Proposal for Star Wars Mod

[Gangor]

One of the things which disappointed me about civ 4 was the lack of a Star Wars mod. One was in the works, but having read through the thread it was pretty much a mish-mash of all things "Star Wars" without a thought out design. I propose to use civ 5 to change this.

Several things jump out at me:

* It should be set in a specific time period, rather than stretched over many centuries. 10-20 years or so would be the most I'd support.

* There should be only 2 teams - the Rebels and the Empire. More is just confusing and unnecessary for storytelling. Most planets would be represented by city states.

* The two teams should be totally different, to represent their opposing philosophies. Different units, different ways of acquiring units(!), different ways of dealing with neutral planets, even different game goals.

* Story telling (always vital to a SW game) and tactics should be emphasized. Strategy should be essentially dictated by the rules, and advancement and development should be minimal - after all that's not what SW is about.

* City states are a godsend for a SW mod, and should be used to the max. They in turn will need some adjustment to fit into the SW universe.

* Play will be on a space map as in Final Frontier.

Specific proposals

Rebels
These guys will start with very little. Their advantage at the start will be that they start at a random location away from Imperial forces. They will deal with the neutral planets with diplomacy, using a diplomat unit to increase influence. Most of their military will come from (be gifted by) these friendly planets, and non-military planets will provide other bonuses like cash, food and maybe even more diplomat units. They are able to build new bases (although they are not very productive)

Units:

Reb infantry
Wookie Inf. (gifted from Kashyyyk)
Z-95 --> X-Wing
Y-Wing --> B-Wing
A-Wing
Nebulon-B Frigate
Assault Frigate
Dreadnought (comparitively weak ship gifted from neutral planets which can be upgraded to the assault frigate)
Mon Calamari Cruiser (gifted from Mon Cal, naturally)
Corellian Corvette (good against fighters)
Diplomat units (can increase influence with neutrals like a Great Merchant except no gold and the unit isn't consumed)
+whatever else is appropriate along these lines

Empire
These guys start with a decent military and a few very productive planets. What they don't have is the location of the rebels or the ability to influence neutral planets in a positive way. Their capships and infantry are stronger in general, but their fighters are weaker. They are unable to settle new planets.

Units:
Stormtroopers
Victory Star Destroyer --> Imperial Star Destroyer
Strike Cruiser
Carrack Cruiser (good against fighters)
Death Star (can destroy a planet or capships, but can be destroyed by fighters)
TIE Fighter --> TIE Interceptor
TIE Bomber
etc.

Independent Planets
The Galaxy is mostly made up of a loose alliance of independent planets formally known as the republic. The Empire is trying to exert control over it (military force is the only way it knows) but by it's freedom loving nature it naturally gravitates towards the Rebel Alliance. Not without some encouragement, however! The rebels must send diplomats (like Leia) to encourage support. As per the existing mechanic, as the empire attacks more independent planets, the rest will tend to resist (as Leia says "the more you tighten your grip, the more systems slip through your fingers"). Perhaps this can additionally be reflected by increased influence for the Rebels, or more effective diplomats.

As in regular civ, Independent planets come in several flavours:

Militaristic (eg Mon Calamari, Kashyyyk):
These guys will give you units, possible unique to them (Mon Cal cruisers!). Probably the most useful for the rebels, at least to begin with.

Commercial (eg Tatooine, Naboo):
These guys give you money. Helpful!

Industrial (eg Kessel):
Gives your bases some production, so you can build defences, extra units etc.

Agricultural (can't think of one right now):
Provides food.

Special (eg Bothawui, Alderaan)
Gives you a unique benefit - full map visiblity, free diplomats etc)

So obviously the key for the Rebels is to get as many independent planets on-side as possible, and the key for the Empire is to either find the rebel bases and destroy them or just conqueur the galaxy.

Other Concepts
Hyperspace: I envisage a button like the paradrop button allowing any unit to move anywhere in one turn, with the caveat that it cannot move before or after the jump and gets a combat penalty for the rest of the turn, leaving it fairly vulnerable if it lands next to an enemy!

Death Star:
Constructed in (expensive) parts and then assembled in a central location, the Death Star is the only thing that can destroy a planet. Perhaps proximity of the Death Star could reduce Rebel influence with Independent Planets?

Rebel Ion Cannon:
Base improvement which causes all enemy units within a certain radius to have their movement reduced to 1

Starfighters:
Rebel starfighters have a decent range, while TIEs have only a 1 or 2 tile range to represent their lack of hyperdrives.

Resources:
Perhaps there are special resources which are controlled by neutral planets to give an extra incentive to conquer/befriend them? (JabberWockey)
Another thought here, perhaps these provide totally different benefits - like concussion missiles which make fighters better or proton torpedos which improve bombers.
Edit: more thinking on this point - There could be relatively few resources, or even unique? which would be controlled by one of the "special" independent planets. For example, Manaan would control the Kolto which could make your units heal a bit faster.

Smugglers/Bounty Hunters:
These are an important part of SW, but I'm not sure how to best implement them. Ideas?
Edit: how about this - Smugglers are unique units for the rebels which are invisible and have the ability to steal money from the enemy. Bounty hunters (unique imperial unit) are able to see smugglers and neutralise them.

Fear/Hope:
Replacing culture for policies(?) to give various bonuses to each side. Or perhaps the new way of getting techs? I'd base it on GG points. (original idea nismogrendel/JabberWockey)

Anyhow, this has been something of a mind dump. I'll flesh it out more later. Look forward to seeing comments!

 

[Gangor]

Reserved

 

[nismogrendel]

I always wanted to play a good Star Wars mod and you have some awesome ideas.

Some things that popped into my head while reading your ideas:

1) What if the mod had multiple eras, kind of like those scenario games from BTS? One example would be the Zahn books/Thrawn era. You could have players play as one of the admirals from that era. Examples would be Grand Admiral Thrawn, Pellaeon, Admiral Daala, etc. Lots of cool stuff happened in that era to pull quests/etc from.

2) When playing as Imperials, what about making the happiness meter a fear meter? As your war machine grows, the fear goes up. Building Stormtrooper garrisons on planets, leaving Star Destroyers in orbit, having the Executor (great general unit?) within X parsecs, constructing the Death Star, all these things could add towards fear.

Alternative idea would be swapping culture for fear, use fear to unlock policies.

What do ya think?

 

[Gangor]

I always wanted to play a good Star Wars mod and you have some awesome ideas.

Some things that popped into my head while reading your ideas:

1) What if the mod had multiple eras, kind of like those scenario games from BTS? One example would be the Zahn books/Thrawn era. You could have players play as one of the admirals from that era. Examples would be Grand Admiral Thrawn, Pellaeon, Admiral Daala, etc. Lots of cool stuff happened in that era to pull quests/etc from.

That's a good point - a lot of the art assets could be reused in subsequent scenerios. But I think at first it would be better to just concentrate on one and get that right rather than overextending.

2) When playing as Imperials, what about making the happiness meter a fear meter? As your war machine grows, the fear goes up. Building Stormtrooper garrisons on planets, leaving Star Destroyers in orbit, having the Executor (great general unit?) within X parsecs, constructing the Death Star, all these things could add towards fear.

Sounds interesting - I had thought of pretty much jettisoning culture, but this would be an alternative. Bear in mind though that this is a mod, and we don't have to find a Star Wars analogy for every civ concept.

Alternative idea would be swapping culture for fear, use fear to unlock policies.

Not so sure about policies - as I said before we don't have to replicate civ in space. Could be interesting to experiment with, though.

Thanks for your suggestions - do you have any critique of my original post? I think it's best to have a few excellent features than many half-thought-out ones, and mine at the moment are only half thought out.

edit: btw, just noticed this was your first post. Welcome!

 

[JabberWockey]

Here's what I've brainstormed so far:
(kind of long)

I would treat entire maps as if they were all "ocean" (space) and that planets were all 1 tile of land. Or that solar systems are 1 tile of land, to give it more a size perspective. While only allowing solar systems to be settled would make it harder to have the moon of Yavin as a possible place to settle, it would take care of huge size discrepencies on the map as well as not having to worry about implementing orbits. Obviously ocean tiles would be black space, and land tiles would be stars.

These "cities" will have planetary upgrades that boost their defense and range, making it harder to assault them with ships. Each solar system would have a luxury or production related resource to it, sometimes maybe even two.

Since all of space is considered "water" all of the ground troops (ATATs, wookies, rebel infantry, droids, etc.) will have to embark in transports to travel. Every attack on a "city" is considered amphibious. Certain bonuses should be given to some units such as AT-ATs when making assaults. Similarly, you'll have to allow stacks with ground units for any of this warfare to be possible. Capital ships can still be one unit/tile, but can stack multiple fighters on top of them as carriers would.

Also, make it so the fighters (TIE, A-wings, X-wings, etc.) are all aircraft, and that they need to either end a turn on a planet or on a "Carrier" type ship. This way you can have several squadrons of tie fighters on an Imperial Class Star Destroyer, but they only have an effective range of two tiles. If something has a hyperdrive, for example, you can give it a longer in air time before it has to refuel (balances the short ranged TIE vs. long range x-wing).

Like someone mentioned above, I would also have different policies based on the civ. For example, if you were the rebellion, you wouldn't accumulate culture - you would accumulate "hope", which you would trade in for certain policies like +15% fighters strength, Making it easier to win over city states (neutral civs), etc.

For the empire, you would would instead accumulate "fear", which you could then use to give +15% planetary attack from capital ships, reduce unhappiness by outrageous amounts, boost death star production, etc.

Also, make unique wonders, such as a Force Academy (+10 hope/fear per turn), planetary shields (+15% all city defenses), Orbital Ship yard (all ship yards [city buildings] get an additional +25% to ship production), etc.

Special units would be:
Jedi/sith: Generals who influence surrounding battles - can be plus healing, plus sight, plus strength, etc. There needs to be an entire policy tree for these guys to upgrade them based on hope/fear. Can be expended to deal massive damage (nuke) to nearby units, to represent a jedi or a sith going all out with the force.
Diplomats: Can be expended cause +8 unhappiness in an enemy city (three tile range of attack) for 10-20 turns, or can be sent into civ state territory to get +5 influence/turn on that city state. These units are invisible unless there is another special unit within four tiles to detect it.
Bounty Hunters: Can be expended to take out an entire capital ship (plus fighters) or to convert an enemy special unit (diplomat, jedi, etc.) to your side (one tile attack range). Conversion doesn't work on other bounty hunters. If you leave bounty hunters garrisoned in a city it will give +5 hope/fear per turn to that city.
Smugglers: Can be expended on a city tile to permanently give one of your cities a resource of your choice, but it will cost gold proportionate to the scarcity of the resource or to the distance the nearest tile of that resource is away. So if I wanted spice from Kessel, my smuggler would have to travel to kessel, use his "Smuggler's run" ability, then select which planet receives the new resource, then disappear. This special unit is also invisible unless detected by another special unit. Otherwise if they are garrisoned on a city they give +3 happiness/turn.

With policies affecting generals (Jedi/Sith) you could have things like:
Empire:
- Jaded Youth (+20% combat strength bonus to units within one tile, +10% str to units within 2 tiles)
- Strong Master (+15% all abilities)
- Fallen Jedi (-10% all abilities but +120% nuke)
- Disturbing Lack of Faith (Can detect special units in eight tile radius)

Rebellion:
- Clairvoyance (+3 sight range, +1 move)
- Battle Meditation (Fighters within 2 tiles receive +33% strength, Capital Ships +10%)
- Converted Sith (-10% to all abilities but +120% nuke)
- A New Hope (Jedi have 50% chance to destroy bounty hunters that are trying to convert them)

Also, because there are so few land tiles, and so few resources, neutral city states are going to be huge in determining your strategy. That's why smugglers and diplomats will be so valuable. And since smugglers and diplomats are so valuable, bounty hunters are valuable too because they can grab them over to your side. Jedi and sith, which are out in the open, will do well to be surrounded by a large number of ships. While watching your enemies fleet(s), you will still have to account that there are diplomats and smugglers sneaking around the map somewhere. And while Jedi are very powerful and can change the tide of a losing battle, a well place bounty hunter could whisk them over to your side if they are too unprotected.

That's just my 2 cents.

 

[Pegasos]

Hello,

I was part of the civ4 star wars revival mod team, and here are the reasons it never got revived:

1. Too many people
2. Too many ideas
3. Too few mod leaders

So keep it simple enough.

BTW, if you ever get it ready, I would like to use it as a template for a similar space scifi mod, but without the star wars universe.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Moved to the main forum.
The subforums are only for finished files, questions and working threads belong to the main forum .

 

[darkedone02]

what about the hutt? Bounty Hunter's and Criminals? Might be another major civ or a huge barbarian army.

 

[Numi]

Im pretty sure i played a pretty fun star trek mod that was in space for civ 4.

 

[Gangor]

what about the hutt? Bounty Hunter's and Criminals? Might be another major civ or a huge barbarian army.

Star Wars is about the battle between good and evil: The Empire vs the Rebellion. Therefore a Star Wars game ought to be primarily between these adversaries. Criminals could perhaps be Independent Planets? Presumably Tatooine would be controled by the Hutts, but could be befriended by the rebels or conquered by the Empire.

 

[Gangor]

Hello,

I was part of the civ4 star wars revival mod team, and here are the reasons it never got revived:

1. Too many people
2. Too many ideas
3. Too few mod leaders

So keep it simple enough.

BTW, if you ever get it ready, I would like to use it as a template for a similar space scifi mod, but without the star wars universe.

Yeah, I wasn't involved with that. Seemed so very incoherient. I think there needs to be a single plan made (however many people are involved) before the creation begins so everyone is on the same page.

 

[Gangor]

Here's what I've brainstormed so far:
(kind of long)

I would treat entire maps as if they were all "ocean" (space) and that planets were all 1 tile of land. Or that solar systems are 1 tile of land, to give it more a size perspective. While only allowing solar systems to be settled would make it harder to have the moon of Yavin as a possible place to settle, it would take care of huge size discrepencies on the map as well as not having to worry about implementing orbits. Obviously ocean tiles would be black space, and land tiles would be stars.

I had presumed this. Did you play the Final Frontier mod from BTS?

These "cities" will have planetary upgrades that boost their defense and range, making it harder to assault them with ships.

Presumably.

Each solar system would have a luxury or production related resource to it, sometimes maybe even two.

Interesting idea, noted.

Since all of space is considered "water" all of the ground troops (ATATs, wookies, rebel infantry, droids, etc.) will have to embark in transports to travel. Every attack on a "city" is considered amphibious. Certain bonuses should be given to some units such as AT-ATs when making assaults. Similarly, you'll have to allow stacks with ground units for any of this warfare to be possible. Capital ships can still be one unit/tile, but can stack multiple fighters on top of them as carriers would.

Now here I disagree - I think the focus ought to be on space battles, and invasions pretty much a result of winning the space contest. Stacking is unneccisary.

Also, make it so the fighters (TIE, A-wings, X-wings, etc.) are all aircraft, and that they need to either end a turn on a planet or on a "Carrier" type ship. This way you can have several squadrons of tie fighters on an Imperial Class Star Destroyer, but they only have an effective range of two tiles. If something has a hyperdrive, for example, you can give it a longer in air time before it has to refuel (balances the short ranged TIE vs. long range x-wing).

Yes, this is how it was in FF and what I implied earlier.

Like someone mentioned above, I would also have different policies based on the civ. For example, if you were the rebellion, you wouldn't accumulate culture - you would accumulate "hope", which you would trade in for certain policies like +15% fighters strength, Making it easier to win over city states (neutral civs), etc.

For the empire, you would would instead accumulate "fear", which you could then use to give +15% planetary attack from capital ships, reduce unhappiness by outrageous amounts, boost death star production, etc.

This is an interesting idea and perhaps worth persuing. Hadn't occured to me. I think though it should be related to the conflict - perhaps replacing GG points?

Also, make unique wonders, such as a Force Academy (+10 hope/fear per turn), planetary shields (+15% all city defenses), Orbital Ship yard (all ship yards [city buildings] get an additional +25% to ship production), etc.

Personally I think this sort of thing should be kept to a minimum. The player ought to concentrate on the conflict, not blinging out his planets.

Special units would be:
Jedi/sith: Generals who influence surrounding battles - can be plus healing, plus sight, plus strength, etc. There needs to be an entire policy tree for these guys to upgrade them based on hope/fear. Can be expended to deal massive damage (nuke) to nearby units, to represent a jedi or a sith going all out with the force.
Diplomats: Can be expended cause +8 unhappiness in an enemy city (three tile range of attack) for 10-20 turns, or can be sent into civ state territory to get +5 influence/turn on that city state. These units are invisible unless there is another special unit within four tiles to detect it.
Bounty Hunters: Can be expended to take out an entire capital ship (plus fighters) or to convert an enemy special unit (diplomat, jedi, etc.) to your side (one tile attack range). Conversion doesn't work on other bounty hunters. If you leave bounty hunters garrisoned in a city it will give +5 hope/fear per turn to that city.
Smugglers: Can be expended on a city tile to permanently give one of your cities a resource of your choice, but it will cost gold proportionate to the scarcity of the resource or to the distance the nearest tile of that resource is away. So if I wanted spice from Kessel, my smuggler would have to travel to kessel, use his "Smuggler's run" ability, then select which planet receives the new resource, then disappear. This special unit is also invisible unless detected by another special unit. Otherwise if they are garrisoned on a city they give +3 happiness/turn.

I like the idea of including bounty hunters and smugglers as special units, but I think it needs more work (and probably testing). I already explained how I think diplomats should work and honestly I think that makes more sense. Did you read the OP?

Also, because there are so few land tiles, and so few resources, neutral city states are going to be huge in determining your strategy. That's why smugglers and diplomats will be so valuable. And since smugglers and diplomats are so valuable, bounty hunters are valuable too because they can grab them over to your side. Jedi and sith, which are out in the open, will do well to be surrounded by a large number of ships. While watching your enemies fleet(s), you will still have to account that there are diplomats and smugglers sneaking around the map somewhere. And while Jedi are very powerful and can change the tide of a losing battle, a well place bounty hunter could whisk them over to your side if they are too unprotected.

That's just my 2 cents.

Was a central part of the OP....

 

[SheepMonster]

I have just released a Star Wars mod for Civ III, and have been considering moving to Civ V recently. I've just purchased the game, and am currently about to enter the industrial era with england on my first playthrough, so if there are any game concepts i'm weak on, point them out.

But here are my mod ideas.

Mod vs Scenario​

- One main mod, featuring several factions
- Several scenarios, featuring specific factions.
The Civ V engine isn't reliant on realism. Augustus of Rome never spoke to Elizabeth I of england in real life. So we don't need to worry about civilizations from different eras.
The main mod will essentially be a graphics patch for Civ 5. We don't need to worry too much about the semantics, as we're providing a star wars theme to Civ 5.

Scenarios, however, need to be more carefully thought out. It will be in these in which we will have to reflect Star Wars life best. We'll choose sets of civilizations, such as Empire vs Rebel Alliance, and set up a galactic map with most important locations. Doing a set of scenarios means we can explore each region of star wars history, rather than getting bogged down on a specific era - it would be a travesty not to feature the Clone Wars, which has been fleshed out almost as much as the galactic civil war.

Various scenario ideas​

- Planets be made up of several tiles each (depending on size of planet). Thus land invasions can still happen, rather than having the entire emphasis on naval supremacy.
* Hyperlanes: say coast is passable, and ocean isn't (space vs unknown space). Sea tiles, ergo hyperlanes, cut through the unknown space between planets, acting essentially as railroads on water. Thus the strategic element of blockading hyperlanes can be introduced, cutting off supply and trade routes.
* "each solar system have a luxy or production related resource" - not neccessarily important. Flushing the game with unneccessary amounts of resources would remove the strategic element of it.
* I haven't been able to investigate how air units work in Civ 5, but i feel that if any unit has the ability to cross the map unimpeded within a turn, the whoile thing might become unbalanced (because your armed forces are wherever you need them to be, rather than needing any strategic placement).
* Fear/Hope - um this could work. But it sounds complicated. And it's not like star wars cities lack culture. Maybe fear/hope could replace happiness (as they're pretty much the same), and affects golden ages rather than policies.
* "Personally I think this sort of thing should be kept to a minimum. The player ought to concentrate on the conflict, not blinging out his planets." Perhaps, but with a sufficient force it takes about 2-3 turns to capture a city/planet on a moderate difficulty. Improvements are required, wonders perhaps less so, and both to a much lesser degree than the original. Although ion cannons are somewhat present in the city bombardment command.

Factions​

- Factions (grouped into eras).
* represent possible 'city state' factions
Old Republic era: Old Republic, Sith Empire, Mandalorians*, Exchange*
Rise of the Empire: Galactic Republic, CIS, Hutt Empire*, Zann Consortium*
Galactic Civil War: Rebel Alliance, Galactic Empire, Black Sun*, CSA*
Return of the Republic: New Republic, Imperial Remnant, Pentastar Alignment*, Hapes Consortium*, Empire of the Hand*, Ssi Ruuvi Imperium*, Chiss Ascendancy* [Yuuzhan Vong?]
Legacy Era: Fel Empire (doubles as Krayt Empire), Galactic Alliance

Thus 5 scenarios total, and one big mod.

Units​

One basic unit structure for every civilization. For example:
- Unit Type (Imperial example)

- Infantry (Stormtrooper,)
- Mech (AT-AT,)
- Artillery (SPMA-T)
- Scout (AT-ST)
- Starfighter (TIE Fighter)
- Bomber (TIE Bomber)
- Interceptor (TIE Interceptor)
- Corvette (Lancer Frigate)
- Frigate (Carrack Cruiser)
- Cruiser (Imperial Star Destroyer)
- Destroyer (Super Star Destroyer)

Having a unified unit list prevents the game becoming too unbalanced. It should also remove any special units, such as wookiee regiment or whatever (because lets be fair, wookies were not a major fighting force of the republic, they were just local militia of kashyyk).

Communication​

I recently helped on a mod for Empire at War (Thrawn's revenge, if anyone's interested), and what made that mod so successful was the constant communication and discussion that took place around it through an ongoing group conversation on Skype. I feel this would be an incredibly useful tool, as it would give immediate discussion about whats going on towards the mod, whats being worked on, etc etc. Gangor, if you're going to make yourself mod leader, i'd strongly urge you to set up such a system. Also, it would allow development of ideas between modders, rather than random throw outs from community (such as 'OMG we shud get lik a chiss infantry with 72 Moovement who can bombard 400 tiles!!1!! per turrn'

 

[Gangor]

Mod vs Scenario​

- One main mod, featuring several factions
- Several scenarios, featuring specific factions.
The Civ V engine isn't reliant on realism. Augustus of Rome never spoke to Elizabeth I of england in real life. So we don't need to worry about civilizations from different eras.
The main mod will essentially be a graphics patch for Civ 5. We don't need to worry too much about the semantics, as we're providing a star wars theme to Civ 5.

Well, perhaps. But to me it makes sense to firstly create assets for a single scenerio (I'd like it to be random in some respects each time, hence calling it a mod) in a single time period. Trying to do too much was why the civ 4 mod failed. In my opinion, by concentrating on a single conflict the mod can have a more defined vision and be pretty much it's own game, rather than simply civ with a sw flavour.

Scenarios, however, need to be more carefully thought out. It will be in these in which we will have to reflect Star Wars life best. We'll choose sets of civilizations, such as Empire vs Rebel Alliance, and set up a galactic map with most important locations. Doing a set of scenarios means we can explore each region of star wars history, rather than getting bogged down on a specific era - it would be a travesty not to feature the Clone Wars, which has been fleshed out almost as much as the galactic civil war.

IMO the prequel movies were the travestys, but that's another topic. All this stuff could be added later, if desired. The first task should be to get the first era out there.

Various scenario ideas​

- Planets be made up of several tiles each (depending on size of planet). Thus land invasions can still happen, rather than having the entire emphasis on naval supremacy.

Firstly, I can't see how this is going to look good on the map. Final Frontier worked fine, so I think it's a pretty good place to start.

* Hyperlanes: say coast is passable, and ocean isn't (space vs unknown space). Sea tiles, ergo hyperlanes, cut through the unknown space between planets, acting essentially as railroads on water. Thus the strategic element of blockading hyperlanes can be introduced, cutting off supply and trade routes.

Seems a bit peripheral to the main story. Besides, the rebels wouldn't have enough planets to have trade routes and they also don't have to force to maintain blockaids, so the idea is kindof moot.

* "each solar system have a luxy or production related resource" - not neccessarily important. Flushing the game with unneccessary amounts of resources would remove the strategic element of it.

Yeah, I don't see that it's vital, but it could be interesting. Worth testing, anyhow - it wouldn't take a lot of effort.

* I haven't been able to investigate how air units work in Civ 5, but i feel that if any unit has the ability to cross the map unimpeded within a turn, the whoile thing might become unbalanced (because your armed forces are wherever you need them to be, rather than needing any strategic placement).

No, air units opperate from a base, returning there after their mission. They have a finite range. I think you're refering to my idea for hyperspacing - Perhaps it would be a bit unbalanced but I think the down side of being vulnerable for a turn would be enough to re-balance it. Testing would discover that.

* Fear/Hope - um this could work. But it sounds complicated. And it's not like star wars cities lack culture. Maybe fear/hope could replace happiness (as they're pretty much the same), and affects golden ages rather than policies.

I don't really know how this would work either, but think it would be worth testing - it would add some atmosphere and that's what I'm after.

* "Personally I think this sort of thing should be kept to a minimum. The player ought to concentrate on the conflict, not blinging out his planets." Perhaps, but with a sufficient force it takes about 2-3 turns to capture a city/planet on a moderate difficulty. Improvements are required, wonders perhaps less so, and both to a much lesser degree than the original. Although ion cannons are somewhat present in the city bombardment command.

Why? The difficulty of capturing planets can be balanced in other ways.

Factions​

- Factions (grouped into eras).
* represent possible 'city state' factions
Old Republic era: Old Republic, Sith Empire, Mandalorians*, Exchange*
Rise of the Empire: Galactic Republic, CIS, Hutt Empire*, Zann Consortium*
Galactic Civil War: Rebel Alliance, Galactic Empire, Black Sun*, CSA*
Return of the Republic: New Republic, Imperial Remnant, Pentastar Alignment*, Hapes Consortium*, Empire of the Hand*, Ssi Ruuvi Imperium*, Chiss Ascendancy* [Yuuzhan Vong?]
Legacy Era: Fel Empire (doubles as Krayt Empire), Galactic Alliance

Thus 5 scenarios total, and one big mod.

And here we find part of the reason the Civ 4 mod was never finished:

Hello,

I was part of the civ4 star wars revival mod team, and here are the reasons it never got revived:

1. Too many people
2. Too many ideas
3. Too few mod leaders

So keep it simple enough.

It should also remove any special units, such as wookiee regiment or whatever (because lets be fair, wookies were not a major fighting force of the republic, they were just local militia of kashyyk).

So on the one hand, civ isn't supposed to be realistic, and on the other no wookies?? I think you've got your priorities around the wrong way. I think the SW atmosphere is the most important thing. Wookies help; seeing the Old Sith Empire being kicked off Hoth by the New Republic does not. Besides, wookies would come only from Kashyyyk and probably not be common anyway.

Communication​

I recently helped on a mod for Empire at War (Thrawn's revenge, if anyone's interested), and what made that mod so successful was the constant communication and discussion that took place around it through an ongoing group conversation on Skype. I feel this would be an incredibly useful tool, as it would give immediate discussion about whats going on towards the mod, whats being worked on, etc etc. Gangor, if you're going to make yourself mod leader, i'd strongly urge you to set up such a system. Also, it would allow development of ideas between modders, rather than random throw outs from community (such as 'OMG we shud get lik a chiss infantry with 72 Moovement who can bombard 400 tiles!!1!! per turrn'

That is a very good idea. Alternatively maybe an IRC channel?

 

[SheepMonster]

I have no understanding of IRC, but i know that in skype you have a list of contacts, whom you can talk to, or the main group. That, and it was easy to screen who joins in the main conversation, and it has a permanent backlog of messages. But if IRC does that, then go for it.

Arguing back on a couple of points.
Firstly, the different factions don't necessarily need a full graphics set each. In civ 3, we made do with the leaders being static images rather than moving videos, and half the units were placeholder/generic units. Having worked on several game mods and a couple of games before, i know that the most efficient way of creating game elements is to plan it all out first, then fill rather than changing/adding as you go along. So sure, we might just start with the two factions, but if we set up a unified structure (e.g. like the unit list i posted previously), then it would be relative childsplay (so long as the SKD is easy to master) to add in later full factions.

Secondly, those damned wookies. I only curse as we were plagued by similar ideas in the early days of the civ 3 mod (i'm reminiscing about the gungan and the jawa factions that people wanted). How are we going to set up a wookie? a) more powerful than your average infantry. In which case the wookie would be standard, and the infantry wouldn't. So suddenly the galactic empire has a military of wookies rather than stormtroopers. Bit peculiar. b) wookies are weaker than standard infantry. In which case, whats the point in having them? c) wookies are stronger, but require 'local wookie' resource, in which there is a total of 1 in the map (=1 wookie total). Are we going to have someone craft a wookie unit, spend a few days of painstaking labour, for a unit that features only very minorly in the mod. Hell, if someone does create a wookie, maybe then we should find a way to include it - but don't put it on the to-do pile, because there are more important things to focus on. Remember - the less units that need to be made, the faster we can release.

"the prequels were the travesty". I never said the films weren't bad. I said fleshed out - e.g. there's plenty of canon resource to draw on. Plus, if the Civ 5 models are compatible with the EaW models, then we should easily be able to fill both Republic and CIS unit trees in no time.

Here's my thinking on planets - if we're basing it entirely in space, with only one tile planets, then we should have almost no land units.

And in response to you saying improvements are a bad idea, let me point out: civilization 5 is a huge game, with a multitude of aspects. Be it city building, conquest, culture, policy, exploration, technology, diplomacy, expansion (off the top of my head), there's a lot to do. If we create a mod, where the only thing to do is fight, we're going to alienate alot of people who like to play with variation. In the main game, I like to settle 4 or 5 cities, and watch them grow, defending myself when necessary, but not just going out and settling the entire world. So we need to allow people to play the mod in different ways, e.g. develop differently.

If you get skype, add beesden and we'll discuss things there if you want. Or set up IRC, however one does that.

 

[crossclayton]

I have a few thoughts on this proposed mod.

First of all i dont think it should not be changed so much from such an early stage. All you really need at this point of time to get a star wars feel would simply be a graphics overhaul. The actual game play elements of civ 5 would still fit in quite nicely, all you need to do is change everything to look like star wars. So basically just replace the graphics.

Ok, so cities become planets, land tiles become space tiles and land units become star fighters.
resources become star wars versions based on asteroids or meteors or space junk or wat ever.

eg: horse resource becomes tibana gas deposit for making fast A wings (horse unit)

Mountains would be impassable metorite feilds, hills and forrest would become some kind of space version, perhaps hills would represent space with higher concentrates of metals on smaller rock fragments. Some thought would be needed cos i dunno, coud get quite imaganitive, then you would build your improvement later.

Coastal tiles become deep space tiles and only units with hyperdrives can travel through deepspace such as capital ships. So boat units become capital ships. Some minor modding should be done so that starfighters (land units) need to dock with capital ships (boat units) to travel through deep space, instead of the land unit trying to embark.

Ocean tiles would become nebula and would be impassable tiles (modding would be needed) this would create exploring to find routes through space instead of just a huge open galaxy where you can travel in every direction, using nebula to create paths and secret ways to get places through space, make space combat tactical as you could hold off choke points etc.

So your the galactic map would be mostly made up of land(space) and coast(deep space) tiles with nebula(ocean, now impassable) to break up deep space and create hyper routes to farther away planets. A star system with multiple planets would be planets that are connected by land(space) and can be travelled to with out hyper travel (or perhaps should be stated as short range hyper travel cos it still a long way ). Roads could be built between planets with in the same star system but would be hyper lanes for trade. Some modding would be needed to make trade routes when you build a road to a city state u are allied with. Also make the alliance with a city state last a lot longer but make it harder to gain there allegance.

Remove the settler unit out of the game all together, every other planet in the galaxy would be a city state and it would be up to you how to go about them. You want more planets, take em over, you want their allegiance, then treat em nice and ally with em.

The eras would be easy enough, ancient would be KOTOR time, Classical would move up to republic time, medieval would be civil war time so on. The factions would be interesting because you would have to decide if you were going to make the republic a seperate faction to the empire which kind of seems silly, best thing would be to make them as one faction and have a progressive transition from republic to empire as you go through the techs. So slowly your clone troopers and walkers would evolve into empire era units and the look of your faction would change. The same could be for the rebels, they could start out as the trade federation and slowly make the transition into the allied rebellion. This would make things very cool, you would be playing as the good guy and bad guy at some point through the ages.

I think generals should be the Jedi\sith unit of the game but should be refered to as force users instead of sith and jedi cos at first the republic would have jedi but then as they become the empire they would use dark jedi, so to save having to create two unit, just replace the general with force user. Perhaps later on this could be adjusted.

Barbarians would be the criminal element of the galaxy, pirates, head hunters etc. The little encapments would be replaced with some kind of meteor base.

So this mod could actually be made with minimal actual modding and spending most of the time giving the graphics a star wars paint job. Once this is done, you would already have a pretty decent star wars mod already. Then once this is done you could then begin implememnting some serious modding into it for the things you discussed earlier but you would have an already strong foundation to work off with all of the aesthetic's work already completed.

 

[DioBrando]

Just a thougt: Wouldn't it be better if planets (or solar systems, depending on scale) were made up of seven tiles? mean, if there was a really good planet, shouldn't the two factions be able to both have "bases" on different planets/different parts of the planet. The "settlements" could still have only one tile of influence, but maybe be able to spread over the whole solar system.

What i'm talking about is a central tile and a ring of six tiles surrounding it.

 

[SheepMonster]

As a start, I agree that we shoul just provide a graphical patch. Those are some good ideas, but here's my thought on them:
Firstly, why is everyone so keen to remove land units from the game? Crossclayton's idea has merit (although tibanna isn't a fuel, it's a weapon catalyst), however if we go down that route I'd suggest one thing: don't have planets, have starbases. Planets could be resources, such as kessel (provides spices) alderaan (some other luxury), korrban (sith stuff), endor (for the death star) etc. I suggest this change, because you want starfighters instead of land units - and a starfighter could defeat a space station, but could only harass a ground base. Arguably.
Also, there has been talk of centering the mod around one era (at least to start off with), something i probably agree with. So starting in the KoToR era and moving to the legacy era would provide too many units to create, and possibly be quite confusing (it'd be republic vs sith-mandalorians-cis-alliance-new republic-galactic alliance).

@Diobrando, I agree that planets should be several tiles, though you're idea would suggest a lot of complication - first off, the two base names, which can't be identical? The first base would have 4 of the tiles, the second 3 of the tiles from the start because of the way civ 5 culture works. I don't know if this is changable, but personally i think it's all a bit complicated.

 

[Gangor]

As a start, I agree that we shoul just provide a graphical patch. Those are some good ideas, but here's my thought on them:
Firstly, why is everyone so keen to remove land units from the game? Crossclayton's idea has merit (although tibanna isn't a fuel, it's a weapon catalyst), however if we go down that route I'd suggest one thing: don't have planets, have starbases. Planets could be resources, such as kessel (provides spices) alderaan (some other luxury), korrban (sith stuff), endor (for the death star) etc. I suggest this change, because you want starfighters instead of land units - and a starfighter could defeat a space station, but could only harass a ground base. Arguably.

There were hardly any space stations in the movies, most of the action was on planets. Therefore, bases should be on planets. IMHO.

Also, there has been talk of centering the mod around one era (at least to start off with), something i probably agree with. So starting in the KoToR era and moving to the legacy era would provide too many units to create, and possibly be quite confusing (it'd be republic vs sith-mandalorians-cis-alliance-new republic-galactic alliance).

Yeah, I'd really like to create some sort of suspended disbelief and crossing all eras would make that very difficult.

@Diobrando, I agree that planets should be several tiles, though you're idea would suggest a lot of complication - first off, the two base names, which can't be identical? The first base would have 4 of the tiles, the second 3 of the tiles from the start because of the way civ 5 culture works. I don't know if this is changable, but personally i think it's all a bit complicated.

I don't really like the idea of multiple tile planets, but perhaps they can be done vertically as in Final Frontier? You could then make it so that when you settle in a system you're asked which planet you'd like to settle on. Could be pretty strange graphically though. I really do think though that single tile planets are the way to go.

 

[Gangor]

I have a few thoughts on this proposed mod.

First of all i dont think it should not be changed so much from such an early stage. All you really need at this point of time to get a star wars feel would simply be a graphics overhaul. The actual game play elements of civ 5 would still fit in quite nicely, all you need to do is change everything to look like star wars. So basically just replace the graphics.

Yes, and you would release the graphics first. But I think they must be designed with the full mod in mind.

Ok, so cities become planets, land tiles become space tiles and land units become star fighters.
resources become star wars versions based on asteroids or meteors or space junk or wat ever.

eg: horse resource becomes tibana gas deposit for making fast A wings (horse unit)

Mountains would be impassable metorite feilds, hills and forrest would become some kind of space version, perhaps hills would represent space with higher concentrates of metals on smaller rock fragments. Some thought would be needed cos i dunno, coud get quite imaganitive, then you would build your improvement later.

Coastal tiles become deep space tiles and only units with hyperdrives can travel through deepspace such as capital ships. So boat units become capital ships. Some minor modding should be done so that starfighters (land units) need to dock with capital ships (boat units) to travel through deep space, instead of the land unit trying to embark.

You realise this would need a map script as well?

Ocean tiles would become nebula and would be impassable tiles (modding would be needed) this would create exploring to find routes through space instead of just a huge open galaxy where you can travel in every direction, using nebula to create paths and secret ways to get places through space, make space combat tactical as you could hold off choke points etc.

But that's the thing with space - it doesn't have unpassable bits (mostly). There are no choke points. Choke points = no suspended disbelief.

So your the galactic map would be mostly made up of land(space) and coast(deep space) tiles with nebula(ocean, now impassable) to break up deep space and create hyper routes to farther away planets. A star system with multiple planets would be planets that are connected by land(space) and can be travelled to with out hyper travel (or perhaps should be stated as short range hyper travel cos it still a long way ). Roads could be built between planets with in the same star system but would be hyper lanes for trade. Some modding would be needed to make trade routes when you build a road to a city state u are allied with. Also make the alliance with a city state last a lot longer but make it harder to gain there allegance.

Roads...in space...??? Or we could just remove them.

Remove the settler unit out of the game all together, every other planet in the galaxy would be a city state and it would be up to you how to go about them. You want more planets, take em over, you want their allegiance, then treat em nice and ally with em.

Partly. The inner core should be this way, however the outer rim should have a decent number of uninhabited planets for the rebels to put their bases on.

Barbarians would be the criminal element of the galaxy, pirates, head hunters etc. The little encapments would be replaced with some kind of meteor base.

This could work, I guess.

So this mod could actually be made with minimal actual modding and spending most of the time giving the graphics a star wars paint job. Once this is done, you would already have a pretty decent star wars mod already. Then once this is done you could then begin implememnting some serious modding into it for the things you discussed earlier but you would have an already strong foundation to work off with all of the aesthetic's work already completed.

The thing is, there's lots of people interested in Star Wars, and not all of them are artists (eg me). There's plenty of scope to do other modding and release a complete product.