Couple Imperial questions Thread - Star Wars: Interregnum mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

First - I've always been curious about the Rebel Scum ability for the ISDII... the description says it debuffs a group of ships. However the ability is cast on a specific target. So what determines which ships are debuffed? I've tested out the ability before and I can tell it does apply the debuff to multiple ships, but I'm not really sure what determines which ships. At first I thought it was in a radius around the targeted ship, but when testing it I've found that ships next to the targetted ship sometimes do not receive the debuff.

Second question is about Teren Rogriss, specifically his Reverse Gravity Wells ability. How is this actually used? Activating it doesn't seem to move any enemy ships, so usually I just don't bother with it at all.

AoE abilities that target an enemy unit usually debuff all units near the target. If a unit doesn't receive the debuff, it may be because the ability has a target filter the excludes the unit (like "Must have weapons" or "Is not Invulnerable") or the ability has a target cap, and the cap got filled before that unit was debufed.

Reverse Gravity Wells should work similarly to the Repulse ability of the Advent Iconus guardian. I haven't really used it for a while though, so I can't say for sure that it is working. Also and pull/push abilities (which includes the ISD's tractor beam) sometimes behave oddly depending on the target's weight.

Rebel scum makes a little more sense now, thanks. Also I tried reverse gravity wells again, it doesn't seem to be working. No problem though because I just tend to spam the shield ability anyway.

I do have a couple questions about the Advent though that I'll ask here so I don't have to clutter up the board with another thread. I've been having a very hard time against the Advent so far in Alpha 3. I've played a handful of games against them (as the Imps) and they seem to just melt me down almost every time - usually on very hard, but lately I've been lowering it to hard against them and they're still pretty grizzly... I don't seem to remember having this much trouble with them before. Their shields just don't seem to want to fall. And even with a half dozen Star Destroyers focusing on a single capital ship it takes a long time to destroy them, I'd guess because of their high shield mitigation. Cruisers only do so much because they get assimilated - I like to use Carracks as my main combat frigate (the special abilities are so great) but they get stomped out pretty quickly. I can usually handle the fighters pretty well, probably because I try to bring at least 2 or 3 Lancers per capital. But after they are done it's over. And if they get a high level titan, forget it. So basically my question is what is the best way to deal with Advent AI?

I also have a couple (hopefully not too bias) Imperial things I'd like to mention now that I've been playing for a bit.

First, regarding the ISDII - I feel like the Induce Terror ability could be tweaked slightly. In my opinion, dropping 150 antimatter points just to prevent a handful of targets from regenerating antimatter for 28 to 52 seconds is a lot, especially for a ship whos other abilities cost a minimum of 100 antimatter. Not only will it likely take the Star Destroyer longer than 28-52 seconds just to restore that antimatter that was used, the targets antimatter can still be restored through healing abilities of other ships. It's a setback, sure, but a minor one compared to the cost. Here's a couple suggestions I came up with.

1. Make it a non stacking passive ability that affects all ships in the vicinity. Lower the debuff to around 40% at level 1 and 80% at level 4, give or take. I like this one best since the ISDII doesn't have any passive abilities. It would really give the ISDII an intimidating presence on the battlefield, as if the entire enemy fleet is feeling the stress of going toe to toe with the thing. Possibly even switch it with Rebel Scum so it's not readily available or overpowered.
2. Lower the antimatter cost.
3. Give the ability extra debuffs - shield/hull restore rate I think would make sense, also could do weapon damage or movement debuffs though... these all fit with the description "Fighting an Imperial Star Destroyer at point blank range is enough to get even veteran crews to shudder..."

I just feel like the ISDII is barely worth it's fleet supply cost, especially compared to the awesome special abilities of the equally formidable Liberty cruiser for 10 less supply.

Second, a thought about the ISDI to make it a bit more interesting - I really like the rebel carriers ability to deploy X-4 gunships. Could the ISD be changed so that it can deploy Skipray Blastboats instead of Gunboats? Possibly replace the ISD's TIE Bomber with gunboats so that Vader isn't the only ship that carries them.

Third, I don't know if this has been said but Vader's dialogue volume is a little low. Not a priority but I want to mention it anyway.

Service_Disconnect wrote:

I do have a couple questions about the Advent though that I'll ask here so I don't have to clutter up the board with another thread. I've been having a very hard time against the Advent so far in Alpha 3. I've played a handful of games against them (as the Imps) and they seem to just melt me down almost every time - usually on very hard, but lately I've been lowering it to hard against them and they're still pretty grizzly... I don't seem to remember having this much trouble with them before. Their shields just don't seem to want to fall. And even with a half dozen Star Destroyers focusing on a single capital ship it takes a long time to destroy them, I'd guess because of their high shield mitigation. Cruisers only do so much because they get assimilated - I like to use Carracks as my main combat frigate (the special abilities are so great) but they get stomped out pretty quickly. I can usually handle the fighters pretty well, probably because I try to bring at least 2 or 3 Lancers per capital. But after they are done it's over. And if they get a high level titan, forget it. So basically my question is what is the best way to deal with Advent AI?

The Advent AI, especially Orthodox/Loyalists, benefited tremendously from E4X making culture relevant, since this is a feature the AI can actually use. Tactically any difficulty you are experiencing from them may be because of the improved culture bonuses, or their hero units, one of which can raise shield mitigation temporarily like Admiral Ackbar can. While this ability is active the Advent can tank a ton of damage (and actually even late game Vanilla Advent is good at this so long as phase missiles aren't around), so definitely try to go for the Advent heroes and try and fight them out of culture if you can.

Service_Disconnect wrote:

I also have a couple (hopefully not too bias) Imperial things I'd like to mention now that I've been playing for a bit.

First, regarding the ISDII - I feel like the Induce Terror ability could be tweaked slightly. In my opinion, dropping 150 antimatter points just to prevent a handful of targets from regenerating antimatter for 28 to 52 seconds is a lot, especially for a ship whos other abilities cost a minimum of 100 antimatter. Not only will it likely take the Star Destroyer longer than 28-52 seconds just to restore that antimatter that was used, the targets antimatter can still be restored through healing abilities of other ships. It's a setback, sure, but a minor one compared to the cost. Here's a couple suggestions I came up with.

1. Make it a non stacking passive ability that affects all ships in the vicinity. Lower the debuff to around 40% at level 1 and 80% at level 4, give or take. I like this one best since the ISDII doesn't have any passive abilities. It would really give the ISDII an intimidating presence on the battlefield, as if the entire enemy fleet is feeling the stress of going toe to toe with the thing. Possibly even switch it with Rebel Scum so it's not readily available or overpowered.
2. Lower the antimatter cost.
3. Give the ability extra debuffs - shield/hull restore rate I think would make sense, also could do weapon damage or movement debuffs though... these all fit with the description "Fighting an Imperial Star Destroyer at point blank range is enough to get even veteran crews to shudder..."

Second, a thought about the ISDI to make it a bit more interesting - I really like the rebel carriers ability to deploy X-4 gunships. Could the ISD be changed so that it can deploy Skipray Blastboats instead of Gunboats? Possibly replace the ISD's TIE Bomber with gunboats so that Vader isn't the only ship that carries them.

Third, I don't know if this has been said but Vader's dialogue volume is a little low. Not a priority but I want to mention it anyway.

Induce Terror is easily one of the best abilities in the game as it is. Part of the reason the duration is so low is so that a player with multiple ISD-IIs have to invest time into totally stopping enemy antimatter regeneration, but it is actually a valid tactic since few enemies put up a good fight when their antimatter is zero. Believe me this was the most overpowered ability in the mod when it first came out. :p

Certainly with just 1 ISD-II you might be better off investing in Ion Barrage (if it was working), but it is actually one of the Empire's best counters to everything, save maybe titans; I don't remember if I let them be affected or not.

You might also want to consider pairing your ISD-IIs with a VSD-II since it can restore antimatter to the whole fleet. The Night Hammer currently has a passive ability that lowers antimatter restoration, so I think they might be too similar and they would stack.

Also Induce Antimatter IIRC does not have a target cap, so it is naturally best against very large fleets.

For the Gunboats, low chance of that happening, since the Assault Gunboat is my favorite Star Wars fighter ever. :p I wouldn't be surprised if the Gunboat squadrons actually out DPS the Skipray Blastboat, though Corvettes may be less vulnerable to being destroyed by enemy fighter superiority.

It is possible we will eventually make separate copies of each Imperial Capitalship for the Galactic Empire and Warlords, and remove the TIE Defender on the GalEmp Star Destroyers and replace it with the Assault Gunboat, which would then require research. The only reason Vader has Gunboats is because he is the only exclusive high level Galactic Empire unit, so he had no reason to have the TIE Defender and I put the Gunboats there just as something different. But for the moment this is pretty low on the to do list.

Vader is not the only unit with low volume, but I'm not going to worry about that until I work out a good method to equalize all the dialog/sound effects in the mod.

Edited by: GoaFan77

Sounds good, I'll have to try Induce Terror on large groups of ships, one after the other. Before I just had it on autocast so I'm guessing all my ISD-IIs just used it as soon as they were in range at the same time so I didn't end up seeing a huge difference besides 150 less antimatter on all my Star Destroyers.

About the ISD-1, yeah that's the only problem I always seem to have the gunboats either get swarmed by fighters, or they end up being the only bomber craft I have and don't make a huge difference. Although with a small handful of ISD-1's at higher levels they do start to build up nicely... And I guess I can't ignore the fact that with gunboats being an ability the ISD can carry TIE Interceptors, which just so happens to be my favorite Star Wars fighter ever :p

Service_Disconnect wrote:

Sounds good, I'll have to try Induce Terror on large groups of ships, one after the other. Before I just had it on autocast so I'm guessing all my ISD-IIs just used it as soon as they were in range at the same time so I didn't end up seeing a huge difference besides 150 less antimatter on all my Star Destroyers.

About the ISD-1, yeah that's the only problem I always seem to have the gunboats either get swarmed by fighters, or they end up being the only bomber craft I have and don't make a huge difference. Although with a small handful of ISD-1's at higher levels they do start to build up nicely... And I guess I can't ignore the fact that with gunboats being an ability the ISD can carry TIE Interceptors, which just so happens to be my favorite Star Wars fighter ever :p

Unfortunately there is only so much logic one can put on the Autocast conditions. Though I will look into seeing if that can be improved. But yes, two high level ISDs or three low level ones can basically stop the antimatter regeneration of an entire fleet if you autocast them yourself. I realize not many players may take the time to do that, but usually it is best to balance an ability on the assumption it will be used to the best possible effect.

Well, bomber squads in general work a lot better if you have Starfighter superiority anyways. Though one odd thing about Sins is that since fighters always prefer to go after bombers, both sides fighters actually ignore each other until they deal with all the enemy bombers. The first one to clear the enemy's bombers will then have their fighters target other fighters, so sometimes having a few extra bombers is vital for ensuring your fighters get the first hits in. Then once one side has gained fighter supremacy, the his bomber squads slowly get built back up.