Stellar_Magic

Troops... Troops are contained in several files. Groundinfantry.xml Contains the stats for individual soldiers, their health points, size, weapons, you know... everything. Groundvehicles.xml Contains the stats for individual vehicles. Groundcompaniesempire.xml Contains the stats for formations of the empire. This is where price and size of individual formations is contained. Groundcompaniesrebel.xml Contains the stats for formations of the rebel alliance... same as above.

Unfortunately you guys are all discounting the performance of stormtroopers when they boarded the Tantive IV... Talk about imperial whup a**... The kill-loss ratio there was well in the stormtroopers favor.

The 2.5D is okay, but you didn't have to lock all the cap ships, frigates, and corvettes on their own layer. It would have worked so much better if you'd let all the units rise and fall of their own accord, as it is its very asteticly... unsound? Perhaps I should just say ugly.

Strange... Do you have a SWMOD.exe file which you're running. If not, find one because sometimes the game ignores the decompiled XML Files. Run the game through the SWMOD.exe and it should work. All you need is that file, and you can usually get it with one of the early mods. I had to use one when I first started, then I downloaded Bryant's v2 Mod and I no longer needed it. I'll have to find out what he did that made that happen. Anyway, I've got a test tomorrow and have to get to bed.

I really hate to say it but, if there is one thing the Space combat in EAW reminds me of its the space combat in the game Star Trek: Armada II... Except its worse in a number of ways. 1.) Armada II used a 2-D plane with Z layers just like EAW, but all the units could freely move between the Z layers, EAW's units can not (With the exception of Starfighters). 2.) Every space unit had its "Special Ability" Cloaking, Polaron Torpedoes, Ion Cannons (In EAW you could replace this with Tractor Beam, Spatial Charges, Diamond-Boron Missiles) But since space battles were often fairly large you wouldn't have time to manage each ability, so the designers included combat settings that made it so you could have the individual unit AI make the decision (Once again something EAW lacks). 3.) The Space Grid is ugly, its always ugly! So have a button to turn it off, at least Armada had that setting.

hmm... What exactly is the error? I'm looking at the file and the only possible problem I see is that the 12 isn't being read because of where it is in the script, maybe if you put it directly below the Squadron_Offsets... If thats whats happening you should see 2 squadrons of X-wings in game (1 of 10 the other of 2), if its not... I sure hope you edited the XML in Notepad or Wordpad because if you did it in word the limits on characters per line may have screwed up your entire XML.

Could you post your XML scripting, just plain saying it doesn't work, doesn't help...

You need to make it so that Zaarin can build his own Star Destroyers and ground troops... It should be pretty easy. Star_Destroyer Pirate I've been experimenting with my own copy and really making a mess, but I'm learning a lot... BTW, how did you enable the retreat and bombardment features.

Well I just conducted an experiment using my copy of the Demo to try and find out just how large a formation of units the game can handle... I modified my Ground Company Rebel XML file so that a formation of Rebel Infantry was enormous... just how big. 3 "Squads" of 120 men... I had fraps running and I ended up with having a mere 2 Frames a second when the cinematic camera watched the formation... but that was with FRAPS actually recording and Graphics to full! HOLY S*** This engine can easily support much larger battles then what it shipped with!

Don't know but... HE killed home one! :'(

If you think the falcon is strong... Just wait till you play against Boba Fett when he's got slave 1! I had the Falcon, Home One, and 4 Squadrons of fighters die from that one man... Talk about just a wee bit overpowered. :

Something else I discovered looking through the files... Look at this comment for the Tartan class. S*** Man, I wanted the Carrack Class!

I've never used Wiki and I can't register... It keeps coming up with a wiki format error for my username.

I'll close the topic... I created it before EvilleJedi started the Wiki.

Yeah, what if you think its not going to be as good as rebellion but you'll get it anyway... Kind of a scewed poll eh?

With the space station issue there is a simple solution... Completely replace the Level 2+ Space Stations with Level 1 Space stations and tweak them from there.

Now that we have the demo we should start building a tutorial and pooling all the information we've gathered. I've discovered some things that are rather interesting... 1st, its possible to mod the game so that there are an accurate number of starfighters per squadron (12)... Go to the XML folder and bring up the file labeled squadrons in notepad... After scanning it you should find these lines... X-Wing, X-Wing X-Wing, X-Wing X-Wing 30.0,0.0,0.0 0.0,15.0,0.0 0.0,-15.0,0.0 -30.0,30.0,0.0 -30.0,-30.0,0.0 It looks pretty obvious, the Squadron offsets tell where each fighter is suppose to be when they're flying in formation, the Squadron Units tells the game how many fighters are in the squadron as well as what type they are. So if you change the settings to this... X-Wing, X-Wing, X-Wing, X-Wing X-Wing, X-Wing, X-Wing, X-Wing X-Wing, X-Wing, X-Wing, X-Wing 30.0,0.0,0.0 0.0,15.0,0.0 0.0,-15.0,0.0 -30.0,30.0,0.0 -30.0,-30.0,0.0 -60.0,45.0,0.0 -60.0,-45.0,0.0 -90.0,60.0,0.0 -90.0,-60.0,0.0 -105.0,75.0,0.0 -105.0,-75.0,0.0 -120.0,90.0,0.0 You should get 12 fighters in a squadron... right? Well not quite, there is one more thing you have to do... You may notice in the file that some of the squadrons have one more command. (The X-wing squadron doesn't have this command, and I don't know why... But to get the mod to work you'll have to add it to the x-wing section). 8 This command dictates the maximum size of the squadron... In the case of the X-wings if you hadn't added this command you'd get 2 squadrons of 2 X-wings and 2 squadrons of 10 X-wings... Not what you want. So... add this command to the X-wing file. 12 Now you have a squadron of 12 X-wings to bash the imps with, enjoy 2nd, The game uses a similar system for ground units... Go to the file Groundcompaniesrebel.xml and open it with notepad. Look for this section of the Rebel_Artillery_Brigade to get a good look at what can be done. Gallofree_Transport MPTL, MPTL, MPTL_Spotter, MPTL_Spotter No MPTL_Spotter It's pretty obvious what all you could do with this information. Build a formation with ten MPTL's... sure. Have them deploy T4B tanks alongside... absolutely. Just add the ground unit type in the section and have a go at it.

Guess what, there is unit building on the tactical level. ??? I just watched a Imperial Light Factory Construct an AT-ST right before my eyes... After looking through the xmls, I've determined to my satisfaction that the Space Stations can also build units in tactical mode, note the Garrison:segment of their encyclopedia entry. This means those ships we were fighting weren't freebees but were built by the Space Station. This really just threw me for a loop.

I'm releasing a trailer of what I'm planning... http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php?user_file_id=99988

Okay... so its a gravity mine, never really saw the point of them in Warlords, but the same may not be true here.

Ghostly... You'll love this. I've made a teaser trailer for Reality of Rebellion, it includes the little modding I've done so far (Scale Changes for Starfighters) and some of the planned features as well as a cool intro to establish Empire at War. http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php?user_file_id=99988

Okay I'm finding myself in between JI and the rest of you guys... JI has some good points, moving the build system was a good move but... it also makes unit building a more distant feature and thereby removes part of the strategic part of the game from its traditional location. Traditional RTS's overall have a number of repetitative problems and EAW suffers from them as well. 1.) Units tend to have more longevity due to health points then anything else. 2.) Experience plays a minimal to nonexistant role even where it does exist as a game feature. 3.) RTS's allow to much individual control of units for true strategic thought. (You move individual tanks instead of Platoons or companies.) 4.) Realism is completely overulled for playability with little thought of reconciling the two. 5.) Unit scaling is optimized for ease of gameplay more then realism. Valid Complaints about EAW. 1.) Tactical battles are too small scale and force players to micromanage his forces instead of actually building a grand strategy. 2.) The building slot system is too restrictive, there isn't enough room on planets to build a proper military base as well as construction facilities. 3.) The Garrison max is also too restrictive, if an enemy can deploy a fleet full of ten times the amount of ground units as are defending the defender doesn't stand a chance. 4.) Heroes, especially major space heroes, are overpowered (The Millenium Falcon should not be able to destroy a star base on its own!) Things that are different in the Demo which JI thought may be or may not be in the actual game have been discounted. Rebuttles to those that have argued against JI... First off... Luck is an important factor in every situation to discount it is folly. Secondly, yes we wanted rebellion 2 and it amazes me that you don't realize just how much of the game is actually copied or perhaps developed parallel to those from rebellion... Planetary Build slots, Espinoage, You get the idea... Planetary Loyalty is the key to the Alliance's victory in the Galactic Cvil War, the Empire had to use garrisons, and military might to ensure its continued control. To remove Planetary Loyalty and Uprisings removes the game from the core of the GCW and the experience those star wars fans with knowledge of the era wanted. I would have been happy if the Empire just had to fight off a battle by civilian uprisings as a random event in the campaign. News flash! Hitlers Germany didn't build any of their military equipment in france! Okay let me explain this... what is strategy. 1.) Build up of a strategic infrastructure... This includes the contracting of corporations to build military equipment, the taxing of the civilian population to pay those corporations, the stockpiling of resources, researching new technologies, establishing tactical doctrine, training your military to a high level of readiness and efficiency, and formulating battle plans. 2.) Battle Planning... Setting up supply lines, moving combat formations, anticipate needs of the troops, adjust plans to terrain, and secure strategic objectives usually the cutting of supply lines, opening lanes of travel, or the securing of most everything seen in 1.) 3.) Actual Combat... Moving reinforcements to the point of greatest need, securing and building defenses, and working to keep troop moral high. In truth RTS's combine 1.) and 3.) while completly ignoring 2.). Most of the combat in an RTS isn't Strategic in any means its tactical and if you want to play a real good tactical game may I suggest the Close Combat series... In closing I'd like to remind everyone that getting a good review from JI is extremely difficult at best, I think the only thing I've ever heard him praise is Eville Jedi's Warlords mod.

What about recompressing the extrated files cain?

It's called Reality of Rebellion... It's a total conversion that will completely revamp the gameplay of Empire at War.

I have obtained a demo copy of EAW and surprisingly its moddable... So I'm going to have to drop out of this and start work on RoR...