Rob Zacny

Episode 336: Star Wars: Rebellion

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Three Moves Ahead 336:

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Star Wars: Rebellion

In an episode that is in no way a cross-promotional marketing tool funded by Disney - but call me if you are interested in cross-promotional marketing - Rob, The Verge's Rick McCormick, and Idle Thumbs' Nick Breckon revisit Star Wars: Rebellion. Rob originally hated Rebellion. He made a big stink about it, we all remember it, and nobody wants to talk about it. But years later with the wisdom of old age and the context of modern strategy games, he now realizes that Rebellion is a gem worth talking about once more.

Star Wars: Rebellion

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I absolutely love that the first thing to which Rob can compare the Empire/Alliance conflict is the First Indochina War!

Loved your discussion of this sadly neglected game.

Rob, had you been born when Rebellion was released? jk!

"Neptune's Pride," eh?

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Rob mentioned how few insurgency/counter insurgency games there are and would AI: Fleet command fit into that model. It's a game where trying to play it as a traditional 4x will see you lose very quickly and the amount of expansion you want to do is as little as possible to destroy the AI home worlds while having a decent layer of worlds to defend your own homeworld from the AI attacks. No hearts and minds through and it's from the insurgent side.

 

Also is there any strategy games where you start with alot of non-renewable/ hard resources but over time they are whittled down as the original size of your empire. From what I heard on the podcast Attila total war does this with the western roman empire but is there a 4x equivalent ?

 

When I saw the name of this episode I looked up from chair in my parents home to see star war empire at war : forces of corruption the shelf over their pc which I briefly played years ago and remembered really liking the stragetic layer and not caring at all for the more prominent RTS aprt so I will definitely be picking up rebellion. 

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I absolutely love that the first thing to which Rob can compare the Empire/Alliance conflict is the First Indochina War!

Loved your discussion of this sadly neglected game.

Rob, had you been born when Rebellion was released? jk!

"Neptune's Pride," eh?

 

Well I just read Devil's Brigade (with its oppressively Nazified narrator) so it was on the brain. But the pattern I fell into of controlling the vital strategic centers but getting hemmed in and picked-at by hostile guerrillas felt very much like the French experience in Indochina.

 

Oh man, and Endor is TOTALLY Dien Bien Phu. 

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"...it's not really a video games podcast, but more of an after-hours conversation..."

 

So basically it's exactly the same as idlethumbs podcast. Just random chatter about someone's dirty socks and relatives whilst drunk. Thanks, but no thanks.

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I LOVED Rebellion in high school. I am honestly shocked people thought less than highly of it. All the characters, world capturing, and fleet building was incredible. Training Jedi, moving capitals, infiltrating planets. I remember building the biggest ships you could muster, and flooding dozens of squadrons of fighters into a battle. So awesome.

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"...it's not really a video games podcast, but more of an after-hours conversation..."

So basically it's exactly the same as idlethumbs podcast. Just random chatter about someone's dirty socks and relatives whilst drunk. Thanks, but no thanks.

I don't believe we've ever been drunk whilst recording Idle Thumbs, but perhaps we should give it a shot for our next "Dirty Socks and Relatives" roundup!

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The cutscene for when the (player) empire loses is all sorts of wonderful: 

 

I loved this game as a kid, to the point that I can still hear the voice of the emperor & mon mothma when they inevitably failed in their diplomatic missions. It has one of the best implementations of sabotaging opposing infrastructure I can think of - but counter to that it is also possible to turn a planet into a fortress that literally nothing can get through - triple shields, heavy laser cannons, enough troops to fill a super stardestroyer and a good general and you've got something that the enemy will never get through. But if the enemy does manage to destroy those shields then oh man are you in for a world of hurt. 

 

 

One neat detail about the Death Star: whenever it enters a system all the planets there will get a small loyalty boost towards the empire as people are indeed cowed into submission - but it goes away if the death star leaves. This means that whatever planets were already maxed out will be less loyal after a death star "driveby". I don't remember but it might be that if the Death Star does destroy a planet then the other planets in the system don't change loyalty but the rest of the galaxy does go more towards the rebel side. 

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Empire at War is good on its own, but mods (which probably took inspiration from Star Wars: Rebellion) made it great by including more ship types, more characters, and better interactions on the strategic layer. As for the RTS layer, the space battles are fun and cinematic, but the ground battles are boring and floaty. It's hard to believe that the two came from the same developer.

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Empire at War is good on its own, but mods (which probably took inspiration from Star Wars: Rebellion) made it great by including more ship types, more characters, and better interactions on the strategic layer. As for the RTS layer, the space battles are fun and cinematic, but the ground battles are boring and floaty. It's hard to believe that the two came from the same developer.

 

When you say "this mod adds more" you're losing me. I bought SWEaW this year and wanted Star Wars 4X. When I found out it's about selecting units and sending them to enemy base I quickly got bored. I'd like less units and more meaningful interactions.

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When you say "this mod adds more" you're losing me. I bought SWEaW this year and wanted Star Wars 4X. When I found out it's about selecting units and sending them to enemy base I quickly got bored. I'd like less units and more meaningful interactions.

Ah well, neither that game or the one discussed on the podcast is probably for you, then!

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Probably so. I get my post-movie Star Wars dose from replaying Knights of the Old Republic 2. Will survive without a perfect SW 4X. Besides I haven't finished EU4 as every country yet.

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Aside from the strategic discussion, I enjoyed this because Rebellion was the last game I obsessed over. I read every article I could find, screenshot, every inch of the box, etc. I had a dim thought at the time that it was an unusual game in a (largely) good way and I'm a bit pleased to see that others agree.

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https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/11/3/star-wars-rebellion/

 

My understanding is, that Fantasy Flight has attempted to port this game to cardboard, perhaps it will give War of the Ring a run for its money. Speaking of which, when is there going to be an episode on War of the Ring? Or has there been one I have missed.

 

I should pick up this game, I like counter insurgency, and star wars.

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Speaking of which, when is there going to be an episode on War of the Ring? Or has there been one I have missed.

 

They've never discussed it in much depth. If I do get round to covering it, it would be great to get the designer on (or a high-skill player) to give a different view point.

 

War of the Ring is a fantastic game. To me, it's main strength is that it attempts to keep itself as simple as possible. Don't get me wrong, it is still a long and reasonably complicated game. But the design decision to resist the temptation to give the different races different stats was excellent. Sure, after a background in Warhammer and what not, it was a bit odd and, at first disappointing, that one elf = one orc = one dwarf, etc. But, it turns out you don't need fiddly stat lines to make the races feel different. It all works fantastically well.

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War of the Ring comes up a lot on this show, and I think that's probably why we've never used it as a full topic. Though I seem to recall some pretty in-depth discussion of it from the first or second year of the show.

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OMG, I was so happy to hear this podcast. Rebellion is such a rough gem of a game, and deserves a lot more loved than it's received. Thank you!

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I was surprised to see this show up in the queue, given that it's one of the few games that inspires shuddering revulsion when I hear the name.

 

You're all entirely correct; it is a remarkable bit of asymmetric insurgency design I didn't recognize at the time, full of creative options, and the design's opaqueness somehow makes more fascinating.  I bought it again to remind myself, and after an hour poking around I can confirm: there is no goddamn way I, or anyone else, should put up with that horrible of an interface ever again.  It actually gave me a terrible incident of carpal tunnel back in college due to long, long play sessions of obsessive clicking.

 

* Every basic operation requires a window drag and three clicks.

* Some windows close with escape, and some don't.

* Every action's duration is measured in days, but the game is real-time for no apparent reason.

 

Did they know what a train wreck they were making?  There's some cries for help in there.

* The manual actually goes to the trouble to explain the difference between modal and modaless dialogs - yes, really - on page 62/64.

* There's a sidebar to save minimized window views of screens you want to go back to.  I literally cannot think of another game that has done this.

* There is a specific hotkey for switching back and forth between the message list and the encyclopedia.

* The droids very much look like a after-the-fact workflow patch when they got feedback that no one could figure out how to do anything without their wrists snapping in half.

 

I suppose if you're trying to build a heavy EU-style window system at 640 x 480 you're kind of doomed, but christ.  This is the same year Railroad Tycoon 2 came out, I don't know what the problem was

 

Amusingly, the tactical interface is mostly fine.  I suppose if I had literally nothing else to play I could put up with this, but life is too short and there are too many other great games.  Rebellion truly stands alone in my memory as the most painful to use interface ever created.

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But such an incredible game.

 

Though a shame about the interface, as Jason says. I played this a lot despite that - both single player and multiplayer. It was also fatally unbalanced, though - IIRC, it was pretty much impossible for the Empire to lose if played correctly, as there really wasn't an "endgame" that worked for the Rebels.

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The one thing I love about this game is that you are playing against other characters.   It is far more valuable to capture Luke Skywalker than win a system's popular support.  It gives you a sense of playing against enemy leadership for the support of the galaxy.  If you are a starwar fan, it gives you a sense historical context maneuvering in the galaxy.  Thanks for reaching back and pulling this game out of the bin.  I enjoyed the episode.   

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