Teradyn_pff

The key for us realism fanatics will be the moddability, so we can fix things.

I was refering to the battle of endor mission on the gamecube game Rebel Strike, not the movie.

Delphi, if what you say is true, then I think an explaination on this is in order. If I'm not misstaken, that is an ISD mkII (as seen in ESB and RotJ) and the guns that are selected are the turrets on the left side of the superstructure, and if so, then all of those guns are supposed to be Heavy Turbolaser batteries, not Ion Cannon batteries. Ways that makes me believe it is an ISD mkII are the turret batteries in question appear to have 8 barrels on each battery (4 barrels on each turret, think WWII battleships for visual reference, so 4 barrels per turret, 2 turrets per battery which again acts as a turret, and 4 batteries per side of the superstructure, totalling to 64 guns/barrels)), and the horizontal array between the domes rather than the upright on the ISD mkI seen in ANH, and no brim trench heavy gun batteries which the mkI has. And even if it is an ISD mkI, then only the rear most turret is a Heavy Ion Cannon. The mkI has 3 dual barreled Heavy Turbolaser turrets per side of the superstructure, and 1 dual barreled Heavy Ion Cannons at the rear, totalling to 12 HTL guns and 4 HIC guns. They are of a heavier caliber than on the ISD mkII though. I'll try finding pictures of the turrets. Jan Gaarni, I think the culprit here is LEC. Ever played Rogue Squadron III (Rebel Strike) on the GameCube? The ISDs there had 4 hardpoints on either side that seemed to be Ion Cannons. I believe that in the last battle (Endor) Ackbar specifically said take out the ion cannons on those star destroyers. Since LEC is supposed to oversee the games' canon adherence, they not only dropped the ball, they unload a 12guage shotgun blast into it every time they see a gust of wind move the remaining pieces.

With what they are doing with persistent units, I don't think you will be building them from Star Destroyers like the Protoss Carriers in Starcraft. But the squadron size will most likely be set to a certain size and the capacity of a ship will be listed in squadrons, not fighters. We may see groups like in the videos. But like I said, that could all change with play balance.

True, but if the reputation issue is like in Rebellion, then you have the destruction of a planet costing you more than the rebels anyway. The only thing that made the Death Star useful in Rebellion was its capacity for troops and fighters and its superlaser that could be used on ships. It also temporarily boosted the support in an entire sector while it was there.

Someone should be compiling a list of preliminary questions I believe.

Well, maybe the shields would disable their repulsors and they would just crash. Not sure about that part. If you had enough time to get a bomber to the ground, move it inside the shield and relaunch it, wouldn't you already be in a position to strike? Beside, bombers may not have the clearance necessary between them and the ground to drop ordinace and keep from hitting the ceiling at the same time. Gameplaywise, I don't see the bombers passing the shields at all. I see them glancing off or avoiding them altogether.

Exactly, but that is my point. If the shield generator was outside, why couldn't the empire bombard it with tie bombers even? I am inclined to agree with the earlier poster saying that the shields would cause problems with their repulsors..... buuuut that brings up the issue again. They wouldn't have to worry about it because it was outside the shield protection. I wish petroglyph would respond to these arguments and explain where in the "canon" they came up with this. "Canon" points to it being inside, not outside.

As would I, but we don't know if there is a unit limit in, do we?

That makes sense. It may also be due to the relatively low ceiling of the shield as well. I know that the walkers were adapted to the cold, but would the tie fighters have the same problems as the speeders? Tie fighters are capable of atmospheric flight and spaceflight, and the X-Wings didn't seem to have a mention of special fixes to get them working. I think that interference with flight would have to be the best explanation of why they didn't use them in light of all this. This brings up a good question though, what happens if a tie bomber flys into a shield? And what keeps the bomber from flying into a shield to bomb things within? These are a couple of questions that would force the issue of what you brought up. Because the way that they took out the shield generator in the demo begs the question of why the Empire didn't do that at Hoth.

They did have a video where an ISD jumped in and sent fighters and bombers to attack a Mon Cal. The bombers made a couple of passes and took out a hard point and the fighters were attacking too. Didn't really seem like the Mon Cal was taking out the fighters too effectively either. I think that the ISD eventually moved into range and that is when the real damage started though. I am more in favor of extremely large fighter battles with high casualties. As would be expected, but too many Star Wars flight sims have the fighters living too long in close proximity to big ships. Hard to hit due to maneuverability, yes. That is what makes the Tie Fighter a valid solution at all, but I don't think a Tie Fighter should survive a hit from anything in this game other than maybe a weaker blast from an older fighter. And that should only be once. As for the shielded fighters, I think that they should have a few deflections, but overall, they should expect casualties when engaging enemy fleets. Epic battles are usually high in casualties and that is what I am expecting. you don't through that kind of firepower in the mix and leave with nothing but damage. At least I hope that is how it will work in game.

I find this issue as ammusingly ironic, given the title of this thread.

Well, the shield effect itself wasn't really seen in the original trilogy. Although, I would like to point out that the Droideka, the gungan shields, etc had their shields protecting their sheild projectors. The point of the walkers was to walk inside the shield and destroy the generator from inside, much like in Episode I where the droids had to pass through the shields to attack the units within.

Well, the capital ship unit list is relatively small in my opinion, on a game of this scale. I wonder what percentage of the Empire avaliable ships we have seen so far.

Delphi, since you are out and about right now, could you tell us whether or not our arguments on the dynamics of the shield generator and/or projector are useless? We need to know if the outside the shield location is a permanent thing with no hope of modification, or if there is a possibility of change, since the game is in the polish/balance phase? In some ways, this debate, as well as the ISD dome being shield or sensor debate have occupied more space/time in this forum than the SSD issue. The difference being that the dome and ground sheild issues are something that most of us agree on in the forums at least.

That may have just been an example. Since they are in the polish/balance phase of the game right now, something like the size of a fighter group is probably still subject to change.

MIRC should have the option to log a session. It has been a while since I have been in one though. Anyone confirm this?

Does this mean that we don't have to build transport ships? Or are you meaning more like a Rebellion interface where you drag the units to the fleet and they get added if there is room for them on the currently built transports? Is it possible for the transports to be fired upon by enemy AA weapons? Meaning if the defending forces are moving on a reinforcement marker to retake it, would it be dangerous to drop troops there for fear of them being destroyed in transit? From the videos it seemed that the transport drop was a quick automatic thing that happened immediately without real interaction between the transport and the land map like being fired upon or firing back.

But the generator is outside the shields so any bombardment could work immediately. That report given to Vader in ESB before the battle of Hoth doesn't seem like a realistic one since they could have bombarded the shield generator with ease... since it is outside the shield of course.

My attempt to find out if the Death Star has individual weapon hardpoints for Turbolasers failed.

This will be a very good thing. Thank you. We were worried that we would be wasting the chat on things that were already answered in that list. Is there a set of guidelines that could be privided for the chat? Like what you guys can't answer, and stuff like that? This would streamline the chat tremendously having that information before hand.

I think the different resources in this game are taken care of by the planetary bonuses. In a strategy game, you dont want to give the players unlimited resources behind their lines, you want to make resources something you have to come out of your base to aquire. That is why games that have objective points to control like Dawn of War are so good is that they force ongoing battles for control, rather than big buildup and resource races. This makes the game more realistic, because wars are faught over territory, not for just the ground, but the resources available there. That is what EAW will be like, you will be fighting over upgrades and benefits that make the planets you fight over worth more than just their respective resource worth. This, I think, is going to be the best contribution to the gameplay of EAW.

There was a rumor that the ship hardpoints could be customized. For example I could have two versions of my ISD, one has all ION cannons and my other one has all Turbolasers. I may have another one that has 2/3 ION cannons and 1/3 Turbolasers or I may have one that has more shield hardpoints than weapon, etc. Where this started I don't know, but it has sparked some debate, as you can tell. If it is true, how many of the Death Star's hardpoints could you modify? Would it be possible to have nothing but anti-starfighter hardpoints all over it to make up for the exhaust weakness? Or if the last example I listed above where weapon hardpoints were changed out for shield hardpoints is possible, could you install more engines to make the Death Star faster?

The Legacy of War mod should be modular enough to include certain segments. At least that is what I hope it will be. I am not to sure that the Yug... something Von era is something I want to mess with too much, but I am sure I want the OT era stuff in and some of the relevant EU stuff during that time too.

You and about everyone else has that problem... The chat coming up is topic enough, we need to decide on the preliminary questions and things like that. Once we have the chat, there will be alot of talk on what something meant, debates on why an answer was so, etc. Plenty to talk about.