The First Transport Is Away Phoenix Rising - June 27, 2009 How to handle carriers and complements is a question as old as the mod, with as many revisions as we have versions. The forthcoming version, it seems, will offer no exception. While working on units late in the development of v1.1, it became increasingly apparent that we had yet to find the perfect formula to balance the needs of carriers and independent starfighters; at that point, however, it was too late to change anything. Shortly after the release, we decided to put the question to the fans in a poll to let you decide our next course of action. I'm here today to report that the vote has been counted and the changes have been implemented! For complements, this means a reduction by half of build costs and times across the board, making carriers more pragmatic of an option. We've furthermore normalized the bias that used to exist in favor of smaller carriers by allowing all complements to reach half of their upgrade potential when the carrier is fully upgraded and scaling everything accordingly in between, meaning corvettes will no longer always have better starfighters than capitals. In an interesting twist made possible by the new tech trees, complement upgrade level is now also offset by a modifier equal to the difference of level between carrier and complement, so newer-model carriers that happen to have older complements will get an upgrade bonus to their starfighters - possibly even surpassing the halfway mark at the final upgrade. The reverse is also true, however, so old carriers with new complements will be penalized in upgrades. For the most part, you won't need to remember any of these rules when playing the game - they will just happen. All the average player needs to know is that starships with a starfighter complement will now be more economical, that upgrades are now balanced across class, and you'll get better complements the deeper you go into the tech tree. Oh, and they now might include transports. With resounding support from fans, we will no longer automatically exclude units of the transport class from complement rosters. I've gone through all of our existing ships and added in transports where they would canonically appear based on extensive research and a little necessary supposition; our unit pages have been updated with that information. Finally, what's a complement post without a new unit? After being sorely missed for so long, I'm thrilled to announce the addition of the ultimate CSA complement: the IRD Fighter! The Corporate Sector had, for years, relied on makeshift, secondhand models to fill the hangars of the Picket Fleet. This thinking changed during the Clone Wars, when the increasing demand for military hardware left the CSA in a pinch. In the wake of the conflict, the Direx Board finally conceded that it was fiscally prudent to produce their own brand of starfighter specifically suited to their unique needs. The result was the IRD Fighter, a design that emphasized speed, firepower, and survivability. As with the X-wing and the TIE/ln, the IRD has transcended its everyday use to become emblematic of its faction - and for good reason: the IRD is a solid all-around fighter for the price. It is fast enough to keep up with everything but a true interceptor, but is more heavily armed and shielded that most interceptors. Its lack of hyperdrive makes it a short-range fighter, but that is just fine for the purposes of the carrier-heavy Picket Fleet. The only weakness of the IRD is its inability to adequately perform maneuvers, a problem so severe that an entire redesign of the hull was prompted for the IRD-A. As such, it tends to be a poor dogfighter, instead relying on its concussion missiles to conduct slashing attacks. Look for the IRD and all of the complement changes in the next release of Phoenix Rising, v1.2. In the meantime, check out the rest of the screenshots! Comments (7) The Thrawn Offensive Part I – The Economic War Ghostrider - June 18, 2009 The revamped Thrawn Campaign, renamed to the Thrawn Offensive for reasons that will soon be clear, is nearly done. For those of you not familiar with this campaign, it is set in the post-Endorian New Republic, when Grand Admiral Thrawn appeared out of the Unknown regions to weld the Imperial fleet into a cohesive force, and following the discovery of the Katana Fleet dreadnaughts, Thrawn proceeded to dismantle the New Republic, taking a large number of planets in rapid succession, inflicting heavy losses on the New Republic before his assassination at Bilbringi by his bodyguard Rukh. This revised campaign attempts to capture this explosive conflict with modern Imperial and Republic warships – full details of which will be given in Parts II and III respectively. It soon became clear in the development stages that the challenge with this campaign was the economy – and how to balance the economies of both opposing sides. We now have a standardised method for determining the amount of starting cash in any given campaign. Bonuses are given for each type of planet controlled by the faction in question, with significantly greater cash bonuses for Core worlds than those on the outer rim. To this base sum is added about 2 month’s cash reserves based directly from the faction’s weekly income. A severe maintenance penalty is then applied for the military construction cost for all fleet combat units – the bigger your military, the less cash you get at the start. The Imperial War Machine The Imperial economy is the simpler model, so let’s take a look at the numbers. The Imperials start with only 2 core and colony worlds, 4 mid rim, 8 inner rim and 6 outer rim worlds, giving a starting cash bonus of $145,000 (with core worlds contributing much more than rim worlds). The Imperials have a reasonably large trade fleet, mostly centred on Chazwa and Svivren, comprising mostly of Action IV Mark IIs, BBF-1’s, CTF-1’s, and Super VIII Bulk Cruisers, with a handful of armed Action IV Mark III’s. Freight carrying armed transports, such as the Lambda-a & b, as well as the more heavily armed Sentinel and Sentinel Mark II tend to be located on military worlds more for their assault capabilities than their revenue generating ability. Even with the huge trade fleet on Svivren, the Imperial economy was still a meagre $17,000 per week compared to the $22,000 for the New Republic, and a further source of revenue was required for the Empire to have sufficient economic muscle to instigate a major conflict. The solution was simple, in the 3 years prior to the assault, it was assumed that Thrawn’s meticulous attention to detail would ensure a strong economy, and so many Imperial worlds have been heavily industrialised, with the majority of space and land slots filled with construction yards, barracks, defensive systems and mining facilties to boost the Imperial war machine. So despite the Empire having fewer planets than the New Republic, it has a higher weekly income, if only by a fraction. This contributes a further $168,000 to the starting cash reserves. The penalty for this industrialisation and the massive military build up is a large maintenance bill of $213,000, leaving the Empire with a paltry $100,000 starting credits. Diplomatic expansion The situation for the New Republic is more complex. With a number of Alliance military victories, such as the taking of the Core Worlds, and the destruction of rogue warlords, such as Zsinj, the New Republic has been focussing diplomatic efforts to expand its membership, with considerable success, with the political leadership successfully persuading the Bimms to join the Republic only days ago. In addition to leaving many worlds relatively undeveloped and with little focus on infrastructure, this has stretched the ageing merchant fleet to the limit, with craft such as the 20 year old Gallofree Transports and Quazar Fire Bulk cruisers and a few captured Imperial transports unable to meet the demands of an expanding republic. Even and the recent addition of new freighters such as the MCF-1 and the heavily armed YT-2000 has not helped much as these are more suitable for smuggling operations and moving high value gemstones past customs stations than the bulk transport of goods to support major interstellar trade routes. The New Republic has taken the drastic step of cannibalising some of its older warships to make much needed cargo ships. CR90s, EF76 Frigates, Mark I Dreadnaughts and even Liberty-class Star Cruisers have been gutted and pressed into freight duties. While these ships maintain their military grade shields, they only possess skeleton crews and, at best, will only have defensive armaments, if any. Worse still, these ships do not have the damage control parties needed to survive long exposure to enemy fire, so loss of these ships would have high impact, as their freight carrying ability is considerable, and furthermore their home port of Sluis Van must be protected at all costs. It should also be noted that unlike the Imperial fleet, which has tended to separate military worlds from trading ones, most Republic worlds carry both military fleets and a range of small merchant vessels in orbit. Overall, this has given the Republic a well needed cash injection, with the added benefit of removing older ships from military service and thereby reducing the fleet maintenance bill at the same time, giving a healthy $200,000 starting credits at the beginning of the campaign. The Future for Economic development The high level of industrialisation on most Imperial worlds leaves little room for further economic expansion, and while some planets are almost totally undeveloped, such as Honoghr and Trogan, there is good reason for this – development of these worlds will only bring very limited benefits. The Empire will be looking to its military forces to find new sources of income, and Grand Admiral Thrawn has located a number of vulnerable planets that should be easy to capture and exploit. For the New Republic, some hard choices must be made. While the cash reserves will be vital to boost a weakened military, some effort must be made to quickly increase the level of industrialisation on some of the safer worlds, and to build up the limited military construction facilities to defend the Republic from the predations of a Grand Admiral. Comments (24) Admiral! We have enemy ships in sector 47! Ghostrider - March 9, 2009 If you want to fight more space battles that feature this type of nervous bridge report, then try the revised Galaxy Far, Far Away-series campaign files. The feedback on the forums has been excellent, and it appears that I neglected to give many of the fleets, especially those in the Core, sufficient destroyers and capitals. The result was that many of the Core fleets were too easy to destroy once you had built up your first fleet, making the campaigns less interesting than intended. Fleets have now been augmented with a considerable amount of Venators, Victorys and Imperial-class Star Destroyers to make you think twice before picking on an invasion target. We also fixed one glaring omission from the films. Victor-class star destroyers were as prevalent as the Ventors in the Clone Wars era, and you will find a LOT more here. Kuat, Brentaal IV, Corellia and Munnilinst in particular are now very challenging. One of the most popular comments was how the AI dumps an entire armada in behind you, just as you think you are mopping up the last stragglers. This will happen a lot more now. I have also improved the fixed defenses, and you will find many space stations and Golans have got a bit bigger since the last version. (Thanks to Tropical Bob for providing this excellent screenshot) All versions have been based on the Slim files, and are no bigger than before (I have cut other content to make room for the capitals), and please note that from now on, only the Slim versions will be part of the release. Please also note that if anyone downloaded the draft versions on the forum last week, we have made some minor tweaks to increase the AI challenge, so please download final versons from the website. I must say, however, how valuable and important the feedback from the forums has been. Since only recently jumping from a forum contributor of random scribblings to a part of the Modding Team, I never realised how valuable good contribution really is. A big thanks to the community, and especially this thread for giving such helpful and informative advice. As an update, the Thrawn Campaign revisions are also progressing well, so expect more news soon. Comments (11) The Hydian Way to the Braxant Run Ghostrider - January 30, 2009 Just a quick update on the latest news from Galaxy Far, Far Away; Full galactic campaign reference maps are now available to download - including details of trade routes and their names. This R2 Unit has a bad motivator I also have to apologise about 2 errors in the recently released campaign packs. One is hardly noticeable - the other glaring. I admit to forgetting to comment out the Pirate forces on the Imperial world of Chazwa in the Inner Rim Slim campaign pack, so apologies to those who found pirates on an Imperial World! The second was more subtle - Corfai was not placed on the Corellian Trade Spine in the Galaxy Far, Far Away Release. Amended versions of both campaigns are now available. So please could you all download amended versions of the Slim Pack and/or Standard Pack to correct this problem. Enjoy the reference maps! Comments (17) Divide and Conquer Part II Ghostrider - January 22, 2009 Apologies for the delays in getting the revised campaign files ready for you, but I have been working on something else to compliment the work so far, and as with all projects, it has expanded somewhat – we now have full campaign maps of the galaxy with the release, but I digress. If you go to the downloads section, you will find a series of campaign packs enabling you to tailor your Galaxy Far, Far Away experience to your hardware. Installation instructions are enclosed, but put simply, download the relevant files to your desktop and copy the campaign files to your XML folder, ensuring you replace the existing files. I recommend deleting both instances of the Campaigns_Galaxy_Far_Far_Away and GFFA_Lite from your XML folder as well. Full instructions are provided in each pack. First, the Slim campaign pack is for all users with older machines and for anyone experiencing slow performance with the current files. This contains slim versions of the Core Worlds, Inner Rim and Outer Rim campaigns, but does not contain the Galaxy, Far, Far Away campaign for obvious reasons. You should find a marked improvement in game speed on these slim files, and with any luck you may not even notice the content that has been cut. Secondly, the Standard Campaign pack includes the full versions of CW/IR & OR as well as a slimmed down version of Galaxy Far, Far Away. While this is considerably faster than the version released initially, I still recommend that you only try this campaign if you are happy with the performance of the Outer Rim campaign as it is larger and runs slower than the full version of the Outer Rim campaign. Thirdly, there is the Modders Campaign Pack. This contains the master files for serious modders wishing to see the full scale of the raw campaign, but these files are NOT intended for gameplay! I have also tentatively included a full version of the GFFA campaign, with all planets enabled, but personally the penalties of worse frame-rates and increased lag are not compensated for by the modest increase in content. This file is NOT supported by the mod and you play this at your own risk. Finally, I can introduce the reason for my delays – full campaign maps. Download the map pack to get PDF’s showing the full galactic maps for the Core Worlds, Inner Rim, Outer Rim and Galaxy Far, Far Away campaigns. These images will also be available in the screenshots section. Finally, please let us have your feedback on these latest campaign files as we plan to introduce new campaigns and upgrade existing ones over the next few months. Your feedback is vital in ensuring these new campaigns run smoothly and with the optimum balance between performance and content. And you are wondering why I have not included maps for the Thrawn Campaign and Operation Shadowhands, then you will have to wait until I have completed my next task – GFFA style revamps of these campaigns with more detailed content. Comments (58) Community Roundup Phoenix Rising - January 14, 2009 There have been a lot of happenings worth noting lately, so I figure I'll combine them all into one news post so no one misses any of them. First up, the Empire at War division of FileFront recently took the time to do a formal interview with me about Phoenix Rising. Conducted by Enceladus, the interview gives a candid, behind the scenes look at our newest release, in addition to tapping my thoughts on a number of general issues that are relevant to the EaW community as a whole. The FileFront exclusive can be found here. * * * * * We're working on figuring out the lag issues, but with the spectrum of PC stats as broad as it is, we really need your feedback. I've devised a standardized benchmarking test to measure exactly how PR v1.1 performs on your system. It only takes about 15 minutes to do and is imperative to our understanding of the problem. Accompanying discussion can be found here. If you spot any bugs during the course of play unrelated to the lag, please report them in this thread. Unofficial hotfixes for some of the problems can be found in this sticky, but applying them may require some working knowledge of the XMLs. In addition, Ghostrider has set up his own topic for feedback specifically on the campaigns. You can use this for anything related to the composition of the campaigns or how they play, but keep problems with specific units and such limited to the Bug Reporting forum. * * * * * Are you comfortable with Photoshop and willing to help us out? If so, check out the Official Icon Help Thread, where we're outsourcing some of the mod work to the community. This is your opportunity to potentially get your name in the credits and help us add new heroes. * * * * * I'm working on a revamp to how we handle starfighter complements, but I want the community's input. Head to this poll to vote for how you'd like to see us handle the carrier-complement relationship going forward. The current rules have been rendered obsolete and will be changed regardless, so you might as well add your input. * * * * * Finally, it's that time of the year again. Yup, Mod DB is doing their annual Mod of the Year competition. Although I wouldn't dream of winning, it's free to vote, so why not do it for us? Click on the golden wrench to head to our Mod DB profile to put in a vote. Comments (30) Remember... No Disintegrations! Ghostrider - January 6, 2009 For some time we have been hinting at the terrifying combat power of illegal warships and of criminals in general. Here is an insiders view of the worst a pirate fleet has to offer. First, we take the view that all pirates have extensively modified the stock models, with major overhauls to engines, maneuverability, shielding and hull armour plate. This makes them tougher than normal, but what really sets them apart are the illegal weapon systems. Pirates use a range of illegal weapons from the extremely expensive Diamond Boron Missiles, through to Slug Throwers and worst of all - Disruptor technology. Diamond Boron Missiles are fast, expensive and have a wide range explosive effect in addition to high warhead damage. This makes them perfect anti-starfighter weapons and a good volley of DBM’s can wipe out entire squadrons of starfighters. Slug Throwers are kinetic energy weapons, like rail guns, that bypass shields and damage the hull directly. They are most commonly used as quad guns to devastating anti-fighter effect. The really scary weapons, however are the disruptors. These illegal guns consume huge quantities of tibanna gas and create a short range waveform that destroy the bonds holding atoms together. The result of this is that if you fire a disruptor pistol at a humanoid target, it is usually vapourised, leaving a small pile of ash behind. Mere possession of a disruptor pistol is an automatic death sentence on most civilised worlds. When Merr-Sonn developed the MSD-32 disruptor pistol, The weapon was so deadly and the company so horrified by what it had wrought that Merr-Sonn took steps to cover up the fact that the weapon ever existed; the design was purged from all company computers, the designers were sent to the spice mines, the managers were killed, and every weapon they could get their hands on was destroyed! Enforcers, illegal mercenaries and marauder pirates carry disruptor pistols and disruptor rifles, making them deadly infantry. Starfighters are armed with disruptor cannon, and there are also very rare turbodisruptors that can be mounted on larger ships. All disruptor weapons sizzle straight through shields and vapourise large sections of starship hulls – causing huge damage. The following illegal units are available to pirate forces: Fighters Alpha-3 Nimbus-class Starfighter (Illegal) - 2 Light Dual Disruptor Cannon. A fast disruptor interceptor. CloakShape Fighter (Illegal) - 2 Light Disruptor Cannon, 2 (3) Light Advanced Proton Torpedoes. A cheap, tough-hulled illegal superiority fighter. Mankvim Light Interceptor (Illegal) - with improved shield hull and maneuver, but no weapon upgrades. Illegal spam fighter R-41 Starchaser (Illegal) - 2 Light Disruptor Cannon +2, 2 Light Slug Thrower, 2 (4) Light Advanced Concussion Missile. A Multi-purpose illegal dogfighter. T.I.E. Starfighter (Illegal) - 1 Light Dual Disruptor Cannon. A Maneuverable disruptor fighter (a worse/older choice than the Illegal Nimbus). Z-95 Headhunter (Illegal) - 2 Light Triple Slug Thrower. A Slugthrowing variant of the standard Headhunter. Bombers BTL Y-wing (Illegal) - 1 Triple Laser, 2 Light Slug Thrower, 2 (2) Light Proton Bombs. A Self-escorting heavy bomber. Rihkxyrk Attack Ship (Illegal) - 2 Disruptor Cannon, 2 Light Laser +2, 2 Light Ion Cannon +2, 2 (5) Light Proton Rockets. An all-around illegal bomber a la B-wing. Transports Delta-class DX-8 Stormtrooper Transport (Illegal) - 8 Disruptor Cannon, 2 (4) Advanced Concussion Missile. A deadly Anti-transport disruptor transport. Gamma-class ATR-5 Assault Transport (Illegal) - 3 Light Dual Turbo-Disruptors, 1 Slug Thrower, 2 (6) Advanced Proton Torpedoes. This tiny ship is a Frigate killer. GAT-12 Skipray Blastboat (Illegal) - 6 Light TurboIon+4, 1 Dual Disruptor Cannon, 1 (16) Advanced Plasma Torpedo, 1 (16) MagnaPulse Torpedo. A Shipjacker special – designed to capture large warships intact. Freighters BFF-1 Fire Ship - exploding version. Twice as deadly as GR-75. CTF-1 Container Transport (Illegal) – with 3 Dual Disruptor Cannon and Power to Engines, this is a blockade-running illegal freighter. CTF-1 Fire Ship (Illegal) - Sensor Jamming (no double lasers). With ionite explosives. Completely depletes all shields – something worthy of Han Solo himself – with one of these and a decent armed freighter, you could knock out the shields of an Imperial Star Destroyer, use an assault transport to blow the bridge windows and capture the ship intact! GR-75 Fire Ship - non-upgraded, exploding version. MCF-1 Modular Conveyor (Illegal) - 3 Dual Slug Thrower, 1 (12) Advanced Magnapulse Torpedoes, Sensor Jamming. A Stealthy illegal freighter. Corvettes CR90 Corvette (Illegal) – 2 Dual Turbo-Disruptors and 4 Slug Throwers, This is a dangerous multi-role illegal corvette. IPV System Patrol Craft (Illegal) - 4 Dual Disruptor Cannon, 1 (24) Heavy Flechette Missile. Flechette Missiles have a large effect area- making this a Hull-chewing counter-starfighter. Marauder-class Missile Corvette (Illegal) - 4 (12) Heavy Diamond Boron Missiles, Full-Salvo. A Squadron-killer. Frigates and cruisers. Carrack-class Light Missile Cruiser (Illegal) - 10 Heavy Mass-Driver Cannon, 20 Slug Throwers and 10 (10) HACM. This is a mass-driving siege frigate, often used as a lesser flagship. EF76 Nebulon-B Escort Frigate (Illegal) - 10 Turbo-disruptors, 10 Disruptor Cannon, 2 Tractor Beam. 2 Illegal Squadrons General-purpose disruptor frigate, often encountered as a minor flagship. Quazar-Fire-class Fire ship. Big scary exploding version. Dreadnaught-class Heavy Cruiser (Illegal) - 8 Heavy Dual Turbo-Disruptors, 16 Quad Laser Cannon, 8 Quad Ion Cannon, 2 (20) Heavy Diamond Boron Missiles, 2 Illegal squadrons. This is some kind of terrifying flagship. Under 10 exist in the entire galaxy, and all are unique. Each is individually named for a person or criminal organisation and all of them have a different special ability, including proton beams, healing, cloaking, and shield leeching! One final hint, the power of the disruptor is often misleading as it is sometimes hard to spot hull being damaged in tactical while shields are fully intact. It is very easy to lose a LOT of ships very fast when facing these behemoths. However, upgraded technology can handle even these monsters, so get your research hotting up! Comments (48) Divide and conquer Ghostrider - December 31, 2008 Many thanks for the campaign feedback so far, including your comments and issues with Galaxy Far, Far Away. I have spend the last few days addressing these comments and generally improving the campaign for re-release. Most of the problems that you have experienced with GFFA and GFFA_Lite have been to do with the extremely high load times and the slow frame rates/lag of the game in galactic mode. The majority of these problems are simply down to the size of the campaign file - the full version of GFFA campaign is 1400kb, compared to 500kb for the Core Worlds campaign. This is the primary reason for the poor performance, with a partial contribution to perfomance loadings being added simply by the number of planets. I have rectified this problem by reducing the file size of this campaign considerably, mostly by reducing the quantity of extraneous units and replacing them with other craft to maintain balance. A perfect example of this would be one of the many separatist worlds. In the original file, I had listed, say 20-30 assorted light fighter craft (Vulture droids and Mankvims for example), and 12 carrack light cruisers as part of the line of battle. This has been replaced with a single Venator_Droid - so 30 lines of code are reduced to 1 line, and you probably won't see much change in the actual battle as I have replaced individual fighters with carriers. This lesson has been well noted and will ensure the reduction of file sizes in the future. If you modders want to make campaigns, remeber to use fleet carrers to give you your fighter presence, not massive lists of indivudual fighters and light cruisers! Overall, a divided theme is emerging: If you want totally epic space battles, play the Core Worlds, Inner Rim and Outer Rim campaigns, as these retain the massive fleets in all their glory. We can get away with this due to the small number of planets in play, hence keeping the file size small. In contrast, if you want to see an massive galaxy, go for the Galaxy, Far Far Away campaign, which will be basically the same force structure as the smaller campaigns, but with some judicious trimming to keep the file size down. Battles will still be tough, but not quite on the epic scale as the sub-campaigns, and with some subtle simplification of forces - cruisers rather than spam frigates - capitals instead of spam cruisers! To give you an idea of this, while the original GFFA file was a nasty 1450Kb , it has now been trimmed to just over 900KB - hardly bigger the Outer Rim campaign. It runs much more smoothly as a result. Get ready to conquer the galaxy soon! Comments (45) Star Wars is a registered trademark of Lucasfilm Ltd. All other content copyright Phoenix Rising 2006-2008.