Master_Xan

This is a bit old, but I'll answer anyway... Shields take damage before hull. Always. I don't know what the ratio is to hull/systems once the shields drop. But systems CAN be damaged before shields are breached. An easy way to prove this is to watch a capital ship in combat against a few fighter squads for awhile. Something like an ISD against x-wings. The fighters don't do enough damage to penetrate the shields; you can watch the ISD's shields blip down for a fraction of a second before they regenerate. But because the ISD is terrible at killing fighters, the fighters have a chance to live long enough that, somehow, the shield generator is damaged. You can also see this when a ship gets hit with a lot of power all at once- the shields might go from full to 50%, and the shield generators are suddenly at reduced effectiveness as well. Much more rarely, I've seen a ship with shields up take damage to systems other than shields. Weapons, engines, anything. This is much more likely to happen when the ship is being pounded by lots of incoming fire than by small amounts of sustained damage, but I have seen weapons damaged in situations like the earlier one, with an ISD and x-wings. On this note, the game has separate firing arcs for weapons, but shields and hull value are not assigned to portions of a ship. Easy way to test this is watch a large group of x-wings take out an ISD; they don't fire torpedoes until the shields are completely down, even if they are only ever hitting two sides of the ISD with lasers (which should only drop the shields on those two sides, if the shields were sectioned off like that). I think it may be possible to use tractor beams on ships with shields up (which takes out or slows down its sublight engines), but I'd have to do more testing to prove it. Also, every ship (except fighters) have a damage control value assigned to it. You can see it in RebEd. This has something to do with how well a ship repairs, and thus a ship with a higher value here will have more robust systems than a ship with a lower value. I don't think it affects how difficult it is to damage the system, but I'm pretty sure higher values will greatly increase the chances of a system being repaired mid-battle. I don't know if this changes repairs made outside of combat. I *believe* ships never miss once they fire; if fire, the shot hits. Also, I *believe* it always does full damage from that arc (so if an ISD shoots a Mon Cal cruiser with its rear arc, the Mon Cal will be hit, and will be hit with the full value of the ISD's rear turbolasers). The only way I can think to test this would be to remove all but forward firing arc from a ship, remember its damage value, and remove the shields from another ship. Put the two in combat with each other, let the shield-less ship get hit (and count exactly how many times it is hit). Then retreat and see the hull damage of the shield-less ship. That might give you insight into whether its possible to miss (even though the laser graphics don't ever show misses), whether it is always the full damage, and/or what possible percentage goes to systems vs hull. Somehow, the game changes things based on turbolasers vs normal lasers vs ion cannons. Ion cannons seem to get a bonus against shields, but I'm not sure if they help disable systems after the shields are down or not. Lasers do much more damage against fighters than turbolasers do. I'm not sure if the game allows turbolasers to miss fighters, or if they just have reduced damage against them. Whether ion cannons are as effective as lasers against fighters, I don't know, nor do I know if they are as bad against fighters as turbolasers are. I'm interested in the results of any testing you do.

I heard a rumor this game was going 'free to play.' Is the rumor true? And if so, any idea what about the game kept it from success?

On the research side, you can use RebEd to change success rates among minions. If you want research to take longer, either reduce the number of characters that can do research AND/OR lower the characters' research number. You have to keep it above 0, or they will always fail. I'm not sure what a good number would be; you'll have to experiment.

I didn't know some of this. Good info. So... is there a purpose to the ion cannon? Still seems the LNR is way more useful...

I want screenies! And actually, if you have two computers available, its a cinch to make a multiplayer game with yourself for testing purposes. If you only have one computer available, Rebellion requires so few resources you can probably run two instances of it at once and do a multiplayer game. Just have at least one instance of it running in a VM so the two don't detect each other. And good job with all the progress! I haven't commented much (again); this time my excuse is the holiday busy-ness.

I love it! The whole thing is good, and I like your choice of buttons (both for fleet finder, etc, but also for the notifications). My only gripe is the floor- it looks like R2 is floating. The Rebel symbol in the center of the lower display looks like it should be part of the floor and the wall at the same time... doesn't work well. The circle-metal on either sides suffers from the same problem- is it the floor? The wall? Who knows? I'd remove the symbol and associated panel, then make a distinction between the wall and the floor. If you can move R2 down, hide his legs a bit, that would work as well, but I don't think you can do that. The fleet finder and other buttons look strange in the symbol's background thingy; making the whole "console" one material would be best, or if you want it split, then you need to not split it in the middle of some of the buttons (so each button is completely surrounded by the same color, not half one and half another). Seriously though, the rest is great. I also like the new symbol for the HQ (I assume that's what the gold is).

That's good info to know. I need to check my VMWare graphic drivers... maybe then I can play that old DS9 game again!

Did you ever get this fixed? I'd try replacing Mothma with another card. You could probably even use her card from the database here, so there are no changes- except perhaps a restoration of corrupted data. Otherwise, do as Tex suggested and try swapping out files or getting another game disc.

Bah. University isn't important. What are they going to teach you that making expansive modifications to an aging game won't? We'll be waiting.

Americans: If you don't know about SOPA yet, go look it up somewhere and email your representatives in Congress to let them know SOPA is a horrible idea.

In line with your desire for typos to be brought to your attention... "wont" should be "want". "Colour" should be "color" if you are going for American English; if you want British English, its fine as is. What version of English are you going for? What all have you changed, as in, what needs proof-reading? Just Encyclopedia entries, or are there other things as well? As you are getting closer to completion, and I'm getting more interested in your work, I'll do some testing for you. And proof-reading. Do you want my responses in this thread, or a new one?

The video looks great! Lots of improvements all around. What do you have left to do? You mentioned in the vid there are 2 planets left; what else is still in your vision of 1.5?

Well, it's working now. No idea why.

Really? It loads up normally for you? Hmm...

Anybody else notice that swrebellion.com no longer loads, but instead pops up a message from justhost.com?

Hey MrPhildevil, have you changed the AI value for different ships? If I understand correctly, it impacts when the AI retreats from battle. I think it also influences what ships they build. You can't change it in RebEd; use SWRE to do that. I have a copy, if you need one (hard to find online these days).

Two options. One: What did you use to make the .iso? Different programs will yield different results. Try a new program and see if it still hangs at 50%. I recommend Daemon Tools Lite, but there are literally dozens (if not hundreds) of programs you could try. Option one has the benefit of being quick to try and completely free. Two: Download VMware and load an old version of Windows. Try Windows 98, Windows 2000, or XP. If you don't have a copy lying around, you can probably find one for fairly cheap at thrift stores, places that sell used software, or online (Ebay anyone?). Option two has the benefit of working for sure. I run Rebellion under VMware, no special settings, mods, or anything required. Its also free, so long as you have an old version of Windows. This is a guide you can use to make Rebellion run even better in a VM. The steps here are optional, and primarily used for getting full-screen instead of windowed mode. If you want, you can just change your screen resolution and get similar results.

I always use the DS Shield because I don't know how many fighters I'd need to achieve that. So, does anyone know the minimum? The number of fighters you need to defend with depends on the number of fighters they attack with. I'm not sure, but I think it also matters what type of fighters are involved. For best results, load up on TIE Interceptors or Defenders, not bombers or TIEs. It would be interesting to run some tests and try to find out. Maybe I will (if I remember).

Welcome to the forums! And you're welcome! Though I won't take much of the credit for making this site amazing. Unfortunately, there aren't many of us these days, but I'm glad you were able to get the game going and playable again! There are a few folks around still doing multiplayer games, and if you want to add-on there are definitely plenty of great ideas and pre-made material available. Feel free to ask us questions if you have any. (And props for actually reading the threads instead of posting questions that are answered elsewhere!)

The pics look really slick. Sorry I haven't kept up with this thread. My email notifications don't work

If you haven't found the mines/refineries pics, I think I can find 'em for you. Just let me know.

Whatcha working on? Or just trying to understand the .dll better?

Any progress?

What does the -w signify?

I don't have a copy of Rebellion installed. I may still have one on a VM, but I have since changed VM programs, so I'll want to reinstall it into my newer VM (VMware works better than VirtualBox, in case you ever wanted to know). I know it should just run with your files, but I want to be able to edit things. Probably not to change them drastically, but definitely to look at the guts of the mod and see what you did.