Do Rebels blow... or do I just suck?

[SexyElf]

Okay, I've played rebels before and won, but that was about 10 years ago when the game came out.

 

I reinstalled last week, beat the game with the imperials (which was a cake walk). Now I try my hand at the rebels and am at a loss...

 

A couple 'web guides' tell to use rebels for their spec ops and use them to sabatoge/liberate planets by using a combination of sab/uprisings. Around turn 60, this worked and an entire system turned to me - but from there on in, things just became worse.

 

I have been sabbing 4 planets owned by imperials, they have NOTHING on them. I've destroyed all mines/refineries/troops/officiers. There is nothing on them at all. I have officers with leadership of 100+ along with 40 gureilla performing incite uprising for 160+ turns and the bar never moves. Yet if I invade the bare planet, the entire sector gets mad at me - when clearly the imperials cannot protect them... What is going on?

 

I have all my recruiters recruiting on planets that are 100% loyal and they constantly are failing. I mean like 3/5th of the time they fail. Meanwhile, the empire (with their two recruiters) have all their officers, and no place to put them because all the planets are sabbed.

 

Finally, the empire is just running over me with the ships. I have sabbed a couple ships, but it seems like nothing I have can stop them, except unless they hit a planet full of xwings. So they just sit in one sector and using diplomatics on all the planets - where as my 8+ diplomats cannot even convert one planet in a 100% neutral system, the imperials (computer) can conert 4-5 planets in a 'war sector' in the same time it takes me to convert one planet in a 'neutral sector'. And having just played the imperials, I know they lack diplomats - so what gives.

 

In total, I have about 200+ spec forces and very few troops. Luckily, I have abducted several officers. How is it easier to abduct 3 officers on a planet with vader - but 40+ spec ops cannot succeed one uprising? Hmmmm.

 

Does anyone have any advice? Am I doing something wrong?

 

-Sexyelf

-Frustrated.

[nordwindranger]

hmm well I've always thought that the rebels have the advantage once you get the moncal. Until then, it might not be a bad idea to hide in the rim.

 

In the only online game i've ever played, my buddy came up with a good rebel strategy. From the beginning of the game, send all of your combat heroes to sabotage troop buildings and troops. Before long the Empire will be crippled, because it needs troops to hold the planets it starts with

[budious]

Playing AI, I usually bum rush Coruscant. Get all your fleets meeting up at a neutral or rebel planet in Swessanna or Corellia sectors. If you are lucky enough to have 2 alliance carriers to start, this will be a breeze. Make sure to send Han, Chewy, Antilles to a Corvette at a neutral planet near Coruscant and start sabbing defenses or ships. Have the rest of the fleet rondevue and merge forces or time it out for multiple fleets to arrive on the same day at Coruscant. Kill the defense and capture the planet. Move your HQ and all fighters and troops you have to Coruscant and hold down fort knox for the rest of the game... if you had it on standard victory, if it was HQ, congrats, you won!

[SexyElf]

I should've set it as a HQ victory - this game is sucking big time. I have about 20 mon cals now and the empire is running around the galaxy. Yawn... why can't the AI just concede when they have lost - wtf.

 

Anyways, 800 turns later, a planet is still being 'incite uprising' with two 100+ characters + 40 guriella ops and still is 99% empire. Interesting yet frustrating.

 

What gets me is when you have about 10:1 planets rebel:empire and the empire still can diplo planets faster then you can. It is like a George Bush War Campaign... they suck but people still love them for some reason.

[Huertolero]

With rebels, its easy to win. You just have to have a strategy. First of all i personally prefer having HQ on another end of the galaxy then seswenna. Sure it makes the trips longer but it keeps you out of harms way for a longer time and lets u prepare for incoming attacks, if any. Second, the most importatnt aspect of the rebel game is Skywalker. With him, you can do pretty much anything, tho i use him for sabotage and combat missions only, so he gets big combat and he beats vader like a little girl when they meet. Also, using Skywalker with Solo is imo the best combo in the game, since the millenium falcon makes them a very fast strike team, and solo is not bad in combat himself. Finally, ibelieve you should forget moncals. All you need is a massive fleet of Nebulon-B's and figter carriers. They are cheap, effective, and carry 2 figter wings. Remember, whatever type of capital ships you decide on, fighters win. The player that has more fighter will almost SURELY win the battle. Fighters easily take care of any star destroyer, SSD or the like. I reccommend A-wings, of course. I've won countless battles with only Nebulons, carriers, and an occasional capital ship for turbo lasers (btw Bulwark beats SSD 1on1).

[SexyElf]

I guess the major thing I have troubles with is converting 100% loyal enemy planets to your side - any tips on this?

 

Additionally, something rather funny that I found. When I took my fleet to coruscant, I bombarded/invaded, so only the officers were left (including the emperor and vader according to an espionage mission only 3 turns prior) and when I invaded I only captured two officers and the emperor and vader escaped (past 20+ troops and about double that in ships, additional to the 20+ officers I had there, lol). So after I invaded coruscant, I removed all my troops, and coruscant went back to the empire and all systems in the sector gained imperial loyalty. So I did this three more times and each time the other planets gained more loyalty - all in a single turn. I just thought that that was ridiculous, lol. Why can't rebels 'steal the death star plans' and build a deathstar? I seriously do not want to have to diplo/invade all those friggin planets.

[DarthTex]

In my opinion, rebel guerrilla forces suck (as you probably already know ). Also, depleting the your enemies resources (and hopefully yours in the future) doesn't really endear the populace to your cause. Your sabotage missions on mines/refineries just rack up unemployment figures, making the Empire the perfect benefactor. Stop that! Invade the systems and keep 7 (not the minimum 6) troops on each planet and start diplomacy. Some diplomats are better than others, and some planets are easier than others (regardless of the diplomat).

 

Since you've invaded Coruscant, don't abandon it; that's just a sign of weakness and definitely shows you don't give a gnat's ass about the populace (that's why Imperial support keeps growing) When you take over a planet, plan on keeping it forever. Now, as for the Emperor and Darth Vader escaping ... the worst possible scenario Start mass producing Bothan spies and hit every Imperial system in the galaxy. If you're lucky you'll get a hit. If the Jedi can hide after the Great Purge, Palpy and Darth won't have a problem either. Good Luck .... (you'll need it now)

[SexyElf]

lol - thanks for the advice

[Evaders99]

Really wouldn't take the time to incite 100% loyal planets. That's just a waste of resources and a futile effort. Better, concentrate your forces on an entire sector. Invade, quell with troops, use diplomacy to bring the system back to 100%. Repeat. Even better if you bring in the Death Star, makes it much easier to keep loyalty high.

[Huertolero]

How to get a 100% other side planet...

 

I find theres one effective way of doing it. It worked many times for me, much to my adversary's dismay. The first, hardest and essential thing you must do is beat the adversaries fleet. If you manage to do that, especially if the fleets are big, you will get popular support in the entire sector. If the opponents fleet bails, it wont work as well as if u have interdictors and blast them all to pieces. Once that is done, there should be no 100% opponents planet in the sector. Then i find the planet that has the most support for me, get my fleet there (skywalker must be there, or some combat personnel) and take out the troops one by one.. if all works well, by the time there are 3 troops on the planet it will allready go into uprising.. once the first planet in the sector goes to uprising, you have practically won the sector. Any planet that was 100% before and had no troops on it should be neutral now.. once you take out troops on another planet, the sector should be more than 75% yours and its an easy job from there.

 

Btw, this technique is so much fun and makes your oponnent cry All you really need to make sure of is that you win the first battle. Also, Skywalker+Solo are great here, not just to kill the troops, but also If the opponent's fleet is too big, you can try to sabotage some of tis capital ships (but you need to be cunning and lucky to do that)..

 

Once my opponent attacked me, bombarded one of my planets where i had Skywalker with a fleet with like 10 SDs and i SSD.. after like 10 tries, i managed to sabotage the SSD and all the fighters on it ) made my opponent cry like a baby )

[dulljackieboy]

Here are the keys to succeeding against the Empire, in my experience:

 

1) Take away their shipyards.

Target these from the beginning of the game and odds are the Imps aren't going to be able to make a comeback unless you play stupid. Use combat teams, infiltrators and of course, His Lukeness to rock them in this way. The real danger of Imperial-held shipyards is the Empire's potential to have such a huge group of TIEs at Coruscant and other important systems that your fighters won't be able to get through them before they have an opportunity to attack their Capital Ships, which leads me to my next point

 

2) Offset their Capital Ship advantage with your Fighters

In the early stages, the Imps have a disgusting advantage as far as Capital Ships go. Even the dinkiest, the Carrack, is almost as fast as Han Solo, and obviously their Star Destroyers can carry huge numbers of fighters and troops. But Imperial Capital Ships are hopeless without fighter support until they have the Lancer. To begin a big battle, sic your Y-wings on the Carracks (they're the only Imperial craft that poses a significant threat to Reb fighters in the beginning) and your X-wings on their TIEs. If you've got enough fighters to begin with, you'll suddenly have an Imperial fleet at your mercy. I'd happily sacrifice a Bulk Cruiser or two to kill a Star Destroyer with an overabundance of fighters. Remember, you're never going to build another Bulk Cruiser (because they suck), but the Imps have to build SD's to stay dangerous. Build Escort Carriers and X-wings, even when you can build the Frigate and the Mon Cal Cruiser. It's cool to have a big fleet with loads of cool ships, but if the Imps can't get through your fighter screen to get to your Carriers, they simply cannot beat you.

 

3) Spread out your Diplomats

Leia and Mon Mothma have skills, no doubt, so put them on opposite sides of the galaxy. If they can both start out getting planets with shipyards for you, that's the best option. And have them work in the Core, not the Rim. If you take the Core away from them early, you'll force the Imps out into the Rim, and that means they can't reinforce their home territories effectively. The Imps themselves are a little short on Diplomats, so treat a poorly defended Diplomat (say, on a recently-acquired Imperial system) as the most valuable target of a potential Abduction mission. If you capture two or three of their Dips, they'll be forced to use Vader and maybe even Palpy to do Diplomacy, and this is where their game falls apart.

 

4) Divide and Rule

If you're lucky enough to have the makings of two goodly sized fleets (being able to distribute two Corvettes to each is the ideal here), then split up your sabotage capable operatives between these. There are going to be planets on either side of the galaxy near to uprising, so hit as far apart as possible to make the Imps split their own strength. Using fleets for this rather than using Han Solo's increased hyperdrive speed to strike from an in-sector base means you can hang in orbit over their planet and that infiltrators used as decoys won't slow you down (Han travels at normal speed if he travels with just one Spec Ops team). Once you liberate one world, move on to another with all speed. Sometimes turning one planet in a sector is enough to make all the other planets go into uprising or better yet, immediately flip.

 

5) Don't worry too much about Imperial Bombardments and Assaults

The Empire doesn't discriminate between Military and Civilian targets usually. When they blow up your mines and refineries, the local neighborhood of planets will start switching their allegiance--the Imps do your work for you. And if they take over one of your planets, do your best to get back there and bombard the crap out of their regiments on the ground. When your people go into uprising, the local planets will likely do the same, helping you out once more.

 

6) Design research is best relegated to the back burner until you have a foothold in the galaxy.

The design guys all have valuable skills aside from design. Don't burn them on R&D when you don't have enough shipyards, construction yards, etc. to make them really shine at their jobs. The one exception are the troop trainers, because the Sullustan regiments are possibly the greatest bargain in the game--they're cheap to build and they detect saboteurs and spies.

 

7) Use shields to protect your planets, not troops.

Two GenCores are a necessity for any planet you want to keep. Troops are a bother to keep track of and even if you've got enough to defend a planet from assault, that doesn't mean that the fleet in orbit won't just bombard them until there are none left. As a matter of fact, the Imps will happily sabotage the GenCores on a trooped-up planet (say you've got it trooped-up with Fleet Regiments, which are no good at detecting sabotage missions) and then show up with one Dreadnaught and murder your boys. Don't let them do that. Give your planets a couple Sullustan Regiments and a pair of shields and they'll weather anything less than Vader himself.

 

The Magical Bothan Spy Ratio

Don't waste sabotage capable operatives on espionage unless you've got a suspicion that something really big is going down on an Imperial planet (Vader's headed there or they're building a Death Star). Rather, build five Bothan spy units and use two to carry out the mission, three to decoy, and DON'T send them to planets close to uprising, as these usually have a ton of troops who'll find your spies. If you start regular espionage from the beginning, you'll be way ahead.

 

9) The Han Solo Dilemma

Han's an excellent espionage/sabotage/commander character and he's double fast, so I love to use him as an operative and as a commander/admiral in a fleet. But in the long term, it's probably more advantageous to use him as a recruiter. Luke doesn't really have the potential to be a great admiral or commander (his starting leadership is 70), but Han's is 90, so you could potentially get him up to 109, which is up there with the Imperial cats, especially without their Palpy-on-Coruscant bonus. Leia and Mon Mothma can also be used as recruiters, but since they can't command fleets, fighters or troops and since they don't have the relevant espionage skills to not get caught when attempting to start an uprising, high leadership skills aren't useful to either of them.

 

Hope this helps.

[Huertolero]

Yea, what he said

 

Now theres a pro explanation right there

[PHSYCOBOB]

 

Luke doesn't really have the potential to be a great admiral or commander

 

Hope this helps.

 

Luke as a commander = fighters move twice as fast.. do try it. =o)

 

 

The Rebel's fleet powerhouse is Gunships.. Very cheap, fast to make, and a fleet of them shreds almost anything.

[Huertolero]

REALLY??

 

i dont recall seeing this in the manual. If Luke makes fighters 2x fast, that makes the rebels pwn oh so much more.

 

can anyone confirm this?

[dulljackieboy]

Yeah, I forgot that. Good call. Still, it doesn't make any sense, you know? His combat's great, but his leadership's in the toilet. What happens when you make Darth a commander, by the same token?

[PHSYCOBOB]

Yeah, I forgot that. Good call. Still, it doesn't make any sense, you know? His combat's great, but his leadership's in the toilet. What happens when you make Darth a commander, by the same token?

 

Darth = the same effect. I did not mention that above as the question was about the Rebels. =o)

[budious]

Luke as a commander = fighters move twice as fast.. do try it. =o)

 

This bonus or a lesser bonus also exists for Wedge Antilles? It would seem logical and has worked well in games I have played, but I am so skilled it could just be a placebo from my super ego. What do you think?

 

The Rebel's fleet powerhouse is Gunships.. Very cheap, fast to make, and a fleet of them shreds almost anything.

 

They sure do chew up ties and spit out bits of space debris. Fill out a fleet with a 50/50 mix of these and Nebulon-B cruisers and you can take down about anything. Neb-B's have a weak ion/turbo with moderate lasers so 4-5 can tackle an ISD or a squadron of tie interceptors.

 

For the Imperials, carracks and vsds are a nice combo. Both have a 60 rated hyperdrive meaning they get anywhere very fast. Carracks punch the laser punch and vsd's pack the turbo lasers for capital ships. vsds also have strong bombardment ratings, use the limited fighter space to carry tie bombers and you can bombard the crap out of rebel systems.

[dulljackieboy]

Another thing I like to do is to move my HQ to Coruscant once I've got enough troops there to defend it, and a whoooole bunch of GenCores. That way you defend one planet instead of two.

 

At later stages in the game, I find the Liberator-class Cruiser to be the real bargain, especially when backed up by Gunships and CC-7700s. There's no job too big for a fleet made of those ships, in enough numbers, obviously. I tend to relegate frigates and the original Escort Carriers to defensive duty given how slowly they move, though those are my workhorses up until the capture of Coruscant, usually.

 

With my RebEd settings, I commonly run into what I call "TIE nests", where a weakened Empire can still hold me at bay by having dozens of TIEs in its few remaining sectors. Since getting my Cruisers damaged or maybe even sent packing after an unsuccessful voyage into the Rim really slows me down, I'll send a whole fleet of twenty gunships or so to clean out the TIEs.

[PHSYCOBOB]

Another Rebel player's combat note: 6 y-wings = destroy an ISD 9 y-wings = destroy an SSD. Within the world of Rebellion, ion/bomber fighters in numbers decimate the battlefield.

[dulljackieboy]

No doubt about it. I'll admit I've never seen 9 Y's take on an SSD, that's gotta be a rare occurance. My Y's are usually long gone by the time the Imps have the SSD.

[PsychoInfiltrator]

I've had multiple reports of a mere 6 A-wing squadrons being able to eliminate 1 unprotected SSD. Granted, I think there was only one or two squadrons left, but still. The abiltiy to evade incomign fire comes in handy, I guess.

[Defender_16]

In one of my famously infuriating battles I lost thirty Squadrons of B-wings to half as many Tie Defenders.

Couldn't believe it! Is their manuverabiliy not high enough?

[budious]

Another thing I like to do is to move my HQ to Coruscant once I've got enough troops there to defend it, and a whoooole bunch of GenCores. That way you defend one planet instead of two.

 

At later stages in the game, ...CC-7700s.

 

Alternative suggestion, get your HQ to Coruscant but instead of going heavy on troops and shield gens, just build tons of X and Y wings and part some CC7700 interdictors there. Any Imperial fleet that shows up gets pummeled. AI sends solo ships so it's not much fun but it's quite awesome to crush an opponent with in multiplayer.

[budious]

In one of my famously infuriating battles I lost thirty Squadrons of B-wings to half as many Tie Defenders.

Couldn't believe it! Is their manuverabiliy not high enough?

 

Tie Defenders have way more laser firepower? B-Wings are heavy ion/torpedo and weak on laser and made more for capital ship assault.

[dulljackieboy]

Yeah, B-Wings are useless against TIEs, especially TIEs with shields. I always enter an Imperial system with a fleet full of A and X-Wings, then exchange them out with B's and Y's from a neighboring Rebel system once I've cleared out their fighters. Very rarely will an Imperial fleet show up and catch you with your pants down.

[RedCrown]

Nah, you have to look at the bright side. But a few points -

 

1. Its easy to play the rebellion. By day 50 you can control half of the core worlds thanks to the PR nightmare that happens when you liberate a planet. In the current game I am playing I am on day 150 and am running 4 sectors (huge galaxy) with Coruscant at about 33% Rebel popular support, and enough resources to build about 10 death stars if I wanted to.

 

2. Mon Calamari Cruisers rock. X-Wings and Y-Wings rock. Heck, all fighters do. While you're only real viable capital ships in my opinion are the MonCals, Dauntlesses and for a quick strike Assault Frigates, all your fighters will win battles if used right.

 

3. The Imperial AI hates the outer rim. Use it to your advantage. At the start of the game, send 1 or 2 Corvettes to scour the galaxy for planets with 12+ energy. Use them as bases.

 

4. Gunships! They'll eat TIEs.

 

I love to play the Rebels. Its easier to win (Coruscant doesn't move. The Emperor tends to stay put. ) Plus, hey, you're the Rebels.