Teradyn_pff

That scenario is one we all are afraid of. I don't think ships are healed immediately, though. I think it happens over time. But if they are near a lvl 5 station, I think it will be quicker than if not. We are not 100% sure on this aspect as of yet.

Hold on there... Petroglyph has alot of talented people for sure, but LEC is still in charge of the product and is a source of most of our recent woes I feel. Saying that this will be the best Star Wars RTS to date is not saying much. Star Wars and RTS are generally not put in the same sentence with positive reactions. Some of us have been following this game way before we even knew about the true timeline. We have been watching what we thought was going to be an outstanding, superb game. Now we have hardly anything that we have learned about the game to be positive. The planet count, pop cap, timeline ending at ANH, no diplomacy, possibly no moddability, the list goes on. Read through Delphi-PG's posts chronologically, oldest to newest. You will see what we are talking about when we express dissappointment.

Yet it is completely uncalled for. #1 is good Teradyn, and #2 might be good if you reworded it to make more sense. I agree about #2. If you have a suggestion for rewording it to get the best answer, by all means, please post it. #5 May be better replaced by something else, but I do want to know the answer to the question. I was under the impression that EAW was delayed for polish not rule creation, completion, etc. The things that we have been finding out have not exactly just been suprises because we didn't know, they have been suprises because we have been lead to believe otherwise. Look how long it took for them to admit that the timeline would only go up to ANH an hence no Executor or B-Wings. I think that the presence of Mon Cal cruisers should have warranted an explanation of the timeline because what else would we have assumed? Anyway, I don't intend for my questions to be the only ones. Please post some more so we can pick the best 5.

I have asked for some clarifications in the questions I posted on that thread. I think what will happen is you will have to move a good sized force in pieces around a potential target and send them in 20 by 20 until it is yours. I wonder if the defending space station will count as 1 (or more) units? I can see winning a space battle as very difficult if a level 5 space station is present and doesn't count toward the 20 limit....

Well, water craft are all well and fine, but we need to get the "rest" of the game finished (through EP VI) first. Then again, with the new news about moddability (or potential lack thereof), no one may be modding in anything (legally).

The comparison to the Star Trek universe is pointless as well. They used different technology and stories. While Star Trek may have most of its technology based in experimental and theoretical physics, Star Wars has a more pragmatic approach. A big mistake was when Lucas tried to get more towards the Star Trek methodology of explaining things with his mediclorians.

And we are the ones who can go out and buy a game like this on a whim when we want to. But along with that, we are the ones who want to be sure we are getting what we are paying for. My gf will call me to dinner, but she will bring it up to me if I am in the middle of something like a multiplayer game. I usually have enough warning anyway though, so that doesn't happen all the time. Sad thing is the target audience is pretty much what they were shooting for with the first 3 episodes. I was just hoping that a veteran group like Petroglyph wouldn't be forced into that, but LEC is involved heavily in this project so ...

I think technically the Hypervelocity gun could pose a serious threat to the Death Star, except I think the Death Star can destroy the planet at a distance that the Hypervelocity gun could not reach it. None of that matters though as the Hypervelocity gun is Imperial only.

Very unlikely that any capital ship will cost less than 1 point. Fighters may be free, if they are attached to a ship, but that is a big question mark as well. And no one thinks that 20 ships are all you can have in the Galactic mode, but 20 is all you can use in a space battle, which is pretty low IMO. The biggest problem with this is going to be people designing the "perfect full fleet", "perfect invasion fleet", "perfect defensive fleet". You will be able to look online for the best fleet configuration to use for a specific scenario, and since there is such a small cap, the builds will be pretty static. It will be something like Starcraft's build orders. Not a very open and progressive RTS IMO.

Yeah, funny how alot of these hyping (my word, back off ;P) statements that they have given us over time have turned out misleading or downright false. LEC can't even keep their story straight. Anyone see the recent video where the LEC rep said something like a player being able to play with all of the planets from the Star Wars universe? 43 is awfully small for a universe, and if you pay attention to the movies and such, the Earth, our very own planet should be playable according to this guy's statement. Bah... this is getting more dissappointing as we go along.

You missed the point. We were shown 2 tags and people were going crazy. So what, you use a type of XML every time you post here. Replace [ quote ] with < quote > and there you have it. I know, that is what I meant. The two lines that he posted didn't really tell us anything. What grouping might that be under, what mode is it referring to, etc.

Here are some I thought of: 1. Can you give us an example of the maximum size of a space fleet given that the pop cap is 20? Does this mean we could have 20 Star Destroyers with their spawnable fighters? Or do different units like Star Destroyers take up more than 1 slot each? 2. What happens if I have a fleet that is 15 size points attack an enemy and have a fleet of 10 size points set to show up after the battle. What happens? Does the game prevent you from telling the 10 size point fleet to go to that planet in the first place? 3. Can you tell us what options are available to the defender during a ground battle in the galactic 1v1 multiplayer for defenses? When the battle starts, is there anything the defender does like set up turrets, build anything, fire the Ion Cannon (if it is built)? 4. When the questions were answered last time, it was said that the demo and game will not be moddable at first. Does this mean adding planets, ships, sides, textures, in terms of models and skins only, or are the XML values going to be encapsulated or hidden in some way? 5. Have the things like the Timeline only going up to ANH, the 20 pop limit max in space and the value for the pop limit on ground, the moddability not being present out of the box been things that are recent or have they been known since E3? And how many of these things are prompted by LEC and how many by Petroglyph?

All of the XML in the world doesn't help if it isn't tied to/used by something.

Nope, there will be pop caps in all levels. Anyone remember when Delphi said that there would be a pop cap for the first time? Remember when he said that it would be so high we wouldn't notice? Um, I can still count to 20... I am pretty sure, yep... got there alright, and pretty damn fast as well. Anyone who has played Rebellion will probably remember going almost deaf when their entire fleet of 100+ ships dropped into the 3-d battle. So the ships are more detailed.. so what.. if we wanted a StarWars capital ship simulator, ala bridge commander, we wouldn't be worried about the RTS portion of this game. I am truely worried because the more we find out, the worse this game is getting. It will still probably be the best Star Wars RTS in existence, but that doesn't tell you much when you consider the competition, Force Commander anyone?

Well, hold on to your "extensive moddability" cap. That may not actually happen. Read the questions that Delphi got answered for us last week.

This reminds me of Battle for Middle Earth. Lotsa hype about relive the starwars battles and you think of the battle of Endor where there were way more than 20 star destroyers waiting for the rebels. Then you find out that actually the biggest space battle that there will be will have at most 40 ships, none of which will be able to be a SD or Mon Cal unless you want less than 40 ships in the battle. I hope the pop cap limits are accessible in XML and not locked away somewhere.

Sorry guys, but there will be no free-form diplomacy in this game during the skirmish galactic map or the 1 vs 1 multiplayer galactic map. The campaign mode will have some planet's loyalty given to you as a reward for completing missions or other objectives, but that is still not the diplomacy that you are looking for, move along... move along.

It also goes against everything that Petroglyph has said about the modability of the game. They have indicated that it would be extremely modable right from the start, but now we are finding that that modability has to be deliberately supported with separate software? Doesn't sound mod friendly to me.

I think that the retreat order is a button like the Death Star's superlaser. In other words, you can't select which units you want it to apply to so it goes for all of them.

As for the base building... I think that the way they are doing it is the best all round. The example that Delphi gave was a pretty good one if you think about all the things you have to do to control up to 40+ planets.

I sincerely hope we are missinterpreting this.

Hey Delphi, don't know if I have stated so lately but we appreciate your presence on these boards...it has helped alot. Anyway, could you clarify what was meant by the answer to question 2?

You don't need that level of detail for this game. Not unless you are making a cutscene. You should be able to the zerg justice with alot less detail.

I feel you Juggy ( um, not what it sounds like ), I was hoping that with the demo I would be able to get to work on the coding aspect of mods. It may be that they were talking about models and such when they answered this question, but I wonder if the XML and other datafiles are compressed, encoded or somesuch to prevent modifications otherwise. If this is the case, this would have to be something that LEC demanded that they do, because there would be no point in doing that while you are working on the game itself. The whole key to the moddability of the game that alot of people probably don't understand is that if you build a game with a powerful engine that is very easy to manipulate (moddability), then it becomes easier and more efficient to build the content and data for that game. In other words, a well made game should be very moddable for the most part. The answer to that question makes me think that LEC made them hide most of that stuff to prevent modding to begin with. This would have been something that would have delayed release of the demo and game probably and was completely deliberate. And if I am right (and I hope that I am dead wrong here), then LEC will probably not support the level (if any) of moddability that Petroglyph is wanting to give us. Delphi, if you are reading this, I think it important to contact someone as to what this means for the game itself. You guys have been touting its moddability for a while now and if LEC is going to step in and make all that untrue, I know alot of the people on this board at least are going to be very unmoved by the demo as the moddability is one of the things that was supposed to be a big feature. We have all played the real time strategy gambit... anyone who has played Lords of the Realm 2 already has somewhat of a feel as to the ebb and flow of the galactic to strategic modes of play that are supposed to be so revolutionary. The world domination mode of Rise of Nations also blends those two elements (although not as directly), so the fact that it is Star Wars will be a plus, but the true longevity of this game will be moddability. Maybe someone needs to sit down with the guys at LEC and explain how this works. In the end though, if they are just counting on milking this for its initial release and using the moddability (kept from us of course) to produce a rapid expansion that takes it up to episode VI, then Petroglyph really can't legally do anything about it. And being a fledgling game producing company, they can't really stand up to LEC.

I don't remember Delphi saying that. I understood it to be a limitation of the timeline they were working with but they had to throw in some post ANH ships for the Rebellion for balance. If it was somethign LEC did, then no description of my opinion on that would pass any profanity filter. The only somewhat acceptable (although money-grubbing and just downright nasty) explanation is that they were planning on having an EAW 2 or some such sequel from the very beginning.