Jameswgm

No, it's another thing that happens for apparently no reason. However when it does happen, it occurs multiple recurrent times: I think I had 5 in a row that were 3 player. James.

Seriously need to bump this, it is evidence of truely atrocious beta testing. James

See http://pff.swrebellion.com/index.php?topic=2857.0 James.

Several times when attempting a quick match, the system has connected me to 2 other players and it loads fine. When it gets into the game there is an instant syncronisation error message, and I have to exit. Im sure others have this problem. James.

I don't think I could do it if I meant to; it's not that I am holding directional keys when the interface switches which I could see as a potential cause. It occurs at random, I may have been on the galactic map for 5 minutes and it'll just happen. It must be keyboard related, it's only the arrow range of movement, it doesn't scroll in irregular directions. I have had it occur where it will scroll at a 45 degree angle and I have to hold 2 arrow buttons to compensate. James.

I think the Ion Cannon is very overpowered, I think unmodified it does 45000 damage to the shields, when the basic shields of an SD is around 2000. Shoot an SD and it basically taken out of the game. Though not destroyed, by the time you get to producing SD's it should be near the climax anyway. The time they are disabled is something an empire player doesn't have: It takes up valuable population points! James.

Yeh I think thats a fair point about the HV gun. The ion cannon is so much more effective. Needs either increased power or decrease in price/ quicker build time? James

I still hold with my arguement that it's not Petroglyph's problem. It's just laziness on the part of the user, I don't expect a game development company to promote the use of third party modifications, especially when it seems most attention has been devoted to the Single Player campaigns. Their aim is to sell the vanilla game to the general public. I suppose you'll want a dev team member to come and install the game for you next :-\ James

"Mod Friendly" can be interpreted in different ways; it could mean the code & files are easily modified which I believe from the emergence of a growing mod community to be the case. Also the fact they have already created mod's after only a couple of weeks. To me, admittedly from a non-modders point of view, EAW seems extremely mod friendly. It's not difficult to easily change between mod's, what's wrong with this? http://pff.swrebellion.com/index.php?topic=2232.0 James

Siddus; I interpretted Necro's question to be based more around the end user of mod's rather than the actual modders themselves. I think between us we've answered his question from both perspectives! James.

I doubt Petroglyph will provide the community with any help for altering vanilla EAW. It simply isn't their job to make patches devoted to modders. However, if the mod community is working like others, a "Mod-Switch" application will be created, I'm sure I've already seen an alpha version of such a program on these forums. It's up to "us" to sort out mod's not Petroglyph's. James.

Agreed Capt. Data, SP gameplay has its own thread. Keep this to MP. Glad to hear it Delphi, I look forward to seeing further developments! James.

That also depends on your definition of careful. Why both taking much care of ships that can be replaced by ten other in a couple of minutes. As Pierre said, why bother? No matter the care you take over battles it really doesn't affect the grand scheme whatsoever. James.

lol, simple as that! I'll try it. Thx James.

Occasionally, I believe the neutral position of scroll movement on the keyboard is altered and becomes stuck scrolling a certain direction. Sometime the problem can be fixed by holding down the opposite directions for a while and the neutral seems to "reset" to normal so I assume this is a keyboard problem. It never occurs on any other of my games, and I'm unsure why it is a keyboard direction problem. James

added you to icq, I can't play it today, but I'll contact you soon so you can send me the mod file assuming you'd still like some help. James

I played MP for the first time today, and to be honest I was quite impressed. An intelligent human player provides a much greater challenge than the clearly gash AI, which contributes extensively to the the game's flaws. The land battles were actually intense and involved strategy, a complete reversal of the SP land battles. What was clearly evident was the Empire's dominance of heroes. Vader and Palpatine absolutely trounce non-force using rebel heroes, and both can beat Obi-Wan in a duel (V. Cool BTW). But I felt that units like the MPTL and Plex Soldiers gave the Rebels an advantage over the Imperial basic units that restored the balance, creating a more asymetric balance which was a change from seemingly linear matching of every unit type seen in some RTS's. So far so good, but with a little more work on connectivity and gameplay it could be a great MP experience. I would much like to see a Fleet engagement battle: that does not feature stations, fought with user chosen ships. However this may require development of slightly larger maps so they do not degenerate into mere slugfest. James.

I think you capture the thoughts of a large part of the community. Especially over the hand-holding, a classic example of the "dumbing down" of games in recent times. Had me engrossed for a weekend...after that the silver lining sort of vanished. How come classics like C&C and Red Alert had me coming back to them for years, while this and others like it lose their enjoyment after just days? Seems that sales figures matter more than creating a truly great game. James.

Having "Attack Status" options such as Hold Ground or Engage at will would improve the gameplay. What about a "Target Ships" option. Too many times have I seen capital ships engage corvettes instead of concentrate on more appropriate targets. EG. Attack fighters, Attack corvettes, Attack Cap Ships.... James

Definitely agree about missle corvettes, their anti capital ship abilities should be nerfed. With the amount the AI churns out, I am being blasted right from the outset. They should be siege weapons, instead they can neutralise bases and capital ships with ease. The AI's spamming of MPTL-2As really defeats the intent of the game. Players are encouraged to build balanced forces to progress, but this directly contrasts with the AI's tactics. It also should not be a garrison unit. I think that corvettes are overpowered hit points wise. They should be fast, and maneuverable, and be a difficult target at long range, making them difficult to kill while weak in a head to head close battle. It really annoys me when corvettes waltz past my capital ships under heavy fire and still have shield intact. I realise the ion cannon needs to be powerful to balance with the hypervelocity gun, but at the rate it fires a decent human player could realise he could disable all my capital ships very quickly. I'd prefer a weakened hyper velocity gun combined with a shorter time of immobilization by the ion cannon. Or simply longer recharge times. James.

It would seem that the reason for many of the features not included, but desired have simply been glazed over and ignored. Diplomacy has been done to death, I've accepted it won't be part of EAW but surely something so simple such as unit experience could have been included. How many current RTS's feature some kind of experience monitors? Surely new games are meant to be innovative, this lack of basic features seems to signal a step back to the past. It's not even as if it would be impractical, I believe that due to the timescale of the game, experience seems even more essential than in other games, which are conducted in a scale infinitely smaller than EAW. Why can't my cruisers that have survived many engagements have an advantage over mass produced "green" units? Even for fighter units, experienced pilots would surely boost effectiveness and survivability? Does anyone share my disappointment or is the consensus one of satisfaction? James.

I've just been thinking about this, stupidly after I ordered the game! Many people are saying autorepair does not affect gameplay, I am certainly not a rookie RTS gamer, and I can't believe that it can only have a negative effect on gameplay. Maybe against the AI it will be fairly unnoticably... maybe, but how bad will it be in MP when it gets going? Say your opponent has skilfully trapped your fleet with an interdictor, outgunning your fleet significantly? It's Petroglyph's cliche "What would you do?" Is there actually any point in fighting, you may destroy some weaker ships, as a sensible player will realise that damaged ships will be restored to full health after the engagement and protect them. Please don't state the obvious: destroy the Interdictor. Who would give their opponent the chance to retreat as opposed to destroying their whole fleet. At least in Rebellion I could take away some small satisfaction that I had heavily damaged large capital ships and unless they retreated for lengthy repairs I would have the advantage in the next engagement. Surely this is no different to restoring full hit-points to units that win skirmishes in any other RTS like AOE3 or C&C? How much would that benefit those games? It is my opinion that games are being dumbed down, with very little depth (eg. the lack of diplomacy), and becoming more "console-orientated". Not intended as a flame against consoles, after all I own one, but when I buy a PC game I have come to expect details like formation settings and combat stance indicators. I don't want to have to keep having to micromanage units to prevent them from blindly following their own suicide missions (cough BFME 2!) Any first hand experience/reassurance would be great! James