New Unit Ideas

[Jesse220]

I think the imperial Remnants could use Terror Troopers from star wars force unleashed II. Along with Terror droids, Bio Droids, and Terror walkers.

[Lord Xizer]

I think the imperial Remnants could use Terror Troopers from star wars force unleashed II. Along with Terror droids, Bio Droids, and Terror walkers.

I think those were exclusive to Darth Vader

[Jesse220]

I think those were exclusive to Darth Vader

Ok. Then what about these Tie Fighters?

http://rpggamer.org/stats.php?page=d6/d6tiecyclone.html&name=Sienar%20Fleet%20Systems%20TIE%20Cyclone
http://rpggamer.org/stats.php?page=d6/d6tiearmageddon.html&name=Sienar%20Fleet%20Systems%20TIE%20Armageddon%20Torpedo%20Platform
http://rpggamer.org/stats.php?page=d6/d6tiehammer.html&name=Sienar%20Fleet%20Systems%20Hammer%20Tie%20Bomber
http://rpggamer.org/stats.php?page=d6/d6tiebomberae.html&name=Sienar%20Fleet%20Systems%20TIE%20Bomber/Ae%20Dive%20Bomber

[Corey]

Those are all fanon.

[Jesse220]

Those are all fanon.

Fanon or not they should be perfect for the imperial remnants.

[Corey]

They're not actually part of Star Wars, and there's no reason to use them so I'd say that makes them pretty far removed from perfection. The Imperials already have a ton of fighters ingame, and if we felt they needed more fighters, there's also plenty of canon options. No reason to just throw in a bunch of fanon units just because someone made them up. The only time we use any fanon elements is for factions which actually need units to flesh them out, like the Empire of the Hand and Hapans, and even then we try to base them as much off of the available information and what they would have used, and we make them ourselves.

[nightraven1901]

While the shadow droid would be cool, and an extra CR90 variant with turbolasers would be cool, and even the raider-class corvette would be sexy to see, I don't see any of them as truly needed. I do think the New Republic requires something with a little more staying power in the way of a heavy flagship unit; I'd love to see the Viscount or something similar to it as either a hero or (preferably) a limited-build super unit. If the Viscount isn't the most appropriate unit to port over, any given SSD-class would do; even any mini-SSD would handle the role and allow the NR to feel less utterly-outclassed by Imperial Remnant capital forces. Now, I do appreciate that the New Republic is more about many smaller ship than the Imperial's preference towards a few bigger ones, they need to be able to stop an Executor before it charges down the middle of the map and eats all their carriers leaving them nought but fighters (and thus a defeat even if they had enough fighters to finish it) the use of a lone SSD is far, far, far too overpowered at the moment. I sometimes have trouble getting my leader killed when I need to, especially if Zsinj has suffered his usual swift end at the IR's hands and SSD Reaper is burning in two large slices over my defences near Bilbringi. The AI is simply not very good at countering an SSD under player command, and likely never will be; I suggest we bypass the issue by simply giving them a larger ship to shoot me with. Request NR counter-play option to this strategy, please?

[t78]

That would go against the idea of the NR being out-gunned, until it isn't.

That said, on Corey's latest playthrough, the Eclipse (with escort), is almost crippled by some MC-90s. Had there been bombers it would have been finished.

SSDs aren't nearly as impregnable as they were.

[Corey]

and even the raider-class corvette would be sexy to see

Raider will be in 2.2. For some stuff like that, the fact that there's several playable Imperial-derived factions in 2.2 gives us lots of opportunity to use some of the more obscure Imperial units without necessarily doubling up on roles.

I do think the New Republic requires something with a little more staying power in the way of a heavy flagship unit; I'd love to see the Viscount or something similar to it as either a hero or (preferably) a limited-build super unit.  If the Viscount isn't the most appropriate unit to port over, any given SSD-class would do; even any mini-SSD would handle the role and allow the NR to feel less utterly-outclassed by Imperial Remnant capital forces. Now, I do appreciate that the New Republic is more about many smaller ship than the Imperial's preference towards a few bigger ones, they need to be able to stop an Executor before it charges down the middle of the map and eats all their carriers leaving them nought but fighters (and thus a defeat even if they had enough fighters to finish it) the use of a lone SSD is far, far, far too overpowered at the moment. I sometimes have trouble getting my leader killed when I need to, especially if Zsinj has suffered his usual swift end at the IR's hands and SSD Reaper is burning in two large slices over my defences near Bilbringi. The AI is simply not very good at countering an SSD under player command, and likely never will be; I suggest we bypass the issue by simply giving them a larger ship to shoot me with. Request NR counter-play option to this strategy, please?

They've always had the Viscount; it's an era 5 unit. We're giving players the opportunity to research it as early as era 3, considering the Shadow Hand stuff was what really prompted them to want their own supership. Wwe want to avoid the idea that in order to balance a supership being used in one place, you need to have a supership in the other- ships should have fairly defined roles, strengths, and weaknesses. The New Republic wasn't really into the whole supership idea, and trying to shoehorn one in for balance would really just go to exacerbate an underlying issue while also contradicting the lore, rather than actually solve the balance problem.

Going towards what T78 alluded to, we have been trying to address different ways to make SSDs more vulnerable, and so far we're pretty happy with the results. Along with some smaller quality-of-life stuff like destructible engine hardpoints so they can't retreat with no health, we've also addressed some of the more exploitable reasons the AI couldn't kill them before.

First, we played more with damage modifiers and armour values. Bombers can absolutely shred shields on anything within that shield/armour category, which includes all superships, Praetors, and a select few battlecruisers. Secondly, in 2.1 and previous versions, the SSDs were incredibly slot efficient- we've rebalanced pop costs, spreading them out more. An SSD will run you most of your slots now, and smaller ships have had their own relative value significantly increased.

Third/Fourth, and probably most important, is that we've changed how the AI manages its fleets, fighters, bombers and corvettes. The base game had a behaviour set for them to essentially just run around randomly scouting. We've removed that, so they're always being used to actually fight. We're also considering adding additional scripts, maybe just on harder difficulties, where we put in a specific targeting hierarchy, making them concentrate fire even more and attack specific targets over others (that could be a performance issue, though, so we're not testing that kind of thing yet). With fleets, in previous versions there was an issue where the AI's attack fleets would be broken up because of a bad divisor in an equation while traveling- you had small fleets trickle in instead of one assault force. This is no longer the case.

It's gotten to the point where I've lost or come close to losing several SSDs in my last few playthroughs. Like T78 said, I did just post an episode where I was attacked by a fleet of 10 capital ships and a few other support craft and was almost gonna lose my Eclipse- I lost all of my support ships, and only had the Eclipse with a few missing hardpoints and an Allegiance  left. I really only won because they didn't have enough fighters/bombers with that particular fleet, and the Eclipse and Allegiance are specifically capital ship killers.

[nightraven1901]

Oh, I see- I am dreadfully sorry for my poor research; I wasn't actually aware the Viscount had been included. It has been a long time since my last install- I may have simply been using a version before it's inclusion (or maybe I just never made it to era 5 with them, but I doubt that. I also didn't break the install... Oh, whatever. Weirder stuff happens than this on my rig anyway...). Only the last week or so have I had the newest version; I'm seeing the differences now- including the reduction of shield strength and armour health per hardpoint. They do die quicker than they used to, certainly. But they still take a kicking to put down- I was actually making a point more about the early game; but it seems this is part of their of the New Republics' charm in this mod. They definitely do have that out-gunned feel early on in game, and they need quite a force to form up in one place to stop an SSD if they have one thrown at them right after starting. Even on high difficulty, sending the Reaper to attack through Bilbringi or Gravelex Med will result in three or four worlds stripped of spatial defences before anything can stop it, and you can do the same with Lusankya but in even more directions.

Maybe another way to help stop that would simply be to add a few Golans to certain worlds to help secure them, but the SSDs can just out-range them anyway (in fact, all capital ships can; maybe they need a twenty percent range buff?) or add some more ships to their starting defence fleets (though the silly AI will use them for early attacks, as we know). Of course, this is only if we want this effect (by which I mean, reducing the arse-kicking a lone early SSD can unleash)- I do admit that using the SSDs as shock-hammers to break whatever the enemy thinks is a defence today is rather satisfying as it stands.   

Oh, you've fixed the scouting AI!? Dear lord, really? Top work. If they actually use the bombers against them they will eat damage a damned sight faster than they are now, maybe even enough to stop them making it all the way to the enemy spawn and thumping out rainbows of death at everything as they jump in (AI used to be pretty bad for jumping ships in next to active hostiles; seems they're a bit less crazy now- also top work) Unsure of how corvette AI update will impact this; probably the AI will lose more corvettes to SSDs now. Meh; corvettes are built to be shot down anyway. Sounds good.

May I ask, have you made any changes to the strategic AI? In both vanilla and my memories of playing this they seem to not defend their borders too heavily; they will stack their assault fleet somewhere and that world will count as well-protected, at least until the assault force makes its attack, but sitting ships over borderworlds does not seem to be a priority to the AI. If they simply understood I have two SSDs in the top corner of the map and they will need to be kept in check then there might be more than an escort carrier parked near Bilbringi- a major naval base and a strategic keystone. Though, this is a secondary concern.

Cheers for the swift reply, and for not taking my head off for making an error. You're a good dude.

[Slornie]

We've not delved too deeply into AI work so far; in fact I think 2.2 will be the first version where we're actively trying to change behaviour, in either galactic or tactical mode, and even then it's baby steps.

Some of the things you've noticed are possibly unintended side-effects of how different the mod is structured compared to the vanilla game which thus far we've not countered.  Generally speaking I believe the game AI is biased more towards offensive than defensive activity, but things that may also affect behaviour in the mod are the fact we only use three starbase levels, which means the AI gets maxed out in space sooner than vanilla, and the difference between starbases in vanilla and our shipyards (starbases were pretty tough and could look after themselves without assistance whereas ours actually need defending).  There's also the fact that our GCs tend to be much larger than vanilla which potentially affects how the AI calculates it's force distribution across owned planets - on average do you think we have more or less border worlds than the norm in vanilla?

[nightraven1901]

I actually believe Slornie, depending on the GC in question, that you may just have less borderworlds needing defence than the original game, due principally to the reduced number of connections per planet creating short lanes or avenues of planets connected only to each other for three to five planets in a row- IF there were only two factions. That said, you have double the number of total worlds, and more factions means a great increase in the number of individual battle lines that are drawn in these confined spaces. With so many factions, the number of worlds considered as being an opening into an empire is substantially greater than ever before. I would expect this to spread the forces out, but my personal spy strategy (sending a gank fleet through every space zone so I can see them all and dropping probe droids on them literally continuously) reveals that forces are not focused on their borders at all. All AI ships cluster into a single gank fleet with only minor efforts being made to garrison worlds at risk; usually a single capital ship and some escort trash per world, at best, assuming late-game. Difficulty doesn't affect it much either. Furthermore, if the empire in question has multiple separate holdings, they produce ships for the attack in places they can't get to it's launchpoint from, making it look like they're spreading manufacture when they're just being silly- evidenced by isolating say, Polus, and leaving it there for a few forevers. The AI will build ships there, but will never get them out to the fleets they're attacking with- they build up there to no end, and never attack while another gank fleet is building (though they can BECOME the gank fleet once the first fails- this makes you have a second, powerful attack come from the isolated worlds right after beating another).

The simple fact is the game always worked that way- it was identical in vanilla too, if you studied them for long enough. Also, the defences are not based on the risk of that world being invaded- most planets have the same small force of a few escort carriers or corvettes even if they're not actually bordering a possible attack avenue. Hypervelocity guns and ion cannons also spring up on worlds far removed from the front lines, and don't seem to be replaced by the AI very well at all as those lines change. Stations used to be a lot worse than they are now though- I think the new system for building Golans is encouraging the AI to spend resources where they're needed (though it is difficult to determine how well fortified a world is without sacrificing a corvette to the cause. Oh, well, corvettes are cheap...)

Now, there used to be a lot of moving back and forth that was sabotaging the ever-loving heck out of defensive operations for the AI (this was super-visible in vanilla by holding Bothawui for any length of time) and while I lack the handy-if-loud-and-annoying spy net my probe droids report less fluctuation of ship totals over defence points than was observable previously, which suggests they're hanging around more than they used to. This is good, though I'm not sure why it is. I can only assume the values for "how well protected is this planet vs. how many total ships do I have" are only re-calculated once the ships actually arrive at their destination, meaning the AI essentially ignores them while they're transiting the entire galaxy, and when they arrive goes "damn and blast; I've far too many ships here now!" and thus splits them up only to return a moment or three later. Would dearly love to have a peek at the AI scripts... (never did look at them in this game; never found the bloody things. Did look at the values/gamecode for the units; though- do understand how they work in vivid detail) I honestly think there is an easy fix to this though; which is to run a check for "can I reach an enemy world from here" followed by "what's the biggest shipyard that this group of worlds have access to" and assign a defence value equal to the results, which is basically my own defence calculation.

Sorry for textwalling you bro; hope you've got a few minutes...

[t78]

The constant back-and-forth of ai fleets could be effective in vanilla EAW. Finding a fleet had been suddenly reinforced could make things tricky.

That said, I agree with Nightraven's points. On a further note, is there any plan to get the NR to use the really small fleets that could slip past defences? Basically hitting poorly defended worlds deep in enemy territory whilst hitting the big concentrations with big single-wave fleets.....

Probably not possible to do both, and large fleets in that case would be preferable, but thought I'd ask....

[nightraven1901]

I would actually prefer to not re-implement the New Republic/Rebellion planetary raid forces, T78, at least not as they are. While I appreciate the extra depth, I play more for space combat, and having a tier-five station get instapopped by making the grievous error of selecting auto-resolve to a raid force at Kuat is one of the most annoying things the game could do, at least in my humble opinion. I don't like randomisation; at least not randomly losing a station worth about fifteen grand and a week of build-time. Plus, there's the concern of instability relating to it: like the station at that planet suddenly deciding it's under rebel control and firing on your ships if they attack space over the world right after- and having a complete remodel happen instantly, no less. Blast those over-eager rebel engineers and their ability to metamorph my stations!

As cool as those things could be, they were extremely cheesy. I never fought the star destroyers of the Empire when playing rebels; just mass fifteen fleets, each consisting of three airspeeder companies and whatever heroes you can spare, and start ordering them at any given target world, starting from the furthest back from the target so they all hit roughly simultaneously. Congratulations; you just secured Coruscant- without penetrating space first. And you have a twenty percent chance if you send a single ship to space above that their station will switch sides, shapes, and paint jobs to clean up those destroyers for you. Not my idea of strategic depth...

If they do decide to re-implement it, I'd appreciate the stability issues being fixed (the CTD on attacking space above- presuming it didn't just give your station over instead, the switching of units to other faction's command despite following your orders; meaning you can order red-circled, definitely hostile units to attack your own planets, y'know, all that garbage it used to cause...), and some serious rebalancing. Maybe even limiting you so you couldn't deploy three hellfire droid companies or three AT-ATs, maybe no heroes as they're broken in circumstances like this. And definitely, absolutely, without negotiation: no stations switching sides!

[t78]

All good points!

Only 2 or 3 infantry companies for a raid force. Maybe some fighters/corvettes for a space raid force but no more.

Perhaps bringing back those corruption missions? A raid force cannot take over a planet (thus no station problems), but performs a mission to get a new regular income stream? Doesn't seem too difficult, the coding would be there.

Its really about moving fleets without being seen. A small raid force might degrade the defences of a backwater world, forcing you to make a defence in depth throughout your territory. Space raid forces only would be more workable than space and ground together....

[nightraven1901]

T78: I actually like the idea of doing something like the corruption missions, but remember they are manually-constructed, highly-time-intensive projects for the development team, and every one of them was unique. The effort expended adding them in the first place was prodigious- and there are now twice as many worlds to build missions for. I don't think we can expect anything like that, as much as the old smuggler unit allowed you to garnish a planet's income to your own empire easily (and as such the coding for it is indeed right there and simply re-used). As for raid fleets on the ground... Well, there's a bit to talk about there.

If we want the ground raids, and want them to not change the planet's owner, then it's tough to do. It could be a scaled-down normal attack, where your units are placed directly on the map as they usually are, but a) this makes it possible to clear the ground of hostiles, which is a problem; and: b) the ground maps weren't designed to make it easy to pick off certain buildings from the bases, which would be about the only valuable thing to do on the planet if it just loaded the normal ground-combat map. There could be a McGuffin target added for the raid team to destroy that wins the raid if destroyed, and that would allow you to then apply the income-garnishing effect. It could be done, admittedly, but would require adding a McGuffin target spawn point to each map. It would also require a hell of a lot of testing. But, it would indeed be possible.

I see little reason for space raids, at least, not without some serious forethought. Building a new system for the criminal faction(s) to pirate shipping lanes and such could be cool, but would be adding an entire new element to the game that's only there for minor factions, and would be very cost-intensive for it's impact on the end product. There could be another workaround similar to the first- use the existing space map- but what would be the goal? Sniping certain ships or structures before the main force arrived, I suppose. But how or why would we use a raid for that? Any method that makes sense to do requires a huge investment of dev time. I don't think spatial raids are very viable at this point in development. Though some of them were rather cool little missions, remember the ones in the base game were just that- standalone missions, essentially purpose-built single fights, that were repeated and repeated until they made you want to automate them if you played for any length of time. The space missions in Forces of Corruption were quite weak, and even the ground ones were easily made boring by repetition. Ground raids are the best you can hope for I think- and the chances do not seem particularly high.

Hmmmm. Pity, though. I like the idea of raiding enemy worlds and stealing income, taking a handful of their ships for variety, and that kind of stuff, but the massive amount of work would probably prevent it being implemented.

[Corey]

On the topic of the AI, while we've always played with the LUA side of it, we haven't touched the XML side of it for one main reason- the game doesn't load those changes out of mod folders. This is why some mods who try to edit them make people go through the extra steps of putting those files directly into data, which is how you get Republic at War breaking every mod instead of just itself with its broken AI code. However, we've been informed that the game will load them from mods folders if they are in meg files apparently, and one of the changes with the next patch to Empire at War is that they will start running out of mod files more generally anyways, so for 2.2 we can start to look into more stuff with it, but that will mostly wait for 2.3.

Perhaps bringing back those corruption missions? A raid force cannot take over a planet (thus no station problems), but performs a mission to get a new regular income stream? Doesn't seem too difficult, the coding would be there.

While the code is there for corruption missions, as Nightraven says, all the scripting, ground maps and new assets would be by far the most resource intensive project we could ever think to undertake. There's a reason we're splitting up even the most important story missions over two releases, and corruption missions are just story missions with an extra level of complication. Also, just because a certain functionality is there doesn't necessarily mean we can edit it to our liking. The limit of that is basically whether a faction <Benefits_From_Corruption>, and you end up with a lot of the BS which the base game had.

[TonPhanan]

Tauntauns. Definitely Tauntauns, hehe :>.

I don't know if it's already planned, but I really liked that Pirate base idea you included in the 2.2 Demo, and thus would like to see the famous XQ-platforms included in the future... maybe with a feature to build some additional starfighters (XG-1, E-Wings, Tie Avenger etc.) or give some additional credits like some form of trading/cargo station. Oh, and maybe replace the Chariot with something like the AT-MP - nothing against the Chariot itself, but it's kinda useless right now ;P. Oh, and maybe  - if possible - making the Probe droid a deployable unit would be awesome. There's a lot more units and ships that'd be awesome, but one'd just run the risk many other mods unfortunately already have, which is overwhelming the player with a lot of units which in the end all fulfill the same role.

But Tauntaun's are definitely a must. Hehe.

[t78]

I see little reason for space raids, at least, not without some serious forethought. Building a new system for the criminal faction(s) to pirate shipping lanes and such could be cool, but would be adding an entire new element to the game that's only there for minor factions, and would be very cost-intensive for it's impact on the end product. There could be another workaround similar to the first- use the existing space map- but what would be the goal? Sniping certain ships or structures before the main force arrived, I suppose. But how or why would we use a raid for that? Any method that makes sense to do requires a huge investment of dev time. I don't think spatial raids are very viable at this point in development. Though some of them were rather cool little missions, remember the ones in the base game were just that- standalone missions, essentially purpose-built single fights, that were repeated and repeated until they made you want to automate them if you played for any length of time. The space missions in Forces of Corruption were quite weak, and even the ground ones were easily made boring by repetition. Ground raids are the best you can hope for I think- and the chances do not seem particularly high.

Hmmmm. Pity, though. I like the idea of raiding enemy worlds and stealing income, taking a handful of their ships for variety, and that kind of stuff, but the massive amount of work would probably prevent it being implemented.

I do apologise if I misread you, but did you mean space raids as in corruption missions, or just small stealth fleets (thus no mission other than what the player wanted)? Stealth, raid, corruption... so confusing to know which is which!

I would happily see only the ability to sneak small (stealth?) space fleets around be implemented. No special coding or repetitive corruption missions, just the ability to attack anywhere in space conventionally so long as the force is small. This cracks down on the risk of it being boring- the Ai won't use it excessively, coded as it is now to use large fleets, and the player can choose to send a small force behind the lines, or they can choose not to. Coruscant would remain effectively impregnable until you get there with the main force. As you said, corruption missions are difficult to code in, so none of that.


If the player advances a stealth fleet to an objective they've set for themselves then small actions, if done sparingly, can actually be very entertaining. Trying to take out a lone gladiator/vindicator in a larger force amassing behind the lines with a few X-wings could be quite exciting and make things (slightly) easier later.

I get what you mean with the 'seize Coruscant with 3 Tanks and a Baby' strategy, ground could cause that problem. I don't think I even played FoC that much due to the ease of that! Nevertheless, I certainly never felt that sending small space forces in FoC to weaken backwater orbital garrisons ever got boring. The main force was always a threat even if I managed to limit that threat somewhat- and I didn't feel obliged to endlessly throw stealth fleets at enemies.

So I'd argue for it so that the player can use it if they want to, but they don't have to. Variety comes with player choice, which the Corruption missions didn't provide.

Of course, I'm probably going to be told that stealth fleets can only be both space and ground units. Ah, the inflexibility of the EAW engine....

But I do hope that I've cleared up what I meant. If I've reiterated a previous point I apologise (arrrgh!). Sorry for the text wall.


P.s.: I'm actually nervous that I'm giving the impression I've ignored your points. If you meant stealth fleets as well I do apologise for this! I just want to make sure.

[nightraven1901]

T78: I was actually coalescing them together for that thought; thinking about the effects of the corruption missions or small raids and what they would be used to accomplish from a gameplay standpoint. I can see a reason to do it if you can steal ships or income from the target, or if you can somehow weaken a position prior to a direct assault, but simply sending a small space fleet requires no stealth to be sent at a heavily-defended position- you can just order them anyway. So, I didn't really see much point to that type of thing.

Now, the idea of using the bypassing mechanic from vanilla FoC does make sense, but not very much if you can't include ground units, and if you can include ground units, it becomes ridiculously overpowered in a breath. So, let us imagine I command the New Republic forces at Correlia. I have Kuat in front of me, and beyond lies Coruscant, which has been stripped of defences by the silly AI. I wish to attack Coruscant, where the enemy is vulnerable. I send a spatial force of corvettes and fighters past Correlia and take the space above Coruscant. Mission complete, right? Maybe. My question is, now what? I have several ships isolated on the other side of an enemy space force and defence line, with no ability to reinforce them, and they're no threat to any real fleet nor a challenge to remove again. Isolated ships on the far side of a defence line is precisely what I'm trying to avoid most days. While I did secure space around Coruscant for a few hours until the AI wipes those ships out with a lone Star Destroyer for no losses, they have accomplished exactly nothing aside from their death. Now if I can do what you can in Vanilla I could assail the planet normally with a ground invasion, having taken the necessary units along for the raid- but that's even worse than a raid. It would tie up a huge number of population points for everyone bar the sides that can use it to defend worlds with otherwise unnecessary ground troops, which I can't spare because every single solitary in my faction needs a spatial defence force too. I cannot see a non-broken way to implement that idea, though I admit it would be fun to do to the AI it would be painful to play against. It has no counter beyond "Defend everything!" which Sun Tzu tells us results in defending nothing. 

The only way I can see space raids working and being positive is dedicated custom missions for each fight, separate from the strategic map, and essentially just repetitive busywork once they'd been played a few times- in exchange for the cost of "by far the most resource intensive project we could ever think to undertake." Insufficient reward for expected cost, my friend. Bad business.

If I can get this blasted mapmaker working, I will try making a mission like this for reference and analysis, but I foresee many hours being spent fruitlessly.

BTW: Y'know, I think the New Republic and Eriadu Authority are actually capable of the old-style land raids? Much to my chagrin...