Feel The Force....

[Guest DarthMaulUK]

Empire At War will be set during the classic Star Wars period, predominantly centring around the events of Episode IV: A New Hope, though there will be a certain amount of cross over from Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith.

 

'The game begins two years before A New Hope',states Brett(Game Producer). 'Well be trying to weave stories around the characters and events from that film,so youll see how certain heroes came to be under one sides control. You can also expect to see ACCLAMATOR-class assault ships - as seen in Episode II - fly along side Imperial Star Destroyers from the classic Star Wars.'

 

Space and planet-based missions bundled together in one strategic package. In fact, judging by the screenshots in PC ZONE magazine (UK, February) shows that the game certainly is shaping up to be the FIRST EVER strategy game to meld the epic 3-D space based battles of Homeworld with more traditional ground based RTS missions. This is something which, if done right, could just propel PETROGLYPH's project into a new real-time strategy game dimension.

 

But how will Empire At War manage to stand out from an already hugely competitive RTS field? Find out in part 2 tomorrow.

 

DMUK

[Com Raven]

Screens

 

Is it correct that this game will be purely battles without base-building? If so, hooray for that, I wish Dawn of War would be like that!

[IG-64]

Originally posted by Com Raven

Screens

 

Is it correct that this game will be purely battles without base-building? If so, hooray for that, I wish Dawn of War would be like that!

 

That's how Rome did it. My bro plays Rome every day. Looks awesome but it's still too hard for me. :/

[Com Raven]

No, I mean just units, without anything else, similar to Ground Control.

 

And Rome is an awesome game, definitely one of the best I've ever played

[Nairb Notneb]

What about resources?

[saberhagen]

DoW isn't very much about base building. The buildings are so expensive in terms of the amount of resources you have that you don't really find yourself building too many of them. Plus the combat starts very quickly, unlike SWGB where you spend the first 10 minutes doing nothing but scouting and managing your econ.

 

I'm guessing that if EAW has any economy in it, it will be on a very large scale with no microing. Maybe your resources will just depend on how many planets you control, or maybe different planets will give you different kinds of resources. But the RTS genre seems to be moving away from resource management. DoW doesn't have any economy at all.

[Com Raven]

Still, it absolutely doesn't fit in with Dawn of War. I have never seen my real Chaos army build buildings...

[Nairb Notneb]

There has to be some sort of manufacturing limiting factor involved in the game or else people will simply build tons of Death Stars (if available) and destroy every rebel planet. Its a "REAL" time strategy game, it has to be sort of real in that you have logistical limits in creating your forces. That's the beauty of the game. It takes mental skill to defeat your opponent. Resource management is what wins a war. That's why Hitler lost WWII, he didn't have the resources to compete with the Allies.

 

That's why 3-D shooter only players don't like RTS games because they typically (I'm not trying to be insulting, just stating the obvious, so I apologize if I have offended) don't have the patience to manage the resources to do combat. I understand this, sometimes you just want to blow stuff up, I hear ya friend, you want big large scale battles with dozens and dozens of AT-AT's, I mean, who doesn't???!!!!

[darthfergie]

*shrug* Not necessarily a manufacturing limit. I figure if you end up building a death star it's going to basically cripple your economy with cost. It'll tie down so much resources that it can be somewhat unfavorable to build one...and the build time on the Death Star is probably astronomical too. That's the main limit right there. I mean, you have to think about it. Would you rather tie down your shipyards for years building a deathstar, or make 4-5 star destroyers (or whatever) in the same time period. Do you have the ability to put all that focus on one thing. Or should you just make the star destroyers and distribute your power to various fronts that are in despirate need of reinforcement.

Death Stars are self limiting.

 

and yes, resources will definitely have to be involved in this game...or I will be very weirded out. I have no idea how you can have a "conquer the galaxy" game and not have resource management (FoCom's point system just wouldn't really work too well when you have to worry about all those armies and navies, etc...it'd be more akward and cumbersome than streamlined)...now admittedly I don't expect to see any "in battle" base building, but I fully expect to see a setup somewhat similar to the Total War series outside the battles, but probably a lot more streamlined.

 

What will be interesting is to see how the heros play out. Because they've admitted heros will be in there.

Will heros have special vehichles like Luke's X-wing, or will they add bonuses to the capitol ships they stay in...or what...hmmm...I'm officially curious. lol.

[OverlordAngelus]

I think in the strategic mode of play, the player will be able to buy things with credits and that each planet controlled will increase the number of credits generated over time (lets say 1 planet would generate 50 credits every minute).

 

Each planet would also have its own bonus, maybe controlling Corellia would give a 5% bonus on credits generated by all planets etc.

 

Structures could be built on planets, things like shipyards which are needed to build fleets and barracks which are used to train ground forces.

 

Ground forces are then loaded onto a fleet which you can send off to battle.

[darthfergie]

eh, I hope it's a little more complicated than that...a fixed resource system for each planet is kinda...nye. I mean you wouldn't expect to mine for resources and stuff like that on Coruscant. More like all you factories and such would be there rather than farms and mines. ya know?

I mean sure you might be able to make money off of taxing the factories and such...but that's probably more complex than they'll make it.

Although it might be pretty good to have bonuses for planets if they arn't going in depth. (if they were though, a high population would be bonus enough with such huge taxes coming out of that region, etc...but like i said, I don't think they'll end up making it a Total War game...bit more streamlined than total war)

[Nairb Notneb]

In Rebellion, the resource management was very simple, each planet had a different amount of raw material sources. You would set up a mine and a processing station. You had to mine and process material to build anything. In order to be able to build something you had to have manufacturing points. For every pair of mines and procing plants on each planet you had you got 50 points. Everything cost manufacturing points to build plus time.

 

I imagine something in a more realistic manner going to happen here.

[Jan Gaarni]

Actually, it didn't have building points either.

 

How fast a planet was able to produce a troop, or TIE Fighter, depended on how many barracks, or shipyards, that planet had, and what type (normal, or advanced).

 

How many units, ships, and fighters, plus special units (commandos, recon-droids/Longprobe Y-wing, etc...), different construction facilities (building, barracks and shipyards), and planetary defence installations (ion cannons, turbolaser cannons, shield generators) you could have at any time, depended on how many Maintainance Points you had.

 

Maintainance Points was dictated by how many pairs of mines and processors (1 mine + 1 processor = 50 points I believe) you had thruout the galaxy.

[Kroven]

will be good anyway, but it would be nice if there was just the focus on the units so there will be more focus on combat/strategy

[Admiral Vostok]

I hope there is resource management and base building, and I'll be very interested to see what form it takes.

 

Sure the resource system in DoW was very simple, but it still existed. I'd argue that that style of resource system is much better suited for the Warhammer 40,000 universe than a similar system would be for the Star Wars universe. Star Wars has always stood out amongst sci-fi for feeling very realistic, and I think a traditional resource gathering and base building system is the best way to go for a Star Wars RTS.

[Jan Gaarni]

I believe base building will take place outside of combat mode, the way I understand it.

 

So, if you haven't gotten your defenses up propperly by the time the enemy comes knocking on your door, well, sucks to be you then.

[Guest DarthMaulUK]

My defences will be ready....just ask anyone I play against on Sundays! ;-)

 

DMUK

[Nokill]

Originally posted by DarthMaulUK

My defences will be ready....just ask anyone I play against on Sundays! ;-)

 

DMUK

hehe the only thing i mostly do is make small bases evrywhere all getting minerals and making units and when i got enuf troops *pretty fast mostly* then i will do a full spread of atack on the enamy that is stil shooting a small base of mine