Empire at war.

[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.