Empire at war.

[Mongoose]

Site:
http://www.lucasarts.com/games/swemp...ndexFlash.html

Preview at gamespy:
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/star-wars-rts/583645p1.html

I've been following this one for awhile, and i'm not sure that it's going to be worth buying. No moral(As far as i know), no XP for veteran soldiers, ECT. The space combat might be more tactical though.

It looks great but the scale seems wrong in afew places.

I was hoping that some one would make a strategy game involving star wars, but it seems to be more RTS inclined at the moment.

On the plus side, it will have a two player MP campagin.

[AggonyDuck]

I'm gonna get it due to the Star Destroyers.

[Mongoose]

I'm gonna get it due to the Star Destroyers.

It appears that the market target will be people who buy anything that says "Star Wars" on the box. I...Must...use...all...will power...to resist....

[Reverend Joe]

Now, why can't they make a game like this about Dune?

[lancelot]

@mongoose
I know exactly what you mean! I want this game to rock but I cant help shaking the feeling that its gonna suck.

And the scale thing does look messed up, especially with the fighters!

I didnt know about the moral or exp, that makes it even worse!!! Even Force Commander had exp!! Lucasarts needs to sort their ideas out big time! Building fleets of star destroyers is one of my favourite things ever but I need more!

Curse my addiction to the wars!!

Havent seen as Super star destoryers or bigger in any screens yet, they had better be in there or ther will be no cash from me!

Those space screenies do look sweet though!

[Mongoose]

@mongoose
I know exactly what you mean! I want this game to rock but I cant help shaking the feeling that its gonna suck.

And the scale thing does look messed up, especially with the fighters!

I didnt know about the moral or exp, that makes it even worse!!! Even Force Commander had exp!! Lucasarts needs to sort their ideas out big time! Building fleets of star destroyers is one of my favourite things ever but I need more!

Curse my addiction to the wars!!

Havent seen as Super star destoryers or bigger in any screens yet, they had better be in there or ther will be no cash from me!

Those space screenies do look sweet though!

Sadly, It seems like we might need to wait awhile before we get the ulitmate Star Wars "Nerdvana"

The no exp thing is a problem and is going to hurt the feel. A big part of strategy games is getting attahced to certain armies, and it adds some life into the game.

And it looks like you won't be buying it. No SSD To be fair, it was out of the time line. EAW is set after EP3, so no SSD. i don't understand why they couldn't let you build one though. They DID have alot of EP3 content, liek the pod walker, etc.

All in all, it's not looking very promising.

[Kraxis]

Sadly, It seems like we might need to wait awhile before we get the ulitmate Star Wars "Nerdvana"

The no exp thing is a problem and is going to hurt the feel. A big part of strategy games is getting attahced to certain armies, and it adds some life into the game.

And it looks like you won't be buying it. No SSD To be fair, it was out of the time line. EAW is set after EP3, so no SSD. i don't understand why they couldn't let you build one though. They DID have alot of EP3 content, liek the pod walker, etc.

All in all, it's not looking very promising.

SSDs aren't entirely out of place here... Just because we don't see one on ANH doesn't mean there isn't one. Remember the comment only 4 years later when they land at Endor "There are a lot of Commandships (i.e. SSDs)". To me it is obvious there are already a few SSDs prior to ANH, but hey are attached to the reactionsgroup or battlefleet, while the Devastator that intercepts the Tantive IV is merely a local ISD that is in the right place to capture it.

Anyway, those spacebattles sure do look sweet. Form line... Cross the enemy T... BLAST AWAY!!! Say goodbye Mon Calamari Cruisers.

But is it just me or does it seem that you build the troops and ships out of tactical mode? Sort of TW style.
And does Vader look bad or what? "It's Darth Vader, run away"

[Mongoose]

SSDs aren't entirely out of place here... Just because we don't see one on ANH doesn't mean there isn't one. Remember the comment only 4 years later when they land at Endor "There are a lot of Commandships (i.e. SSDs)". To me it is obvious there are already a few SSDs prior to ANH, but hey are attached to the reactionsgroup or battlefleet, while the Devastator that intercepts the Tantive IV is merely a local ISD that is in the right place to capture it.

Anyway, those spacebattles sure do look sweet. Form line... Cross the enemy T... BLAST AWAY!!! Say goodbye Mon Calamari Cruisers.

But is it just me or does it seem that you build the troops and ships out of tactical mode? Sort of TW style.
And does Vader look bad or what? "It's Darth Vader, run away"

Yes, there will be a campaign mode, and it will have 1VS1 MP That alone might make it worth buying, very few games have MP Campaign + tactical combat gameplay.


I wonder if they wil allow you to build anything larger then a SD, but not a SSD.

The space battles do look nice, and maybe more complex then the land combat.

BTW: Congratulations on the promotion to moderator

http://swempireatwar.10.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=308

Scroll down the the second section.

[AggonyDuck]

Also from what I've read the game should be very mod friendly, so that additional content can be quite easily added.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

While browsing mods for Homeworld 2, I came across a SW mod, which looks like it has some incredible star battles.

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/

Some pics (sorry modem users):


http://warlords.swrebellion.com/gall...ts/ss00045_001
http://warlords.swrebellion.com/gall...nshots/ss00256

I can't wait to get Homeworld 2 (both for itself and for some great-looking mods).

[Kraxis]

Wow sweet picture there!

I see lots of ISDs an SSD and two somewhat odd SDs (middle). Are they ther elusive Sovereigns, or just ISD IIs?
Alexander, Homeworld II is pretty good, but you never get the epic feeling of Homeworld. You never sit and feel horrible as you did when you had to exterminate your 'brothers' in Kadesh. Tactically the game is good, but the weight has been shifted from fighters/corvettes to heavy ships, which in my mind is a bad move. The fighters made Homeworld lively (who can forget the image of the fighters breaking up in pairs and when one of them died the other said: "I've just lost my wingman!").

This is an interesting game... Not just because of itself but because it is anything but spectacular on planets, while highly cool in space. And it includes a TW system of forcebuilding.
I agree, the game is goingto be worth the buy just for the MP campaign.

You know, this looks almost like a suped up version of SW: Rebellion. It was pretty much like TW with tactical battles and strategic building and nice spacebattles (though the ground was just numbercrunching).

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I don't really know what the two odd SD's are, but I think they're in the Star Wars expanded universe, because the mod draws heavily on that for content.

It sounds like Homeworld (I) would be a good bye. Maybe after the Christmas season, since it should be just about free by know.

I heard about SW: Rebellion, but I never got it. I heard just a bit too many bad things, like too much micromanaging, for me to get it. But I do like the idea of a game combining galactic strategy with a fun and cool tactical battle system.

Hmm. Sounds familiar.

[Mongoose]

That was HW2?!?!?! I think i'll go see what it sells for at amazon.

[Kraxis]

They certainly look like Sovereigns, but they were about the size of Supers (their real name was Executor class Star Destroyer).
[EDIT] Ahh... There is an extensive list of SDs, so it is impossible to determine what ship they are. But I'm downloading it right now... This should be fun.

Hmm... They do look sweet though.

Homeworld I was absolutely superb of its day, don't know today though. The story is good and you get plenty of challenges, some subversive (like a small enemy ship coming and stealing your capital ships), some plain brutal (like having a massive sphere of enemy Ion Frigates protect some vital equipment) and yet others that are somewhere in between.

Rebellion was not a good game per se, but it did have fun space battles. They were primitive and the guy with the strogner fleet usually won, but you had a lot of options for each ship, and nothing beats blasting endless streams of Rebels with a few ISDs and their complements of TIEs). The strategic aspect was somewhat similar to the TW games where each planet was an island in RTW, and fleets couldn't intercept each other (unless it had an interdictor). All battles were fought over planets (and each getting a name, such as Third Battle of Contruum, got old rather fast).
The construction and resources were quite confusing, and I ended up just crashbuilding warships (Carracks and Victories mostly). At least you could name each ship, my fav battlegroup contained such immortal ships as the Director, Dictator, Monarch, Rex, Tyrant, Venom, Terribilis, Percutator and Debilitator... and a long host of smaller consorts. To make is easier to control I named each class of ship alogn a specific line (ISD IIs were all royal or single rulers, ISDs were all some kind of personal unpleasant title such as Percutator).

It was fun to hunt the Rebels with Noghri, sure they failed fairly often, but to kill Han Solo was a great boon.

If you like micromanagement then it was a paradise (you also had to scout out planets to find the Rebels, they don't have to do the same though).

[lancelot]

I actually think IIRC, that the first SSD began development inbetween AHN & ESB and became active shortly before ESB.

So if ther is mon cal cruisers (which we didnt see till ROTJ) then SSd are definately in the timeframe!

Give me my SSD's

@kraxsis I believe those 2 middle ships are classes from the dark empire series, although for the life of me, I cant remember the class name at the mo.

[Kraxis]

I actually think IIRC, that the first SSD began development inbetween AHN & ESB and became active shortly before ESB.

So if ther is mon cal cruisers (which we didnt see till ROTJ) then SSd are definately in the timeframe!

Give me my SSD's

@kraxsis I believe those 2 middle ships are classes from the dark empire series, although for the life of me, I cant remember the class name at the mo.

Yeah... I looked up the shiplist on the page... They are indeed Dark Empire Dreadnoughts or Heavy Destroyers.

[Kraxis]

Ok I have played the SW: Warlords a bit.

It is fun enough, but it suffers greatly from what Homeworld II also suffers from. Too big scale. You simply don't see what is going on, which was a huge part of the fun in Homeworld, to see fighters dogfight was extremely fun, that is about impossible.

The selection of ships is absolutely huge for the Empire, but there are many that simply overlap and thus are redundant. For instance the venerable Corellian Corvette is not useable really as its upgrade (Heavy version) is just behind it and is much better.

To confound the problem the speed of the ships is too great and the damage output of fighters are deplorable. You would need hundreds of squadrons of fighters to take on a single large warship, even if they have torpedoes (which btw is handled very well). But at least they are very cheap.
It is basically impossible to take out anything beyond corvettes with fighters, and they have a bad tendecy to bump into the big ships (and die of course). Their torpedoes does negligent damage.

As it is now there is no SP part, just MP and skirmish.

[Geoffrey S]

Warlord's certainly not well balanced. I played it a couple of times, but grew fairly bored of looking at the marvelous vistas after a short time.

Empire at War seems promising, but I'll definitely try a demo initially; it could be great, or it could be an uncomplicated and shortlived game (SP, that is).

@Zorba: seconded. It's perfect for a good tactical game.

[Snowhobbit]

According to sources at the SW: Rebellion forum the game will include SSD's, you can however only build one Deathstar...

[Kraxis]

Geoffrey, I mananged to build a single ISD, and prior to that my Assault Frigates and Dreadnoughts (Rebel) duked it out with an Empire Victory II. That was a very uplifiting battle, especially since it arrived very early in the game. It was only because I completely dropped corvettes and frigates that I had the resouces to match it. And I had to send my ships in one at a time because it came so early (I thought I would surprise the Empire but it ended up surprising me). But after that and my devastation of its legions of Skiprey Blastboats it was sadly over. But boy did a broadside of the Victory II look good and the ISD was lovely in itself.

Good (or bad) old Rebellion also featured the DS... Just blast the Rebels out of the sky. Of course you might risk a few uprisings but hey, by that time you should have plenty of troops on your planets.

[Geoffrey S]

Geoffrey, I mananged to build a single ISD, and prior to that my Assault Frigates and Dreadnoughts (Rebel) duked it out with an Empire Victory II. That was a very uplifiting battle, especially since it arrived very early in the game. It was only because I completely dropped corvettes and frigates that I had the resouces to match it. And I had to send my ships in one at a time because it came so early (I thought I would surprise the Empire but it ended up surprising me). But after that and my devastation of its legions of Skiprey Blastboats it was sadly over. But boy did a broadside of the Victory II look good and the ISD was lovely in itself.

Was that in SP skirmish or in MP? I've never had a particularly engaging battle in the skirmish mode with Warlords. But it sure does look the part, particularly as you say when capital ships are duking it out. Lovely.

[Kraxis]

Skirmish... The only true mode is extreme (or what it is called). The installment also states that.

That has to date been my only battle at that level, perhaps I should try it again, as the Empire attacked me early with about 8 squadrons of fighters against which I initially only had a single squadron of X-wings... But I won, though it wascostly and gave me the time to go for Assault Frigates (and that proved valuable.

Btw it was on the Bilbringi map (with 100k resources to start with).

[Mongoose]

There was a new interview with the devs.

http://forums.lucasarts.com/thread.j...92983&tstart=0



Some bad news:

Thrawn: Will units gain veterancy over time? If so, how will this be applied to both ground and space forces?
Petroglyph-Adam: Since the battles rage fast and furious, the likelyhood of forces surviving for a long period of time makes veterancy moot. However, heroes will persisit, and since they offer such a dramatic shift in power when in battles, they act as your veterans, so-to speak.

Some good news:

FFDmh2223: Can you train soldiers to become more effective and will soldiers gain experience?
Petroglyph-Chris: You can upgrade soldiers with unique offensive and defensive abilities. But they will not gain experience overtime, they will persist though.

This might mean that you can upgrade individual soldiers, so you could have sort of have afew "Veterans" . they probably just meant that you upgrade a certain type though. still, there is a chance that we'll get osmetihng close to xp...

[Kraxis]

Hmmm... makes the game sound fairly basic yet with some cool new features. But I hate the fact that space battles are ging to be fast and furious. That is just... GAH!!!!



I just loaded up a game of Warlords tonight. This time I wanted a big slugfest of battlewagons, the big stuff. So I changed map to Byss (nice red map) and upped the starting resources to a full million.

WOW!!! Did that change stuff. I stayed back initially, that was bright as the Rebels just came at me with fighters. That unfortunately lead me to build lots of corvettes and Lancers, but I got my Destroyers and light cruisers going. And suddenly I got embroiled into the massive brawl in the center of the map.

It is quite funny how it started out. The Rebels had posted a Longprobe unit to keep an eye on me, so I sent a unit of A-9 interceptors (think super TIE Interceptor) to blast them. Well, they ran for home, dragging my A-9s with them. There I learned bad stuff, the Rebels were strong indeed, so I tried to flee. This in turn dragged a number of corvettes and frigates along, so I had to send in reinforcements. This kept going until all my forces and all the Rebel forces (or so I thought) were duking it out. My cruisers and corvettes blasted ship after ship, those Enforcers (Interdictors without the gravety well projectors) are damn strong little ships. But the Rebels kept feeding ships into the battle. Nebulon-Bs and other ships of that size. That ground all my corvettes out and I felt the pressure. But by now I had built a number of Carracks and my first Imperator... Muhuhahahaha!!!!

But to my surprise the Imperator didn't turn the tables, but at least it absorbed everything thrown at it and so kept my presence there while the rest of my fleet faltered. Eventually I reinforced the first ISD with several more, then a number of ISD IIs and finally an Allegiance Destroyer and a number of Victories (concussion missiles galore). When I got my first ISD II added to my four ISDs I began to win. Pushingthe smaller Rebels back. But then I met what I had feared. Two enemy ISDs and a massive number of Mon Cal cruisers... I was dead! I had at the time three ISDs, two ISD IIs and two Victories, but my ships were damaged, and I tried to fall back, but lost the Victories and an ISD in the process (they had put up a Golan III and its massive amounts of missiles tore into my ships).

Meanwhile the Rebels had been hurting my economy with heavy fighters and such. So I had to divert my meager reserves to deal with that. Luckily the Rebel fleet held back and I managed to return to the center. Mind you the exchange of turbolaser fire never stopped entirely.
When I got my first Allegiance SD into the group the Rebels attacked... Just in time. And the battle became a nasty exchange of death, but this time I had brought repair droids with me and they made the difference. It was brutal but I won after having retreated to my own Golan III and I. By this time I had run out of money and expended my last resources on mole miners.
Good choice as the battlefield was full of wrecks to be recycled.

The Rebels then began to pound out fighters again, the sign of bad economy... I thought.

My last attack was with a massive force of Destroyers of various kinds, but the two Rebel Golan IIIs took a heavy toll. All Vics and several ISD IIs fell to their massive weaponry. After that it was just mopping up, but I had struck at the right moment, had I waited the Rebels would have rebuilt as they were recycling wrecks faster than me and they had better production capabilities.

I think I will have another battle tomorrow.

[Voigtkampf]

Did you try the multiplayer mod so far? How is it? I just checked their page, they are still in beta phase, but it looks astonishing...

[Kraxis]

No, just a skirmish with the CPU... And it is pretty good.

[Steppe Merc]

I hope to be able to resist buying this... I love Star Wars, but have always been disapointed by the strategy games.

And the fact I am broke, and have no job will help me keep from buying this, I think.

[lancelot]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dev Interview
Thrawn: Will units gain veterancy over time? If so, how will this be applied to both ground and space forces?
Petroglyph-Adam: Since the battles rage fast and furious, the likelyhood of forces surviving for a long period of time makes veterancy moot. However, heroes will persisit, and since they offer such a dramatic shift in power when in battles, they act as your veterans, so-to speak.

What a glib way of saying, -'no adding a concept like experience is too serious for our expected target age-range.'

What a crock! Not cool, Lucasarts.

[lancelot]

Popcorn2008: Can the deathstar take out capitol ships during combat?
Petroglyph-Joe: The first Death Star took about 24 hours to charge up and didn't have the targeting ability to fire on single ships, so in keeping with Lore, it cannot hit individual ships.

What about this little gem!!!

Er...didnt the Deathstar have thousands of turbolasers?!?! Dodonna even mentions this in the trench run briefing in the movie! Lame!

The more I hear about this game, the less enthused Im getting and I really wanna love it!

[Steppe Merc]

Yeah, I mean if the Death Star couldn't destroy all enemy capital ships, they wouldn't have bothered with sending the fighters!