and the Antarans, fought a war that devastated most of the galaxy. The victorious Orions, rather than exterminate the Antarans, imprisoned them in a pocket dimension before departing the galaxy, leaving behind a very powerful robotic warship, the Guardian, to protect their homeworld.
Gameplay
thumb|left|The main screen: the pop-up window displays information about a specific star system, while the large window under it displays the galaxy as a whole.
Master of Orion II is more complex than Master of Orion, incorporating game mechanics from Master of Magic as well as new gameplay options. Three new alien races have been added, and the option for players to design their own custom race. Instead of the one planet per star system found in Master of Orion there are now multiplanet star systems that can be shared with opponents. Food, and the need to balance it, is introduced into the economy. In tactical combat, spaceships can now turn direction and marines can board enemy ships. With the right technology, players can now destroy planets outright. Multiplayer mode includes one-on-one matches and games with up to eight players. Each player starts with ten "picks" (race design points). Choosing advantageous traits reduces the number of picks available, while choosing disadvantages increases them, but players cannot choose more than ten picks' worth of disadvantages. Most of the options are major or minor advantages and minor disadvantages in farming, industry, research, population growth, money, space combat, espionage and ground combat.
Each player can change each of its colonies' outputs by moving colonists between farming, industry and research.
In Master of Orion II, space combat occurs only within star systems, either over a planet one side is attacking or on the outskirts of a system, if one side is driving away the other's blockaders or trying to prevent an enemy build-up. If the defending side has warships and several colonies in a system, they automatically scramble to defend whichever colony is attacked. In general, enemy colonies can be taken over only after all orbital and planet-based defenses have been destroyed and all defending ships have been destroyed or forced to retreat. A fleet of a Telepathic race can mind-control the colony, unless the defenders also include telepaths. In other cases the only way to seize control of an enemy colony is by invading. In order to do this, the attacking fleet must include some troop transports, which will be lost if the invasion fails, and at least 1 transport will be permanently deployed on the planet if the invasion succeeds. For Master of Orion II, Simtex provided additional pre-defined races, the option to create custom races, and multiplayer options.
In June 1995, MicroProse agreed to buy Simtex, and turned it into an internal development division. The acquisition continued to be known as "Simtex Software", and the Simtex logo appears briefly before MicroProse's while MOO II is loading. MicroProse released Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares for IBM-compatible PCs in 1996,
Reception
Sales
Master of Orion II secured 10th place on PC Data's computer game sales chart for the month of November 1996. It remained in the top 20 for the next two months, in positions 17 and 20, respectively. By mid-January 1997, its global sales had surpassed 200,000 copies.