Imperial Civil War vs Awakening of The Rebellion?

[Revan0123]

Hello gentlemen, I've been playing Steiner Modding Group's 'Awakening of The Rebellion' for the last few days and I'm really enjoying it

It sets the feel of all three factions (Well, Black Sun still need some work) and their advantages/disadvantages. When I'm playing as The Rebel Alliance, I feel like I have to...well, use strategies like The Alliance did (I.e. When I'm in the early stages of The Rebellion, I can only build a few capital ships of each type so I have to use them wisely).

Space battles are great (Apart from the 'torpedoes going through shields' part, that needs to be changed if you ask me) and I somewhat like the ground battles cause I have to use an actual strategy to beat some of the planet's garrisons (Atzerri, I'm looking at you).

But hey, what do you guys think of this mod compared to ICW? Comment below (And please, no bias... )

[Pali]

I enjoyed it, though the ignorant mono-lingual American that I am would prefer less of it in German. Only played so far from the Rebel end in the 2-way Rebel vs. Imperial campaign - I simply do not like the criminal faction's presence, particularly since they start off able to access their best units while the Rebels and Imps can't.  Mimics the way the Zahn Consortium was implemented, but in the wrong ways.

I liked their focus on scripted missions, though a number of them were somewhat confusing and could've used a bit more explanation to them.  Similarly, it would've been helpful to know from the start that a lot of buildings simply can't be build in the Rim - the Rebels HAVE to push into the Core to get their top-tier land units, as well as to start getting anything more than a pitiful income.  The biggest improvement it has was ground battles, I think, with the integrated infantry/rocket platoons being quite nice, as well as the commandos being a full squad with shields and various special abilities rather than just one guy with a sniper rifle.

The space battles... at first I enjoyed them a great deal, until later in the game, when I had already pretty much won (taken Coruscant, Kuat, Corellia, owned 3/4+ of the galaxy), when I realized that I'd never had any battle that came close to the scale you'd get in ICW, or RaW for that matter.  With the limited income and very high ship costs, even the AI on hard doesn't build a whole lot of ships, and so once you've set up your good couple of battles that take out their ISDs/VSDs (only a handful of each), you've got nothing but mop up for the rest of the game unless you just sit back for a while doing nothing.  The AI simply will not end up massing a fleet again that you need to worry about.  This'll happen in ICW and RaW, but not as early and not to the same extent - by the time it happens in these, it feels earned, whereas in AotR I felt like I'd just gotten my fleet together and was ready to rumble when I realized there was nothing to rumble with.  This problem of scale exists in other ways as well; the Executor feels WAY too small, and even the biggest campaign is only equal to a mid-sized ICW game.

Also, while I overall like the look of the space battles (a number of ship models are quite beautiful), I strongly prefer the massive firestorms of ICW or RaW to the "single shot equals the damage of lots of shots" style they went with.  I know it's meant to keep graphical needs and hardpoint counts down, but it doesn't really feel right.

[Revan0123]

I enjoyed it, though the ignorant mono-lingual American that I am would prefer less of it in German. Only played so far from the Rebel end in the 2-way Rebel vs. Imperial campaign - I simply do not like the criminal faction's presence, particularly since they start off able to access their best units while the Rebels and Imps can't.  Mimics the way the Zahn Consortium was implemented, but in the wrong ways.

I liked their focus on scripted missions, though a number of them were somewhat confusing and could've used a bit more explanation to them.  Similarly, it would've been helpful to know from the start that a lot of buildings simply can't be build in the Rim - the Rebels HAVE to push into the Core to get their top-tier land units, as well as to start getting anything more than a pitiful income.  The biggest improvement it has was ground battles, I think, with the integrated infantry/rocket platoons being quite nice, as well as the commandos being a full squad with shields and various special abilities rather than just one guy with a sniper rifle.

The space battles... at first I enjoyed them a great deal, until later in the game, when I had already pretty much won (taken Coruscant, Kuat, Corellia, owned 3/4+ of the galaxy), when I realized that I'd never had any battle that came close to the scale you'd get in ICW, or RaW for that matter.  With the limited income and very high ship costs, even the AI on hard doesn't build a whole lot of ships, and so once you've set up your good couple of battles that take out their ISDs/VSDs (only a handful of each), you've got nothing but mop up for the rest of the game unless you just sit back for a while doing nothing.  The AI simply will not end up massing a fleet again that you need to worry about.  This'll happen in ICW and RaW, but not as early and not to the same extent - by the time it happens in these, it feels earned, whereas in AotR I felt like I'd just gotten my fleet together and was ready to rumble when I realized there was nothing to rumble with.  This problem of scale exists in other ways as well; the Executor feels WAY too small, and even the biggest campaign is only equal to a mid-sized ICW game.

Also, while I overall like the look of the space battles (a number of ship models are quite beautiful), I strongly prefer the massive firestorms of ICW or RaW to the "single shot equals the damage of lots of shots" style they went with.  I know it's meant to keep graphical needs and hardpoint counts down, but it doesn't really feel right.

ThatOneBullet, an american developer of AOTR, is making changes to make the mod better. He's fixing the german dialogue so it's all in english but it's still a work in progress (For example, when I took Tatooine in the earlier versions, the 'Red Squadron' cutscene was still in german but, in the later releases, it's now in english. Same thing with Jan Dodonna (Still needs to get the dialogue for the german dreadnaught fixed )).

I don't blame you about the scripted missions. During one mission when I'm hunting for the Katana Fleet, the dialogue for Han was being interrupted by a Luke cutscene when he's having that vision of Obi-Wan.

About the income, I think that's what the smugglers on Bonadan are for. Considering they're the Rebel Alliance, they wouldn't have a crap ton of money on them. I will agree about the top tier units though, I shouldn't be forced to rush for the core just to get better firepower.

I'll agree with space battles later on in the mod, it does get boring. I never feel like I'm gonna be threatened by the enemy once I've got my uber fleet of doom on me. Again, I think the limited outcome and high ship costs were on purpose. You're The Rebellion, you're not going to have alot of dosh on you.

About The Executor being too small, I read on one of ThatOneBullet's videos that he reduced the size of the ship cause it was having pathfinding issues (You know, like SSD's do alot in this mod).

I can understand why you would think that. In my opinion, I'm fine with what they did about the single shot = damage of lots of shots. I guess I just got used to it.

If you want, you can ask ThatOneBullet about the issues you have here:

[Pali]

*shrugs* I plan to give it another shot in the near future, probably an Imp game this time.  I liked it, and I liked RaW too, even if my posts on both came across a bit heavy on the criticism.

[Mat8876]

I'm not going to vote simply because A. I think ICW is one of / the best mod for a game that I have downloaded and B. I have never heard of AotR or seen. Looking at the video it looks like it's for vanilla so I might try it.

[Zharkov]

[...]  With the limited income and very high ship costs, even the AI on hard doesn't build a whole lot of ships, and so once you've set up your good couple of battles that take out their ISDs/VSDs (only a handful of each), you've got nothing but mop up for the rest of the game unless you just sit back for a while doing nothing.  The AI simply will not end up massing a fleet again that you need to worry about.  This'll happen in ICW and RaW, but not as early and not to the same extent - by the time it happens in these, it feels earned, whereas in AotR I felt like I'd just gotten my fleet together and was ready to rumble when I realized there was nothing to rumble with.

I share the sentiment: When you have won a major space battle and destroyed its major shipyard, AotR's AI is pretty much beaten. This is rather disappointing. However, it is only half of the story, as it doesn't mean that AotR's AI is weaker than ICW's: If you take a look at the respective DifficultyAdjustments.xml files, you will see that in ICW the AI gets very much higher boni (meaning, it gets more credits, can build faster, and its weapons do more damage) than in AotR, but acts in no way smarter. Next, I will try an AotR game with the ICW adjustments.

But hey, what do you guys think of this mod compared to ICW? Comment below (And please, no bias... )

Nevertheless, both mods are great in their own way!
I like the way you have to look after your heroes in ICW. And then there are all these very polished major and minor factions! And the scale and balancing of space battles, the era system, and the gfx design.
On the other hand, AotR has  very neat gfx, too. And, in AotR there are a lot of interesting events and missions. Furthermore, planet management is very sophisticated with all the different ground and space buildings and tech upgrades. And, land battles are a lot of fun as there are very different ground units and an infantery that can become very dangerous if handled right.