Thrawn's Revenge - A mod for Star Wars, Empire at War

News

So You Want to Be a Tester

Alright, so the beta for 2.1 is fast approaching, and we're about to start picking beta testers. For your edification, here's how we go about choosing testers, and how the beta process works.As we've said many times, the closed beta is not an opportunity to just get and play the mod early. Because of the limited size of the development team, and the large scope of the mod, beta testing requires a serious time commitment and a willingness to wade through hours of playing and replaying the same situations to provide useful feedback and data we can use to fix bugs, balance issues, and anything else that comes up. As a result of this, we only pick testers out of our active community. This isn't because we think other people can't do it, it's just that we have limited slots so we have to choose people who we know are invested in making the mod as good as possible, and are willing to suffer through the repetition for it.So, if you have fewer than five posts and apply because it "could be fun" there's basically no chance we'll pick you. The best way to get picked is to post bugs from existing versions, post suggestions, and get involved in discussing it. That's really the only way we know people are dedicated enough. Otherwise, just wait for the final release; it'll be a lot more stable, and you can have all the fun you want to by playing normally without us telling you when/how/what to play.For those who still want to do it and haven't signed up for consideration yet, the thread can be found here. If you're primarily active on another site (ModDB, Facebook) I can think of some people we'd be happy to have, but you do need to have a forum account to do this, since we organize the distribution and reports in a subforum.We will be choosing the 15-20 2.1 beta testers by July 1st, 2013, when the beta will hopefully start.-Corey ...

Imperial Civil War: 7 Years of Galactic Conflict

...Specter of the Past...Today marks the 7th anniversary of the beginning of Thrawn's Revenge. Over those 7 years there have been dozens of people who have helped create the mod directly and indirectly, and thousands of fans who have contributed ideas, constructive criticism and supported the team in our efforts in various ways.Those efforts have translated into 3 minimods, 4 major versions of Imperial Civil War, 300,000 downloads and taking into account Ascendancy, a collective 2700 watches on Mod Database, 800 likes on Facebook, and tens of thousands of comments and forum posts.Before getting into the development news, we have finally decided to start using the domain www.thrawnsrevenge.com instead of gutr.swrebellion.com. We're still going to be under the same great hosting of the SWRebellion network and the same site layout and design (so forum users don't worry, your accounts are safe), but we've been aware for a long time that our domain name doesn't really lend itself to easy memorization. We're currently not switched over yet, but just remember to switch your bookmarks. The gutr domain will still redirect for a little while after we're live....Vision of the Future...That being said, after the release of 2.0 we immediately got to work on 2.1. We've been relatively quiet about it as far as news posts go, having focused mainly on video, so in this update I primarily want to take the time to outline the main thrust of what 2.1 is going to include.The guiding principle of 2.1 has been and will continue to be bugfixes and general quality of life or polishing improvements. This ranges from the little stuff like balance changes, up to larger and more glaring issues like the era change issues in Art of War, the base layouts, and the attack loops of the AI (which I think I have resolved, but will not be sure of until we can get a larger testing pool). We're also cleaning up some of the rough edges on the Empire of the Hand and Pentastar Alignment, such as the lack of tactical upgrades.Part of this plan has included a smaller focus on adding new content than we have in previous versions, as this makes us more able to be confident that we're not introcuding new issues and allowing us to put the full focus on polish. This does not, however, mean you will not have new toys to play with.UnitsOne of the main additions is the highly requested heavy Empire of the Hand defense platform which has actually been in production since before 2.0 released, but had some significant delays for reasons I won't go into. This is the Visvia, a kilometer long platform with several small weapons emplacements, but also four gigantic tracking turrets which have an extremely low rate of fire, but which collectively deal damage on the scale of an Imperial hypervelocity cannon. In addition to this, there are some other gaps in the unit list which we're addressing, mainly for the Empire of the Hand and the Pentastar Alignment. The Empire of the Hand will receive at least one new ship, and the Pentastar Alignment will be receiving several with different requirements to build them, to compensate for their lack of interaction with the era system (considering that canonically they were re-incorporated into the Empire after era 2). These ships include the Lucrehulk, the Recusant, and a few other Imperial ships. For the Empire of the Hand, they'll be receiving at least one frigate to fill the gap between the Chaf and the Kariek, which means the Kariek will be dropped to its intended power level. We're also finishing the redesign process we started with the Phalanx in 2010 by redesigning the Vigilance and Massias. We understand that some people grow attached to the old designs, even if just for familiarity reasons. Slevered addressed the need to redesign these ships, specifically with reference to the Vigilance but outlining the team's general feeling on the issue by saying:Quote from: SleveredThere are actually multiple reasons why the vigilance needed a design change. Although the unit had some interesting design elements, it did not complement the other ships in the same faction. Two key design elements caused this dissonance to occur. The first problem was the engine design. Although it does convey a fierce aesthetic, it does not match any design element in EOTH. The second problem is the structure of a singular hull plating with only standalone "theme park" elements that pass on the top tiers of the hull. This design decision caused an awkward focal point at the only extruding parts of the design.The updated model not only matches the core design elements of EOTH, but also uses the old Vigilance as an inspiration behind the personal design requirements I set out when I drew and modeled the ship. I enjoyed the fierce engine but there needed to be a more balanced composition and silhouette.The design of the ship will also bleed over into gameplay when selecting units (even though this is a tiny ship, the principle still stands) and designing iconography for ships.Galactic ConquestWe're also adding two new galactic conquest scenarios. The first of these is a 103 planet era-progressive GC (like the Art of War campaigns) called Imperial Civil War. This is more in keeping with the 1.3 version of Art of War which had more planets than the 2.0 one because it focused on fewer factions. This GC includes the known galaxy, which means the playable factions are the Pentastar Alignment, Imperial Remnant and the New Republic. Essentially it's the Art of War without the Empire oif the Hand which people have been asking for.The second of these two GC's is a new version of From the Ground Up, the single planet start GC, which includes the Pentastar Alignment, which was added after that original GC in 2.0. This one we're still working out the details on.Survival ModeThe biggest addition to 2.1 is Survival Mode. In this you fight of waves of enemyt units with limited credits and ship production. You can see a more in depth presentation of it, as well as the first few waves of the New Republic version in this video:Click Here to WatchThat's all for now. Hopefully it gives a better or at least more collected idea of the overall plan we have for 2.1. We'll be going into more specifics with each of these in future news posts. If you want to track specific changes made so far, there's a thread for it here.We're accepting beta tester applications here.-The Thrawn's Revenge Team-Follow us on Facebook.Watch us on Mod Database.Join the discussion on our forums. ...

Help Us, (Your Name Here). You're Our Only Hope.

We've been trying to get some feedback on what kind of media people like, partially to make sure people actually enjoy what we put out there as much as possible between releases to tide people over, and partially to see the most effective way to spread the word to other people. So if any of you could fill this out (including and especially guests, we want to hear from as many people as possible), we'd appreciate it.http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XHG7V87We have no intention of selling the information, this is solely for us to figure out what people want to see and where people tend to see it from.Thanks. ...

Lucrehulk Ingame

The second new Pentastar unit in 2.1, the Lucrehulk. We're still playing with the scale on it. I'm using an integrated chip right now, so the picture's a little lower res than I'd likeModel: DavisSkin: Davis, Corey ...

Another Reminder on the Chatbox

Just to remind everyone, the chatbox is meant for discussing the mod, life, or anything else you may want to talk about or find interesting. What it is not for is tech support. That has its own forum here. We're not here 24/7 so more often than not it'll get archived or pushed out by newer messages before any of us see it. There is also a manual provided with the mod that tends to answer most questions....

2.1 Preview Video: Survival Mode

The actual preview video for Survival Mode, featuring success by Corey.[Click to Watch] ...

Imperial Civil War 2.1 Beta Tester Signup Thread

Hey everyone,Once again, we're looking for a few (15-20) brave people to volunteer to test the 2.1 release of Imperial Civil War. This doesn't necessarily mean we'll be finished anytime in the near future, however we want to get people as much time as possible to sign up.If you want to take part, post here saying so. The best way to make sure you get picked is to be active and provide feedback on previous versions. We want people who actively want to make the mod better and who we know we can rely on to actually stick with the testing without disappearing after the download goes up for it. EDIT: We're making a new qualification that in order to apply, you need to have at least 5 posts. We're looking for people who've shown they care about sticking around and helping development, so while it's not the perfect metric (I know plenty of people have contributed elsewhere) it's the best we have available at the moment. ...

Corey Sucks at Surviving

We tried to record the preview video for Survival mode. This happened. Actual preview video coming tomorrowish, hopefully.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ0GKTeI6RM ...

Thrawn's Revenge: The Clone Wars

This has come up several times in the past few weeks for some reason, but it's not happening. Here's why (taken from a PM exchange I had with somebody on Mod Database suggesting we add them into ICW):That wouldn't make sense. The CIS and Republic didnt each turn into the Empire and Rebellion, so it wouldn't be possible to do it within one GC and have it make sense; too much changed, and for another thing we don't cover the Galactic Civil war to begin with. Also, the factions would always be called the same thing regardless of what era it is, so if we did include the Clone Wars stuff it'd have to be in its own GCs with its own factions. Considering that factions beyond the first 3 can't have their own story scripting and the mod is already 4 gigs, if there's no place where the CW content is being mixed with the original content, it would be most efficient if it were done as two seperate mods since the file size would be smaller, the factions would function better and no content would be lost.But again, we have no interest in making another mod for EaW, and whether its done seperately or just tacked on to ICW as you suggest, that doesn't change the fact that its still a good 60-80 additional units plus everything else we'd need to do. It's years of work to add a time period we can't stand into a game we've already spent 7 years modding. The bottom line is the team hates the Clone Wars. See my sig for details. We're so damn professional, I know. ...