Naja

Here's what I can infer, judging from what we know so far: - Rebels get a ubiquitous intelligence network, i.e., they can see everything the Empire is doing. - The Empire has nowhere near that level of knowledge about those elusive Rebels, so they rely on surveillance technology like Probe Droids and TIE Scouts to not stay completely blind. - Both sides can buy the services of bounty hunters, although naturally the Empire will be predisposed to the task - at least for the beginning of the game - due to their superior economic starting position.

But that's what Americans want, isn't it? Small government? "It's not the government's money, it's your money" = "It's not the government's hurricane, it's your hurricane."

Well, a plus to stupid partisan politics, at least there is no way in hell that Bush - considering his ratings - is going to let Rita be another Katrina. That's good news for several thousand potential refuges.

Hmmm, maybe Cain or Ismeal can prove or disprove this, but I think I remember hearing that the Rebels can hide bases on neutral planets. Makes sense.

But would you really want an insane, alcoholic, pedophilic lout controlling a Death Star? Such character traits can develop in your RTW generals.

You'd be surprised how many fundamentalist whack-jobs actually said things around those lines, in regards to New Orleans' fate. Those people took it to be something like a modern Sodom & Gomorrah.

Capture Kuat and Fondor for the bonuses to my fleet, obliterate Mon Calimari and Tatooine with the Death Star to deny fleet and hero benefits to those lovable terrorists (if anyone got the irony of that last part, 5 bonus points!).

I've heard glancing snippets about Imperial probe droid usage in magazines, long ago.

I believe that we will simply start with Stormtroopers in their present state. The only thing Clone War-ish would be the presence of Acclamators, Victories, and...well, the Imperial Senate.

How could I have forgotten Home One, your Fishyness??

Leave it to Amazon to bungle a universal shipping date that Lucasarts itself has confirmed.

Yeah, all we've seen have been Alphas. Even the most recent footage with Hoth. Garbageben, where did you hear that each ship will have its own cool explosion?

How many other hero ships do you think we will get? The Executor (I hope I hope I hope) ? Tantive IV ? The Medical Frigate? The Avenger? The Liberty?

Their reassuring us of the game's simplicity, I think, simply means that the game will not have an excessive resource-gathering aspect like most RTS's, and will have a lot of Byzantine aspects removed, so that we can focus on combat most of all.

Obsessive-compulsive? Just maybe! But I want the best damned product those lovable Petro guys can muster! Anyway, I'm sure you know my grievance. ISDs get way-detailed damage graphics and destruction sequences, other starships simply get blown up in one big, anticlimatic, spontaneous explosion. POOF! My concern is whether Petroglyph is going to make it so that every ship gets its own unique death throes. And if not every, then at least every medium-sized/large-sized one.

Worries me too, when they leave some minor irritating things like the lacking non-ISD ship explosions, the blastwave of a dying planet miraculously leaving the Death Star's oribiting fleet intact, etc. However, I think the main reason that we don't see more units, locales, and anything else, is probably legal, and probably in development. Lucasarts probably doesn't want everything revealed just yet, for marketing reasons, and Petroglyph probably doesn't want us to see new units or locales until they're close to being 100% crisp 'n clean.

http://www.empireatwar.net/fall2005/videos/EmpireatWarTalk.wmv Hmm. - It's disputed whether the Death Star can actually target ships? - When Alderaan was destroyed, the "shockwave" of the explosion still expanded through the Death Star, like it did in the E3 video. Are they going to correct this? - The Mon Calimaris aren't exploding too interestingly (a la ISDs). Other than that, though, I'm looking forward to it. Neat that they have Byss.

Another thought just occured to me: Starships have a limited amount of power that they can allocate to weapons. They also have to worry about shielding, engines, gravity, life support, etc. Smaller and medium ships like Carracks and Nebulon B Frigates are equipped with both turbolasers and laser batteries because they don't allocate nearly as much power to shielding and guns as large capital ships do - they simply don't have the energy to dedicate to one form of attack without leaving themselves horribly vulnerable to the other (dedicating everything to turbolasers would leave them vulnerable to fighters - without the heavy shielding of a capital ship to actually take that sort of beating - and everything to lasers would leave no defense against larger ships). Considering that both ships either have no fighter hangars, or a small amount of fighters stationed in them, smaller and medium cruisers have to rely on more tactical laser cannons to protect themselves against fighter attacks, with some larger turbolaser cannons to at least offer some resistance against capital ships - large vessels like ISDs and Mon Cals simply do not have that vulnerability due to their huge investment in armor, shield energy, and fighter complements, and thus can merely rely on their own fighters to take out enemy fighters, and their gargantuan shield power to repel close to anything a mere star fighter or bomber squadron could do to them.

Maybe if we funded our schools... Anyway, I know that it's not in the questions, but how under wraps are new unit developments? Is Petroglyph not allowed by Lucas Arts to release new information?

The Imperial military was a very sexist institution. That's why Daala being a Fleet Admiral was such an anomoly, and took her having to be Tarkin's lover. I personally prefer to believe that Stormtroopers are average humans, and not clones. I think it speaks more of the heinousness of dictatorship. It's one thing to say that the minions of Palpatine are all grown in a vat, and genetically predisposed to be absolutely loyal; it's another to say that a nefarious government, spanning across the stars, can expect such rabid devotion from its population, that millions of average Imperial citizens would be so eagerly brainwashed as to don the white armor for what they believe to be a noble and patriotic cause. Dictatorships are fuled by blind patriotism, anyway. Why would the New Order be any different?

I'm not sure. Some people claim that the Stormtroopers were simply Republican clones in new uniforms, fighting for a new government. No difference. Others say that the clone facilities were destroyed in the Clone Wars themselves.

I guess what I mean is, why bother mass-producing all sorts of disposable crap fighters when you could rig your ISDs with an equal amount of say, quad laser cannons, along with their heavy turbolaser batteries. Or the same for the Rebels, for that matter. Why are heavy starships and quicker laser cannons mutually exclusive?

What always confused me was how heavily-armed ships like Star Destroyers (or even the Rebels' own Mon Calimari Cruisers) are bristling with heavy weapons like turbolasers and ion cannons, but never have basic laser cannons for targetting fighter craft. I don't understand why they couldn't have both. Is there just not enough room on starships, not enough power to allocate, etc, ?

Leftover Kaminoan from the Clone Wars. Secret powers: able to play God with genetics and cloning supertechnologies, blissful ignorance of the genocide/totalitarianism/bad accuracy/silly armor brought about by your creations.

That's a very good point, actually. It might just be a glitch, but it makes sense that bounty hunters would have no real ideological loyalty to either side; simply the one that pays the most. This obviously, would make the Empire the natural employer, at least until when/if the Rebels gained economic dominance. However, I remember a Petroglyph dude mentioning bounty hunters only glancingly in an interview, as the Empire's counter to the Rebel's espionage network. Since the Rebels can prettymuch see every major Imperial installation, know about every Imperial construction operation, and prepare for every Imperial fleet movement, it would seem only fair to give the Imps some sort of remedy. What part the bounty hunters would play remains a mystery. I doubt that there's going to be hero-capturing like there was in SW: Rebellion, so I assume that killing (or at least disabling) is the name of the game. The best guess I can give is that bounty hunters would provide a bonus against other heroes in combat (space or ground), and perhaps detect cloaked espionage units like Han & Chewie.