Articles - Star Wars: New Order mod for Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption

Timeline

• Era I: 19 BBY - 13 BBY

The Empire is formed, but it hasn't yet acquired it's full power. Conflicts on distant fronts with Separatist remnants are still raging, and the new authority, led by the Emperor Palpatine, are engaged in exterminating the Jedi, as well as everyone helping them. Empire is still using forces, inherited from the Republic, but new technology is making it's way. The Rebellion is an organization consisting of local militias and resistance forces undermining the positions of the Empire and hiding the Jedi from the eyes of the Emperor and Darth Vader.

• Era II: 12 BBY - 0 BBY

The Dark Times have come. Empire rules the Galaxy through the fear, it's immense forces imposing Emperor's will or crushing those who refuse it. Facing the growing leviathan, numerous resistance movements are organizing into single entity to become the Alliance. "Operation Strike Fear" scenario will take place at the end of this period.

• Era III: 0 ABY - 4 ABY

Rebel forces won a series of victories and now openly battle the forces of the Empire, gaining strength.
To compensate, the Empire is developing new weapons while trying to suppress the increasing number of worlds joining the Rebel cause. Striking from the nowhere and gaining resources, troops and materiel from sympathizers, the Alliance is preparing to make it's decisive move against the Empire.

• Era IV: 5 ABY - 11 ABY

Emperor Palpatine and his right hand, Dart Vader, are dead, the Empire is in disorder and bears great losses. The Alliance, reorganized into the New Republic, captured the Coruscant and forced the Empire and warlords into Deep Core of Outer Rim. While the imperial leadership is demoralized, battles for the throne are fought, and the imperial officers and politicians alike announce their independence and battle between themselves and the remains of imperial authority.
In certain years of this period, the Empire is reorganized to figth the common foe under the leadership of Grand Admiral Thrawn and the reborn Emperor Palpatine.

• Era V: 12 ABY - 31 ABY

The Imperial Civil War is over: admiral Daala united struggling warlords forces, but is unable to inflict a major defeat to the Republic. Her cause is carried on by next imperial leader, Grand Admiral Pellaeon, who fights several campaigns, but Imperial Remnant still loses it's forces and worlds, which forced him to sign the peace treaty between the Empire and the New Republic. However, the peace in the galaxy does not last long, as new threat looms over the galaxy - the bloodthirsty Yuuzhan Vong, destroying everything in its path. The galaxy is united in every way to repel the uninvited guests.

• Era VI: 32 ABY - 40 ABY

The war with the Vongs caused enormous damage to the galaxy. It would seem that there is no reason to fight on the ruins, but over the years new conflicts, perpetrated by Lumiya and Abeloth, will lead the galaxy into a new chaos - the Second Galactic Civil War, followed by emergence of Lost Tribe of Sith.

We would also like to point out that Scenarios are planned for each era, and some of them, to properly portray the events, will be made into full Expansions with it's own features.

Era system

I would also like to say a few words about our new system of era changing in general scenarios.

The vanilla tech levels are now called "eras", and replace each other depending on the time spent in the game. So, the longer you play in the Galactic Conquest, the further your era will move forward. This does not apply to story Scenarios, which take place in specific eras.

In skirmish, you are still forced to purchase the upgrade to a new era, but we are thinking about applying our new system too.

Thank you for reading and following us!

New hero system

From the very start of our mod we pay much attention to heroes, their roles and characteristics to provide better gameplay experience and conformity to Canon. In original game and many other mods heroes are represented pretty boring: unlimited respawn (or lack of it), template bonuses and (frequently) a rather strange choice of them. So, we try to change that in New Order.

A lot of information was examined about heroes before adding them to the mod: books, comics and articles with their appearances - all this was done to get the feel of those characters and to better represent them in New Order.

Heroes in our mod are the most high-ranked and/or talented persons. Main complication was the lack of candidates. Alliance is low on suitable personas on almost all eras. As for Empire - it has them in excess up to late Imperial Civil War, and the choice largely collapses afterwards. We had to find different ways to solve this problem, but it only gave us an occasion to think about some new mechanics.

What can our heroes do to benefit their factions now?

• They still have combat and/or economic bonus. In first case the forces gain certain superiority if a hero is present on the battlefield. In second case the planet, on which a hero resides, gain additional income and/or boost for production.

• Many fleet commanders got so-called 'Flagship bonus'. All heroes showed different skills using their ship. With this bonus, those hero's ship will be more effective in the battle.

• Each hero has his own special bonus. Through this bonus using certain heroes in certain conditions can be more effective. Assortment of these will be really impressive. Working on them is really interesting, but is equally hard. Only half of our heroes have such bonuses now, but we're slowly working on increasing the number of those, who already have it.

• Some heroes can be lost irretrievably. To compensate that, the new mechanic of limited replacement was implemented. It means if you lose an admiral in a battle you will receive another one, but the list of replacements is quite short.

• Two systems are implemented to prevent collection of many heroes in a certain battle.
  The first system is based on ranks. If two grand admirals and two ordinary admirals participate in a battle you will receive only the maximum bonus of those grand-admirals plus the max bonus of those ordinary admirals.
  The second system is based on a conflict between heroes. Of example, Octavian Grant has a conflict with other heroes of the same or lower rank, so both he the second "incompatible" hero will not provide any bonuses. Moreover if you have 3 or more such heroes, this can even cause decrease in effectiveness of your forces in a battle.

A long-awaited option for most of our followers will be an opportunity to buy dreadnoughts for your heroes (it concerns both Imperial and Alliance heroes). But be careful - after loosing a hero on this new ship, it won't be restored (if a hero can be resurrected, he will revert to using his usual flagship). Dreadnoughts are not effected by hero's bonuses.

As you can see, the changes in hero mechanics are really global. We also have to balance them all. Heroes are balanced on many factors - power of the flagship, command bonus in a battle, ability to resurrect and minimum amount of such survivors.

We have also faced an issue of lacking of portraits for some heroes. At this moment we try to fix this problem by making our own portraits for them. One of our teammates, vovagete, draws great portraits for those heroes made in comic style. Her pictures are really impressive :)

Thank you for reading and following us!

Original text written by Sudno
Imperial Entanglements Box Art by Darren Tan
Tol Getelles art by vovagete

Working with ground vehicles

During the last 2 months we have been working with light vehicles for both factions. Everything has been coded and added to the game. Testers tried the units, reported about all bugs and suggested some interesting ideas too.

Recently, we have also added some new hot stuff: two deadly killers - "Imperial Mobile Artillery" and "HAV/r A9 Floating Fortress".

The mobile artillery was in the earliest versions of our mod, we used the model from Alliance mod, but the quality of the model and its appearance wasn't good to our minds. Therefore Sudno decided to make another model, more realistic and more similar to the Galactic Battlegrounds variant. He did that, but nobody from our team could make the skin for the model. Our mesh just collected dust, until nkorn contacted us with a proposition to make the texture. The result of the cooperated work of these guys you can see here :)

We are very thankful to nkorn, and we hope to cooperate with him in future again to make more high-quality custom content for our mods.

The information about the in-game characteristics of these vehicles you can see in descriptions to their screens on our page.

Infantry Remake

Yes, we have started to work with infantry. We are going to make unique models to every type of ground soldiers planned to be added in upcoming version. We have already showed you a WIP model of an army trooper from Pandemic Studios Battlefront II, but we have faced some problems with animation for this guy. We went further and decided to take DICE infantry (from Battlefront (2015) and to merge it with some elements from older Battlefront(s). So, here you can see the differences and our new results:

We are also working with textures for some stormtrooper variations. As for now, we have already finished skins for Magmatrooper, Novatrooper and Elite Guard Stormtrooper. There will be more to come, besides the work with textures we have to optimize meshes for the game and to reduce the count of polygon edges on the them.

Keep watching and following us. Thanks!

Hello, everybody! The first concepts of our mod appeared in 2006, but the progress passed pretty slowly through these years. Plans are growing, but our small team cannot deal with them as quickly as it could be. So, we have decided to ask some help from Moddb community.

Primarily, we are looking for Mappers and 2D & 3D artists, but any other assistance is welcome too. Also, we are in need of Testers. By the way, if you have some interesting ideas, suggestions or any other thing which could help to make this mod better, feel free to tell us.

If you're interested in assisting or joining our team, please, contact us! Thanks in advance :)

Balance enhancement

We decided to review the gameplay balance to make it more accurate for better game experience. It relates to ordinary Galactic Conquest scenarios and skirmish battles.

We decreased a number of available units to give the remaining ones unique roles in battle tactics. We will not delete from our mod other units, they will be available in upgrade branches, scenarios and skirmishes. We will also add even new units to existing lists.

As it was mentioned above, we are thinking about upgrade branches system for Galactic Conquests. This system will give you an opportunity to upgrade the existing units or to unlock the new ones. As for now, we are only thinking about this feature, but we'll try add it to the game.

By the way, rebalancing relates only to the ground units for the upcoming version. We will work with space units in future.

Tests

New Balance needs tests. So, we can represent new screens from them.

Credits:
First Strike mod team for Firehawk;
Nertea (from Phoenix Rising mod) for PX-10 ;
The_Farseer for TIE tank

Character Portraits

vovagete has drawn new portraits for Foga Brill and Sil Sorannan. This time she decided to draw in comic style similar to the one in which were drawn all the Imperial Grand Admirals.