Population caps

[Guest DarthMaulUK]

After the recent Q&A, it was revealed that the game will have a population cap of upto 20 units (in space) and depending on how many recruitment points you have on the map(if you are the attacker on land). Also, if you are defending your position, you are limited to 10 units but will be able to build defensive structures such as turrets.

 

Some of you are unhappy at this but at this stage, it is unclear what actually equals one unit. When playing Dawn Of War, most ground units equal 2 points on the cap. When a unit is produced (say a trooper) he appears with 3 or 4 troopers in that squad, which you can 'recruit' more to, so it ends up being a squad of 9 or 10, which, at a guess is something you will be able to do in EaW.

 

I guess that fighters would work on this same principle. As for larger units, I would think that they take up a little more, like 2 or 3 points with the Death Star taking 5-8.

 

Empire At War isnt about having just 1 or 2 giant battles (unless of course you are playing Skimirsh) to finish the game off. Its about Galactic dominance and trying to recreate the struggle both factions had for total control and for freedom....

 

DMUK

[killerluk]

the spacecap of 20 made me wonder about one thing

you cant have 2 of your fleets attack a enemy fleet at the same time?

 

if you can how would it work on population cap? if you where to have a fleet of population cap 20 and another of population cap 10 ? would the other fleet only get active if ships are destroyed?

 

and if the population cap is 20 how come that video at lipzeig or something has a ****load of sd's and fighters in it :s wouldent that be +20 cap?

[shadowsfm]

just becouse the fleet cap is 20 dont mean you cant have more fleets in other systems

 

maybe 20 is enough if that video had 20 cap too

[MasterJack]

the pop cap should'nt be a problem, the units are probably groups of units (such as the stormstroopers from the at-at) and you can raise your pop cap by capturing planets,building space stations and capturing landing points. A fleet of 20 is more than enough to control at once. If you lose that battle you can send in another 20 to finish them off from another location. Should add quite a bit of stragey to the game.

[Admiral Sith]

Strange, before Delphi said that the pop limit would be as unoticable as the one in Generals

[THrawn((9]

yes but a cap of 20 units in space 20 units depending on what they are is more than enough for the defence of any planet. but for attack fleets no planet would be defended by twenty cruisers anyway if it is then its supious. so wouldnt need anymore ships than 20.

[FleetAdmiral AK]

eh 20 SD's or mon calamaris is enough for me.

[Athanasios]

Well, 20 DS or Calamaris attacking one single planet is not bad, but im worried about the galactic conquest.............i don't really like the idea of having 40 planets and 0.5 DS/Cal at orbit...........

[FleetAdmiral AK]

Well, 20 DS or Calamaris attacking one single planet is not bad, but im worried about the galactic conquest.............i don't really like the idea of having 40 planets and 0.5 DS/Cal at orbit...........

 

just reinforce strategically positioned planets and the other ones will get Hypervelocity guns Ion cannons etc...

 

p.s what do you mean by DS? death stars?

[THrawn((9]

just reinforce strategically positioned planets and the other ones will get Hypervelocity guns Ion cannons etc...

 

p.s what do you mean by DS? death stars?

 

hecant mean DS as we know you can only build one Death Star. so i think he means SD's just got them the wrong way round.

[Mag Trinix]

I dont think it will be a problem if like some people are saying 5 fighters equals a pop of 1 and one SD is 2-3 then you can still have particulary large fleet,you could have 5 sd's if there pop is 3 and still have 25 more tie-fighters im sure that would be enough ships,and something else is your strategy,Say if you like trying to destroy there forces in a head-on fashion your gonna need a larger fleet but if you hit there flanks you wont need as many ships and youll be doing more damage and youll be taking less punishment than if you went head on,So in the end diffrent people are gonna want diffrent pop caps

 

Mag Trinix

[killerluk]

still i thought this game was a chance for us to do the starwars 'our' way so if you want to have a HUGE rebel fleet going at the heart of the empire for a attack you basicly cant cause you limited by this cap i for one would have loved to be able to get my rebel side to get more ships then the empire just to see how the empire would like a piece of their own tactics hehe ... guess ill have to hope for a update/mod/expansion to do that

[Jeff]

 

I'd say that's a pretty good sized fleet. The population cap is fine how it is.

[FleetAdmiral AK]

http://empireatwar.filefront.com/sc...ts/News/17585/4

 

I think thats fine.

[Garbageben]

 

I'd say that's a pretty good sized fleet. The population cap is fine how it is.

With my prediction of the pop cap that picture has a strength 18 rebel fleet against a strength 18 imperial fleet. Not bad at all for speculation.

fighters = 1

light cap ships = 1

med cap ships = 2

heavy destroyers = 3

 

I guess it all depends on interpretation though. The fleet in that screen looks good enough for me.

[Teradyn]

All I can say is, that there will be some serious fixing to do with the ships and their respective values (shields/weapons/fighter capacity/etc). You can't afford to not have the values right with such small forces. Remember the battle of Endor? More than 20 Star Destroyers alone, a communications ship, the Executor Star Dreadnaught, and the second Death Star. 20 pop cap... bah, I think it is to support the rediculously low computer requirements for a 2006 game.

[FleetAdmiral AK]

actually if you look in return of the jedi there are 19 star destroyers and one SSD and one unfinished Death star. only 21 things!

[Jeff]

I wonder if the created TIE fighters from the star destroyers will count as population since they are made in the game?

[FleetAdmiral AK]

http://www.eaw-fr.com/screen/eaw/137.jpg

 

look at it the pop limit says 15/20 this gives us an idea of how much the things take up (p.s there is adeathstar there proboably taking 6-8 of it).

 

I wonder if the created TIE fighters from the star destroyers will count as population since they are made in the game?

 

as far as I can remember they do not add to the pop limit but they have their own pop limit(invisible) however since you are a modeator you proboably know more than me.

[killerluk]

i wonder how much the ds will cost you in pop cap and if it will add something back (perhaps through research give more pop cap so it evens up again)

[rwps]

I think that you have no pop cap when you are in galactic wive. So that the pop cap of 20 is how may ships you can use in one attack force.

[alecsuba]

There is a Population Cap in the Galactic Mode afaik. Its increased by the number of planets you have etc. In a Realitic way this is accurate to have. An Empire wouldnt have the same troop capacity for instance wiht only 2 planets that a 40 planet empire has

[Givike]

Same principal goes for Rome: Total War. People who play it regularly should know this. The more towns the more pop = more troops. If you have too many troops, more payments (duh) <b>but</b> you can't keep recruiting from the same town. Eventually there won't be enough people inside! So ya, same but I doubt it'll make that much difference anyway.

 

Every RTS starts slow, when we start in the galaxy we'll have barely any resources. We still have to travell over several planets before even encountering an oposing force. By the time we do, our empires will have grown economically and military. Therefor I'm not very worried. Nor against the popcap.

[Athanasios]

http://www.eaw-fr.com/screen/eaw/137.jpg

 

look at it the pop limit says 15/20 this gives us an idea of how much the things take up (p.s there is adeathstar there proboably taking 6-8 of it).

 

[off-topic]

 

What i can see for this image is that DMUK was just right when first posting it asking if this is a pop-cap and if this is the max pop-cap for space mode.........just bullseye........what a coincidence [...]

 

[in-topic]

 

I think that pop-cap serves only the aim of achieving low specs. In my humble opinion, this is not such a good move. I know, the 20 number may finally be enough, no objection. But if my,yours,his computer can handle much more demanding games/programs so as, referring to EaW, we can have 70+ SDs/Cals/frigates/fighters fighting the same time on screen with blazing lasers/missiles/explosions happening all around and all the lightning/shading/anisotropic/antialasing filters set on full level, and all these running smoothly and beautifully, why should we stuck to the 20 number?

 

There should be an option to set the pop-cap (both for space and ground) to everyone's preference, exactly as everyone can twickle the graphic details.

[FleetAdmiral AK]

I have a weak graphic card but Dawn of war plays fine it never even slows down for me even in the biggest battles ''For the emperor!'' I guess I would be able to handle40-70 ships before things started going bad.