Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

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RogueIce
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Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by RogueIce »

No, not the board game. Image
Image
What is this game?

For those who don't know, Star Wars Rebellion is a grand strategy game (I guess, game genres confuse me :() released by LucasArts back in 1998, so nearly 20 years old now. You get to play as either the Rebellion or the Empire in your quest to take over the Star Wars galaxy, which can be up to 200 worlds spread across 20 sectors! With that kind of scale, there is a lot you can do with this game, though just playing to win against the AI won't require near as much effort.

So how do you win?

Conquer the galaxy, duh. Image

To be more helpful, there are two game modes: Standard and HQ Victory. Each side has two Main Characters that must be captured in a Standard game (Palpatine and Vader from the Empire; Mon Mothma and Luke Skywalker from the Alliance) and you must also capture/destroy their Headquarters: Coruscant and the Alliance HQ (which looks like Cloud City on Bespin for some reason).

Wow, that sounds like fun!

I'm glad you think so, because it is! Of course, I would be remiss to point out that this game is nearly 20 years old, shows its age, and even for the time had some questionable decisions made...

Uh oh...

Yeah. :(

To be fair, it's mostly the UI, which can rightfully be described as a click-fest. However, if you can get past that, there is a surprisingly deep strategy game that is really quite enjoyable! The clicks can be annoying, true, but at the end of the day I feel that it's totally worth it and even now I still routinely play it: and I say that as somebody who started way back in the heady days of 1998.

So how will this be run?

Well, there's only two sides to this Galactic Civil War, so I'll be starting with the Empire. I would have left it up to a vote, but I plan on cross-posting this so nuts to that. Also, the Empire is a bit more straight forward, and I plan to explain the mechanics as I go along rather than hit everyone with a long infodump in the beginning. There are also various character-based events that happen, but most of them are on the Alliance so it gives you something to look forward to.

And hopefully I will remember to keep up with this and it won't be an orphaned LP as so many sadly become. :(

But I am working on my first post, which should be up soon!
Image
"How can I wait unknowing?
This is the price of war,
We rise with noble intentions,
And we risk all that is pure..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, Forever (Rome: Total War)

"On and on, through the years,
The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Agent Sorchus »

My favorite Star Wars video game. I've long wanted to do a lets play of it but have never found any good way of getting screenshots of the game. If you don't mind revealing your secrets Rogue it would be much apreciated. (Though I very much prefer playing as Rebels since they are less strait forward.

What difficulty, Galaxy size and will you be doing headquarters only victory?
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Esquire »

I'm so very interested in this. :D
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Isolder74 »

I like playing as the Rebels. Sometimes I can take over whole sectors without firing a shot, well other the sabotaging troops, and then crank up the rim snowball.

Tiny fleets of transports for the win!
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When you want peace prepare for war! --Confusious
That was disapointing ..Should we show this Federation how to build a ship so we may have worthy foes? Typhonis 1
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by RogueIce »

Agent Sorchus wrote:My favorite Star Wars video game. I've long wanted to do a lets play of it but have never found any good way of getting screenshots of the game. If you don't mind revealing your secrets Rogue it would be much apreciated. (Though I very much prefer playing as Rebels since they are less strait forward.
The GOG version. I too was afflicted with those problems regarding screenshots, but the GOG version works well enough on Windows 10. I think I had to get a modified EXE from the GOG Rebellion forums, though. Otherwise, it worked like a charm.
What difficulty, Galaxy size and will you be doing headquarters only victory?
Novice, Huge, and Yes because fuck chasing Luke around the Outer Rim. :razz:
Image
"How can I wait unknowing?
This is the price of war,
We rise with noble intentions,
And we risk all that is pure..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, Forever (Rome: Total War)

"On and on, through the years,
The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by RogueIce »

So, let us begin!



The standard opening crawl, and we get to watch the good ol' Lambda Shuttle flying about and see the credits.

Assuming you sat through all of that (a simple mouse click will skip ahead), we transition to the game's main menu: the Shuttle Cockpit
Image
As you can see, I'm starting off as the Empire, as promised. :D

But first, a quick explanation of what you're seeing here before we continue. The Empire and Alliance symbols are pretty self explanatory: click one of those and the game starts as the respective faction. Along the top left, there is a spinning X-wing, Star Destroyer and Death Star; these represent the three difficulty levels (Novice, Intermediate and Expert respectively). Between the Alliance and Empire logos is the galaxy size toggle for Small, Medium and Large (I'm going with Large because go big or go home right?). Below that is a little Cloud City icon, which is how you choose between the Standard Game (capture/destroy enemy HQ + 2 Main Characters) and HQ Victory; as you can see I've chosen the latter because it gets things done quicker and tracking down the two Mains is kind of annoying sometimes. The other options are what you'd expect: the little LucasArts logo shows the credits, the CD icon next to it opens the Options Menu where you can load saved games, the butting heads in the bottom left is for Multiplayer and the lever on the lower right exits the game.

Important Information: Courscant and Alliance Headquarters - So, one of the immutable goals of this game is to capture and/or destroy the enemy HQ. Well, there's just a tiny difference here: one is a planet, the other is a mobile base. The Empire, as you would expect, is headquartered on Coruscant. This will never change and as the Imperial player it is your duty to defend it, and of course Alliance players must capture it to usher in the glorious New Republic. Alliance HQ, on the other hand, is a mobile structure: it can move from any Alliance-controlled planet to another at any time based upon the player's choices. For the Imperial player, your objective is to destroy the HQ. This basically works the same as capturing the planet it is currently based on, though a planetary bombardment (I'll go over these later) can also do the job.

Clearly, this presents some pros and cons. On the one hand, an Alliance player can always move the HQ if they feel it is in danger of discovery (needless to say at game start, the location is unknown to the Empire). However, since the objective of the Empire is to blow it up, if they are successful the Alliance player is screwed: when it's gone it's gone, no take backs. On the flip side, while the location of Coruscant is obviously known at the start and thus always a target, an Imperial player who loses it (provided Standard Game is selected and the Emperor and/or Vader are still free) can always liberate it from the tyranny of the Rebel scum.

So, let us begin...

When you start the game, you'll get a cutscene of your shuttle arriving at either the Imperial Command Ship (a SSD) or Alliance HQ. Sadly I couldn't find any videos of them independent, only one that mixes the two together and splices the footage into each other rather than being separate from some odd reason. Which is a shame, because the Imperial one is pretty cool where you are greeted by your own legion of stormtroopers in the manner of the Emperor and Vader in Episode VI.

When you start the game, you're greeted by your loyal Droid Advisor: IMP-22 and his counterpart, SD-7. The Advisor will launch into a briefing giving you a brief overview of the galaxy, what's going on, what you're supposed to do, etc. Unfortunately, this is one of the points where the game shows its age: on XP or newer systems, you cannot skip the Advisor Briefing. Fortunately for all of our sakes - it's useful maybe the first time you play the game, not so much after that - there is a workaround. Go into your Rebellion game folder and delete/rename (depending on how you feel about backups) the EMBRIEF.DLL and ALBRIEF.DLL files. Doing so shuts up the Droid and skips the briefing, more or less. What you'll get is this:

Image

Which is the game speeding through the various highlights the Droid would have been mentioning were he able to talk. Don't worry, it doesn't affect anything else. Now, as I am a lowbie scrub, I selected Novice for the purposes of the LP, and am immediately greeted by this screen:

Image

The Agent Advice message center. It actually does give you some useful hints and tips, and if you're a new player it's worth checking out. As you open up new windows and do other things he'll pipe up with new messages pertinent to what you just did as well, unless of course you turn him off:

Image
(ignore the fact I have Galaxy Overview highlighted; that's just where my mouse was)

Right click your Advisor and you get this little menu. As you can see, "Agent Advice" is on the bottom and can be unticked. The other options are as follows:
Build Ships/Troops/Facilities - grouped together because they do the same thing. It's more or less a shortcut to build things, and when clicked you'll get a target icon to select the destination of whatever it is you wanted to build, and the game will choose what is theoretically the nearest appropriate manufacturing center to start working. While it may save you a couple clicks I rarely bother because I prefer to have more control over which manufacturing facilities are doing what, but it is an option.
Galaxy Overview - an important window that gives you a basic rundown of every capital ship, fighter squadron, trooper regiment, special forces unit and facility you have. I'll show this off later.
Objectives - Your typical victory condition status window.
Manage Garrisons/Production - an automation feature, if you care to use it (not many do, myself included). Garrisons does what you'd expect it, your agent will build troops to garrison your planets. Priority will be placed on those with a Garrison Requirement (more on that later) and then...something, I guess? I don't know, like I said I never use it. Production is slightly more useful, because that will have the AI focus on building mines and refineries, which are the basic facilities that allow the construction and maintenance of everything else in the game. Again, more on that later.
Translate Counterpart - whenever you get a message about a fleet arriving somewhere, a successful mission being completed, something finishing being built, whatever, your Droid Counterpart will make a noise alerting you to this fact. If you play this game far too much, you can actually tell what kind of message by what noise it makes. For those who don't care to learn those noises, however, your Advisor will helpfully translate for you, mentioning that there is a message concerning production, an agent reporting in, one of our fleets has arrived at its destination, etc. You can turn this off, if you want to.
Agent Advice - turns off Agent Advice, as mentioned earlier.

You can also right-click the Counterpart and tell it which message categories to alert you about, if you want to silence it on any particular subject or even all of them.

Image

So this is an overview of the Galactic Map, where you will be doing basically 99% of the work in this game. The Advisor and Counterpart I already went over, so I'll discuss the other things you see here. The middle of the screen is the galaxy map, showing the Core and Outer Rim. The Outer Rim, by default is unexplored (represented by the small white stars) by either faction with the exception of Yavin (because this game takes place just after ANH) and the presently hidden Alliance HQ. The Core is fully explored and made up of a mixture of Imperial (Green), Alliance (Red) and Neutral (Blue) planets. Along the top you have your Resource Counter, from left to right: Unrefined Materials (produced by your Mines); Refined Materials (produced by your Refineries) and used to build things; and finally the Maintenance Pool, which is incredibly important and so of course I will explain more about it later. Next to that is the Game Clock which shows you what Day it is. This game is real time, but everything happens by the Days and you can set the speed from Very Slow to Very Fast, or Pause the game by right-clicking the clock.

On the bottom, all those icons are various information windows you can bring up, which will give you the details about various subjects which I'll get into when they're appropriate. Along the left, those blue boxes are shortcuts for where you can store Fleet, Defense and Manufacturing Windows for any systems you care to reference in a hurry. Next to that and partially obscured by the Advisor context menu (sorry about that :() is the button that will take you to the Options Menu. Finally, along the right we have the Notifications Panel, which will light up whenever a pertinent category has a new message for you to view - as usual, I'll cover those as we go along.

So with all that out of the way, let's get to actually playing the game! First up, the ever useful Galaxy Overview window! (accessed by right-clicking your Droid Advisor)

Image

As I mentioned before, this shows you your ships, fighters, troops, SpecForces and facilities. Let's see what the always merciful and kind RNGesus has provided for me, shall we?

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(the first number is the amount of that item you have, the second is the total maintenance cost of them put together)

Not exactly the stuff of Legends (see what I did there? Image) is it? :(

Still, it's not terrible. And I have a better capital fleet than anything those rebel scum are fielding, I can tell you that thanks to experience with the game. I have a decent number of Shipyards and Training Facilities, which is nice, although it's rather disappointing to start off with only one Construction Yard, since that's what I need to build up my critical infrastructure. But hey, can't win 'em all, right?

Next Time: I actually start doing some things. Image
Image
"How can I wait unknowing?
This is the price of war,
We rise with noble intentions,
And we risk all that is pure..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, Forever (Rome: Total War)

"On and on, through the years,
The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Patroklos »

Despite its many flaws and some of the most fugly and unimaginative combat systems I have seen even for its time I enjoyed the hell out of this game. Its long overdue for a remake, but they would shoehorn some much prequel BS now (it had plenty of EU that could have been left out as it was) god knows what it would look like.
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by RogueIce »

Patroklos wrote:Despite its many flaws and some of the most fugly and unimaginative combat systems I have seen even for its time I enjoyed the hell out of this game. Its long overdue for a remake, but they would shoehorn some much prequel BS now (it had plenty of EU that could have been left out as it was) god knows what it would look like.
Yeah, the tactical combat is pretty terribad. I mean, I can still enjoy watching a fleet of Star Destroyers massacre Rebel ships, but it's not exactly the game's primary selling point.

And I would love a remake. Empire at War was kind of like that, but stripped away a lot of this game's depth and, while decent, I usually wind up going back to SWR over EaW. I wouldn't mind some prequel stuff being in there - I like Venators well enough - but I can't see them doing this game justice, not with EA at the helm.
Image
"How can I wait unknowing?
This is the price of war,
We rise with noble intentions,
And we risk all that is pure..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, Forever (Rome: Total War)

"On and on, through the years,
The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Agent Sorchus »

RogueIce wrote:Yeah, the tactical combat is pretty terribad. I mean, I can still enjoy watching a fleet of Star Destroyers massacre Rebel ships, but it's not exactly the game's primary selling point.

And I would love a remake. Empire at War was kind of like that, but stripped away a lot of this game's depth and, while decent, I usually wind up going back to SWR over EaW. I wouldn't mind some prequel stuff being in there - I like Venators well enough - but I can't see them doing this game justice, not with EA at the helm.
The number one thing I dislike in EaW was that ships could suffer extreme damage in battle but within seconds were back to full effectiveness once the battle was won.

At least with Rebellion if I keep raiding Corescant with Gunships but retreat shortly before engaging any capital ships I could rackup damage on their fighter squadrons and increase the Empires maintenance costs quickly.
RogueIce wrote:The GOG version. I too was afflicted with those problems regarding screenshots, but the GOG version works well enough on Windows 10. I think I had to get a modified EXE from the GOG Rebellion forums, though. Otherwise, it worked like a charm.
Ah well I'm still working with a backup CD (cause the original didn't survive my childhood), but yeah had to use a fix of the web to get it to work on Windows 7.

Still you give me hope that I can find a solution to my screanshot problems and get a Rebel hard difficulty Let's play out.
the engines cannae take any more cap'n
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by RogueIce »

Remember when I promised to kill you last start doing things?

I lied. Image

Well, not totally. I will actually do some things, but first some background that I really should have posted earlier but forgot to.

First of all: Where can I find this wonderful gem of a game?

Glad you asked! You have two options: Steam and GOG. Now, this being a game from 1998, there are the expected compatibility issues. For Steam, I tried it on a friend's computer who had Windows 10 Professional 64-bit (same as me) and actually didn't notice any issues. That one seems to work pretty well, though I didn't try to take screenshots (for reference: when I used Win7Pro with a workaround, my attempts at screenshots ended poorly). The GOG version, which is what I'm using because it worked with less fuss than the CD version (and I got it through buying one of their Star Wars bundles) did require me to get an EXE from their forums (made by a staff member) but otherwise runs pretty well.

There is an occasional CTD affecting tactical battles, but it's random and not 100%, so just save often and you should be fine.

While this game doesn't have the biggest community the Internet has ever seen, there are nevertheless some good online resources out there. First up: the official LucasArts game guide. Of course, their Rebellion website is long gone from any normal viewing of their webpage (which doesn't even exist anymore) but fortunately for us, the Internet Archive comes through!

https://web.archive.org/web/20010108170 ... y_tips.htm

This gives a lot of good information about the mechanics of the game, if you don't want to read the fucking novel of a manual it shipped with (GOG has a PDF, not sure if Steam has it):
Image
(I'm sorry, did you think I was joking?)

On the fan site front, there is of course the aptly named Star Wars: Rebellion. Most notably, their forums which were down for the longest time but luckily for us have been brought back up, and it seems like at least some of the old hands have returned so that's a good sign. Also of note from the SWR forums, a user by the name of Master_Xan compiled a pretty good Field Manual (Google Docs) that has quite a bit of knowledge as well - and which I helped contribute a few things to (shameless self promotion, I know).

You can also pick up RebEd, a handy editor that can let you mess around with all sorts of fun things, like a Rebel Death Star. I'll cover that more in a bonus post later on.

So with that out of the way, let's push on to some actual gameplay, shall we?

First of all, it's important to take stock of your assets. I already posted my compiled Galaxy Overview, so the next most important thing is to see which Characters I have available. Characters are the men and women we all know and love from the movies and Legends. From the well known like Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Wedge Antilles and Thrawn to the lesser known (unless you're a serious SW buff, I guess) like Roget Jiriss and Noval Garaint, these beings will be forming the core of your leadership cadre and special forces units, as well as other no less critical tasks like diplomacy and R&D. As the manual helpfully describes, there are certain Characters you will always start with. For the Empire, they are as follows:

Image

Additionally, depending on the size of the Galaxy, you will get an additional 1 (Small), 2 (Medium) or 4 (Huge), randomly picked from the 30 total for each side. Since I picked a Huge Galaxy, I got the extra four. Let's see who I got, shall we?

Image

Not a bad start, all in all. Of note, of my extra characters I got Covell, who like Veers (someone I always start with) he can do Troop R&D. Wonder of wonders, he even ended up on a system with a Training Facility! So needless to say, I set him about his R&D tasks right away. Jerjerrod and Piett, as the manual notes, are pretty good Diplomats, which is vital to the early game expansion - unless you want to conquer the galaxy literally, but that's a suboptimal strategy. Better to be nice about it instead, at least until you get your infrastructure going. Once again RNGesus smiled upon me, for he placed them both in the Sesswenna Sector, home to my HQ, Coruscant. It's always good to get these planets under your sway first so the Rebellion doesn't get them and have forward bases from which to launch attacks - and more damagingly, send out Special Forces - against you.

As you can see, Veers and Vader are enroute to a Victory Star Destroyer, which I had not yet gotten around to renaming in this screenshot. While they're going to the same ship, this ship happens to be in a Fleet with a Carrack Cruiser. This is a fortunate happenstance because both the VSD and Carrack have fast hyperdrives, which let me send them where I need them that much faster. Veers, of course, is destined for a Training Facility to R&D. Vader is on his way to Coruscant to help good ol' Sheev (fuck off new Canon, this is 1998 Image) Palpatine Recruit more Characters to the Imperial cause.

Now is a good time to take a little detour and talk about the differences between Major and Minor Characters. Major Characters are, essentially, the principle movers and shakers of their faction who you know well from the movies: the Emperor, Vader, Luke, Leia, Han and Mon Mothma. Minor Characters are everybody else. The primary difference between them is that a) they cannot be killed; b) two of them on each side (as previous noted: Palpatine/Vader & Mothma/Luke) are Victory Conditions in a Standard Game; c) they can go on Recruitment missions which are the only way to add Characters to your ranks; d) they actually have voice actors who do a (poor) job recreating their voices from the movies. They also have various special events and conditions tied to them, except for Mon Mothma who is only notable for the target painted on her back but is otherwise a bog standard diplomatic character. Which is useful, don't get me wrong, but a little boring.

In any event, you can see here that the Alliance gets an advantage over the Empire because they get to send off four Recruitment missions at a time while the Empire only gets two. :(

But enough of that. Vader is on his way to Coruscant to help Palpatine to Recruit not because he needs to - you can do the mission on any System you own - but because that's just how I roll. Shenir Rix, a Mon Calamari spy I'm assuming is from somewhere in the vast cesspit that was the Legends EU, happened to be on Coruscant so she's being sent on an Espionage mission to one of the Alliance controlled planets in my HQ sector.

Image

Espionage missions are vital. I'll let the Galactic Encyclopedia - an in-game reference source and yes you need all the reference sources you can get - explain why:
Espionage missions gather information about your opponent's planetary systems, military forces and personnel.
Basically what they do is provide a snapshot of everything happening on that System, and I mean everything. Which Characters are there, any missions they may be performing, ships, troops and fighters station at that System, ships, troops and fighters enroute to that System (and their arrival times!); basically everything you would know about one of your own Systems, a successful Espionage mission will tell you about an enemy System, accurate as of the beginning of the day upon successful completion. Of course like with any covert mission - and all missions in this game - there is a chance of failure, but even in failure Espionage missions will (usually) give you at least a partial picture of what's there. And it's always important to keep informed about what your enemy is doing, as any student of warfare will tell you.

Sadly, there is no way to automate these missions, so if you want to keep an accurate intelligence picture, prepare for some micromanagement. :(

Oh, and as a bonus, if you succeed in an Espionage mission on any enemy Core System, it will also give you full details about another enemy Core System, essentially providing you two missions for the cost of one. Which is pretty nice indeed. Another note about Espionage is that you can run them on your own Systems, if you want, and it'll give you information about enemy agents attempting or conducting missions against you as well as any enemy fleets that may be inbound - perfect for setting up ambushes, if you keep up on the intel game.

Intelligence is of course critical to any successful war effort - although if you really want to you can probably just brute force your way against the AI - but it also brings about some unexpected benefits in the early game. Take, for example, what this successful Espionage mission revealed in another Imperial game I ran:

Image

Ah, so the Alliance is training troops destined for the Algarian System. Well, if you know the game as I know the game, you'd know that Algarian is in the Outer Rim. And on Day 35, as this was, the only Outer Rim system even remotely likely to be colonized is...the Alliance HQ! And sure enough, after I gathered up my combined fleet - which, as I alluded to earlier, is significantly better than anything the Alliance has - I sent them out to the suspected location of the enemy HQ. Sure enough, there it was, and after blasting aside a Corellian Corvette and some X-wings, the Alliance Headquarters laid helpless before me. Had that been a HQ Victory game, as this is, that's a win right there. And all because I got lucky on an Espionage mission revealing the right information at the right time.

Now, on the information front, you're not totally in the dark. On all neutral and enemy Cory Systems, you will have accurate information as to their defensive and manufacturing facilities - although enemy ships, fighters, troops and Characters will be unknown to you. Also, there's Yavin, which of course you know about due to the failed Death Star attack. In my game, it looks like this:

Image

If you're at all familiar with the movies, those Characters should not be surprising to you. In any event, you are certainly free to gather up whatever fleet units you want and send them out on a mission of retribution - heck the Droid Briefing even suggests this as a course of action. Of course, as you might expect, they're going to know you're coming, so don't expect to easily snatch up Luke within the first 50 days. That said, I did manage to trap Chewie and Wedge there in my last game, and ended up killing both of them, so it may not be a total waste of effort if you want to try.

In any case, for this playthrough I'm not going to bother with Yavin just yet. And I'm just about ready to wrap up my initial actions and settle in for the waiting game as things take their time to happen. But first, remember how I lamented my lack of Construction Yards? Time to fix that!

Image

40 days?! Oh dear... :(

Unfortunately, there's nothing to be done about it. Production time is determined by the Refined Materials cost of the item in question, processed at the rate of the facility (which for a basic facility isn't much) as well as how many of the same facility you have on that System. So while building up additional Construction Yards will make things go faster, I only have the one I started with in the entire galaxy (for the moment) so I'll just have to wait.

Next Time: People get to where they need to go and I do other stuff, I guess. I don't know, I haven't actually played that far yet. Image
Image
"How can I wait unknowing?
This is the price of war,
We rise with noble intentions,
And we risk all that is pure..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, Forever (Rome: Total War)

"On and on, through the years,
The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by RogueIce »

Agent Sorchus wrote:The number one thing I dislike in EaW was that ships could suffer extreme damage in battle but within seconds were back to full effectiveness once the battle was won.
Yeah, ships needing to be repaired is a nice touch in Rebellion.
At least with Rebellion if I keep raiding Corescant with Gunships but retreat shortly before engaging any capital ships I could rackup damage on their fighter squadrons and increase the Empires maintenance costs quickly.
You wouldn't really be increasing their maintenance budget at all by sniping a few fighters, because it doesn't cost anything for them to replenish. At most you'll be forcing them to expend resources and precious Shipyard time replacing squadrons when you manage to actually kill an entire unit.

But yeah, the fact these kinds of "hit and fade" missions are possible in the game at all is pretty nice. You can harass, irritate and weaken an enemy fleet with careful micro in the Tactical game, while waiting for your main Battle Fleet to arrive and finish them off.
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Raesene »

Rebellion.... fun times....

Having three Executors with Interdictor-support at the end taking apart the Rebel main fleet before destroying their headquarter was always fun. Two or three salvoes, boom, next Mon Cal cruiser

Looking forward to your Death Star use - for me, it was mostly a fighter carrier (24 or so Squadrons of TIE Defenders ? Yes Please!) and bombardment tool, without destroying the planet.

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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Steve »

The thing I remember about this game the most was how much I loved the FMV for the Rebels taking Coruscant. :)
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by RogueIce »

Raesene wrote:Looking forward to your Death Star use - for me, it was mostly a fighter carrier (24 or so Squadrons of TIE Defenders ? Yes Please!) and bombardment tool, without destroying the planet.
We'll see. It may not come "naturally" during this game, just because I'm not really planning to wait around and build up the galaxy like I normally do - I have an Alliance playthrough to get to, after all!

But I can always use RebEd to get a cheap DS and show off some of its mechanics, if it comes to that. Which one winds up happening depends on what I do in terms of finding the HQ, how much infrastructure I wind up developing, etc.
Steve wrote:The thing I remember about this game the most was how much I loved the FMV for the Rebels taking Coruscant. :)
That's going to be a little ways away, unfortunately.

Well, unless I totally screw up this game. Image
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Isolder74 »

You have to really screw up to lose Coruscant when playing as the Empire against the computer. A Star Destroyer always on station with 12 - 24 squadrons of Tie fighters is usually more then enough.

However don't get too confident and always keep 2 shields and a blaster on planet as well as a large garrison. Late game you want to keep a pair of ISD's and a pair of Victory's on station just in case. Never forget that the Rebellion has really OP star fighters until you can get your hands on the Tie Defenders. 6 squadrons of X-Wings can take down a fully loaded ISD at the start of the game. Tieln's just die too fast and the ISD can't kill the things fast enough to keep the ISD from going down. Playing the Empire isn't a walk in the park if you don't manage your resources well.
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Steve »

I mostly remember once downloading a cheat mod that altered the DS construction time to 4 days. I forget when I quit, but I'd annihilated most of the galaxy by the time I did.

Of course, every planet that was surviving was either Rebel-aligned or Imperial only due to the garrisons on-world. Including Coruscant. So much for the Tarkin Doctrine eh? :P :twisted:

And this is the best video in the game.

:mrgreen:
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Soontir C'boath »

You don't want an Ozzel and you can avoid that by hypering into the adjacent system.
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

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Isolder74 wrote:You have to really screw up to lose Coruscant when playing as the Empire against the computer. A Star Destroyer always on station with 12 - 24 squadrons of Tie fighters is usually more then enough.
In the early game, sure, but that won't keep forever unless you're the type to play really aggressive and prevent the Alliance from ever really developing.

In which case, you hardly need to worry about Coruscant being attacked. :wink:
However don't get too confident and always keep 2 shields and a blaster on planet as well as a large garrison. Late game you want to keep a pair of ISD's and a pair of Victory's on station just in case. Never forget that the Rebellion has really OP star fighters until you can get your hands on the Tie Defenders. 6 squadrons of X-Wings can take down a fully loaded ISD at the start of the game. Tieln's just die too fast and the ISD can't kill the things fast enough to keep the ISD from going down. Playing the Empire isn't a walk in the park if you don't manage your resources well.
I'm going to get into all that later. We're still quite a bit away from going on the offensive.
Steve wrote:I mostly remember once downloading a cheat mod that altered the DS construction time to 4 days. I forget when I quit, but I'd annihilated most of the galaxy by the time I did.
RebEd is a wonderful thing :D
Of course, every planet that was surviving was either Rebel-aligned or Imperial only due to the garrisons on-world. Including Coruscant. So much for the Tarkin Doctrine eh? :P :twisted:
Yeah, the down side to using the superlaser. But I'll get to that when I get to it.
And this is the best video in the game.
I was going to post that when I got there in my Alliance game. :(
Soontir C'boath wrote:You don't want an Ozzel and you can avoid that by hypering into the adjacent system.
That was more them detecting the fleet early, which is not an issue in this game. You show up, they know about it. That said, it can help in MP to do that since human players will know to run Espionage missions on their own systems and see if you're coming. I don't think that's an issue against the AI, though.

Speaking of intelligence, update incoming! Let's see how much the differences between XenForo and phpBB breaks things!

EDIT: Turns out it didn't. Yay!
Last edited by RogueIce on 2016-09-26 02:10am, edited 1 time in total.
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We rise with noble intentions,
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The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by RogueIce »

So, let's discuss some more mechanics!

First up is the all important resource counter:
Image

Starting from the left, we have the Unrefined Materials (with a picture of the Mine facility), Refined Materials (with a picture of the Refinery facility) and your Maintenance Pool (the wrench thingy). When you start the game you'll have a generous Maintenance Pool - which can go fast if you don't pay attention! - but you'll start off with 0 Materials and have to start building them up from Day 3 onward (the game starts at Day 2 for some reason).

Unrefined Materials (UR) - these are the raw resources that will be converted into your Refined Materials. Don't worry if you have 0 or a low number here, because that just means you have enough Refineries to keep up! Unrefined Materials are useless to you, until they're converted, so a low number is actually a good thing.
Refined Materials (RM) - these are what you use to build everything in the game. They'll slowly trickle in as your Refineries do their thing. Obviously, the more the better.
Maintenance Pool (MP) - this is a critical one, and is increased by each Mine and Refinery pair you have (50 MP per pair) and deducted for every unit and facility you own, with the exception of the Mines and Refineries themselves. You can run low on this really easily if you don't keep up with your M/R pairings, and this is why it's ideal to have even numbers of both.

When it comes to construction, troop training and shipbuilding, you don't actually need all of the required RMs up front, as the Death Star helpfully demonstrates for me. The game will build the unit/facility over time and take part of the cost as you go. If you run out of RMs, that just halts production until the next day when you get some more RMs and your production facilities greedily ingest them. Obviously, this is rather suboptimal and you should avoid it when you can, because it will greatly increase your production time, across the entire galaxy. Material shortfalls delaying production are a thing in this game, just as in reality.

What will stop you cold, however, is a lack of Maintenance Points (which also shortens to MP, which is nice). If you don't have enough MP for something, that check-mark will be grayed out and it won't let you build it. Thus, MP is the hard cap on what you can own, and you thusly you should always seek to expand it. If you're running tight, you should definitely consider scrapping obsolete units and facilities. Facilities especially - if you go look at the LucasArts Game Guide I linked earlier, you can see the tech tree for each faction and note that of the various production facilities - Construction Yard (CY), Training Facility (TF) and Orbital Shipyard (SY) - there are Advanced versions of each, which build things twice as fast. And with the exception of the ASY, they even cost the same in RMs and MPs so there's really no reason not to do a 1-for-1 replacement; the ASYs do cost 7 more MP though, which can sneak up on you, but trust me the production boost makes it worthwhile to replace them. On top of that, the upgraded versions of the Planetary Shield Generators and Planetary Turbolasers actually cost fewer MPs than their Mk I counterparts, making them especially attractive to replace. Ships, troops and fighters are a bit more situational, however, but we'll discuss those options when my R&D actually starts bearing fruit.

While you can't overbuild into a lack of MP, it is quite possible to wind up with a negative number thanks to enemy action. This will lead to the dreaded Maintenance Shortfall where the game will start randomly scrapping units and facilities to get you back to 0 or above. Fortunately, it's not instantaneous and you'll usually have a few Game Days before things start going kablooey on you (for some reason the game gives a picture of an exploding ship for those messages). This gives you the opportunity to try and regain your MP before you start losing stuff, generally by retaking the planet the enemy just invaded and/or breaking up the blockade (I'll go into more detail about Planetary Assaults and Blockades when they're relevant). But if you take too long, well, RIP your precious units - RNGesus is kind of a jerk in what He selects. If you hit a Shortfall and don't think you can correct it within 2-3 days, you're probably better off scrapping things of your own choosing before the game decides for you. Even if it's just -1 MP on that counter, Rebellion is quite capable of slagging that SSD forming the heart of your strike fleet because it's a jerk like that.

Next up, I'll go into your Map UI and System Information windows, which will provide most of the information you need. First of all , let us recall the Galaxy Map. As I mentioned previously, all those stars represent Planetary Systems, and each of them are Grouped into Sectors of ten Systems each. For a Small Galaxy, it's 10 Sectors (100 Systems), Medium Galaxy is 15 Sectors (150 Systems) and a Huge Galaxy, which is what I'm playing on, is 20 Sectors (200 Systems). So as you can tell, the scope of the game is quite large even on the smallest setting, which to me is a definite plus. In any event, the Sector window isn't terribly interesting by itself, as it's basically just a cluster of ten of these:

Image

What you're looking at is a small sprite of the System, the name, the little buttons that open up your Information windows (those icons surrounding the planet) and system details along the bottom.

System Alignment and Loyalty - the ownership of the system is shown by the color of the name: Green for Empire, red for Alliance, blue for Neutral. Just above the System's name is a bar that will be green or red, indicating how loyal the population is to either faction (there's no "blue" loyalty). Because I chose Coruscant as my example, they are fully loyal to me, hence the bar is entirely green; the neutral system of Averam is much more divided.
Available Energy - the white and blue squares immediately underneath the planet tell you how much Energy the System has. Energy determines how many facilities that planet can support, be it for manufacturing or defense. White indicates energy taken up, blue indicates that which is available. So in Coruscant's case, there are 13 total energy points, meaning I can build up to 13 facilities (all facilities take up only one Energy Point); and at the moment I am presently using nine of those Energy Points, which means I can build up to four more facilities. Facilities under construction will immediately "consume" an Energy Point.
Raw Materials - the red and yellow squares beneath your Energy meter tell you how many Raw Material Stockpiles that System has. These Stockpiles are necessary for building Mines to start gathering up the Unrefined Materials to become Refined Materials. This is a hard limit on the number of Mines you can build, regardless of available Energy, although Refineries have no such restriction. Yellow indicates a Stockpile with a Mine already constructed, while red means it's an available Stockpile. I will note that while the Energy and Stockpiles are often identical on Systems, as you can see on Coruscant that is not always the case.

Clicking on the little icons surrounding the planet will bring up one of the four System Information windows, shown here:

Image

In clockwise order from the top left we have:

Fleet Window - this is where you can see the Fleets you have above a system. Fleets, as the Encyclopedia notes, are just groups of ships that travel, fight and work together. You can have fleets of over a hundred ships (assuming your MPs can support that) or a "fleet" of a single ship. The little icons below your nice generic Fleet graphic indicates that this particular Fleet has fighters, troops and personnel (Characters and SpecForces) embarked. Over on the right you can see I have the Ships panel selected, which shows you how many capital ships you have, as well as the same fighter, troop and personnel icons to tell you which individual ship happens to be carrying what. Along the top you have the Fighter, Troop and Personnel tabs which you can use to see the overall count of each unit the fleet contains. While ships can transport unlimited personnel, they can only transport so many fighters and troop regiments; selecting each tab will display two numbers on the top: the one on the left being the current embarked fighters/troops, the right number being the total capacity of that ship. If you double left-click the Fleet icon, it will display the individual ships where you can access each ship's individual fighter, troop and personnel tabs. One final note: the blue "glob" behind the VSD Venator indicates that this ship is currently in hyperspace, moving to the current location.

Production Window - this is where you select what to build and where, and you can see the total number of each production facility that System has. From left to right, the tabs are: Active Production, Shipyards, Training Facilities, Construction Yards, Mines and Refineries. On the Active Production tab, you can right click the SYs, TFs or CYs (assuming you have any) to select what you want to Build as well as select the Destination which will change the cursor into crosshairs, allowing you to pick the System where the constructed unit/facility is destined to go (by default, they'll build at the current System). You can build to any System you control, just make sure to have the appropriate Sector window open so you can click on it.

Mission Window - if there are active missions on this System, this is the window that shows them. Right now all I've got running is a Recruitment mission, but any missions I have will be here. If you do Espionage on your own Systems, you'll also see enemy missions being run against you in this window. It's pretty self explanatory: on the left it'll list each mission, on the right it gives the details of the selected mission - the mission's Target (in this case the System itself, though other missions will have other targets; I'll go over these when they become relevant in my game) as well as which Characters and/or SpecForces are assigned. The left tab is for the personnel working the mission, the right tab is for Decoys which I'll go over when I actually use them.

System Defenses Window - this is where the personnel, troops, fighters, planetary shields and batteries will be shown. One again, from left to right: personnel, troops, fighters, shields and batteries (turbolasers and the ion cannon). Most of these are pretty self explanatory, however note the Garrison Requirements on the Troops tab. Tied in with the System loyalty is the concept of Occupied Systems - planets where the population doesn't actually like you but you maintain control through an iron fist anyway. In such cases, depending on how disloyal they are to you, the Garrison Requirement will increase (to a maximum of six) and you'll need to make sure you have at least that many troops units stations there. Otherwise, the System will go into Uprising and that's just bad juju (again, more details when I get there). Fortunately, the population of Coruscant loves me so that's not an issue.

This is just a broad overview of these windows and what they do, as they are where you'll be spending most of your game and issuing most of your orders. I'll go into more details about them in later posts, but for now this will have to do. Because enough boring details, let's see some gameplay!

...not that there's a ton going on right now, because as I've said the beginning of this game can be a little slow. But there are some things going on so let's get into it.

Image

First of all, because there's not much going on, let's speed things up a bit, shall we? Letting the days tick over, I get my first Messages of actual progress on actual things. Yay!

Image

...and all it is telling me that a couple Espionage Droids - SpecForce units, their function should be pretty obvious - have finished training and have been deployed. But this gives me the chance to talk about the Message Index so prepare for more Infodump! Along the top of it you have the various and sundry categories into which messages are sorted. You know the drill, from left to right we have:

All Messages - Does exactly what you'd think it does, it shows you all of your messages (except Agent Advice).
Loyalty Messages - These messages are about when planets shift hands, if an uprising breaks out somewhere, Informants provide you information and if you're getting any Smuggling Benefits - or losing materials to them.
Fleet Messages - Tells you when you Fleets get somewhere, new ships and fighters being deployed, damaged ships and fighters repairing themselves and pretty much anything else having to do with your fleets.
Mission Messages - Exactly what it says on the tin. When your Characters and SpecForces have mission progress to report - whether an ongoing check-in, success or failure - they'll tell it here. Also tells you if anything in general happens to them, such as being killed in action ( :( ) or if Luke/Vader detect that they are Force Users.
Resource Messages - When you build a new Mine or Refinery, this is where it tells you. Also lets you know if new Raw Materials or Energy are found on a System, though this is pretty rare. Also the place where you will be informed of the dreaded Natural Disasters which everyone hates but sadly we're stuck with. As usual, more details on this when (because it's always when, never if :() it becomes relevant.
Manufacturing Messages - When your SYs, TFs or CYs finish something and are available for new orders, they'll let you know. Also tells you when new construction facilities have deployed on a System. Finally, your R&D breakthroughs will also show up here.
Defense Messages - When new troops, fighters, shields or batteries deploy on a System, this is the tab that tells you.
Conflict Messages - If you Blockade a System - or get blockaded yourself, this is the window for that. Also informs you of Planetary Bombardments and Planetary Assaults.
Multiplayer Messages - Should you happen to play a multiplayer game, this is where you and your opponent talk trash to each other.
Agent Advice - Exactly what it says. If you happen to have that option selected, new advice and tips will go here as they come up.

With that out of the way, let's put my manufacturing to good use! What is Star Wars without ships, right? Let's go to one of my Shipyards and start building the mighty Imperial Fleet!

Image

Well then. :(

As is the case with the Construction Yard from last update, having only a single Shipyard really sucks, and RNGesus was not kind enough to give me multiples. As you can see, even the lowly Carrack Cruiser - the cheapest, most basic combat ship I have - is going to take a little over 100 days to build. Fortunately, the TIE fighters are far more reasonable, so I employ each of my three separate SYs to build three squadrons each, which will be deployed to the various Systems I control.

Image

Next up I go to my Training Facilities. Luckily, troop regiments aren't that expensive of time consuming to build, but I don't really need any right now. So instead, as you can see, I decided to build Espionage Droids instead. They're as cheap as it gets and will help me greatly in expanding my knowledge of Rebel activities. I'm building six at a go because I've found that's a good size for a covert ops team to be.

Image

As you can kind of see, I'm tasking my Obroa-skai TFs to build Espionage Droids to send out to Bpfassh (in the Sluis Sector) because the Sector Obroa-skai is in doesn't actually have Alliance-controlled Systems. This is also an illustrative example for a basic tactic: when possible, locally produce within each Sector! As you can see, the deployment time for intra-sector construction can add a lot to the overall time before your new units become useful, especially when it comes to facilities and troops/SpecForces. Unfortunately, my sole Construction Yard back on Coruscant is still occupied with increasing its own building capability, so I don't have much in the way of options for the moment.

As I advance another couple of days, something actually useful happens:

Image

That Espionage mission I sent Shenir Rix on has borne fruit! And as I mentioned before and can now show you, successful spy missions on enemy Core Systems will also count toward giving you information on another enemy system. So let's see what the Rebel Scum are up to on Chandrila and Byss, shall we?

Image

Ah, manufacturing intel! I love it when I get this kind of data, as it can be used to further increase your knowledge of enemy movements and territorial possessions, as I pointed out last update. Unfortunately this haul isn't that great, as the X-wing squadron is destined for a ship rather than a system, which doesn't tell me a lot. As it happens though, the Alliance Escort Carrier Eagle happens to be on the way to Byss, so that was some nice synergy (Fleet 5 is just a Corellian Corvette). And as we discovered, Page happens to be chilling on Chandrila at the moment, which opens up some opportunities for me. Finally, we see the Alliance has hit upon the same idea I had of increasing the building capabilities over on Byss.

Another great thing about that Core Espionage bonus is that Byss happens to be in a Sector I don't have any controlled systems in, meaning direct missions to there will take a very long time for my personnel to get there, do their thing, and go back to friendly territory. Luckily, I can still get intel on the local goings-on this way, so that's pretty nice.

Next Time: We continue our search for knowledge regarding enemy activities, expand through Diplomacy and start recruiting heroes to our cause!
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"How can I wait unknowing?
This is the price of war,
We rise with noble intentions,
And we risk all that is pure..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, Forever (Rome: Total War)

"On and on, through the years,
The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Soontir C'boath »

RogueIce wrote:
Soontir C'boath wrote:You don't want an Ozzel and you can avoid that by hypering into the adjacent system.
That was more them detecting the fleet early, which is not an issue in this game. You show up, they know about it. That said, it can help in MP to do that since human players will know to run Espionage missions on their own systems and see if you're coming. I don't think that's an issue against the AI, though.
Fleets can be detected by moving your own fleet into the system and any missions run on it whether its on-going like research and diplomacy, or recruiting. Fleets can also be detected by canceling a mission.

While I don't want to necessarily spoil this fact as frankly why would a research mission reveal an incoming enemy fleet, but you will find this occurring frequently enough that there's no avoiding it anyway.

If you want, you can scrap extra mines or refineries to get refined points back to keep up a smooth construction time line for awhile longer.
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by RogueIce »

Soontir C'boath wrote:Fleets can be detected by moving your own fleet into the system and any missions run on it whether its on-going like research and diplomacy, or recruiting. Fleets can also be detected by canceling a mission.

While I don't want to necessarily spoil this fact as frankly why would a research mission reveal an incoming enemy fleet, but you will find this occurring frequently enough that there's no avoiding it anyway.
That's more or less a glitch though, so not terribly relevant to playing against the AI. Against a human, though, it is an issue.
If you want, you can scrap extra mines or refineries to get refined points back to keep up a smooth construction time line for awhile longer.
Honestly I'd rather scrap a few shield generators or batteries than lose 50 maintenance if I need a quick infusion of Refined Materials. Sure if I have an uneven number of them it's a possibility and I won't 'lose' anything directly, but I'd rather build up to parity than have to spend double the time and resources later for MP expansion.
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"How can I wait unknowing?
This is the price of war,
We rise with noble intentions,
And we risk all that is pure..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, Forever (Rome: Total War)

"On and on, through the years,
The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
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Elheru Aran
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Elheru Aran »

In that Coruscant video... is that the Wild Karrde?!
It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way.
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RogueIce
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by RogueIce »

Elheru Aran wrote:In that Coruscant video... is that the Wild Karrde?!
No. It's the game's Bulk Transport, which is modeled after the Corellian Action IV from the EU, which is the type of ship the Wild Karrde was modified from, but's not the Wild Karrde.
Image
"How can I wait unknowing?
This is the price of war,
We rise with noble intentions,
And we risk all that is pure..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, Forever (Rome: Total War)

"On and on, through the years,
The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
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Knife
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by Knife »

I loved that game, glad it's on steam, might buy it this weekend. Anyway, loved the Rebels play. First and foremost you could name your ships and name your fleets. It personalized it for me. Sending my medium transports to the rim to explore and then build super sectors of troops or ships, then hit the core with Mon Cal fleets or even Dauntless fleets. Never really got into the people bit, though would recruit till I had all the peeps, never really did the whole 'find new Jedi' bit. Once in a while would lose Luke or Leia, but orbital bombardment of the system would release them... most of the time.
They say, "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." I suppose it never occurred to them that they are the tyrants, not the patriots. Those weapons are not being used to fight some kind of tyranny; they are bringing them to an event where people are getting together to talk. -Mike Wong

But as far as board culture in general, I do think that young male overaggression is a contributing factor to the general atmosphere of hostility. It's not SOS and the Mess throwing hand grenades all over the forum- Red
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RogueIce
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Re: Let's Play: Star Wars Rebellion

Post by RogueIce »

Hey, I'm back! And it hasn't been a full month between updates, either. I figure this means I'm doing pretty good, right? :V

Now where were we...oh yes, we just found Page, one of the Rebellion's foremost commandoes, on the planet Chandrila. Given this is in the same sector as Coruscant, I'd just as soon he not present a problem for me. So, time to deal with him.

Luckily, Lord Vader arrives at Coruscant the very next day. Putting him and Shenir Rix, an Espionage character, on the Imperial Star Destroyer Imperator I task them with eliminating this pesky Rebel thorn in my side. Shortly after I send them off, however, this happens:

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Jerjerrod, one of my diplomats, has been hard at work to bring the planet Bortras to my side. Well, as you can see, he has done so, but with a bonus! Because Core Planets are hubs of activity and information, what happens to one of them will have spill-on effects throughout the Sector, for good or bad. In this case it's for the good, as the act of one planet declaring for the Empire brings half the Sector into my control in one fell swoop. Not bad, not bad at all.

In any event, the Star Destroyer Imperator arrives over Chandrila, and is met by a pair of Y-wing squadrons. Battle ensues:

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Clearly, an amazing space battle worthy of the Star Wars name. :V I'll talk more about the tactical game later when it's a less boring battle. Suffice to say my ISD and its 6 squadrons of TIE fighters carry the day. This puts me in a Blockade of the Chandrila system, which means any refined materials and maintenance points it would generate are now unavailable to the Alliance, any manufacturing on the System - in this case a shipyard producing X-wings - is stopped, and any troops or fighter squadrons that were enroute have now been redirected to elsewhere. Additionally, any characters and troops that were already on the planet - in this case, just Page himself - are trapped and risk capture or death if they try to run the blockade.

But the AI will pretty much always wait you out, so if you're not in a position to just assault the planet, other measures must be taken to deal with the characters stationed there. In this case, I'm going to choose to Assassinate the unfortunate Page, as opposed to attempting an Abduction. This is something only the Empire, thanks to it being evil, can accomplish; the goody two shoes Alliance would never stoop to such an extreme action. I like it as a player because it removes a valuable character for the enemy forever, which is much preferable to the hassle of keeping them imprisoned.

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Here we have the Mission Assignment Window, opened up to the Assignment Tab. For this example, I have Lord Vader running the mission itself (on the left) while Shenir Rix is a Decoy (on the right). Decoys are useful as they serve as a distraction from the main mission personnel, giving you better odds of success. If Characters/SpecForces running the mission are detected, it is considered foiled; if a Decoy is detected, it is not. For this reason, you want to try and limit your mission-doers to the minimum necessary for success (usually 2 or 3) but you can feel free to pack on as many Decoys as you have available; your best part there are the utterly expendable SpecForces troops, if you choose this route.

For this mission though, there's no opposition except the target himself, and Vader is more than capable of avoiding detection and capture. And, of course, this being Darth Frickin' Vader he should easily murder his way through a single Rebel commando, no matter how skilled, right?

Sadly, no. :(

Because the RNG is a jerk, Assassination missions - even when successful - have an annoyingly low chance of actually killing the target, and the RNG generally hates you as RNGs are wont to do. So I will be resigned to sending mission after mission, hoping for a lucky break. Luckily, he is Injured early on, as indicated by the little EKG or whatever they're supposed to represent lines on his portrait.

While that's going on, some more productive news:

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At long last, we shall have our revenge on the Jedi be able to build facilities less slow than before. As you can see, I have halved the construction time (recall it was originally 40 days) and so I decide to speed things up even more by building two at once. On the construction screen it will claim 40 days, but in reality it'll be slightly faster because when the 3rd CY is finished, that will increase the processing speed for the final CY.

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In the meantime, Piett has brought Corsin, the final System in my HQ Sector, onto my side; however the Rebellion has been doing their own diplomacy and brings Tanaab over in the Farfin Sector to their cause. Bummer. :(

But that's the other side of the Core from where I'm focusing my efforts for now, and a problem for another day. More importantly, I get sick of the RNG's crap and send Vader to more productive pursuits: recruiting Characters on Coruscant (seriously it's been 40+ days now and Page still lives). Ultimately I break down and just have Shenir Rix go after him. After another 20 or so days of failure, she finally hits pay dirt:

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While these fun and games have been going on, I've also been doing Espionage. I haven't shown those results because frankly they're a little boring as it keeps this eternal cycle between Chandrila (which I'm blockading), Svivren and Balfron (neither of which have anything interesting going on yet) as the systems I receive additional intel on. Well, that is until a group of Espionage Droids I sent out to Kothlis come back with results...

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Unfortunately, I have zero assets in the Sector to do anything about this new intelligence. :(

But it's good to know nonetheless. More productively, I have sent Jerjerrod the next Sector over to bring Ketaris on my side.

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As you can see, this planet comes with a pair of CYs already built, the only such System in the entire Core, making it quite the prize. Jerjerrod, being the efficient sort that he is, does so quicklyand brings along another system for good measure. Meanwhile, Coruscant's fourth CY finishes production, so I decide it's time to increase my troop training capabilities:

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Four TYs in 40 days, where with my original CY this would have taken 160 days. Always, always, always group up your manufacturing facilities by a single type on a system as much as possible! Right now I only bother with four of each, because I'll eventually be replacing them with Advanced versions and don't want to waste the materials and time building facilities that are due for obsolescence later on. Speaking of which, Lord Vader recruits Orlok, some obscure Legends character I've never heard of outside of this game but who is nevertheless useful because, as the game's Encyclopedia tells me, he is "the Empire's facilities specialist".

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Which means he can conduct Facility Design R&D, which will allow me to produce Advanced manufacturing and defensive facilities that much faster (and a Death Star Shield, since I'm the Empire) which will be nice.

Next Time: Next time I won't be doing a "Next Time" stinger because I don't actually play far enough ahead between posts to know what's going to happen when I start up again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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"How can I wait unknowing?
This is the price of war,
We rise with noble intentions,
And we risk all that is pure..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, Forever (Rome: Total War)

"On and on, through the years,
The war continues on..." - Angela & Jeff van Dyck, We Are All One (Medieval 2: Total War)
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight
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