R2-Opus2

I know what you mean about using fighters as fear. In all my games, and this is true of the Imp side's fighters too...I always make all class if fighter including the "obsolete" Y, X, TIE and TIE bomber. If those are mixed in liberally with your TIE Defenders and B-Wings, you can have yourself some decent fighter garrisons in place. Ever since I noticed the AI tends to go after the most advanced fighter first, that's when I knew I'd still be making the others too. In my current game, fighters are real inexpensive on both sides, 1 cost and 1 maintenance pts The AI builds fighter detachments well for fleet deployment, but this way it also encourages it to have more on its own systems too. My typical garrison of starfighters is 48 of each type with a doubling up of the TIE Bomber if I'm Imp to augment the TIE Def ships, and same if I'm reb using Y's to bolster the Bs. With my HQ system or if its Coruscant (and any planet set for it to fall back to if need be), I add each class in larger chunks (100 or so at each order so I don't have to check that yard too often). Most of the time, the fighters alone will force a fleet to retreat, freeing up my home fleet if I want to use it. On other key planets devoted to nothing but ship building (with mine usually I add at least 1 troop yard), I set those up as ambush planets should an enemy fleet stop by, ususally just the fighter groups plus 1 interdictor. Planets with construction yards I can risk loosing, but without ship building at one of those planets along with at least one training facility, I couldn't take any of those worlds back.

I skimmed the first page and the last (c'mon, there's 8 pages, cut me some slack ) and I think Scathane's points are probably the key to the outcome: Points 1 and 2 are pretty much one point in my mind, that the Emperor "forsees" a lot of things, except apparently detecting Luke's presence when Vader had, even though the old geezer is obsessed with turning him. The thing about someone who's angry all the time, as I suspect he'd have to be to tap the Dark Side in the first place, its easy to lose focus, even on the thing you want most...Luke in yer back pocket backing you up, or you'll have to kill him cause he's a clear and present danger. Palpy is probably mulling over all this even as he casually gave his order to Piet to keep the rebels from escaping. I agree that he forsaw the rebels responding to his ambush plans, but the glimse he had of the future must have been false. Here's why I don't think his vision was necessarily "false"... a. His confidence level through it all was high, even though the end result of the ambush looked grim. One argument could be made that nothing was as important as turning Luke, thus, his grip on his fleet officers (ala this Thrawn Theory) was not up to par to crush the rebel fleet then and there. In fact I'd concur with the statement also mentioned that he probably didn't even care about the DS IIs fate. I would bet that all his material assets came second to turning Luke at the time. b. In relation to Palpy's high confidence level (and presuming here Dark Horse's comic Dark Empire is canon), I think because he had that mysterious way of projecting his presence into the body of a fresh clone...knowing he had a "back door" of his own in place should things turn on him...no matter what happened, he would go on...with or without Luke, Vader, or his prescious Empire if need be. I bring this stuff up only to illustrate another point, and that is, while you can plan for most contingencies (like his clone, or laying out the plans for the ambush), if you aren't paying attention as the Emperor was, or directing some of those events first hand, you cannot influence the outcome. Plus the guy had 24/7 road rage and can't think clearly. This goes back to Piet who's following his orders as best as he can interpret them..."The Emperor has a suprise for them. We only need to hold them and keep them from escaping." His overconfidence must have stemmed from the superlaser (even if he didn't know about it at first, he did when that first reb ship bit the dust) and just the TIE starfighter squadrons. Going in at point blank range with his own destroyers would have been counterproductive. Lando picked up on this a tad late after the seond ship got vaped, but that's what kept the superlaser from firing again. If Palpy had given a squat, he'da sacraficed his own destroyers to keep on firing that superlaser, which proves my point above that he didn't His assets were secondary to the problem before him, Luke. His focus wasn't on the battle or I would argue he would have fired into his own forces to get the reb fleet. That's how evil I think he was at any rate. That left Lando rolling with the point blank tactic Piet neglected for the sake of Palpy's "surprise". Mind you, I think they were following Palpy's orders to such a degree that the only exchange of fire the Imps were doing with their cap ships were defensive in nature only...they were not on the offensive because they were not ordered to. They had faith in their multitude of starfighter squadrons, however with fighters such as the B-Wing in the reb's aresenal helped tip some scales. And as we saw its fairly easy to cripple an ISD by blowing up them shield dingleberries, then its Torpedo City. You only need a few if you can keep them alive long enough. To me the battle above wouldn't have had to be that long before the Imps collapsed into chaos. Despite their low cap and starfighter numbers, the Rebs only needed to let the Imps see a couple of their prized ISDs fall to those B-Wing assaults. Mind you that wasn't the only thing either, both side's cap ships were now duking it out at point blank range, and even though those Imps must have been under some "spell", I would have thought they'd have retaliated a little smarter than they did. That spell must have really really been hindering them, or they don't much care for officers that can make creative decisions on the spot. Anyway, witness your command ship plow into this multi gabillionjillion credit spacetation, and that's enough to sap most's morale I'd reckon. But that's not to say the Rebs were technically in any better shape. I'd have thought they'd have boogied as far away from the rest of the Imp fleet as possible after the DS went. Even if they did and the Imps thought they could still crush the Rebs at Endor, we're forgetting that there's little to stay at Endor for now at that point. As for point 3 & 4 I think they may have all been there even if we didn't see them. I simply think also that there were 2 points that helped the strike team here the most... a. Han's boast that..."Chewie and I have been in more heavily guarded places than this,". Despite his deftness with that bunker door, I still do not have reason to doubt him, after all, he got them to the door right? I don't know what it says to others, but that tells me he knows how to work behind enemy lines. b. The Ewoks. Being tree dwellers, and one with nature and all that cutesy stuff. They've had Imps in their backyard for some time and like Han's strike team, would develop methods to get in close and personal to evaluate their foe without being detected. They know the lay of the land and in effect the strike team and the furballs together make a good pair. up. Both of these points alone to me explain why we don't "see" as many troops. Maybe if they had blundered in their all loud and noisy, we'd see them pop out o fthe wood work so to speak. I just like to imagine all the perimeter guards faces under their helmets as they turn to see the shield generator go up in smoke behind them That being said, I do think the mopping up down on the surface would have taken awhile, but maybe not too long a time if the Ewoks knew where they were. C-3P0 prolly could have tranlated their positions from the furballs for the returning fighter squadrons to pick off some on their way in. The other alternative for those troops is to fin for themselves...with the thing they were guarding gone, there's little point in fighting so some probably took their chances and ditched. heh sorry to blather on so long, but its late, I'm bored, and I happened to check out this forum

I forgot what difficulty I was playing on when I did this or how I edited this particular game session, but I played as the Empire and once the Rebs found out I had a DS, they wasted no time in throwing their fleets away at me I simply left my DS with shield and fighter swarm (and some capital ship fodder) along with an interdictor and sat there blasting away. I never moved it, although I did have a backup system equipped with a DS shield in case I needed a fall back position. The only thing I had to worry about was protecting the interdictor really, but I thought that was weird how that played. You thought the slimy rebels would have learned their lesson after that first slaughter Anyway, that's the only known instance where I know for a fact its possible to fire more than a few shots per battle. Depends on how you edit the rebel's ships...if they can build alot in a short order or not etc. I do remember one thing though, I never saw an assault after that first one that wasn't steadily larger. They had more than enough to destroy my DS, but the shield was intact.

Thanks for the info mask, and yea this is what I was confused about. I couldn't remember if the information I got was a description of a hack already out there or if this was something someone either was making on their own or requesting it. I noticed the ability there with each side's home planet capacity and that's good at least. I was quick to disable traitors too, I hated that almost as much as the random disasters heh especially after you built up a character real good too. I say almost as much because generally I stuck those chars on front line duty The only thing that bothers me a little is the AI, but I guess that's been the concensus for a long time. i.e. I've never detected through spying for example, that Vader does any Jedi Training missions of his own (only that i noticed someone with force potential he ran across and/or recruited in one place). Also I'm not sure if its cause of the editor or what, but giving the oppositional characters diff command abilities, it seems that the game sometimes doesn't exploit that potential. To get a halfway decent game going, I always keep it on expert level, so that in the case of going against the Empire, they're not always lurking in the core area (I also jump up nearly every sector to high visibility/high value with Rebed). I just wish they'd colonize more rather than just go after planets I got to first. By turn 500 I've colonized the bulk of the outer rim. Anyway, experimenting with this version of Rebed now since it has way more features than the one I got in the distant past. Playing a game now with no traitors, everyone's abilities improved across the board for both sides and almost everyone a force user I'll see how that plays out. I'll say this though, if it wasn't for programs like this to make the original product tweakable, this game would have been buried long ago.

I may have gotten confused with other stand alone hacks with other versions of Rebed, but I was wondering is there anything with this version that can disable random events? Also I want to know if there's a way to have it so one could max out each planet's energy spaces (I've never seen the largest planet's energy level go above 14 slots, so if that number is the max, I want to know if I can alter all the planets to have same # of slots)?