Those working on this mod do so in their own free time and for no pay.
Show your support for them by enabling ads on this site!

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Pali

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 ... 40
1
Also, I set the space pop cap to 120 for every faction if that would cause any serious issues

It definitely changes faction balance, and does so in the NR's favor I'd say.  With how spacing works in EaW, if you can largely fill the screen with ships, then quality will beat quantity every time, as the quantity advantage can't actually be brought to bear - there's a limit to how many ships can be in combat with each other at any given moment because you can't just cram everything you have into firing range.

Think of the Battle of Thermopylae, or really any famous battle involving the ancient Greeks.  The Persians had a massive quantity advantage, but because of the terrain, they couldn't bring that advantage to bear, so the 300 Spartans and assorted other Greeks were never at any one point truly outnumbered.  This allowed their advantage in quality to be decisive during the first couple days of fighting, as the Persian troops simply weren't equipped or trained to the same level, so the Persian troops that engaged the Greeks head-on were slaughtered.

It's pretty much the same thing here.  If the NR can't be effectively outnumbered by the Imperial factions, it will win just about every fight, because pound for pound they have better ships (especially in later eras).  Fighter swarms can't be limited this way, so theoretically the Imps should be able to at least win the fighter battle, but the AI is terrible at concentrating its fighters - so it can't really take advantage of this, and NR fighter quality will mean that an NR player should be able to establish fighter dominance as well.

2
Star Wars Discussion / Re: Strike Cruisers vs SSD
« on: April 04, 2018, 08:07:29 PM »
You can crew 15 strike cruisers per ISD, and yes you'll have more guns and troops.  But you're also possibly not using them as efficiently as the ISD does its own troops, guns, and so on. 

Most members of a naval vessel's crew aren't troops or pilots or gunners, they are engineers, technicians, maintenance crews, logistics officers, flight deck crews, cooks, and all sorts of other roles need to be filled on a ship to keep it running.  A single large vessel will need a larger such custodial staff than a smaller one, but it won't be proportional because a lot of these kinds of duties scale very well - a crew 15 times larger doesn't need 15 times as many cooks when you have automated systems in place to assist those cooks, but when you have 15 ships, you DO need 15 times as many cooks because each ship needs its own set.  The same applies to all the other support crews, and it also applies to things like engine components, sensor systems, main computer cores, structural supports, and many other systems.  Having more ships means you are multiplying how many of these roles need to be filled, which can be an inefficient use of your resources.

On top of this, there is the matter of attrition.  A zergling rush may well work, but it is going to take heavy casualties before it wins.  Say you have a Kaloth battlecruiser to take out - a ship a third the size of an ISD that a star destroyer can handle with ease and with minimal damage making it through the ISD's powerful shields.  Say you send 15 strike cruisers at it rather than an ISD.  You may kill the Kaloth even faster... but none of your ships individually have the shields or hull integrity to handle a return volley.  So while you blast it with your opening round, they spend their opening round firing back and killing one or two or three of your strike cruisers.  The ISD can handle this with almost no losses of its own beyond perhaps a handful of TIEs, but the strike cruisers probably will lose a cruiser or two in the process.

There is also then the matter of command complexity.  Let's look again at an ISD vs a Kaloth, which we see happen in I, Jedi.  There is a clear command hierarchy aboard the ISD, and maintaining crew coordination is fairly simple, which allows the ISD to fire devastating broadsides that overload the Kaloth's shields instantly - but had those weapons not fired in sync with each other, had the Kaloth's shields had time to absorb the turbolaser bolts as they arrived individually rather than all at once, the Kaloth can survive the volley and continue to fight back (Corran survives an ISD volley on a passenger liner by causing this to happen).  With your 15 strike cruisers, coordinating your fire is a lot harder - you have to maintain ship to ship communications which are vulnerable to jamming, you have to maneuver your ships properly so that they can all engage the enemy together, and rather than a single order being given to a single senior tactical officer directing a single weapons crew working on a single computer system, you have 15 orders being given to 15 captains to pass to 15 tactical officers directing 15 weapons crews on 15 computer systems.  You may have more guns on your 15 strike cruisers, but making those guns work together with the same efficiency of an ISD's is a LOT harder.

And to top it all off, the Emperor wasn't wrong regarding the psychological impact of larger ships or weapons.  One giant ship is a lot scarier than a bunch of small ones.  Over and over again we see the impact an ISD's appearance can have, how its sheer size can be unnerving even for veteran officers and pilots.  Every second that your enemy's mind is focused on simply how big and scary you are is a second they aren't fighting you effectively, a second in which fear can take hold and cause them to freeze up, or to surrender without even fighting in the first place.

The key is to find an ideal balance between all these factors (and more).  Thrawn believed that the ISD, with its own TIE fighter support fleet, best represented that balance in the Imperial Navy, and I tend to agree.

3
Stand down Dragon, That throne belongs to Stannis. A just and qualified King. It is also his by Right.

Depends on how you're defining Right there.  Stannis was next in line after Robert, true, but Robert was a usurper who seized the Iron Throne from the Targaryen line that created it in the first place - prior to Aegon's conquest there was no single ruler of Westeros, simply seven independent kingdoms.

Personally, I think Stannis would've been a terrible king.  Not because he was a bad person or incompetent, but because he was terrible with people - a king needs to maintain the loyalty of the lords and play them against each other, and Stannis never showed a talent for playing politics of that nature.  He's respected, but neither loved nor feared, and come winter his inability to inspire or motivate the lords would've torn the kingdoms apart as they tried to survive the onslaught.

Of course, Dany's not all that great a queen either, nor Jon Snow a great king - but these two are younger and more malleable, more willing to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes, so the potential to grow into the roles is there.  Stannis was too old and too stubborn to change his ways.

4
The Lounge / Re: Processor
« on: February 24, 2018, 02:21:34 AM »
I tend to rate Intel a tiny bit higher if gaming is the primary intended use of the PC, as their processors tend to push individual cores a bit harder (and most games still aren't designed to run on more then 2-4 cores at most despite 10-core processors being released), while AMD's are a bit better for running multiple processes across the cores... but the differences are fairly minor in the end.  An Intel processor costing $500 is going to be pretty similar in overall performance to an AMD costing the same, though each will do certain things slightly better than the other.

5
The Lounge / Re: Marxism, Socalism, and Communism.
« on: February 18, 2018, 09:33:00 AM »
Note: the following is based on my limited understanding of Marxism and the history of socialism and communism, and I should not be taken as an expert or authoritative source regarding any of the subject matter at hand, only someone providing food for thought.  If you find scholarly or historical sources that contradict what I say, I almost certainly deserve less benefit of the doubt than they do, and the reasonable course of action is to assume I am in error and they are correct. (edit: I originally had a much longer post because I'm drunk and post-happy, but I deleted the majority of it as extraneous)

Socialism and communism were seen by karl Marx as the perfect world

Not quite.  As Corey pointed out quite eloquently earlier in this thread, socialism and communism are not the same thing, and Marx foresaw socialism as an economic and political ideology that would grow within the wealthy industrializing societies of his time - the UK, central and western Europe, and the USA especially being where he expected support for communism to grow with the most strength, given the rapidly growing class of industrial laborers in those societies.  I don't know that Marx necessarily saw a socialist society as a "perfect" society, whatever that entails, but he definitely expected a socialist society to be the natural result of growing economic disparities among the wealthy and working classes once the working classes realized just how much they were getting screwed by the wealthy.

So who knows, maybe the next few years of US politics will finally prove him right. ;)

6
Forum Games / Re: Last Person to Post Wins
« on: February 18, 2018, 08:05:35 AM »
how long can this last

You'd like to know that, wouldn't you?  The question is probably eating away at you, a tickle in your ear when you want to sleep, a twinge at the back of your mind when you're trying to solve another problem, a phrase that won't change languages no matter how many you speak and is forever unknown.  It never goes away, and no answer will ever come, whether you spend an hour or a year upon it, whether you approach it sober or drugged to high heaven.  It is the question that creates your existence, that causes your ending, that defines your limits as a thinking being.  It is a question that you will either be able to answer in a manner that will never satisfy you, or that you will never answer at all because the answer is beyond your paltry understanding of reality, causing satisfaction to be forever beyond your reach.

It is, like this entire post, bullshit, and it can last as long as it is spewed.

7
Imperial Civil War Tech Support / Re: Won't launch
« on: February 18, 2018, 07:55:16 AM »
The more details you can provide, the better you can be helped.

Do you own Empire at War Gold through Steam, or another version from another source (GoG, CD, etc.)?  If so, which version from which source?

Did you download the mod and install it manually through ModDB, or through the Steam workshop?

When you attempt to launch Empire at War and Steam asks if you want to launch EaW vanilla or Forces of Corruption, are you selecting FoC?

If you go into your Forces of Corruption folder on whatever drive you have Empire at War installed on, do you find a folder at "\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Star Wars Empire at War\corruption\Mods\Imperial_Civil_War" or the equivalent of it if  it isn't a Steam install?  Does that folder contain folders labeled "Data" and "Documentation"?

Windows 10 shouldn't be the issue, as I have no problem playing the mod on a Windows 10 PC.

8
Was it ever talked about in the novels of the science behind hyperspace travel

Nope.  In fairness, few sci-fi franchises delve into the depths of their FTL systems, for the simple reason that they are all fantasy: warp drive, hyperdrive, wormhole travel, quantum gates... as far as modern science is concerned, they may as well be alchemy 500 years ago.  Some of the ideas sort of fit into either relativity or quantum mechanics, but for the most part they are simply plot devices, intended to move our protagonists from point A to point B so they can meet the antagonist at point C at the right time.  So far as modern science is concerned, Star Wars hyperdrives are magic.  Warp drives as presented in Star Trek are equally magical, and though the Alcubierre Drive makes a noble attempt at making them simply hypothetical such a drive still is reliant upon the hypothetical discovery of types of matter that may well not exist.  The Expanse's Epstein drive is probably the most realistic "sci-fi engine" in modern sci-fi, but that's because it doesn't allow for FTL travel, it simply allows sublight travel to be done at economically-sustainable acceleration rates via a hyper-efficient ion engine (ion engines are already a real thing, though they are nowhere near Epstein-levels of efficiency).

Star Wars has always been high fantasy in space rather than hard sci-fi.  Expecting it to live up to the demands of hard sci-fi series is a recipe for disappointment IMO.

9
The Lounge / Re: A idea involing the Admiral's Lounge
« on: February 18, 2018, 07:15:29 AM »
I don't post on this forum nearly as much as some people, and I'm pretty far from the rank of a Grand Admiral, but I hardly see how it makes me less of a fan.

It doesn't - I may hold the rank, but I don't at all think that I am a more valuable contributor to this forum than you are, and someone like kucsidave has quite literally gone from being a brand new forum personality to a vital team member just in the time period covering me being counted as an "admiral"-level or better poster - he's contributed to the mod a significantly, massively greater degree than I have in a fraction of the time that I've been a regular participant on these forums (which has been what, 5 years or so now?  Longer?).  Simple post counts have never been how the team here have judged community contributions, at least not from my perspective.  At best I give semi-regular feedback, and that's somehow enough that I was offered the position of an official beta tester, and I'm not going to even try to pretend that I've lived up to that title as well as I'd have liked to... so I can promise that simply being labeled a grand admiral, or a tester, by the forum software is NOT how one should judge the quality of their contributions to discussions here.

It may not mean much, Tierce, but as far as I'm concerned you and I are of equal rank. :)

I don't think a separate chat for admiral's lounge-rated members is needed, nor do I think it would bring much in the way of benefits.  As someone who is not on Discord, and whose primary interactions with the Thrawn's Revenge community occur here on this forum, I certainly have a bias toward supporting community activity based around this forum and its chatbox and other social amenities (private messages, levels of forum access, etc.)... but, cognizant of that bias as I am trying to be, I fail to see how a separate chat/forum would benefit the mod in any significant way.  What would it add that cannot already be supported by the current forum?

10
Forum Games / Re: Last Person to Post Wins
« on: February 17, 2018, 07:09:19 AM »
"We don't have to win.  All we have to do is fight."

Challenge: name the person quoted, and the source material.

11
Forum Games / Re: Last Person to Post Wins
« on: February 15, 2018, 01:09:26 AM »
Yeah, but then you're stuck going to either Mexico or America after the taco.

12
Star Wars Discussion / Re: First Order's Origins?
« on: February 13, 2018, 07:20:48 AM »
I've not read any of the new canon books that are post-Endor, but I've seen the new movies - so I have no idea at all what the First Order's origins are. ;) Doesn't really bother me though.  Superpowered forces coming out of nowhere is an old Star Wars trope, and at this point I'm pretty cool with it showing up.

13
Forum Games / Re: Last Person to Post Wins
« on: February 13, 2018, 07:05:37 AM »
I don't.

14
The Lounge / Re: Could Japan have won the pacific war?
« on: February 13, 2018, 02:27:18 AM »
It is easy to forget the importance of events in Europe. However, the USSR did fight Japan in Manchuria during the last weeks of the war. Any speculation is incomplete without considering the impact of the Soviets turning their attention eastward.

Had the fighting in the Pacific died down after a Japanese victory in the summer of 42, with Japan being recognized by the US and other Allied powers (which were in no condition to oppose Japan in the Pacific at this point) as ruler of a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere involving most Pacific islands west of Midway and north of Australia (including New Guinea and Indonesia, and any already held or soon-to-be-seized territory in China and Manchuria), I honestly wouldn't expect the USSR to declare against Japan in late 45.  They'd have had 3 years at that point of uncontested fortifying of their new holdings, along with having successfully secured the time and territory required to develop the resources to support their expanded military.  The Soviet Pacific fleet was of minimal strength, and couldn't have possibly stood up to an IJN that hadn't been smashed by US naval power - hell, even in late 45 in the real history the Soviet Pacific fleet was a pathetic thing consisting of only a few dozen light ships, and while the Soviets were able to push Japan out of Korea and Manchuria they were in no position to invade Japan itself.

15
The Lounge / Re: Could Japan have won the pacific war?
« on: February 12, 2018, 10:45:45 PM »
Agreed regarding US resolve, which makes me think stopping at Midway after a Japanese victory would have been the smart move - prior to the war I doubt most Americans could have named Midway, but Hawaii was already “ours” in people’s minds and was well on the way to statehood.  Stopping after a Midway win and seeking a truce that recognized Japanese supremacy in the west Pacific would have been Japan’s best hope (and Hitler tried asking Britain for a similar treaty after conquering France), but it is definitely questionable that the US would have accepted such.

16
The Lounge / Re: Could Japan have won the pacific war?
« on: February 12, 2018, 05:38:05 PM »
Winning in the sense of conquering the US was never on the table.  Winning in the sense of hurting the US enough that it wouldn't keep fighting over control of the Pacific?  Still highly unlikely, I think, but Midway going the other way would've made it at least a possibility.

What I do think the video is wrong about is that the Japanese would not have been able to take Midway Island had the naval battle gone their way.  Yes, US troops managed to take islands defended by larger numbers of Japanese troops later on in the war, but this was done under cover of naval and air supremacy that could support landings and diminish the ability of Japanese land forces to concentrate strength effectively.  The US garrison was about equal in number to the Japanese landing force brought along, and I see no reason to simply assume that Japanese naval and air dominance couldn't have supported their own troops just as effectively - if Japanese forces were as pathetic as this video makes them out to be, they'd never have conquered the Philippines as easily as they did (23,000 US troops killed/captured there).

Now, even had Midway fallen, Hawaii by this point was already too heavily defended by land-based planes to make a naval invasion feasible, so Midway would've been as far as the push east went - Japan afterward would have likely tried to consolidate control over Pacific islands to deny the US potential bases among them to support a counter-attack.  Forcing the US to accept de facto Japanese control over the Pacific at this point would not have been beyond the realm of possibility, especially as the US and other allies were trying to concentrate their efforts on the European front and things weren't going the Allies' way there yet either.

17
Forum Games / Re: Last Person to Post Wins
« on: February 12, 2018, 03:52:08 AM »
Even inside one group the reaction might be so different. I like the way The Lord of the Rings nailed it in the films, it is interesting for larger audience, but still captivating by being exact in certain moments (not the Helm's Deep part for sure :D). J.J. Abrams tried to do it, and been somewhat successful.

The LOTR films had the good fortune to be novel adaptations that were allowed (and had the budgets) to hew very closely to an already-written legendary tale.  And yet, even they had people criticizing them for not including figures like Tom Bombadil, or events like the razing of the Shire.  The Hobbit films, which tried to expand upon their source material, largely failed in their ambitions.

18
I suppose it comes down to intent. If someone does a military strike against a factory it's with the intention of putting the factory out of commission, worker deaths are not the desired outcome, they are a byproduct. Collateral as it were. In contrast with the executions, the goal is to instill terror by deliberately targeting and publicly killing the workers themselves, so the factory becomes the secondary objective there, it's about an object lesson with the deaths being the primary objective.

I missed the question, but this is largely my answer.  I'd only add that there is also a significant difference not only in intent but also in execution.  Bombing the factory kills the workers as an unfortunate byproduct of serving a military goal (reducing your enemy's capacity to wage war), but if you've already captured the factory then there is no longer a legitimate military purpose to be served by harming the former workers - your enemy's capacity for war will not be harmed by the act.  The very ruthless might argue that dealing with prisoners diminishes your own capacity to wage war, and they aren't entirely wrong in that as you do have to devote resources to securing and maintaining captives, but pretty much every international treaty regarding rules of war has refused such reasoning as inhumane - and the strategic fallout of such massacres can make one's overall military situation worse, as knowing that they will not be treated well will reduce the willingness of enemy soldiers and civilians to surrender, while simultaneously harming one's situation politically by making it far more difficult to claim any moral high ground over one's foes.  German soldiers in WWII were FAR more willing to surrender to UK or US troops than they were to Soviet ones, and with good reason.

19
The Lounge / Re: I maybe going mad
« on: February 11, 2018, 09:04:58 AM »
So long as you're not having any trouble distinguishing your dreams from reality, I say enjoy the craziness.  The most vivid dream I ever had was when I was 20 and on a big vampire kick, burning through Buffy and Angel with a friend while also reading the first few Anne Rice books, and to this day I have the very clear memory of drinking dry a 4 year old girl and loving every moment of it.  Probably the weirdest dreams I ever had were when I was playing a MUD (a text-based multiplayer RPG) called Aabahran: The Forsaken Lands and I quite literally had dreams that were in text - the best analogy I can give for the experience is the scene in The Matrix where Cypher points at the screens showing matrix code and says "I don't even see the code, just blonde, redhead, brunette..."  In my dreams I saw text, yet it was always immediately translated in my dream-mind as images and events as well, if that makes any sense.

If it starts to be too much, try to lay off the fiction for a bit - read some nonfiction books, go outside, chill with friends, immerse yourself in reality for a while.  An active imagination is a good thing, an imagination that runs away with you can cause problems.

Now, if you're having trouble keeping your dreams and reality separate, I'd say seek professional help immediately.  Mental health isn't something to play around with any more than physical health is.

20
Forum Games / Re: Last Person to Post Wins
« on: February 11, 2018, 08:47:03 AM »
I would likely classify just about everyone on this forum as belonging to group 1, the hardcore fans - the descriptions of the categories are meant to conceptualize how immersed and invested one is in the Star Wars universe, rather than be hard definitions that one has to meet every condition of.

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 5 ... 40
Those working on this mod do so in their own free time and for no pay.
Show your support for them by enabling ads on this site!