Teradyn_pff

The big issue is their accuracy, but this seems to only apply to the Imperial ships as the Rebel ships seem to have very good accuracy and damage.

The StarForce copy protection system has been reported to cause a lot of problems with various disk drives, basically making the game unplayable. There also is the issue of a program being installed on your computer without you being able to oversee the installation (I know about the micro-print in the EULA). I don't like StarForce because of the second issue, luckily I haven't had the first issue. That being said, I currently have it on my system due to Silent Hunter III. For a developer they have to decide whether or not the chance of losing sales due to incompatibilities and/or player refusal to accept the malware that is StarForce is worth the extra protection that it requires. There are ways to get around StarForce, and there have been some outright cracks for some games, but most methods are more complicated than for other protections out there I understand. No copy-protection method is fool proof, but game makers can't afford to not put one on there. As it stands now, the copy-protection method has not been stated for EAW unless I missed it, but there would be no reason that they would broadcast that. Don't think that there will not be one since the game will be very moddable. Anyway, I think that this thread has very dangerous potential for discussions that could meander into the "shady" realm so I will be locking it.

Yeah, but where is the fun in that?

Well, the thing you may want to do is see if there is an even you can catch for when a fleet hits a planet node. Try this: Insert a transparent planet (Deep Space) in the middle of each trade route. Use the biggest space map possible and have nothing in it. Make all building there impossible. Make it impossible to do missions, spying, bounty hunting, etc. If a fleet passes through this node on the way somewhere, check to see if there is currently an interdictor ship stationed there. If so, activate space tactical engagement. If not, continue on as if nothing was there. Assuming this can be done, I see no way for an imperial player to designate whether or not he wants the interdictor active or not, so if you put one there, you are going to default to on. Also, these points can be used as staging areas for either side to give a quicker shot to the planet in question. Something will have to be done to deal with incoming fleet notification if we want that notification activated while they are on their way to the node... but otherwise it may be better to leave it alone for now. Any suggestions?

The bombardment does have some possibilities, but we will have to see how much we can do with the LUA and XML in the final version.

The destruction of the first death star was a very lucky, very improbable event. The completed death star II would have been the ultimate power in the universe. Even so much as to preclude the need for a support fleet. It is regrettable that people seem to think that it was a common event. The EU books are rife with that misconception. Peachy-keen, oh noez, there is a big superweapon somewhere! blow it up with a chain reaction or (insert rediculousness here). Pah. There really is no way for the Rebels to counter a Death Star II completed. Any "counter" that the Rebels would be given would be infinately worse than the Bulwark Battlecruiser counter to the SSD in Rebellion.

Um, the AI seemed to take delight in the fact that the correllian corvettes can waltz right past a line of VSDs and ISDs and completely wipe out my fighters and bombers. Didn't wait around for that at all. The only time I saw the AI just sit there was in galactic mode fleetwise. They did do a few rebel sneak attacks though. I think that the AI will be a lot more robust in the final version.

Uuugh. This looked like a catch up session again. I can't believe some of the questions that were asked. Shouldn't someone that was on the boards enough to know about the event know some of the very basics of EAW?

Most of th Most of the people on this board, at least most of the older members, are more mature than the general cross section of gamers.

How would this work in a multiplayer campaign mode?

Should have taken the source code as they obviously haven't had to fix the problems.

There might be some modifications necessary, but when you think of something like the SSD done by LOW, making holes in the model structure to insert hardpoints will not equate rebuilding the entire thing, especially the complex city structure. The hardpoints themselves as models don't need to be different for each iteration, just for each type... and that itself may be just copying for things like the ion, turbolaser and laser cannons. The design of future models may want to take this into account and make a basic structure and have the rest of the ship built as extensions of the hardpoints though. Imagine irregular explosions and pieces breaking off instead of the uniform way they break off of an ISD for example.

EU? What is EU? European Union? Who the heck turned that down?

Well, this rivalry is not just media made, they just picked up on it. A lot of gamers take great exception to the dismantlement of Westwood by EA. They currently see BFME2 as an abomination and EAW as the true RTS of the former Westwood team. The truth of the matter is that BFME2 should be releasing close enough to EAW that some gamers will have to choose between the two and not get both, due to cost (about $100 or so to get both).

I do not agree with any modification other than one allowing imp vs imp and reb vs reb with no modifications to each. This may not be an issue, but I just wanted to reiterate that. We may want to have a secondary confirmation session on Feb 18th to recommit to the tournament as well as confirm that you have your game and it works. At this point the actual match times should be agreed upon by the participants and submitted to the organizer (Plokoon9619?). I also think we should increase the participants to a total of 16 to avoid the uneven problems that we currently face. There probably does need to be some ground rules made and posted as well. Things such as: at what point can a player surrender the game. What to do about disconnects. Save game requirements to handle disconnect situations (like requiring a save every 10, 20, 30 min, etc). Methods of match submittal and disagreement resolution. Unless we find out otherwise, the results of a match will not be able to be verified by anyone but the participants, but if we are able to access savegames, the matches should be saved right before a surrender or an assault on a final planet, etc. Then the two participants should send their save games to an appointed judge (we still need to determine who) and that judge should have another judge to load the save game and view the state of the game. This shouldn't be necessary in most cases except for disagreements about who won and the like, but the final match should have this done anyway. It would be horribly space consuming, but is there a way that the galactic mode could be recorded? It may not work with the in-game recorder, but possibly with fraps? The only problem is that fraps is $37 to be able to record more than 30 secs at a time, not to mention fps loss and hard drive space before compression. Any suggestions on this would be greatly appreciated, especially if Delphi could chime in on how this could be handled.

The key to these battles is to issue move commands to your transport keeping it just a bit behind the other. The attack command causes your ship to stop and fire at range making it necessary to speed up and get back within range. It will fire on the other ship though if it is just moving near it. Speed up the game and right click in front of the enemy ship periodically and keep your unit behind it, kind of like directing a dogfight on a 2d plane.

I know that there have been several requests for the source code to Rebellion and they have all been denied.

Unless you are working with a 2d only interface, like a PC monitor... Personally, I think that I would rather see more dimensions in the gameplay and data summary than 3d combat in space. But we have neither.

I stand corrected. However, moderate success can be claimed by getting any fleet ship to show up on ground, even if it clips all over the place. The problem that may be the showstopper is that that type of closeup may require a special LOD model that may not be there at all for any other ships than the transports.

If Delphi or anyone else reads this from Petroglyph, please let LA know that the fans will be making our own editors, importers, exporter, etc, therefore it would be better for the integrity of the game and the mods if LA allows Petroglyph to release the tools that they want. I think that if anything, this argument's possible success due to the work you have done, Dante, is a better contribution than the actual converter(s) you build. Thank you very much.

Even if this old XML code is in there, there is no menu interface for calling down the bombardment. Now someone might want to try to replace the bombing run button with a bombardment function, but that is all I can think of at the moment.

Actually the Acclimator would make the most sense... I don't know about a venator ever entering the atmosphere.

I agree that the issues may be with the Imperial units being nerfed to give us a chance in the demo as a possibility. However, given the completeness with which this aiming deficiancy is spread out over the entire Imperial fleet, I kind of doubt it for the same reason you just gave for it being a deliberate nerf for the demo. They did not have every Imperial ship enabled in the demo on any portion, thus they wouldn't have needed to nerf them all. Thus, I still feel that the most likely reason is that this is their version of "balance". I am sorry, but either the weapons on the Imperial ships need to be astronomically bumped up, or the aiming needs to be fixed. Where did they get the idea that Imperial ships can not aim at all?

Naja, try the same thing with correllian corvettes... you will take out 10x the number of tie fighters before they get past you. Notice how often the cc doesn't miss and how often the tartan does. this is the core problem. I am sorry, I don't give a rats hairless behind, the imperials would be better shots....... period. Definately not this bad.

I believe that we will be able to do this in the final version, but I don't know for certain.