Comments - JCosmic

We just got the Mercenary Random Event for the first time. Holy God! That was brilliant. Why wouldn't Mercs offer their services to the most powerful and properous player? GREAT idea. And the 60 corvettes rolling through everything was good too! Haha.

Oh, beef up Capital Ships! It just took 13 ISD's 3 minutes to destroy one gun platform, and 4 and half minutes to destroy a Civilian Base! : )

JC

Myself and several of my friends have been playing this religiously. We've even compared it to the new LucasArts Empire at War, due out soon. There is no comparison. With Hegemonia's Graphic Engine, and this Mod, it's the greatest Star Wars Space Warfare RTS we've ever played. The models in this Mod are better than what LucasArts could create! The effort these guys have put towards attention to detail, down to the rousing original movie scores while in the thick of battle makes this Mod amazing. Our favorite past time is going into Special Camera Mode and putting ourselves in the cockpits of Tie Defenders, and literally watching the battles over the shoulder of it's pilots. We do the same thing in ISD's while they are bombarding a planet. Nothing like looking out the bridge and watching your fleet of 15 Star Destroyers pulverize a planet.

Sure there are few things here and there that could use improvement, and even fixing, but hey, this is a Beta Mod, only 70% complete. I've seen Betas put out by full blown multi-million dollar gaming companies that have 100 times the gliches and problems than this one, and for a bunch of guys whose native language isn't even english, they did a damn good job, and the good thing is they're not done yet!

A few things we found that need to be looked at before the final release:

1) A few grammar issues and spelling errors, but they are very few, and really not that big of a deal.

2) In the research menu, it is apparently possible to research more than the menu is capable of displaying, showing blank spaces sometimes in the middle or most commonly at the bottom. Perhaps some of the available inventions should be reduced so they all can fit in the menu display.

3) The dependence on Fighter Support by Capital Ships. I think this is a great idea, as I've always believed a mass of fighters could take down a capital ship, but they are able to destroy one faster than another capital ship, and that's a bit too much. Towards the end I wasn't even making capital ships, putting together a ton of fighters instead, because they could kill capital ships better than other capital ships. That's a little unbalancing. Perhaps capital ships should be able to defend themselves just a tad bit better against fighters. Either that or make them tougher to be destroyed by fighters.

4) I made the mistake of sending 50 fighters to attack a planet, and my computer (which is a monster Pentium 4 3.4, with 2 gigs of Corsair DDR), nearly slowed to a halt. I ended up having to Alt-Tab out and close the game from the desktop. There were just too many lasers and effects going on. Perhaps fighters other than one specifically made to attack ground targets (like the Tie Bomber) should not be allowed to attack planets, to avoid this problem in the future. Plus it makes sense, a planet it just to big to be threatened by fighters.

5) Space Debris. In the original game, after you destroyed something, a piece of it was left out there as wreckage. The orginal game models still do this, but the Mod's Models explode and then sit there, so it looks like an abondoned ship that's in one piece. This gets a tad bit annoying as we constantly have to click on this wreckage to make sure it's not still alive when not in Tactical Map Mode, because unless it's an orginal game ship, the Mod's ships look no different when they're destroyed than they do when they're active. It is possible to break them up a little, like the orginal game models?

6) Space Pirates. They're very passive. In the maps we played, after 4-5 hours of playing, they only had one planet and it was not very developed. They never really expanded on their own. They would send out some ships every now and then, but it was rare to see them. We think they should be more numerous and agressive, doing what pirates do best - raiding and attacking your merchants and mining bases, yet avoiding your military forces, other than maybe doing hit and run attacks every now and then. We were so paranoid about the pirates (from some of your screen shots), that we were sending fighter escorts out with our bases and merchants. When they never got raided, and the pirates rarely showed their faces, we didn't worry about it anymore. In other words, beef up the pirates! They kick ***. I would crap my pants if I looked up and saw a fleet of pirates bearing down on one of my newly colonized planets.

7) In the research menu, even though the research tabs have been modified, their tool tips still show the original description. For example, like when you highlite the "Engines" tab the tool tip displays an Ion Weapon Description, from the original game. This is a bit confusing.

8) Lack of random events. Even set at Often, there were literally NO random events. We don't know what the problem is here. In the original game you could tell the difference, but in the Mod, even set on Often, one would happen maybe once every 1-2 hours. Also, some special Star Wars related random events would enhance the experience greatly, if they haven't been put in already.

Those are really the only negative things we could pull out. Most of our time is spent singing the Imperial March while pounding on Calamari Cruisers, and laughing our ***** off at the general mayhem of large fighter battles. Green and blue lasers lancing all over the place. Utterly amazing Mod, and we are counting the MINUTES till the fully finished Mod is done and released, and your screenshots of the new stuff is killing us man! Many kudos to you guys! LucasArts could learn a thing or two from you guys!

Screw school! Finish the Mod, and then worry about school! This is more important! Haha. :)

JC

You guys are quite simply, amazing. I've got a whole group of guys just WAITING for you to finish your Hegemonia Star Wars Mod. We all play Solon Heritage LAN quite often, and are rather tired of the same old maps.

I stumbled across your Mod this morning, and within an hour, all the guys downloading and scouring every inch of the internet for information about it.

Needless to say we're all very excited. When do you expect it to be 100% complete?

JC

I agree about the Mercenaries. It's a great idea actually, but they can get a little unbalancing. Other than what I listed below, the biggest thing right now is Capital Ship Rebalancing. That and adding more ships, would be good too!

So this Beta is really old? You guys do plan on releasing this into a full version, pretty much fixing and updating all this stuff, right? We are quite curious as to an ETA! : )

N