I am re-posting this as originally seen on Stardock forums: Greetings to the community, I finally got caught up on this post and decided to drop my 2 cents in on the matter since it seems no one has addressed the idea I came up with. First let me just praise the efforts of the community in coming as far as they did before SoaSE was even released. The idea I have been nurturing concerns the "culture" system in SoaSE and how it can be effectively employed as a gameplay mechanic in a Star Wars mod. I feel that, if used well, this system could allow a much more realistic presentation of the Galactic Civil War era of the Star Wars timeline. As we know, during the Civil War era, the rebellion had a much smaller military force than the Empire, but were more mobile, allowing them to strike where the Empire was weak. Conversely, the Empire had little knowledge of the Rebel's bases, and were forced to spread their massive fleet out to defend their holding. In the current SoaSE setup, there is relatively little requirement to leave fleets behind for defensive purposes in worlds that are not front line planets. And with few exceptions, the most prudent military strategy is just build one or two large armadas and crush your opponent in a linear fashion. By carefully modifying the culture system, we could drastically upset this balance. Here is how I would do it: The Rebel Alliance should use culture as a powerful weapon against the Empire; in the current SoaSE, you can cause enemy planets to go neutral from Culture alone, you could previously flip them completely to your side. I would give the Rebels (and only the rebels) this ability. This represents the way in which rebel forces can infiltrate Imperial planets and influence them covertly. This however, is only half of the system. The other half is the Imperial culture system, which should spread at a much slower rate than Rebel culture, and be related directly to the level of fleet and defences in orbit around the planet. I do not know if the game is capable of calculating culture based on these modifiers, however the intention to make it so that to prevent Imperial worlds from succumbing to Rebel culture, they must maintain a garrison at all times to bolster their culture (aka fear in the population). This allows the creation of a more imbalanced, and therefore realistic, gameplay scenario wherein the Rebel Alliance starts with fewer worlds than the Empire, possesses smaller fleet caps, and weaker ships, but can still compete. Naturally, to fully integrate this idea, several other things need to fall into place; i.e. a system that intentionally gives the Empire larger more powerful fleets, a map that favours the Empire strategically, additional Rebel advantages in terms of mobility (perhaps giving them the Vasari slipgate technology that allows slipstream transport without using a lane, we can just call it a Navigational relay or a pirate jump point.) Of course, all of this is moot if the game is going to be designed for the post ROTJ galaxy. Questions? Comments? Please make sure to ask if you dislike the idea but aren't sure if you fully understand my meaning. In simple terms... 1. Rebel Alliance can use "holonet transmitters" to spread culutre and flip imperial planets to their side. Or at the very least, cause serious production and resource penalties to Imperial planets. 2. Imperials must keep sufficient space based defenses and fleets to ward off Rebel Culture and ensure Imperial control. 3. This forces Imperial players to spread out their forces and allows Rebel players to level the playing field despite fielding a technologically and numerically inferior fleet.
