I am not gonna bother reading through 26 pages of this, but I swear to high holy hell if you guys mess up the units in this mod I will hunt you down. Every single mod that adds a bunch of units for Empire at War is completely useless because it adds far too many units, and far too many stupid units. Save your expanded universe BS for your fanfiction. I don't want Chiss Clawcraft in my damned game, or any other mary sue nonsense, including that damned Eclipse SSD. Stick to the general rule of thumb, if it wasn't in X-Wing Alliance, DON'T PUT IT IN.

All I wanted was a bloody Imperial Strike Craft damn it. MAYBE a Lancer.

I followed this thread for 3 pages when it was first made and kind of ignored it. And then I came back to it and it had blossomed into a 26 page nerdfest featuring arguments about hangar size and such. I figured that I didn't want to read 23 pages of that just to see if my commentary was relevant.

I apologize if I came across as a douchebag.

I am simply venting at the fact that two years after Empire at War is released I have yet to find a ship mod that doesn't add dozens of pointless craft. And then I am browsing the Sins forums and see this nerdfest and forsee something similar happening. Maybe if your head surfaced from Evillejedi's crotch once a week and you wiped your mouth off you would be able to see this.

I have great confidence in this mod, however, I know how easy it is for mods like this to get derailed. If I'm not mistaken, Warlords had about 40 units per side, but since his site is so damned convoluted I can't find any other information. 40 units per side is far, far too many. It is simply taking it too far. The vanilla Sins has about 16 units per side if I am not mistaken, I refuse to pull the manual out and count. Every unit fulfills a specific function. With 40 units per side you have multiple units performing the same function, wasting space on your quick bars, in your build queues, cluttering up your research screens, wasting your time. Now if we include fighters, the PRIMARY fighters, the ones that MATTER, (T-Bomber, T-Fighter, T-Interceptor, T-Defender or whatever, and the A, B, X, Y wings, and Z95) we shouldn't have more than 20-23 units per side, depending on how he wants to deal with fighters. If ship behavior cannot be modified, if ships cannot be coaxed into moving around during a fight, if fighters cannot be made FTL capable, this mod will suck, period. The weakest part about Sins is the fact that ships simply sit around and shoot at each other until one dies instead of maneuvering around, even just purely for aesthetics.

And another thing, if you wish this mod to gain any sort of actual credibility, why don't you open a new thread with an original post that actually has relevant information in it?

And who is the bigger flamer, fanboy, the flamer or the flamer that flames the flamer with big scary text?

FYI: XWA wasn't my first Star Wars game, XVT was, and XWA is fairly considered the definitive Star Wars source for ships when it comes to gaming, not to mention that it has that fun encyclopedia feature that lets you view ships from any angle for good reference.

I refuse to respect mod makers until their mod is actually released. I will give necessary props at that time, and not a minute before. And if I don't enjoy a mod, I will bitch until I no longer find it amusing like every other person on the internet. Wait a minute. That was a little too wordy for you, let me dumb it down into terms you can understand:

NO U

Stop me if I'm wrong, but I am afraid I am being misunderstood here, I am a little frustrated with the EAW modding community right now. My problem isn't with large numbers of ship types, it is with large numbers of POINTLESS ship types. RTS modders, EAW ones in particular, have a nasty habit of putting in dozens of new units not because they actually serve a purpose, but because they "look cool". You have to keep in mind that if every unit you add to the game doesn't fulfill a niche or create a new niche, or outclass an old unit, and you just say "screw it, this is cool" you are making a poor design choice.

New units that outclass old units should be treated carefully, it is endless amounts of frustrating to have a 8 capital ships that serve the same purpose and are merely upgrades to each other. Don't just make them more powerful, you have to give them unique abilities so people will still use despite the fact that they ARE outclassed. This is one of the things EAW did that I was rather fond of.

Here is an example:

Changes in V3
Empire
Fully Fuctional mini-DSII used by palpatine in space.
New Heroe-Anakin Skywalker, replaced at Tech lvl 3 by vader
Clone Troopers, replaced at Tech lvl 3 by stormtroopers
Shutter Shield can be built on cetain planets
Lancer-class Frigate
Mandator Cruiser
Eclipse SSD
Vengeance SSD
Sovriegn SSD
Titan Heavy cruiser
World Devestator
TIE Droid
Chiss clawcraft
fixes vader glitch, he is now escorted by tie avengers.
All new units are in skirmish, except the sovriegn and DSII. (sovriegn may be invluded later though)
Royal guards buildible on coruscant and alderaan
Empire units only in skirmish--most at merchant dock!
Virago Fighter squadron
Merchant Gunboat
Dreadnought
Imperial Gunship
Arc-170 fighter squadron
V-wing squadron
munificent cruiser
vulture droid
Chissclawcraft.

The Rebel Alliance
M-104
M-90
M-40
Mediator Cruiser
Bothan Assault frigate
Bulwark Cruiser
Home One resized
Obi-wan uses eta-2 jedi interceptor in space battles.
Obi-wan has stealth.
New heroe--young obi-wan kenobi,replaced at tech lvl 3 by old kenobi.
Rebel Skirmish units
The Liberator
Eta-2 squadron
Arc-170 squadron
V-wing squadron
dreadnought

The Confederacy of Indepedent Systems (CIS)
Space
Death Star
Invisible Hand
Slave 1
Technounion Destroyer
Providence class cruiser
lucrehulk mobile command ship.
recuscant class cruiser
Genosian pinneace
munificent-class frigate
Diamond-class frigate
CIS corvette
Vulture Droid
Tri-droid
Genosian nantex fighter
Technounion fighter
Space stations
Hidden asteroid base
Shipyard
Lucrehulk core ship
Ground units
Shocktrooper
Plex Shocktrooper
Field Commander
Shocktrooper Assasin
Shocktrooper bodyguard(cant build them, they come with dooku)
Count Dooku
Jango Fett
Vulture Droid Ground attack fighter
CIS Skiff
CIS Pod walker
CIS swamp speeder
Ground Structures
Command Center
Turbo lasers
Reseach facility
mining facility
superhypervelocity gun



That is the unit list for a popular mod for Empire at War. THIS IS WHAT WAS ADDED IN ONE VERSION. Note all the redundant fighters and capital ships and super weapons. 3 Super Star Destroyers. 3 classes of Calamari Cruisers. This is what is driving me insane about the EAW modding community. I want some of these units, but I can't have them without the rest of this garbage, it's all or nothing, and most of them don't do much more than fill space on the build menu, because I am just gonna build one type of each class anyway to make for easier unit selection. The CIS ships in particular interest me. I had my eye on Imperial Assault II: Rise of the Empire for a long time, but it looks like that mod will never see the light of day at this point.

And if you don't see where I am going with this you never will. I applaud Sins on the fact that it takes a minimalistic approach to the unit list. It makes strategies easier to plan and makes it clear what exactly a unit can do.

Empire at War on the other hand went to the extreme on this. While it is nice to have less unit types to worry about, they gave us barely anything to work with. The research list tops out at ISD, which pissed me off to no end. I get two big gun cap ships? Come on. Rebellion did it right. Every unit fulfilled a niche, and then there were upgrades on those units. I have high hopes that this mod will give off a Rebellion vibe, minus the annoying land combat. Perhaps hero units could somehow be implemented into the mod, they were sorely missed considering how few of them were in EAW compared to Rebellion.

Okay
1) I haven't complained about his choices
and
2) I'll complain if I damn well please. Just because someone made a mod doesn't make them immune from criticism. If it sucks I'm calling them out on it. For example, the maker of this little gem needs to be removed from the gene pool. http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Girl_on_TV;78346
Of course filefront isn't a fair example. The users there are so stupid and inbred they make XBOX Live look like a high class social club. Note all the people saying how GREAT that mod is.

go away parrotpatrol. thanks.

I think Parrot needs to find his zen. Much anger there. Leads to dark side.

I happen to love the 40+ unit count in EAW... why? Well, because I am a RTS fan *and* a roleplayer *and* I actually like everything Star Wars, including the Expanded Universe and even Jar Jar Binks provided I can shoot him... plus, when I play Empire I always garrison the Rim systems with older, less effective ships. Shiny ISD's are reserved for important Core worlds you know.

So you see, it is a matter of personal preference. Calling someone a retard just because they prefer different ship types and unit numbers in a computer game speaks volumes about your own maturity.
Anyway, enough about that from me. Let's return to the topic at hand.

I fail to see the 'problem' with having units that are later outclassed or have limited utility in a mod. If it is because of substandard implementation then it is just dead weight, some of the ships are from different eras and are superior, your example of the clawcraft is sorta silly when taken into context of other viewpoints. Many people believe that the prequel ships are a waste of space and would rather see effort spent elsewhere, I also don't see any pointless fighters on the sepretist ship list if the intent is to at least show the most commonly associated ones.

The main problem with SW is that it has widely distributed eras and factions.
Are corellian corvettes actually useful in combat? NO, not by any measure, but they are important visual markers to have a SW game? increidibly so.
Are old republic vessels canonically on par with Imperial vessels. NO. Do you want to fight against them and have fun? probably
Did the empire use Nimbus Vwings? YES do they need it as a unit? not if you want to play a alliance and empire game.
That in my opinion is a FAILURE of EAW to allow limited shiplists as an option for game setup (and a failure of about 99% of the RTS market to allow per unit build restrictions like total annihilation had, IC take that as a hint)

btw IA2 died mainly because the original authors decided they had better things to do in real life than actually import and code the units. As the primary art content creator for the space portion I met all of my goals well ahead of time, it was lack of implementation resources on the easy parts that any 12 year old with notepad can do and post on filefront (and I don't even own EAW because it was honestly really awful)

The problem with taking ships from different eras is that they aren't implemented correctly. If separated into different factions, it would work, but you rarely see this done. The Sep ship list had few useless craft, I was pointing at the other ones, but honestly, all ship lists for EAW mods read pretty poorly.

Harp on variety all you want, unit variety kills the game in EAW. It slows unit selection time and since the AI is so DAMNED retarded, if you select one enemy unit type for your forces to destroy, they will destroy that unit and then go on standby again.

What I meant by outclassing was having 7+ different heavy warships that basically do the same job but are progressively slightly better. That is simply obnoxious.

The blockade runner isn't crap for combat, it makes a decent anti-fighter platform, and a fair garrison. I mainly use them to hold off enemy fleets to cover a retreat, they work great.

I feel that ALL RTSes suffer horribly from lack of unit selection. Sometimes I just want infantry against infantry in Company of Heroes.

Yes, filefront is inhabited by complete bloody idiots. It doesn't mean I don't get my files there, I just don't bloody post there. I can still shop in the bad side of town, it doesn't mean I LIVE there. I quit posting after I gave up on the filefront community after I had a forum argument against a guy who claimed that bunny hopping was good for the gaming industry. Go ahead, read some of those smiley-encrusted posts. I dare you. The only reason reason I use FF is because moddb is pure crap and you can't find the files anywhere else in a central place on a speedy server.

kryo: if you had taken notice, you would have seen I wasn't insulting him. I was insulting everyone ELSE. At least I didn't come in here spouting Trekkie nonsense and swearing death upon this mod in Klingon, I came in with a legitimate concern.

revxy: No, thanks, I think I'll stay. I've already set up camp and am roasting marshmallows

great mod guys just finished a huge inter fleet battle and it was really fun.

ds

There's your problem!

EvilleJedi:
Just to clear all the bad air in this thread, I personally, as well as the rest of the "team", love your mod, and ALL the ships, and ALL the effort that you have put into it.
While I think all the stats are highly unbalanced when compared to the "vanilla" Sins races, I think you are right on when using Star Wars specs.
The level of detail you put into each ship is uncanny, and you should be commended. Fantastic work! I can't wait to see more from you.
It's all about adding more, and more variety. Most people DO want that, but there are some exceptions to this.
I am glad you granted permission for other modders to use your mod, as I do plan to merge your mod in with 7 DEADLY SINS, I just have to balance the stats out.

There is an Interdictor ability on the downloads section, so maybe you can incorporate that in. If you need any help with your mod, please don't hesitate to ask.

GREAT JOB!!!!!!

DANMAN

EJ do you plan to include vanilla system of increasing the number of fighters allowed for more experienced capships ships?? Because right now, I think that this feature id off.