Soltaris

Hehe, I don't think there is always a rationalization for everything. Goodness knows ST isn't very reallistic with stuff either. If they showed a technology to overcome a situation in one episode, why didn't they use it in to good effect in another. Why is it ppl without security clearance can walk right into engineering without any security sensor going off and force fields errected? Why is it Federation starships don't carry large boarding parties during times of war even though a good portion of the battles ships will always have a downed shield? And a 100 other whys... I think it comes down to this. Lucas isn't in a realism contest with ST. You just need to ask yourself which looks cooler on the big screen? Dropping some cannisters into the ocean on a planet, or blowing up the planet with a beam from a superweapon?

Welcome back to the forums I always hate arbitrarily changing things on ships like the number for fighter squadrons they carry. But one thing you can do to make them stronger right off is reduce the cost and maintenance on each of their units by 25% or so. Another is to reduce the research needed for them to get new units. In the tactical game you never want to choose anvil or hammer as the rebels. Your ships have most of their turbolasers on the sides and so it's better to left hook or right hook. And yes it does make a difference. Often times too it will cause the enamy fleet to have to swing around to get at you while you're already pounding on a single ship on his flank with the firepower of your whole fleet. Also using your nav points is really helpful when you need to pull a ship out of the battle.

I played the first month it was out and quit. In that time I was mostly PL'ing and I only ever spent much time on 4 of the planets. Although I completed getting BH during the last week I was playing, most of my xp was in Pistoleer. I quit shortly after had to buy crafted droids and they got really expensive (although that wasn't the reason). Reason I quit (in this order) was 1) although it had some SW elements, it really didn't "feel" like SW, 2) I didn't like many of the game mechanics such as HAM system, the way armor worked, the way using specials on carbines could kill you worse than the monster, 3) many professions lacked a "role", for example it would have been cool for there to be tangible benefits to advancing further in ranger, or for bio-engineers to not suck so bad, 4) lots of stuff for artisans, very little to do for combat professions, 5) I absolutely hated the UI, 6) too many bugs to shake a stick at. Even with all that though I do wish I stuck around an extra month to try out being a covert and also getting in on some of the battlefield action. I'm sure the game has addressed some of these issues because a lot of people are still playing it today and having fun. It just wasn't for me.

Hi NicFyyar For the most part you're right. But I must say the Assault Transport has been around for a very long time. You can find it in the Star Wars role-playing game, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Balance of Power, X-Wing Alliance, etc in addition to rebellion. I'm sure some books probably mention it and it can probably be found in other sources as well. Here's a picture of the more commonly found 3D model: http://www.minos.net/~sco/fleet-manual/viewship58ce.html

I don't think the Emperor ever heard of the prime directive

Also good is to keep some assault transports around with Noghri and espionage droids on board. If you see a planet turn rebel you can quickly get there, blockade the system (while he's still bringing the system further towards his side), and assassinate his diplomat. The rebels will certainly feel it sting after you do this a few times.

Hehe it's true I've not played many RTS. I think the biggest thing with HW2 is that a true 3D environment takes some getting used to, the immense size of the battlefield and how spread out your units are, and the whole thing about managing research, unit production, and resource gathering at the same time you're trying to conduct your battles. Spending more time with it might help overcome some of these obstacles. Also your point about hotkeys is good because I didn't know any of them. I might actually buy the game if I can get it on a good clearance. I've tended more towards strategic level games such as SW Rebellion, Fields of Battle, the Total War series (Shogun, Medieval, Viking) and MOO 2. I also like most tactical games that have limited reinforcements such as Myth, Myth II, and Jagged Alliance 2.

Well this is my first time trying out HW2 so take my observations with a grain of salt Also keep in mind I don't actually own this game so I played it at a friends house and I didn't get too much time to play with it To be honest I really didn't like the game too much. The mod itself is great, it's HW2's gameplay that I couldn't adjust to. This is mostly because there's too much stuff going on all at once. It's like running the tactical game in rebellion with a larger environment, while you have to do all your resource scouting/collecting and ship building/production and technologies research, etc and all the while keeping a lookout for what the enemy is doing. You have to constantly manage all these things all at once! Keeping an eye on the enemy is difficult to do with everything else going on. You can only keep the screen panned in one direction and everything is real-time. Units are hard to select - especially smaller units that are bunched up together. It would be nice just to have a panel like rebellion has at the top of the tactical display. The one in HW2 only has units you manually put there. I couldn't figure out how to dock stuff. It would have a dock selection, my fighters would move around a bunch, but they didn't seem to dock in my ISD III's. Also is there even any advantage or reason to dock them in this game? Traveling long distances doesn't seem practical to control. Also I didn't have time to figure out if there is an option to jump to light speed or if there are any effects/benefits to having an interdictor with gravity well generators. Several things I wasn't able to test and I cannot really comment on the following questions: How are tractor beams handled? Can you ram or capture ships? Can you order your ships to fight at maximum range so they just fire into the battle and take less damage? Can you fire on a ships subsystems (to knock out it's engines and such)? How is damage control and ship repair handled? Fighters really seem to be hard to get a handle on controlling especially in a big battle. How can I ensure my TIE bombers only go after the capitol ships while my fighters try hard to protect them? It would sure be nice to be able to assign a unit to defend another unit instead of having to click on multiple incoming groups of hostiles. Even capitol ships are difficult to manage in a big battle. It's hard to select them and even worse to try to click them to go to the correct target when there are so many vessals in close proximity. One of my biggest disappointments is that ships should take months to produce but in this game you can keep cranking them out left and right. It kind of sucks that the rebels can keep building stuff when I'm fighting their base, and I have to divert my attention away from the battle to manage building more ships and keep a supply line of new vessels heading to the combat area just to keep up. Conclusion: Some of these issues likely have to do with my inexperience with the game, but many have to do with the gameplay of HW2. As for the mod itself, it seems EXTREMELY nice and the ships are very cool. There are a WIDE variety of ships that are well balanced with how I envision Lucas meant them to be. The graphics are quite STUNNING. I do wish it had some Star Wars background music but perhaps there's already an option to play a CD with a Star Wars soundtrack in the background. Anyone who likes HW2 would surely LOVE this mod

Faced against impossible fighter swarms, an ISD commander without support ships would still be hard to take down. He's likely to have his fighters aggress to buy enough time to make the jump to lightspeed.

The game actually has a solid foundation, but (just like everyone else) would like to see a few enhancements: * The ability to load various scenarios. For example it should be possible to load up and play in different timelines. Only one timeline needs to come with the game, but this would leave open the option for easily loading player mod sets. Some of these may just alter the card sets in the game, while other more comprehensive ones could alter the AI package or the starting planets and unit placements. Building the Empire: ============= * Allow all planets to hold 10 facilities in addition to a number of resource gathering facilities. Resource gathering facilities would be take up the random slot locations currently found on planets. This gives planets with only one resource point the ability to still be useful locations for building research and production facilities. * Introduce new building types for space stations. For play balance these should take up some of the 10 facilities slots so that a planet cannot be completely impregnable. The idea is that planetary defenses can be purchased slightly cheaper but you cannot ammass them into a big armada like you can with space fleets. * Introduce new building types for research facilities. The only way to research new technology would be with these new building structures and with characters. * Lift the hard-coded restriction on the number of researchable ships. With a utility like RebEd you could add or remove items from the list instead of having to simply replace items that are already in the list. * The ability to add refit upgrades onto existing units. These refits would have to appear in the technology tree and would be performed at the appropriate facility type. These would have to fit in with existing Star Wars lore and may take some time for the upgrades to be installed. In some cases, such as upgrading blasters on troops I think the troups should keep their existing combat abilities until the upgrades are complete. Ships might be incapacitated while upgrades are being performed. Expanding the Empire: =============== * Auto-explore option for probe droids, longprobes...when they finish exploring 1 unknown planet, it gives an option to move on to the next closest one. I saw this idea from Shadow_of_Thrawn and I think it's a most excellent idea alleviate a lot of the tediousness from the current game. * Independant planets should be able to slowly build up their own planet and fleet, although this should be at a much slowed advance rate so as not to completely deture someone from wanting to still take over the planet. Also these worlds should not try to aggress at all, or perhaps only limited aggression towards only one neighboring world. * Fixed hyperspace routes. Currently the game lacks reasons to defend key areas other than worlds with installations. This introduces a geographic feature worth fighting over. * Introduce the ability to change a fleet's destination while it's already enroute to a destination. * Fighters with hyperspace capability should be able to attack enemy worlds within a specified range. I think any in a certain cluster would be fine. Tactical Combat: =========== * Ability to have super weapons on capitol ships. * Ability to have torpedo launchers on capitol ships. * Fighers help protect capitol ships from torpedos. * More control in the tactical game by allowing players to assign specific targets for each ship or group of ships. Basically each ship could simultaneously hold a single target order, a formation order, and a maneuver order. * Adding more maneuver orders in the tactical game, such as ram or capture. * Adding the ability to relaunch fighters in the tactical game. * Adding a launch speed rating to various ships. Some ships should be able to launch fighters faster than other ships. * Adding tactical combat for ground units. (I saw Shadow_of_Thrawn had this idea. I feel this could add a lot of fun if done right) Things I don't want to see: ================= * Planetary trade. I feel this makes the game too cumbersome. I like to build stuff and blow stuff up as quickly as possible. Setting up trade routes slows down the gameplay. * Enhanced diplomacy. It's fine the way it is.

Why isn't the Dauntless considered "canon"? Everywere I look in these forums people say that the Dauntless isn't part of the original fiction. I just don't understand why people say that. The appearance and stats are almost exactly the same as the MC 80b card that I downloaded. Is it just the name that everyone is worried about? If that's so why don't I see people complain so much about the Alliance Escort Carrier? That's really supposed to be called a Quasar Fire Cruiser and it's only supposed to have 50 fighters (4 squadrons) from what I can find from various sources.

Thanks for giving me some insight about the question I had Not sure about trying MP out yet. I'd have to come up with a better play style first because the pace would overwhelm me. When I do single player I usually micromanage my planets too much and I often have to do all my moves in very slow mode. For example I don't like to protect too many planets so I concentrate all my production on some planets and use the others just to pull in RP. That way I don't have the expense of putting gen core's and troops on every single planet, and I don't have to worry about the enemy bombarding my troops on unprotected planets. My tactics work great against the computer but I'm not sure I'd have enough time to set this up MP and this part of my strategy might not even be viable MP. Other speed issues would hurt too, like not having the key combos memorized.

Hi, I've played SWR quite some time in the single player but this is my first post on these forums My question is: Do units of like kind increase the detection rating? The reason I ask is that it seems that my sabotage attempts are at the same level of success if the alliance has 2 mon calamari regiments or if they have 20 mon calamari regiments on a planet. My theory is that the game takes the highest rating on a single troop, adds that to the highest rating of a single fighter, adds that to the highest ship, etc. I don't believe having multiples of the same item really helps with the detection rating. Am I on the right track? I've searched the forums and I can't find the answer to my question.