Star Wars: Empire at War

For the discussion of the game itself, and its modifications.

What did you make of it?

Forces of Corruption had serious balance issues.

Ah, nostalgia. I remember loving this game so much. But the Librarian is right, the Zann Consortium is hilariously broken.

edited 5th Nov '12 10:16:51 PM by CPFMfan

Are there any modifications to correct that?

Strangely, nobody's really attempted to make a good balance mod. There are some mods out there that remove the ZC from the Galactic map or nerf them to hell, but then again that's just putting a band-aid on a much deeper wound.

Now total conversion or Expanded Universe mods, on the other hand...

Priorities!

How are those mods, by the way?

I loved the space battles, but I found the ground battles to be boring and uninspired. And a strange disconnect between the two. Sure, you can have ships do bombing run, but that's so... limited. But you'd think having a few star destroyers in orbit capable of laying huge tract of lands to waste would kind of severely tip the odds in my favor.

Yeah, the space battles are definitely where it's at. I've had a few really awesome huge space battles in the center of the map with fighters all around while ships are blowing the hell out of one another XD My favorite mission in Forces of Corruption was the mission where you lead a fleet to a planet and end up in a space battle with Thrawn. I don't even remember the details but aside from Kuat that was my favorite level XD

Yeah, Kuat was the only mission that had an epic space battle worthy of Star Wars. The others just had 5 vs 5 captial ships against each other, at most.

Well. I've fired up Empire at War at last.

It's fun, but the Alliance AI baffles me. They keep sending these horrendous fighter swarms after me numbering in the dozens, with a few corvettes helping them out.

The ground battles were... weird, and unbalanced at times (in general, I felt like early-game was tilted towards the Rebels while the Empire had the advantage late game). I always, always did them automatically unless I absolutely had to. Space Battles, on the other hand, were ten times better, a lot more balanced, and using troops was a lot less awkward.

edited 8th Nov '12 10:25:45 PM by KnownUnknown

What, even when you had AT-A Ts?

Also, I swear, the Rebs must be mass-producing those ships and then piloting them with droids.

I liked the land battles :(

Though goddamn do I hate those rebel tanks.

edited 9th Nov '12 3:02:37 PM by CPFMfan

Which ones? And why?

Wouldn't that be late game?

edited 9th Nov '12 4:00:27 PM by KnownUnknown

I don't remember what they were called, but I hated them because they just chewed through everything else.

You know what else I liked? The native militias.

the T4-Bs?

AT A Ts: Mid to late. You didn't think it was worth it to smash everything in your way with them?

Militias: Oh? I found them useful for grabbing build points and drawing fire. What about you?

I played a lot of Galactic Conquest (or whatever it was called in Empire at War), and it tended to be a lot of battles before I could actually use them. Inevitably, by the time I did get around to getting AT-AT's, I was so done with land battles that even the delight of having AT-A Ts didn't really do it for me.

Like I said - until you got the Empire's heavy weapons in general the Rebels had a clear advantage. Early game the ball was in the rebels court, while late game the balance shifted to the Empire. And even then that's still unbalance late-game, just in the other direction.

I find myself wondering is there a Kotor era mod? Does anyone know?

I remember seeing one on Youtube, but I don't know what it's called.

Yes, there is, and it's mostly complete. I think you might need the Forces of Corruption expansion to run it however. Check Moddb.com to find it.

EDIT: Wait, you guys found the T4-B tanks frustrating? All they did was just act as a damage sponge, and their rockets were the only worrisome weapon they had since they could outrange turrets. The one unit that was a REAL bitch to deal with was the MPTL missile artillery. The late-game Rebels just LOVED to sneak those bastards onto your worlds along with Snowspeeders and Hero units like Han Solo/Chewbacca or Yoda. If your Garrison's defenses lacked heavy armor or strong anti-infantry weaponry, it was guaranteed that they'd wreck everything on the planet before you could reinforce it.

edited 10th Nov '12 8:35:39 AM by SgtRicko

Like everyone, I hated the land battles and really enjoyed the space battles. What I never got though, was the rebel sniper unit. Why put such a useless unit in the game?

Every game needs a sniper unit! Even when it doesn't actually need a sniper unit.

Snipers in RTS' tend to be hit or miss. Their main function is generally useless unless you have generous mechanics, and you usually need some kind of supplementary effect for them to have a useful role.

edited 10th Nov '12 7:46:22 PM by KnownUnknown

This was a really bad game.

Now people are in here praising the space combat, and I'm not really clear on why. It's exceptionally weak, the balance is pretty poor, there are weird departures from the source work, there's very little differentiation between sides, it's not 3D, the pathfinding is bizarre, ships cannot maintain formation at all, and of course lolunitcap. At least on the ground it could be justified as a matter of landing capacity, but in space?

Rebellion had better space combat than this. That's actually pretty scary since Rebellion's space combat portion was very bad and taking control yourself was usually only so you could pull out before the enemy reached firing range, but it was at least properly balanced and had a clear differentiation in strategies for the two sides.

edited 10th Nov '12 8:18:13 PM by Night