New Republic Trailer & 10 Years of Thrawn's Revenge news

Before we get into all the news and celebration, Jin has finished the second of the narrative faction trailers (voicever once again by UnassumingWhiteGuy). Last time it was the Remnant, and now it's the New Republic's turn. As with any exciting video game trailer, we find ourselves listening to a speech in front of the senate on fiscal policy. If there's one thing we all learned from the Phantom Menace, it's that galactic financial and trade policies are what's really interesting.... Right?

Without going into too much detail, 10 years ago, on June 7th 2006, Videoteck, Zer and I began Thrawn's Revenge with no idea what we were doing after I had wanted to put Grand Admiral Thrawn into Empire at War as a hero. In the course of the last ten years, that scope has evolved quite a bit and our second project, Thrawn's Revenge II: Ascendancy was announced on October 27th, 2012.

On behalf of the entire team, past, present and future I would like to thank everyone who's supported us in any way during these ten years. There's no way we could ever have made it this far without your encouragement, suggestions, let's plays, critiques and everything else. At the end of the day knowing that so many people enjoy what we've done makes it all worth it. I can't speak for the team directly on this part, however what started as a haphazard mess of ideas from my 13 year old mind has turned into one of the most fantastic and formative experiences of my life and I will always appreciate the opportunities I've had to meet, speak to and work with so many talented individuals.

We still have plenty of modding on our two current projects (and maybe other stuff?) left in us though, so back to what we're all here for.

While we're still plugging away at fleshing out the new warlords, a significant portion of the recent work into 2.2 has been in cleaning up the mod's files. Some of this is purely to make development easier, but on the player side it should mean a few performance enhancements and also the rectification of some of bugs and inconsistencies in unit behaviours, especially pertaining to units that appear in different eras and factions. Smallpox is still working on implementing the new Diplomatic Influence system as well, which gives a new non-military option for conquering some areas, for those who are so inclined. We've got a few other things planned as far as different mechanics and features but as ever, we're waiting to see what the hit to performance is before saying anything is set in stone.

Content-wise, 2.2 will see some changes to pre-existing factions, not just the Warlord changes. Some units which you may recognize from Ascendancy are also making their way into ICW, such as the Allegiance, Intego, Alaria, Bellator, Gladiator, Secutor and more. The Empire of the Hand in particular is seeing some roster changes, which have been summarized (from an Ascendancy perspective but the main points are the same) here. We're still making a few final determinations on what new content will and won't be included, but some things which were removed from previous versions of the mod will be returning, in one form or another.

I recently made a news post about some of the general gameplay changes impacting already-existing features between 1.0 and 1.1, but instead of focusing on that, we'll talk a bit about the new things that are coming your way. As a release without any new factions, we're using 1.1 to work on the galaxy you're playing in and also to round out the tech trees and rosters of the existing factions in a few places. Diplomatic and defense tech will be pretty prominent in this, along with a slew of new content for the Hand especially; two starbase models, two new defense stations, two more capital ships and two redone fighters.

In the galactic changes, you'll be seeing forces from various different groups represented in both random events and as militia, along with other random events and unique encounters related to events in Star Wars history. When traveling to different planets you may come across Centerpoint, the Maw Installation, The Wheel, or an angry horde of Duskhan League Thrustships. For random events, there's a pretty large spectrum; from bands of roving Warlords and Ssi-Ruuvi incursions on one end, to Lando publishing a book on the other. You may want to take an Epidemiology course before playing as well, because there's also a random event for the Death Seed plague which can hit one of your planets and begin to spread throughout the galaxy on occasion, and we may even be doing something with the Krytos Virus. If you have a favourite bit of Star Wars history (Legends, not nuCanon; sorry Kylo) which you think we should include as an event or encounter, let us know in the comments or on our forums and like with any other suggestions we receive, we'll gladly take it under consideration.