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41

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / Salvage Operations

« on: June 01, 2017, 10:53:56 PM »

In my games I have found that I make relatively little use of my space construction slots on any planet that is not on the front line.  Noticing this, I was thinking about what use could be made of them. The idea that has snagged me so far is having a moderately expensive structure called a "salvage operation" which has a small chance of spawning a ship for you.  Usually it would spawn weak/old ships, with a rare chance of spawning a better vessel.  What do you guys think?

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42

Discussion, Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Possible Republic Unit Roster?

« on: June 01, 2017, 09:47:18 PM »

With the sheer number of clone heroes, they either should only be recruitable one at a time, or should be attached to other heroes, like deploying from a space hero's ship to the ground, or accompanying a Jedi, otherwise the clone heroes will be too many in number, bogging down your hero selection.

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43

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback

« on: June 01, 2017, 09:44:57 PM »

I agree that the SSDs get extreme, but maybe only the player should be able to build them, and let the AI build a battlecruiser?  I just have to sigh every time I fight a fleet of 3 executors.  But I think what would maybe round out their roster more would be the Praetor truncated variant as a carrier battlecruiser, like heavier version of the Secutor.  It would fill a different role in their roster, that of a heavy carrier, and wouldn't have the sheer fire power or mass of other large ships, but more mass than a secutor.

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44

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback

« on: May 31, 2017, 01:30:34 AM »

lovely job on the map, but a few suggestions:
1. the PA. it is show on your map only half it's size, so maybe add attack lines or modify it to symbolise it's greater size.
2. similarly, the Cuitric hegemony looks a little big for 1 sector.
3. you mentioned the Oplovis sector, but didn't fill it in.
4. can you add the NR attack movements of the first two years, to show it's growing size
great job over all though.
as a side note on this, could you make a serious of  maps for the rest of the civil war?

edit: scratch the PA size comment

The Ciutric Hegemony's size is based on its control of the two planets you can see on the map, Ciutric and Axxila, each faction is also basically a fair amount of guess work, many of them may have owned more or less territory between ABY 4-5, but they are all roughly in the right place and the right size. 

The Oplovis sector is that green section between the PA and Ciutric, there is white line connecting the area to the title, but it is accidentally in the same layer as the green territory marker, and so is at the same transperancy, might fix in future.

I'd love to make more maps, no promises, but I will have a look at it.

Edit: @Corey:  Has anyone ever asked you guys to make the Nar-Shadda type star destroyer seen in the Force Unleashed games?  It also appeared up in Zinj's territory at Raxus Prime and would make for a unique mid-range star destroyer being between a victory and a venator in size and utilizing design elements from the Imperial and Venator SDs, meaning that it could likely be cobbled together from existing models.  Just a thought.

On that note, the Imperial Remnant has no ship between the levels of ISD and SSD, like the Praetor for Eriadu and PA or the Allegiance for Maldrood.  If that is intentional then disregard the following, but if they should have a ship in that class, there a couple of options.  There is the Tagge battlecruiser, named after the Core Worlds based company that built it for the Empire, and were supposed to be bigger than ISDs, but not SSD size.  There is also a Praetor II variant that appears without a name in Admiral Giel's secret armada, it is 90% a Prraetor, but has truncated bow like a Gladiator which could make a carrier, similar to the Secutor, or a missile battery battlecruiser. There is also a battlecruiser of unknown type with a unique design captured by the pirate Crimson Jack after it was damaged in a battle against rebels, and the cruisers Praetor mark 1 and Procurator, but no images outside of fan imaginings exist for them.

2 other thoughts, I know the Zann are essentially a FoC only creation that doesn't fit well, but has the team ever thought about using the Aggressor-class star destroyer from that faction that was, supposedly, a design stolen from the Imperials.  It probably doesn't work for any of your factions, I am just curious.

Lastly, the Twilight incident from early in the Galactic war saw the use of a modified Victory class Star Destroyer with a weaker version of the Death Star's superlaser embedded in it.  This ship then just vanishes and is never mentioned again.  It is likely something that would never come to pass as there are more pressing issues, but it would be neat to have this ship appear as a rescuable mission/event in the wild space territories up near the Empire of the Hand as it was last spotted up that way.  Again, likely never to happen, just interesting that this ship and its plot thread were never completed in the EU.

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45

Discussion, Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Possible Republic Unit Roster?

« on: May 31, 2017, 01:17:26 AM »

Thus the CIS could be a weird military with glaring weaknesses but also great strengths.

What I find interesting, is that in most depictions of the CIS vs the clone army, the clone army can barely hold its own.  Most of the successes of the clone army were the result of the heroic actions of either Jedi or veteran Clone commandos.  Heroes should thus be one of the most important elements in the Republic army, while the CIS army should appear in large numbers and, despite terrible aim, should be very difficult to stop without brilliant tactics or heroes.  The biggest weakness of the CIS army and even navy, was not that they couldn't stand up to clones or deploy proper tactics, Grievous' terror and hit and fade campaigns were hugely successful, but that most of their heroes could not stand up to the Republic heroes, and the Republic was forced to adopt very unconventional tactics that often surprised the Confederacy.

Which brings us to the question- how is the Republic different from the factions in ICW? Might they be somewhat limited in a certain unit type? Unlike the NR and IR, they'd have few capital ship classes, but they would be very good from the outset- venator, victory, and dreadnought heavy cruiser. Might clone task forces be very small but very capable? What would make for a different playing experience compared to the IR of ICW? Obviously they ARE a proto-empire... but the team might not want to make them too much like that. 

Both sides seem to have a varied infantry line-up, so that might make them different from the regular infantry/elite set-up of ICW.

What do you all think?

The Republic army is, essentially, a lead up to the Imperial army, same with the navy.  Biggest difference is the sheer number of Jedi and the bolstering of their army by local forces of varied kinds.  The Republic, visually, is meant to look like it will become the bad guys, but are currently the good guys.  Its probably why lucasfilm had most of their fighters look like precursors to the Rebel fighters instead of precursors to TIEs, and why they have a vibrant colour scheme that often includes red, orange and blue, colours we have seen many times with the rebels.  At the same time, the look of clone armour, capital ships and walkers gives that direct link to the army of the Empire.

A couple of things I would love to see for the Republic would be; 1: The ability to construct orbital medical stations that could occasionally spawn clone units, representing Republic attention to medical care, or provide a moral boost as the clone forces know that injuries will be treated.  2: The inclusion of more Jedi as small bands of a couple Jedi, with a padawan or two and maybe a couple troopers or an R2 unit.  Lots of Jedi existed in the EU, thousands, and many died at the hands of the Separatists even before Order 66.  3: The amalgamation of certain heroes into groups, like is done in ICW with Han Solo and Chewbaca.  There are a ridiculous number of heroes in the Clone Wars era, and you do not want the entire upper corner of the screen filled with hero portraits.  An example of this would be putting Obi-Wan and Padawan Anakin together in an early GC, and later having Obi-Wan, Anakin, R2-D2 and possibly even Ahsoka in the same unit.  Or, if you want to split the two of them up, have Obi-Wan with Cody and maybe Rondo, the Red Arc trooper from the 2003 series, while Anakin could spawn with R2 and Rex, maybe adding Ahsoka if the mod makers want to use her.


Edit: Quote from Wookiepedia at the end of a long evaluation of legends material. "Thus is it is most likely that the Grand Army was combination of clones, draftees, and troops from local planetary armies."

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46

Discussion, Suggestions and Feedback / Re: What do you guys want in this?

« on: May 30, 2017, 07:14:48 AM »

For a slightly different take on the whole regional recruitment thing, a feature I personally love, make it instead/also so that certain buildings present hard choices in direction.  For example, the CIS is primarily backed by 3 or 4 companies, off the top of my head I can think of the Trade Federation, Techno Union, Banking Clan and Commerce Guild.  If one building slot on a world were used to say which company were 'backing it' then certain different droid options would be available.  All of these companies used certain droids, such as B1s, but each had a handful of unique droid types that only they produced, as well as a few unique ships.

In the same way, I agree with whoever made the post about this before, but the Republic should start out with Kamino as its only source of Clones, with expansion available after some time through the construction of Spaarti cloning cylinders, or something to that effect.

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47

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback

« on: May 30, 2017, 07:01:23 AM »

Makes sense.  With all this legends content to look at, what would you recommend?  (I have read the Thrawn trilogy and the Jedi Search trilogy)

Also, don't know if there is a place for it in the rosters of ICW, but the Gozanti cruiser/carrier has appeared in the prequel movies and the 2008 Clone Wars cartoon, admittedly not in use by the Empire, but would that place them far enough into Legends territory to be used if you ever wanted to?

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48

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback

« on: May 30, 2017, 03:25:53 AM »

Thanks for the response Corey!

Happy to hear you're enjoying it. As for your questions:

There's this. The ones who controlled the most amount of territory, enough to be considered real threats for significant galactic powers, would be the ones present in the mod as playable factions. People like Harrsk and some of the Grand Admirals were smaller, but not quite insignificant. There were some like Prentioch or Getelles who tended to control only one sector, as well.

Since we try to make sense of canon as a whole, we tend to leave out stuff that either has too many weird elements to properly fit in with the whole, or was too insignificant to impact the wider galaxy. Unfortunately, this fits into that category- nothing from it, to my knowledge, was ever referenced outside that particular roleplaying story, and even then they had minimal impact, especially considering how many new assets that would be for a faction that doesn't really fit into any other conflict. If we're gonna be doing dinosaurs, it'll be the Ssi-Ruuk.

Thanks for the link!  Don't know how I missed this before, but there are a lot of them, something like 30 in the first year alone.  And a number of them are far weirder and more powerful than the Moff Delurin fellow I found.  I had fun and made this map for ABY 4-5 because I enjoy making maps. 
http://imgur.com/XChQRGF


Also, didn't the Empire of the Hand recruit reptilians from Kariek or one of their planets?  If you ever made the Ssi-Ruuk in years to come it would be a neat resource crossover, assuming they looked at all alike.

We don't want to put even more CW assets into the mod, most were incredibly outdated and some like the Eta-2 were never really seen again. Stuff like the CW Y-Wing had been completely superceded by the more modern Y-Wing, which itself was almost entirely superceded by this timeframe. We've already basically overused them. When we were looking for a PA IPV replacement, we were posting a poll between a few options- the problem is really just that there's too many, not necessarily that we couldn't find one. Other TIEs are an option, but they tend to be pretty low priority as far as assets go.

I had only thought of it as a good doubling of resource use with FotR being worked on, but you make excellent points.  Still hope to see the VT-49 in the future, one of my favourite ships in Fantasy Flight's X-Wing.

I like most of the new ships except that new heavy bomber. The reason we don't pursue new canon assets, though, has more to do with the fact that it's a completely separate timeline, and none of those ships exist in L:egends. We'd have to make an entirely new mod, stripping out all of the EU ships, characters, campaigns and basically start fresh in a universe with, currently, far fewer ships and options generally.

It seems unfair that new-Canon can take whatever it likes from the EU, but that the reverse does not apply.  There was a statement at one point from a Lucasfilm employee that all EU characters still exist in Canon, but their stories don't.  This seems like a strange blanket statement since it clearly doesn't always apply, what with Kylo Ren/Ben Solo being an amalgamation of Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker or Jyn Erso being a new version of Jan Ors.  Still, it seems a shame that those working with EU material cannot apply that logic in reverse to take any planets, ships or even characters they want.

Also, wasn't the Raider developed by a collaboration between Lucasfilm and Fantasy Flight after the Disney buyout and the beginning of new-canon?  Wouldn't that make it a Canon only ship, and therefore not usable in your mod?  Not that I am complaining, I really like seeing the Raider in your mod, just curious.

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49

Discussion, Suggestions and Feedback / Re: Possible Republic Unit Roster?

« on: May 30, 2017, 02:54:10 AM »

I am very excited by the prospect of the Thrawn's Revenge team covering this era.  I have tried several other clone wars era mods and none of them feel complete, at least in the sense of playing them as a balanced game, something ICW does very well.

If you want a simple way of dividing up the war by eras, you could either do it through the Republic fighters being used, or through the sub-commanders of the CIS.  The fighters are how the 2 cartoons, both 2003 and 2008 display a clear progression in time.

ex. Fighters. Era 1 (Pre-War/Instigating Conflicts) Represented by regional planet starfighters and Judicial fighters such as the original Z-95, A-6 interceptor and Delta series
Era 2 (Early war) Represented by V-19 Torrents
Era 3 (Mid war) Represented by the introduction of 'Clone headhunters' and BTL-B Y-Wings
Era 4 (Late war) Represented by the introduction of ARC-170s
Era 5 (Post war/Separatist Holdouts) Introduction of TIE fighters

The core of the war is really only Eras 2-4, 3 eras, with the stretching of looking at the conflicts that led into the clone wars, like the invasion of Naboo, and the mopping up of Separatist holdouts after the official end of the war.

CIS sub-commanders:  The introduction of new separatist leaders, most of them some form of sith apprentice, also shows a progression, albeit a more confusing one, as the war drags on. The first sub-commander to appear during the pre-war conflicts is Darth Maul.  The Second to appear with the outbreak of the war (even though we learn after that he was involved in the plot the whole time) is Count Dooku, then Asajj Ventriss, and finally General Grievous.  The Separatist holdouts after the war's end also had their own leaders, but the central authority was gone.  Most of these characters overlap in some way, but each is introduced at a turning point in the story.

Maul is introduced when we find out that there is a hidden hand behind what the Trade Federation is doing.  Count Dooku is introduced when we have the creation of the CIS and the beginning of the Clone Wars.  Asajj is introduced as the war begins to pick up pace and spread throughout the Galaxy.  Grievous is introduced at a time when it seems the Separatists are gaining momentum and Anakin is being knighted.  Now this doesn't work as well as the fighter analogy since all of these characters are introduced before we even see the first arc-170s or even clone headhunters, and before everything that happens in the 2008 cartoon.  In my mind, to make continuity work, the whole 3D series has to occur during the montage in the 2003 cartoon that occurs after Anakin is knighted.  From that perspective I have only seen 1 or 2 continuity errors between the 2 shows.

Somebody also said somewhere that they didn't want regional forces to be included because the name of the war is 'Clone Wars'.  But . . . every medium we have seen, the movies, both shows, have displayed regional troops fighting in large numbers.  I mean, maybe just making them spawning on the ground to help whichever side they are supposed to be aligned with, but these regional troops played a huge part in the war.  Just to name a few, the Clone Wars has shown us Calamari, Quarren, Gungans, Geonosians, Twi'leks, bounty hunters, Mandalorians, Naboo humans, Umbarans, Dugs, Wookies and the Nelvaar (Spl?) fighting in battles.  But, and lets be honest, who doesn't want to invade Naboo with a Separatist army and mow over an entire army of Gungans?

Personally I would love to see some of the wackier Separatist inventions on the field.  We can likely expect to see some of the same units as from other mods, B1, B2, Droideka's, CIS tanks, crab droids, vulture droids, and hyena bombers.  But I want to see those cloaking, bomb-planting droids from the 2003 cartoon that attacked Ilum, or the Quarren mega-cannon, but especially the rare tank dubbed the 'de-foliator' which started off as a one off tank, but then reappeared in another episode of the 2008 show. The Separatist's love for mega-weapons and wacky ideas is what I like best about them.

The Republic does not get as wacky with its ground troops usually.  We have standard Clones, walkers, artillery, etc.  At least in film that is, I haven't read any EU books or comics for the clone wars era.  The space fleet is the best part about the Republic forces I think.  Lots of versatile fighters, a variety of evolving capital and support ships including older Republic ships, Pelta class and whatever regional ships they felt they had to press into service, like the bucket of bolts they gave Anakin in the 2008 show.

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50

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / Re: 2.2 Demo Feedback

« on: May 27, 2017, 01:15:02 PM »

Hey guys, just found this mod a couple of weeks ago, downloaded the demo and have been absolutely loving it.  The attention to detail and the effort you put into expanding upon a relatively poorly known and poorly represented part of the Star Wars story is awe inspiring.  Admittedly the only books from this period that I had read before were the Thrawn trilogy, the Jedi Search trilogy and the novel 'Return to Ord Mantell', but all the characters and concepts you including have gotten me looking into it a lot more, and enjoying the level of detail in the legends canon. Thank you guys so much for this mod!

I have a couple of questions/fan requests, and while I am trying to catch up with forum posts and Corey's video playthroughs, forgive me if I ask something that has already been answered.  Thank you in advance for any of these that you have time to answer and keep up the amazing work!

1: I found this interesting quote when reading up on the warlords, "The Empire has broken into six, maybe ten major fragments, ruled by warlords and governors." Apparently attributed to Luke Skywalker in 12 ABY, so it got me looking into how many notable Warlords there were.  The internet is not particularly helpful on this account.  You have already included/plan to include 9 of the most notable warlord factions, and I only found one other of any interest.  How many have you come across in your research/development?

2: As a continuation of the previous question, the only other warlord I found so far is the inspiration for my user name, and I really hope you guys will include him as a minor and/or acquirable faction in 2.2 or 2.3.  The Warlord of Wild Space was a Moff named Delurin who commanded a unique battleship named the Galaxy Dragon that literally had a draconic look to it.  He conquered a planet named Bormter to the Galactic north of Endor that was home to a reptilian race who he used as 'Dragon troopers'.  He also controlled territory all the way over near Ruusan at one point, on the other side of the expansion regions and he tried to take on the New Republic but was a little less than successful.  Also, he is never stated to have died or lost his territory as far as I can tell, unless he was at that meeting where Daala gassed everyone.  Check out his page on Wookiepedia, he seems like a cool side character.

3: You have teased a couple of times that a future 2.3 might focus on non-imperial factions.  What kind of factions would you guys like to work on if you had the chance?  Some of my favourites include the Hutts, Zann Consortium, Ssi-Ruuvi Imperium and the Chiss Ascendancy.

4: With the addition of the Bellator and Night Hammer capital ships to the existing Executor, Eclipse, Viscount and Vengeance, you have covered almost every major dreadnought class ship.  With only a couple types left, do you intend to include them all? I think all that remains are the Assertor Class, Mandator Class and couple of one off types.  Will other super weapons like the 'Eye of Palpatine' or the Death Star prototype be considered?

5: Some small requests for types of small craft to flesh out the outer rim factions and differentiate them.  The TIE Punisher heavy bomber as a recruitable squadron, the old BTL-B Y-wings from the Clone Wars as a launchable squadron from some of the older ships, ETA-2's as a launchable elite fighter in the interceptor slot if you ever make the mandator SSD (I like the idea proposed in legends canon that they were the inspiration for TIE fighters and given to elite imperial pilots), Old Republic V-Wings, TIE Advanced/avenger as a recruitable squadron since they had hyperdrive capability, Shadow Squadron (The last surviving squadron of TIE Phantoms)  And you said in one video that you were trying to find a replacement for the patrol craft for the PA, if you have not found one yet, have you considered using the VT-49 Decimator? or having the VT-49 as a separate unit?  It is about the size of the Millenium Falcon and served as a raider/transport/bomber/escort vessel.  It would do well against fighters, but be more maneuverable than most anti-fighter craft, and possibly even classified as a fighter itself (not sure if the YT freighter is a fighter), giving it a unique role in a ship lineup.

6: Lastly, I heard you comment about not having the manpower to pursue working on new-canon ships with all of the stuff you currently have on your plate, but if you did want any new-canon ships, what are some of your personal favourites/ones you think would help out your ship rosters?

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