I just watched the battle scenes in the Main menu, where I saw ships using tractor beams in combat, are they a special ability? is there tractor beams in SW:EAW?

I like the demo very much in general.

the only thing which bugs me is that the movement of space-units are somehow very strange. Is it not possible to animate them more... like if you order them to turn around that they pitch to the right/left and curve to their destination point... rather than just turn on spot and fly to the next waypoint...

i cant find anywhere where it tells you how to "spin" the camera around. what am i missing?

hold down ctrl and the mouse wheel at the same time... move. Should spin the camera fer ya

the cinematic camera is neat. but annoying too. should zoom out more. same pan shots over and over again aren't very entertaining. can't they add some more variety to the camera angles, etc. this is in reference to the land battles. as for space battles, seems like you are looking an awefully lot at empty space instead of the battle.

So far so good. I can't think of anything really offhand to add to what I've seen thus far, except perhaps the ability to target and kill wildlife (ie: shoot down banthas) if nothing else than for fun and added realism. I remember killing "mutton" in Warcraft 2/3, so why not here? Also recording some jokey voice samples if you click on the unit too many times would be neat.. though albeit more expensive (more voice samples) and might hurt the "seriousness" of the rest of the game.

I noticed another small thing, in the demo.. the Probe droid, when it moves to the planet on the galaxy map, the outline is shown of a ship flying. If it's going to be a ship shape, it should be shaped like those little pods that are shown flying towards Hoth in ESB. After all, that's how Probe Droids get to their targets!

The Demo is a bit buggy. I have a 2 ghz machine with 256 mb ram and a 128 mb video card in Win2kpro, but it loads a long time. When the game finally begins, in Single Player I noticed that the starbase was not destroyable. I blew up all the "hard point" targets and all the capital ships, but the fighters just came forever so I had to finally give up.

There should be a "RESTART MISSION" option in the escape menu I think, if the game screws up like that and especially if you accidentally save it while it's goofed like that. :P

Also, I like the ability to minimize a game I'm playing, if I want to quickly check an instant message or something. This should be do-able in a video game without screwing it up I think.

A "hotkey" that selects all usable units that you have for a major offensive would be a nice option. Maybe there is one already in the full version, but if not, there ought to be. ;)

And finally I sincerely hope that Mod making will be allowed for this game, and we'll get mod tools. Patches to fix any bugs, and the option of Linux dedicated servers for online play. If those elements are present in this already good looking game, I'm sure it will be a long-term success for the pc gaming community.

Good luck with the game and thanks for listening to feedback!

ctrl+a selects all units

1 little remark: It isn't possible to assign a unit to more groups,
for example: you assign frigates to a group, and fighters to another, but you cant create a third group with the fighters and frigates together. And thats all I could think of... very nice.

I agree with the earlier comment about the fighters just sitting around after destroying a TIE squadron. Bombers should automatically attack the nearest cap ship/station, with fighters attacking the nearest fighter squadron. That would cut down on micromanagement.

Also, at times I found that when I was trying to order ships to attack a hardpoint with the target ship being on the left side of the screen, the unit description came up and blocked my view of the ship. Perhaps there could be an option to disable those after you've seen them once?

Overall a wonderfully immersive demo with lots of Star Wars moments.

Okay this is my first post on these forums, but after playing the demo i felt it was my duty to make a 'little' review.
I'll provide my thoughts in a list to make it easier for you to check over, i know you don't want to look at a 3 page essay ;)

Lets get the bad things out of the way;

You need to split the tutorials up into 'ground' and 'space' tutorials. The combat is extremely different, and from reading on 2 forums, people are finding space battles pretty tough.

The Galatic campaign, is putting it blunt... bad. It's terrible, i was utterly disappointed by having just 1 planet to invade. Sure i got to fight a space battle, but i felt so frustrated by the end of the space battle, that i turned off when i saw the ground battle, which was really boring. However, i came back on today, installed a few mods/hacks (whatever you want to call them) and that has just saved you a customer. My faith is restored having played about 6 hours straight of space battles.

The ground combat is really weak. Probably the weakest part of the game. I understand why you want to have fixed building positions, i know it's because you want to concentrate on the fighting (exactly like battle for middle earth did) but it makes it all too predictable. Anything thats predictable is bad, bad news. I just felt, that the spaec battle was so intense and you come down to the planet and it was really dull. Something needs to be added to make it more vibrant and more intense.

I adore the weather effects, brilliant, i love the pros and cons, makes it alot better for tactical fighting. The problem is though, it doesn't do enough and it's not long enough. A sand storm should reduce the field of view hugely to the player, not only to the units. It would make surprise attacks even more daring and get people unaware. It should also last for a hell of alot longer. You can't move a force from one side of the map to the other in time to make an attack, as the weather lasts for 15 seconds odd.

I know your going to make larger maps, so thats not much of a problem for me. I do however think that the space maps in particular need to have room for craft to move. I couldn't do a nice sneak attack because the space station was right in the corner of the map, so it was always predicting which way i'd come from.

I'm also assuming that we'll see the imperial units move, camping next to the station makes it suprisingly difficult to attack. Another pet hate of mine, the garrisons. Now i'm all for having garrisoned ships. But i think those garrisoned ships should not be infininent, and they should also go towards the pop cap. The point of having a hanger full of ships is that you can mess about with just 1 ship instead of 10 units. When you see an enemy, you an empty the hanger, and watch all the units fly out. I'd love to see 10 tie units flying out of the hanger when you start an attack. But wave after wave of them just gets annoying.

Asteroids. They provide the computer with cover and hides them from view, but it won't allow your own units to hide in them. The computer always attacks them straight off. Also you should be able to have a 'hide' button ala total war. Pressing the hide button would stop all fighters in there and prepping for an ambush. Perhaps also hiding their mark on the minimap.

Someone was talking about simplicity. To begin with, i was playing the tutorial and it all was going over my head. But having played it for a few hours, it's all fine, infact, at times it's like playing Wrist, the card game. The enemy throws down a 2 of clubs, you put down a 5 of clubs, he trumps it with a 3 of hearts, and you top it with a 10. Theres nothing in there to break it up and make it really tactical, it's all too simple!

The MF is far too powerful, i managed to beat two of the star destroyers and the starbase single handily, yes it took about 40 minutes to do it, and i used a few transports as distractions in the last 5minutes. But the point is, it's very much a Gandalf character, (BFME) it's far, far too overpowerful. But i don't know what it's like in context with the other units.

Scale, it's no good, i really don't like the scale. The point of the films, is that the fighters are like little ants, with these huge ships. It would give it such a more cinematic feel and far, far more epic.

The tractor beam effect is really poor. I really dislike the swirling effect. Look really poor considering the work you've done on the rest of it.

Last point, the funny shaped Rebel ship, (don't know the name) the one that holds missiles, and used as an artillery type ship. Well that thing can fire across the map, i'm not sure if its simply the mod having bugs, or if it's meant to be like that? But it's silly.



I could keep going on :P

Graphics wise: You should up the bars on everything in the advanced, cross the 3 options, bloom and 2 others. Put the anti aliasing onto full and the detail level too full. Then it's absolutly gorgeous and film like.

I have a question: Are the levels presented on the demo, going to be the same size on the actual game?

1) There is a MAJOR bug in the demo, that ought to be fixed in the full game (and possibly a demo patch released since as is, you'd have to use mods to cheat your way past the problem areas) wherein the hard points on the "Space Stations" (for example the one in the asteroid field in the single player Galactic Conquest campaign for the Rebels) disappear if you destroy them in the wrong order or crash the game or make it impossible to win.

2) Also, the fact that the HUD disappears when you zoom out too far is rather annoying. I realize the dev team must have figured that removing the interface would be a nice way to see more of the action, but a better solution would be to simply have a key that toggles the display on or off at ANY zoom level. And of course the fuctions should always be available via hotkeys, even if the interface is not explicitly visible.

3) The ability to zoom the map in or out (the mini map) might be useful, as well as the ability to setup little markers or "hot zones" (save a spot and bind it to a key so you can "zip" there anytime). These kinds of things have been in other sorts of RTS games like Warcraft III and are very useful. Will the game allow the recording of "demos" or "replays"? I hope so!

4) In the Demo tutorial, when you send a "Probe Droid" to a planet on the map, it shows the outline of a regular ship taking the Probe droid in. Rather, shouldn't it be like those "pods" we see sending the probe droids to Hoth in Empire Strikes Back? Just a little nitpick that might add some more "Star Wars Realism." ;)

5a) This is a "fun" request, but the Banthas and other wildlife need to be killable, even the ones that can't hurt you. The Empire LOVES to stomp on little bunny rabbits! Target practice and morale boosters, obviously. ;)

5b) I realize putting in funny comments that the units would say if you click on them too rapidly without issuing an order would take a lot of extra work, but simply being able to shoot down a Bantha by targetting it wouldn't be much work and quite fun/funny as well!

6) Also, I sincerely hope that Linux dedicated server support is planned! I've probably already said that a million times, but that, along with support for the game after it's been released is sorely needed. Look at all the nonesense we've gone through with games like Battlefront and Republic Commando. Compare to the sheer awesomeness of the support for games like Jedi Academy. Make this game the best it can be, and hopefully LucasArts will let you continue to polish up the product.

It's a good sign that Empire at War was not rushed out the door to coincide with some Star Wars DVD release like some other titles, nor dumbed down to appease some percieved console gamer expectations!

So best of luck! May the Force Be With You... ;)

Thoughts in no particular order.

Maps: Waaay too small, even for a mainstream game. Tactics are near nulified by the limited space maps which are very path based.
Wildlife: Seemed a bit excessive at some points. Zooming out on the Tatooine map there were are least 7 banthas wandering about under the shield. I support having them killable.
Pathfinding: This felt really cumbersome, especially on the space maps when lots of units were present (not to mention hyperspacing in a fleet and finding 80% of my capital ships either out of the game area or inside an asteroid field).
Galaxy: Somewhat disapointed that it was so small (43 planets). Will the full game include tools to createe planets/ground terrain for expansion?
Tutorials: Couldn't be skipped once started.
Non-Linear Inverse Perspective Scaling A.K.A. fighter scaling: Disapointed that this can't be toggled.
Camera: I agree with a HUD toggle for any level.
Abilities: Many seemed useless on such limited battlefield, namely ones which aid in units escaping (where is there to engine burn to?)
Other: Annoying having limited units and timeline. Room for ROTJ expansion?

Woahohoah. This thing is made of pure delicious. I don't get why people are complaining that the demo is too short, obviously the full game will be much longer...

I like how smooth and simple the interface feels--even though there's a lot you can do, especially on the galactic level, you just drag-drop everything and the units go. It feels much cleaner and more intuitive than Star Wars: Rebellion ever did...and more involved at the same time. (Oh...the graphical displays for unit building--the rotating progress bars--were definitely proof that the old Westwood guys are involved on this project!) I particularly like how you can retreat and recover from a lost battle (yeah, I fudged my first assault on Tatooine...damn tornadoes) in the galactic view pretty straightforwardly. I disagree that there should be a "replay mission" option--players should have to lose a little every now and then. That's the best part of grand strategy: you have an entire, integrated campaign involving many elements at once, you can't just rush the opponent. I also really liked the tooltips that give you instant access to all sorts of unit information.

I enjoyed tactical combat, though I had some issues with the camera controls. I couldn't help feeling that you can't zoom out far enough. I'd love to be able to get a good overview of the situation without a Star Destroyer taking up a third of my view (by the way, kudos on having units drawn to approximate scales, instead of AT-ATs and infantry being roughly the same size like in many other RTS games). The cinematic camera thing was really fun, though sometimes I'd be stuck looking at empty space or ground...that bothers me less since I figured out that I can manually cycle to the next camera view. The on-the-fly "documentary-style" camera, zooming in and out and panning dynamically, is very, very cool--the development team must have been watching Battlestar Galactica for inspiration! Only bad thing I can say about the cinematic view is that sometimes it would be pretty jerky...I'm running on a fairly old system, though, maybe that's just my lack of a modern graphics card.

Bringing in reinforcements was a great touch. It reminded me of Force Commander, but done properly--I only got the demo of FC before I decided how godawful it was. This system of reinforcements really makes you feel like the tactical campaigns are part of a larger struggle, since you have only the resources on hand to deal with the ground situation. It's also a great touch of realism, without all the on-the-site army infrastructure construction seen in other RTS games. I'd love to see if, in the full game, you can send fleets to a planet in staggered fashion--so that your forces arrive in orbit in waves, at your call, just like you can bring in land units in separate reinforcement drops. Tactical combat got a little bit micromanage-y, but no more than in any other RTS, and since these battles are much more squad-based than whole-army-based, that makes a good deal of sense. I really, really appreciated being able to trigger various units' special abilities individually, even if they were part of a larger group. That's an innovation missing from many RTS games these days. Finally, I must say that the Tatooine map didn't leave much room to maneuver. My artillery and tanks kept choking up all the passages between rocks. I still managed to make some useful tactical maneuvers, though, so it's not a big issue.

Great job, guys. I'll definitely be getting this when it comes out, I'm very much looking forward to it! Thank you for all your hard work!

[EDIT: Two more things: First, I'd like to see tanks, speeder bikes, and infantry that hasn't been told to take cover do a little more movement when attacking, like the fighters do in the space battles. I fully expect capital ships and things like AT-ATs to stand and slug it out, but people and hovertanks ought to jockey for position, and speeder bikes should be zipping around just as fighters do--like the aircraft in Total Annihilation. Second, I really want to be able to give units lists of orders just by SHIFT+right-clicking, instead of using a special waypoint command. ]

The demo appears to be good, and I do hope it's an good indication for the final product. Just a few minor issues so far.

1. The demo AI, although that's easy to fix using one of the mods.

2. Way too short,although partly caused by the AI.

3. Build spots, I like the idea of limited buildings per planet (although the number should be reasonable). However I don't like the idea of having a limited defense on the battle map. So the build spots there need to go. That way I am able to defend my drop points, and set up a well defended small heal and repair base. Maybe have an infantry troop create them.

4. There are some illogical in the demo, while there are already logical units that fill the same role. Although this may be fixed with some modding. For Example the TIE Mauler can be replaced by the AT-PT, and the TIE scout can be replaced by the TIE advanced. I'd also like to be able to fill up the ships and I'd like to see the TIE interceptor to take care of those nasty A-Wings used by the rebel scum.

5. I'm not sure about this, but it appears the rebel scum has better ships than the emperors own (in the unit is strong vs and weak vs screen). However neary all the imperial units come with added squadrons (not sure about the rebels, but I think they don't get them), I do not know how to see this. So, does a fullly loaded MC80 Cruiser (if it carries any fighters) beat a fully loaded Imperial StarDestroyer? According to the weak/strong list, it should beat one when empty vs empty, but it's weak against bombers and the ISD has those as well.

6. I think the defender on a ground map should also be able to use bombing, if he has the correct building/bombers stationed etc. I think this should be done by either allowing small ships to be garrisoned on the ground, or by building a hangar that gives you acces to bombing runs.

I loved the demo and enjoyed playing it all day. This looks to be a great RTS set in the Star Wars universe. My chief compliants are in the AI and group commands.

1. I would like units to attack what they are strongest against preferentially like others have mentioned.

2. I would also like to see an 'escort' mode for both ground and space. This will make one unit guard another, however it has to be ended by the player before the units take new orders. That way capitals and bombers can be easily guarded without having to select just them. Units in this mode will still attack what they are strongest against.

I am rather bored of it now, played the demo too much, so i doubt i will be buying it now.

The Demo gave us the rebellion side to play with, now with mods, we got the imperial side, i am just bored of it now....i am sure it will sell well though.

I thought it was a good demo, but I just have one tiny suggestion:

The special ability buttons (i.e. "take cover" or "sprint") should all be toggled by one hotkey (or at least, there should be less hotkeys), so we wouldn't have to memorize all the different hotkeys. For units with more than one ability, there could be a hotkey for "special ability 2." When you have multiple types of units selected, you could "tab" through the different unit types (like Warcraft III) and the use the hotkey just for that one supgroup you have selected. Besides that, the special ability buttons could be a tad more prominent on the UI.

I've played the demo and mods, so here's my take:

Zoom controls are clunky, especially in ground mode.

When I zoom into a planet on the strategic map, if I have two fleets and I want to move 5 out of 10 units from one fleet to another, I have to drag one at a time. I'd like to have a number-to-transfer option when there's more than two units.

In ground battles, if I attack with a group of vehicles the ones in back can't attack because the range is short compared to view range. Maybe the laser ranges should be longer so that my second row of tanks can fire.

Ground units seem to bump into eachother too much. Maybe the models should be smaller.

On the galactic map, I'd like to see lanes of travel between planets. At least where there's no fog of war. Maybe that could be a dificulty setting.

I should note that I really like the game. There's always room for improvement, and they asked for feedback. In fact, I liked it so much that I've already pre-ordered the full version. Good job Petroglyph!

On the galactic map, I'd like to see lanes of travel between planets. At least where there's no fog of war. Maybe that could be a dificulty setting.
You can when there're trade routes between the planets (which are always illuminated) or when you're selecting what planet to move to it will show the route.

Generally the rule of thumb is that your fleets should be able to move to any planet within the LOS radius for the planet they're on (about 3 inches) if unobstructed.

You can when there're trade routes between the planets (which are always illuminated) or when you're selecting what planet to move to it will show the route.

Hi Iamme,
What you say is true, but when I'm deciding what planets to garrison, I don't want to be forced to select a fleet (if I have one) and drag it around the map so that I can see the lanes of travel. The general rule of thumb you mentioned has some exceptions that are not clear or intuitive just by looking at the map. Are you saying that you wouldn't like a show/hide option in the game settings? :-)

Are you saying that you wouldn't like a show/hide option in the game settings? :-)Nope, I'd actually love that feature :D

A couple of things I'd like to address:

1. The beginning of a galactic campaign (through the mods) is almost always the same for me. Build a ton of storm troopers and capture as many planets as possible, asap. If you don't, the rebels will, and you are overwhelmed. Basically, the outcome of the entire scenerio seems balanced on the first 5-10 minutes, and how much area you can capture. To me, this seems boring and anti-epic. I'm not sure how it is in the real game, but I hope you don't have to start out with a mad territory dash across the galaxy.

2. I just don't like ground combat. I do my best to avoid it. I am a RTS veteran, and i'm not sure what I was expecting, and it does appear to be realistic, however it just seems to be slow and boring to me. I think the main reason is because theres no base building type of units to go around building bases with. Nor do you have an economy control.

3. Again, its hard to say from the demo, but economy is kinda bleh. So is the tech tree. None of them seem very indepth. Techtree has 5 levels with 2-4 new things each level, not very big.
Heres some thoughts:

-Economy:
-Some planets have 'rare' resources that give benefits, or need to create certain units.
-Able to build up the economy/production/defense of a planet without taking up the precious building slots. Perhaps a "increase defenses/industry/economy" upgrade.

-Tech Tree:
-I'd like to see the units evolve more. Start from ep 3, and advance units from there. Don't start off with X-Wings, start off with a prototype like thing, and you have to research X-Wings.
-Ability to research units, weapons, ships, buildings, etc would be nice.
-Make research stations lower time and/or cost to research technologies. As it is now, you only really need 1 research station. No benefit from more except for convenience. That is unrealistic.

Well, those are my thoughts. Keep in mind those are just based off the demo and mods, so I don't know what is different from the actual game.

Now that the game has gone gold, are you Petroglyph guys still interested in feedback from the demo and/or the early days of the full game, possibly to incorporate into major or minor patches, expansions, et cetera?

I liked the demo a great deal and am really looking forward to getting my hands on the full product, but I know there were a few additional things about gameplay or the interface that gathered interest here. (I'm not counting complaints about the lack of base-building or some specific EU ships or other silly things like that.)

This is going from a combonation of mods for the Demo and the actual Demo itself.

1.) Hero units (Millenium Falcon for example) are way overpowered. In the movies Han had trouble fighting off a trio of Tie-Fighters, in the game he's mowing through entire wings w/o taking so much as a scratch. Although, I thought that Piett and Veers in the Mod's were very balanced, then you had Red Squadron that can rape a ISD by itself..... Some tweaking needs to be done with some of the Hero units.

2.) Build times. Smaller/cheaper craft should be quicker to build than the larger more expensive craft. Granted this is coming from my experiences with the Modded Demo, I think it carries over into the actual game as well. Larger more expensive ships should take longer to build, not only will it make them more valuable in battle (seening how it took you so long to build such a massive fleet) but it will also make them more powerful in a way as well. You take down an enemies larger capital ship, he's gonna be hard pressed to make up for the loss, as it is now he can just click and have it ready in less than a day's game time.

3.) Ship damage and repairs. Battle damage should stick to craft for a time, that time can be dependent on the space station's level it is currently in orbit with. Same goes with the fighter compliment within a ships hangar. It shouldn't be immediately healed/fixed as soon as the battle is over. It gives your opponant a chance to finish off a ship/fleet if he's fast enough and has damaged the ships enough.

4.) Travel. Travelling is fast, really fast. To take a fleet from one side of the galaxy to the next takes maybe 2-3 game time days. It lessens the strategic value of "sector patrols" as I liked to call them in rebellion. It also makes it far easier to bring in reinforcements from a far away distance fairly quickly, another strategic decision you really don't have to make in this game.

5.) Smugglers/Bounty Hunters. The most horrific thing I have seen in a game to date. Not only are smugglers cost efficient, but you can pump them out faster than the Bounty hunters can kill them. Not to mention it costs more everytime you have the same Bounty Hunter take out a smuggler. I think I had Boba Fett up to 1200 credit bounties, nearly the cost of a space station. Granted, again I was going off of what the Mod's incorporated, don't know if this is actually in game also. Simple solution. A orbital garrison of a significant amount of ships will be able to halt any and all smuggling attempts. As it is, it doesn't matter if you have an enormous fleet garrisoning the planet, the smugglers will still get through. More of that ugly, ugly portrayal that the Imperials are bumbling idiots.

6.)AI. Both ground and space AI is horrific. Especially when you take over capture points, kill all the ground troops but there are half a dozen speeders flying around in far corners of the map and I have no anti air to go chase them down with (all my anti air are stationary turrets in the base) again, this is from a modded game, hopfully it is better in the actual game.

7.) Corvettes. I will specifically put my bombers and landing shuttles in the back of the fleet so that they would be "protected" from harm. Not so when the enemy has corvettes. They just fly in, absorbing any damage the turbolasers give them and rape my bombers and shuttles and are still able to fly out alive. Suggestion; give them an engine hard point and thats all. Take out the engine and they are a sitting duck so they can't just race in and rape your supposedly protected bombers or shuttle craft then race out.

8.) Concussion missiles are for fighters/taking out torpedos, torpedos are for capital ships. I don't like the fact that concussion missiles are able to bypass shields. Hell I don't like the fact that anything can bypass shields and go directly for hard points. I know there is a cold chance in hell where this will get changed, but I thought I would just give my 2 cents.

Even though I have alot of bitching, I do like the game. I only bitch so much cause I wanna truly LOVE this game. That, and i'm a huge StarWars nerd and need to have everything exactly like StarWars ;)

Edit: By god please remove that damn tornado in the ground battle. I swear that thing has better AI than the enemies ground forces, wherever I went it followed me around just mowing through all my troops. I even yelled out, "Stop following me!"

We already know that travel times and build times were sped up for the demo...2 and 4 are non-issues in the full game.

Now that the game has gone gold, are you Petroglyph guys still interested in feedback from the demo and/or the early days of the full game, possibly to incorporate into major or minor patches, expansions, et cetera?

I liked the demo a great deal and am really looking forward to getting my hands on the full product, but I know there were a few additional things about gameplay or the interface that gathered interest here. (I'm not counting complaints about the lack of base-building or some specific EU ships or other silly things like that.)

Feedback is always welcome, and you can bet that your feedback up until this point will play a part in future patches and whatever comes after. However, we will probably compile all of the demo feedback up to this point, since there's a lot of repetition going on across forums (not that this is bad - it just means that lots of people agree with those points).

We will be back on the fan sites paying close attention to the feedback once the game is in your hands. That's when we start looking for things like unforseen balance issues, exploits, and things that just generally irritate people. Hopefully we got them all before shipping, but based on previous release experience, that's likely wishful thinking :)

We look forward to supporting the game as long as needed. And we will probably be around on gamespy looking for some multiplayer action as well :D

Excellent news...thanks Darth!

First off, I want to commend a lot of the posters: excellent feedback which is well thought out. Second, I love Petroglyph's ongoing excellent interaction with the community. I'm very pleased with this and I don't know how to say thx enough. A couple of other thoughts:

***There is a very nice list of comments regarding HUD issues/unit assignments in a separate thread. Won't repeat that here, but want to make sure you look at these. Some similar comments have been made in this thread already. Thread is here: http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=159847)

***Build pads are very random in the demo. I'm not sure why they're where they are. They're not necessarily next to cities or command stuctures. Why would one be next to the Sarlaac pit? It seems they should have a rhyme or reason to them. Attached to cities, or attached to command strux areas. Like reinforcement points, it seems to me they should be visible from the overhead map. Also, I definitely think there should be a limited number of build pads that I can place where I want. I like that this RTS doesn't require me to be a build-monkey during battle, but I really am not sure why my buildings need to be predesignated in location. Feels weird to me.

***The hurculean task of building 40 planets is amazing and commendable. But one of the problems I'm foreseeing is that while we're getting all these historical and EU locations, the planets themselves really are barren. For example, Tat has no named cities: where's Mos Espa? Bestine? Mos Eisley (scum & villany :))? Perhaps there should be multiple maps per planet to incorporate these locales. Tat just is too desolate (even for a desert planet). Since SWG and BF fleshed out a lot of these locales, diehard fans are going to want them to exist in this RTS as well. While I loved the demo, it was hard for me to believe that Tat was almost 60% occupied by a single base and was populated by only men and Jawas (plus a rancor, some random mercenaries, a single camp of wandering Tuskens, and a Sarlaac).

***I don't like that my bombers can only attack areas where I have clear sight (ie, no fog of war). The bombers are in the air and have a pretty good panoramic view. If I call in a bombing run in an area where I briefly got view of an important hard target (ie, a turret), I should be able to assign a bombing run to that location whether I can see it now or not. The turret isn't going to move and the location is now known to me. One side note...I love calling in a bombing run and then immediately switching to cinematic mode: you get an amazing camera lock on the bombers as they approach their target and it's just awesome.

***Not sure I understand why a mercenary base allows my stormtroopers to move faster and not be affected by weather. Seems like these need some more fleshing out. It would seem that the things you get from the mercenary base would be better served from a research facility. The mercenary base should be an area where you could physically send units to be trained in mercenary tactics. It shouldn't provide a planetary-wide bonus to all units. Also, I think--similar to the bonuses you get on space stations--you need to make "hard choices". As it stands now, I basically click on all four training choices as soon as I've assimilated the mercenary base without even looking at what the bonuses are that they provide. There should be more than a monetary choice to make (ie, the cost of these bonuses). There should be disadvantages to them (such as gaining bonus against planetary weather at the expense of decreasing the armor of a unit against projectiles, etc).

***As above, same goes for space stations. It also seems weird that I can't activate those bonuses from the galactic map, but have to wait until there's a space battle to activate them.

***I should also be able to explore the planetary and space locations in depth prior to battles. For example, I can't defeat the Tusken Raiders until I'm attacked and then have access to the planetary map itself. I also can't strategically place units until the battle itself. There should be some way to balance the ability for the enemy to land on the planet and me to have the tactical advantage of having the planetary control.

***If I install a shield generator, most of my structures should have protection. The mining facility on the Tat map (and yes I know that there will be other planetary maps and layouts :)) is outside the shield. What's more, there's really no need for me to defend that building since in the planetary battle it doesn't help nor hurt me at all. Again, it leaves me thinking that during the battle there's no good reason for it to be visible at all.

Thanks again for your attention to the community. You are setting a high precedent for subsequent games (as it should be).