General gameplay questions

[cab0oze]

Hi guys,
First off, awesome job with the mod! I recently started playing EAW/FOC, started to get bored of it and then found out about Thrawns Revenge. I dove right into it with a skirmish on easy to see what kind of new units I could expect and got absolutely crushed within minutes by what seemed like hundreds of fighters. I also didn't understand what was going on since the game plays quite different from vanilla EAW, so I figured that I should probably start with GC to ease me into things a bit more.

Started on easy (after my skirmish disaster) / Isard's Revenge (due to the small number of planets, seemed like a manageable place to start.
The learning curve is still quite steep, and I'm not doing very well. I skimmed the forums trying to find some feedback along the lines of what I'm experiencing, but didn't find anything, so here goes:
1. I keep getting attacked by massive NR fleets. No problem with that in itself, but the number of fighters that come at me makes space battles completely unmanageable. It's to the point that I often can't tell my ships who to target because I can't see the ships I'm trying to target due to the massive number of fighter icons.
-- My support ships are so small that they get hidden behind the wave of fighter icons and they get crushed quickly because I don't even know where they are or that they're in trouble
-- Along those lines, the hardpoints are so small that it is impossible to tell units to target something in particular in the heat of battle
-- Basically my overall experience is that while the space battles are epic-looking, I'm struggling to manage them and actually play them any better than Auto-Resolve, whereas in vanilla EAW I was able to deliver some absolutely insanely lopsided victories (most recently defending a planet with no space station, a Victory SD and a Tartan Cruiser against Ackbar, an Assault Frigate, 2 Nebulon Bs, 2 Corvettes & plenty of fighters). - Just to say, I know what I'm doing lol.
Is there something I'm missing/doing wrong?

2) All of the planets have one of two descriptions: able to build light frigate shipyards, or able to build heavy shipyards. No special advantages/disadvantages to any of them. Was this intentional? Makes it a bit less fun to pick which planet to hit next. That being said, as far as I can tell, I can build light or heavy shipyards on any planet, regardless of what the description tells me, which adds to my confusion a bit.

3) The majority of units & building icons in the taskbar (or whatever the bottom build display is called) are really dark, so I find it to be really hard to tell what I'm clicking without waiting for the pop-up description.

4) The website says there is a tutorial somewhere I can play, but I went through the whole menu twice and didn't see it. *edit* ok so I found out that if I click GC and click on any of the menus headers (e.g. Historic Conflicts) I see the text on the right hand side that indicates that I can play a tutorial, but the start button is greyed out.

5) I forgot what I was going to write here

Don't get me wrong, everyone involved has done an incredible job with this mod, but the number of changes is actually overwhelming for someone who is just starting out, there doesn't seem to be any way to ease into the mod.
Thanks!

[Ordo]

1. Well if you encounter lot of fighters you need to build your own anti-fighter corvettes (Lancer for Empire) and your own fighters. Hardpoints are pretty much the same in size as base game, if that's a problem you can still zoom in/out. If you have issues selecting units you can ctrl+a to select all your units.
2. I'm not sure what else would you have in mind? If you toggle the options next to the minimap you can see what space station level each planet can build and has built on it.
3. That sounds more like an issue with your monitor brightness?
4. The tutorial description is just an old leftover from main game.

[Slyguy3129]

2): The real flavor comes from specific planets having "companies" you can build. Like the Kuat Shipyards on, well Kuat. They give a boost in building speed for specific units while also making them cheaper.

[Arvenski]

If things are happening too fast for you to manage, the pause button is your friend. I make use of it in a number of strategy games I play. Whenever you need to take a look at something (like a ships's health or an enemy hardpoint), or think about something, or perform a number of actions quickly, hit that pause button. It's in the bottom left corner of the screen, near the minimap. Give the orders you need to while the game's paused, then resume it once you're ready.

Also, NR likes their fighter/bomber spam, and it can be pretty deadly. That's part of how their faction works. To counter that, you'll need anti-fighter corvettes and plenty of your own fighters. I'm not overly familiar with the Imperial Remnant units, but presumably you can build some kind of carrier that'll spawn a few fighter squadrons of your own.


Planets and shipyards: On the galactic map, next to the minimap, there's a button which turns on the planetary info icons (or whatever they're called). I'd recommend turning that on each time you load a game. They are a bunch of icons next to each planet that'll tell you what level of shipyard can be built there and how many buildings can be built on the ground, as well as what level of shipyard is currently there and how buildings have been built. For instance, 3 shipyard icons means that a capital shipyard can be built at that planet, but if only 1 icon is lit, that means there's only a light frigate shipyard currently there.

[cab0oze]

1. Well if you encounter lot of fighters you need to build your own anti-fighter corvettes (Lancer for Empire) and your own fighters. Hardpoints are pretty much the same in size as base game, if that's a problem you can still zoom in/out. If you have issues selecting units you can ctrl+a to select all your units.
2. I'm not sure what else would you have in mind? If you toggle the options next to the minimap you can see what space station level each planet can build and has built on it.
3. That sounds more like an issue with your monitor brightness?
4. The tutorial description is just an old leftover from main game.

1. I've always played my battles max-zoomed out to always have the big picture. Maybe I need to change my playstyle
2. It seemed to only tell me what I could build, and it didn't seem to be accurate.
3. Maybe, but I don't think so - never had an issue with any other game.
4. Not according to http://thrawnsrevenge.com/features/other-changes
Thrawn’s Revenge includes a brief tutorial to explain several of the key new features introduced by the mod (all of which are also outlined in this manual).  You can access and play through the tutorial from the Galactic Conquest menu.

2): The real flavor comes from specific planets having "companies" you can build. Like the Kuat Shipyards on, well Kuat. They give a boost in building speed for specific units while also making them cheaper.

I just read about that, and that is cool. I just miss each planet giving you a random bonus, but it sounds like they still do, but aren't advertised?

Planet Capture Bonuses
When you capture certain key planets, such as major shipyards or population centres, as the Imperial Remnant, New Republic or Empire of the Hand, you will be rewarded with some form of prize.  This will vary depending on the planet and the faction but may include captured units or structures that are added to your forces at that location.  You will always be informed of any additional bonus received and this is in addition to the standard credit bonus for capturing the planet.

If things are happening too fast for you to manage, the pause button is your friend. I make use of it in a number of strategy games I play. Whenever you need to take a look at something (like a ships's health or an enemy hardpoint), or think about something, or perform a number of actions quickly, hit that pause button. It's in the bottom left corner of the screen, near the minimap. Give the orders you need to while the game's paused, then resume it once you're ready.

Also, NR likes their fighter/bomber spam, and it can be pretty deadly. That's part of how their faction works. To counter that, you'll need anti-fighter corvettes and plenty of your own fighters. I'm not overly familiar with the Imperial Remnant units, but presumably you can build some kind of carrier that'll spawn a few fighter squadrons of your own.


Planets and shipyards: On the galactic map, next to the minimap, there's a button which turns on the planetary info icons (or whatever they're called). I'd recommend turning that on each time you load a game. They are a bunch of icons next to each planet that'll tell you what level of shipyard can be built there and how many buildings can be built on the ground, as well as what level of shipyard is currently there and how buildings have been built. For instance, 3 shipyard icons means that a capital shipyard can be built at that planet, but if only 1 icon is lit, that means there's only a light frigate shipyard currently there.

Lol I have never used the pause button in a battle, I didn't even know it was there!!! This changes everything... Although pausing a battle feels a bit like cheating

Yeah, I guess I'll have to build a lot more lancers/carriers etc to counter the fighters. In the vanilla game, I my standard fleet would contain 3x capital ships 2x anti-fighter corvettes and 3x broadsides, and that magic formula worked every time. In Thrawns Revenge, sticking to that ratio just doesn't work, I guess a lot more anti-fighter ships are required to fight the NR.

Thanks for the tip on the shipyard icons, I'll pay more attention to it going forward! I had just been reading the text, which may be erroneous.


Thanks all for the replies!

[Slyguy3129]

2): Well sort of. You have to build them. For instances, at Kuat, go to your ground base, you will see the option to build the ship yards. It does however take up a base slot. But all your ISDs, VSDs, SSD(Executor), and other assorted Empire ships will be cheaper and build faster. This will be noted by the price being green instead of white. Also, while playing the Empire, it might be wise to place your leader at Kuat, atleast for a time, as they also tend to make thing cheaper. My Executor went for 60k to 42k, with my leader, plus shipyards. Also make sure that your faction can even build those units. Taking Mon Calimari as Empire and building one there won't get you anything but lost credits, since you can't build those ships.

I pause on the galaxy map alot especially when I get an invasion notification. I pause it, and check out the Galactic Log, which will tell you where you have a fleet approaching. I only pause in battles when I warp in reinforcements. I also run galaxy speed at the slowest you can. Always hated how fast things played out in EaW. I rarely target hit points unless I'm facing an ISD2, and rarely want to take out it's octuplet turrets.

[Corey]

2. It seemed to only tell me what I could build, and it didn't seem to be accurate.

You can ignore the planetary tooltips that say that, if you look at the icons on the galactic map, it'll show what each planet's shipyard level can be.

4. Not according to http://thrawnsrevenge.com/features/other-changes
Thrawn’s Revenge includes a brief tutorial to explain several of the key new features introduced by the mod (all of which are also outlined in this manual).  You can access and play through the tutorial from the Galactic Conquest menu.

That information was for 2.15 on the website, not the recently-released 2.2, which hasn't been updated for the release of 2.2 we're basically going to be removing all direct ingame-info from the website, since it's more cumbersome to update and most people never even look at it, we have the manual for that, which gets updated with each version.

3) The majority of units & building icons in the taskbar (or whatever the bottom build display is called) are really dark, so I find it to be really hard to tell what I'm clicking without waiting for the pop-up description.

The backdrop is darker, and the icons themselves tend to actually be brighter, so there's a higher contrast between them and the backdrop, so they generally should be even easier to make out than the base game, so I don't really know what more we could do in that direction.

No special advantages/disadvantages to any of them. Was this intentional? Makes it a bit less fun to pick which planet to hit next.

Planet capture rewards are not the same as the base game abilities, they're units or structures that can spawn when you take a planet. As for abilities, EaW had 2-3 factions and about ~60 planets between all of its GCs. We have about 250 planets, and 8 playable factions plus several non-playables. Most of the base-game abilities if you tried to apply them within the mod's context would be either meaningless or OP. You'd either have to make them very generic, so ultimately every faction would more than likely end up with the same abilities and wash the whole thing out anyways, or very specific, and then any given faction could be at a huge advantage or disadvantage because of what the planets in the GC happen to be. As others have mentioned, that's why we've gone in different directions with planet-specific things, like corporations, capitals, and other stuff we'll continue to add, since they allow a bit more flexibility in scenario design without completely fucking up balance like the base game abilities would tend to if applied the same way.

[cab0oze]

You can ignore the planetary tooltips that say that, if you look at the icons on the galactic map, it'll show what each planet's shipyard level can be.

That information was for 2.15 on the website, not the recently-released 2.2, which hasn't been updated for the release of 2.2 we're basically going to be removing all direct ingame-info from the website, since it's more cumbersome to update and most people never even look at it, we have the manual for that, which gets updated with each version.

The backdrop is darker, and the icons themselves tend to actually be brighter, so there's a higher contrast between them and the backdrop, so they generally should be even easier to make out than the base game, so I don't really know what more we could do in that direction.

Planet capture rewards are not the same as the base game abilities, they're units or structures that can spawn when you take a planet. As for abilities, EaW had 2-3 factions and about ~60 planets between all of its GCs. We have about 250 planets, and 8 playable factions plus several non-playables. Most of the base-game abilities if you tried to apply them within the mod's context would be either meaningless or OP. You'd either have to make them very generic, so ultimately every faction would more than likely end up with the same abilities and wash the whole thing out anyways, or very specific, and then any given faction could be at a huge advantage or disadvantage because of what the planets in the GC happen to be. As others have mentioned, that's why we've gone in different directions with planet-specific things, like corporations, capitals, and other stuff we'll continue to add, since they allow a bit more flexibility in scenario design without completely fucking up balance like the base game abilities would tend to if applied the same way.

Thanks Corey, that bit about the planet capture rewards vs base game abilities makes sense.
Re: the icons, it's not all of them just a few of them that are mostly dark grey units on a dark gray background that are kinda difficult to make out. Also many of the structures are dark on dark (e.g. barracks, tax office, etc)

Noted re: tooltips. Things are starting to make more sense to me now. I'm still not doing well at space battles, but my strategy is improving - now I pause the fight at the start, and build several teams (anti-fighters, anti-ship, etc) and task them appropriately from the start.

Two new questions:
1) Is it possible to set rally points for fighters/auto-reinforcements? I keep getting new reinforcements and forgetting to bring them into the fight.
2) I saw in one of your youtube demos that you could select your ships placement when arriving at a system. How do you do that? Mine all just auto-place. To make matters worse, when I have a big fleet I frequently get backwards facing ships (including on defense). By the time the Star Destroyers get turned back the right direction they're already getting hammered.

[Slyguy3129]

In regards to fighter/bombers, I have found that selecting them all (double clicking an icon selects all ships on screen, not map. IE double clicking TIE Interceptors selects all of them present on screen) and then setting them to Guard (G Key) around your fleet (In front of it most times) and they will tend to do a great job engaging other fighter/bombers and preventing them from doing their mission. I've found the same works well with anti-fighter ships, the Lance for Empire.

I like to send my Interceptors and Fighters out ahead of my fleet, then send my bombers to attack a specific target. The INTs arrive first, then get backed up by the FTRs, and by the time the bombers get there the area is either clear or all the enemy fighters are locked in a dog fight, letting my bombers slip in and do damage.

Though I do wish some of the other Corvettes and Frigates had more anti-fighter appropriate weapons. The VSD1 is nice with it's missiles but you are sacrificing on not having a VSD2 with it's Ion batteries and heavier turbos.

[cab0oze]

In regards to fighter/bombers, I have found that selecting them all (double clicking an icon selects all ships on screen, not map. IE double clicking TIE Interceptors selects all of them present on screen) and then setting them to Guard (G Key) around your fleet (In front of it most times) and they will tend to do a great job engaging other fighter/bombers and preventing them from doing their mission. I've found the same works well with anti-fighter ships, the Lance for Empire.

I like to send my Interceptors and Fighters out ahead of my fleet, then send my bombers to attack a specific target. The INTs arrive first, then get backed up by the FTRs, and by the time the bombers get there the area is either clear or all the enemy fighters are locked in a dog fight, letting my bombers slip in and do damage.

Though I do wish some of the other Corvettes and Frigates had more anti-fighter appropriate weapons. The VSD1 is nice with it's missiles but you are sacrificing on not having a VSD2 with it's Ion batteries and heavier turbos.

Yeah, I just started with that strategy last night (can't believe I'd never tried double clicking the units before lol) and it seems to help a lot. Thanks for the reply

[Ordo]

2) I saw in one of your youtube demos that you could select your ships placement when arriving at a system. How do you do that? Mine all just auto-place. To make matters worse, when I have a big fleet I frequently get backwards facing ships (including on defense). By the time the Star Destroyers get turned back the right direction they're already getting hammered.

Just set a pathfinder unit, see attached pic. That way only the ship you put in the slot will warp in at the start, leaving you with the decision of what ships you actually want to use.

[tlmiller]

Yeah, I just started with that strategy last night (can't believe I'd never tried double clicking the units before lol) and it seems to help a lot. Thanks for the reply

Control + Click also selects all units of the same type.

[Arvenski]

Just set a pathfinder unit, see attached pic. That way only the ship you put in the slot will warp in at the start, leaving you with the decision of what ships you actually want to use.

@OP, this makes a huge difference. I almost always check to make sure I have a ship in the pathfinder slot before launching an attack; if I start a major battle and find out too late that I didn't have a pathfinder ship and my ships just jump in automatically, I usually retreat or load a previous save.

[Slyguy3129]

Also in regards to pathfinder units, keep in mind they are not saved when you load the game from a save file. I'm other words every time you start up the game you will need to set a pathfinder. Can't tell you how many times I've forgotten that at the start.

[cab0oze]

Just set a pathfinder unit, see attached pic. That way only the ship you put in the slot will warp in at the start, leaving you with the decision of what ships you actually want to use.

@OP, this makes a huge difference. I almost always check to make sure I have a ship in the pathfinder slot before launching an attack; if I start a major battle and find out too late that I didn't have a pathfinder ship and my ships just jump in automatically, I usually retreat or load a previous save.

Wow, how did I never notice that slot?? I said it before, but this really does change everything!! lol

Also in regards to pathfinder units, keep in mind they are not saved when you load the game from a save file. I'm other words every time you start up the game you will need to set a pathfinder. Can't tell you how many times I've forgotten that at the start.

Thanks guys, I think I may stand a fighting chance now.

[Grand Admiral Rufaan Tigellinus]

Everything that was said so far was spot on, so I would only want to stress the importance of pausing even further, both on the galactic map, and in battle. If you have some moral issues with it, thinking that it's cheating, well, you can find comfort in knowing that the AI usually never fights fairly either 

But, in truth, I don't really think that it could be considered cheating in any way.

[cab0oze]

Played a bit tonight.

The Good:
I crushed an invading fleet, took out about 30 ships and only lost 3 lancers. Armed with the tips in this thread (thanks all!) I'm back in business.

The Bad:
I pressed my advantage and ran into Wedge's SSD. No problem, I lured him out into the open with my scout ship, and then dropped about 8 Victory IIs in behind him took out his engines and then proceeded to demolish him without taking any damage. How is that bad? The game starts lagging when he's at 50% and then crashes. I've tried to kill him about 10x now, closestI got was actually killing him and the second he died, the game crashed.  Any ideas?


--edit--
another 10 tries later, confirmed... the second the last turbo laser on the Lusankya blows up the game crashes. I was able to make get saves closer and closer to beating him until I got a save <1min before I beat him/the crash happens Any tips for this? haha

[Arvenski]

Report it as a bug, and maybe next time don't frustrate yourself by trying 20 times.

[cab0oze]

Report it as a bug, and maybe next time don't frustrate yourself by trying 20 times.

Lol not quite the tip I was hoping for


-edit-
Wait, where do I even post bug reports...? I found a thread about posting bugs ("public testing") but nobody has posted in there and since this was an official release I'm not sure it counts?

[Slyguy3129]

http://thrawnsrevenge.com/forums/index.php?topic=7431.0

Good God man. Roughly thirty attempts? Masochist much? Be sure to include as many details as you can recall as that should help them isolate the problem.