I was shocked to find this forum still populated by people playing Outpost 1&2. I have recently been creating a (rather large) DOSBox setup including all of my old favorite games. Outpost 1 (v1.5) is now up and running perfectly, and although Outpost 2 is a Win95 game, i have a triple-boot setup (Win8/WinXP/Ubuntu) in which i can use XP to play the majority of the Win95 games.
I've always loved Outpost, even though the original release was buggy as all heck. Outpost 2 has never left my "CD rack of games i play a lot" even though i don't really play it all that much - there just really isn't anything that has ever come out since that compares to it or replaces it.
I've never considered modding it, even though i have modded many other games. After reading through this forum it has sparked a need to tweak a few things. I haven't gotten into anything in any real depth, but it looks as though tweaking basic stats is easy enough.
As a side note, for those of you who still have the cd version of Outpost 2, i'd recommend heading over to fileplanet and grabbing the 4 patches for the game. Now that fileplanet is in "archive mode", who knows how much longer it will be available... and the more of us who keep a copy of the maps and patches released for it the more likely the game will continue to circulate around.
Multiplayer has different types of game play - some where you need to co-operate against an AI and escape from the blight. Might be something for you if you like the singleplayer.
Multiplayer doesn't have to be quick combat. It all depends on what players want. And you are clearly not the first one who prefers sandbox mode.
But how are there 4 patches? I only know about 3 (official ones).
And i was not aware of a co-op mode multiplayer. That does sound interesting. I'll have to check it out!