Star Wars scenario... no, seriously!

[fairline]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia


The state of being sulky, taciturn, or cantankerous. Usually applied to adolescent females when you have just refused to take them to the mall.

The male version of the word is "shirty". As in "Don't get shirty with me young man".

Both are predominantly UK used.

When the little bleeders grow up they graduate from stroppy and shirty to arsey

[Elok]

I once had a similar idea (what SW fan hasn't?) and WRT balance, my idea was to model their limitations on the real limits of the series. In my scen:

*The Empire had superior capital ships (domain 2), including the various Star Destroyers. The Rebels had MCSCs but those were the only ships they had that could stand up to anything Victory- or Imperial-class. This was to be counterbalanced by the use of CivCity to limit the number of planets "with shipyards," ie which could build naval units. In the SW universe, shipyards aren't found on every planet; you needed places like Corellia, Sullust, Kuat and Fondor to churn out ships. Dagobah and Hoth have no business producing Star Cruisers.

*The Rebels had superior starfighters (until the development of the TIE Defender, and the underused "TIE Advanced" variant owned by Vader, none of the TIEs had shields), which made for a more versatile hit-and-run strike force, which could be rebuilt more quickly because any planet could build fighters. Rebel fighters had hyperdrives, and thus could move further without carrier support, and generally were tougher. B-Wings could do serious damage to capital ships.

*The Rebels were smaller but were a fundamentalist government, as opposed to the Imperial Monarchy. The Rebels therefore had no corruption or happiness problems...I planned to keep them from becoming filthy rich by not giving them ceremonial burial or monotheism. The Empire subsequently had to concentrate on pacifying little patches of unrest all over the place, while the Rebels only faced an exterior threat.

*The Rebels had full knowledge of the map, but the Empire had to find the Rebel planets. In addition, the Rebels had a monopoly on Bothan spy units; the Empire only had immobile Security forces designed to hamper enemy espionage. The rebels got money to bribe enemy ships with by raiding Imperial shipping (killing an enemy caravan-type got them fifty gold under events.txt). The Rebels also had most of the invisible units.

The scenario eventually croaked, like most of my ideas. That's the bulk of what I got though.

[kobayashi]

Well I always wanted to make a star wars scenario. good hunting.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Elok, you have some very nice ideas there. I hope you don't mind if I borrow some for the scenario. These ones especially really ought to play a major part in any given SW Scenario.

I plan to remain faithful to the Star Wars paradigm where the Empire's capital ships are the most powerful, and the Rebels have to make do with superior starfighters. Both the TIE Advanced and TIE Defender will make an appearance, alongside the way-too-powerful Missile Gunboat, but the cost of these will be ludicrously high.

Certain units, like Corellian Corvettes, Strike Cruisers, and Dreadnaughts, will be made available to both sides.

The Rebels will not get any starships more powerful than the Mon Calamari Cruisers. Supremacy gave them various cheesy heavy ships, but they won't feature here.

Originally posted by Elok
This was to be counterbalanced by the use of CivCity to limit the number of planets "with shipyards," ie which could build naval units. In the SW universe, shipyards aren't found on every planet; you needed places like Corellia, Sullust, Kuat and Fondor to churn out ships. Dagobah and Hoth have no business producing Star Cruisers.

This is a fantastic idea! I hope to use this to make certain planets more valuable than others. Better yet, in the multiple scenario varieties and event varieties, I could place different planets with this ability, so the player never really knows which ones they need to keep!

I'm thinking of keeping the Rebels in a Communist government - that would reflect a fairly non corrupt society with some martial law. The Empire would have a straightforward despotism or monarchy, allowing it to commit vast military resources but with a fair degree of corruption to the worlds under its command.

I love the idea of awarding the Rebels some gold for their kills. I don't know how bribing will work in this scenario (I understand that tech trees can still be kept separate in ToT even though techsteal can occur) and I don't like the idea of Star Destroyers falling under the Rebels' control. The idea is that the Rebels will be able to command more respect and resources with each visible victory they score against the Empire.

Research will play a part but not too great a part. I think it will probably have three or four tiers of research, maximum.

[Cyrion]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
I don't know how bribing will work in this scenario (I understand that tech trees can still be kept separate in ToT even though techsteal can occur) and I don't like the idea of Star Destroyers falling under the Rebels' control.

Unless I'm mistaken (I'm no ToT specialist...), there is an unit flag which allows to make an unit "unbribable" in ToT!

Which means that the poor rebel wouldn't be able to get those Destroyers (unless they bribe the city housing it...).

[Elok]

Eh, according to a lot of the books, the rebels did in fact manage to capture a few star destroyers, which helped supplement their relatively small shipbuilding base. Feel free to use my ideas, I'll certainly never get around to using them.

Oh, and here are some more I had:

*The FIRST Death Star was merely an air unit with a move of about five and a range of 20 or so, plus an attack power of 98, good health and a fairly pitiful defense. That way it could only be destroyed by fighters (or, in theory, captured Lancer Frigates which I gave anti-air abilities, that being their role in the SWU), and it took a swarm of them attacking at once to destroy it. Its destruction enabled the very expensive Second Death Star wonder (Manhattan Project), which would enable nuclear Superlaser units to be built. Since the rebels' only hope was supposedly to destroy the thing while it was still under construction, and all. Without an SDI defense and with plenty of SDs around to carry the laser units, the rebellion would be doomed if the second Death Star were completed.

*The Rebels had Communism and Guerilla Warfare; Escape Pods took the place of Partisans. Escape Pods were helicopters with zero attack and a build cost of 100, so they could be disbanded in other rebel cities for quick production. Seeing as the Rebels were supposed to be adaptable and flexible...

*If the Emperor was killed, the Rebels were given Electronics, which made their Cantinas/colloseums more effective AND made the Empire's Michelangelo's Chapel Wonder obsolete (one reason I had the Rebels as a fundie state was so that the Empire used Detention Centers and Garrisons instead of Temples and Cathedrals...without monotheism and ceremonial burial the Rebels got no cash from such brutal improvements, but as fundies they didn't hurt from the lack of happiness buildings either), throwing the Empire into chaos and giving a big morale/cash boost to the Rebels. I thought about making the Rebels commies, but the use of superefficient martial law seemed odd, though the veteran spy thing was of course a good bonus for them.

*The Rebels could build Smugglers, which were very fast, invisible transports that could only carry two units or so. The Imperial counterpart was the versatile Bounty Hunter, which was a domain three unit; operating in unconventional ways, bounty hunters can't be defended against with shields or normal defense systems, but they can't occupy Rebel cities either since they're just hired guns.

*Airspeeders had the pikeman ability to make them better against walkers. Hope some of these were of use.

[Alinestra Covelia]

If you set certain cities (one square planets) as being "non-ocean" so they can't build ships, then that also will stop them from building Coastal Defences, right?

Partisans could be set to "refugee units" but then that would make them available to anybody with that tech. For the seven civs, I'm thinking it would be a shame to limit it to just the Rebels. The Imperials, being the evil jackbooters that they are, will get no friendly refugees, (which means neither Communism tech nor Guerrilla Warfare tech) but other civs might get them. I'm thinking Old Republic would definitely have adherents who pine for the good old days, and so they would probably get at least Guerrilla Warfare and possibly Communism too. To a lesser extent, maybe the Separatists would have them too. Not the Hutt, though.

Bounty Hunters will probably be something the Hutt faction uses more than anybody else. They would be the versatile Domain 3 units that can do damage to shipping and planetary systems without actually capturing a planet.

[Elok]

Oh yeah, my old scen was based on the concept of just Empire vs. Rebels. TBH the prequels have never really interested me; even the newer ship designs look too clunky to be cool to my eye. All of my suggestions would have to be adapted drastically, of course, for a seven-civ game.

And yeah, preventing ships to a city would prevent all "coastal" improvements as well, including harbors and port facilities. In a space scenario it'd be a good way to distinguish between the heavily developed and frontier planets. Like most tricks, it's not without its costs. If you don't feel like civCitying, I believe you can achieve the same effect by founding the city in the middle of a nine-tile square of land and then removing the surroundings as needed. Or at least you could in Civ2 classic. I have no experience with ToT.

[N35t0r]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
If you set certain cities (one square planets) as being "non-ocean" so they can't build ships, then that also will stop them from building Coastal Defences, right?

There are actually two separate flags, 'coastal' which allows the city to build ships and the sea improvements, and another one which limits it from building ships (so you can have a city that builds the improvements and not the ships, but not the other way round)

[:) Smiley]

What results if the shipbuilding flag is on but the coastal flag is off?

[Tigey]

If you're going to include the Missile Boat (yay!), why not consider making it created only by events, to simulate the real rarity of the handy little buggers? I'm not 100% of how the ToT events system works, but I would guess that it would be possible to have them spawn every so often after a certain tech is researched or a certain point reached, etc...
And have you had any thoughts about how to address the transport/carrier issue (whether to give ISDs the carrier ability or troop capacity)?

I'm actually really looking forward to this, it looks like a load of great ideas and effort is being put in...

[N35t0r]

Originally posted by Smiley
What results if the shipbuilding flag is on but the coastal flag is off?

I think nothing.

I'd test it, but my CivCity doesn't work...

[Alinestra Covelia]

The carrier contradiction cannot be reconciled - I remember reading somewhere that somebody managed to get a unit to carry both land and air units, but later on decided that they had either hacked the game so thoroughly that I could not hope to replicate their method, or more likely were talking out of their bollocks.

My thoughts are that lighter starships will be more likely to carry troops, since the huge capital ships are there more to ensure space supremacy. So anything from the ISD on up (SSD, ESD) will carry starfighters, and everything from the VSD and smaller will carry troops. The main exception will be the Escort Carrier, which is intended to carry starfighters.

Starfighters are intended to be useless against planets, so you need some good capital ships or some high-tech troopers (which will have the Marines flag) to carry out planetary assaults. But for the crossing of interplanetary space, you will want a good starfighter defense going out constantly and patrolling around your ships so as to root out any incoming hostiles.

I'll give the CivCity program a whirl, regarding the coastal improvements flag and build ships flag. I should have a finding by later on today, after work.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Okay, a few questions:

1. I do plan to have a lot of barbarian units in the game. This will reflect that fact that a lot of planets don't really have any interplanetary allegiances, and will probably react with extreme paranoia and hostility to any encroachment. (Rather like our own, I'd imagine.)

IF I put barbs in the map, then does that mean I can't really use the Partisans-as-Escape-Pods trick? I'm afraid that the barbs would start revolts with a huge number of Escape Pods, which wouldn't make much sense.

2. Is there a way to turn off bribing units and cities entirely? I remember it's possible to prevent the human player from bribing, simply by altering GAMES.TXT (or possibly LABELS.TXT) so the single line of options from the Diplo/Spy popup actually doesn't have that line in it (so you can't click that option). This is not a problem for ToT units, but cities can still be bribed, and that seriously sucks goats' bollocks.

3. What is the difference between Submarine ability and Invisible Until Attack ability? TIE/Phantoms can dogfight like any starfighter, but you can't see them coming. How does this compare with Vorknyyx stuff?

[Tigey]

As Kobayashi mentioned earlier, Will Keenan's Barbarian Paper, is THE definitive source on all matters Barbarian...

http://coc.apolyton.net/guides/barbarian_paper.shtml

As to the use of Partisans, it all depends on whether you want to use a Barbarian "setting" at the start, and intelligent use of tech/unit slots. If you are planning to use the Villages only settin, you shouldn't have much to worry about (heck, nothing to worry about if you wipe all huts), just give the article a look, and make sure you pick appropriate slots for units you want to pop from huts as "hordes & mercenaries" Personally, I'd advise you do use villages only, in combination with a few events to spawn Barbs, as otherwise it will be quite a LOT of work to sort out the finicky Barbarian issue...

If however, you want to take advantage of the Barbarian Settings to help you spawn Barbs, then you have a few things to think about... If you want to keep your Escape Pod trick in AND use a Barbarian Setting, it'll involve a large amount of work and forethought in planning how to allocate tech and unit slots out, far too much to write out here, and Keenan's paper will be a godsend... It might be worth it, if you're really set on your escape pod trick...

However, using his trick of giving any civ Guerilla + Mob Warfare will simplify your work greatly, as the number of tech/unit slots you'll need to worry about will be significantly reduced to a more manageable level. BUT, you will not be able to use your escape pod trick...