Topics

161

News & Updates / Support Your Local Corey Today

« on: July 24, 2016, 11:26:48 PM »

Hey everyone, this isn’t quite mod news (there'll be a post for each of the three projects coming really soon, though, so hold tight). I just wanted to take a moment to explain a side project I've been working on, off-and-on for the last year, but which I intend to put a lot more effort towards going into August and beyond.

Corey Loses is a youtube channel and stream I hope to use for a few different purposes. Primarily, I want to use the last 10 years of experience I've had modding to try to bring a hopefully-entertaining or at least moderately educational perspective on modding and game design processes, primarily while playing different mods and video games but hopefully also with tutorials and other behind-the-scene type things. Hopefully it'd be a way to introduce some people to new mods or games they may have missed, but it's also a way for me to play some games I was never able to, and also preview different builds of Thrawn's Revenge mods. It's also a way to organize multiplayer games for those mods with community streams (which I've been doing mostly-weekly for Ascendancy)

I've got a fair bit of content already posted (mostly Ascendancy previews, at the moment) if you want to check it out, and hope to really step it up starting in August. If you want to give it a look and follow or subscribe, I'd really appreciate it. If there's anything you want to see me do, such as previews or taking a look at a specific mod or game, let me know here or leave a comment or message there. As with my work on TR, I try to be as involved with the community for this as I can. As we go, I’ll hopefully learn better video editing and also address some of my system performance issues which can cause some frame stuttering in more resource intensive games.

If you would like to content I make in other ways, you can also consider turning off adblock if you watch the videos, or if you want to support it directly, the Hitbox page has a monthly subscription option. I also have a Patreon page set up, if you feel so inclined. If you can’t or don’t want to do any of those things, I totally understand and hope you enjoy the content. I’m doing this because I love making these kinds of content, not for the money (as the 10 years of modding will attest), but school and living are expensive, so the more this is able to sustain itself, the more time I’ll be able to devote to making all kinds of content and hopefully, the better the quality will be.

Youtube: www.youtube.com/c/CoreyLoses
Hitbox: www.hitbox.com/CoreyLoses
Patron: www.patreon.com/CoreyLoses

162

News & Updates / Regime Change

« on: July 18, 2016, 05:15:14 AM »

A new way to time-travel.

163

Multiplayer / Community Game Day - 5PM EST

« on: July 09, 2016, 06:44:27 AM »

Today at 5PM EST we'll be having another community match. As usual, it will be first-come first-served, to take part or to watch, head over to www.hitbox.tv/CoreyLoses

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164

News & Updates / Stick Them With The Pointy End

« on: July 08, 2016, 05:22:37 AM »

As we hinted at in the Crimson Command preview image, we're giving the Remnant players the ability to align with different Imperial leaders for some (pretty significant) changes to their tech and in some cases units in order to give them more options while playing, and also to work in some more of the better points of ICW. It will also have a pretty big impact on the hero choices coming in 1.1.

Once Remnant heroes and the tech trees are fully implemented, we'll have a full write-up, but the first of the possible leaders is Natasi Daala. One of her techs grants her access to the Crimson Command variant of VSD IIs, based on her canonical capture of that fleet while reuniting the Imperial Warlords.

Another of her unique aspects is the ability to potentially have two Executor-class titans active at one time, which you can see here. The choice to side with Daala comes with only one hero; her, in the Knight Hammer. Unlike other heroes, however, she has a never-say-die attitude, and can be recruited again if she dies (a function which will be unique to her) based on her tendency to not actually die and randomly pop up again.

We'll talk more about heroes in an actual news post, but you could say some will be good at flying solo. Others tend to eclipse the competition...

165

News & Updates / A Base to Call Home

« on: June 26, 2016, 07:14:37 PM »

Alongside the Warlords themselves, 2.2 will have a bunch of other changes. One of these changes is something I'm working on (which will also be used by Bullet in AotR) is adding static defense turrets to base buildings. Here's the Imperial barracks with a standard AI turret built in.

These will be present as targetable hardpoints on the buildings, similar to the Underworld palace. 2.2 in general will have a lot more hardpoint representation on ground.

166

News & Updates / What I'm Doing

« on: June 16, 2016, 04:25:22 AM »

We've said we have no plans to make a full Star Wars mod for Stellaris, and that's still the case. However, what I do intend to do is release a few small themed race/faction packs to allow for Star Wars ships in the game. This will be mostly aesthetic, with some possible portrait, logo, etc changes but the main point is to have different ship collections for different factions.

These are the ones I currently plan on doing:
- Empire
- New Republic
- Empire of the Hand
- Galactic Republic (Yeah, the Clone Wars one)

Maybe more later, too.

There's no real timeline for this, and while it may turn into some other modifications since that's kind of a thing I do, this is currently just a side thing I'm working on because I want it and don't like the possibility of ever having free time in my life again. I'm going to regret posting this.

167

Ascendancy Discussion / Community Game Schedule - June and July

« on: June 13, 2016, 05:30:08 AM »

As promised, we're trying to have a few game nights each month for people to play Ascendancy with other real-life humans. My work schedule at the moment prevents this from being as often as I'd ultimately like, but here are the match days and times for the upcoming months. We're trying to accommodate as many timezones as possible. There will be different matches to accommodate people with different versions of Sins, and keep in mind if you have Steam you can opt-in to 1.83 to play at those times.

Saturday, June 18th - 2PM EST
Saturday, July 2nd - 5PM EST
Sunday, July 3rd - 2PM EST
Saturday, July 9th - 5PM EST
Sunday, July 17th - 5PM EST
Saturday, July 23rd - 4PM EST

Once my work schedule changes in August, we'll hopefully be able to have some more variety in there.

All of the games will be organized and run on my stream at www.hitbox.tv/CoreyLoses and also posted on my Youtube Channel afterwards. If you want to participate, I'll typically be setting the games up about 10 minutes before the start time and will open them at the start time. We'll typically give some notice on the facebook page, my youtube channel, steam, or the forums right before it starts. You can also click the little blue and white heart on Hitbox for notifications.

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168

News & Updates / New Republic Trailer & 10 Years of Thrawn's Revenge

« on: June 07, 2016, 05:51:34 AM »

Trailer #2: New Republic

Before we get into all the news and celebration, Jin has finished the second of the narrative faction trailers (voicever once again by UnassumingWhiteGuy). Last time it was the Remnant, and now it's the New Republic's turn. As with any exciting video game trailer, we find ourselves listening to a speech in front of the senate on fiscal policy. If there's one thing we all learned from the Phantom Menace, it's that galactic financial and trade policies are what's really interesting.... Right?

Thank You, Community!

Without going into too much detail, 10 years ago, on June 7th 2006, Videoteck, Zer and I began Thrawn's Revenge with no idea what we were doing after I had wanted to put Grand Admiral Thrawn into Empire at War as a hero. In the course of the last ten years, that scope has evolved quite a bit and our second project, Thrawn's Revenge II: Ascendancy was announced on October 27th, 2012.



On behalf of the entire team, past, present and future I would like to thank everyone who's supported us in any way during these ten years. There's no way we could ever have made it this far without your encouragement, suggestions, let's plays, critiques and everything else. At the end of the day knowing that so many people enjoy what we've done makes it all worth it. I can't speak for the team directly on this part, however what started as a haphazard mess of ideas from my 13 year old mind has turned into one of the most fantastic and formative experiences of my life and I will always appreciate the opportunities I've had to meet, speak to and work with so many talented individuals.

We still have plenty of modding on our two current projects (and maybe other stuff?) left in us though, so back to what we're all here for.

Imperial Civil War 2.2

While we're still plugging away at fleshing out the new warlords, a significant portion of the recent work into 2.2 has been in cleaning up the mod's files. Some of this is purely to make development easier, but on the player side it should mean a few performance enhancements and also the rectification of some of bugs and inconsistencies in unit behaviours, especially pertaining to units that appear in different eras and factions. Smallpox is still working on implementing the new Diplomatic Influence system as well, which gives a new non-military option for conquering some areas, for those who are so inclined. We've got a few other things planned as far as different mechanics and features but as ever, we're waiting to see what the hit to performance is before saying anything is set in stone.



Content-wise, 2.2 will see some changes to pre-existing factions, not just the Warlord changes. Some units which you may recognize from Ascendancy are also making their way into ICW, such as the Allegiance, Intego, Alaria, Bellator, Gladiator, Secutor and more. The Empire of the Hand in particular is seeing some roster changes, which have been summarized (from an Ascendancy perspective but the main points are the same) here. We're still making a few final determinations on what new content will and won't be included, but some things which were removed from previous versions of the mod will be returning, in one form or another.

Ascendancy 1.1

I recently made a news post about some of the general gameplay changes impacting already-existing features between 1.0 and 1.1, but instead of focusing on that, we'll talk a bit about the new things that are coming your way. As a release without any new factions, we're using 1.1 to work on the galaxy you're playing in and also to round out the tech trees and rosters of the existing factions in a few places. Diplomatic and defense tech will be pretty prominent in this, along with a slew of new content for the Hand especially; two starbase models, two new defense stations, two more capital ships and two redone fighters.




In galactic changes, you'll be seeing forces from various different groups represented in both random events and as militia, along with other random events and unique encounters related to events in Star Wars history. When traveling to different planets you may come across Centerpoint, the Maw Installation, The Wheel, or an angry horde of Duskhan League Thrustships. For random events, there's a pretty large spectrum; from bands of roving Warlords and Ssi-Ruuvi incursions on one end, to Lando publishing a book on the other. You may want to take an Epidemiology course before playing as well, because there's also a random event for the Death Seed plague which can hit one of your planets and begin to spread throughout the galaxy on occasion, and we may even be doing something with the Krytos Virus. If you have a favourite bit of Star Wars history (Legends, not nuCanon; sorry Kylo) which you think we should include as an event or encounter, let us know in the comments or on our forums and like with any other suggestions we receive, we'll gladly take it under consideration.


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169

News & Updates / 1.0 Post-Release Roudup

« on: May 31, 2016, 05:59:35 AM »

Hello everyone! It's been a few weeks since the release of 1.0, so now that we've had a reasonable amount of time for the dust to settle I want to take a few minutes to discuss the state of the mod, common feedback, and our own perceptions after having played more of the mod ourselves, read all the feedback, and watched as many of other people's playthroughs as we could get our hands on. We're happy with the direction in which we are headed, but as always there's plenty which is yet to be done, and also some unforeseen consequences of some of what has been done.



One of the first and most important aspects upon which we are still working is game pacing; the early game can sometimes be painfully slow, but the resulting buildup ends with Sins typical problem of having trillions of unusable resources accumulated, and travel speeds are also fairly slow. Part of the slow pace in the early game is he result of an attempt to scale back that late-game overflow, but the end result didn't actually do what we wanted it to. It hurt the early game too much, without fixing the late-game problem. As a result, we're playing with resource scaling in a few different ways. Firstly, planet upgrades are being made cheaper, so that it's less punishing to expand early in order to gain the credit income you need to start supporting a fleet capable of dealing with militia. This may have some balancing implications for the factions we need to look at, but it should make things a bit easier. We're also adjusting income rates to be relatively higher in the early game, and to scale less with research. In order to address the initial overflow problem we were trying to fix, we've got a few other ideas, chief among them being the reworked Upkeep System (and yes, before anyone asks again, mole miners will more than likely be a part of this if we can swing it properly).

 The other point of feedback as far as pacing is the travel speed at which ships go between planets. The slow pace of this is actually a result of the greater scale of the map compared to the base game, considering each map is built off of a consistent-yet-huge repository map I've put together of every planet in the Star Wars galaxy I could stand to plot without losing my mind from the tedium. We've recently increased the base speed of all factions (Empire of the Hand more than the others) and will play with that until we're happy with it. Because strategic movement and positioning is supposed to be important, but we don't want to punish people who want a bit faster paced of a game, the differences between all of the game pace options in the pre-game menu will also be significant and able to tailor the game to different desires.




Another prominent issue is the role fleet tenders have come to play in battles. Fleet tenders were meant to be a way to encourage diversity and attention to fleet logistics, able to keep your ships in prime condition between battles and differentiate between players who choose to opt for full firepower for one engagement vs those who choose to bring less absolute power to the table, but more long-term deployment capabilities. The problem here ended up being that one of the best strategies for certain factions is to build several of the most powerful capital ships you can get and spam fleet tenders with them (which also leads to some fights being more drawn out than they should be, as well). As a result, we will be nerfing this strategy in a way which should theoretically not remove some of their utility in battle or between battles. Instead of just having a cooldown on the ships performing the repairs, the ships being repaired will also have their own internal cooldown; the number we're currently using is a 60 second cooldown between repairs, with a helpful little particle indicating when this is in effect. Numbers will, of course, be adjusted as necessary.

This brings us to another thing we're going to be working on for 1.1- documentation, both ingame and out. This is partially a result of the systems still being in development, but some players end up being confused by certain systems when they're new to the mod, especially fighter supply. We'll be working on particles, menu, and tooltips as avenues to make this information as obvious and natural for players as possible (for example, a similar particle to the repair cooldown one will exist for a ship which lacks the Supply to spawn another squadron). We're also thinking of a manual similar to what we've done for ICW. More of this will come as we discuss some of the UI rework OzWolf has been working on. If you're a forum member, you can click on that link to see some early WIPs of it. Essentially, we want to make it more possible for Bane to beat Gul next time.


This model is being improved still, too.


Lastly, I want to contradict what I said earlier and address a specific bug (and also one of the major features of the 1.83 patch as far as modders are concerned). This is the issue where Starbases can sometimes prevent the Galaxy Gun from destroying actually a planet- we're working on a fix for this. One possible solution is to use the newly-implemented ability to ruin other peoples' worlds via buffs that now exist in the game, however we intend to use that specific feature for something else involving a faction that is not yet present. I wonder what will Hapan then, if Yuu Sii what I did there. Hugs and Chisses!

This is all, of course, to say nothing of our usual little improvements between versions or the other areas of the mod being specifically focused on in 1.1- namely, random events, unique encounters, defensive structure changes, and other things meant to enhance the "Star Wars feel" of the game, like pushing out more VOs, debris, and the like. As far as the VOs go, if you want to help with that, Davis is currently running a thread on the forum for it.


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170

News & Updates / Active Duty

« on: May 24, 2016, 01:08:05 AM »

The month isn't over yet, but so far May 2016 has seen the most forum activity ( http://thrawnsrevenge.com/forums/ ) in a single month since July of 2014, so here's a screenshot of the Intego, one of the New Empire of the Hand capital ships, in ICW to celebrate. We want to thank everyone for their continuing support and enthusiasm as we approach our 10th anniversary in a few weeks, but more on that when it hits.



For more information on the Intego and the other upcoming Hand changes, you cans see the dev diary about it here. It's specifically about Ascendancy, however the changes apply to ICW as well.

Other than that, if you have any feedback, suggestions, ideas or just want to discuss strategies or counter the massively pro-Imperial bias of most of our current posters, you to join the discussion. Making an account only takes a moment, but if you don't want to do that, guests are able to post as well. The forums tend to be where we post the most "behind the scenes" development news and previews of content before it gets released or is ready for public consumption.

171

News & Updates / Behemoth

« on: May 23, 2016, 05:15:33 AM »

We've been asked a few times if we're doing anything for ground in 2.2, and this is a small part of the answer to that question.

The All Terrain Tactical Enforcer is in many ways the precursor to the Imperial AT-AT. It served as a main battle tank for the Grand Army of the Republic during the Clone Wars, but ever since the declaration of the New Order it has been relegated to more and more remote areas of service. In Imperial Civil War 2.2, it servers as a primary vehicle for some more remote Imperial groups with restricted access to the AT-AT

Compared to the AT-AT, it's actually not a direct downgrade. Although it doesn't have quite the same anti-vehicle power, its main turret still packs quite the punch. It also has 6 small anti-infantry turrets (all with independent targeting and movement) which cover areas the AT-AT is vulnerable in.

There's still a little bit of work we need to do to finish the model, including fixing up some animations and adding a Stormtrooper to the turret's seat, but other than that it's ready to re-enter the fray, after 8 years sitting in my unused models folder.

172

News & Updates / [Release] Ascendancy 1.0F Released, Reflections & Upkeep Preview

« on: April 29, 2016, 04:11:41 AM »

In this three-for-one news post, we release 1.0, address our overall plans for 1.1 and announce a new feature for 1.1.

...Ascendancy 1.0F Released...


While the Moff Council and the New Republic have begun their bids for control of the galaxy, in the Outer Rim and beyond, more contenders await their chance to strike. Can the Empire of the Hand unite the galaxy against the impending external threats, or will the Pentastar Alignment find the opportune moment to strike and establish a new form of Imperial galactic leadership?

...For Those New To Ascendancy...
Play as the New Republic, Imperial Remnant, Empire of the Hand or Pentastar Alignment in the post-Endor Star Wars galaxy, each with unique ship rosters, abilities, playstyles and tech trees.
Conquer the Star Wars Galaxy on several maps with various configurations, featuring several new planet types and canon planet placements.
Completely redesigned UI, and overhauled graphical effects.
Several overhauled and all-new gameplay mechanics, ship systems degrading with damage, and the ability to entirely destroy planets.

...New in 1.0F...
New Capital Ships: Intego (Hand), Lucrehulk (Alignment), Torpedo Sphere (Remnant)
Fixed multiple bugs
Several balancing changes
Some new tech and abilities
Many performance optimizations

As opposed to being a content-oriented release, 1.0F (or 'full') is intended to fix several of the issues in 1.0 before we work on breaking the game again for 1.1 For a more comprehensive overview, see here.



(Strikeouts mean that version is Pending - I'm uploading them on Friday when I'm home from work around midnight, so they should be up by Saturday afternoon)

[Download Ascendancy 1.0f for Rebellion 1.82 (Steam) - Zip - ModDB]
[Download Ascendancy 1.f0 for Rebellion 1.83 Beta (Steam Opt-In, GoG) - Zip - ModDB]

The version for v1.82 is available now, with support for 1.83 coming as soon as possible

Before playing the mod to increase stability, also enable Large Address Aware to bypass Sins' 2GB memory limit issues. LAA is included in the download, simply open it, set the mode to basic, find your Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion.exe file and click the box to enable large address aware, then save. This only needs to be done once, so if you have already done it for other mods you can skip this step.

...Game Days...
In order to facilitate multiplayer matches for our players, we'll be doing pre-planned community game nights on predetermined weekends with Ascendancy players and developers. The first of these days will be Saturday May 7th, at 2pm EST and will be hosted on lead developer Corey's personal stream, at www.hitbox.tv/CoreyLoses . Access for games that day will be first-come-first serve, and depending on how people feel about it it, we'll look at different ways to expand this.



...Reflections & Projections...

Even though the last version just released a couple pixels up on this page, we have a pretty clear idea of where we want to head with the mod. The goal with the releases up to 1.0f has been to get solid basis for the first four factions. One of the most common questions we've received has to do with the identity of the factions represented by the "coming soon" portraits on the faction select screen, and we're proud to announce the identity of the first new faction will be... the first thing we discuss in the development of 1.2.

Faction-wise, 1.1 will deal with finishing off the existing four factions and filling in the blanks left in their tech, structure and unit rosters. This polishing of the Hand, New Republic, Alignment and Remnant will also involve visual reworks for their less aesthetically pleasing ships, like the Dreadnaught and the oft-discussed Bellator. Unfortunately, Robin had work to do in order to make sure he could eat so we were not able to finish the new Bellator for 1.0, but visual updates will be a major part of 1.1.

If the path to 1.0 was setting up the factions within themselves, the main thrust of 1.1 is to work on how they interact. Without getting into too many specifics (there'll be different news posts to detail specific changes), this will involve things like diplomacy, but also trying to work in some of the narrative feel of the Star Wars galaxy. One of the biggest complaints about Ascendancy, especially from Imperial Civil War players, was the lack of a role characters and canon events played in the mod. Most of our work in this area has been saved for 1.1, from canonical map starts and 'militia' forces, to random events pulled from canon, and, yes, heroes.

Another major area of contention are the unit and structure pips with tails and indicators around them. We're still trying to find an effective way to get the necessary information across while reducing some of the visual noise the current setup puts in screen. We would ask that people who question why we would do such a thing instead of just plain silhouettes like base Sins should keep in mind that the silhouettes of ships within Sins factions are very different from those in Star Wars, many of which share entire hulls, let alone similar shapes.

The first major feature added for 1.1 can be found below...


...1.1 Preview: Upkeep...

Please note that this is a preview for a feature being included in 1.1, not the 1.0f version available above. Specifics may change between now and release based on testing and feedback.

One of the biggest issues which brings down Sins of a Solar Empire is the way the late-game devolves into a tedious slog, where the determining factor of a match is not who has a better fleet, economy or strategy, but instead who gets bored last. Rather than large fleets and empires resulting in a climactic battle or series of key engagements, the end-game would drag on as players could easily accumulate thousands of unusable resources and immediately replace any losses. Their reserves would also be so large as to render most territory losses meaningless. Part of this can be ascribed to income rates, but its also partially the fault of how upkeep is handled; regardless of how many ships you have, once you've upgraded your capacity you're stuck at a flat income cost. You can't make that cost too big either, or players wouldn't be able to afford it and any loss would be impossible to adjust for.

No individual change can fix all of this, however we fhave a new way to handle upkeep which should require a bit more thought for fleet composition, increase the value on individual ships, and significantly change the way late-game engagements are thought about.

Instead of fleet upkeep being based on a flat rate (which remains), there is now an additional component where each individual ship has its own upkeep cost in credits. This is broken into tiers based on different characteristics of the ships, and provides another mechanic with which we can differentiate ships and even factions. This mechanic means that having a fully-capped fleet requires not just saving and spending properly, but having an income which can sustain it long-term. The more ships you have, the less money you have rolling in, and the less effectively you can replace losses you've sustained.

This also provides a sneaky way for us to potentially improve performance. Where before 10 players on a 100 player map could realistically survive and end up with 10 fully-capped fleets, making gameplay slow to a crawl. With these changes, that should be a lot more difficult to accomplish economically, since there are only so many ships that can be supported at once. As players get eliminated, more space gets freed up and remaining players can afford to expand more.



Figure out you're expanding too much, or losing too much territory to sustain your ships, or even just not at war and want to focus output more on infrastructure instead of military? No problem. You can also mothball your ships from any of your frigate or capital shipyards. Mothballing completely deactivates the selected ship, making it a sitting target, however it also removed the upkeep costs associated with keeping it active. This will hopefully provide players on both sides with interesting strategies to take advantage of. There will also be a helpful indicator above the ships, indicating that they are mothballed.

Moreover, this should also make it more viable to engage in hit and run tactics. We want to make infrastructure more valuable to begin with, whether by making it more expensive or take longer to build, but aside from that, previously if you had a smaller fleet you really had no choice but to engage or try to expand your own to take it on at some point. Our first attempt to solve this was buffing smaller fleets with well-trained fleet commanders, but that was not the answer. Now, if you're able to outmaneuver a player with a bigger fleet and chip away at their territory and economy, you can eventually force them to start mothballing or even scuttling their fleet if they want to continue producing anything or taking territory.


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173

News & Updates / Dev Diary: Expand the Hand

« on: April 24, 2016, 05:40:08 PM »

For the first time in four years, we have added a new capital ship to the Empire of the Hand. Over the next week or so, you'll probably see a lot more of this particular ship, but before I get into what this particular ship is, I want to address the Empire of the Hand's capital ship roster in general.

As most people are aware, the Empire of the Hand has only ever had three capital ships in released versions of Thrawn's Revenge; the Phalanx, Syndic and Ascendancy. We've always wanted to bump that up to six, however  the difficult bit has been designing them. Also, whenever people hear "new EotH capital ship" they tend to be a little scared of what that might mean, power-wise.

On the whole, it is true that the Empire of the Hand capital ships have always been more powerful than those of other factions. This has never been the long-term intention, instead its a result of how few they had. Where other factions can spread different roles and duties among different ships, the Empire of the Hand ships have had to pull double or triple duty while waiting for their roster to expand. Ultimately this means each new capital ship for them will come with changes to the other existing ones. Before addressing the new ships, I'll do an overview of what the ultimate role of/changes to the existing ships will be, along with what versions those changes will be implemented it.



Ascendancy-class Star Destroyer (Update for: 1.1)
The Ascendancy has always been the jack-of-all-trades but master of none for the Empire of the Hand. Going forward, it will be getting an altered design, for one thing, but more importantly it will become a dedicated carrier. So, it will be taking a small hit to its direct combat stats while gaining more fighters, and abilities more oriented to its fighters. This more specialized role also means it will be replaced as the "starting" capital ship by the Syndic.

Syndic-class Destroyer (Update for: 1.1)
The Syndic will probably be the least changed of all of the EotH capital ships. The main change here is its replacement of the Ascendancy as the starting capital ship, which means it will be taking the drop garrison ability and no longer require research to build (meaning it might get a slight drop to its combat stats, but that's unlikely). Essentially, it will be put more in line with the ISDI, and remain as a sort of generalist ship.

Phalanx-class Heavy Destroyer (Update for: 1.0)
We've always been happy with the idea behind the role of the Phalanx- it's a fast, well-armed ship which sacrifices a bit of defense in order to be able to engage multiple smaller threats at once. This is based on the idea that the Empire of the Hand in canon covers and protects a vast amount of space, and typically has to deal with numerous small threats (ala the Vagaari, or the Killiks later on) as opposed to any single gigantic threat. However, ingame they've also needed to be defensive tanks, making their defense sacrifice nonextsiant, and titan-busters, making their "multiple small threats" aspect moot as well. With those roles being filled elsewhere, the Phalanx will be taking a hit to its defensive capabilities, and losing some of its ability to focus all of its firepower on one target, although its overall firepower should remain the same.



Now, we get into the new ships.

Intego-class Heavy Destroyer (Added in: 1.0)
The first new ship, the Intego, is the one you'll be playing with very soon. It and the updated Phalanx are sort of the result of splitting the Phalanx's role. where the Phalanx is keeping the offense, the Intego is the defensive tank of the Empire of the Hand. It is also unseating the Phalanx as the largest and bulkiest of the Empire of the Hand ships, coming in at 2250 meters, about the same length as a Secutor or Allegiance. The Intego has significantly less firepower than the Phalanx, however it is much better defended and has abilities that aid in that, including the Bulwark ability. Where the Phalanx is the ship that goes out to hunt down threats to the Hand, the Intego is sort of a well-supplied, beefier mothership.

Springhawk-class Assault Cruiser (Added in: 1.1)
This and the next ship you won't be seeing until 1.1, however the Springhawk, named after the former flagship of Thrawn as a Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet Commander, is the glass cannon of the Empire of the Hand. It excels at single-target damage, whether that's against planets or enemy capital ships or super ships. On the flip side, it has incredibly low defenses and is alcking in smaller weaponry for use against other threats, making it easy to overwhelm when on its own.

??-class ?? (Added in: 1.1)
We'll talk about this later. It's not a titan.

So, that's a brief rundown the the planned Empire of the Hand capital ships, to say nothing about defensive structures and starbases, which will also get a lot of attention in 1.1

With the completion of the Intego, we're ready to put the finishing touches on the non-beta 1.0 version before working on 1.1. I'll be spending this upcoming week finishing up some of the text and icons needed for release, and then hopefully can start the release process this Friday when I get home from work. Before people start spamming F5 on Friday and leaving comments asking where I am, I should clarify that I don't get off until about 11:30PM or home until after midnight, so it should be up sometime on Saturday of everything goes according to plan.

If you would like to help in the completion of the mod, we have a subforum with open positions on the team on our forums.

Follow Ascendancy
Forums - Facebook - Steam Group  - Mod DB

174

News & Updates / AT-TE Animation Preview

« on: April 22, 2016, 02:25:59 AM »

Slevered has been working on animating the AT-TE model, which will be used alongside (or in place of, in some cases) the AT-AT for some Imperial factions in 2.2.

175

News & Updates / We Want You!

« on: April 14, 2016, 06:37:18 PM »

We're coming up on the tenth anniversary of the start of Thrawn's Revenge. In 10 years, we've managed to raise our standards and consistently improve the quality of work we put out, however with such a small team and a long period of time, this leads to some inconsistency between older and newer materials. One of the biggest goals we have in Ascendancy 1.1 and Imperial Civil War 2.2 is to try to rework some of the older, worse materials in the mod, as you can see with this new Ton Falk Carrier model (formerly known as just the Escort Carrier).



In order to more quickly/fully accomplish this goal, we are looking for people to help fill a few more positions within the team, including concept artists, modellers and texture artists. If you have some experience and are interested in any of these positions, you can find more details here:
Recruitment Board

For anyone not interested, just look at the picture.

176

News & Updates / Enter Entralla

« on: April 13, 2016, 04:19:20 PM »

For the past few versions, we've been using Bastion as the de facto capital of the Pentastar Alignment. This is not entirely accurate, so in 2.2, we've added the actual capital of the Alignment, Entralla.

177

News & Updates / Capital Punishment

« on: April 08, 2016, 03:06:51 PM »

It's now just over two months  since the release of the 1.0 beta, and with the official release of Rebellion 1.83 nowhere in sight, we've decided to make some executive decisions. We have a ton of major changes we really want to get in the mod for 1.1 but can't since we want to make sure 1.0's full release is out first and doesn't break anything else. Instead of waiting on the 1.83 patch to come through, we'll be releasing the full 1.0 for both 1.82 and the 1.83 opt-in beta, and just hoping that nothing they change between the beta and the final 1.83 release requires us to fix anything else.

We have a list of all the changes here, however there's one major area which I want to address separately; capital ships. Some people have mentioned wanting a fifth capital ship for the Remnant. While they technically already have a fifth capital ship built in a different way (the World Devastator), which is also arguably the most powerful in the game, we are adding three new capital ships to the mod for 1.0; the Lucrehulk for the Pentastar Alignment, the Torpedo Sphere for the Imperial Remnant, and an as-yet undisclosed new capital ship for the Empire of the Hand (the first of three additional capital ships which they'll be getting 1.0 and 1.1). The Empire of the Hand one is the final part of the mod we're still working on for this release. I'm going to be out of town and therefore not have access to certain necessary programs to finish it off until the 19th, but the release shouldn't be too long after that.

The Lucrehulk will serve as a generalist utility capital ship, replacing the ISDI as their starting ship. With less firepower but more defensive capabilities, as well as some economic impact (via Embargo), it should serve to tone down the PA's early game where the Gladiator tends to reign supreme, without hurting them later. We'll keep an eye on how all of this breaks in this version for potential changes in 1.1, but we're fairly happy with where that is now.The Torpedo Sphere is a large, siege-oriented capital ship with limited anti-ship abilities or weapons. They saw some use from Warlords in the post-Endor period, perhaps most notably at the Battle of Tralus when Grand Admiral Grunger rammed the Executor-class Aggressor into one.

Rather than just provide screenshots of these three new ships, Corey has been doing individual Let's Test series on his personal youtube channel and stream to preview the new changes. Keep in mind the questions he answers in those videos are fairly off the cuff and with beta footage, so they're not always 100% representative of the final result.

Here is the first Lucrehulk preview video, the Torpedo Sphere ones should be going up this week:

The full playlist can be found here.

178

Discussion, Suggestions & Feedback / GC Discussion: Difficulty Ratings

« on: April 03, 2016, 02:10:19 PM »

Because of our attempts to represent the relative strengths and weaknesses of different factions at different times in the post-Endor era, different GCs have always provided different levels of difficulty for different factions by design. This can sometimes cause confusion to newer players who, for example, jump straight into From the Ground Up. So, one of the things we're doing in 2.2 is adding a section to the GC descriptions for difficulty (ala what you'd find in faction select for a Total War game).

As the people who've played the mod most, we want your opinions on which GCs are hardest are hardest, and which are easiest, broken down by faction. For simplicity's sake, we're keeping this to  five different levels (Easiest, Easy, Normal, Hard, Hardest).

• Reply
• Quote

179

News & Updates / Elite Fighters

« on: February 20, 2016, 06:34:36 PM »

Although superior fighters are meant to be a strength of the New Republic, the fact that they had fewer compared to other factions tended to make their superiority insignificant. The lack of fighter shielding in Sins also tended to make this an issue. In order to make their superiority significant via stats would require some pretty weird numbers that in the end wouldn't really feel right.

Instead of just pure stats, we've decided on an alternative compromise to help represent both shielding and other aspects which make the New Republic fighters a cut above their Imperial counterparts. Every New Republic fighter now has a 75% chance to dodge any given incoming attack. This should mean that even with superior enemy numbers, the New Republic has a better chance of coming out on top.

180

News & Updates / 2.2 Faction Profile: Warlord Zsinj

« on: February 07, 2016, 07:14:22 PM »

With Ascendancy 1.0 in beta and soon to be fully released pending the official Sins 1.83 update, the old behemoth that is Imperial Civil War has been de-mothballed and pulled back into active service alongside her little sister. In the 2.2 announcement update, we announced that we would be doing a GC based on the Galactic Civil War era, however ultimately the team has decided this will no longer be the case. Rather than using those resources to expand the timeline of the mod, we'll be continuing to fine-tune and polish the area between the Battle of Endor and the beginning of the Vong War. This will involve a lot of things, some under the hood and some more obvious, but the first thing we'll be talking about, and the biggest change, is the disintegration of the Warlords.

Rather than being a single brown mass on the galactic map, the Warlords are being split into three fully-playable and distinct factions, representing (in our opinion) the biggest and most important of the Warlord groups; Warlord Zsinj's Empire, Treutan Teradoc's Greater Maldrood and Sander Delvardus' Eriadu Authority. As the faction which should be most familiar to our players and which requires the least 'new' units, Warlord Zsinj's Empire will be the first to be addressed.



Zsinj's Empire

Capital: Serenno, Dathomir

One of the first and ultimately most powerful groups to denounce the authority of the Imperial Ruling Council, Warlord Zsinj's Empire formed around Serenno and his flagship, the Executor-class Iron Fist, in 4ABY. Initially he was ignored by the New Republic and managed to coexist with all except the neighbouring Greater Maldrood. During this time, he subsumed the Corporate Sector Authority and parts of the Hydian Way, ultimately moving his capital to Rancor Base at Dathomir, whose Nightsister populace he began to exploit. The New Republic takeover of Coruscant bolstered his forces even more, as former Imperial loyalists flocked to his Empire. Ultimately a coalition of New Republic, Hapan and Imperial forces led by Han Solo, Prince Isolder and Teren Rogriss defeated Zsinj.

Key among his forces are the Raptor Troopers, an elite corp of Stormtrooper-esque soldiers, as well as the TIE Raptor, a unique fighter type available only to Zsinj. Zsinj will also be taking some of the Pentastar roster based on the Corporate Sector Authority, including a few new units in 2.2, while the Alignment gets replacements from their units in Ascendancy.

Space Unit Roster
Executor
Lucrehulk, ISDI, ISDII, Invincible, Allegiance
Nebulon-B, Nebulon-BII, Quasar, CR90, Carrack, Dreadnaught, Strike Cruiser, Gladiator, Neutron Star, Immobilizer-418, Providence
TIE Raptor, TIE Interceptor, TIE Bomber, Authority IRD, Warpod Pinnace

Ground Unit Roster
AT-AT, Juggernaut
AT-ST, Chariot LAV, AT-AA, IDT, SPMAT, TIE Mauler, TIE Crawler, 1H Repulsortank
Unique Infantry: Raptor Troopers, Nightsisters

Heroes
Warlord Zsinj - Iron Fist
Tetran Cowall - False 181st
Terrinald Screed - Demolisher
Apwar Trigit - Implacable
Gethzerion
General Melvar

As ever, if you have suggestions for this faction, feel free to post them in the comments on our forums or on ModDB.