Now that probably got your attention! Check out the concept art for the Droideka MkII at the Official Site - http://www.lucasarts.com/games/swempireatwar_foc/)

And read the little description. It says something about Droidekas being able to board ships in space, and the transport Tyber was flying around in for the Mandalore mission in the demo is a boarding transport that can carry 12 of the beasties.

:eyeraise:

I had heard nothing about this, what the hell?

Let's get some talk going about this, cause it opens up a whole raft of possibilities.

Astounding. It did get my attention, and I'm not even a regular in these forums. ;)

There are indoor missions in this game, correct? =)

There are indoor missions in this game, correct? =)

Yeah there are, but I don't see what that has to do with this.

It clearly says in space, so I see it as a way to disable large ships quickly. This could be really dangerous for the Empire and Rebels in a large battle, as one of these little transports could sneak up on an ISD or a Mon Cal and BANG! One capital ship down.

I wonder if it works on heroes - Piett, Thrawn, Ackbar...the Executor??

You certainly have a sharp eye for updates Ablett.

This changes the fundamentals of the Zann Consortium's space strategy. I'm sure Torpid will show up soon to explain the function of these Destroyer Droid boarding parties.

You certainly have a sharp eye for updates Ablett.

This changes the fundamentals of the Zann Consortium's space strategy. I'm sure Torpid will show up soon to explain the function of these Destroyer Droid boarding parties.

I know, this could be a pretty big development in regards to Consortium strategy. It's strange that it just came out in that art though, no other fanfare.

Petro, how about some more details please? :ears1:

While were on the topic of concept art, is that Bel Ilbis thing a hero or a buildable unit?

i guess that its a hero unit... but if its buildable it will be like the Executor...
I think that Piett, Thrawn, Ackbar, etc should be buildable because they all come with powerful ships... its weird to get the ships free... considering that they are all military vessels...

Grand Text File Presents:
TEXT_TOOLTIP_BOARDING_SHUTTLE The RZ-52 Dekard boarding shuttle carries up to 12 destroyer droids. It is equipped to deposit the droids into a ship and destroy it from the inside. It has no defenses other than speed.

SECCRET Urai Fen: The battle class droideka is 1.83 meters in height and has a built in shield projector, making it a formidable threat to infantry and light vehicles.(...almost no data about the bording shuttle expect ... +The fact that Urai loves Droidekas :)


!-- Used for Underworld infantry squads and droids --
...This i found over somethin useing the bording shuttle model ...No more data
No special ability ...

This dosn't sound good for the droidekas...

i guess that its a hero unit... but if its buildable it will be like the Executor...
I think that Piett, Thrawn, Ackbar, etc should be buildable because they all come with powerful ships... its weird to get the ships free... considering that they are all military vessels...

Well, they may change the mechanic so heroes have to be built, but I don't really think they need to. It's just a game after all, and you have to pay to get to a higher tech (in GC). Oh, and the gargantuan is a hero unit - you only get 1.

Back to the Droideka thing though, in the demo the Venator being boarded had to have its engines taken out, do people think this would be the case for 'regular' Droideka boarding? If so, that's kinda strange since Home One could be boarded fairly easily then, just by taking out one hard-point.

It could be done quickly with Vengeance mass-drivers too...

I wish we could get some Dev action going in this thread! :ears1: :ears1:

Reminds me of the Marine Frigates in Homeworld 2. If the Consortium does indeed have the ability to board enemy ships that would make for an interesting tactic. I know I'd make a point of blowing their transports up as soon as I saw one coming towards me.

Guys i have noticed something in my Tekst File post...
"...destroy it from the inside..." wath do they mean destroy from the inside :edeaths: (I have a bad feeling about this)

Guys i have noticed something in my Tekst File post...
"...destroy it from the inside..." wath do they mean destroy from the inside :edeaths: (I have a bad feeling about this)

I'm pretty sure that means you bring the shuttle up to an enemy capital ship and, after some trigger like blowing up the engines, deposit the droidekas inside the ship, blowing it up.

I would imagine the balance for this is that you probably wouldn't get the droidekas back, and 12 droidekas is probably fairly expensive.

It could be a good tactic to weaken the bigger ships though, like Home One or the Executor.

Artoo, could you find out the price of 1 droideka from the demo? This would give us a better idea of risk(cost) vs reward.

Sory but the droidekas cost is a mystery to me because there are no xml's that have a droideka, only the models were left :(

Sory but the droidekas cost is a mystery to me because there are no xml's that have a droideka, only the models were left :(

That's fine, thanks for checking! :)

With this boarding ability, which I assume would work quite quickly, and the general Consortium emphasis on big guns but weak armour, space battles involving Tyber and his crew won't last long!

I'm just guessing, but I think it'll work like this: You buy the "droideka transport" as a separate ship; it's not actually a transport that you have to fill with 12 individually purchased droidekas. Then you have to fly it over next to the ship you want to board, possibly after disabling its engines so it can't manoeuvre away. Once the droideka transport is there, it has to remain next to the target ship for a certain amount of time while the droidekas board, during which time it is completely defenceless.

The question, of course, is if doing this would merely disable/destroy the target ship or if you could cease it and use it for yourself, at least for the duration of that battle.

I think the words "destroy from inside" sugest the anwser :( (I realy hoped that we coud get a ISD ... when they said that the romove Tyber's spacebribeing ability...

Teleporting terminators... ehh I mean... Droidekas into spacehulks and taking them over... now thats just nice. :)

Porbbaly the solution for those bugger is kill the control ship and it has to take soem time no i just killed a ssder in 10 seconds type fo stuff.

Porbbaly the solution for those bugger is kill the control ship and it has to take soem time no i just killed a ssder in 10 seconds type fo stuff.

I don't think it would blow up the Executor in any case, but I wonder how much hull damage it would do, or if it would take out hardpoints.

It might only work on frigates or corvettes, not on capital ships?

This might be something where your boarding shuttle uses its special ability on an enemy ship and, if the shuttle gets in without being destroyed, a timer starts running and when it hits zero, the enemy ship blows up. The timer bar probably varies depending on the size of the enemy ship.

It might only work on frigates or corvettes, not on capital ships?

From the concept art it says most ships, so I'd assume it works on the big ships.

Wedge, a 'dock' special ability which takes time but means the shuttle is more easily destroyed is what I was thinking, a bit like your idea.

I think all the Petro devs are over at their new forums, so no confirmation from here. :(

The boarding system was planned in the original design but was cut due to time constraints. The Destroyer Droid concept art contained text relating to the original design. Sorry guys, no boarding.

Interesting, what other things were you planning to put in the game?

good question...
what else is cut?

it was cut due to time constraints...? sounds like obsidians answer bout the cut content in kotor 2 which nearly destroyed the fun caused by the lack of story related infos in the final game.. why that pressure? publisher?

Time constraint cuts are pretty common in game developement. You have a schedule and a deadline. You calculate how long a feature will take to code, do the UI for, design, balance, etc. You add up the required time to do all the things you want, and since you will likely go way past your deadline, you decide which things to cut in order to get the time down to a managable level.

Also, many times through the life of the project, you will run into things that seem cool on paper, but just don't work in the game. You can either cut those things, or spend the extra time to get them to work properly. In many cases, if you choose to do the latter, something else will need to be cut in order to get back the time to fix it.

Most game developement is a give and take of time vs. manpower vs. ideas. You can change your ideas, and you can change your manpower (sometimes) but you can't change time - you only get so much. Sometimes it amazes me that we manage to do what we do within the time given. But then Petroglyph has really good people :)

Honestly I don't really remember much more being cut than the boarding ships; we had intended to cut some more things, but we ended up finding the time to do them anyway. Actually, we added way more to FoC than was originally intended (the vast majority of the corruption system was added late in the project, and the story has more missions than originally intended). While the boarding thing would have been interesting, I don't think the current game suffers for its absence.

While it would certainly have been cool to try it out, I have to admit I can live without it. There should be plenty of goodness in FoC as it is.

I second that. There will be (and already is) mass amounts of goodies to play with ;)

Time constraint cuts are pretty common in game developement...

Actually, we added way more to FoC than was originally intended (the vast majority of the corruption system was added late in the project, and the story has more missions than originally intended).

While the boarding thing would have been interesting, I don't think the current game suffers for its absence.

Hi Torpid. Thanks for the explanation. I second Anarchs sentiments. Im sure we all understand the pressures of time and manpower and are not bummed about not having a boarding feature. The expansion looks like it will pass all expectations overall and people will be pretty chuffed at the things we *will* be getting, which is alot. I was VERY surprised to read that the corruption system was added late. I am no betting man but I would have expected this was something you guys had in mind for them from the outset. Sing the praises of those that came up with the idea and for those responsible for jumping on it because this is at the heart of individuality of the ZC.

Just one thing though; im still curious as to how you intended boarding to work? May it make an appearance in another expansion (hint hint) ;P

Hmm...I'm not sure what the legality is about talking about unused ideas from a game design doc, since the documents are technically the property of LucasArts. However, in a nutshell, the idea was that the droid shuttles latched onto the side of the ship and would eat away "pips". When the pips were gone the ship was destroyed or captured. Each shuttle could only eat so many pips, and each ship had a different amount of pips. The shuttle wasn't completely removed - the current drop shuttle used for Consortium infantry and destroyer droids was originally the boarding shuttle.

It's always possible this will appear in a later product. Designers are pretty notorious for re-using ideas :D

I hope it reappears in any future expansions or sequels. I want to board a Star Destroyer and add it to my forces! The rebels did do that, they took control of Star Destroyers and even the SSD Lusankya.

It would be a good feature for a.... lets just say sequel *cough* :p.

when i start rememberin things like the time when developers needed more time for a game and any everyone was impressed what they gonna do with it till they finally release it and the hype about it got bigger and bigger cause of that...
i get a bit sad bout the financial situation these days now, that some devs have to rush their way through it and cut ideas just because as a matter of time... even if it would be just a month or somthin.. ppl are just to concentrated on money, thats the point where u gotta realize that it turned into a big business like everything else.. :-/
hopefully they will recognize one day that they gonna lose customers cause of that and "beta-status-gold-releases hittin the shelves".
sounds pessimistic, shouldnt sound like it, but as a matter of fact its true.

It's always possible this will appear in a later product. Designers are pretty notorious for re-using ideas :D
You mean in Star Wars: Clones at War :D

Seriously though how similar do you think EaW/FoC would have been to the released version, compared to if you had unlimited time and resources to make the game?

You mean in Star Wars: Clones at War :D

or it could be... Republic At War...

or it could be... Republic At War...
True, I just thought I'd be a little (not much, but a little) more creative.

Darth Torpid, I hope you mean a new EaW!! Sorry. Little noobish.

Thanks for the info Torpid. Yes I would really like to see a clone wars era version come out. There is already a couple of the main ships models done. The boarding ability would be very apt considering a scene of clone marines was cut from ROTS; I think they were either boarding a Separatist ship or repelling a boarding??? I cant remember. Back in that era they had the man power to board ships whereas during the classic era civil war the reb ships didnt carry enough troops to board and capture ISDs and such craft. I know someone already referred to some ISDs getting captured but correct me if im wrong, but those 2 surrendered at Endor? But its still possible to put it in a game; to hell with realism. But if PG does boardings, please add Zero-G stormtroopers. I love those guys. :)

Actually the whole 'republic boarding a seperatist ship' thing is in referance to a Republic Attack Cruiser that is 'docked' with a Trade Federation Battleship during the battle of Coruscant. No marines were shown, nor were they going to be.

They were however shown in the Clone Wars mini-series.

That was a awesome part. They jumped from their ship to the other one didn't they? A boarding craft type ship would be awesome.