Questions Round 2: Answers!
 

Here are the answers to the second round of questions. Some of these questions could be taken a few ways, so if I didn’t answer exactly how you expected, feel free to clarify/expand on the question and I will follow up on the answer.


Generally the firing ranges of the units are not indicated. Some of the special abilities that have an area of effect will show that area when the ability is activated. You can also see if something is in range by watching the mouse cursor when you attempt to target something.


Here's the SKU list as I have it:

US English (1 DVD, extra bonus disk)

US English (2 CD)

UK/SP/IT (1 DVD) English VO (Spanish/Italian HUD and Tutorial VO) with Spanish/Italian on-screen text

UK English (2 CD)

German (1 DVD) – full localization

French (1 DVD) – full localization

Polish (1 DVD) – full localization

Russian (1 DVD) – full localization

Japanese (1 DVD) – text localization only

Canadian French (1 DVD) - full localization

Asia/Pacific UK English (2 CD)

Brazil UK English (2 CD)

Mexico US English (2 CD)

Note that this is subject to change but should be relatively trustworthy.



With some exceptions, heroes have a re-spawn timer that activates when they are defeated in combat (whether in space, land, or taken out by a bounty hunter). Heroes can also trigger their re-spawn timers when certain galactic-mode special abilities are used (for example, Boba Fett de-spawns when you use him to eliminate a Rebel hero). The hero re-spawn timer is long enough to be a pretty meaningful penalty for losing them, but not long enough to prevent you from enjoying the use of the heroes.

Because of this, it is strategically beneficial to, for example, use Boba Fett to eliminate a Rebel hero, or use a raid to eliminate an Imperial hero before a major battle to deprive the other side of their use.

The exceptions are the “leader” heroes – Mon Mothma and the Emperor. If the “kill enemy leader” win condition is turned on, defeating those heroes will end the game.


Currently there is no order queuing in the game other than movement waypoints, but I will certainly put it down as something to consider for the future.


There’s no way to queue up fleets for an attack, but you can use the normal way the game engine works to achieve the same effect. I am assuming you already know how to arrange ships within fleets by zooming into planets and dragging ships around.

All galactic progress stops while a tactical battle is taking place; so using this fact you can send one fleet to your target, wait a few seconds, and then send the next one to the same target. Be sure your pause is long enough; if you don’t wait long enough between fleet dragging the game will automatically combine the fleets at the target destination.

So, when the first fleet arrives, you have your battle, and the second fleet is paused on the route to the target. Even if you lose the first battle or retreat, the second fleet is unaffected and will arrive as soon as the first tactical battle ends.

Generally you will want to split space and land forces anyway unless you are absolutely sure of the enemy space defenses, since ground unit transports are easy and obvious targets.

LOL, Torpid, just watch what i was just about to post :^: . Heh, no offence taken...

LOL No worries :D I've had a busy time here working on...stuff...so the answers were later in coming than I would like.

Thanks for the info torpid

Thanks for answering these Darth! All these answers make me want the full version of the game even more :D

Great answers, hopefully the collector's edition will be DVD then. Can't wait to try it out!

Thanx for the answers. Like, Darth Moeller said, "All these answers make me want the full version of the game even more!"

Great Answers thanks again, I am still in anticipation for EaW
I wonder what else will happen with these questions, as the first post had said.
I still have good interesting EaW as it currently stands.

Lack of a queue system for attacking/etc does seem like a big step backwords in the development of the rts genre. I hope that is quickly resolved.

Thanks for answering!

yes they say they try to make it less chore-ful with the strategy by having a lot of thing automated, yet having to assign a new target for ur ships is prob the worse chore of the bunch especially when u have lots of lil units fighting at once

Although the cursor answer (related to firing ranges) is adequate and all the details will be explained in the manual (<--- i'm expecting a nice one, not a leeflet that unfolds to four parts :)), could you tell a bit more about cursors' indications?

"

Quote:
(2)gstommylee: I have a clarification question is the regular edition CD and the collectors’ edition DVD? I'm curious to know if the collectors’ edition is DVD I haven't decided which one to get yet.



Here's the SKU list as I have it:

US English (1 DVD, extra bonus disk)

US English (2 CD)"

So is the Collector's Edition for the USA a DVD or a whole bunch of CD's? Anything more than two CD's I would rather have the Euro version which is in DVD format I assume? The question is still not answered clearly.

collectors edition is dvd at least to the current list and regular is 2 cds
but typical its as ways been subject to change. (not likely that it would happen) its alwasy been with 2 version of the game 1 dvd and the other version is cd i have yet to see since they been starting to come out with a dvd version of games as well as a CD version where both collections and regular are cds

I contacted Ebgames the company and not a crappy store ;) regarding DVD or CD. they told me they have no idea what the collectors edition is and havent been told that information. They told me if the information came out before release i could specify which i wanted but til then basically out of luck.

Hi,

Thx for the awnsers but may you tell us why you opted for the system where the computer make choice which ships will start the battle ? Wasn't more natural for a player to make his choice instead letting that to the computer ?

One big question is still pending... is it possible to download the English-Voice-File? As I read, the German version is "full localization"... I doubt that Lucas Arts has invested the same amount of time/money in finding an appropriate crew to cast the voice-overs.

I would really appreciate an answer on this subject.

Yea all the sites compusa bestbuy ebgames gamestop image for the collectors edition show PC_CDROM not PC_DVD.

I'm wondering at the time the lucasarts decided to do a collectors edition they decided have it be cd rather not dvd and later on they changed it to do dvd instead and sites aren't aware of that.

On Amazon.com they did say the collector's edition was CD-ROM but now they aren't saying what it is. I can pretty much assume it is one DVD and one bonus CD with extra content as it is in Germany.

so germany gets the added content?.
its cool that i can change the language in the german version.

Unfortunately, after doing some more research, it seems that this functionality was disabled in the shipping version. Supposedly the color cursor system was found to be too confusing in focus tests. The functionality is still in the XML, so it can be turned back on if desired. Basically how it worked was that the target cursor would be yellow if you attack something out of range (that is, it would have to move to attack) and red if something was in range.

Honestly, I don't know. I got the SKU list from Lucas, but the details you have there are what I have as well. I assume that the DVD would be the collector's edition, but it's just an assumption. You may want to contact LucasArts via their online store and see if they can offer more details.

We experimented with a "setup screen" system for both space and land so that you could have more control over the initial ships in battles. It was almost universally despised because of it's impact on the flow of the game. In order to preserve game flow, we devised a priority system that chooses ships based on the encounter. While not ideal in all situations, it does a pretty good job overall. You can remove the situation entirely by streamlining your fleets.

I doubt that Lucas will allow the downloading of only the localization files. You may want to take a look at the German version - since it is on DVD, it may contain all of the voice files, not just German localization - however I can't confirm that. Once it leaves our offices, it's all in Lucas' hands :) If the German version doesn't have what you need, you may want to try the UK version. As to the quality of the actors, I would guess that Lucas is pretty particular about who voices their characters no matter what the language.

Thanks for answering all of the extra questions! Clearly you guys are just sitting around and twittling your thumbs now that EAW has gone gold;)

I'm sorry to see that colored cursor system go. It sounded like a very good idea!

Darth_Torpid-PG
At some point did lucasarts decide the colllectors edition was cd and changed their minds to do dvd later on cause all the collectors edition boxs say cd-rom

gstommylee

Yep but the good news are that you can reactivate the cursors in the XML file :)

The problem is that, if anyone starts playing with XML files to adjust the game to his desire, what compability problems may arise when trying to play online???

As long as the mods were the same then there would be no problem.

I think he was referring to the game detecting the modification as a hack or an attempt to cheat in the MP game.

Hehe you would think so, but nope, we're hard at work on the next project. But you know how it is - you get into work, have to drink your coffee and surf the web a while before you can dive into code :D

Besides, I remember being on the other side of the forums way back when (sheesh I am old) and appreciating when developers answered questions, so I like to return the favor now that I can.

For custom match games, it will work fine as long as your XML files are identical. If they don't match, you won't be able to connect. So yes, if you mod to enable the cursors, you could only play online with someone using the same mod.

I wonder when you'll be announcing the next project. Hope it's fun! :D

The one question I have, if you can answer lol, is when you are about to initiate a space battle (for example) and it says "Tactical battle imminent" and you get the begin option and the auto resolve option. Will you be able to see the enemy fleet so you can decide wheter or not you want to auto resolve?

You can't know the exact contents of an enemy fleet without using a spy of some kind before-hand, but you can see the relative strengths of your fleet vs. the enemy fleet by looking at the stack of "coins" at the top of that dialog. The strongest ship type in the fleet will appear at the top of a stack as an icon, and the height of the coin stack will let you know the relative number of ships.

So for example, the Empire has stack of 10 coins with Captain Piett's Accuser at the top, and the Rebels have a stack of 5 coins with a Nebulon-B at the top. In this case, the Rebels are in trouble. In this situation, the Rebels do not want to use Auto-Resolve, because the autoresolve is only favorable to overwhelming odds. Since the Rebels are definitely the underdog, playing through the battle would give them the option of either trying to use superior tactics to win the battle against all odds, or retreat. If they did use auto-resolve, the AI would conclude that retreat was the only option; the Rebel fleet would take severe attrition damage, and potentially be completely wiped out.

How does the Attrition damage work anyways? how does it decide what's lost?

I believe heres how it works:

Try retreating in the demo while your around enemy units. You will notice they speed up and your units become WAY weaker. In space, if a capital ship loses its engines than it cannot retreat either. Even if it is healthy otherwise.

I didn't work on the attrition system, but I believe it calculates a random chance per ship to take extra damage from the enemy when jumping to hyperspace. Damage repair happens post retreat, so the attrition damage is applied before the repairs; if the ship was damaged enough during the tactical battle that attrition would destroy it, the ship is lost in the retreat. The defender can lower or eliminate the attrition damage with certain heroes, or by having planetary defense weapons on the ground (such as planetary ion cannons).

Guess I'll need to keep distractions handy... :S

That's what i was afraid, the incompability issues. Still, will there be an option to "download the necessary file to play", in a folder so as the opponent won't have to mess up his own installations/mods?

Like the "download map" that some player-established servers have...

[edit] And one more question (lol, i like the topic: "5 questions" :)), easy to answer, just to cheer us up from the repair discussion: Is the manual "number one!", like the game is going to be? You know, so good as to make you read it till the last page (ok, not till the last one, i never read the guarantee things :))...Is it colorful and informative, or grayscale but still informative?

LOL OK, but it's the last one for a while - I have a deadline to attend to :D

Actually I haven't seen more than a few photocopied pages of the manual since it was done by LucasArts. All I've seen are the insert cards for the tech trees and such to verify them. I'll get to see the final manual the same time you do - when I open my shiny new copy of the game on the 16h :)