My issues with RR beta so far

[JediHawking]

Well I'm not signed up as an official beta tester, but I've been playing rebellion for a very long time and have been following reloaded for 2 years. Overall, fantastic work. I'm not really going to comment on the little bugs and such that need fixed up still, just on the gameplay.

 

The one bug that is annoying as hell is that as the empire the picture at the bottom is on top of all the buttons. Now I've been playing long enough that I know where to click naturally but its still irritating.

 

As far as gameplay, the Eclipse SSD is my biggest beef. It's totally unballanced because it's used as a death star. It has it's stats programmed in just like its supposed to be a badass SSD but because it's in the death star slot none of that get's utilized. If it's going to be used as a death star, then it should cost a lot more. The death star was 600 maintenence while the eclipse is what 175?

 

Now what I really want is the Eclipse to not be in the death star slot so that I really get to use it. That 3D model is amazing and it's a shame for it to go to waste like that.

 

For both the Imps and the NR ship research isn't that exciting for quite a while. Because you're starting out with Imp star destroyers there is no reason to really bother with the early mon cals. With the Imps you don't get anything bigger worth building until Imp star duece.

 

I'll keep playing but other than the AI being totally worthless to fight against (like always) that's all for the moment. Great job RR team, keep up the awesome work.

[Lord_La_forge]

Thank you, you helped us a lot! The Eclipse will stay in that slot though 175 is pretty damn cheap, I agree. This should be fixed in the future.

The ESSD is far too "uber" for a standard ship slot, and we have some great SDs already on the imperial side.

 

Could you describe that interface problem a bit better? Which picture do you mean?

[JediHawking]

The Eclipse is growing on me, when I started blowing up planets I was happy. As long as the cost and build time is appropriately adjusted it would be alright.

 

When you are imp, the buttons for adjusting the map, looking at the personnel and fleet lists, the planet, fleet, and troop databases are all underneath the imperial officers that have been added in.

 

Another thing that I wanted to add is that if the imp star is available to both sides, so should the imp star duece. Giving them an SSD isn't neccesary even the the NR did have one at some point, but they used the upgraded imp stars plenty. This isn't really a big deal though.

 

As far as the rebel ships, I really haven't played them enough yet to test out all the "big gun" ships but it seems like theres a lot of them that may not really be that useful. The mc 40a makes sense because it has laser cannons as well so it's an all around package, but that also takes away the need to ever build a nebulon b doesn't it?

[JediHawking]

Well first off I like the fact that the NR and Imp have setups that cater to different strategies. With the imps having shipyards first it gives them a quick first strike strategy and the NR with their construction yards must outmanufacture for the longer term. The one problem I have with this is that so far in my gameplay that gives an edge to the imps it seems. You can build several corvettes very quickly and just blockade/sabotage the NR to death and destroy all their infrastructure.

 

What is the point of the system patrol craft? If you wanted a shitty ship that was fast to build then fine, but it takes longer than a corvette. Perhaps to better balance the game the corvettes build time (cost) could be enough more to make it not so powerful of a tool in the early stages.

[JanDeis]

Well the beginning of the game is usually a flurry of diplomatic missions accompanied by a production rush in structures, troops, and ships. About the 5th day, I usually have all of my fleets organized and spread out where I want them. About day 10 is when all of the sabotage and other missions of the like happen. After that is all the real contact with the opposing faction. The ships, troops, and characters should have a balance to keep the game's original feel.

[JediHawking]

Jan you're missing my point. I understand how to play the game, I've had it since it came out.

 

As the imps with the shipyards to start out you can employ a very offensive strategy of attacking their infrastructure. Early in the game blockading is extremely effective because you don't have the resources to handle several planets blockaded at once. Also because you can't build to or from a blockaded planet that is just another way to halt their manufacturing build up. You don't even need to stay at a planet for more than a few days. If you stay mobile and shuffle things around it's a tough strategy to stop especially since you'll be so strapped for money. You of course load up the ships with saboteurs as you get them and run missions off the blockading ships. I've shown up and leveled a sector completely without a single bombardment. It then takes hundreds of days to rebuild that sector and I can focus on attacking someone else. In a small galaxy this strategy is almost unstoppable. Really the only thing to do is keep saboteurs of your own on your planets and try to hit the ships, but if you are continually moving your ships around then it's hard to get at them.

 

Really the rebels have to just do their best to fight off that attack while building up their manufacturing. In the long run the rebels have a huge manufacturing advantage so the key is to never let them use it for the imps and for the rebels the key is to protect that advantage. The small galaxy still favors imps like in the original while large favors rebs.

[JanDeis]

Ohh, ok. I get it. Oops.

 

Also, I installed Reloaded, and it wouldn't load the game. It said I didn't have the CD in the drive (even though I did) and I don't think rebed ever loaded the .reb file.

[JediHawking]

Jan, make sure it's installed in the right directory. My roomate had it installed right under C instead of in program files and for some reason that caused his to do the same thing.

 

Back to game play, I'm really enjoying the mod now that I'm playing against my room mates. Sure I kick their ass (they played before, but not that much) but it's at least a game. The one thing that I would like to see changed at this point is for the golan stations to be earlier in the research. It really seems that by the time you get your ship research done in reloaded the game is already in one person's favor enough that the golan's aren't going to make a big change. I feel that the strategy of the game can really be made more complex by adding the stations earlier because you can afford to be defensive and offensive at the same time and really get into some great space battles.

 

I also like giving them 1 sublight speed so they can maneuver slightly in battle. I also have given them 150 (max) hyperdrive instead of running battlestations and just when playing against my room mates play by the rules that you don't attack with them. That way you can deploy them to defend what planets you want but not fast enough for it to be a practical fleet movement. We'll see how I feel about golan's when I really get to test them in battle against a person but I'm excited about how it's going to change the dynamic of space battles.

[DarthTex]

I also like giving them 1 sublight speed so they can maneuver slightly in battle.

I think sublight 1 is the default value as RebEd will not let it be 0. I believe this was mentioned in the BattleStations mod.

 

 

I also have given them 150 (max) hyperdrive instead of running battlestations and just when playing against my room mates play by the rules that you don't attack with them. That way you can deploy them to defend what planets you want but not fast enough for it to be a practical fleet movement.

Isn't that the "point" of the DESTINATION selection when constructing the Golan at the shipyard? When it's complete it goes to the DESTINATION and is then stuck there (hyperdrive = 0). Your method allows Golans to escape if confronted by a large enemy fleet, instead of fighting to the death

[JediHawking]

That is true golans shouldn't be allowed to retreat from a battle, but at the same time its extremely lame to have golans stuck at planets. I wish I could not allow them to retreat from battle, but make them relocatable.

 

Realistically though, I never fight without an inderdicter with a fleet that significant so it's not much of an issue later in the game.

[JediHawking]

I now have some other issues after beating up on my friend a few times in a row .

 

Research is way too slow. I at first didn't mind this, but in a pvp the game is practically won before any research really happens. I've had him cornered to the point of no recovery before day 400 every time.

 

I also think there needs to be less sabotage. I use it to death and it makes the game very anticlimactic. If you dedicate yourself to sabotage you can never let your opponent do anything. I think just reducing the success probability of sabotage by a lot would help, but also there needs to not be so many personal that are good for nothing except sabotage/espionage. I'd be happier with them just not existing.

 

I'm going to try making some changes to it such as moving the golans up to 4 or 5 in the research, doubling each characters base research ability, and see how things go. I've already been playing with the eclipse made to cost that of a death star, the golans the way I mentioned earlier, and I think that's all.

[JediHawking]

Well I realized the reason research takes forever is that there are gaps in the research. Imperials don't get anything until research level two for ships, and then it continues to skip around. This on top of the fact that both sides only have one ship research only guy makes it take forever. Rebels have the same deal with ships, they don't get things constantly. I went in and eliminated the gaps so it doesn't take 3 rounds of research to pick up one thing.

 

Also wtf is up with the NR getting two facility research personal and the imperials only getting one. It's not even like the imbalance is made up for somewhere else.

 

I went ahead and added another ship researcher for the imps as well as another ship researcher for both sides to speed things up.

 

Overall the only big problem other than the missing facility researcher as far as balancing the game goes is that the NR starting with construction while the Imperials start with shipyards is rediculously imbalanced. The NR has such a massive manufacturing advantage it takes a lot of lucky turns of events to counteract.

[DarthTex]

Well I realized the reason research takes forever is that there are gaps in the research. ..

You did take into account that the "gaps" might be where starfighters get researched, correct? I haven't installed Reloaded, but even in the "vanilla" game if you looked at capital ships only, there would appear to be "gaps". But if you look at the starfighters, then ... the "gaps" are filled

[JediHawking]

In reloaded you start with 3 out of 4 of your fighters on both sides. The E wing and the defender are the only fighters to be researched. You also start with a lot more of your capital ships than you do in the regular rebellion. This is a good change I think, but the research needs to be adjusted accordingly. It shouldn't take forever to get your next advances. I made the changes that I think need made and am going to play a few games testing it. I think I finally found a good balance to the reloaded game so we'll see where it goes from there.

[VinBadir]

I downloaded RR on july 5th and installed it on the 6th, everything loaded fine and i started a game as the rebels...

 

The first thing i noticed was that Coruscant was farther "east" than Yavin IV, i'm pretty sure that Coruscant is closer to the core than Yavin IV. So i just went into RebEd and switched their positions, no big deal there. As i continued playing i noticed that there were none of the new icons, voices, etc,. not only that, but when the first space battle happened i was surprised to see that the ships that had new graphics, showed up as the original ships (they didn't match the new pictures of them) it pretty much seemed to me that the only thing new were some of the characters, defenses, troops and special forces...

 

Considering the fact that i could do all that with RebEd (even load ships without the space battle graphics showing up, i haven't figured out the graphics yet, but it would be great to play a game with different ships) i uninstalled the game and haven't played it since...

 

I know what you're thinking, that i didn't install it right. But i have Resource Hacker, Rebellion Editor and i followed the directions precisely (i even had the instruction screen open and did each thing one at a time) and i installed the patch or video (whatever it's called that goes in the registry)

 

However i would like to give Reloaded another try, but the experience would be much better if everything worked...

[JediHawking]

Well everything worked for me and I have now installed it on four different machines. It sounds like you didn't load the reloaded cards (or they didnt load right) before you enabled the movie patch.

[Moribundus]

I'm pretty sure you must have messed something up. The fact that you have the tools doesn't necesarily mean that you know how to use them. Also posting about uninstalling the game and your bad experience will surely help the team.

[VinBadir]

I re-installed Reloaded a couple days ago and guess what? IT WORKED!

 

I found out that when i first installed it i didn't place the BETA folder within the Rebellion folder.

[JediHawking]

I've noticed also that the mc - 40a comes with a glitch. It's supposed to carry two fighters and two troop regiments (sometimes it starts loaded with them) yet it cant carry any. If you remove them from the ship, you can't put them back on.

 

It's a simple fix in rebed, just thought I would comment.

 

I also started a game today on expert, NR, small gallaxy, and the imps started with 3 super star destroyers. It's insane. I like it, but where the hell did this come from.

[Exedore_Neo]

Reloaded is awesome! I have enjoyed myself immensely, though I do miss Vader...hehe. Anyway, I just wanted to say the balance does seem to favor the NR in the construction area. I really enjoy the fact the Imps have those shipyards, but it is hard to get on the construction track. Really great job on this guys. Hope the final draft is coming soon! Really looking forward to it.

[JediHawking]

So after playing the game a lot I have a ton of issues with the game. Its amazing how certain things change the balance of the game.

NOTE: (I am going to use rebel and NR interchangeably, old habit), also I know yavin is supposed to be coruscant and coruscant wayland, but I'll use the current names from the game.

 

 

First of all, it is almost impossible to win as the empire against a legit player. Only times anybody ever won was me against my dumb room mate who only kind of knows how to play.

 

Going over all the problems with the balance of the game from the beginning.

 

As cool as it is to have 3 shipyards as the imperials to make the game different, it doesn't work. It gives the rebels basically 60 days head start on manufacturing while the ships that the imperials build aren't really that much of a benefit long term. They get boned on manufacturing.

 

The Carrack light cruiser is way over powered. I've had one take out an MC-40, while I've had an MC-40 take out a victory (all 1v1, the matchups work out differently in larger battles).

 

The Eclipse needs to cost that of a death star (or at least in the ball park), not that of a SSD.

 

The M 90 is overpowered as well. It outguns the SSD by a significant margin and is cheaper. It needs to be not as powerful/SSD needs to be more powerful. I changed both of them small amounts.

 

The setup of the galaxy itself causes many problems as well. This is where balance is something that was easily overlooked. With the location of Coruscant and Yavin in RR, it makes diplomacy on the galactic scale favor the NR a lot. On every size of galaxy, the rebels can move to a sector and have the upper hand on in diplomatically before the imperials can. Coruscant is isolated away from most of the high importance sectors (relative to Yavin). Compound this with the natural imbalance of having 4 NR recruiters and 2 imp recruiters and it's a huge problem. Add in the diplomatic imbalance in personel and it gets even worse. The rebels have a huge edge in diplomats over the imperials (not counting the fact that with rebel recruiters finishing early, they become diplomats sooner).

 

With that said, corscant needs to be relocated closer to center and Yavin needs to be moved farther out. This is how the original game was balanced with the 4-2 recruiter difference. The three rebel recruiters on Yavin are far enough away that either you move them immediately to an inner sector, or you recruit out there and move the personnel in. Either way, there is a huge amount of days of delay in there that evens things out. Also with Mon Mothma out at the capital, shes not as useful in delivering personnel to important sectors either.

 

Along the lines of the imperials not having enough diplomats to contend with the NR, there are a few things that need to be changed. The 40-60 range diplomats are fairly worthless in the grand scheme. They aren't good enough to win over planets fast enough for them to have a serious impact on the game and they aren't good enough to ever beat out a NR diplomat on a planet. Also with the diplomats that the imps do have, they are consistantly below those of the NR. Thrawn is nowhere near Leia. Cboath is nowhere near luke or Mon Mothma, and then everyone else is kind of in the mix with each other. Also the rebels have more diplomats than the imperials. With the minor characters, there are legitamately 7 rebel diplomats and 5 imperial diplomats (the 40-60 guys don't count there). Then of course there are 3 major rebels and 2 imps, of which all three rebels are far superior.

 

Back to other issues. Obviously Golans come incorrect. The problem is that the battlestations mod makes them worthless. The fleet AI in the game, even with a commander, is too stupid to utilize the stations correctly. They need to have enough mobility in battle that they can actually get into position to do something. I personally also gave them hyperdrive and made it as slow as possible with a rating of 150, that way I can "deploy them" myself to where I want them to go, but they are so slow it is unrealistic to attack with them. I don't expect others to go for that maybe, but I think it works much better. I just make it a rule with who I play not to attack with them so it stays fair.

 

E wings have a significant advantage over Tie defenders, despite almost no difference in cost (6-6 vs 5-6).

 

The planetary shield generators in the game are worthless. With a medium sized fleet my brother blows through 2 ion sat networks no problem. They need defense value bumped up a lot. Never in all the star wars literature could a fleet just bombard straight through two shield generators. It should be possible, but very difficult. I'm talking like 50 bomber squadrons difficult, not 12.

 

The other beef I have with the game in general (original and RR) is that all the worthless sabotage personnel make the game broken. I have won a game without using a single ship before because I sabotaged so effectively that I couldn't be stopped. Once my guys were seasoned veterans, they were rated high enough that I almost never failed a mission. I find that sabotage the way the game has it destroys the overall game play. You never reach the stage of the game where its large scale manufacturing and fleet battles against each other

 

Also in every single game if you manufacture appropriately you run into serious refined material trouble and it's very frustrating. To accompany the bump in manufacturing early by starting with three construction yards while not having the mines and refineries to build up resources you need to drop the process rate down on mines and refineries accordingly. I recently played a game with the rate at 1, and it's a bit too much. I think putting the process rate at 2 as opposed to 4 is where it should be.

 

I think that takes care of all the imbalances in the game play (major ones at least). You can choose to leave some imbalances, but there should be certain advantages for each side that a player must utilize. The problem is that almost all the advantages are in favor of one side, and it ruins the game. I can almost not be defeated when playing as the NR in the basic RR setup. I believe I am currently 12-0 as NR against players, even with half of those problems fixed.

[JediHawking]

Things in the game that I haven't even looked at (as far as balancing).

Troop units.

Commanders

The other MC cruisers - haven't had time to experiment with how good they actually are. Same goes with a few other ships.

I'm sure there are a few other things I'll figure out along the way.

[JediHawking]

Ahh I forgot to elaborate on my beef with the sabotage personnel. There are too damn many of them, and they are too good. My solution was not to change the personnel, but to change the success probability and foil probability of the missions. I also play with 4 worthless characters removed from the game on each side.

 

Realistically to make the game more fun I simply recommend adding more diplomats to each side. It can move the game along much more quickly and allow the more fun later stages in the game to happen at a competitive level. That along with making sabotage truly difficult I think fix the problem.

[elfposer]

First of all a BIG BIG thx for this wonderful Mod. I often thought about what could be better at Rebellion and many of ths ideas are in the Mod. Of course things like new factions are not possible i guess.

 

My experiences are very limited to Rebellion i play i quite often with 2 of my friends, but never against other guys in the internet. So after a while we all have more or less the same play style and i guess we dont play it as efficient as the internet community. I experienced that at starcraft where the battlenet games where a different world then our Lan games. So maybe i am wrong with my balance issues.

 

We just played 2 games against each other and both times the Alliance surrender around round 300 because of playing to aggressive with the characters. So in Both games Alliance lost 2-3 Diplomats earlygame and later even more characters.

 

In our third game which we just play its a draw situation, i was able to get with the Empire an planet with 2 Construction Yards around turn 30-40 so i was able (with 2-3 other planet with 1 Construction Yards i got at the beginning) to built up a good industrial backbone. Still i have the feeling of falling back and back, because of the outer rim. My tatic so far was to fly in the outer rim Systems with a Corellian Corvette with 4-6 saboteurs and scrap the neutral systems so he cant gain to my upkeep there. I just lost my Imperial Star destroyer to a 6 Commandos on a well secured planet which blew my plan invading Yavin, we are now at round 400 so we will see. I hope i get Interdictor Cruisers someday i am researching for ages now and just got Lancer/Galleon/and those little fast transporters. Game is still quite open so we will so what happens ..

 

So now to the balancing/game issues as i have experienced them with my Friend:

 

1. I read that Yavin is supposed to be Corusant and Corusant Wayland ?? Hmm i like the idea that the Empire still controls Corusant, as after the fall the Fall of Palpatine they still hold it, and i was later conquered. And Wayland with 3 Shipyards doesnt make sense to me, more Wayland with 3 Training Facilities.

 

 

2. 3 Shipyards vs 3 Construction Yards is a great idea. But not balanced why not make it 4 Shipy./2 Constr. for Empire and 4 Const./ 2 Shipy. for the Alliance?

 

 

3. Ya the Carrack light cruiser is too strong, hmm no idea how to fix that. But he needs to be overdone.

 

 

4. The setup of the galaxy needs to be overdone, i would suggest just change Yavon with Coruscant.

 

 

5. Ya Empire needs some diplomats as you said, but please dont take away any Characters i like them all and its always good to have some Characters that can get caputured without ruining the game. But yes more Diplos need to be added for balance and speeding up the game. And the 40-60 Diplomats suck but are always good for outer rim missions.

 

 

6. Please do something with Ship Research i dont want that one gets new techs too fast, but can the interdictor cruiser come earlier. In our current game in round 400 with 2 Researcher and a planet with 9 Shipyards and just 3 new ships. My Researchers are doing the Shipresearch mission together maybe thats not good i dont know.

 

 

7. Manufacture shoud be more efficient, i also have Maitance problems and my fleet isnt really big.

 

 

8. Is it possible to give Planets like Mon Calamari or Corellia or even Nal Hutta a certain setup so that theys play a greater importance?

 

 

9. Ya please over do saboteurs, i started that tactic against my friends but it dominates a bit to much the game.

 

 

Again a big big thx to you for doing such a great job, and i hope you will release a overdone new beta soon. Until then i will for sure enjoy some more games against my friends. The new beta doesnt have to be perfect i would just klove to try out a new setup !!

[elfposer]

Ah and i forgot one thing can Luke spot Force user cause in our games he never did. In our current game he went most recently to Dagoba and is now a Padawan thats strange too. Is he now able to spot Force user, and why doesnt he start with a Jedi Knight Rank.

 

P.S. plx plx strengthen Chabotha and Thrawn they both should be way stronger in combat stuff atleast Chabotha should be a real monster/puppetmaster with good stats. Cabotha also should be a Admiraletc as he controlls troops through his force in the books of Timothy Zahn. But maybe i am wrong