Reading around the forums, there's a mixed response to the Death Star being included in Empire At War.

Personally, its a good move. In Rebellion, the Empire could build the Death Star but it took alot of resources and alot of game time to actually build it. Some of you are concerned about balance. You didnt hear the Rebellion Alliance sit down with the Empire and say 'look, its a nice thing to have but how can we have a counter against it?'

Its simple - daring raids! The Rebels are all about daring missions. Take note, as with Rebellion, if a Death Star decides to come out of hyperspace to take out a planet and you have a squadron of fighters there, you will have a chance to launch that daring raid and take out the Death Star.

For me, it adds a thrill to the game because the longer the game goes on, you just never know when one will pop up!

DMUK

I agree...
Rebellion perfectly handled the Death Star problem, as it was very vulnerable to starfighters, and for every planet you destroyed, more and more systems changed sides. On the other hand of course, it destroyed ships in a shot.

Would be a loss if it wasn't there, same goes for the SSD.

We don't know how those "daring missions" will work yet, though. Don't know if it's random, don't know if you actually control what goes on, no clue. It would be nice to know...

As much as I agree with you, there's only two factions in this game. It wouldn't be so bad if there were 8 or so then it could be somewhat ignored, but since there's only two factions it's a little bit harder to overlook.

Also, it may cost the Empire a lot of resources to build, but it probably costed the Rebel player even more to build all those ground forces and structures on that planet. In one simple shot, all that is destroyed. Seems a little frustrating for the Rebel player if they can't pull a "daring mission" off.

If they had some function in the game to reflect their mass mobility (like the retreat to Hoth), then Rebels should be able to (slowly) transfer some buildings between planets. Not a whole lot of them because some are probably just too huge but a few would make sense. The Death Star still gets to destroy a planet and a bunch of buildings and ground forces, doing its job, and the Rebellion gets a chance to salvage a little bit so it isn't just a total loss.

I'm not for the removal of the Death Star, I really want it in there, gives me a quicker method to do alien genocides! But just imagine the total frustration of your planet being blown up, something that you've been building up for a while, and it gets blown up in one shot. Not by a land invasion where you can tactically defend yourself, but because the Imperials also brought an entire fleet of star destroyers and fighters that prevented you from attacking the Death Star.

Actually, if the game is supposed to be realistic, the Death Star is supposed to cost more than 3 times the resources of a rebel base like the one on Yavin.

Also, at least in Rebellion, there was no way to stop the rebel starfighters from approaching the death star for a "daring mission"

I would imagine the rebels could pack up and leave. This was possible in Rebellion. You could move the rebel HQ anywhere you wanted - (so long as you controled that planet) making it very difficult for the Empire to find you.

One of the things that gets me is how people do complain alot about balancing. Yes its important - but -The Death Star is an extremely powerful unit, so the Empire must have it. Daring missions would probably take the form of fighter attacks and also Sabotage missions.

Remember, it could go either way. The Empire could lose their DS or the rebels could lose their planet. However, as in Rebellion it was extremely rare players destroyed planets simply because other star systems would join the alliance. The DS would make a superb tool in space combat and im sure there will be a delayed timer before the DS could fire again at a ship,for example

DMUK

Actually, if the game is supposed to be realistic, the Death Star is supposed to cost more than 3 times the resources of a rebel base like the one on Yavin.

Also, at least in Rebellion, there was no way to stop the rebel starfighters from approaching the death star for a "daring mission"

Well, there's other stuff on planets besides a rebel base. There's also ground forces, not to mention the several other buildings that would exist. That planet also provided a consistent source of income for the rebellion, so not only do you lose a lot of material that costed a lot of resources, but you're losing part of your paycheck.

Also, this is not rebellion.

I'm not complaining about balance, Darth, but it is something that needs to be considered. I haven't played the game yet so I don't know if they balanced it or not, but I'm just trying to get people to imagine the scenarios before they immediately dismiss balance.

I think its good to have the death star in the game, but like stealthwar said imagine having your whole planet destroyed, the one you worked hard to create and build and all that jazz. All I know is it better not be super hard to kill. Also though I hope it isnt super easy. Cause in rebellion if you didnt have the death star shield on the planet then it was totally unprotected and rebel ships could just go in, and you couldnt stop them. That was real annoying, so i hope that at least the empire could do something to stop the rebels from attacking, but also it shouldnt be too hard to kill.

I also hope that killing a death star isnt entirely random, there should be some skill to it.

Im not saying this is Rebellion, but the balancing items from Rebellion can be fully used for EaW, at least concerning the Death Star. A lot will depend on the amound of systems the game will have. If there are only about 20 systems, as I've heard somewhere, a planet killer would be really annoying, but if there are about 200 the damage is not so grave anymore.

EDIT: of course a delay after each shot is a must, in fact it should be quite big.

Good point, yeah if there are only 20 planets in the game, then the death star would be a huge impact. If that is the case they need to limit how many planets you can kill or something. Hate to compare to rebellion but... at least it had a ton of planets so one loss didnt totally get you heart broken.

Also does the death star look entirely to scale? For some reason in some of the shots it looks a little small to me, idk maybe im wrong.

again, I'm going to referrance to Rebellion (yes I know, this is not Rebellion ;) ).

If you go around destroying planets, several thigs will happen: First of all, you got rid of whatever forces was on that planet. But you also lost a potential resource, err, source. You would also suffer a significant decrease of popular support thruout the entire galaxy, which you would spend a long time trying to smooth over. The drop in popular support was huge too, you could only destroy around 2-3 planets before riots started to appear. You may think this is alot of planet, and seeing how few planets this game is reported to have, I would agree, Rebellion had 200 planets you could conquor (or bkow up :p ). So for EAW I would imagine the popular support drop would be even greater. This was one way of keeping the "blow up as many planets as you want" mentality in check, and I believe it will be the same for EAW.


Popcorn, no, none of the ships and vessels are to scale.

If you go around destroying planets, several thigs will happen: First of all, you got rid of whatever forces was on that planet. But you also lost a potential resource, err, source. You would also suffer a significant decrease of popular support thruout the entire galaxy, which you would spend a long time trying to smooth over. The drop in popular support was huge too, you could only destroy around 2-3 planets before riots started to appear. You may think this is alot of planet, and seeing how few planets this game is reported to have, I would agree, Rebellion had 200 planets you could conquor (or bkow up :p ). So for EAW I would imagine the popular support drop would be even greater. This was one way of keeping the "blow up as many planets as you want" mentality in check, and I believe it will be the same for EAW.
But in Rebellion, in order to stop the uprisings you had to either:

A. Add more garrisons to the planet.
or
B. Send a diplomat to calm the planet down.

EaW could easily do A, just dump more stormtroopers onto the planet. But what if you have no spare troops? How would you do B? Everyone doesn't want this RTS to turn into some political Star Wars saga; they want action, action, ACTION!!! To me Rebellion was a resource/political management game with some space skirmishes dispersed in between. Although Rebellion and EaW are similar in some respects, people mostly want to command and conquer (What? Don't look at me!), not dilly-dally in the political system because they just annihilated some planet. Though I do want the Death Star in the game, I think they could balance it out a better way.

Actually, it COULD feel pretty cool coordinating an evacuation of the planet, a daring mission, and ships covering the daring mission starships so they don't get blown up by an SD before they even reach the damn thing.


And I think the daring misssion thing, once on the deathstar, if you can't control it, it should be modified based on:
1. Type of ships
2. 'veterancy'
3. Skill
4. Any special characters on the mission. I.E. if you send Luke he should have a pretty good chance of destroying it.



EDIT: They could also handle it like invading a planet, except replace the planet w/ the death star, and replace the army transports w/ the starfighters, you cover them until they reach it, and if they do, they blow it up. Which will also mean that the Imperial side will have to make sure it has an escort.

The Death Star is a massive murder weapon and very fun. I cant wait to use it. As for riots, I'll just send a platoon or two extra.

That's all good and everything, Jan, but the thing is we don't know if there's going to be such a thing like "popular support" in this game, much less politics or diplomacy. If you have any links where it shows there is popular support, please show them to me, I'd like to know about it some more. But for all we know, we COULD end up blowing planets up at will with no popularity penalty.

That's all good and everything, Jan, but the thing is we don't know if there's going to be such a thing like "popular support" in this game, much less politics or diplomacy. If you have any links where it shows there is popular support, please show them to me, I'd like to know about it some more. But for all we know, we COULD end up blowing planets up at will with no popularity penalty.


in that case how could they balance the DS? if you can just go around blowing up planets its not gunna be good. im sure they will have a long wait time for each shot. and it will be extremely expensive

Well, I hope there is some kind of popular support function, but if there isn't then I'm guessing the "balance" case is that the rebels are going to have some option to withdraw buildings or their fighters are going to be insanely good (like they should be) and be able to take out the death star if given the opportunity.

it will be interesting to see how they balance everything out. im not saying balance the DS so its weak or give the rebels a direct counter. it should be a strong weapon and it should be feared. At the same time it shouldnt be a game breaking unit with no reprocutions to its use. i think a popularity system would do this well. if you start blowing up too many planets you will start loosing system to revolt

I think somthing they should add for the rebbellion is a preemptive strike on the death star. Hopefully the Death star will have a construction time and a place for it to be constructed. This will allow the Alliance to attack it before it is fully operational much like they tried to do in ROTJ. This would help with the balancing slightly as the rebels could have a chance to destroy it before it even gets used.

I think somthing they should add for the rebbellion is a preemptive strike on the death star. Hopefully the Death star will have a construction time and a place for it to be constructed. This will allow the Alliance to attack it before it is fully operational much like they tried to do in ROTJ. This would help with the balancing slightly as the rebels could have a chance to destroy it before it even gets used.

its a possibility. luke and a x wing can be the death star counter