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).