May the Mass and Acceleration be with you... news

Greetings all,

Ah-ha! April Fools!

Yes, the Star Wars: Strike Groups project we revealed last month is indeed real! And you were too suspicious of the date to believe! Shame on you! Or is it shame on us?

Perhaps there's some inadvertent social commentary here. Perhaps we've been lied to too often to believe good news when it comes along. Are we even truly capable of genuine trust any more? Have we become so jaded by the repeated betrayals of once-trusted institutions that all we know is suspicion and paranoia?

"Get to the bloody point, Orion!"

Oh yeah, the Star Wars mod.

Yes, you'll be happy to know that the April Fool's joke was that there was, in fact, no April Fool's joke. Only a delightful truth cleverly disguised as an April Fool's joke. Does that make sense?

Regardless, Star Wars: Strike Groups is indeed a reality. And it's coming soon.

As I said last month, right from the start we've always wanted to do a Star Wars project. With Armada III and Ages of the Federation taking our focus, however, Star Trek mods have always been our 'thing'. Which was fine with us - for many on the team, Star Trek is our first love.

And yet there are some things that Star Wars delivers that Star Trek doesn't. It's that classic, yet always epic clash between good and evil, be it between fleets of starships, or when a hero faces down darkness. Star Wars at its best has an undeniable grandeur that speaks to many of us.

In some ways I guess you could say that this project has been in slow development for a few years now. Max in particular, the mad modeler that he is, had already made many Star Wars models in his free time as a hobby, and the idea of a Star Wars mod was in development on the side as a never-to-be-released fun project for some time before the events of the last six months motivated us to raise it to the status of a full-blown mod project.

It's no secret that when Sins of a Solar Empire 2 was announced it threw a giant monkey-wrench into our future Star Trek plans. The viability of AOTF2 was hit particularly hard. In the end we had a choice - we could finish Ages of the Federation and just wait for Sins 2 to release, or we could have some more fun in the meantime. In the end we decided, 'Why not? The old girl's still got it! Let's do something we've always wanted to do and rub one out for old times' sake!'

"Er, I don't think that means what you think it means, Orion..."

Nonsense!

So here you have the result - Star Wars: Strike Groups.

As we said last month, the focus for SWSG will be on gameplay above all else. We're far too nerdy to throw canon out the window entirely, so not to worry - everything will fit within its respective place in the Star Wars universe. We will be utilising ships and designs from both official canon and expanded Legends material. That said, SWSG will focus on gameplay over canon, placing the focus on balanced, competitive battles. Take an Imperial Star Destroyer, for example - true to canon, it will be a large, powerful battleship supported by a generous fighter compliment, but you can forget the 'canon' stats on Wookieepedia because they would make for a terribly unbalanced experience.

Expect each ship to have value and an important role to play in your fleet, AOTF-style.

True to Star Wars, you can also expect fighters, bombers and other strike craft to play a significant role in any engagement. To that end, the great Echo has already done something he's always wanted to do and torn through the guts of fighter movement and combat, turning Sins' existing fighter mechanics into something altogether much, much more satisfying. Fighters have much more of an impact, can take much more damage, and move as if they're in a Star Wars-style space battle. You'll see it for yourself before long, but so far this is my personal favourite part of the mod.

You'll have the chance to play across two eras of Star Wars history - the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War - utilising four distinct factions - the Galactic Republic, the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the Galactic Empire, or the Rebel Alliance. Each faction will play in a very different way, as you'd expect, so hopefully there'll be something for everyone.

Star Wars: Strike Groups is coming along rapidly. True to form we simply can't give any kind of ETA at this stage, but rest assured this is something we want to show off and we want you to be involved in. Expect more information, including live engagement like livestreams, in the near future, so you can see the quality of work that the whole team has put into it.

Until then, we'd appreciate it if you could visit SWSG's very own ModDb page by clicking the logo below. See you there!

Until next time, be good. But not too good.
- OrionSlaver

* NOTE: Of course, this does NOT mean that we have stopped working on Ages of the Federation. This project remains very important to us and we are still working on the next patch, as well as getting the Romulans into a playable state. Stay tuned - it's going to be fun.