DarthScharnhorst

Just tell me where to go

No love for the Carthaginian Elephants??

Ismael, thanks for the warm welcome. I hope my arguments do some good!

To tie into this topic, I think it would be great if the skill of the Admiral leading your fleet determined what formations you could put your ships into. That is of course if we will see admirals leading the fleet! Take it one notion further and give the Admirals different traits which could open up new formation possibilities. For example, Admiral X prefers to engage the enemy at a distance thus he likes to employ the heavy use of fighters and bombers while keeping his ships away from the Enemy. A fleet led by Admiral X therefore gets the ability to go into a screen formation where the carriers are at the center of the Fleet. On the other hand, Admiral X's opponent Admiral Y likes to get his Capital Ships in close to use their main lasers so his fleet has the Special formation of a Battle Line or a Delta Wing and his fighters screen his capital ships. Take it one step even further by having the AI employ different tactics based upon the Admiral leading the Fleet and its ship composition, this way it will be harder for battles to feel the same and grow stale. If the developers pull something like this off I won't be able to leave my PC for weeks!

Ghostly, I know how you feel with Rome Total War. I gave up on the vanilla version a long time ago. If you want to breathe new life into it there are a couple of great mods out there. Check out http://www.rometotalrealism.com/ for one of the best. As for Kotor, stick with it, the game gets a hell of a lot better once you get off Dantooine, especially if you go to the dark side ELeMeNTz, In some ways Hoi2 is better than Hoi and in some ways it is worse. I really like the improved diplomacy, land combat, and AI. However, I don't like the low resolution of the map, the lack of game sprites, and the air war. I think once the mod community kicks into high gear it will be worth buying. So what games do you guys play?

Hi everyone, I wanted to thank yall for recruiting me to the forum team Let me know when there is something I can do to pitch in! A little about me: I'm a full time collage student working on my masters while holding a part time at a local (New Orleans) Gamestop. As for as video games, I mostly play sports games, RPG's and strategy games, Rome Total War, Hearts of Iron, and Jade Empire occupy most of my gaming time right now. In regards to Star Wars, I own just about all the PC games, the original x-wing vs. tie fighter, Rebellion, Jedi Knight and Knights of the old republic being my favorites. I doubt that I am as up to speed on the lore as the rest of you but I think I have a good understanding of the universe. If there is anything else, just ask.

Wolf, I was talking about their Navy not their army but any analogy that brings out hit and run tactics versus battle fleet engagements works fine with me!

Ship names and or the ability to name ships are essential to creating a feeling of attachment to the game world. Without them, the player loses the ability to relate to what is going on in the space battles. When the player has the ability to name a ship, there can be a feeling a loss over the destruction of a ship that has served in five or six engagements. Ships without a name mean nothing besides what it cost to build them. In interviews, it has been stated that Empire at War will allow the player to write their own Star Wars History. This is not possible if ships do not have names. Imagine a depiction of the Battle of Midway with all the ship names stripped away. What is left is not very compelling or very interesting. Give ships random names, allow the player to name their own ships, and have someway of keeping track of what ship destroyed what instead of having a click fest where the thousandth capital ship produced means the same to the player as the first. It is more rewarding to destory a famous enemy ship that his managed to cause havoc for half the game then to go into battle against ships without any character of their own.

I like your analogy Jahled. However in WWI the German and the British Fleets were about equal. I equate the SW galaxy more on par with WWII, with the Rebel fleet being similar to the Germans and the Empire like the United Kingdom. While the Empire has a much larger fleet, it also has a lot more ground to protect and should have to spread out its ships in order to do so. The Rebels on the other hand have a smaller fleet but can do some real damage to the empire by attacking the gaps in the Empires protection. Now as the game moves on I wouldn't mind seeing some truly large battles. However, I think the overall balance should reflect the Rebel need to employ hit in run tactics. As the Empire loses ground both sides can consolidate their fleets leading up to the huge battles that will most likely be game breakers, think Midway WWII. One thing I hated about Rebellion was that when you did have a huge space battle with the AI, you usually steam rolled them, taking minimal losses. This allowed you to basically play mop up the rest of the game. I hope that Empire at War allows the AI of both sides to alternate between hit and run tactics and battlefleet engagements depending on the situation.

Joshinator, I agree with you there! I would be very happy if they slowed the pace of the battles down. I've read a lot on these forums about how people want to be able to name ships. I really want to see happen as well. However there might not be much of a point to it if you have over a 100 ISDs and they only last a few seconds in combat. What I am looking for are battles more in line with WWII fleet engagements when it comes to space conflicts, leave the command and conquer style battles for the ground where they belong. Sadly, I think their idea of strategy leans towards the simple Rock, Scissors, Paper format instead of the more stat oriented nature required for epic space battles. To me it looks like we will be getting a homeworld set in the SW universe with ground battles and a galaxy map. I'm not blaming the developers as I am sure that this format will appeal to the average RTS fan. While I think it will be a lot of fun, I hoped for something a bit deeper, maybe more in line with Rome Total war and Nexus than Age of Empires and Homeworld. Hopefully I'm wrong or it will at least it will be mod friendly!

Hi all, I have been following the forums for a while but this is my first post. I would really like to see infrastructure play a role in how many capital ships you can build. This would allow the player to build a massive fleet but not until he has the resources and infrastructure to support it. I think this could be easily achieved one of two ways. 1st way: Link the total number of capital ships a player can build to a ratio of his total number of ship yards/planets. This would represent the logistical side of maintaining huge armadas. I hate the idea of a static unit cap as I see it as an unrealistic glass ceiling; however, I really hope that this game focuses more on small to medium size ship engagements that focus on strategy instead of clicking 30 star destroyers and sending them towards a rebel fleet. What I mean is that I want to feel some serious pain when an ISD goes up in flames instead of not caring since I have another 30 in the production queue. 2nd Way: Make the Capital ships take a decent time to build. No matter what the rules of the SW universe are, it should take a fair amount of time to construct and train a crew to man the Capital ships. Let the player build as many as he/she wants but make them cost a lot in both time and resources. This harkens back to my first point of making each ship mean something to the player instead of having a mindless click fest. As for those wanting a mindless click fest, I have nothing against them and would not complain if the ground battles plaid out that way