Davynelord_pff

Well, to me, diplomacy is the alliance. Without diplomacy, there would have never been a rebellion. Mon Mothma, Dodonna and others had to persuade the Mon Calamari, the sullustans, the wookiees and every other race/planet to join them to help overthrow the empire and end their rule through tyranny. So Diplomacy was the single most important part of the alliance. Diplomacy lead to gaining allies, to getting spies and forming spy networks, to getting resources and even to getting imperial officers to defect to the alliance and give away information so that the rebels could run missions against the empire. So without diplomacy, there would be no star wars. As much some don't want to beleive, Star Wars was centered around diplomacy. I mean episode 1, 2, 3 centered around a council of jedi and a council of senators doing what they do best, Diplomacy. All the fighting came about due to the failing of such diplomacy. Remember, in situations where one army fights another, it typically starts because of failed diplomacy and rarely if ever does one army attack another army without the use of diplomacy. So I think the better option is to have an on/off option so that those who like diplomacy can have it if they wish and those who don't like it can have the game the way they like. I won't begin to speculate how diplomacy can be used or put into the game if it already isn't. I won't make assumptions based on the demo or mods people have done. We must wait for the final game and see what we get, diplomacy might be in it already. In my opinion, I hope so because there is no such thing as galactic domination without diplomacy. Even the empire didn't forcefully take control of every planet...they did use diplomacy to gain the trust of some worlds, thus allowing them to have control without needing garrisons to keep the people in check. Just because the movies didn't show the empire using diplomacy on planets doesn't mean it didn't exist. For one thing, how do you think palpatine was able to gain the trust of the separtist, use and double cross them as he did. I mean the very head of the empire is a former "Senator". It would be crazy to think all those years of diplomatic skills he's had to use in order to manipulate the republic so he can gain control, is not used by the empire. Palpatine is probably a master diplomat just as Mon Mothma and the other senators were, otherwise they would not have been a part of the galactic senate. So my standpoint is that diplomacy is vital to the star wars galaxy for any game that involves strategy/tactics of taking control of worlds. Leaving it out is like leaving storm troopers, star destoryers or even the death star out of the game...it just wouldn't be star wars. Remember, star wars is unique when it comes to games. Most if not all games are made and built as a game first and the story is made to fit the game. Star wars existed long before any RTS game and has a strict storyline it follows and now that it's a game, you can't expect it to be star warsy like we want when you leave out parts of the storyline, especially when that one part is proable the whole reason the story even exist. Sure the driving point of star wars was the following of the skywalker family and the uprising of the alliance over the empire (good verse evil, light verse dark), but the foundation of it all was diplomacy, otherwise, the story wouldn't have so many diplomatic scenes in it. IN fact, there are more diplomatic scenes in all of star wars than there are shots of combat, battles in space or ground. Despite popular belief, star wars was not all about fast action and face paced space battles. That was like 10% of the movies, yet everyone argues that star destroyers, at-st's and jedi swinging lightsabers are what star wars is. So as far as I'm concerned, if diplomacy is not in the game, then we have an incomplete game on our hands, but that's not saying it won't be fun, but instead disappointing because in my mind, you haven't accomplished galatic domination if all you did was forcefully take every planet or destroy them with the DS. Options! That's all people want...Options the reflect the options in the movies. I think this is what people expected of EAW, not a typical RTS game. People probably wanted a revolutionary game where RTS meets simulation/Action. All of which star wars is and always will be. Just remember, diplomacy is more powerful than any weapon, death star or army!

Ok, found a bit more....it was really close, didn't look hard enough, LOL Snow/blizzard = reduces vehicle sight range 30% - 70% Ash = reduces Infantry sight range by 30% - 70% Rain = reduces accuracy of lasers and vehicles by 30% - 70% Wind/sandstorms = reduces rocket accuracy and infantry accuracy by 30% - 70% I'm not sure what determines how much percentage is used on each map. Probably each planet has a certain percentage it uses.

The Text in the .Dat file says they both interfere with weapon accuracy and visibility. For visibilty, the sight range can be reduced between 30% and 70% for both snow and ash. I haven't found any other info on them yet, I'll keep looking but there are a couple thousand text files and the utility I'm using to read them doesn't have a search feature.

how were you able to get kyle katarn enabled when he doesn't have a model (ri_kylekatarn.alo) in the models file. I've searched for the models to all the hero's and kyle katarn, vader, palpatine and luke don't have any models for their ground based characters. I enabled kyle katarn and everytime I try to go to planet, there is no model visible for him and sometimes the game crashes.

Yup! that's exactly what the level 5 station looks like. Kinda cool looking. As for the population cap, I think you just have to own a lot of planets. I once played a game where i owned over 25 planets and I had a pop cap around 200 or so, probably was higher than that, but I got stuck on a invisible space station and just quit the game, that was before I knew about the glitch/error.

Curious, what file did you use to edit the shield and armor values? And yes 1500 shields are very high for fighters, capital ships only have 2000..so you got fighters with capital ship quality shields...LOL I bet it was cool to do though

ok, something weird just happened. I clicked the download link and it keeps sending me to microsoft.com. I eventually typed the link in the address bar and got to the download page. I don't know what that was about, could be because I'm using firefox or something.

Awesome job, I shall download and play them. One question though, are you able to do the same thing with the ground maps because I am sick of tattooines map. It's too darn small and the other map shouldn't even be in the game because it's so small. I really, really, really.....reeeeeaaaalllyyyy hope the final game don't have maps that small. Anyway, good work.

Well, I have seen and fought a level 5 space station and it was visible. I loaded up a new game with bryants mod 2.0 and immediately took a fleet of imperial ships to a planet (alderaan I think) and it had a huge space station which was clearly larger than the level 1 and it did look as if it had extra addon's to it. I should have took a screenshot, but wasn't thinking about it. Anyway, I lost pietts SD, 2 other SD's 2 interdictors, all my fighter and bomber squadrons that spawn from the destroyers, boba fett (slave 1) and a few other ships I can't recall. The only ships they had there was one hero ship (forgot who the commander was). However, the space station was spitting out infinite x-wings, y-wings, corvettes and nebulon-b frigates and was incredibily difficult to do damage to with since the planet was firing the ion cannon at my SD's and had them frozen too far away from the space station to be able to destory the hangar. Needless to say I got slaughtered.

Well, don't worry guys. I'm fairly confindent that the demo only gave us about 10% of the full game. I've seen up to tech level 10 stuff that I can recall while looking throught the .xml files, might of been higher. There are scripts for a few different era's so I don't see them not including interceptors. Heck, they have kyle katarn in the game and a few EU references. I don't doubt there will be more ships, troops, planets, buildings, hero's, possibly more than 2 factions and whatever else. I mean, it would really be stupid to only make the game up to the level it is in the demo. Demos are just teaser's, don't expect the final game to be anything like the demo besides the fundamental gameplay.

Not sure how long you think they are, but I looked them up in the .xml files and this is what I found... piett's energy weapon has a 120 sec recharge time and a 5 sec expiration time. millennium falcons' invincibility has a 20 sec recharge and a 10 sec expiration time. on top of that, ships have a energy rating and a energy recharge rating which I'm guessing is a pool of energy used to power shields, fire weapons and use special abilities. I think that's why you see ships fire continuous burst of lasers for a bit and then seem to stop for a few seconds, they may be recharging their energy pool. Anyway, the millennium falcon has the highest energy pool in the game (99,999) and a recharge of 300. The next closest in energy is the mon calamari cruiser and ISD which both have 8,000 energy and 800 recharge. So clearly, the game is not balanced. There are a lot of other balance issues I've come across in my areas of the game, I'm sure the Dev's are aware of this stuff and the final game will have them all fixed since they don't require any programming to fix, just change a few values here and there.

I know what you mean, I thought the same thing at first too, but then after looking again, it didn't make sense. Not all ships have listings in the GameConstants.xml, but there is a default listing for fighters. Then in the projectiles.xml there isn't a separate projectile for each fighter. So this would all mean that all the fighters do the exact same damage, including the bombers. That does'nt sound logical given the fact that A-Wings are superior to X-Wings in fighter-to-fighter confrontations and bombers can't do jack against another bomber or fighter. Of course this is a demo and all the code isn't in the game nor is the game fully balanced like the finished product will be. So I can only make a guess to what file or combination of files handles the damage. I just know it doesn't make sense to make the projectile the factor in determining damage when the projectiles are shared by all the ships. Because if the projectile did determine the damage, that would mean a bomber and a fighter would do the same damage to another bomber or fighter and we know that isn't true. The GameConstants.xml file doesn't seem to have any values for tie Fighters, Tie Scouts, bombers (other than missiles), X-wings, V-wings, Z95's...etc. The A-Wing is in there though. Even some of the cruisers are not listed. So either some of the ships in the game are all doing the same damage if it works they way you say or the game is using all three values from all 3 files in some kind of formula.

I just got finished writing down some of the stats for the ships in the game and I realized that if your gonna put 12 ships in a squadron, you are gonna end up with some overpowered squadrons for the game. For example, in the default squadron size of 5 x-wings, each x-wing has a damage value of 5. A full squadron will do a total of 25 damage per shot (assuming they all hit the same target). Now if you up the size of the squadron to 12, one squadron will then be able to do 60 damage per shot. Starbases do 75 damage Mon Cal's do 60 damage SD's do 70 damage So having a single fighter squadron doing 60 damage is about as powerful as a capital ship, however the only difference maker would be that cap ships have more guns and fire at a faster rate which mean they can do around 120 - 240 damage depending on how many guns it has. The fighters however are twice as fast and in the case of x-wings fighting a single SD, the SD can't fire from the rear, it has to turn to get shots off on targets behind it. The speed and agility of fighters will have them running circle around cap ships and frigates. corvettes classes are a different story as they are fighters nemesis. However, this doesn't include the damage modifier from special abilities either. Point being though, a squadron size of 12 is extremely powerful without modifying the damage values a bit. So I think if you up the squadron size, you should also lower the damage rating from 5 to about 3 or even 2. The best way to figure it out though is to play the game without any damage changes and see how everything goes. I personally think that x-wings are powerful enough. I mean I can win a whole battle with nothing but x-wings and a single Mon cal cruiser. Can't say the same for the empire side because their fighters don't have shields.

The bombers, so as long as you can protect them fit in perfect though I believe. the demo is good feedback for petroglyph to modify values before the final game is released so I'm not confident the bombers will stay as powerful. Right now I think some cap ships are really underpowered. The fighters and bombers seem ok, but VSD's, ISD's, Mon cal cruiser's etc, seem a little underpowered. The special ability to boost shields just doesn't help you in any way because your shields still go down fast. In battle against a full fleet that has a counter to every ship you can throw at them, it seems to come down to who has the larger number of ships, how fast you can take out the space stations hangar bay and any cap ships that has multiple squadron spawning from it, like the ISD (or is it the VSD). One other thing that I am disappointed with is that the tie bombers don't have any special ability like the y-wings ion cannon shot. Seems like they should have some kind of missile ability since they have powerful missiles as well. anyway, y-wings might be powerful, but 2 tartans can destroy multiple y-wings before they can make a second pass and in some cases before they make the first pass since y-wings are slow as dirt.

Sorry for not reading the link that you posted. I just read it and saw it said the same thing as I posted above. However, as I said, my game worked with 7 fighters without changing the max squadron size in the other file, but it may have something to do with having a squadron as large as 12 that might require that you need to change the max squadron size. I'd do it anyway just to make sure. I should also note that I did not use notepad or any text editor. I used peter's xml editor which I use for all xml files. I just like xml editors better because it's easier to read since all the tags get colored and such.

Well, I'm not sure how many fighters you can get into one squadron without getting an error, all I know is that I have increased my squadrons before by simply going into the Squadrons.xml file and adding new lines. For example, For x-wings, the default is five fighters and the section looks like this....(the red text is what I added for a seven fighter squadron) X-Wing, X-Wing X-Wing, X-Wing X-Wing, X-Wing X-Wing 30.0,0.0,0.0 0.0,15.0,0.0 0.0,-15.0,0.0 -30.0,30.0,0.0 -30.0,-30.0,0.0 -60.0,60.0,0.0 -60.0,-60.0,0.0 I wanted to stay with the same format the file already had since i wasn't sure if putting it all on one line would work or not. When I played the game, sure enough there were 7 fighters in one squadron. I didn't change anything else but those two sections. For the Squadron_Offsets, I simply added 30 or -30 where needed for positioning the fighters in the formation. Everything worked just fine. I've only tried this once though and did not try more than 7 fighters yet. I'm assuming you can do more. I'm not sure if you need to change the squadron size in the spaceunitsfighters.xml file as well. I didn't see any issues when I played with 7 fighters per squadron. Hope this helps! Oh by the way, I used the SWMOD.exe file with Bryant's Mod 2.0. I haven't tried it with the original executable file.

So far I found the easiest way to gain planets before the A.I. does is to send out infantry to raid planets before the A.I. can take them since you don't have to worry about the A.I. assaulting any planets you own in the early going. One garrison is all you need and you will have time to build up defenses on each planet you take. I did this in a game just a short while ago and I ended up owning 80% of the planets in the galaxy without ever having to fight the empire for a planet. At one point (on day 4) I owned over 20 planets and the empire owned 3. All I did was take any units i start the game with and send them to raid planets like byss and kessel so that once I take those planets (well I couldn't take kessel for some reason), I can position a fleet in those key places and that way the A.I. has to go through my fleet to get to the other neutral planets or even to get to my planets. However, It doesn't take long to build 1 unit. When you have 3 or 4 planets pumping out troops, it's easy to raid fast in the first 3 days. I used ackbar, red squadron, the millennium falcon with any other ships I had to block paths to planets. At least in this demo, the A.I. won't attempt to break blockades just to get to neutral planets. I just found out that you had to go through/past certain planets in order to get to uncharted planets. So if you allow the A.I. to take those key planets, you'll be stuck on one side of the galaxy and have to fight your way through. Now of course I haven't tried this on hard mode yet, it might not be possible on that mode...but it works on easy and medium for sure.

I had this exact same problem. The only difference was that when I assaulted naboo, I controlled the whole map, the buildings, the CP's, the construction pads, everything...but there would always be 2 imperial scout speeders on the map. I would kill them, win the map and get the money but naboo remained under imperial control. I even had a massive fleet in orbit as I destroyed the fleet there before I assaulted naboo. I'm guessing there is something wrong with the mod pertaining to naboo. Also has anyone noticed that the A.I. never assaults your planets at all but if you take one of theirs they will immediately and constantly try to take it back within a day or two. It's not a bad thing really, just didn't realize they would counterattack so soon.

I kind of agree with Darthscharnhorst2 just a bit. In space, where there is no visual or sensor disturbances within range (open space), only a tiny enemy attack fleet should be able to approach your fleet in the same sector and not be noticed. A map with no asteroids, nebula's and such, there is nothing stopping the enemy sensors from detecting you and there will be sensors and patrols in such regions of space where the enemy wants to protect a space station or planet. So I say fog of war on unknown/uncharted planets and those with jungle, trees, fog, thick rain/sandstorms/snow or dark atmospheres like mustafar are a must....but on planets and space where there is nothing but clear sky or space, it shouldn't be hard to see a massive fleet or troop regiment coming without the need for sensors. I mean it's like being out on the ocean on a perfectly clear day with no clouds or raging waters, you can see miles and miles away and no huge ship or massive fleet/troops could sneak up on you unless they were under water and radar didn't detect them. however, we are talking about space and star wars, so the only thing I can think of that would allow a massive fleet to surprise the enemy in clear open space is if the enemy fleet hyperspaces in right near the space station within immediate sight or attack range. One alternative to simply having no fog on a map is putting up a sensor which in open space would reveal the whole map and in space with asteroid fields and such would simply be restricted to a small portion of the map. Also, lets not forget the fact that espionage is one of the biggest professions or missions done by both sides. Typically from the rebel point of view, they would send in a spy or spies, get recon info and that would tell them exactly who, what and where they need to strike all without even having dropped their fleet or troops yet. Of course there should always be a counter to it all and that would be even more strategic than just simply having the fog of war rules. to have to take measures to prevent your enemy from taking your fog of war advantage away is in itself a great startegic element that adds to the fog of war rules instead of being so black and white, which is get to enemy territory and explore the map until you find the enemy. I'm sorry but in any kind of war, it doesn't always happen like that. If at all possible, any army wants intel on the enemy position before they send in their troops. This is actually one thing I have always disliked about many RTS games with fog of war, especially in star wars games. I mean you have no way of knowing if the troops or fleets you send in are enough to handle the enemy and that is a bad strategy for any army. Sure you can always send in scouts and then retreat, but the way the game works, it alerts the enemy 100% of the time. If you see them, they see you kinda thing and that makes fog of war simply a nuasance instead of a tactical or strategic element. It just delays the inevitable. Still I think it shouldn't be taken out of RTS games, just modified to add a deeper element than the typical black and white issues I stated above.

Allow me to poke my head in for a quick comment. I think playing the original demo doesn't reveal the true strength or weakness of either rebel or imperial troops as your only able to play short tutorials against a A.I. that is clearly not using all of it's abilities. Second, If you've played one of the mods, it's not a real representation of the final game, at least I don't think so. It's not official because the final game isn't released yet, things do change at the last second before release or even in patches later. Also, don't forget that planetary bonuses can make your troops better or worse. The combar Armor bonus gives rebels 50% damage reduction on top of the take cover ability. Then there's the bonuses that each map gets from each planet that has a mercenary building on it. I'm not sure which bonuses other planets would give from these buildings since tattooine's merc building is the only one we currently can get. In the end, I don't think rebel troops and imperial troops will be totally equal. At times the balance of power will constantly shift due to what parts of the galaxy and maps are under your control. This alone totally makes the idea of both troops being equal irrelevant for the most part except probably very early in the game. I just think there is a lot more to the balance of the game then simply black and white. The intangibles make more of a difference than anything.

Well so far I haven't played the demo a whole lot, still examining the game or should I say study the game, it's mechanics, the balance of troops and ships..etc. I tend to do that with nearly every game, just habit I guess. anyway, so far I typically start out by sending in x-wings with s-foils (for more speed), get in radar range, maybe attack a bit then run and the tie figthers will usually follow, or they will send out a tartan. I have my gunships or corvettes waiting because even though x-wings are great, gunships/corellian corvettes slice through fighters fast with Laser Cannons. The corellian corvette has 8 LC's and really lays the smack down on fighters. once I take care of the first wave of tie's, I send in the y-wings with corvette support and acclamators or Mon Cal Cruiser to cripple the shield generators and any powerful weapons cap ships may have. I use concentrate firepower on the big cap ships since they seem to pick on my frigates early in the fight. I try to draw the enemy fleet out of the range of the space station to keep it from firing on my fleet. I'm not totally sure of how much difference it makes, but at first glance the space station seems to do more damage in one burst of shots than the enemy cap ships do to my fleet in multiple shots. One thing I have found out so far though is that x-wings seem to be the superior ships in this game. Their speed and maneuverability seem to allow them to be effective against nearly everything. They seem to last long too. I seem to lose frigates faster than I do anything else. Y-wings are absolutely beast with thier ion cannons taking out shields in one or two passes. I can't wait to see what b-wings will be able to do.

Hi everyone, my first post...just heard about these forums from gamespot, man I been missing out on a lot Anyway, I downloaded Bryant's Mod 2.0 and I noticed that the planets Kuat, Kamino and Eriadu are no where to be found on the map, playable or unplayable. The game mentions Kuat as being one of 4 planets that allow building mon calamari cruisers and ISD's. I looked in the xml files and found entries for the other 2 planets also, but I'm not sure if it's the mod that left them out or if the demo just didn't include them. I'm just more curious than anything, I really don't expect them to be playable. I'm also curious that ryloth was playable in the tutorial, but not in this mod. By the way, this is a great mod. It makes the demo worth playing and is a nice little appetizer before the full game, lol. People like me really appreciate mod's like these. I wish I had time to do modding as I do enjoy stuff like this, but with a new born (3 weeks old) and a 4 year old, work and everything else, kinda hard to spend time modding....oh well, maybe someday!