Improved ship battles with simple effective RebEd changes

[LordVader2]

Well here’s my first post as LordVader2. I used to be around on these forums a few years ago as LordVader until real life intervened. Now I’m back and enjoying the creativity of RebEd.

 

I realize there has been many mods and changes to Rebellion using RebEd. After playing around I came up with a simple yet effective mod to make it a challenge against the AI.

 

The main element of Rebellion that affects the AI are ships. It builds fleets to invade systems, blockade, attack your ships and the presence of fleets determines who wins the game. So I made major changes to the ship statistics in RebEd. I didn’t want to change the overall flavour of ships and ship combat so I used a basic formula. I also eliminated some ships, fighters and troop types to make the game more compact and to save time with the technology race. I removed the Victory Star Destroyer 2, Strike Cruiser, Imperial Star Destroyer 2 and Super Star Destroyer for the Empire. With the Rebels, I removed the Liberator Cruiser, Assault Frigate, CC-9600 Frigate, Dauntless Cruiser and Bulwark Battlecruiser. I also disabled B-Wing’s and TIE Defenders. I wanted to put more focus on ship combat because powerful fighters unbalance the game (against the AI, it’s cheaper and easier to maintain swarms of fighters).

 

So with these changes it means the Imperial Star Destroyer and Mon Calamari Cruiser are the most powerful ships in game. For editing the ship statistics I doubled the following values: Shield Strength (except for the Interdictor Cruiser, 1200 would be unbalanced so I kept it at 600), Shield Recharge, Sublight Speed (for faster battles), Weapon Recharge (again, for faster battles), Tractor Beam (The AI is very dangerous now when it catches your ships trying to break away and repair shields), Turbolasers, Ion Cannons and Laser Cannons. I modified the Damage Control Rating by 2.5, ie the Mon Calamari Cruiser now has the highest DCR of 125 and Imperial Star Destroyers have 75. This makes for interesting battles because the ships are repairing more quickly.

 

I only made one change to the fighters, that is to double their sublight speed rating to keep up with the ship changes. This means they can get a few shots in if the other fleet withdraws because of their speed.

 

The ship battles have improved considerably with these changes. I’m currently playing a game as the Empire and I’ve never worked so hard before with keeping the Alliance fleets away. My ships barely have time to repair before having to fend off another Alliance fleet. For increased difficulty I halved the maintenance cost for all Alliance ships, troops and fighters while DOUBLING the cost for the Empire.

 

I made several other changes to facilities, defenses, troops, special forces and the Characters if anyone is interested in them. The difference is very noticeable with ships and with the smaller pool of ships to build from, it tightens the strategy of ship battles and you don’t need to upgrade your major capital ships constantly. You can use ISD, VSD, Mon Cal and Neb Frigate throughout the game. I will say this, I’ve learnt to respect the Mon Cal now. It’s easily the most dangerous ship in game.

[DarthTex]

... I made several other changes to facilities, defenses, troops, special forces and the Characters if anyone is interested in them ...

Sounds great, almost like somethings I've been kickin' around in the back of my mind. What are your "other" changes? I'd be interested to hear the rest

[LordVader2]

The other changes I made were to enhance gameplay and speed. I tried to avoid making values too different. I think I achieved a fair balance.

 

Facilities.

Doubled the bombardment value (except Mines, made it 9).

Doubled the production rate, standard facilities are 2, advanced are 1.

Changed the production rate for Mines/Refineries to 3 (from 5).

 

Defenses.

Not many changes here since I only really use the shields.

Doubled the bombardment value.

Increased weapon power for LNR Series 1 to 1600 and for KDY-150 to 4000.

These changes were mainly for the AI’s benefit since they make use of all defenses.

 

Troops.

(Playing Empire side)

Doubled the Attack rating, Defense rating and Bombardment defense (except Alliance Army Regiment, made it 9) for Alliance Regiments.

Increased detection rating by 10, much harder to get past those Sullustian’s now.

 

Special Forces.

Tripled cost for Imperial Spec Forces (do the opposite if you play Alliance). It really bites into your maintenance pool if you go on a building spree.

No other changes, I rarely use Spec Forces for offensive missions.

 

Characters

Gave Leia and The Emperor the ability to train Jedi Knights.

Removed probability of Jedi from Ackbar, Wedge Antilles, Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca (Call me old fashioned, but I stuck to the film’s and books for these characters) and all characters with Espionage/Combat ratings under 50.

Made Novell Garaint and Page Jedi’s with up to 40 rating.

Gave all remaining characters a 10% Jedi Probability chance with up to 40 rating.

Gave Bin Essanda and Borsk Fey’lya General tags.

 

These options balanced out the characters a bit without turning it into a Jedi fest.

 

 

Overall these changes made the gameplay smoother without any major imbalances.

[Antonius]

Sounds interesting... how we can try these modifications ?

And thx to a member, he were able to introduce an extra character for both side.

Now we can have 31-31 characters

[Exedore_Neo]

I am excited to see the possibility of this new character business working into a new editor for Rebellion. Rebed is great, but times are changin'... Can't wait for the new one. I like the changes LV2, just think Leia doesn't sit well with me. But since the options for the Rebellion are slim...eh...