Take the time to read the preview on Gamespot. Here is some info on the air craft units for the Empire:

"The Empire is also immensely strong on artillery and siege weapons, although its fully upgraded heavy AT-ATs make such weapons redundant. Where the Empire is weak is in air units. Its TIE fighters and TIE bombers are weak, lacking the shields that other civilizations have to shore up the inherently low hit points of starfighters. In addition, the Empire does not get the final tech level-four upgrades to their starfighters. Yet what the Empire lacks in air power, it more than makes up for in Force power."

Also, since we don't get to go to tech4, we don't get the entire picture. Air units will be better in tech4. Lastly, the rebels' air units in tech4 supposedly are much better.

are not weak maybe againsed anti air but ya know:eek:

The Empire isn't an Air unit civilisation at all. Don't look at their air units as the typical GB air units. Look at their tech tree: Air units are 5% more expensive and take 5% longer to build!

yeah, but if you gusy had bothered to look at the OTHER civs air units, you'd see that air units are VERY weak. The highest HP was like 40, and highest attack was 6 or 7. That should be the bare MINIMUM, what with 5 anti-air unit types, all doing 20 or so damage....

yeah air-units are definatly abit on the weak side........but where still in QA so these things should change ;)

Notice what that artical said about the rebel units however:

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To make up for the low hit points of their starships, Rebels can get shields, which can be researched in tech level four. Shields effectively double a starship's hit points and then regenerate. Proving their air superiority further, Rebels get all accuracy upgrades and are thus able to improve the accuracy of their starships' attacks by 40 percent. They also get full speed and armor upgrades.
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So it looks like the Rebel units will be quite the threat in the full game.

Can't wait :laughing:

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I thought I saw a . . .

Wild Thing :thrawn2:

"Shields effectively double a starship's hit points and then regenerate. "

REGENERATE a think a key word in all of this, the naboo and and the rebels will have an advantage in air units (and we are sure that the rebels air units shields will regenerate), so hit and run, regenerate and come back. Also The Rebels unique unit , the snowspeeder is suppose to be great against mechs (read:Empire) and a excellent scout.

The Anti-air turrets don't move (Duh! i know), so they are a counter to prevent that an overwhelming air force becomes the universal game ender by blowing away your main bases and i agree with this. This way, you will always need a ground force to occupy the territory, that seems logical to me.

But it seems clear that air force can be used quite effectively against an opponents army when he is moving to attack you, out of his protected compound. Using your air force to scout out your opponents army, then attacking it by air (missile troopers seem to be far less leathal than anti-air turrets and anti-air mechs will have a hard time against the snow speeder it seems) before he gets to you, will soon become a widely used tactic i'm sure.

So in my view, the air units don't suck, they are just not the ultimate game winning unit. You will need good combined forces and that adds depth to the game. In any case, we all know that you can not win a war on air force alone.

Actualy I did a bit O' research for my guild yesterday and found that naboo and rebels have the strongest airforce while the empire has the second to the weakest airforce...

also another thing that turned up in my research was that the airspeeder is essentialy an anti mech flyer. It is suposed to do more damage to mechs than fighters and stand up better to them... unfortunately my checking around failed to reveal exactly how effective... I was only able to tackle general info for the civs not in the demo.

If you want to read some of the info that all of us have gathered, take a look over at the Nexsis Guild (www.nexsis.freeservers.com) and go to the Star Wars Galactic Battleground Main/News page. The pages are still in developement (to my knowledge) but are comming allong nicely.

BTW my sig (the pic below) is a link so if you don't want to go now, just find one O' my posts and click that pic :)