female human leaders

[Nicole Sharp]

Why are there no female human leaders and how can they be added to the game?

Cross-posting here from the Master of Orion Official Forum, since I am not sure how active that forum is:

https://forum.masteroforion.com/index.php?/topic/2381-female-human-leaders/

I just purchased Master of Orion, and while I knew before I purchased the game that for the default races, the only two human leaders in the entire galaxy were both white men, I had hoped that at the very least there would be a way to create a custom races that included female (and non-white) human leaders. Unfortunately, it looks like there is no way to change the default white male avatar if the human template is used to create a custom race? There needs to be an easy way to upload custom avatars for custom races. I don't really know how to "mod" and would like something very simple like just an image upload, and picking the leader name. Any help on how to get female human leaders into the game would be appreciated. Otherwise I am actually considering returning the game (I still only have about one hour of gameplay, per the Steam return policy). There are a lot of alternatives to Master of Orion with very similar gameplay, that don't have as many sexist elements for human leadership.

I can add that I have not played any previous versions of Master of Orion before (I am a completely new player), so I am not very familiar with the different races and their backstories, though I don't think that really helps.

[vaaish]

The game is effectively abandoned by the original developers. There are no assets in the game to do what you want and not any easy way to make that happen. As far as I can tell the leaders use real-time rendered 3d assets so there isn't any way to upload a new avatar as just an image. You MIGHT be able to swap the female research assets for the human male assets but I can't guarantee it would be successful.

I think the race/genders had a lot to do with the voice talent they hired. Some of well know actors from TNG and such were used likely because of the geed cred. For example, John De Lancie did the voice work for the Humans so it follows that the avatar is white male.

Truthfully, the game never got core gameplay fully implemented before the patches stopped and I'd expect racial/gender options would have landed under cosmetic customization once everything else was done. If the current state isn't something you're ok with, you'd probably be better looking at one of the alternatives than trying to mod it into MOO.

[TheDiaz]

I will add that if you want a game that allows you to choose the gender of your leader, play Stellaris. You can modify everything about your civilization. Other than that, I believe there's no easy way (if there exists) to add new models, so I cannot help besides that.

[Nicole Sharp]

Thanks for the input. I have been reading all of the discussion posts both here and on MasterOfOrion.com and there is a lot of feedback along those lines about a lack of support from the developers.

https://forum.masteroforion.com/index.php?/topic/2273-we-hit-50-days/

I've only gone one hour into the tutorial, so have only met one extraterrestrial race, and haven't had much interaction with them (they didn't want to share their maps with me). Not sure how important the 3D animated audiovisual characters are for the game. I am trying to upgrade from Sid Meier's Starships, where static images are used to display leader interactions, so am used to that. I agree though that it sounds like I would be better off returning the game instead of trying to mod it, if I can just get a different game without mods that is better supported instead. I'm just disappointed since I do like the other gameplay elements of Master of Orion, in particular the idea of having starlanes (unlike Galactic Civilizations III), though there do exist other games that also use the starlane concept.

[Nicole Sharp]

Originally posted by Isaac:

I will add that if you want a game that allows you to choose the gender of your leader, play Stellaris. You can modify everything about your civilization. Other than that, I believe there's no easy way (if there exists) to add new models, so I cannot help besides that.

I have been looking at Stellaris for a long time now. It's RTS instead of TBS though. But my main hesitation in getting Stellaris is the mixed feedback that it can be dull without paying a lot of extra money for the expansions.

https://forum.masteroforion.com/index.php?/topic/2358-is-it-over-yet/

[Nicole Sharp]

Originally posted by vaaish:

The game is effectively abandoned by the original developers. There are no assets in the game to do what you want and not any easy way to make that happen. As far as I can tell the leaders use real-time rendered 3d assets so there isn't any way to upload a new avatar as just an image. You MIGHT be able to swap the female research assets for the human male assets but I can't guarantee it would be successful.

I think the race/genders had a lot to do with the voice talent they hired. Some of well know actors from TNG and such were used likely because of the geed cred. For example, John De Lancie did the voice work for the Humans so it follows that the avatar is white male.

Truthfully, the game never got core gameplay fully implemented before the patches stopped and I'd expect racial/gender options would have landed under cosmetic customization once everything else was done. If the current state isn't something you're ok with, you'd probably be better looking at one of the alternatives than trying to mod it into MOO.

And you make a really good point about matching the human appearance with the corresponding voice actor. I didn't think about that. Being able to interact with the all-star scifi voice cast was a good selling point for me in deciding whether to get MOO in the first place.

[TheDiaz]

Originally posted by Nicole Sharp:

Thanks for the input. I have been reading all of the discussion posts both here and on MasterOfOrion.com and there is a lot of feedback along those lines about a lack of support from the developers.

https://forum.masteroforion.com/index.php?/topic/2273-we-hit-50-days/

I've only gone one hour into the tutorial, so have only met one extraterrestrial race, and haven't had much interaction with them (they didn't want to share their maps with me). Not sure how important the 3D animated audiovisual characters are for the game. I am trying to upgrade from Sid Meier's Starships, where static images are used to display leader interactions, so am used to that. I agree though that it sounds like I would be better off returning the game instead of trying to mod it, if I can just get a different game without mods that is better supported instead. I'm just disappointed since I do like the other gameplay elements of Master of Orion, in particular the idea of having starlanes (unlike Galactic Civilizations III), though there do exist other games that also use the starlane concept.

Welp, another reason for you to choose Stellaris as it uses starlanes only now (before it was 1 option out of 3 travel systems), and is, btw, much more complex. I would normally tell you to stay on the game, but there's a lack of support from the devs and the game itself is not that good in my opinion. BTW, I feel the decision on having 1 leader per race was to keep the same design philosophy from the older games (You too had only 1 character representing each race), although I agree that personalization is better.

[TheDiaz]

Originally posted by Nicole Sharp:

Originally posted by Isaac:

I will add that if you want a game that allows you to choose the gender of your leader, play Stellaris. You can modify everything about your civilization. Other than that, I believe there's no easy way (if there exists) to add new models, so I cannot help besides that.

I have been looking at Stellaris for a long time now. It's RTS instead of TBS though. But my main hesitation in getting Stellaris is the mixed feedback that it can be dull without paying a lot of extra money for the expansions.

https://forum.masteroforion.com/index.php?/topic/2358-is-it-over-yet/

Oh, the expansions are not that necessary, I played for a while only with 2 of them and got them on sale. You still will obtain several hours with just the base game. And mods add more as it is more of a story writing game rather than a you have to win every match game.

[Nicole Sharp]

Originally posted by Isaac:

Originally posted by Nicole Sharp:

I have been looking at Stellaris for a long time now. It's RTS instead of TBS though. But my main hesitation in getting Stellaris is the mixed feedback that it can be dull without paying a lot of extra money for the expansions.

https://forum.masteroforion.com/index.php?/topic/2358-is-it-over-yet/

Oh, the expansions are not that necessary, I played for a while only with 2 of them and got them on sale. You still will obtain several hours with just the base game. And mods add more as it is more of a story writing game rather than a you have to win every match game.

Thanks for that feedback. That does sound nice. Even on Sid Meier's Civilization, I never stop playing when I get the first victory condition. I definitely would like an open-ended game if possible.

[vaaish]

Not sure how important the 3D animated audiovisual characters are for the game.

They are pretty integral. The game does a lot of compositing static backdrops and 3d characters rather than pre-rendered animations. So any time you'd see a leader you're seeing the 3d art, not a static visual. Same goes for the colonization animations, it's a 3d asset that's motion matched and composited with multiple 2d images and particle effects.

It's really pretty cool because it allows the game to scale much better with screen resolution than even providing 4k pre-rendered stuff and uses far less space to do it.

My point though was that the game isn't using a single image you could easily mod to add what you need. You'd have to mod the actual character asset and add a new asset to replace the current leader model but that's almost impossible to do with the tools available to mod the game. There's a slim possibility you could swap two existing assets and sort of get the result you want, but I've never tried it.

[Nicole Sharp]

I already put in the request to return Master of Orion. Thank you very much for the feedback. I do like what I am hearing about Stellaris. Any other recommendations for alternatives to Master of Orion are appreciated as well. My experience in MOO-like games so far is limited to only FreeOrion and Sid Meier's Starships. I like both of those, but they are bit limited in graphics and gameplay, so am basically looking for an upgrade from those games.

[Reriser]

Originally posted by Nicole Sharp:

Why are there no female human leaders and how can they be added to the game?

Cross-posting here from the Master of Orion Official Forum, since I am not sure how active that forum is:

https://forum.masteroforion.com/index.php?/topic/2381-female-human-leaders/

I just purchased Master of Orion, and while I knew before I purchased the game that for the default races, the only two human leaders in the entire galaxy were both white men, I had hoped that at the very least there would be a way to create a custom races that included female (and non-white) human leaders. Unfortunately, it looks like there is no way to change the default white male avatar if the human template is used to create a custom race? There needs to be an easy way to upload custom avatars for custom races. I don't really know how to "mod" and would like something very simple like just an image upload, and picking the leader name. Any help on how to get female human leaders into the game would be appreciated. Otherwise I am actually considering returning the game (I still only have about one hour of gameplay, per the Steam return policy). There are a lot of alternatives to Master of Orion with very similar gameplay, that don't have as many sexist elements for human leadership.

I can add that I have not played any previous versions of Master of Orion before (I am a completely new player), so I am not very familiar with the different races and their backstories, though I don't think that really helps.

What the hell is sexism??? Tired of these stupid remarks about tolerance! Want to play for women - play for Mrshans or Elerians. What do I do if I want to play for the Elerians, but to be led by men??? Return the purchased game? Just such an ideology of races(almost every race has used men and women). Stop looking for this sexist background - it's very stupid! P. s.: and Yes I use a translator!

[Nicole Sharp]

I can only comment on human culture, since I am not knowledgeable about the extraterrestrial cultures in MOO. But the problem with not having diverse human leaders is just one small part of a larger problem in that the game is supposedly not being actively supported by the developers. There should be more leaders available in general, and statistically it does not make sense for humans to occupy more leadership positions in the galaxy than any other species (humans have two representatives when every other species only gets one), yet the numerical majority of human beings in the galaxy are women despite women having zero representation in galactic leadership. An expansion pack to allow custom avatars (both human and non-human) for custom races could have been pretty popular, with additional in-game customization options for greater diversity of gameplay as well as characters.

[McKwack]

As Isaac mentioned previously, historically speaking, the original MoO and MoO2 games (and even including the much-dreaded MoO3) didn't give you any options to choose your leader as per, say, Civilization (I played both the original MoO and MoO2 back in the days, so I pretty much know this fact).

MoO: CtS was build under the pretext that it's "MoO/MoO2 remake", so naturally the devs tried to stick as much as possible to the original games by NOT giving any choice to customize the leader, only the race per se.

Not that the devs seem to care about the game anymore tho..

Just my 2 bit(coins)..

Originally posted by Nicole Sharp:

I already put in the request to return Master of Orion. Thank you very much for the feedback. I do like what I am hearing about Stellaris. Any other recommendations for alternatives to Master of Orion are appreciated as well. My experience in MOO-like games so far is limited to only FreeOrion and Sid Meier's Starships. I like both of those, but they are bit limited in graphics and gameplay, so am basically looking for an upgrade from those games.

PPS: you might want to try Endless Space / Endless Space 2. IMHO so far the only other 4x space games that is on par with MoO, and they're both turn-based to boot. Still no options to customize leaders tho..

[Warempel]

I think it's worth noting this is basically a space opera setting. So the game effectively uses stereotypes for a reason.

All leaders are very much 'tongue in cheek'... The soothing "Well met, friend" Human line just can't be taken seriously - who would really trust such a guy? And yes [therefore] this is your typical real-world CEO or candidate for US presidency! But it's all slightly over the top so it becomes a bit humorous - and I think this applies to all races: The Meklar leader has a mechanical voice that sounds just like the Ceylons from the original '80s Battlestar Galactica series :-) And the Elerian leader can still make me grin when she suddenly appears on-screen and shouts "Stand down, you maggot!" banging her staff on the floor :-D just to give 2 examples. But it has to be your thing, I guess.

[Obelix]

Originally posted by Nicole Sharp:

I already put in the request to return Master of Orion. Thank you very much for the feedback. I do like what I am hearing about Stellaris. Any other recommendations for alternatives to Master of Orion are appreciated as well. My experience in MOO-like games so far is limited to only FreeOrion and Sid Meier's Starships. I like both of those, but they are bit limited in graphics and gameplay, so am basically looking for an upgrade from those games.

Hi, try Stars in Shadow https://store.steampowered.com/app/464880/Stars_in_Shadow/