Master_Xan

I'd do a complete reinstall and put back the changes you want. You could try and repair, restoring defaults, but I'd just reorganize what you want and don't want, then reinstall.

Hmm... well, that was my best shot. Obviously didn't help you much, sorry. I read your other post, and I definately don't have an answer for you there. I wish you luck with it, but it may well be hardcoded and unalterable.

That's actually more what I was asking... is it even worth building them in multiplayer, or is it better to put the RM towards fighters to repel the enemy in the first place?

Most of the time, I too find myself low on RM and high on maintainance. That's because you get a set amount of maintainance for your mines/refineres, and when something of yours is destroyed you get that back. You don't get RM back, and it takes a bit of time to generate. First, make sure you have equal refineres and mines (right-click advisory, select galaxy overview, scroll towards bottom and compare the numbers. 1:1 ratio is what you want). Second, you MUST be either actively taking planets with mines/refineres, or you must be actively building them on your planets. Anything less and you'll run out of RM. Also, scrap your older units for their minerals, and sometimes it pays to scrap a heavily damaged ship instead of repairing it. To regroup taskforces, select the ships and hit ctrl+#, where # is the number you want the taskforce to be. Select the ships by ctrl+click (or maybe its shift+click, I forget). Your general goal is to get ships together based on either their speed, or their usefullness. Ex: group Corellian Corvettes with Gunships because they are both fast with laser batteries, group troop ships and carriers together and keep them out of battle (unless you want to use the minimal weapons on them, in which case you still usually want them together because of speed), and put the heavy-hitters together to efficiently give orders.

That previous example was if you had increased too far the AI value for Xwings, so it won't happen normally. Or shouldn't, anyway. In a close battle, the AI will retreat when its fighters are destroyed. A fighter, say an Awing, has an AI value for each squad, say 17, and a capital ship has a value, say 52. If they have 6 squads, thats 17x6, or 102, which is worth about two of the capital ships. So loosing those fighters will drastically change the numbers the AI uses to calculate its chances of winning. This may have also been used to try and keep the Imperial AI from wasting fighters by withdrawing from their planets too soon. By waiting until the fighters are destroyed, any fighter that didn't have hyperdrive has at least gotten a chance to destroy something before being lost. Like you Scipio, I've also noticed that the AI will retreat fighters if you calculate much more often then if you actually do battle.

I'm curious, do laser batteries/shield generators/ion cannons ever have a useful function in multiplayer? I would assume the shields do, but what of the rest?

There is. Its the location of the cards. I noticed it when testing the new Reloaded fighters; if you replace the Ywings with a new fighter, you get several of those new fighters at the games start (even if the new fighter requires research, so you can't build them right away). I assume this is the case for special forces as well. To fix it, just load the cards backwards (swap the Imp and New Republic cards). That should be all you need to get NR special forces at start.

Nice, very nice. (As long as weird skinhead fellows hiding in the mountains of Montana aren't taking it seriously )

Thanks for the link, I'll probably do that myself. Oh, and DarthTex... your avatar is the all-mighty Mystery X. Unless that's what you're going for, I just thought I'd point it out.

Too true, too true. So it was a bad example, but you get the idea. As a better example, the AI won't retreat with a Corellian Corvette and Alliance Carrier against a SSD until after their Xwings are destroyed (which the tactical player could take advantage of and possibly kill the capital ships...)

The days where a game is perfect out-of-the-box are gone. Publishers don't have the time to make a game like that anymore, there is too much pressure to get the thing out the door. Hence the prolific patching and updates many games experience. The bugs aren't all fixed, but even more so, the balance is usually off (you can get away with that easier then selling a game with lots of bugs). It saddens me, but its become a fact of life. Fortunately for me, I never buy new games anyway, they cost too much. After a year or two, the game is cheaper, the bugs worked out, and the community has made a few good mods to fix up the balance a little. I haven't even considered playing the EaW demo, much less buying the thing. Not for awhile anyway.

*SLAPS EVERYONE WITH WHITE GLOVE* Go download SWREditor. It has the option to directly modify the AI value for ships/fighters/ect. Simply bump up the AI value on the Xwing and watch them build hundreds. The only downside is that it can mess with when they retreat or don't retreat, so don't make it too high or they'll stay and fight a SSD with two Xwing squads... Or you could lower the AI value for the Awing, and then get the same retreating odds but get more Xwings. Same thing with Ywings or any other ship.

You might check your security settings. Sometimes a brand-new computer has goofy IE settings, or another program with "features" like popup-blocker or some such. Generally, when I get a new computer I spend a week rooting out all the 'extras' and deleting them, then finding their registery lines (which make them come back up) and removing them, until finally I've gotten rid of all the "Free AOL Trial" shortcuts, wacky startup programs, and all that.

This should probably be in the "Rebellion Editing" section, rather then Reloaded... unless its supposed to be a suggested feature for Reloaded. I would certainly second that notion. The music does get old after awhile, to the point where I disable mine and have Windows Media player running some of my own tunes in the background.

Part of my decision to make the Awing more powerful was to make it into an air-superiority fighter. The AI will automatically attack Ywings and Bwings before any other fighters, making losses there heavy (and also making it difficult to maintain an efficient number in my fleet). So I moved the Xwing into a sort of bomber/fighter, using it to support Awings if required or using its torpedoes against capital ships. The Awings with improved laser damage became the intercepter, as they were capable of taking out Defenders sufficiently well to even the odds a bit. But because they were too good early on, their research requirement went up and the defender's came down. I also lowered the TIE fighter's cost and the Imp Carrier's cost (so the AI will build them more often). My goal was never to make the game like the movies, but instead change things around as if I was actually a commander (but because I keep things realistic and am doing it for both sides, the game remains balanced). I've been toying with the idea of adding some custom cards like royal guards, and especially with replacing Bwings and some of the troop ships (give the Alliance the heavy troop ships and replace the medium one with something else, ect.

The Alliance is supposed to have the best fighters, and at the beginning they outclass the Imps completely. But I never used Awings because they couldn't handle capital ships as well as Xwings could. Generally, I have no problems with fighters, so the additional firepower was what I wanted. Then TIE Defenders would roll out, and all of a sudden the Alliance doesn't have anything quite as good as the Imps. That's just wrong. So I bumped up the research so that Awings didn't come out so soon, but made them more comparable to Xwings (firepower to battle Defenders and the Awings speed to keep up).

That would be an interesting debate... he did technically 'betray' Solo, but wasn't really involved in the Rebellion until after ESB. But at the same time, he also helped Luke and the others escape, so I usually consider himself redeemed. Add that to the role he played in RotJ (and latter things like the YV invasion in the NJOrder series), and you've got a loyal guy. A little opportunistic, but still.

SWRE is a little finicky with saving. Make sure its in the same folder as your rebexe file, and make sure you save after modifying each thing (as in, if you change the values for ISD's, you must SAVE THOSE MODIFICATIONS before changing or viewing any other ship's stats).

Decompile, or disassemble? From what I know, decompiling would give us code, while disassemble would give us machine language (utterly useless unless we converted that into standard code). Disassembling wouldn't be nearly as good, forcing two conversions, but if we can't decompile then it might be worth a shot. It might be that LA obfuscated the code, which could be why you didn't succeed. How long ago did you try? I can only assume that as the game gets older, there is more chance that someone will have a decompiler capable of cutting through any security they might have implemented, and more decompilers in general are made (so a new one might have more success simply because of design differences). Even with many variables missing, having parts of the code would still be useful. It would allow for a better understanding of the engine, making it easier to work around limitations. Naturally, having the full code would mean actually fixing those limitations, but I'll take what I can get. Oh, and I should mention. Remember the part of my warning where I told you to call me an idiot? Don't be afraid to do just that if I say something stupid, as I'm not particularly experienced with coding issues and have never tried to reverse engineer something before. Trust me, I won't be offended. I might even clap. EDIT: hmm. I've been doing some reading, and I'm beginning to agree with you two more and more (and discovering my own ignorance). Some reading on Slashdot and various other forums is revealing to me that yes, you can decompile, but not only does it leave out variables, and parameters, but also has the code misarranged, and even mixed with assembly. I'm getting the distict impression that its possible, but WAAAY over my head, extremely time consuming, and may not even be worth all the effort. As a sidenote, I really liked a post on this page. If you take a quick look on it, you'll see its an argument for whether decompiling is possible or not. One guy about halfway down the page makes a great argument against it, using all kinds of wonderous logic. A reply to it: "Been doing it for twenty years. It is easy to do. Stop trying to use logic... actually do it." And that, my friends, is good advice. Don't argue something you've never tried with people who have tried it, you'll always loose when they say something eliquent like that.

WARNING: Serious inquiry ahead. Leave absolutely no joke untold. Beware falling objects, and be sure to tell me I'm an idiot (otherwise that chip starts to get big). This thread is of a technical nature, so please leave your kid sister who still plays with Barbies in the babysitting lounge next door and make sure your brain is in good working order (or discard it entirely to prevent any possible confusion). So, anybody know what language Rebellion was written in? C, basic, what? Or a way to find out? Or a guess? Any clue as to what program was used to write it? A way to find out? A guess?

I did several minor changes and a few major ones. I made the Emperor capable of training, increased Leia's force abilities and made her capable of training, tinkered with who could be commanders/generals/admirals, and removed the diplomacy ratings for several espionage characers (so I don't have to select espionage in the mission list when targeting a planet where diplomacy is possible). I made it so a few character's couldn't betray their side, such as Lando, messed with force probabilities and skill modifiers a few dozen times, and even forced certain people to be a jedi at the start. I did so many minor adjustments to ships I couldn't possibly recall them all. I made the construction yards build faster to lower game time while retaining ship-build times, made ISD's and Death Stars carry more troops, experimented with removing the gravity generators to make for more interesting end-game battles with the computer, made Defenders research faster and AWings do as much damage as XWings while increasing their research time, tinkered with the Corellian Gunship to make them more useful, made the Bulk Cruiser cost less and both versions of the Dreadnaught were made faster, cheaper, with better shields and weapons but unable to carry anything (to make a good front-line ship when the game begins). I took out both carrier's weapons entirely, increased slightly the shields for Mon Cal cruisers, and lowered the VSD turbolaser batteries while increasing their laser turrets (to provide an effective all-purpose ship). Decreased the Strike Cruiser's hull and shield regeneration, made Carrack cruisers cheaper, and tinkered with modified settings for Lancer and B Frigates before settling back to their originals. I also lowered the maintainance cost of all troops and the mineral cost for mines and refineres. Hmm... that should be most of the important ones. As you can see, I have too much free time and have had this game for too long (most of those changes were done with SWRE before I even had RebEd).

I actually had found SWRE long before I knew RebEd (or these boards) existed. RebEd is a superior progam, however SWRE is a little easier to work with initially. If I remember correctly, it approaches stat editing differently, and I seem to recall it doing a few things RebEd couldn't do. If you're lucky, I'll be motivated to go check it out, seeing as how I have a copy around here somewhere... EDIT: Alright, went back and played around. Here's the synopsis: RebEd is superior in almost every way. Its capable of changing the research requirements, editing a few things SWRE can't (such as the galaxy map), has the card system, can make characters not betray their side, offers the mass alteration feature for ships, and can be more easily used with mods. Very important, you can edit the range of a ships weapons. To name a few. However, SWRE does do a few things RebEd can't (!! FUTURE features, perhaps?!!) This includes making the character available at start (unless the 'won't betray' in RebEd does this as well), and it also allows for the option of directly editing the AI value of a unit. This could be a very good feature to have in RebEd... I also feel compelled to mention another little-known gem, the Fast Builder, possible archive name 'swr-fast', built by Tywyll. He essentially halved the maintainance and mineral costs of everything in the game for both sides, but also included several .bat files to quickly and efficiently switch between settings. Simply run the 'first.bat' file to record the original settings, then the 'fast.bat' file to make everything take less time. This was my staple before I found these boards, as I could quickly switch between the original and the modified settings, and by tinkering with the 'first.bat' file and its companion, 'original.bat', I essentually created my own card system. I'd edit things with SWRE, then run my copied/renamed first/original.bat combo to record my changes while still retaining the ability to restore defaults or put back another set of changes. Not as streamlined as RebEd, but it worked well and had fewer things that could go wrong... I've even used my old system from time to time when I wanted to save all my settings into one file instead of having to save bunches of cards (I can't seem to get the global save/load features to work very reliably in RebEd).

I've tried both MoO and GC, but prefered the SE series. Don't know exactly why, I just do. But I should have mentioned those two as well, because they are good games.

What's almost as cool as SWRebellion? A different game turned into SWRebellion by players! I heartily recommend Space Empires IV (and the new SE5 when it comes out) for everyone here. Particularly wonderful is that the game is easily modded, and there are two Star Wars mods floating around for it. And a really nice Star Trek mod, another called 'Proportions' that makes the game more realistic, and and and... Anywho, the Space Empires series is similar in complexity to Rebellion, lacking characters and missions but with a great shipbuilding and research system. Similar to other games you're probably played, but with the SW mod its more similar to Rebellion. Starfury is also a pretty neat game, same company. Check them out at http://www.malfador.com and tell me how you like them!

I'm working on that as we speak... don't quit your day job, but do wish me luck!