With the last one destroyed, I can finally bring in the rest of the fleet. One thing I like to do is to place the reinforcements while the game is paused, cause it makes so that they all warp in at once, which looks pretty cool.
*hyperspace noices*
The fleet, comprised of Vader, three Acclamators, and two Tartans, get to work quickly, with the Tartans, Tie Fighters, and two heroes taking out pirate fighters while the frigates remove the turrets.
Next, everyone starts assaulting the pirate asteroid base, which is destroyed hilariously quickly. Seriously, the Tie Bombers don't even reach it before it's half dead.
You can see the bombers on the minimap, barely offscreen.
When the base is destroyed, the pirate leader tries to escape in a small frigate. It's cute, how he thinks he actually has a chance.
I'll take the chance to show off more of the pretty cinematic view.
With the pirate leader's frigate almost destroyed, Fett moves in to take him into custody, and the mission ends.
Another easy mission. Next time we'll begin mowing our way across the galaxy.
So, in case you've been wondering, the reason there's been no updates the past few days is cause I had exams yesterday and today. Now those are over, so updates should be regularly forthcoming for a while.
Anyways, after the last mission where I got Boba Fett and we captured a pirate leader over Ilum, there's some sort of plot-relevant stuff going on. We got no time for that, though. Wanna know why? Cause it's time to actually capture Ilum. Since Ilum's pretty much on the opposite side of my empire from where all the new enemy planets will appear, it's pretty much free credits and population increases.
Blah blah blah, let's blow this popsicle stand.
As usual, I start off with four AT-STs. I bring down Vader, stormtroopers, a field commander, and some scout troopers. I'm hoping to emulate the strategy that lead to an easy victory on Fondor, by spotting the pirates' building with the scout troopers and then dropping a bunch of bombs on it. However, things don't exactly go according to plan.
For some reason known only to my past self, I decide to march my army east towards the other reinforcement point instead of waiting for a bombing run. Vader stays behind to set up some turrets, before running off to join the others.
On the eastern front, there's some pirate troopers, nothing major. However, things start to go wrong back by the reinforcement point. Pirate infantry along with a skiff attack before the northern turret is done and manage to destroy it. They also manage to remove the reinforcement point from my control before Vader gets over to reinforce. I decide to leave him there to keep the area controlled.
The reason everything went wrong was the positions of the turrets. They were too close to the cliff, so enemy forces could sneak around them near the reinforcement point. Also, I'm pretty sure their range was limited due to snow storms. It probably would have gone better if I had waited for the turrets to finish building before marching east, as that would have let them defend themselves easier.
Anyways, to the east I manage to break through to the reinforcement point. At first, the resistance is pretty light, but the pirates are able to send a constant stream of units to whittle my army down. On the far side of the reinforcement point there's some anti-vehicle turrets along with skiffs and other units. This makes approaching without Vader difficult, as normally he'd be able to disable the turret while my army fought the pirates. However, without him they have a strong defense against both vehicles and infantry, so I hold my ground next to a batca station.
Eventually I just go "fuck it" and drop a bombing run on the enemy forces. This makes things a easier, and I capture the reinforcement point while Vader takes his time getting over there.
There's some more turrets to the north, and since I don't want to deal with those at the same time as the enemy army, I decide to send some fresh scout troopers (the original ones died at some point) towards the center of the map, where the enemy base is. You can tell where an enemy building is even if you can't see it by selecting a unit and they moving the cursor over various points on the map. In places it's not valid for that unit to move, such as buildings, the cursor will change to show you can't move there.
The scout troopers go to the pirate building, wait a bit while the bombs drop, and then speed back to the rest of my forces. Due to bad micromanagement on my part, they die to the AV turret right there.
If you look closely, you might be able to see the scout troopers' corpses.
The rest of the pirate forces pretty much suicide into my reinforced army, and the battle ends quickly.
I start building a space station and some mining facilities on Ilum for those sweet sweet credits and population increase. Next time I'll go take over some more planets after I'm briefed on the next mission.
Ugh, this didn't go particularly well, mostly on account of careless mistakes on my part. It's pretty much the first battle that hasn't gone practically perfectly. Well, I only lost the scout troopers, same as on Fondor, but I still played pretty sloppily. It might be a good idea to do these not so late at night in the future...
Okay, I know I said that since my exams were over, updates would be fairly regular, but I forgot I was going camping tomorrow. It's only one night, so expect the next update day after next.
Ok announcement time! For my RAW LP I am only showing one last battle as the CIS because Easy mode is actually easy now, and thus very boring to play.
But Don't worry, Only Begun The Clone wars Have......
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Grand Army of the Republic Intelligence Report:
Commander Disappointment "Hassam" Reeta:
Commander General Reeta (Formerly Chief Engineer Reeta) Was granted a command Position after distinguishing himself in the Battle of Eridau, Using the Range of the then untested AT-AP(All-Terrain Attack Pod.) . He Managed to Unite the Citizens into an impromptu militia, Leading the Pirate invasion force into an ambush allowing GAR reinforcements to arrive. His Commanding Skill in the face of Danger gained him the title of Commander of the Eridau Defense Fleet.
He was Further promoted to Grand Commander of the GAR with the outbreak of the Clone wars During the battle of Geonossis, as the only Commander with field experience present at the time, And the subsequent retreat when CIS forces arrived.
While we've been running around killing rebels, the Death Star construction project has began to run out of slaves. So, Grand Moff Tarkin orders us to go to Geonosis and get a bunch of Geonosians for slave labor. Vader and Tarkin get a bit sassy, so the Emperor pops in to tell Vader to do what Tarkin says.
While this conversation has been going on, more planets have been becoming available on the galactic map. Most of them are between us and Geonosis, so it's gonna be a while before I get to the actual story mission.
Both Endor and Byss start off unoccupied, so I immediately send my primary fleet to Endor and take it over. After that, I go to Byss and capture it as well. Since these are going to more on the frontier, so to speak, I only build barracks and light vehicle factories, which will be able to spawn reinforcements in case of land invasions. I also start producing some units that will occupy those planets and protect them.
After that, I send the main fleet to Eriadu, a Rebel-controlled world. I want to begin and keep up an offensive as soon as possible in order to prevent them from attacking me.
I start out with a disappointingly low ratio of Acclamators to Tartans. I guess I'll need to buff up the number of Acclamators so that the computer starts me off with more.
Now, the Rebel space station is in the opposite corner of the map. I decide to go around the south way instead of directly to the west, since the passage through the environmental hazards to the west is a bit cramped for my tastes.
A Rebel Corellian corvette and a Corellian gunship approach. The corvette is similar to the Tartan in that it has lasers for anti-fighter and bomber duty. The gunship is a bit more worrying since it has concussion missile launchers, which go through shields. I send my fighters and bombers away and let the Tartans and Acclamators handle the Rebel ships.
Next is the assault on the Rebel space station. It's lightly defended by other ships, but it itself has some relatively powerful defenses for this point in the game. I send the Tie bombers to disable the hanger, while the Acclamators fire on the proton torpedo launcher that has significantly damaged one of them. The Tartans, Tie fighters, and Vaders just hang around helping, or attacking any other Rebel ships that approach.
At one point a Corellian corvette manages to make it over near the bombers, but it's driven off by the Tartans before it can do much damage.
Finally I just have everything fire on the space station until it's dead. I activate cinematic mode so that I can get some nice shots.
When the space station explodes, the battle doesn't actually end yet. There are some Rebel fighters and bombers hiding up at the top of the map, but they make a suicidal rush and die easily.
I seem to be getting back into the swing of things, as the battle and preceding galactic management go off without a hitch.
After this battle we'll have a land battle on Eriadu, and then proceed to another Rebel planet.
Take Bespin. It is hilariously overpowered in EaW. You can't build mining stations, of course, but it's a space only planet with 1000 credit base income.
Take Bespin. It is hilariously overpowered in EaW. You can't build mining stations, of course, but it's a space only planet with 1000 credit base income.
Honestly, when I played the campaign the moment Victories and later proper ISD's became available I spent time just replacing all my Acclimators with the next gen stuff. By the end of the campaign I was using ISDs everywhere. Worked rather well too.
Though I wish you could specify your deployment. FoC did this somewhat by allowing you to have a "scout" ship enter first, but it'd be nice if you could just do it all from the start (mind with the scout ship you can just find a good location closer to the target then warp everything in - using a sufficiently fast fighter was great for that)
I am a bit of an old fart with my Ship tech, So I kept using Acclamators as my main frigate with Victorys being the Slightly less plentiful but very power full Support ship to My star destroyers. Also it's cheaper to Keep them around.
Acclamators are cheap as shit - pefect for cannon fodder purposes. Plus, they have a bit more varied weapons loadout than the Victories or the ISDs do (the latter two just have turbolasers and ion cannons; Acclamators have proton torpedos and concussion missiles as well).
Of course, Star Destroyers are a more preferred option if you don't want to go that route - heavy firepower and fighter spam all the way!
I played the campaign recently and at this point I had about 50 acclimators, which was annoying because in every spacebattle I started with half my fleet consisting of them. They might not cost much in credits but they take a spot a better ship could use.
I am a bit of an old fart with my Ship tech, So I kept using Acclamators as my main frigate with Victorys being the Slightly less plentiful but very power full Support ship to My star destroyers. Also it's cheaper to Keep them around.
But we don't pay unit upkeep costs... if we did, sure, that'd make sense, but we only have to pay to build them, otherwise we could have thousands of ISDs and it won't cost a credit.
OR do you mean "it's cheaper to not replace them with higher tech versions", in which case you're right. I usually just leave them as garrisons in further back planets that may or may not see action, then gather up a main hammer fleet of primary ships for use offensively.
TBH the Tartan Patrol cruisers are vastly superior to the Acclamators. The Acclamators are only good when you know you need a ship to soak losses with against enemy heavy caps, and even then, the Victory is all around better as it is capable of beating all but 2 of the rebel ships at 2:1 odds against it.
So, I took a look at Bespin and whether or not I can get there from Eriadu or not.
Spoiler: You can't.
Therefore, after the land battle at Eriadu I'll probably go for Sullust and then Bespin. Eriadu is a pretty important barrier between the Rebels and myself, so if I can expand the width via Sullust and Bespin and prevent the Rebels from taking Bestine and Corulag, that'd be good.
Anyways, land battle time.
So, something that I'd actually forgotten is that the Empire has native allies on Eriadu. Unfortunately, they spawn smack-dab in the middle of the Rebel base. They're pretty much only useful for scouting out the layout of the base, before the Rebels kill them and destroy their spawn buildings.
There's only one reinforcement point on Eriadu, and it's worth ten, so I can land my entire force at once. Stormtroopers and AT-STs make up its backbone, while Tie Maulers are useful for anti-infantry purposes. Vader and a field commander, because duh. The scout troopers can cross the water between the reinforcement point and the land to the west of the Rebel base, so when I have a bombing run ready I'll run them over there and destroy the Rebel barracks.
My force advances south and east to a chokepoint. The field commander goes and sets up a bacta station so I'm not at risk of losing my precious bonuses, and a stormtrooper accidentally creates a repair station instead of a anti-vehicle turret. The turret will offer some measure of protection against any T2-B tanks that cross the water, though not much.
With the bombing run ready, the scout troopers are ready for their mission.
There's an anti-vehicle turret at the west entrance of the Rebel base which kills one, and an anti-infantry turret and some missile troopers near the middle which kills the other. Luckily, the last one made it barely close enough to spot the Rebel barracks, so I drop a bombing run while I still have vision on that area.
Those scout troopers will receive the highest of honors, and their families will never want for anything.
Now my main force proceeds east into the more narrow passages. To the south is an abandoned sensor array, which when captured let's you see the entirety of the map. So, Vader goes and gets that. Now I can see everything.
NSA mode activated
A sizeable Rebel force masses near the south entrance to their base, before attacking. A lone Tie Mauler is destroyed by missiles, but otherwise I have no other casualties during the battle.
There's another bombing run available by now, so I place it on the light vehicle factory.
The entrance to the Rebel base has some tough defenses on the more western south path, with both an anti-infantry and an anti-vehicle turret. My plan was to have Vader disable the anti-infantry turret while stormtroopers backed him up and destroyed the anti-vehicle turret, but things didn't quite work out that way.
Some Rebel infantry get down near the turrets and start firing at Vader, and he's not quite out of range of the AV turret, so I have him run away before he dies.
Something to note about how hero units work in this game is that when the die, after a certain amount of time they'll respawn on the galactic map, which is nice.
Run away!
I have another bombing run ready, and rather than dropping it on the turrets or some Rebel units, I blow up a communications center, which I'm pretty sure does nothing.
After Vader heals, the attack on the turrets goes much more smoothly. Everyone goes into the city, things die, buildings blow up, I win, etc, etc, etc.
