i said just use map like rebllion, make the ground battle in depth like force commander and have space battles like any space strategy game and u got a game. I am just soo happy they have a free form galaxy and not mission based.

only thing ill be worried about is if they limit amount of units too much and if they dont have vehicles/ships like not customized enough. Like be cool to have it where each STD can only hold this many fighters, u can add more lasers to this ship, or edit the base and have structures where u want them to be.

It sounds like what you're talking about is the ship-building feature in games such as Master of Orion. While I really like that feature too, I'm not sure that it quite fits in with this type of game. I mean, when someone sees a star destroyer, they should know what to expect from it. Meaning, it can carry X number of fighters, and has Y number of turbo-laser batteries, etc. If that starts changing, then the whole definition of what a "star destroyer" class of ship "is" begins to lose its meaning.

I seem to recall reading in one of the previews that you could customize some of the equipment on the ships. The idea was to make them more personal rather than being just another Star Destroyer.

Hmmm, if true, then I'll be very interested in seeing how that works.

The most likely customization I can see would be what fighters are being carried aboard.

I think they said there are "slots" in which you can put ion cannons, turbolasers, launcher tubes, etc. I think it's good because a star destroyer captain would possibly customize his own ship, too. Depends on situation always, though.

Where do you guys get the idea that ANYTHING will be customizable?

There was a gamespot review that said so.

make the ground battle in depth like force commander
Nah, I hear they're making the ground battles fun, but except from that you're pretty accurate.:D

Customization: Nothing beats Stars!. Ever. You built your ships from the bottom up, taking a hull and adding engines, weapons, scanners, mines, cargo pods, anything. Technically, it could work for an SW game as well.

X-Wing: 1 engine (save the need for multiple engines for the bigger ships), 4 beam weapons, 2 warhead launchers, 1 general purpose slot, 1 armour slot, 1 shield slot, 1 general purpose slot. This in addition to basic armour, fuel capacity, cargo capacity, etc. of the hull itself.

So if you focused on electronics and propulsions research and not weapons you could have an X-Wing (when you had researched the hull design) with advanced (newly-researched) engines, mediocre blaster cannons and warhead launchers, a very good astromech droid, a very good shield, and so on and so fourth.

If you have played Stars!, that'd make sense to you;) .

Empire Earth had a similar system in which you could pay to upgrade the armour, engines, weapons, speed, hit points, etc. of your unit types and even buildings. So if you played in the modern age you could have F-15 fighters that were maxed out to be strong hit points-wise, fast, and with a big fuel capacity, while your enemy could have a maxed-out F-15 with very good armour, strong weapons, and a long firing range, but with nowhere as much fuel or as many hit points as you.

More simple, but just as fun.

If that starts changing, then the whole definition of what a "star destroyer" class of ship "is" begins to lose its meaning.
Nope. Even in Stars!, where you could build ships from scratch, a Battleship was a battleship, a Medium Freighter hull was a freighter, and a privateer was an armed freighter. They'd have variations like different equipment (for example, you could put a beam deflector and shields on your privateer instead of extra fuel tanks and a scanner), but you knew what to expect most of the time (except in cases where ships had tonnes of "General Purpose" slots, which could be fitted with everything from guns to scanners to cloaking devices to cargo holds).

Changing global things like number of fighters carried, though? Nope. A Star Destroyer is a battleship/carrier, letting the player turn it into, say, a heavily armed freighter with no hangar bay makes no sense.

There can be basic, fixed stats and still be game play. Stars! proved that.

Customization rules. I don't think EaW will be as customizable as Stars! (although it'd rule to design SW craft with so much depth!), but I'm glad to hear there will be something.

If you can custumize I don't think I'll do it on every ship, but instead I'll have some definate flagships.