Supremacy

I've had today off work, which is fairly rare. Short of being off work on holiday, I don't tend to get many Saturdays off. So it was nice to not have to set my alarm clock this morning, and as a result of that I slept in until about noon, having let my body decide how much sleep it needed for once. I feel pretty good as a result of that. I've passed the time by watching a couple episodes of Stargate Atlantis (my favourite show at the moment, and I have all 40 episodes of seasons 1 & 2 on my HDD, which is handy). I've also been playing a game called Star Wars: Supremacy.

It is a fairly old game, the copyright on the CD case reads 1994. The graphics are pretty decent for its time (especially the various animated cut-scenes), and the gameplay even against the AI is addictive as hell. The game can be played against a human opponent, but I've never done that. The AI has 3 difficulty settings (X-Wing, Star Destroyer and Death Star, each of wich starts your side with less and the opposition with more resources), and the game has 3 settings for the size of the galaxy you want to play in. Habitually I play in the largest setting, which gives the player/s 200 planets to battle over.

Unlike other Star Wars games where you control a fighter, or an army or a single character, in this one you literaly control the entire Empire or the entire Rebellion. Every unit of troops. squadron of star fighters, capital ship and up to 30 special characters on each side are yours to command. I prefer to play as the Empire, mainly because they have the cooler ships, but it is more of a challenge to play as the Rebels which is what I've been doing today.

It comes to something when the Empire starts the game with a few Star Destroyers and your most powerful attacking ship is the Corellian Corvette. For those wondering what that is, picture the opening scene of Star Wars Episode IV, where a little ship roars into view getting shot at by a Star Destroyer which utterly dwarfs it. That little ship is a Corellian Corvette! On the plus side, the Rebels do have the ultimate saboteur team in Han Solo & Chewbacca, and their capacity for blowing up imperial installations is very useful!

I'm doing quite well so far and I've saved the game at just past the 500 day mark. I have more worlds than the Empire does, most of them well protected by shields and planetary defence laser batteries. What I don't have really is capital ships. I have a few, and I'm building more all the time, but I just don't have any that can stand up to a Star Destroyer in a straight fight, and so my tactics are still annoyingly focused on sabotage and hit & run raids at the moment, while the Empire can easily blockade planets and blast the living hell of them from orbit, as with enough big ships in one place, shields can be shot through.

I did get one extrodinary piece of good luck early on in the game though, as the first planet I attacked and overrun happened to have all three of the Empire's special characters who can research new ship designs on it and I captured all of them! This basically limits the Empire to only the ship designs they started the game with (plus TIE Interceptors which they developed before I snared their researchers). Granted, they start the game able to build Star Destroyers and even a new Death Star (if they can afford the horrendous resource cost of building it), but I'm hopeful that I've now stopped them from being able to build Interdictor Cruisers.

These are a real pain in the ass, as they prevent escape via hyperspace, thus forcing the smaller Rebel ships into fights they cannot possibly win against the Empire's far more powerful ships. Without them, I can hit & run throughout the game. Also, my research team is hard at work designing new starships for my side and will in time (unless they get caught or killed) design a couple ships that can really turn the tide in space battles against the Star Destroyers. Until then, I'll keep a low profile and keep sabotaging shipyards so as to limit the number of capital ships the Empire can complete, while building lots of star fighters and harrassing their planets. Wish me luck!