A Brief Overview of
Star Wars: Empire at War
SUBMITTED BY: LT Antillies / Aurek Leader / ISD Chimaera /
Imperial Navy
HOLONET REGISTRATION: <emperorfrecks@aim.com>
SUBMITTED ON: 2008.06.13
The fifth strategy game created by Lucasarts, Empire at War allows you to command both the
Rebellion and Galactic Empire in the Galactic Civil War. Unlike traditional RTS’, Empire at War (or EaW, as it is commonly referred to as) scraped the
harvesting of multiple resources in favor of one
“resource”, in this case credits, and allowing the player to focus more on the
strategy and tactics of the game as opposed to the somewhat tedious
micromanagement of resource collectors that is so prominent in games like Star
Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.
Each planet that you control has a base credit output
that can be increased by the building of mines on the planet’s surface. These credits allow the player to purchase
everything from starships to ground troops and
heroes, which then can be deployed wherever the player may wish. Also breaking the honored
RTS tradition of units being created in-battle, EaW
allows you to use only the units available on a given planet, whether in space
or on the surface, to fight an attacking force.
However, some buildings have the capability of producing a fixed amount
of units for the duration of a battle.
Once the limit of units has been reached, no more are produced, but if
you lose some in a fight they are regenerated from their designated building.
Empire at War was heavily influenced by its
precursor, Star Wars: Rebellion. While
more complex and prone to micromanagement, Star Wars: Rebellion lent EaW the building slots for ground and space structures, the
continuation of managed space battles, and other concepts such as smuggling and
assassinations. Empire at War filled in
the gaps of Rebellion by allowing for managed ground battles and watering-down
the complexity that was, for some, too expansive.
The newest strategy game corrected a rather
misunderstood concept of proton torpedoes.
Through both the fiction of Star Wars and first Star Wars movie, proton
torpedoes are said to be able to pass through the shields of ships and hit
directly onto the hull of the ship being targeted. Both the flight simulators and Rebellion
showed proton torpedoes not being able to do this, but Empire at War allows
bombers such as Y-Wings to target individual hard points on ships and allow the
torpedoes to damage these.
Because of its relatively new release, Empire at War
has slowly become the Galactic Empire: An Empire Reborn’s
primary navy platform. Commodore Mar has
made it his mission to “grow [the GE’s] combat chamber” with new missions for EaW in anticipation for the growing interest in the
platform and the majority of recruits who will be joining the EaW portion of the Academy.
EaW also provides opportunities for excellent
screenshots with its BattleCam feature, which
temporarily gets rid of the HUD and creates rather cinematic images.
Empire at War, in addition to becoming more important
in the GE in general, has become more significant to those who wish to be
considered for the Secret Order of the Emperor, Scimitar Squadron. While candidates can still be considered
without this platform, proficiency in EaW is
considered a beneficial quality, especially when Scimitars are called upon to
serve the Empire in the inter-club training event (ICTE).