Star Wars: Empire at War

I don't think so, sadly. I actually bought the Steam version a few years ago on a sale because it was pretty cheap.

You know, considering that Petroglyph doesn't actually seem to have forgotten the game - does anyone think they'll actually nerf the Consortium at any point now?

edited 1st Sep '17 8:33:46 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

Don't hold your breath. The Zann Consortium is so fundamentally broken that Petroglpyh would probably need the fanbase to take over and develop a faction overhaul mod if they plan to even have a hope of balancing those guys.

Can't wait for any of the mods to become Workshop-compatible - installing them was always kind of a hassle back in the day.

Also, I liked the general idea of a third faction and stealing/hiring together your forces- but the Zann Consortium was just... I don't know... too powerful for what's basically a newcomer criminal syndicate on the larger stage.

Imagine starting off somewhere in the Outer Rim as some small-scale (relatively speaking) warlord or pirate leader. You slowly expand, relying mainly on older ship types (like the out-of-commission Venator-class) and "neutral" ships. You can interact with the other factions in different ways, either actually siding with one of them or actively staying neutral - or antagonising both while you carve out your own fiefdom at the edge of the Galactiv Civil War.

I'd rather have this (or one of the Expanded Universe's crime syndicates) than what FoC came up with.

Don't get me wrong, I liked some of the aesthetic- but it was just too much of a hodgepodge of Black Sun, Mandalorians, CIS and what not rolled into one.

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

Well that's good to hear about this recent news since i enjoyed the game when i bought it from gog.com

Honestly, the solution to everything in FoC was to throw Garm Bel Iblis at it until everything was dead. The Gargantuan is beyond god tier.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

Or if you were the Consortium, and used Tyber Zann, Silri, IG-88 and Urai Fenn to conquer planets. Those four had the ability to invade planets undetected, cost you no resources, and could easily handle a small planet's worth of garrison troops. It all came down to how much credits you had at the time: Tyber's Bribe ability allowed you to instantly and permanently convert useful vehicles to your side, and also doubled as a means to quickly kill off powerhouses like the AT-A Ts or MPT Ls. Add in how he could also do this while cloaked, and that meant all you needed to do was avoid their stealth detectors and heroes while trying to isolate their useful units for bribing. The ability to build bacta stations, repair pads, or your own defensive turrets on any found building pads only made it even easier to heal him and keep his bribed units alive. Ultimately, this made Imperial worlds very easy to capture under their noses since they lacked any hard hero counters save for Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader.

Silri's force drain worked similarly to force lightning, only this ability also heals her. That alone made her a good choice for eliminating infantry and light armor, and her pet Rancor "Cuddles" could also be summoned at no cost. He wasn't terribly difficult to kill, but often worked as either a great bullet sponge or base defense killer. Oh, and you could re-summon him if he died once the ability cooldown finished.

Urai Fenn was the weakest and least useful of the four. He could cloak, use his sonic stun blast radius against enemy infantry, and his blades worked well on most targets. That stun ability worked pretty good against the Rebel's and their habit of spamming hero units, but you absolutely had to use Fenn alongside the other heroes to work effectively. At least he auto-healed when out of combat.

IG-88 was awesome at dealing with light armor at a distance using only his blasters. His radioactive contamination' ability essentially served as an area denial weapon effective against infantry or heroes, and even did damage to vehicles (think of the Iraqi Desolator from RA 2, but more damaging).

Keep in mind, this strategy only worked on the AI since it wasn't that great at tracking down hidden infantry and quickly gave up after the initial rush of your landing zone. It's much harder to pull this off on a human player, since they'll be aware of Tyber's bribe ability and make an effort to snuff him out ASAP in retaliation.

edited 2nd Sep '17 11:15:21 AM by SgtRicko

Just found this thread, since I'm all excited about the multiplayer being back. Even if it is an unstable mess of a garbage fire right now.

So, my question is: Are Rebels bottom-tier only in galactic conquest? Or does it apply in skirmish modes too?

Honestly, I always found the Alliance annoying to play against. You basically have to fortify ALL your planets because of their raid mechanic.

And the tank hero they got in FoC is kinda overpowered.

edited 3rd Sep '17 9:51:05 AM by DrunkenNordmann

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

The Rebels hold up far better in the multiplayer since they have the opportunity to start off on a mostly even footing with their opponents. They don't lose their edge in the late game either, since the MPTL missile artillery is devastating against almost any target, save for fast scouts capable of evading their barrages. Also, while some of their Heroes are a serious waste of time past the initial rush (I'm looking at you C-3PO and R2-D2!), Yoda and General Garm more than make up for that.

But on the Galactic map? Yeah, it's a pure uphill battle to be the Rebels, no matter how you cut it. That annoying raid mechanic mostly works only towards the AI's favor since they're allowed to spawn in both ground and space units for free on planets that you don't have eyes on. It also makes a point of IMMEDIATELY sending awfully annoying combinations such as General Garm's land battleship, MPT Ls, and air speeders onto planets where your ground defenses are limited. Can't count how many times I had to defend the following:

• Dagobah's swamps, which made Garm's land battleship even harder to deal with since he could travel almost anywhere, along with the airspeeders.
• Endor... just Endor. This was one planet where the auto-resolve function would probably give you less casualty numbers than a human controlled invasion, all thanks to the Ewoks who have trees to spawn from EVERYWHERE.
• Tatooine, though I strongly suspect this was intentionally designed to evoke a sort of "last stand at the Alamo" situation. You're in the center of the map, surrounded by NP Cs of all sorts of allegiances, and trying to secure the corners or destroy their settlements is difficult since the rebel AI will be attacking your base with full force.
• Polus and the REALLY FREAKING ANNOYING Rebel sympathetic civilians ARMED WITH CRAZY-EFFECTIVE FREEZE RAYS (it's basically a planet full of Mei's!)
• Ilum was another one that suffered frequent raids, but at least both the space map and planet had lots of natural defensive features and well-positioned emplacements which helped make it bearable.

So with this recent news I decided to play... started with the rebel campaign and wow I get to the point where I need to free Kashyyyk and holy crap right out of the gate I get bum rushed by 5 star destroyers and can't stop em.

Any tips?

Well, for starters, what tech level and difficulty are you at?

And also, save fighters until AFTER your cruisers have focus-fired down the Tartan Cruisers, since you'll just waste them otherwise.

Its on easy and I just gained access to the tech tree via the mission to spy on Mon Calamari, I JUST built my first Nebulon B.

That's the Rebel campaign for ya.

In the Imperial campaign, tech levels go up gradually as the plot progresses; in the Rebel campaign, the Empire starts at max tech level and the Rebels start with all non-plot techs immediately stealable. Oh, and at more than one occasion, you can't Take Your Time.

Yeah, like how the Death Star, once it's completed, will start blowing up planets.

Well, I looked into the game's scripting once to see if it's possible to have the player keep Boba Fett in the Imperial campaign (it was surprisingly easy; all I had to do was to comment out a single line), after which I started sketching down what I'd put into a hypothetical mod.

One of the ideas I had was to script the Death Star to be immobile until the player attacks and fails to take it down on first try.

Another idea was to even the scales with the Empire getting free strike craft from their capital ships but the Rebels don't by having Nebulon-B frigates launch strike craft. That would even be canon-compliant. The Rebels would still be able to manually produce strike craft on the galactic map, but they'd no longer have to rely entirely on ones they have to spend cash to replenish after each battle involving Tartans.

edited 3rd Sep '17 5:08:00 PM by amitakartok

I guess I need to look for campaign difficulty mods.

Oh, fair warning about the rebel campaign: It is entirely possible to run up against AT-A Ts without snowspeeders. Yes, this DOES mean you need an overwhelming amount of firepower to beat even minor garrisons.

The Rebel MPT Ls work just fine dealing with the AT-A Ts, along with the PLEX missile troops. Trust me, you've got more than one option on how to deal with those things.

Dug out my aforementioned notes for what I'd mod into the game.

• Buildings
  • Turbolasers inflict minor splash damage, making them slightly more effective against infantry.
  • Anti-infantry turrets have a slight scatter, making their damage less concentrated but better able at handling clustered-up infantry.
  • Anti-vehicle turrets have a slight scatter, making them liable to miss when attempting to shoot infantry.
  • Anti-air turrets are extremely inaccurate against ground targets.
• Units
  • Anti-infantry blasters (Rebel Soldier, Sniper, T-2B, Stormtrooper, Scout Speeder, TIE Mauler) now inflict extremely minuscule damage versus structures and shields.
    • Note: this is so that basic infantry aren't anti-everything if the opposition doesn't happen to have crushing-capable vehicles. I've seen far too many instances of basic infantry killing fortified structures faster than the tanks accompanying them.
  • Anti-tank blasters (Imperial tank, T-4B, AT-AT) are now naturally inaccurate against infantry.
  • Concussion missiles are now faster than most fighters and have triple the flight range as well, so fighters cannot simply outrun them by flying in a straight line. A-Wings, TIE Scouts and major heroes in fighters can still outrun them.
  • Fighters now draw higher aggro than bombers, making them more effective at escorting friendly bombers by drawing fire away from them.
  • Rebels
    • Plex Troopers' missiles have reduced splash damage so that they are now properly countered by infantry instead of mass-killing them.
    • Snipers can now shoot from three times the range they could before and do not provoke retaliation.
    • X-Wings now have their S-Foils locked by default and must actively switch to attack position instead of the other way around.
    • Nebulon-Bs now have a lower priority for determining which ship in the fleet heroes sit onboard of.
      • Note: I found this particularly annoying. A Nebulon-B dies if you so much as sneeze at it, so why the hell do fleet commanders insist on commanding from that tin can instead of a much more durable Assault Frigate?
    • Nebulon-Bs can now launch 4 squadrons of Z-95s and 2 squadrons of Y-Wings per frigate. This moves them slightly closer to Acclamators in terms of power: Acclamators have more hardpoints and are therefore tougher, but Nebulons have a larger fighter wing and more bombers.
  • Empire
    • TIE Maulers that initiate self-destruct detonate with splash damage when killed, so the explosion can no longer be prevented by destroying the TIE Mauler first.
    • Interdictors launch TIE Scouts instead of TIE Fighters.
  • Heroes
    • All major heroes passively regenerate health. Does not apply to Darth Vader's wingmen but applies to Red Squadron.
    • All units have reduced weapon accuracy against major heroes, so they can actually do something for a change instead of catching fifty blaster bolts and dying instantly. Major heroes still have full weapon accuracy against each other, so the best way to counter one is to fight fire with fire.
    • Major heroes do not count into the unit limit.
    • Fleet Commanders are now scattered across the fleet instead of piling up in the same ship.
      • Note: this is another thing that really annoys me. It's basic leadership 101 that you don't put the entire chain of command in a single location specifically to deny the enemy a decapitation strike.
    • Red Squadron can respawn squad members like Darth Vader can. To make room for the button on the UI, their S-Foils are permanently locked in attack position, so they lose out on the speed boost.
      • Note: they're nearly useless otherwise. Vader can tank like no tomorrow, so why not Luke?
    • Mara Jade participates in space missions as a unique Z-95. Slower rate of fire than the stock model, but instakills non-hero fighter craft in one shot and has an ion cannon as well.
    • Coloner Veers' AT-AT is immune to tow cables once more, but costs substantially more to deploy.
• Campaigns
  • Tactical mission casualties are now always rounded down to the nearest integer, so a company suffering 51% casualties no longer counts as a total loss unless the entire company is wiped out down to the last man. This should prevent the annoyance where companies suffering less than 100% casualties are lost without them being included in the post-battle tally, causing the player to lose units without noticing it until down the line, he enters a completely different tactical battle and suddenly realizes that half his army has mysteriously disappeared from the game.
  • Artillery units are no longer granted as infinitely-spawning garrison units to the defending side during land tactical battles. AT-A As and Snowspeeders are given instead.
  • Rebels
    • Y-wings are not available until Kessel, so the Fresia mission cannot be cheesed by bombing the turbolaser towers instead of going around them and the AA turrets that pop up later make bombing runs impossible anyway.
    • The player does not get a free Light Factory and T-2B tanks before the technology is stolen, so Wayland and Fresia have to be done with infantry only.
    • After the Kuat mission is completed, an Imperial Star Destroyer will spawn over the planet. Until Kessel where the player gets access to Y-Wings, the player most definitely does not have the teeth to take that Star Destroyer out, so Kuat have to be taken either via a raid fleet or waiting until after Kessel to amass a large group of Y-Wings.
      • Note: Mon Mothma explicitly states at the beginning that the Rebellion has limited resources, so the player shouldn't be able to defeat the Empire's finest head-on at this point.
    • Wayland is transferred to the player's control after the story mission there, instead of the player's remaining troops getting ejected and the planet being left unoccupied until the player returns to occupy it. Mission dialogue have been edited accordingly: the mission ends when Antilles congratulates the troops, instead of him ordering everyone to abandon the planet.
      • Note: this makes sense. I mean, the Empire doesn't control the planet on the galaxy map, the Rebels literally just won there, so... why pointlessly force the player to send one unit there if he wants to control it?
    • The rebel Pilots on Fresia passively regenerate health as if they were major heroes.
    • During the Kessel mission, when Mon Mothma states that two Star Destroyers have entered the fray, actual Imperial Star Destroyers are spawned instead of Victory cruisers.
    • When Tatooine is captured, Obi-Wan joins the player's forces. He disappears after the story mission immediately preceding Alderaan's destruction.
    • Once the Death Star appears and destroys Alderaan, Han and Luke join the player's forces permanently.
    • Once the Death Star appears and destroys Alderaan, it does not move unless the player fails to destroy it on the first try. Once that happens, though, ALL BETS ARE OFF.
  • Empire
    • Boba Fett remains under player control after the assault on Ilum.
    • After the run-in with Han on Kashyyk, he's given to the Rebels as a permanently respawning major hero. Whenever he gets taken out in battle, he respawns at whatever planet is the current objective until the campaign is over.
    • When the Emperor is placed under the player's control for raiding Bothawui, he's accompanied by Mara Jade. She also permanently joins the player's forces.
    • On the mission to ambush and capture Leia, the free Imperial Star Destroyer given to the player is Captain Piett's Accuser instead of a regular ISD. After the mission, he joins the player's forces permanently.
    • After the destruction of Alderaan, the Rebels get a Mon Mothma for each of their final five planets.

Thoughts?

Interdictors aren't spawning anything, if I recall correctly. they don't actually have hangars. You might be confusing the cruiser that appears ingame with the Interdictor-class Star Destroyer.

edited 4th Sep '17 2:27:26 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

Could be. I originally wrote that list based on memory.

That reminds me that I downloaded Thrawn's Revenge recently and still need to test it again.

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

I don't think the majority of those suggested changes would be beneficial. The game's arsenal for all of the factions lacks many of the usual hard counters you'd find in most real-world militaries, such as dedicated AA for the rebels, proper IF Vs or APCs, actually useful cover beyond the garrisonable bunkers from the Fo C expansion, more varied infantry roles to prevent them from being pure fodder, etc. The "low-damage, high-HP" model of the combat doesn't help, since most of the more fragile units can survive a few hits before going down, meaning all units pretty much need a high rate of fire or crazy alpha damage, or else they aren't going to be useful at all. Hence why the T4-B2 Rebel heavy tank kinda sucks: it has a decent amount of HP, a reasonable production cost and decent movement speed, but the damage for both the rockets and turbolasers is lacking compared to what the AT-AT, Canderous tank, or any other high-tier unit puts out.

The Rebel airspeeder is another prime example. That unit is downright ANNOYING in the hands of the AI, since it loves to send that sucker on stealth raids all the time and few units can actually hit it with consistent accuracy. This is especially noticeable if you end up as the Imperials and lack any speedy units such as the Mauler, hovertank, or the AA walker; you'll have to rely upon Stormtroopers, AT-S Ts, and creating AA turrets to deal with the issue, and they aren't very good at shooting those down.

Not to mention TIE Maulers, who the AI will use to run over anything in their way.

Not to mention the AI seems to have far fewer problems with unit pathfinding compared to players.