Are there any tips anyone can give me on how to do well against medium and hard opponents?

It really all depends on how you play games. I would suggest that you never have a time when you are doing nothing. Have you characters laways negotiating or on missions and always keep expanding. And try to often have very slow as time.

If you are playing Imperial:-

 

1) Eliminate any rebel held planets in the Sessweena Sector as quickly as possible, by a combination of military strength and diplomacy. Have your diplomats converting ALL Neutral planets to your cause

 

2) Start exploring the outer rim for planets with high energy slots for building large shipyards, advanced training facilities and advanced construction yards. Imperial probes are good at this.

 

3) Constantly do espionage on your own and enemy planets. This is VITAL

 

4) Build lots of Imperial commadoes and troops on key planets, or planets you are going to use as a jumping off point for an offensive.

 

5) Do your research at max especially facility research early on ( you NEED those Advanced Construction yards ).

 

6) Keep Coruscant well defended and have the Emperor constantly recruiting. ( On Coruscant obviously )

 

7) Keep the Rebellion off balance by using Victory Destroyers as Commerce raiders, to bombard enemy installations and resources in their rear areas. This can be further refined by using a few light cruisers loaded with 3/4 Imperial Commando's and a leader with a high espionage rating to arrive at an undefended planet and destroy very quickly all important installations.

 

Once you have thrashed the AI a few times on Hard, start looking for a human opponent. This is where the game takes off so to speak and really comes into its own.

 

9) Crush the Rebellion

 

10) Enjoy this wonderful game.

How so you do research at max?

And I do sometimes play as the Imperials but I usually play as the alliance.

Just employ all your characters who have the ability to research doing research.

 

I rarely play the Alliance, and if I do it is to probe their capabilities and weakenesses!!!

 

The Empires main function is to bring order and stability to the Galaxy, the Rebels are just.... REBELS. They must be brought to heel before the Emperor

One thing I missed out in my tips advice for Imperials is always have a few Death Squads lying about. As soon as as your espionage droids discover a Rebel character, capture or liquidate him/her. If you capture them have one planet that is heavily defended and use that as your 'prison planet', and have them incarerated there, to be endlessly tormented by IMP22 poking them with a sharp stick and being forced to watch endless soaps on TV.

 

Always do espionage on this planet to find out if the rebels are trying to rescue someone, and have them captured too by your Death Squads as they land on the planet to commence their mission.

 

The other option is to load a captured character onto a small ship and have them endlessly moved about the galaxy, although you have to be careful with this especially when the rebel equivalent of interdictor cruisers start turning up

I have found it better to make a prison ship out of a Bulk Transport or Star Galleon and load it up with Infiltrators or Noghri Death Commandos and send it across the galaxy to a far away planet.

 

If I understand the game correctly then a captured prisioner has a small chance to escape each turn. If they are on a prison planet and escape then they will report back about the planet and you will have to move it or prepare for an assult. You also have to spend resources and characters defending it and performing espionage on it.

 

If you put them on a starship that takes 120 days to get where it's going then you can keep them prisoner longer because even if they sucsessfully make an escape because they can't actually escape until they reach the destination. You also don't have to worry about them betraying the prison planet, garrisoning the planet, defending the planet, and putting vital characters there when they could be elsewhere doing something productive for your infrastructure.

 

If I'm incorrect in how the game determines a jail break then I apologize in advance, I'm only giving you my perspective on my observations. I still consider myself a newbie in this game but I've done a lot of research on it to learn it.

How do you move prisioners from one ship to another, or from a ship to a planet?

Prisoners can only be transported with another one of your characters, which is kidna annoying. Would have been nice if normal troops could do it . . .

Prisoners can also be transported or moved by Noghris, Espionage droids, and Imperial commandos as the Empire of course. I believe that rebel special units can also do this.-Grand Moff Conway

Prisoners can also be transported or moved by Noghris, Espionage droids, and Imperial commandos as the Empire of course. I believe that rebel special units can also do this.-Grand Moff Conway

 

Really, well that's oing to be very useful

rebel spec ops forces can indeed do this and with them being so wuick to make same as any spec ops forces it's usually better to use them if your sending them long distance so that you don't have a char sitting in hyperspace doing nothing