After reading through a couple of the Star Wars novels, something that hasn't really sat well with me about Empire at War has solidified: the Rebellion acts like a legitimate nation, with borders, holdings, a conventional military, and conventional bases; not like an uprising. In particular, I'm not quite sure I like the way the Rebellion takes and hold planets and builds bases up just like the Imperials. My biggest wish in Empire at War would be some mechanism for the Rebellion to build secret bases such as those on Yavin IV or Hoth. With Forces of Corruption, we see the Underworld faction taking on several of the roles that the Rebels filled in the movies, and so I wonder if there's a way to change the way each side operates so that the Empire is the conventional military juggernaut, the Underworld operates from the black market in the shadows, and the Rebellion is just about halfway between.

I think there should be a mechanism for star system on the galactic map to be mark as unexplored or unclaimed systems, even after forces have moved through. Perhaps, for one reason or another (perhaps lack of logistical support?), the Empire should not be allowed to build a base in those systems. The Rebellion, however, should be able to build a base wherever they like, but those bases should remain hidden from the Empire. Imperial forces should be unable to distinguish an uninhabited system from a Rebel system, unless they send probe droids or a fleet over to investigate. Rebel forces should also be allowed to move freely throughout the galaxy--unless, of course, their path is interrupted by an Interdictor cruiser.

Since the Underworld gets a number of abilities to build on planets owned by the Empire, avoide detection, and move freely, I think the Rebel gameplay mechanic should be altered a little to give them some of those abilities. Forces of Corruption looks like it may shape up to involve two standard RTS sides and one side with entirely unique gameplay. The Rebellion should be altered a bit so that instead of that two-and-one dynamic, each side fills in a gradient between conventional (Imperial) and criminal (Underworld). In particular, I'd love some ability for the Rebels to hide their forces and bases, a tactic that was vital to them in the Star Wars movies, books, and other games.

Nice idees. It would be more realistic if the rebels could have some "hidden bases", but I would like the rebels the have an organicasion and work like the empire. But the new corrupt side should have alot of hidden bases and/or camoflage bases/units and so on.

I feel with you. It's not really how the rebels work, finding there bases is no problem at all.

BTW: Using that quote was a smart way to get the point through.

Looks good but i think after that the imperials should get a military increase. It is stupid that bolth the rebels and the underworld has a big enough force to chalage the empire in a open war. They should maybe be able to fightfew battles but not enough to go fight to fight saying im just as powerful as u if not more powerful.

well maybe a Rebel Command center with a ability like Dagobah or Kashyyyk (you know can't see ground units) but instead it works for that Structure. Also you must remember the rebellion had help from powerful systems like Mon Calamari , Sullust ,Roche , Bothuwi and Aldeeran until it was destroyed. They also had Old Republic Weaponry and Veterans at their desposal also powerful rebel commanders (Ackbar , Rieeken , Princess Liea , Luke , Han Solo and Lando Calrissian.) And their were Tradorus Imperial Forces that could give the Rebellion Imperial weapon Specs and Battle Station Read outs (How do you think Star Destroyers were so easily destroyed?!) also they had the Bothan Spies so they were invunerable to suprise.
The Empire on the other hand relied on the generic clones the owned endlessly that were a constant same teaching same combat training and relied on only themselves and the clones. The only intelligence they had was the Imperial Intelligence Department that was not always accurate accept when Ysanne Isard was the Chief of intelligence. The Empire hardly accepted outside sources basiclly it was "you can't teach a old dog new tricks" the empire being the Dog. and the underworld Relyed on Bann weaponry which could cause MUCH more damage then standard weaponry.

Rebellion - Rag tag alot of intelligence

Empire - Brute Force

Underworld - Corruption.

I'm not sure what you're arguing, Magna, but there are a number of problems with your statements:

1) Though the Rebellion had help from many systems in the galaxy, that help was clandestine. The ruling family of Alderaan tried to hide their involvement with the Rebellion--until they were found out and the planet was destroyed.

2) Star Destroyers "easily" destroyed? Ha. The Rebels managed to take out some Destroyers, using the element of surprise and knowledge of Star Destroyer systems (such as the location of the shield generators on the conning tower), perhaps quickly, skillfully, or efficiently at the hands of someone like Rogue Squadron, but it was never easy.

3) The Bothan spies certainly did not make the Rebellion "invulnerable" to surprise! The Rebels were caught off guard at Hoth and by the trap at Endor, and that was just in the movies! The Bothans revealed the location of the second Death Star, the location of its shield, and the fact that the Emperor was overseeing construction--but they failed to uncover the trap. I'd say the Rebels were pretty darned surprised that time.

4) By Episode IV, the clone troopers were out of service. Stormtroopers were drawn from the ranks of citizens, after heavy indoctrination.

5) Imperial Intelligence was an extremely effective and incredibly feared organization. It wasn't always accurate, but no intel agency is ever totally accurate. Imperial Intelligence was as much a tool of fear as it was of intelligence-gathering, and it was very effective at both those things. That's one of the reasons why the Rebellion was kept "on the run" up until the death of the Emperor.

6) The Empire often relied on bounty hunters to track down Rebel leaders. They also liased with organizations like the Corellian Security Force. Those are both significant outside sources.

7) The Rebellion used banned weaponry, too. In fact, under the Empire, I wouldn't be surprised if all military-grade weaponry was banned for use by anyone other than Imperial military units.

In general, the Rebellion should be much closer to the "shadow organization" of the Criminal Underworld than it should be to the established military force of the Galactic Empire.

The Rebellion was not Suprised by the Attack at Hoth they Saw the Entire Imperial Fleet and escaped it.

Okay, first, they only found out about that fleet when the fleet of Star Destroyers showed up on their scanners--not from Bothan spies. Second, they barely escaped. They definitely weren't "invulnerable to surprise" in that situation.

On the original topic ... :p
The problem is that it just isn't possible to realistically simulate a galaxy with millions of planets. The reasons the Rebels were able to hide is that it was simply numerically impossible for the Empire to search every single habitable planet.
However, in a video game you will always have a very limited amount of planets - and so, it would propably take the Empire maybe 5 minutes at maximum to search the entire galaxy. I don't think that simulating the situation in the movies is really campatible with a RTS PC game....

At the end of the day, it helps if you don't try to compare it to real life. It does tend to kybosh a few ideas.

You might be able to counter that in a few ways. One is to decrease the galactic map speed--then the Empire certainly couldn't search the entire galaxy in five minutes. Other ways would be to modify how Rebel forces can be discovered. For instance, an Imperial fleet or army might not turn up Rebel forces on a planet unless those Rebels did something to attract attention or had a large base on the planet surface. The Empire would have to use a probe droid or a hero to locate Rebels for certain. Even then, a probe droid could be programmed to turn up parts of the Rebel force, but not all of it. Probe droids also could take some amount of time to investigate the system they are deployed to, rather than giving instant information.

This is a situation of Gameplay > Realism.

While it would be nice to have a galatic map with tons of planets, gameplay doesnt allow it. You could go through and argue about a ton of aspects in EaW that could be improved, but they just cant be or gameplay is sacrificed.

We need to think about it being fair its not fair if the rebels can lie low and not get destroyed if they dont attack and only put 1 unit on each planet so they have a huge army that isnt detectable and also the probing needs to be instant no it takes 2 minutes and by then u find out that they left the system

its not fair if the rebels can lie low and not get destroyed
Well, of course, the Empire might find them and destroy them even as they're lying low. The Underworld is also supposed to be able to hide to evade military engagements. The strength of the Rebellion should be in its ability to avoid detection...but the risk of the Rebellion should be the extreme difficulty of defending itself if the Empire finds them and and drops the heavy end of a hammer on 'em. Likewise, the strength of the Empire should be that it can amass overwhelming military forces and deploy them with ease, but the risk of the Empire should be that it's vulnerable to small strike attacks and has trouble gathering information on the Rebels.

I think this isn't a case of gameplay versus realism, it's just gameplay versus a different kind of gameplay. Right now, we have a standard "one side fights another side" dynamic, as seen in every other strategy game imaginable from WarCraft to Risk. Petroglyph did try to make the Rebellion and Empire play differently with a few differences in information-gathering and tech research, plus features like raid fleets. I'm advocating that they accentuate those differences, give a few of the Underworld's proposed abilities to the Rebels, too, and give the Empire appropriate countermeasures. All sides should be equal, all sides should be fair, but all sides should play very differently. This also isn't something that should require increasing the number of systems on the galactic map. For a game like this, I wouldn't have more than 50 systems anyways. But that could easily be enough space for each power to have major recruiting centers, major manufacturing centers, major shipbuildings centers, and still leave relatively empty space for the Rebels to hide in and the Imperials to lay traps in with Interdictors.

I fear that this might weaken the Rebellion way too much. I realize that realistically ( :p ), it might add a few gameplay twists that are interesting. However, many problems do show up.
How will they gather enough ressources? Unless Rebellion units get a serious buff (which would be unrealistic mind you), they'll get trashed around pretty badly and find themselves out of credits way too often.
How will they be able to defend themselves in space? To remain hidden, you can't have a big space station in orbit. This puts them in quite a disadvantage.

Realism asside, I fear that balance will be the biggest problem here. If the Rebels become a micro-managing nightmare along with requiring incredible skill to pull off even the slightest victory, would anyone play them?

There are ways to help the Rebels achieve a greater deal of realism through the improvement of better raiding forces, stealth units, change in units(faster and more mobile, perfect with a map size increase), abilities to ambush the enemy, starfighter raiding, etc.

There is one thing I agree with though and that's the exploration part. The Empire should not be able to see if X planet is controlled by the Rebels unless they send a probe droid or fleet (or if the Imperial forces have recently been booted out). It is an easy idea to implement and would not wreck balance at all.

Hmm, good points, especially with regard to resource-gathering and units. Maybe the Rebels could have a theif/recruiter minor hero, trained at officer academies, that's sort of like a smuggler for units: deploy them to an enemy world and they "siphon off" idealistic civilians or defecting military units that then become Rebel units?

I think YertyL hit the nail on the head regarding the vast number of systems in which Rebels could be hiding. That to me seemed to be the single greatest obstacle in the films to finding where the Rebels were mustering conventional forces for military operations against the Empire.

To shift Rebel activity from overt to clandestine I believe would also detrimentally change the nature of the game. Instead of a galactic conquering contest we might have more politics and subterfuge... the game might feature more acquisition and loss of *influence* over systems than good old combat. I know this sounds like an indictment of the Underworld faction... I`m just saying that I like the warfare nature of what we have right now, and that adjusting things so that both the Rebels and the Underworld function more covertly might cause the game to be a lot less exciting. And possibly less fair for the Imperial side.

As for detecting only a few Rebel elements on a planet, maybe. The problem there would be that at the first hint of Rebel presence an Imperial player will mass a considerable invasion force; the mechanic of concealment might only serve to eliminate some erratta from a pre-invasion screen. The Imperials will try to take the system regardless. If you completely conceal their presence from the Empire, the Empire will still certainly try to take the "neutral" planet.

This aspect of the new third Underworld faction is something that has been concerning me for a time... engineering a moment where you have an out & out fight with the faction may be a tricky thing to design.

I have to stick with gameplay > realism

As I said before, I agree with that sentiment...but what about "new innovative different gameplay > boring old rote gameplay?" As others have pointed out, some of the features I brought up at the outset are similar or identical to gameplay features the Underworld faction will already possess. All I'm asking is that the Rebellion have some of those abilities, too...not that the game sacrifice every aspect to realism, but that the Rebellion gameplay should have a spin to make it play like a rebellion with all the unique abilities that entails, rather than have the Rebellion just seem like a second competing Empire.

Agree with you wedge. I bet you someone will give the rebellion this in a mod when the games comes out.(or combine the two factions, change rebellion faction to some organized sub-faction (un-controlable, or just remove it), rename tyber to rebellion, and enable it to build rebellion units and with buying outdated stuff, change bribe to free/very little cost(rebel sympathyses, limited use though)).
I felt like the rebellion was a version of the empire too. (emp=worse economy, better units later on, reb vice versa) Ex of change: Rebels should have few soilders in infantry and have stealth(can be bought as special abi. or make that a passive ability for the infiltrator version). They should have 1/2(vs stormtroopers) hit kill but slow fire rate and chance of miss. Stormtroopers should be in numbers and fire rapidly but have a very high chance of miss and need 3/4 hits?(vs rebel troops) to kill.
As for sneaking around, rebels should be able to travel anywhere if they have say <5 units together at one spot(or be with solo, kyle, or some minor hero), and the base would be undetected.(empire can take over planet but rebel forces will still be there and will take some of the money) Counter to that can be empire can use vader, emperor, boba fett(or some minor hero) and place them on a planet and the rebels can't travel there unseen.