What Made the Original Star Wars Strategy Game Great? - Star Wars Rebellion / Supremacy

Corey breaks down the first Star Wars strategy game, Rebellion (aka Supremacy) and talks about where it succeeded and how it influenced Empire at War

Star Wars Rebellion Network:

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#StarWars #Squadrons

[NubyPlaysGaming]

Star Wars Rebellion was awesome, especially the character management mechanics. Also ow that moment in the footage of trying to move a troop regiment to a ship by transferring to the tiny icon. Yea, best bet is opening the fleet window.

If anyone has issues getting the space battles in Rebellion working on current systems, google dgvoodoo2 and place the dll files from ms/x86 into the main game directory.

[nurse]

Star wars Rebellion and Star Trek Armada 2 were my go to games. Rebellion was the long term challenge, while x-wing vs tie fighter was my quick fix. Thank you Corey for bringing so much fun to our lives.

[HouseofOrdos]

I love that game, bought it on Steam too. I wish a game would copy it so much with updated graphics. I love the empire building and scale of that, then the battles feel much more tactical. Losing ships matters a lot more.

[scbask]

Star Wars rebellion is probably the game ive put the second most hours in. The reb-editor and replacing/adding models gave it so much replay value.

[Arashmickey]

Honorable mention for the Imperial protocol droid voice actor :)

[havocsquad]

+1 to the Stellaris Fallen Republic mod. Even for some significant rough edges of some fleet strength issues that might have gotten patched in the most recent 0.91 update, it's very close to SW Empire at War/Forces of Corruption in the feel/experience although with the learning curve of Stellaris in the buildings, tech, and resource management area.

The game is more strategic with little influence tactically during the actual battles, however it's still quite a bit of a light show when they face off, especially with the big ships in big fleets.

Yes, I also liked Star Wars Rebellion/Supremacy when I played it. It was a very empire building experience and it better dealt with the complications of the Empire trying to hunt down a mobile and hidden Rebel Alliance in the galaxy. In short, you couldn't bring the whole imperial fleet to their capital/key planets in the unknown regions without finding them first.

[DavidRichardson]

This was one of the video games I played most regularly as a little kid, though I would not actually win my first campaign until I was about to enter my teens.

Even with having both the manual and the big guide book (and I still have the game, the books, and an old computer to play it, though I did get the Steam version during the time I had to rebuild that computer), there was a LOT that I just would not pay attention to. Stocking up on refined points and not focusing solely on maintenance points always frustrated me whenever the projected to time to completing a construction project would quickly and massively stretch out - and even after finally realizing the importance of refined points, I still end up in this.

To this day, though, I still don't bother with controlling my fleets in their battles. I just load them up with carriers and then load those up with starfighters, and the starfighters are usually enough to wipe out the enemy fleet before your capital ships took any shots (this was especially true when playing as the Rebels - you could win just about anything if you have enough X-wings). Of course, I always started the battles rather than use the auto-resolve, because I have gotten those instances where the auto-resolve would rule in favor of my opponent, but if I entered the battle, my opponent would immediately retreat; this happened most often when I was defending a planet and all I had as a defense fleet was 30-60 starfighters (yeah, I know I said "all I had was 30-60" - shut up).

The one thing that always irritated me was how the opponent would usually succeed in their sabotage missions, especially around mid-game. Yes, I knew that stationing troops went a long way towards foiling them, but 1) you needed troops with the highest defense stats, 2), you needed enough of them but couldn't know how many would be enough, and 3) stationing a commander or general did not seem to help that much. It was especially irritating whenever I played as the Empire.

I will say that I had lost FAR many more campaigns than I had won, though to be fair, nearly all of them were because I would play as the Empire, build a Death Star, station it over Coruscant, and then destroy the planet with the Emperor and Vader on the planet. Why? Because I thought it was funny to do.

Yes, the game has its issues and problems. Yes, even as a kid and after getting years of practice with the UI (all of which ensured that I could still play the game and win), I found the UI to be a pain. No, I went _years_ without thinking about mods (it was because of Stellaris and Civilization 5 that I finally started considering mods), and I'm probably not going to bother with getting them for Rebellion (I mean, I will try to look into them, but actually getting them and setting them up is another matter). And yes, I will keep playing Rebellion.

[sentrysapper]

I'll admit, as much as I like the concept behind Rebellion, the UI has always been a major sticking point that's prevented me from fully diving into the game. Bear in mind this is coming from someone who grew up in the '90s and has a relatively high tolerance for old-school jank. Maybe I'll try tracking down the board game instead.

It's pretty amazing that the fan site is still up; the people that run it have had to weather all manner of server and domain issues over the years. I would sometimes go there back in the day despite not playing Rebellion just to see all of the custom cards folks created (the potential for all kinds of crazy crossovers is staggering).

[Justicar]

Rebellion is one of the best Space Strategy games of all time. I'm still waiting for a worth successor. EaW was hopeful, but it has a few major problems. For me specifically how you can't actually control the game while paused, added to the AI's spamming of fleets so you can't get much of anything done for all that fighting.

[neofulcrum]

If only they could remake Star Wars rebellion with today’s technology

[Kiloku]

I loved this game so much. Now and then I install a whole Windows XP virtual machine on my PC just to play this without graphical issues.
Btw if you need help on how to play, I could give you a few pointers. I'm not the sort of player that conquers the entire galaxy in under an in-game year or something but I can consistently win the campaigns overall

[christophmahler]

In 'Rebellion', all characters had a chance to become 'force sensitive' and to increase their traits by training - or major encounters, further enhanced by other characters in their fleet or _mission_ party, adding a mechanic of 'RPG'.

While the engine needs undoubetedly a more functional port - it's one the games where reading the manual leads to the discovery of powerful mechanics and unimagined playstyles - adding a replayability that Empire at War never had due to it's rushed release.

To take 'Rebellion' as a source of inspiration to modify other games is a good direction of gameplay design.

[liamcarden]

Corey I am so pumped for more 3.0 content!

[paulwalsh]

It was my first strategy game. I got age of empires afterwards. Now I pretty much only play strategy games. All because of this game.

[DarthJokerFett]

Great video Corey, while I admit I have no experience with the Rebellion video game, I very highly endorse the Star Wars Rebellion board game by Fantasy Flight. That was my go to board game for game nights with my best friend in college and I've played it around 15 or so times which is a fair amount for a game of that scope and playtime of roughly 4-6 hours a game. Without a doubt my favorite board game of all time and the best Star Wars strategic experience I've ever had.

On a similar note, I am quite the fan of Paradox strategy games and am looking forward to trying the newly released Fallen Republic mod for Stellaris as it appears to be the closest thing we have to a new Star Wars grand strategy game for the foreseeable future.

[sword]

i always loved the cut scene from that game made it feel more real

[jeffjensen]

Oh you covered this a few months ago :D This is mah childhood! Er, I guess teenage years.

[johnhughes]

One thing always bugged me about this game. If you controlled a planet and had a few squardons of starfighters to defend it and an enemy invasion fleet turned up, a space battle would begin. I always sacrificed my few fighters by sending them after the enemy troop transports and would destroy enough of that the enemy fleet would withdraw after the battle without attempting to invade. However, since my fighters had technically lost the space battle, I lost political support throughout the whole sector. In reality, my fighters had sacrificed themselves heroically to stop the enemy from invading the planet! I always felt that I should GAIN support for doing that, not lose it.

[antwan]

Star Wars Rebellion brought me great memories my favorite was when Darth Vader Captured both Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca . Luke discovered Chewbacca had the force powers . Luke escaped and died fighting Vader then Jedi Chewbacca escaped and killed Vader making for one of the most surprising endings I ever had.

[atakanakca]

What exactly is going on at 6:26? Is that a story mission of some sort? Or is it like a new victory condition for space battles?