Davynelord_pff

yup! it's possible. Editing a few .xml files will allow you to change when hereo's are available in any mode. I've done it with obi-wan to allow him and darth vader to start at the begging of all galactic maps. I can't recall the exact files I edited though, have to take a look at it a bit later tonight.

OH, I smell a converter coming very very soon

I completely agree with you Cain. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Autoresolve quickly became an enemy of mine, LOL. I once attacked a planet and lost but decimated the forces on that planet, I was just a couple of troopers short of winning. Well, I had a huge force on another nearby planet and because I was mad that I lost such a close battle, I immediately sent the full force to that planet right after I came from the results screen. I knew I outnumbered the units on that planet at least 10/1. Well, I figured I'd use autoresolve.....big mistake, I lost the battle and It puzzled me as My forces were clearly superior to what was left on the planet. I tried autoresolve in a few more test on othet modes and the same results happened. The invading force typically loses every battle no matter what units you have sent in. Another bug or glitch I've noticed is when you actually play a battle and lets say you win and destory all of the enemies forces. Lets also say to keep things simple that the enemy had 10 AT-ST's, 10 Stromtrooper units and A couple commanders. Well, since you've won the whole battle (they did not retreat, they got completely destroyed), why is it when the results screen shows, it might say the enemy lost only 2 AT-ST's and 5 Stromtroopers. It also happened that I didn't lose a complete squad in a ground battle (maybe had 1 or 2 units left alive in the current squad). Well, when I get to the results screen it says I've lost a squad when clearly I didn't lose any full squads. I was under the assumption that as long as at least 1 unit from a squad survives, you retain the whole squad (or it gets replenished/healed up afterwards). For example, I took a single squad of x-wings in a battle once for testing purposes. I lost 3 of the x-wings in that squadron and decided to retreat. Results screen showed that I lost the battle, no biggie, I did retreat....but low and behold, it said I lost a full squadron of x-wings when clearly I didn't. Also, I've had battles where no side lost any units at all, but how can that be when one side lost and did not retreat. Not sure how much effect that final screen has on the game but I just found it weird that the screen reports the wrong results. So from my experiences, the game still has a few bugs in both the autoresolve and how the game reads unit loses.

Hmm, Just sounds to me that there needs to be a patch fixing the A.I. because clearly the A.I. is bugged. The A.I. should tech up and the rebels should never be able to progress too much further in tech level than the empire since they gain all of their tech from the empire. By the way, limiting the rebels tech ability to stealing it "all" from the empire is a bit redundant because it's not like the rebels didn't have any scientist on their payroll right!. I mean how in the world where they able to modifiy imperial equipment if they weren't smart enough to progress technologically without stealing it from the empire. I mean, the rebels did have much better ships than the empire as far as effectiveness goes.....so if the empire had to build Tie Advanced to compete with the A-wings, where did the rebels get the tech to even make the A-wings superior to normal ties? I think the rebels should have the ability to tech up with their own research facility but at a slower pace. Then they can additionally be able to steal imperial only equipment. The empire should have a much greater tech pace and therefore have much better ships than the rebs only until the rebs find a way to get their hands on that tech, which by the way should be one of the hardest missions to complete in the game. But yeah, Game needs an A.I. patch, a Good one too.

That's funny because I found playing the empire easier than the alliance.....well, credits was my main issue with the rebels, but still I can take a whole planet with vader, a At-St and a squad of ST's. If the natives are on my side, I can send in vader by himself and win since you can just use the natives as meatshields or decoys and vader is badass mofo who seems to brush off damage, Plus he heals over time. When it comes to taking control of a planet I think that it's too easy for both sides really, but I think it's more about taking control and keeping control because if you notice, whenever you take an empire planet, they immediately retaliate and try to retake the planet from you and may try multiple times before giving up or until you set up considerable defenses. However, a few things that I think really contribute to the A.I. being so easy in "ALL" RTS games is the fact that the A.I. in RTS games don't seem to adapt to the situations or to things that you've done before. For example, in sports games, you can't just keep running the same play against the A.I. and expect to be successful each time. It will work the first time, the second will work also but will be slightly harder, but the third time you will be completely shutdown. The fourth time, you won't even be able to start the play. The fifth time, you won't even be able to get your players into position to even attempt the play. This is all because the A.I. keeps track of what you have done in the past and adjust to it. Well, in RTS games, they never really adjust or even use anything that may resemble a anticipation factor. Instead, they just seem to have one goal in mind and follows a certain path to reach that goal no matter what the player is doing to the A.I. at the time. There will be a few random things thrown in to make it seem as if the A.I. is actually thinking, but it's still too predictable and therefore isn't really surprising or difficult. One example is when you take control of a planet in enemy territory. Instead of the enemy strengthening their surrounding planets or being prepared for an attack from you (logical thing that may happen since you've fortified a planet in their territory), they instead send a small fleet to try and take the planet back. Now you fend them off and when you start to attack their nearby planets, they have them so lightly defended that you can nearly land on the planet, plop down a lawn chair with a beer in the armchair holder with a reb/imp flag in the ground next to you and claim the planet as yours I don't know about anyone else, but If I'm gonna send in a fleet to retake a planet, I'm sending them in a large force unless I know the exact number of units I'm gonna face. Otherwise, I will reinforce any nearby planets in anticipation of attack all the while I'll be keeping tabs on that enemy planet. I would want to know every unit that moves on that planet.....however, the A.I. does none of this at all it seems. They just keep sending small fleet after small fleet and you just keep destorying them over and over again until you either run out of credits, pop cap or have built up defenses. So to me, no RTS game to this day has presented an A.I. that is really any more difficult on hard than it is on easy. The major difference that I see on the hard modes in RTS games is that the A.I. produces units faster and has more units than you and things like that. When it comes to actual strategy or battle, the A.I. is no different on hard than it is on easy. One thing I've found that probably makes the biggest difference between difficulty settings on RTS games is the same ole "boost the HP of the A.I. units" or reduce the effectiveness of human controlled units (or all units) verse each other. Somehow, that is thought to make the game more difficult but instead it just makes it last longer than usual. The difficulty in any game is forcing the human player to think about how to do things, how to attack the enemy, how to defend against an enemy and how to learn what the enemy is trying to do, wants to do or will do. Also, the A.I. must change what it's doing frequently. A.l of that should force the player to have to evaluate what they want to do or should do each time, not just at the beginning of the game and then forget about it and just go full speed ahead with that one plan. If a game is truely difficult, it should at any given point and time, make you completely change what your doing or how you are thinking. So anyway, if you've played any other types of games where the difficulty between levels makes you have to become better at what your doing in those games, then any RTS game will be easy for you because they never adjust any harder than how they were scripted to work. I think this is due to the storylines in RTS games. Other game's stories (if they have them) are simply there in support of the gameplay to make it interesting but has nothing to do with the actual difficulty in playing the game. A RTS game's story usually directly affects the actual game play and difficulty of the game because you typically aren't allowed to access certain units until the story progresses. However, it's supposed to allow you to unlock or use units that are inferior to the A.I. units, but in EAW, all the units are completely equal and thus during no time during the game is anything very difficult. So with the attempt to capture the visuals and fast action of star wars and the fact that petroglyph wanted to take out the stuff that's meant for a RTS strategy game, they've also effectively taken out some of the difficulty. For a Real Time Strategy game, the main difficulty is supposed to be in the "STRATEGY" as there is no way besides boosting the A.I. units stats higher than the Human controlled units or outnumber your units to actually create difficulty in EAW since it's more reliant on fast action, head on battle and brute force. Since both sides are practically equal in everything, the game is not difficult at all. AT least in other RTS games, you were able to maybe beat your opponent to the next tech level and get some much better units a while before them and that could push things in your favor. You could also, take the reverse approach and sabotage things that made them lose the ability to take advantage of their current tech level (like destroying their research facility, make them lose a building facility that's producing their higher tech level units, attack their resources to limit there ability to build anything, cut-off routes from one of their bases to another, etc.) So not only did you have to worry about the normal stuff, you had to worry about what your enemy was doing against you, how fast they were progressing and where their important building facilities were as well as preparing to attack and be attacked at any given time. IN EAW, you don't need to know anything about the enemy at all, just build up as large of a fleet as you can afford, invade, win the battle. Then move on to the next planet doing the exact same thing and the A.I. never adjust to it. So my opinion is that anyone who plays EAW for it's difficulty simply picked the wrong game. Play this game for it's action, it's nice cinematic view etc. but not for it's difficulty. This game is too simplified to present any true RTS game player with any difficulty at all.

Well, I thought ri_Luke.alo was the land model. I recall seeing that model and few others like his death clone, landing, moving etc. Not sure if his textures are in the game, I haven't looked at those. Dodonna also has a model (ri_dodonna.alo). Correct me if I'm wrong though, Isn't the models that start with ri (rebel)/ei (imperial) the land models and the files that start with rv (rebel)/ev (imperial) the space models? It seems that all the other heroes models follow that pattern.

I think you need to edit the campaign.xml and add both of them to that file. The herounits file just maps out the models, textures, sound effects and other such things that they use. There is nothing in the herounits file that allows you to change a value to include them in galactic conquest or campaign. I've actually put mara jade and Kyle Katarn in the demo, so I'm sure it can be done in the full version. I don't recall the exact way I put them off the top of my head, I'm almost certain I just added something like Unit_Kyle_Katarn or team_Kyle_Katarn in the starting units section of one of the campaign entries in either the campaign.xml or singleplayer one. I haven't messed around with modding this game lately, too busy playing MMORPG's, lol. I'll have a look at what I did later.

I know it's efficient to code this way, but wouldn't be easier to include at least a temporary browse for folder feature? Or actually, both methods can be done. Use the registry to locate the game directory first, if not found, then ask the user to select the directory where the game is installed. I do this with my apps mainly because peoples registry could be corrupt and it's not garaunteed to find a person's game directory.

Hmm! maybe this new version will allow my game to work. I tried extracting the meg files for the full game using the demo version of the meg extractor but the game would not run at all, it just hanged. As soon as I deleted the extracted files and xml directory, the game would run fine. I'm not sure what happened, but my full version (the demo works fine) will not run if I extract the meg files to folders. Again, I will try this new extractor version and see what happens.

Oh Yeah, I forgot about that! ;D And as for all those antilles, come on Lucas or whomever, why no relation? did they run out of last names to give them, LOL.

Well, I started a post and it got way too long, LOL. So here's a slightly shorter version...I do get carried away sometimes, LOL. For me, EAW is a very good game. It however, is not a revolutionary game that I think should win awards although it probably will since there most likely won't be another rts this year for EAW to be compared to. The thing is though, all or most of the better RTS games of previous years have certain features that fans have come to expect will be in future games. Unit experience is one of them. When you leave such features as unit experience out of the newer games, it's kinda like making a basketball game with no free throw feature, a football game with no play clock, a racing game with no hand brake, a FPS game with no jumping ability. Sure you can have fun playing those games without such features if your the type who enjoy arcade style game play, but you definitely will miss them because they have become features gamers expect to be there and have grown accustom to. The first thing you'll say if they aren't is that such and such game had that feature and a brand new 2006 game with today's better technology doesn't have it. Come on, what's up with that, especially with all of todays copy and paste features a lot of other developers seem to use for games. The debate that units die too fast is clearly a reason why the feature should be in the game. Units that have survived multiple encounters (like Vader's 501st whom were considered the best troopers in the imperial army, second to only the emperor's hand), should gain an edge over a freshly new produced unit. Without such a feature it's like saying that (in real life terms), a army platoon fresh out of boot camp with no war experience is just as good as a veteran platoon who fought in 3 wars before them. we all know that isn't the truth or else there wouldn't be any need to give ranks to different platoons or personnel. Also, I know people love the cinematic feature and the devs are proud of that as well, however, when you look at it, all your simply doing is watching the computer play itself since you can't command your units in that view. For me, I like to issue a lot of quick commands during combat and I don't have time to sit back and watch the cinematic view if I'm playing a serious game. So the cinematic feature is a nice bonus, but should never have taken priority over the most basic and expected features for the game. I can understand diplomacy not being in the game as it's not a staple feature of a RTS, but unit experience has been for many years and I can't recall a RTS game that doesn't have it in some form or another (hey, I haven't played them all). So in my opinion, experience or rankings for units should have been in the game. For those who's units die really quick, then I would think that an experience feature would help you to spend a little time using more strategy and tactics. Only reason I say this is because I can play and have quite a few units survive multiple battles without losing a single unit from their squad and all I have to say is that it's because of the strategy and tactics I use. Should an experience feature be in the game, then those units would probably be elite or highly ranked units in my games and every bit, no matter how little counts in a strategy game. Sometimes 5 points of health or a .5 second recharge is the difference in winning or losing a battle or war just like 1 second on the game clock in basketball or 1 yard short of the goal line in football (Pittsburgh vs Rams, Superbowl anyone?).

reveno's meg extracter does work with the full version. It's the only one I use for both the demo and the full game. However, I can't recall exactly how the meg extractor looks for the game directory since I installed it a while ago. Hopefully it just ask you to select the directory where the meg files are installed. IN which case, you can just make a fake directory like so.... C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Star Wars Empire at War Demo\GameData\Data The app should open and from that point on you can use the file menu to select the meg files in the original game directory not the demo directory. IF the app searches for the directory on it's own, then I'm afraid the app is reading the path of the demo straight from the registry and that would require you to edit the registry which I don't recommend if your not familiar with registry editing. You could really screw up your computer if you mess around in there and don't know what your doing. So basically, depending on how revano's extractor gets the directory information of the demo will determine if you can use it or not. Since i have both the demo and full version, should the meg extractor search for my directory, it will always find it. This is one of the reason's why when I create an app, I don't use the read registry method and instead ask the user to locate the directory themselves. Then I have an .INI file created so that the app will remember where that directory is and won't ask you again every time you open it up. The other thing I might do is not even have the app look for or require the user to input a directory and just simply allow the app to open up and then you can choose the files you want to edit through the file menu. But it all depends on what kind of data i'm working with and whether I feel the user needs to have a choice in selecting certain files. For example, if I'm working with a database file that my app just reads data from to supply it to the app, then I don't give the user any interaction with the database at all and have the app do it automatically. THis all might seem like a lot of trouble to some, but of course theres always alternative apps that are out there or will be out there. Also, you could just download the demo as well...hehe.

see thats what im talking about. Someone obviously don't care about the bulwark not being a real star wars ship. Thanks for that link. Now I got some reading to do

It's possible the devs will release new campaigns which will allow you to unlock them for that campaign. The current campaigns are in an era where kyle katarn and mara jade didn't even play a role. Kyle wasn't even force sensitive yet I don't think and mara wasn't an emperor's hand as during this time period the game starts in, I don't think there was an emperor's hand yet. I could be wrong though, who knows what the devs are thinking when they make these decisions. Heck I didn't think kyle and mara should have been in the game and leia isn't, but luke sure is. However, I haven't played a full campaign yet, so I wouldn't know if she is in or not, I do know I didn't see a file or model for her or a ship for her......correct me if i'm wrong, but wasn't capt. antilles supposed to be the commander of leia's ship at one time?

I tried that one myself and I'm almost certain it didn't work. I recall having 2 mon cals, 4 corvettes, a fleet commander, 4 y-wings, 2 assault frigates, 2 neb-b's, 10 x-wings, 1 marauder in that exact order in the first fleet screen and when I went into the battle, all the x-wings made it in but mon cals and 2 corvettes didn't make it into the battle and were in the reinforcements list. So I'm not sure exactly how the units are picked, but yes there was a post in an interview on the Lucas forums where someone asked if we could organize the units we want to enter the battle and they said yes we could, but I guess they failed to put that feature in. Also, once the battle alert sounds, you can't move units around either to my knowledge.

By the way, I wasn't asking for any modders to include such a ship in there mods. I was actually thinking from a individual model standpoint. Like some guy who likes making models for others to use. I mean I've experience such things in other games where someone simply made models for the game and that's it. They allowed other modders to skin them and use the models in any mods. So that's what I was thinking of. Sorry if It sounded like I wanted someone to include the bulwark in their mods.

Well, that's nice and all what you guys are saying but really is irrelevant to my questions. Simply put, I would like to have a bulwark in the game for my own personal enjoyment. Everthing else about it doesn't matter, it's personal preference and should there be a modeler out there spending time making existing SW ships or non SW ships, then I would like for them to think about a bulwark and every other ship that ever existed in previous star wars games.

Hi all, sorry if this has been answered or asked before, only got a couple minutes to post and no time to search forums. I haven't had time to check the modders websites either. Last one I checked, there was a SSD model being worked on I believe. Anyway, question is....are there any modders working on new ship models or units for the game? I ask because I would love to one day have the bulwark battlecruiser (from SW rebellion/supremacy) in the game if at all possible and also there are a few units and heroes I would like to see added. Leia, Lando, maul are a couple I'd like to see. I seen a luke and dodonna entry in the xml files, but I couldn't find a model for either one in the .meg files. Second question.....if making these models are out of the question, would existing models be able to have their skins changed to represent other characters? Like mara jade skinned to look like leia, how much of a possibility is that?

What I do is hit ctrl-A to select all units, then click once on the group of units that I want, then assign them a number. If I ever need to have a single unit (like bombers in some cases) shoot at two or more different targets, I just do a double click on that unit. Also, selecting any unit then pressing ctrl + Y will select all units of that type. Lastly, the pause button is your friend. Use it to assign units and orders and also to examine the battlefield. I know I should take my own advice on this one because I too often forget to use the pause feature, just slips my mind because I'm into the action, lol.

I had the same problem when I attacked a enemy space station once. I had a lot of x-wings (left over from a previous battle that I won) and I added some capital ships to the fleet because I sent the droids to spy and see what I might be up against. So I sent my fleet in and totally forgot that the A.I. seems to randomly choose what goes into the initial invasion fleet. Anyway, I ended up having all my x-wings getting put in and 3 capital ships stuck in reinforcements. With the population cap reached, I basically had to wait until the enemy SB and Tartans decimated nearly all my x-wings before I could get my cap ships into the battle. So Yeah, I really hate that you can't prioritize which specific units you want to go into battle first (unless of course I'm missing something). Then when in the battle, I hate how my I have to take the time to assign each of my units a number and before I can finish assigning each one, the enemy is already attacking and my fleet starts spreading out all over the place. I really hate when the x-wings see a tartan and charge head first without me even telling them too and get their butts handed to them. I usually manage to get them under control, but it's still annoying. However, as far as formations go, I'm not totally sure if this game needs it with how fast the engagments happen. You don't have much time to do anything when your the attacking fleet and ships go down so fast, I don't think they will have time to benefit from formations in any way. The main reason though is probably because no matter where a ship is located on the map, the A.I. will attack the closest target and once one of them is damage, every ship in range will most likely focus on that ship/group of ships until they are destroy. Again, that usually happens pretty fast with everything other than capital ships. Also, I should add that I've never been a fan of formations in any game. Even when other games had formation options, I didn't use them. they might give a tactical advantage in certain situations, but I've always been the type to force my enemy into the situation that I want and therefore never really needed 90% of formations. Having the ability to force my ships to hold/guard a certain area is always a plus in my book and I'm glad the game did include that no matter how limited it is.

I have to agree with Captain Data, although I haven't played enough of the game yet to give my input on any other issues just yet. I'm actually taking it extremely slow right now, not rushing to do anything. So I haven't finished a full game/campaign yet. However, I did notice even in the early going that tartans/corvettes seem to be pretty much overpowered as far as defensively. Marauders and broadsides shouldn't be fighter killers in my book either. In fact, they should be vulnerable to fighters especially bombers since they don't have (or shouldn't have) any anti-starfighter weapons or great engines like corvettes/tartans.

Yes, must wait until the game comes out, only a few days left now. So we will see, I will put a bet that diplomacy will be in the game though. All the diplomacy haters out there can be disappointed then. Even if it's not in the game, I will buy it, I will play it and I will enjoy the game, but I will always want it no matter what. It's just like if you were to not include darth vader or palpatine or wookiees or Bh's..etc, many people would miss it. I feel the same way about diplomacy for a game like this. Now for a battelfront II type of game, I don't crave diplomacy because that is a FPS built for fast paced action with minimal thinking require, just read and recognition. For a game like EAW though, this is supposed to be full of action, but with a bit of thinking and decision making before you react....to me, that clearly is a place for diplomacy. Also, I too saw those political codes in the files. They seem clear as day to me. What else can political control mean?

It's not too late for it to matter in this game due to the fact expansions are likely to come out and that leaves it open for adjustment, again that's assuming diplomacy isn't already in the game in some form.

I guess this would be cool if I didn't have to uninstall Visual Studio 2005, which from the looks of your link Visual studio 2005 can do the same thing. THe thing I want to know is VS Express a full replacement for VS 2005 because I don't just make web apps. So for me at least, it's not worth me uninstalling VS 2005 and VS6. Anyway, I wrote my own EAW editor which makes use of a graphical user interface to edit the xml files. Never again will I use text based editors for EAW. I simply like starting up my app, click a few buttons and have everything I want to edit right there, no need to load/reload multiple xml files manually.