DarthCycle

The balance between realism, simplicity and fun is hard to achieve. When you model too few elements, it's often too simple hence not very fun. When you model too many elements, it gets complicated (the opposite of simple) and is also not always fun. It's a tough compromise. The fog of war is designed into a binary model: I see you or I don't. It's not elegant but it's simple. It works in the sense that it adds some tactical challenges hence also increase the fun factor. But there is a limit to the increase of the fun factor when you incorporate complexity in the gameplay. It's a downward curve: starts high, but drops low really fast. There might be a correlation between age, short spawn attention, concentration of caffeine and sugar in bloodstream, sex drive and the complexity in games. But I haven't figured out the formula yet ;D

Just to add my 2 cents, To argue that fog of war shouldn't be in the game because of the timeline and technology available, I would offer this simple question/answer: if computers and sensors are so powerfull, why are weapons platform manned by personnel on capital ships and why are fighters manned by pilots? Isn't there available technology to do this? At least, you could manned all this by droids? From a gameplay perspective, fog of war adds an tactical element to the game.

Vasuba, You're absolutely right. A massive fleet of bomber is powerfull. However, extremelly vulnerable too. A balanced fleet with good anti-fighter elements will eat your bomber fleet very easily. This brings the single element of what makes a good game: it's all about interesting choices. You, as the player, have the choice of making a specialized fleet or a balanced fleet? It's a big gamble, it can pay off but it can also end in utter failure and make you lose the war.

Noian, your scrolling text is .... hum, let's try to be diplomatic here .... annoying?

Beowulf, Actually, if you want a game like Homeworld but in the star wars universe, go get the sw mod for it. Homeworld is a complex 3D space RTS. Personnaly, too complex for me. I prefer the simplicity offered by SWEAW so far. Simple but with a few elements to offer tactical opportunity and flexibility. I like the design they used for fighters and capital ships. Fighter are faster, fragile but still carry some punch (especially the bombers). Capital ships are big, slow and powerfull.

About the demo, First of all, I'm not a huge fan of RTS. I played a few along the years but I'm not a hardcore RTS player. Two notable games I played: Total annihilation and Warhammer 40k: dawn of war. Those game rocks IMO, and they had a lot of character. The game universe are rich and compelling. By the way, I wasn't a big fan of games like C&C, Empire Earth or AoE. I'm a huge fan of the star wars universe, and I feel it was properly integrated into the game/demo, based on what I've seen. Space battles in the demo were cool. They offer a much simplier system than the one in Homeworld, which is definitively a plus, and it's so satisfying to finally have a game were you can control the coolest spaceship of all: the imperial star destroyers (even if in the demo, you can only control a smaller variant of it). Love it. I played SW Rebellion countless hours. The game was simple and effective. However, the tactical space battle were so-so. Still, it was nice and is still on my HD after all these years. So from a space battle perspective, the demo deliver a great game experience. However, the ground battle leave a lot to be desired IMO. In short, I didn't like them at all. The feel for the graphics and the environment brought me back memories of C&C and their countless clones. That wasn't a good thing for me. The system where you cannot build new units during a battle is interesting, but it only reinforce a simple fact: the side with the biggest army will win if played smartly. Most human player will be able to achieve that: playing smartly. However, I wonder how aggresive the AI will be and how effective it will be at playing offensively: attacking your planets. Like most games, it will achieve this by doing a simple thing: cheating. The AI will probably know what planets are poorly defended and it will conduct invasion against them, leaving you, the human player, very frustrated. I could be wrong of course, but I doubt it. What I also fear with this system is the sheer repetitiveness of it through a game. In the galactic conquest mode, how many planets will I have to invade? With the same units over and over. And fighting against similar foes over and over. Repeating a similar land battle over 30 times in a game is not what I have in mind. Space battle offer more tactical flexibility. They offer the classical rock-paper-scissor unit design approach but with a twist: you have capital ship and fighters. And not to repeat myself, but controlling big capital ship is just cool. Controlling a squad of tank units or rocket infantry is not. To me at least. The demo doesn't give us a clear indication about the gameplay difference for the 2 factions. They mention it a few times, but I would prefered to experience it more. They do show us one of them: the rebel can steal money from empire controlled planet using smuggler/heroes. The empire can defend against this using bounty hunter. Wow! I'm soooo impressed (being cynical here). I just hope there's more of this and not just 1 or 2 features like this. If you ask me, if there's one feature they could implement/add/modify that would make me buy this game is this: allow me to skip tactical battle on planet. I press a button and I get the result. This way, I could focus on space battle only, which I liked a lot in the demo, and controlling my faction through the galactic view giving me a strategic experience. Conclusion: I'm not sure yet. Will wait and see before buying the game.

Depends, if you mix that stuff with vodka, kaboum in your head and bye-bye productivity !!!

you from Quebec? How do you know about Poutine?

I agree. Numerical superiority provides strategic flexibility. Definitively more my style too. Where did you see that??? This is completly ahistorical, based on the SW universe

Good luck with your interviews! Another good fellow that crosses the path to the other side of the gaming world.

Actually, it would be interesting to see the correlation between the avatar you use and the side you will play first. Everybody with an empire avatar (vader, emperor, SSD, etc...) seems to be playing Empire first. Same goes for rebels.

??? Sorry to pull you back on earth in the real world and tell you this, but all game company are in this business for one thing: money. Sure, they might be fans and gamers too, but money is still the number one priority. And there's nothing wrong with that. The reason the gaming industry has exploded in the last 10 years is because everybody seemed to realize there was money to be made. Never before has there been so many games developped on so many different platforms. You can thank money for that. And us gamers, benefit tremendously from this. There's a lot of quality games available in so many different genre (RTS,FPS,Sim,MMORPG,Sports,wargame,etc...). I can't even try all of them due to the sheer number available.

Imperial all the way!!! Why? Because evil is fun (in games). We will crush the rebellion in one mighty stroke!!! Hehe.

An interesting topic. For us gamers, it's so easy to build a wish list of all the things we would like to see in a game. We just have to think about it a little, formulate it and voila, our job is done. For the developpers, they have to make it happend. They have to go from brainstorm, design, concept, model, implement, debug, balance and ultimately release. So much more work. And each step takes time. Time cost money. Remember, the game is an investment in time and money, and in the end (at release time) the game has to sell. If not, the project is a failure. For the gamers because the game s*cks. For the developpers because they spend 2-3 years of their career time on a game that will be remembered as a failure (not good for their resume). For the producers, because they invested money and got nothing in return (or less than they had invested in the project). I highly recommend reading the excellent feature on iterative development techniques at gamasutra http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050720/gold_01.shtml They basically define the 3 kind of features a game has: core, required and desired. Each feature has to go through a QA (quality assurance) cycle of null, base, nominal and optimal. It's a nice read and makes you appreciate the hard work making a game really is.

That's an unusual question to say the least. For my part, it all depends on the result. If they make a great game, I'll keep track on the other games they make. If it's a big let down, I'll move on. Remember Quicksilver? Of course not, they're the one who destroyed the MoO franchise. We will never see another MoO game after the disastrous result MoO3 was. That name is burned forever. My 2 cents

Wow, the graphic quality is awesome. Great details and light effects.

Welcome to the boards and keep up the good work on EAW. We're all very excited about this game.

To return to the topic of hit and run, yes I would love to be able to do so. Those are definitely worthwhile tactics. Especially in areas that are too far for your forces to invade and keep in your control. Unfortunately, AI are usually not very good at this. We'll see.

Definitively a cool strategy, but it really depends on the fog of war mechanics of the game. Also, capital ship hiding in asteroids could work but it order to stay hidden, they would have to : 1-not move 2-not use their weapons against nearby asteroids (those energy emission could be detected). That could be a problem. Asteroids do move around and capital ship due to their mass would attract smaller asteroids to them. That could cause serious damage. It would probably be more "realistic" to hide fighters squadrons and the smallest capital ships. Not the big ones. Still a cool strategy, we'll see if the game mechanic allow such a thing.

As I mentionned in the ground tactic thread, it all depends on the static defense effectiveness. Effectiveness is mostly measured in terms of how much it costs to build the defensive structure compared to a unit. For instance, if a laser turret is 3x the cost of an ATAT unit, but it can't do enough damage even to destroy one before being destroyed by it, obviously that defensive structure is not effective at all. If on the other hand, for the same cost it can destroy 3 ATAT and still be operationnal, then that structure is effective. In command and conquer, it was more cost effective to build units compared to defensive structures. In total annihilation however, you could construct various spike (group) of defensive structures that were REALLY effective and required the use of combined arms (different kind of unit) to destroy them. An early laser turret was able to destroy 3 light tank/mech and still be operationnal. Add to that the fact that structure+unit gains experience for each kill (translated into a faster rate of fire) and those turret would really kick *ss in no time. Also, for ground structures, we still don't know if the player will be able to configure the layout of his base. In my opinion, such design would slow down the pace of the game (due to the number of planet in the galaxy map), even if it would be somewhat enjoyable to do so. However, repeating this process for each newly conquered planet would get tedious as the game progresses. As far as AI is concerned, most AI are really bad to avoid defensive structure kill zone. Usually, they either repeat the assault with more units or with a different kind of unit. For instance, you build a kill zone of 5 laser cannon, effective against ground unit. The AI attacks with 5 tanks. They all get destroyed. Either the AI will repeat the assault next time with 10 tanks or with 5 bombers. It all depends on the model used by the AI designer.

Actually, before any creative argument can be made on ground tactics, we need to know more on the effectiveness of static defense. If static defense are not very effective (as in most command and conquer games), then the need to garrison your planet with units will be explicit. On the other hand, if static defense are effective (think Total Annihilation), you can minimize the need for mobile ground units.

Actually, can the death star fire its primary gun against capital ship? If so, how often (in game time) during (tactical) space combat? The answer will have a huge impact on how to deal with the death star If the death star does have this capability, the imperial can then concentrate on building a lot of fighter squadrons to defend against rebel fighter attack run. It doesn't need to care at all about the damage capital ships could do against it. The DS can deal with capital ships on it own considering that one shot from the primary gun destroys anything it hits.

Awesome I totally agree . Announcing release date 6 months in advance is just playing with fire. Anything can happend in that period and any date change just plays havoc with our nerves. They should always keep it vague until its gone to gold version. Then they should announce the release date

I'm a big fan of scifi in general, especially the military genre. I'm currently reading David Weber's Harrington series, and it's awesome. I'm at book 5 now, and already bought the next 3. I'm reading one a week. At this pace, I'll run out of reading material in no time. I also read the series he wrote with Steve White, which was also excellent by the way. What other authors are there for the military scifi genre? I've read (that I can think of): Orson Scott Card, Ender's series Robert Heinlein, starship trooper Dan Simmon, Hyperion series (not pure military scifi but there is some) Around 30 star wars novels, best series definitively the Thrawn trilogy from Timothy Zahn What do you suggest I read next ?

Cool, let me know when you're all setup so we can play