just rediscovered the game and trying to play after many yrs

[guerre_detoiles]

okay hello everyone, i just dug up this game from storage and started playing for the first time in like a decade. i don't have the manual anymore and i got some questions after my first session that hopefully can get answered here. thanks in advance

 

1. is it a bad idea to group a lot of ships together and send them off to other planets? do all ships differ in speed? meaning it's better to send them in groups of the own class of speed? also, do infantry inside ships matter at all in space engagements?

 

2. which attributes for success with rescue/abduct missions, and incite/suppress revolt missions? also is recruit only available to certain people?

 

3. sometimes, theres no troops on enemy planets but i can't make a planetary assault. is it because there are shields and batteries still in place? i keep bombarding the military facilities but those pesky shields won't blow up.

 

4. is there a reason to mix different types of fighters in a fleet? or is it just better to take the most expensive fighters over the cheap ones.

 

5. when moving characters from planet to planet, is it better to send them off in ships? and do some people travel faster than others? it seemed like solo does.

 

6. is there any way to bump to screen resolution and to have more than 2 planetary windows open? what i would give to have more windows open...

 

7. are there any comprehensive guides around the web you'd recommend?

 

8. are there different versions/releases of this game? i took a look at the screenshots over at gamespot and they seem a bit different and more colorful than what i have.

 

that's it for now, i'm sure i'll have more questions as i play more.

 

oh and for an old game, it seriously rocks and still better than most games of today! and i'm not even a star wars fan!

[Darth_Rob]

Alright, I'll give it a shot at answering your questions.

 

1. Its not necessarily a bad idea. Sure, if you have a slower ship in a fleet, the entire fleet slows down, but sometimes having that diversification of ships is a good thing that is beneficial in the long run.

 

2. For rescue/abduct, combat is used. For uprisings missions, leadership is used. Espionage is also used for both, as it is used to determine if the mission is detected and foiled by the enemy.

 

3. If shields are up, an assault will not be possible. You would have to send in a sabotage mission against the shield generators to get them down.

 

4. You could mix different fighters. For example, TIE Bombers are good at taking out capital ships, and Y-Wings have ion cannons which will help knock out shields faster. On the other hand, TIE Interceptors and X-Wings are better at handling other fighters. So having a mixture is sometimes a good idea.

 

5. Han Solo has the "Millennium Falcon" effect, where him and other characters you move with him travel at half the usual travel time. Solo is very useful for transporting characters, and it is faster than ship travel.

 

6. I dont believe there is a way to do that.

 

7. I believe that we have a wiki somewheres, but I have forgotten the site...

 

8. As far as I know there is only one version of the game

 

Glad you enjoy the game! Feel free to ask further questions as you play more.

[DarthTex]

Rob got most of them for ya, so I'll just throw my two bits in here or there

 

1: Ship speeds vary, so fleets travel together at the speed of the slowest ship. Infantry inside ships during the tactical battles (ship battles) do nothing, except become cannon fodder if you lose or fail to escape.

 

2: Recruiting is limited to Han, Luke, Leia & Mon Mothma for the Alliance, & the Emperor and Darth Vader for the Empire.

 

3: If there are two shield generators on a planet, no assault is possible. Either you have to sabotage one of them, or bring in some HEAVY firepower from a fleet to blow them away. You can assault a planet with only one shield generator.

 

5: Characters traveling by ship usually travel faster than "moving" them directly planet to planet. Planetary travel for characters has a default of 100 on the hyperspace speed, which is the same speed as a medium transport. So, traveling by ship (other than the med. transport) is faster. Han (and any "character" that travels with him) has a hyperspace speed of 50 (twice as fast as a med. transport).

 

8: There's really only one version of the game, but there are two titles Rebellion sold in the US, and Supremacy sold in Europe. There is a "patch" that allows the European version to play "head-to-head" with their US counterparts; this "patch" changes the version from 1.00 to 1.01. If you don't play head-to-head internationally, don't load the patch (until you absolutely have to).

 

Good Luck!

[Master_Xan]

Some more notes:

 

3: Shields are very hard to take out by bombardment. Especially if they are GenII or if there is more than one. That's why sabotage missions are so important; it's often the only way you can get in unless you just happen to have a spare SSD chilling in orbit. I'd take some characters with high combat/espionage ratings with your invasion fleets, if at all possible.

 

4: Also, Rebellion fighters are generally better than Imperial counterparts. Imperial capital ships are generally better than Rebellion ones.

 

5: Han Solo does NOT travel faster if he's on a ship.

 

8: Screenshots will vary if the person taking the shot has any mods on their version. For example, someone running Reloaded will have very different looking screenshots than somebody running the standard version of Rebellion.

Edited September 3, 2008 by Master_Xan

[DarthTex]

5: Han Solo does NOT travel faster if he's on a ship.

That's what I meant; anyone traveling with Han "directly" (not on a ship) gets Han's special taxi cab bonus of traveling very fast

[guerre_detoiles]

thanks for the replies guys, i have started a new game and put in a whole day's worth so far. made some noob mistakes but just decided to play on. i'm having some difficulty trying to figure out missions.

 

1. are decoys at all necessary when doing missions on your own planet? it doesn't seem so for most missions but i'm not sure about subdue uprising. trying to end uprisings are giving me a really hard time, i still can't figure out what the best way to do these missions are. do i just send a bunch of solo high leadership guys and hope they get lucky? mix them with guerrilla decoys? is succeeding this mission independent of having enough garrisoned units?

 

2. what is a good ratio of decoys you want to send along with your main espionage guys on enemy planets for espionage/sabotage missions? is it always better to send in a lot of decoys? should you always use the cheap special forces as decoys or is it okay to use a character as a decoy? sometimes i end up with a bunch of characters and not enough spies/infiltrators and i try to send 2 characters on a mission and have just 1 special force unit as a decoy. should you ever have more than 1 main character (non-decoy) performing a mission?

 

3. what has the most effect on your units getting caught during missions on enemy planets? personnels? ground units? enemy espionage missions? do units inside ships orbiting the planet have the ability to foil missions just as much as the ones on ground?

 

4. which ship attribute determines how fast they travel? i noticed ships that have the same hyper-drive rating don't arrive at the same time so there must be another factor.

 

5. i always seem to run out of resources. should you not let your mine and refined resource counters get to zero if possible? and always keep the same number of mines to refineries?

 

6. oh and when someone said you need to bring in heavy firepower to destroy shields, which ships for example on the alliance side can do that? i can never seem to take out those shields.

 

ok just these questions for now, but i'm sure to have more later. thanks again for all the help.

[DarthTex]

I'll give some of these a shot:

 

1) Are decoys necessary? No. High leadership guys work best at subdue uprising, & of course having the more than the minimum required garrison troops helps immensely.

 

2) A good ratio of personnel vs decoys? That's a tough one. I use a variety; sometimes 1, sometimes many. I don't have a "set" amount I use each time. I even use characters as decoys too.

 

3) Command personnel are the toughest (Generals especially). Fleets in orbit are an extra layer of detection (your mission team must get by ships in orbit first, then ground personnel before they can proceed with their mission). If you have a HIGH priority system you want to protect, put a fleet in orbit loaded with troops/fighters, have an Admiral, General & Commander on board; planetside have troops/fighters, a General & Commander and perform espionage missions on your own planet (to find incoming & ongoing enemy missions).

 

4) "Hyperspace" is for between systems; if ships have the same value, they travel the same speed. If not, check any ships to see if their hyperspace engines are damaged from a battle. Each ship is also equipped with an emergency backup hyperspace engine, which is extremely slow.

 

5) It's OK if they go to zero, the only thing that really happens is it takes much longer than the stated time to construct anything (basically your resources get backlogged; if you need 20 and 10 are available, it will use those and "wait" until more become available. Waiting and waiting unitl whatever is being constructed will be completed). The best optimization is to have equal numbers, for maintenance points as well as resource management, but that's not always possible.

 

6) Usually those at the latter research stages, CC-9600's, Dauntless's and Bulwarks. But given enough numbers of anything it should work. You might have to experiment: 200 bulk cruisers might be equivalent to 100 Mon Cal cruisers, which might be equivalent to 75 Assault frigates, which might be ... and so on. Y-wings have excellent bombardment values for going after shields, so get lots of escort carriers loaded with Y-wings, that'll definitely help.

 

Good Luck!

[Master_Xan]

2) Also, if anybody gets captured, the decoys tend to be the first ones to go. That's there job, make sure the mission still goes through. I usually use large amounts of decoys on a critical mission, with maybe three characters and a couple of cheap build-me folks doing the actual mission; I've noticed however that a small group of very good characters are sometimes more successful...

 

3) As far as I know, commanders and admirals have no direct effect on detection ratings. I don't know this for sure however, it's only an assumption. Generals certainly do though, and fleets are a major influence.

 

5) Take as many core worlds through diplomacy as possible early in the game. Core worlds have lots of mines/refineries, and tend to make sure you don't run out of resources. If you aren't taking worlds all the time, you have to be building mines/refineries or else STOP building other things. Otherwise it won't be long and you'll run low on maintenance. (Unless you loose a lot of ships or something.) Like Tex said, it's important to have equal numbers of mines to refineries if possible.

 

6) Again, like Tex said, Y-wings are the cheapest and earliest heavy-hitter the Alliance has for taking down shields. Make sure if you take this route, you have a commander and an admiral; they help with orbital bombardments. Generally, the more powerful a capital ship's turbolasers, the more effective they are against shields. Corellian Corvettes do basically nothing, bulk cruisers slightly more, dreadnoughts are better yet, and then the bigger ships like assault frigates, dauntless', etc. are the best.

[guerre_detoiles]

thanks a lot guys, i appreciate your replies.

 

i finally won that game i mentioned above (albeit on easy), but nevertheless i'm finally starting to get it and getting better.

 

few questions that's on my mind right now: do multiple shipyards/training/construction facilities output faster research when R/D missions are taking palce there? also do multiple shipyards repair damaged ships faster than single shipyard?

 

 

couple general questions about how others play:

 

do you guys do the actual tactical fighting? i always opt for auto battles as it seems way too daunting to figure out, i was just wondering if majority of people do the same. however, i'd like to know if which side has the advantage prior to making that decision. is that shown anywhere in the pre-battle screen?

 

do most of you guys think alliance is better than imperial? it seems to have the edge in several crucial areas like diplomacy and knowing where the enemy base is. which side do most here prefer to play with?

 

and finally where other than here can you find people to play multiplayer with?

[Master_Xan]

I've never considered whether having multiple shipyards/train/construction facilities where the research is going on makes it go faster, so can't help you there. But having multiple shipyards does repair ships faster.

 

I almost always do tactical. Only time I do auto is when I know they're going to run away or else I know I'll crush them. For a long time I did auto because, like you, tactical was very daunting indeed. When I finally got around to learning it, I was surprised to find it wasn't so hard. Also, the AI is not very smart, so you'll do much better in battles if you take control yourself (at least, once you get the hang of things you'll do much better).

 

In the pre-battle screen you can see what ships and personnel each side has. If you're vastly outnumbered, that's when you run away. If they're vastly outnumbered, I do auto combat so I don't waste time. Anything else I generally take control. Sometimes I'll take control even when I know I'll loose, and then I'll try and take out/damage critical ships to slow down their advance or to try and kill command personnel. Just depends.

 

Alliance and Imperial are evenly balanced in the stock game. True, the Alliance has a mobile command center that stays hidden. True, they have more diplomats and their fighters are better. But if they expand into the Rim, they end up with slow travel times and a long build-up time. The Empire's capital ships are superior and they have more leadership people. Their HQ may be known, but it's also fairly well protected at the beginning. They tend to do better in the core than the Alliance too.

 

That being said, the Alliance has one massive advantage. The Imperials have one key weakness at the beginning, that if the Rebels can exploit then it's game over, Alliance victory. The Imps start with a few systems more or less under martial law; they don't support the Imperials but are under Imperial control. If the Alliance can free even one of these systems, most of the rest of that entire sector will join the Alliance instantly. If they Alliance can do this with two systems... even if they can only manage it with one, its very hard for the Imps to pull out of such an early disaster.

 

I don't play multiplayer, so you'll have to wait for somebody else to help you on that one.

[guerre_detoiles]

I'll try and take out/damage critical ships to slow down their advance or to try and kill command personnel. Just depends.

 

thanks for the reply. btw, how do you know what commander/admiral is in what ship once you enter the tactical mode? so you're saying you're intentionally targeting the ships containing those personnel? interesting...

[Master_Xan]

Definitely. It's a prime goal of mine to limit the enemy's ability to use personnel, either because they're dead, or captured, or injured. All of which are possibilities when the ship they're on is destroyed. In tactical combat you can select enemy ships to see how damaged they are, what troops they are carrying (which is another goal; if they are invading but I can't defeat them, I'll take out their transports so they can't capture the planet), and it also shows any personnel on that ship.

 

I might mention you can pause combat at any time to issue orders; that helps to learn things.

[guerre_detoiles]

couple more questions: is it of any use to send decoy spies when you're doing espionage mission on enemy planets? same thing for incite uprising missions? is it right to think you only need decoys for really tough missions like abduct, sabotage, and rescue?

[Darth_Rob]

You should always use decoys when doing a mission to an opponent's planet. The thing with decoys is that they provide "cover" for the mission. Decoys reduce the chance of the mission be foiled, and sometimes, the decoys can be the ones who get captured, but the real agent doing the mission will remain safe.

 

So yeah, always use decoys when on an enemy planet.

[guerre_detoiles]

even if the enemy planet isn't really occupied and has no detection factor?

[Darth_Rob]

Well thats a different story. For instance, sometimes I would take my fleet to a planet, and bombard all the troops so there were none left. Then I would send my personnel on my fleet down on one-man missions to sabotage and abduct anything that was still there. This was an easy way to boost stats.

 

So I suppose that if you know the enemy has no troops stationed on the planet, it is ok to send in one-man teams with no decoys.

[guerre_detoiles]

when your fleet occupies enemy planet's airspace, is the information given to you about the planet 100% accurate?

 

also when your mission goes bad, you get updated information about the enemy planet. are these accurate as well or just partially accurate?

[DarthTofu]

I don't know about the second one, but the first one can be inaccurate. I know this, because after I arrive at a planet that I espionaged some time ago,it will often show an enemy character en route to the planet through hyperspace, even after a fleet arrives. The character may have arrived days ago, but their status still shows up as "en route."

 

Failed missions do update data, but I don't know by how much. I know that it only updates true data, though. It'd be sweet if you could produce disinformation when you were playing- convince your enemy that Luke was on some crap planet, then ambush whatever fleet arrives to grab him, right?

[Darth_Rob]

Like Tofu said, just because you're fleet arrives does not mean you get access to complete information. You will have to do another espionage mission to be 100% accurate about the units on that planet.

 

As for the second question, that information is also partially accurate. Since the mission is foiled, you agent does not have the ability to get complete information to you.

[guerre_detoiles]

another question:

 

does it make sense to send in many weak mission forces to keep the detectors busy and then send in your main mission team? like sending in a bunch of 1 man infiltrator team and while they're busy getting caught, you can sneak in your real team. or do detectors like personnel and units don't get tied up foiling missions and can handle unlimited enemy missions?

[Darth_Rob]

I dont no. I have never tried it before. I dont know if the number of missions will effect the results of the real mission. I dont believe it does, but like I said, Im not sure.

[DarthTex]

I tend to agree with Rob; I don't think the number of missions matter, just how many are on the mission. Just a gut feel about that, no "hard" evidence.

[DarthTofu]

Going by my own experience, nope- doesn't work. If you send in more teams, you have better chances of success, but who is on the team, what their stats are, etc. hold a bearing- how many other missions are going on at the same time do not.