Naja

Maybe Republicans are the descendants of the Sith Lords, and Democrats are the descendants of Ewoks!

Well, from what videos I've seen, infantry seem to die like flies. Having troop carriers seems like a very wise way to preserve your Stormies until you need them.

Well, that's true, Teradyn, the Iraq war is a good example of those "strings." However, as a constitutional law student, I've learned that a lot of our freedoms are not absolute, for the sake of flexibility. Protected speech, for example, does not cover speech that has a clear and present danger of incitement or of large-scale violence, child pornography (yes, pornography is classified as speech), and libel/defamation, to name a few. The same goes for countries. It's a very tricky balance to attain, obviously, that no one of us really knows. If you say that every country has absolute self-determination within their borders, then some very horrible things like genocide could occur and there would be nothing that more civilized, concerned countries could do about it. On the other hand, if you add strong strings and say - sort of like my country's foreign policy guys - that it is the duty of all democratic countries to "democratize" all dictatorial countries, and to stop ethnic killing, etc, then you have opened the door to a lot of sneaky loop holes, like you've mentioned. After all, *sarcasm* we're fighting in Iraq because they were living under a dictator who gassed his own people (even though those people were gassed a little under 20 years ago and that same dictator enjoyed our full support while he was doing it).

"When designing the game's units, did you include all of the units we saw in the original trilogy? How many did you include from the expanded universe?" Yeah, I believe that they should be combined. Though it may be too late...

I'm kinda at odds with your definition of freedom. Are you saying that one person or one small group of people should determine what is "good" for everyone else? According to your definition, the Taliban were champions of freedom. Who defines what responsibility and good decisions are, anyway? Take an Evangelical Christian, a Muslim, an Atheist, a Republican, Democrat, a conservative, a liberal, and put them in the same room with the question of what responsibility and goodness are. What exactly are the chances of anything close to a unanimous answer on anything? To me, freedom in a civil society is best defined, in the words of President Theodore Roosevelt, "the right to my opinion ends at my neighbor's nose." Freedom in a democracy is your right to your thoughts and ideas despite what the majority may think of them, and your right to freedom of action, so long as those actions you do do not adversely affect others. Freedom on the global scale, like for a country, is what's called self-determination - a country has the right to choose what it can and cannot do, how it can handle its resources, what sort of government to serve its people, etc, and the freedom to operate under these rights without a more powerful country telling it what to do; assuming again, that these actions do not adversely affect its population or the population of another country (i.e. no genocide, no wars of conquest, etc). The important thing in realizing how these concepts - freedom, democracy, wrong, right - are agreed upon values by means of consensus, is the necessity of no one party acquiring too much power. The old adage of absolute power corrupting absolutely is notoriously relevant, in this day and age. And one supreme governmental body with no seperation of powers has no chance of becoming corrupt? That's the problem with over-centralized power - if you've got a legendarily good leader, like Charlamagne, Augustus, or whoever, then a lot gets done with no hassle. But more often than not, you've either got a dipshit or a power-hungry tyrant that's attracted to power for its own sake, and then you're in a world 'o trouble. Ah well. I'm just full of shit. You can take me with a grain of some serious salt.

Hmmm. Unfortunately, I think we can assume that the AT-ATs will kneel to deploy stormtroopers. However, how possible do you think it would be to mod the cable rapelling exit of troopers into the game, once it's released? After all, it's not a complicated animation - Generals has it for Chinook helicopters.

Look great to me, too. Hey, I'm a Jedi Knight, now.

No, White Man's Burden was a popular pro-colonialism philosophy at that time, coined by the author Rudyard Kipling (the dude who wrote The Jungle Book). Has nothing to do with our American slavery. Basically, the White Man's Burden is the belief that "those people" are so hopelessly backwards that it's our (European) duty to go into their lands to govern them, convert them to our religion, and modernize them to our technologies. Many people believed it at the time, because it was essentially a benevolent rationale for merciless conquest and exploitation.

I wasn't talking about political parties, nor disarmament. Just foreign policy that is hypocritical and anti-democratic. Neoconservatives are the grand champions, but neoliberals like Clinton weren't exactly angels either, e.g. giving China - a despotic police state with a horrible human rights record - Most Favored Nation trading status, similar though lesser handouts to megacorporations, supporting the WTO, etc. Now...I could be misunderstanding that quote. But it sounded awfully a lot like colonialism, to me. If that's the case, then...wow. Congratulations on the 19th century thinking, minus the White Man's Burden. Look at a starving, disease-ridden place like Africa and tell me that those dictatorships, genocides, and civil wars weren't at least influenced by Europeans coming in, pitting ethnic faction against ethnic faction, drawing arbitrary map boundaries, and stealing their resources. If you're willing to accept the "might makes right" argument, then I'd wonder how long you would maintain it if it were your country that was invaded and taken over, and coerced for another country's hunger for resources.

Well, as long as I know Petroglyph is going to improve ship/space station explosions to be just as cool as when ISDs kick the bucket, I won't worry about the questions anyone asks.

I imagine/hope that the Empire will get the Lancer Frigate. And then there's always that elusive SSD...

Hmm. If there's slim to nil activity, would it be too rash to add a new question? If it would not be, then my question would be similar to my ship explosion thread: In the videos we have seen, the only ships that are destroyed in a more interesting way than simply blowing up are Imperial Star Destroyers. Are the developers going to make other starships and space stations explode in a more different way than simply going "kaboom!" ?

Which of the reasons for his physical ruination did you like more? The explanation before the prequels was that he had become so unimaginably powerful with the dark side of the force, that it was physically eating away at him. Hense his need for clones, in the Dark Empire series. It's even mentioned directly in the beginning of Shadows of the Empire, where Prince Xizor notices his physique, "as if something was slowly eating at his flesh." The prequel explanation is, obviously, that his dark power got radiated back at him in combat, forever scarring him. Now, it's kind of a given that the former sounds more dark, and more fun to think about. But, on the other hand, there is a strong reason that the latter could be better. There's a very symbolic reason that Palpatine becomes physically disfigured in Revenge of the Sith - it's not simply to show how his once handsome looks belied a true monster, the so-called mask becoming the man thing, but his degradation is to contrast with Anakin's. They are both fallen and ruined people, and the reason that Lucas probably had Palpatine and Anakin become disfigured in the same period of time was to illustrate their ironic similarity, and their striking difference; the difference being, of course, that one was a fallen hero lured into evil by good intentions, and the other was a mendacious beast who chose it in full judgement. So thoughts?

Well, I again watched my E3 Convention EaW footage, nerd that I am, and noticed that for a few seconds in one of the space battles they were showing, an ISD simply goes kaboom, as well. Perhaps it's only been coincidence, or that the ISD is just a magnificent ship to start working explosions on, but this just makes me think that perhaps their ship explosions will truly be interesting to see, and not simply trivial explosions all the time.

From what I've heard from the German convention, you can load a unit of stormtroopers in an AT-AT. What I'm wondering is, how did they animate the troops exiting the walker? Because from what I know, stormtroopers exit AT-ATs from the sides by a system of rapelling cables that descend to the ground. It would be quite simple to animate, considering that Generals has a similar animation for American Rangers rapelling from Chinook helicopters.

That new book about Darth Vader's rise to power looks pretty inspiring. Undoubtedly, there's a surge of literature following Episode 3, not to mention a surge of games and releases, and re-releases, etc. But besides games to keep the EU mainstream, I think that the novels are the truest extension, personally. Or at least the most active agent in Star Wars' longevity, IMHO.

Directionless rant commencing in 3...2...1... Huh? I know that there was some outcry against Afghanistan, but it was hardly everyone. It was a widely accepted invasion, even on the international front, and even *gasp!* a justifiable war, considering that the Taliban was sheltering bin Laden. Didn't make the war that effective, though, considering how a: terrorists don't present fixed targets, b: bin Laden et al are long gone, c: the mountainous terrain paired with the zealous nationalism of the Afghanis more or less completely guarantees that our occupation of Afghanistan will never be successful. Same thing happened to the British at the turn of the 20th century in Afghanistan, and...even Iraq. Not to come off like a cynic, but do you call arming and training corrupt men like Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Manuel Noriega (to name a few) making the world a better place? Our troops have nothing to do with it, and have nothing to do with a more liberal-minded critique of our foreign policy - it's the policy-makers that we have grievances against; short-sighted, arrogant bastards that want pro-US puppet states to supply cheap resources, and that only make a stand about freedom, or dictatorships, or genocide, or *fill in the blank* whenever it serves their interests. Did Reagan care about genocide? Why was that administration a staunch ally of Saddam when he was gassing the Kurds in the 80's? Does Bush & company? Then where the hell is the action against the current genocide in Sudan? But they're such gallant champions of democracy! ...and they whole-heartedly support the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, and tried to rig the Iraqi election with the CIA. Like it or not, the fact of the matter is that our foreign policy ever since the Cold War has been nothing but the procurement of satellite states. That may have had some relevance back in that era, but in this, it's nothing short of pure hypocrisy and robbery. "Support the troops" is a misleading farce - to support the troops means to care for their actual well-being, to serve their best interests. Yet what has this administration done? It's cut Veteran's Affairs by over a billion. It's haphazardly supplied inadequate amounts of infantry armor and vehicle plating for our frontline troops, it's the administration of a man who has never seen combat ever in his life, exclaiming "bring it on." Supporting the troops in no way means that you have to support the war...a corrupt war that has no purpose. A war against a country that - even admitted by the White House - had no ties to bin Laden and 9/11, and no WMDs. An occupation that is rapidly turning into an ethnic civil war that we simply will not be able to win. An occupation that, ironically, has made us less safe; fanatics like bin Laden are propagandizing our invasion, spinning it to confirm to millions of confused and terrified Muslims that America has declared war on Islam, and thus acquiring thousands more in recruits than they could ever have dreamed of. All because of that moronic and reckless invasion. As for your world army? Technically, the UN is ideally supposed to serve as a "non-biased" peace-keeping forum and force, but you're right, it is weak. But not for the reason you specified, and in no way does this justify one country filling in the spot. Institutions like the UN are only effective at neutralizing worldwide conflicts when all countries - especially the most powerful ones - fully cooperate. Our neoconservative administrations since Reagan have backed out of and violated an unimaginable amount of international treaties concerning nuclear disarmament, global warming, genocide, napalm, and torture. Imagine what a joke an institution like that looks like if the most powerful country in the world can balk at it and simply continue what it's doing unabated. It's not soley the US's fault, as a lot of the bigger European countries sometimes creep around UN protocol, but we are the only member that has demonstrated such brazen disregard for international law. International law becomes a joke when one rogue country can continually defy it at its leisure, sort of like how a town's police force becomes viewed as a joke when the mob rules everything. All this said, why do you think the majority of the world looks down on us? Our government parades freedom and self-determination, and yet jails hundreds of its own citizens without even charging them with a crime, and funds terrorists and contra thugs to usurp popularly-elected governments. And yet somehow most of us seem to think that people like bin Laden hate us because of our freedoms. That the whole world hates us because they are jealous of our power. It's our arrogance, my friend, our arrogance. And while I love my country and the ideals it was founded on, and strive to better it by getting educated and learning about the issues, at this point in time I am very ashamed to be an American because of men like Bush, and the people who voted for him. Directionless rant ending in 3...2...1...

Well, I come from a nation with the average emotional maturity of a 14 year old, so you're not alone.

I agree with the need for an emphasis on solid RTS, but that doesn't justify the arrogant comment. Anyway, in terms of a sequel or expansion, my hunch is that it would be a Clone Wars one as well. It would only make sense. However, if Petroglyph wanted to do something different and still remain in the Star Wars franchise with this line of products, perhaps they would expand into the future, into the Star Wars EU? It would be interesting to wage war as the bona fide New Republic against an eroding Imperialist mockery, and various other villains. Who knows? Add a Thrawn campaign in there somewhere to keep people on their toes.

Some of us are obsessive-compulsive.

Thanks for the url. Anyone here ever been to domuspublica.net? It's a very meticulous site, painstakingly done. The guy's more or less done a complete analysis of the Galactic Empire, and is a very decent author, too. Y'all should check it out. No extra charge, he also made a very good Wikipedia submission, under "Roman Emperor."

Quick question guys, I've been looking everywhere, and am wondering if there is a general site that keeps track of the most recent developments and releases in EU literature. I tried Lucas Arts, but the bastards want me to sign up and pay $35.

Who says, Ackbar? How can they ignore B-Wings if they have Mon Calimari Cruisers?

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Ya know, a major reason why there's so much catastrophe in New Orleans is because the National guard troops, National Guard helecopters, and the funding that would have otherwise increased levy and water pump security went to - you guessed it! - Iraqi 'Freedom'.