Generating Interest in the Imperial Navy

[LC La Forge]

Here's the deal, people: with the exception of Empire at War, all of the platforms in use by the Imperial Navy are something like 10 years old or older. For PC software this is just about ancient. Furthermore, it does not appear that LucasArts or anyone else (for that matter) will be producing a new Star Wars flight sim anytime soon.

Now, nothing against the bridge crews, but the squadron in the navy is really where we started and to let those units die would be a real shame. As someone who started out in a squadron, commanded a squadron, and oversaw squadrons, I have a particular attachment to them, as many of the GE vets do as well.

My question is this: how can we improve the interest in the squadron unit (and therefore, the Navy)? I'm not talking about GE recruitment in general (that's a different monster that needs to be addressed), I'm talking about getting a new recruit to select a Naval platform on the recruitment page that lands him in a Navy squadron. Right now, this is pretty rare it seems and the situation is pretty much unsustainable in the long term if we want to keep the squadron around... and I most definitely think we should.

So, some brainstorming has developed these ideas (pardon if this has been discussed formally before):

• Revamp a current platform, such as TIE or XWA: difficult, as we don't have source code and are limited by the engine, and it doesn't help new people obtain the game beforehand.
• Find a new flight sim platform that is modern and popular and has SW themed mods for it. Would work like current Navy platforms.
• Find a free or open source platform and adopt it. Similiar to the above, except that we can link to the download site, modify it if we wish, and the like. Problems include theming (may not be related to Star Wars), the product may not be finished by the developer(s), and may not be popular. Examples include Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator and others.

I will leave that as food for thought. But I think this is an issue we need to address ASAP, and I'd be willing to lead the charge on it, so to speak, but I want general GE input on the topic, as well.

What say you?

[COL Longstreet]

Would not be the problem to find mods for several games, but to find some that are really popular. Even with popular it could be difficult to handle a squadron for every platform. What could help would be mixed squadrons, e.g.
one for mods a, b, c and d for game x and x2; one for game mod e and f, one for game z and game mod g for game w etc. - otherwise we´d have a dozend squadrons with at best 4 men each and without sufficient active members and recruits.

Of course - any other sw club should be allowed to dissolve and join or ranks ...

I´m not that much in touch with non-sw flight sims. Are there, beside freelancer, any really pupular mp-games right now?

[LC La Forge]

Well, frankly, in terms of mods, I was thinking this: pick a game, pick a good mod, and leave it at that. We link to the mod download, the pilot supplies the game, and we help get the mod installed if needed. But none of this pick and choose and blah blah blah. One game, one mod.

And no, I would have to research into other flight sims that are combat oriented.

EDIT: About Freelancer: See [link=http://www.moddb.com/forum/thread/tides ... freelancer]this mod[/link]
EDIT2: Also, there's a game called X[sup]3[/sup]: Reunion which has [link=www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-feYFQHras]this mod[/link], though I'm not sure if it's been released to the public yet or not.

[Hazledine]

I've got X3...

[Vortagh]

Well. Here's the problem as I see it.


LaForge, you already mentioned the main problem about generating interest in the Navy Squadrons: There's no new simulation games for SW coming out in the near future. In a different thread, I have recently talked about this whole dillemma. Not only are there no new games on the horizon, but also people are no longer willing to really put effort into these games. Games nowadays are mostly flashy with nearly no story and a bad engine to run on. Oh, of course there are exceptions, but those are rare to begin with and then either the engine is good or the game is good, but nearly never both. People want instant gratification, not refly a mission 20 times (Wing Commander and TIE Fighter - weee! ).
Let's face it, we live in the age of consoles and of first person shooters and THAT'S what the industry focus' is aimed at. The gems almost always come from small companys (which will be bought up as soon as they produce something awesome and then the name will be milked for EAs new game series ) - and last time I checked, all the SW stuff was owned by one big company.

All we can do, is hope that a good modding crew gives us something to use, like the SW Mod for UT2004, which is really really nice. Of course, if you wish to start assembling and organizing a modding crew for a game, go right ahead. But be aware that it will be years until something worthwhile comes out.

I can't say anything about the X3 mod (which looks and sounds awesome, yet is still an Alpha, from what I can read), but I can say something about anything based on Freelancer: The Freelancer community is *very* annoying to play with. Just yesterday we had a small talk about that on IRC and as the guy who lead the GE's old FreeWorlds (Freelancer mod) crew, I can personally say that the good times were far fewer than the annoying times. Freelancer is, in my opinion a bad mix of a bad trading-sim and a bad combat engine. Yes, combat in Freelancer is *really* bad, especially because lag is often incredibly bad.


Also, I know this isn't focussing on Squadron stuff, but we we might want to look into mods of very popular games, to find the most people. Homeworld 2 should not only have an SW mod, but also has a great following. Same goes for Nexus: The Jupiter Incident.

[LC La Forge]

Okay, I remember the FreeWorlds debacle now, so that's out. My thoughts if we want to go the game + mod route:
-Wing Commander Saga, if we can find a mod for it
-Homeworld 2 does have a mod, http://www.swrebellion.com/modules.php? ... load&cid=6
-Never played Nexus, but maybe that might be something to tap into.
-Any others we can think of?

EDIT: HERe's a Youtube video of Warlords, the HW2 mod for star wars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XzsLK_gGfk

[Vortagh]

What we also might look into, is the ... err... was it called Freespace? There's a *really* nice moddable engine out there, which already has two frikkin awesome BSG (new series) and Wing Commander mods out.

[Munro Burton]

Don't want to rain on your parade, but the Warlords mod for Homeworld 2 is a LOT closer to EAW than XWA. In that it's about fleet strategy and tactics, not the simple glory of energy management(beam, shields, lasers anyone? )

[LC La Forge]

Vort: Yeah, perhaps. We really need to get a formal group together to study the options we've got. I saw the Freespace stuff, could also work.

MB: Yeah, I know, I've been watching videos. It is, nevertheless, still a suggestion.

[Vortagh]

Burton: As I said: "I know this isn't focussing on Squadron stuff"...

[LC La Forge]

Anyway, back on topic.

We should look into compiling a list of potential games, WITHOUT looking at mods, too see if anything looks good as a vanilla game. Then, we can go looking for mods for those games.

Criteria should be:
-Good SW mod available
-Good gameplay, etc
-Good community

[Fel]

http://swc.hard-light.net/about.php holds a good deal of promise...

[Vortagh]

Ok, here are a few mods. I include mods wether they are usable for army or navy and in any stage of development. Most of them will be alphas with no release so far, but I try to only list mods that actually look like they will be finished. I will include the one Fel mentioned:

Fate of the Galaxy - A Freespace 2 total conversion, not even a demo yet. But there's hope and they say that the demo is due early this year.

Imperial Assault 2 - A SW:EAW mod. Also still in alpha, no releases yet.

Warlords - A Homeworld 2 mod. Very impressive. Check out their gallery. The game looks near finished and downloads are available (link is in the upper right corner, read the ReadMe file first).

Sins of a Galactic Empire - ATTENTION, this is a link directly to their download page! The guys who made Warlords, apparently are ALSO working on a mod for Sins of a Solar Empire! The download link is hidden in their news, so I figured I should put it here. Currently version 0.75.

A New Era - A HalfLife² mod. Guess what, also still in the works. Looks great and very professional.

Star Wars Fleet Command - A mod for Star Trek Armada II. Released in 2003, I can't really say anything about it right now. However, as an avid Armada II LAN player, I am downloading it right now.

Imperial Winter - This isn't a mod or total conversion. It is a game built upon the Spring engine (hence the name, which gives a pun-lover like me a good giggle), itself an open source clone of Total Anihilation. If you are into vast scale battles and don't mind older graphics, this is for you.

Galaxy At War - A C&C3 mod. No idea how far they actually progressed.

First Strike - A BF2141 Total Conversion that sadly isn't standalone. You still need BF for it. :/

Galactic Conquest - Another BF2141 mod. I don't own BF2141 and thus can't check these two out.

Well, that's basically it. I left out a few mods/TCs for games like Red Alert (I know Qorl will read this and kill me ), StarCraft and C&C Generals, but I figure people can live with that.

I also know that there's more than just one or two EAW mods out there, but most of them are either really small and only deal with fixing/adding a few small things, or they are big and looked like crap ATM, so I didn't mention them in here (Thrawn's Revenge comes to mind).

[Mike Mar]

I also want to point out that we have No EAW:FOC Units/Squadrons and that this should be a easy step to do.

[Jagged Fel]

Adding more EaW units completely goes against what we're trying to do.