Death Star turbo lasers vs Capital ships?

[Teradyn_pff]

Has anyone seen any information on whether the Death Star will be a present unit or a construct "out there" like the bitmap for Rebellion? The whole idea behind using small fighters against it is because it's defenses were designed to take on capital ships, so I am wondering how close could you move the Death Star to the planet and/or the space battle to engage enemy capital ships with the conventional turbolasers? Although the Station is extremely vulnerable to fighters and we know this now... the Empire did not take that threat seriously. I could see them using it in the "bowling ball of death" roll vs rebel capital ships. This does not have anything to do with the super laser of course.. that is a separate issue.

 

So, any ideas? How many hardpoints would it have? And does anyone know whether or not that x-wing in the trench was a triggered ability like in Rebellion or will capital ships and/or fighters target hardpoints on the Death Star like other captial ships? I am really curious as to the answer to this question. The Death Star will not (In my opinion) be truely implemented in a game until it can be represented as a whole, not another bitmap or special cross section representation as has been seen before.

 

If it is possible for the Death Star to finally be completely modeled in a game, what counter, other than the obvious fighter vs heat exhaust, would exist? Would later vessels like the Bulwark Battlecruiser (Rebellion) be able to disable enough hardpoints to do some actual structural damage? Should they be able to? Remember in RoTJ that the Death Star didn't really have too much of an overall structural reaction to a SSD falling into it...

[Joshinator]

Welcome to the forums Teradyn. As of yet, we don't know much about the death star, other then that it can be built. However, if u check in the general discussion board, a poll and a set of 10 questions to the developers is going up. Vote for that question (it is asked), and perhaps that will be one of the questions asked.

 

*edit* this is the link http://swempireatwar.10.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=652

[Teradyn_pff]

Well, I saw the questions about the surface map and the super laser being usable on capital ships like in RoTJ. But these don't address my question of the Death Star's turbo lasers and its use as a ginormously big capital ship, not counting the superlaser.

[Foshjedi2004]

The Death Star prob. will only be the superlaser firing thing at planets. I mean it'll suck but so far the Petro team hasn't shown us the light!!!

[Teradyn_pff]

You are probably right. But you have to just wonder about the tactical implications of a fully modeled Death Star! How many turbolasers were supposed to be on that thing anyway?

[Foshjedi2004]

The first Death Star held 27,048 officers, 774,576 crew including troopers, pilots and crewers, 400,000 support workers and over 25,000 stormtroopers. It also carried assault shuttles, Skipray Blastboats, strike cruisers, drop ships, land vehicles, and support ships as well as 7,200 TIE Fighters. For surface protection it sported 200 Turbolaser batteries, 2,500 ion cannons and at least 700 tractor beam projectors, plus, of course, the superlaser.

 

The second Death Star corrected several flaws of the original design. The two-meter exhaust vent that doomed the first station was replaced with millions of millimeter wide tubes, each designed to seal if excess energy was detected. The second station also boasted far more turbolaser batteries with redesigned targeting systems, allowing them to target starfighters more easily. The greatest concentration of turbolasers was located near the Emperor's throne tower.

The second Death Star, if completed, would have featured over 30,000 turbolaser batteries, 7,500 laser cannons, 5,000 ion cannons and 768 tractor beams.

[Teradyn_pff]

My guess would be that the Death Star in the game would be based on the first one. If it is fully modeled, it might have a few upgrades available to bring it around to the second design, but even the first model would be extremely overkill in a nose to nose battle with rebel capital ships.

 

On first consideration it would seem extremely unbalanced to model the Death Star in the game with all of it's surface weapons, fighters, launchable craft, etc. But the issue of it being able to be destroyed with one of the cheapest units on the rebel side makes up for that I think. Not only would the surface weapons be formidable, but I think that the stormtrooper, fighter, and other craft should be there in any event. This thing is extremely costly to produce and extremely risky to deploy due to the achilles heel it has, so in my opinion the full modelling of the Death Star should be done.

 

Unfortunately, the size difference, complexity of dealing with the 2.5d space and planetary gravity constraints will probably have the developement team relegating it to a 3d model that is outside of the regular playing field. Rebel fighter missions against it will be like in Rebellion where they can perform the attack when they have x number of fighters compaired to the Empire. I may be wrong about this but then again, I never imagined a game like EAW being made the way it is anyway.

 

I think that the Death Star's actual capabilities vs what is depicted in the game will make a difference when talking about orbital bombardment, troop and fighter reinforcements, etc. I am excited to learn what Petroglyph has in store for us in this respect because it will drastically change what tactics are employed in this war.

[Foshjedi2004]

Teradyn how did you expect the game to be made??

 

 

But I have to agree with your question about the role of the death star whether it will only be as an object outside the space or inside the playable space. But I am sure that some people would rather destroy the death star which costs loads of credits and lose all their fighters than to lose a planet.

[Gen.Vader]

from wwhat i have seen the DS role is just blowing up planets, not fighting ships. does any one have any info or screens to prove/disprve this?

[Teradyn_pff]

Well, the thing I am thinking about is Rebellion. When you play the Empire, the only possible use for blowing up a planet you would have is if you have found the rebel base. Any other use is completely stupid because it ticks off everybody and you destroy what would be a good resource producing planet. The only reason would be at the end of the game if you have captured the rebel leaders or you are playing a HQ only game.

 

This makes me wonder what good a death star will be if it can not help in fleet battles... what benefit would there be to spend the enormous amount of credits it will take to build (and protect) the thing? Being able to pop into a system, use the superlaser on a big rebel cap ship, and then retreat would be an extremely powerful use of the Death Star. Popping into that system and blowing the planet up... what good would come of that? We haven't really seen any details on faction with planets, whether it is affected by activities ala Rebellion, so maybe the Death Star wouldn't hurt your rep if you blew up a planet with it... but I can almost garrantee you that you wont get the same amount of credits from the planet area if you blow it up.

 

Fosh, what I said about how the game is being made was referring to whether or not the space portion would be able to handle the Death Star as a real object. If you can have a space battle around the thing... I dunno. I think it would be extremely cool if it had its own gravitational field... meaning it would work kindof like a black hole in Star Trek Armada I & II. Your ship loses its engines and it gets pulled in! There are so many possibilities available that they should be farely no-brainers if it is being modelled as a unit in the space area.

 

That is a big if though. You can't have a game like this without the Death Star of course... but if it is like rebellion... the Death Star will be something you don't even build until you have already won the game basically. This would be a sad thing IMO because the true use of the Death Star should be such that the Imperial player has to make the decision "Do I gamble and use the credits I have to build the Death Star or should I instead use those for conventional fleets?". The Death Star should have more to it than blowing up planets (which you probably will not want to do strategically 99% of the time). It should provide an extremely potent fleet killing capacity with its storage capabilities for cap ships, fighters and its superlaser (upgradable to target large capital ships) not to mention its emense storage capacity for ground assault.

 

The implications of the possibilities for the Death Star will change everything about how we conduct the galactic and space portions of the game! Absolutely nothing we try to strategise has any real merit in the overall game until we know more about the Death Star. Even a possible inclusion of the SSD will not be as significant because of the sheer difference in the type of platform we are talking about. There will be a more conventional balancing element for the Rebels against the SSD, but the balance for the Death Star is its achilles heel and that is not the same thing.

 

The thing that has me perplexed is that screenshot with the x-wing in the trench. There are what looks like, real time battle going on in the background, which would imply that the screenshot was taken with the cinematic camera. There were turbolasers on the sides of the trench as well, which could be there for just the little trench map view but could they be actual hardpoints on the Death Start that can target and fire on enemy capital ships and fighters (with small percentage to hit of course)? If so... how long could Home One for example last against a direct assault from the thousands of turbolasers available on the Death Star?

 

There are so many details like this that I never would have thought possible to even consider in a game. But I have to wonder whether or not Petroglyph will be the ones to do it. Anyone that has played a Star Wars game RTS, Flight Sim, etc knows that when the Death Star is in play, it is a bitmap in the background, ground map in a special level, and so on. Will Empire at War be the first game to actually model (to a reasonable level of realism) the Death Star?

 

My brain hurts from the anticipation and the war between my usual extreme scepticism and a sense of a new hope. Sorry, couldn't help it.

[Zer_Teron]

Oh the SSD wont be in the game thats been confirmed.

 

The most lethal thing about the Death Star would be the shear amount of Turbolasers it can bring to bear, this would allow it to tear through fleets of Rebel ships easily without ever firing its Turbolaser. Of cource then it would have to suffer fighters, but if its the invicible Death Star II then that would be impossible and no fleet could stand a chance against it unless they destroyed every single weapon it had(no easy task considering the shear amount) and then pound the surface for a couple of months till you reached the core. Very inefficent and costly, a better approach would be to get a team aboard and sabotage it.

[Darkmark]

Welcome to the forums Zer Teron.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn 889]

another one darkmark?

 

and the Questions answered on Gamespots Dev. Diary.

[cronincp]

I brought up some of these same questions in another thread. "Utilising the Death Star as a DIVERSION "

 

I found a question posed to the developers in the online chat, but not sure if it answers all our questions.

 

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 7:33 pm Post subject:

 

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I believed that was its only flaw was the smaller vessel attack, but according to the developers the DS will NOT be able to fire or engage capital ships, which seems like a very large problem.

 

Popcorn2008: Can the deathstar take out capitol ships during combat?

Petroglyph-Joe: The first Death Star took about 24 hours to charge up and didn't have the targeting ability to fire on single ships, so in keeping with Lore, it cannot hit individual ships.

 

Not sure if this means it will not be able to use its superlaser to target one ship or if will not able to engage them at all and will have to rely on escorting ships and fighters. Also, even though the DS many have 700 plus turbolasers on it, does not mean it could bring all to bear on one target due to its size, though would be interesting if it could engage mulitple targets around it. I do agree the DS would probably not be worth the cost and risk if it can not engage capital and or fighters on its own.