Originally posted by Lahgtah:

Originally posted by Comander-07:

the ground battles are actually far superior because they have more depth, more options and the AI cant be cheesed as easily. Its way harder to prevent losses than in space and since players are used to not taking casualties they dislike ground.

You as the attacker have infinite reserves to draw from, giving you a huge advantage. In reality defenders always hold the advantage, something the game barely represents. Factories giving garrisons means defenders actually stand a chance without having to stack each planet with an army.

Also afaik only the barracks apawn infinite units and a hand full of infantry is not a huge issue.

It's not hard to be far superior than a dog turd, to be fair. While EAWx does improve ground battles, particularly in map design, they still feel terrible as far as most RTS goes. Even the best tactics can't survive units deliberately refusing to go where you tell them to. The only RTS I've played with worse ground unit movement behavior is Halo Wars. A big part of the reason is the lack of formation and stance control. You can't force units into a formation, neither can you force them to all move at the same pace. Try to place infantry behind heavy tanks, select all and move, and the infantry will run past the heavy tanks and get slaughtered. This is simply not the game to play for star wars ground battles; for that, you play Galactic Battlegrounds with the Expanding Fronts mod.

Originally posted by Sakura.exe:

Is that true..? I'm sorry for my outburst, I just came home from woodworking in 90 degree F heat. I'll explain it in further detail, I don't have a recording software and I don't know if screenshots will be sufficient.

I'm playing as the Pentastar Alignment, I'm a bit new to the mod so I easily forget names. Bear with me, I'm beginning the conquest and I conquer a couple planets, the next planet I'm after has a cloning facility so I'll be able to build infantry better. After the space battle, I'm faced off against an infantry platoon, 2 barracks and a couple factories. Then the palace, this is the Zinj Empire by the way.

I land Jereces, a repulser lifted turbolaser gun, walkers, TIE Maulers, and infantry. The battle starts quickly with both of the other reinforcement points captured by the AI, and before I can organize the army, I'm approached by a few tanks and infantry. I fight off against them but my walkers and maulers fall quickly to their lasers. But I kill them, I can't call in more since there were still a couple left, I start moving towards the base, a few steps. I'm met again with more tanks and more infantry. I defeat them, but my vehicles are in shambles, the only thing remaining. My mobile turbolaser tower and Jereces, yet they keep coming. And coming, if this is not the case, I'm confused.

Where did the tanks come from, they didn't show in the defender's garrison. This is the second time I invaded the planet, the first time I lasted much longer, the story in the OP. It may not be infinite, but how many do the factories produce?

PA is a noob trap. It's listed as "easy" yet it's probably one of the harder factions to play now after changes to their starting worlds and units; the only thing that made them "easy" before was a much more defensible starting position and a free SSD on top of some other good heroes at week 20, but those have been nerfed in 3.3. They're a carrier faction, but carriers are expensive. Likewise, they lack a good battlecruiser to tank hits. The Praetor 2C is terrible for its population cost - never worth building, as 2 secutors are better in every way conceivable.

On the ground, their infantry are hot garbage outside of their field base special infantry, but those take forever to spawn. Basically ground battles as PA is spamming nemesis gunships and abusing their fast firing artillery, maybe a couple C-10's just to be a big distraction. Use inQueastors or Jerec as a first spawn to quickly capture early on while landing in 4 gunships, then go from there.

IMO, the easiest faction to play right now is Eriadu. Their ground roster is very strong, excellent use of tanks and AT-AT's, and their space roster is easy to manage. It's a bit expensive, but they're surrounded by high-income and good trade port worlds right off the start.

yeah this game does not play itself for you, you need to actually control your units

Originally posted by Comander-07:

yeah this game does not play itself for you, you need to actually control your units

That's one way of saying "I've never played GB, any of the AoE's, DoW, SC1 or 2, C&C, WC3, or even - god forbid - halo wars."
Ground battles in this game ain't good, and you'll feel the same way if you play any of the above for a few hours.

Originally posted by Lahgtah:

Originally posted by Comander-07:

yeah this game does not play itself for you, you need to actually control your units

That's one way of saying "I've never played GB, any of the AoE's, DoW, SC1 or 2, C&C, WC3, or even - god forbid - halo wars."
Ground battles in this game ain't good, and you'll feel the same way if you play any of the above for a few hours.

The path-finding and random objects in the very linear paths I feel is 80% of what makes it so bad. Linear paths often force your forces into a single-file line with no room to change positions, many times I lose an artillery piece because the AI randomly decided to change positions and walk into the line of fire, or it's very clunky to get a CT-10 into a proper position because of the way the map is designed and the pathfinding being terrible.

I haven't played many RTS's, this game and Halo Wars being my go-to's. And I feel Halo Wars has far superior ground combat because it doesn't face these two issues as much.

Also, there is times where it is better to let your units fire- Mostly in space battles, if you have superior firepower and armor, you can line your units in a wall formation and let the AI mow them down for you. Fun to watch.

Originally posted by Sakura.exe:

The path-finding and random objects in the very linear paths I feel is 80% of what makes it so bad. Linear paths often force your forces into a single-file line with no room to change positions, many times I lose an artillery piece because the AI randomly decided to change positions and walk into the line of fire, or it's very clunky to get a CT-10 into a proper position because of the way the map is designed and the pathfinding being terrible.

I haven't played many RTS's, this game and Halo Wars being my go-to's. And I feel Halo Wars has far superior ground combat because it doesn't face these two issues as much.

Also, there is times where it is better to let your units fire- Mostly in space battles, if you have superior firepower and armor, you can line your units in a wall formation and let the AI mow them down for you. Fun to watch.

I actually think the maps in EAWx mods are generally fairly well designed(barring a few exceptions: bespin still sucks, imo). The problem is just the unit behavior itself, and that's something no amount of mods can change, sadly.

Halo wars has terrible pathing as well, but circumvents the issue just by the way the overall game is designed, with most units being turreted and being able to fire omnidirectionally at full speed. Even then, it still has a function EAW lacks, and that is when you select multiple units and move them, they will all move at the speed of the slowest in the pack(usually, at least.) It also has far fewer units, meaning each type is more unique in strengths and weaknesses, not really overlapping. Finally, it has a very low pop cap(outside of mods) and squad sizes are rather small per unit spawn, so the pathing issues don't become terribly apparent until you do something like mass Scorpions or something.

In EAW, units have a weird tendency to wander off on their own: especially things like the AT-AT. Additionally, they seem to have a terrible fear of ever touching, making mile-wide turns just because a small obstacle is in the way. I definitely get the frustration with C-10's, doing exactly this where they'll slowly rotate and turn around for some reason when seemingly nothing is in the way.

IMO, the NR feels the best on the ground because most of their vehicles are turreted but, even then, they have that issue of seeming to go wherever they want. AAC's for example, are supposed to be fast hit-and-run units good at flanking slower heavier units, but when you try to move them around, one or more of them always lingers behind for some reason, or gets caught on something causing it to be destroyed. It's completely disobedient of what I ordered the unit to go, and where it needed to go. Even trying to micromanage their paths for them doesn't work well. So, a lot of units built around hit-and-runs just don't work in practice even if the idea is nice in theory - only air units, IME, work for that since they have no obstacles up there. Even then, air units that don't hover in place often like to take their sweet fat time to turn around when commanded to, often getting themselves destroyed.

It's why most of the time, ground battles in EAW for me either involve infantry spam, air gunship spam, tank spam, or simply turtling up until the enemy runs out of spawns followed by "I win" buttons(bombing and bombardment) lighting up and clicking on the enemy base. A really cheesy tactic is with CSA droidekas, as they take forever to deploy, you can drop them in around a cap point under attack and use the transport ship flying them in like a sort of pseudo-turret.

In space, this isn't an issue, because formations are easier to assemble, and matter a lot more than movement. It would be an issue if you couldn't hyperdrive in close to an enemy, because formations fall apart as soon as you start moving ships, but fortunately that's not the case. At worst, what happens is that you command ships to stop and they start turning on the spot, but that's easy to fix. Defense in space does feel bad because of similar issues, having to quickly rush to try and move ships into a good position, but it still at least feels doable unless the enemy has lots of very fast ships.

I feel like there should be no ground force unit cap for attacker. FULL DANG STOP!

Anything more than 10 real non-garrison/field base spawn units on the ground breaks the UI, and mods can't fix that. To be clear you can go over 10 units, it just breaks the UI

Originally posted by wookycooky:

Anything more than 10 real non-garrison/field base spawn units on the ground breaks the UI, and mods can't fix that. To be clear you can go over 10 units, it just breaks the UI

real? willing to make that trade. Also you can get more than 10. Infantry, repaired factories. How come that dosent break the ui