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

Hey Goa, just wanted to ask a couple questions of "why is that this way" of your publicly released Alpha 3.2.

I'm curious on the decision to make the Y-wings locked behind a tech research instead of the B-wings? IMO, seems the B-wings are technically a newer tech, it should've been reversed, and make them cost antimatter like the A-wings. Along that same vein, I think the B-wings were newer even than A-wings, so maybe knock the A-wing research down a tier or two and put the B-Wings more around tier 4 to 6?

I'm also wondering if you had thought much about putting all of the weapons on the strikecraft? Keep them for their correct roles, but I think one of the reasons the X-wing was considered a superiority fighter was because of it's ability to engage even frigates with its torpedoes. And this could better bump B-wings up to the heavy fighter/bomber role. Though maybe make X/Y/B-wing torpedoes unable to target strikecraft. I know you technically could... but most fighters are maneuverable enough that being targeted by a torpedo would be more of a nuisance.

Another quick question, I really haven't spent much time in it as of late to look around, but what does the general fighter ratio rebel/empire look like in what they can field? With the different abilities on the a couple of the caps, the titan, starbases, and the hanger defense structures, it almost seems like the rebel fighters are matched or outnumbering the Imps right now?

Couple other comments, I know you mentioned before about how the main doctrine of the rebels was via fighters, and I agree. I'm just wondering on how many frigates their fielding? I almost wonder, if like in trade to making fighters stronger as I was suggesting above with adding in all their weapons, if maybe you either increase the fleet supply used by the frigates or maybe just decrease their overall available fleet supply?

My final comment for the night, and this one is maybe more of a no go due to the amount of work involved... make it so most all ships can actually target and shoot at strikecraft, albeit not as efficiently as the anti-SC frigates. At the very least, capitol ships, titans, and starbases. It's always seemed kind of silly to me that such large craft are completely defenseless against strikecraft unless they're fielding strikecraft of their own or are covered by anti-SC frigates.

1. It is a little silly, but it was mainly done so that the AI won't get Y-wings/TIE Bomber-Bs. You see in most cases B-wings will be better against the targets you want to kill than Y-wings, because the proton bombs are mainly good against structures and now titans, but not much else. B-wings remain much better against anything with more armor than a siege/long range frigate (fighters take care of things with less armor) yet smaller than space stations/titans. By telling the AI not to get the tech, it won't waste fighter slots on Y-wings which will mostly be less effective (this was a bigger deal for the TIE Bomber Bs versus the standard missile TIE Bombers).

Also since the Y-wing has a unique antimodule role, and the B-wing was the standard Sins bomber (anti capitalship), we didn't want to research lock the B-wing because the vanilla races get the standard bomber without research.

2. Not really a priority. I mean I guess we could put Proton Torps on the X-wing, but it would target fighters just like the lasers since I want the standard Fighter/bomber for each faction to be very close in balance to the vanilla fighters. For fighters with a unique role like the Y-wing or TIE Defender we are willing to experiment more and have all the weapons being better against different targets as they should, but they are simply a bonus choice.

3. I find that sort of surprising since many Imperial cruisers can carry a small TIE fighter squadron. It only has 3 fighters compared to the normal 5, but it does mean the Empire can field lots of low quality squadrons quite easily. The Rebels have a lot of abilities that spawn temporary squads though, their titan can carry more and with the Starfighter Doctrine tech, each individual squadron significantly better than any other faction. Spawning temporary squads can be better in long battles as it helps mitigate squadrons being lost to attrition, but does rely on your fleet being able to maintain antimatter supplies.

4. Military I think the Rebels are doing pretty well. Frigate wise the Empire's ships are stronger but more expensive and fleet supply heavy, the Rebels are cheaper and weaker. The Empire gets a lot of research and abilities to support their capitalship usage, the Rebels get abilities and techs to support a starfighter heavy strategy. I don't think their fighters are so strong that they need to reduce their frigate strength, especially since the Rebels do not strictly have to build carrier units if they don't want to.

5. It may be silly, but since most ships in vanilla Sins can't target fighters, it would be a pain to balance Interregnum ships being able to. Even worse, most vanilla frigates can only fire in one direction, so even if I magically made them able to fire at fighters, the ships really weren't designed with that capability in mind.

Capitalships I suppose could probably be done that way for all factions, vanilla and Star Wars, but its really not a priority.

Also for what its worth Interregnum already has more fighter defenses than vanilla. A few units like the Empire starbase and Enforcer get antifighter guns as an alternative to an ability. Larger cruisers with hangars also get that already mentioned small fighter squad to protect them.

Hey Goa, thanks for replying. I did want to apologize, too, if any of what I wrote was unclear. I started typing it up while waiting on my girlfriend to come home from an extended day at work, then she showed up when I was half-way through it all, so I ended up splitting my attention mostly to her so I could be the loving boyfriend listening to her vent about her day.

1. Hmm, ok, I think I understand. I take it that even with the fighters listed the way they are (X-wing/B-wing/Y-wing) that after researching the unlock tech, the AI wouldn't allocate points towards B-wings on newly built craft? I don't expect the AI to switch where its points are allocated on existing.

2. Oh, ok. I haven't done much with strikecraft, so I take it there isn't a can target strikecraft flag on each of its weapon types like frigates/caps?

3. I'd have to take a better look at some point. In the few skirmishes I've played, it just seemed like the rebels quickly started outnumbering the Imps due to the spawn abilities.

4.Oh, I agree, they are doing very well. I think that's my point. I guess in my mind's eye, I've always seen the Empire as being able to field more ships than the rebels, but the rebel Starfighters were of a higher enough quality to make up the difference. Then again, things have changed in SWI and the rebels aren't alone and constantly on the run anymore.

5. Yeah, sorry, I wasn't referring to just the new stuff, but Vanilla rebellion as well. I do agree, though, that it would be more difficult with the frigates due to the way they're setup in Sins. I did do a personal mod at one point, though, that gave most Caps the ability to target strikecraft, though. I felt as though it turned out quite well. I only did one weapon type for each one, though, for TEC and Advent using the weapon type of their anti-SC frigate. Vasari I went by the weapon type used on their titan seems their anti-SC used missiles. And if a Cap didn't have that weapon type, then they didn't get anti-SC capability. I think it only turned out to be like 1 cap per faction that couldn't hit strikecraft. The damage type, armor type, and the accuracy settings in the game play defs file made it all seem like it balanced quite nicely.

1. As far as I can tell, the AI picks which fighters to build at random. So having a very specialized fighter is bad for it since it might build Y-wings when it is fighting a defensive war. Instead of 50/50/0 for X/B/Y wings it becomes 33/33/33.

2. These is a flag for that. TIE defender missiles don't target strike craft for example. I was talking for a balance perspective I don't want to divert X-wing DPS from antifighter damage, because it is the standard fighter unit for the Rebels so that is its main job.

4. Empire can easily have more total number of fighters thanks to more fighters per squad and all the cruisers that get a few fighters. Most of them are TIE Fighters though, so yes the Rebels beat them easily in the quality department, especially with starfighter doctrine (well I guess that technically increase the Rebels fighter numbers, but their base fighters are better to begin with). Total tonnage the Empire does field more ships, they just have much larger midsize ships so the total number of ships is smaller. 3 Gladiator Star Destroyers versus 3 Marauder Cruisers does not mean the Rebels have a fair fight. :p