Star Wars Supremacy (Rebellion)

Ok here’s a thread unlikely to get many replies, but given that I’m laid up at home today, and bored out of my mind, I thought I’d just test the water in the hope someone would fancy having a game of this sometime. The game’s called Star Wars Supremacy in the UK, and Rebellion everywhere else (for stupid copyright reasons), and simply set as the Empire versus Rebels in a Star Wars galaxy, picking up at the point following the first of the original Trilogy, when the Death Star’s been destroyed and the Rebels are trying to establish a foot hold. Now, it’s an extremely old game, and obviously looks it, but every few years Saj and myself take a wee notion to fire up a game of this, and it’s not for any nostalgic reason. We play it because it’s actually quite a good game and challenge, however during this particular notion that I’ve taken, I’m having a problem finding human opponents, since Saj is currently living in some crazy Canadian timezone. The game we’ve been playing over successive weekends though, has been epic.

If you’ve not heard of it, then simply put, it’s Civilisation in space, but it’s completely war orientated and has the Star Wars theme, obviously. You try to gain control of up to 6 core sectors, which are built up and have plenty of resources, and you have the option (particularly as rebels) to setup bases in the outer ring, which contains unexplored but mostly barren planets with few resources and generally uncolonised. Each side begins with roughly the same level of support amongst the core sectors, but the Empire has the early advantage in terms of military, and it’s the Rebel player’s job to fight a guerilla war, and gain as much of a foothold in the core, via mostly diplomacy, while his military technology and resources catch up. The end goal for each side is to capture/destroy the opposition HQ and, depending on game conditions, capture the 2 key opposition leadership characters (e.g. Vader and the Emperor).

Characters provide a dice roll element to the game, as they perform missions which succeed based upon their personal stats, although there are ways to increase the odds in your favour, or stack them against your opponent, depending on whether you’re taking on a difficult assignment or protecting a strategic position. The rest of play is a game of chess between you and your opponent, and while military resources tend to be focused around a particular sector where battle is taking place, if you spot an opening, there are no restrictions preventing you from opening a new front elsewhere, beyond travel time and whether you have ships available for it. The units for head on fleet engagements are expensive and powerful, while cheaper, faster, but much weaker units can be used to blockade/bombard weakly defended planets where your opponent thinks he’s safe. The balance you strike between these types of ships depends entirely on your chosen strategy.

The resource management side of the game is simple; mines provide a unit of raw material every day into a galactic pot from which refineries take a unit per day, producing a unit of refined material into a stockpile used by all your construction facilities. In addition, a mine and refinery combination provides you with 50 fleet capacity points which are used up by the units you produce. Strategic targets are normally your opponents military and construction facilities, but a side game takes place between the two of you, attacking/defending mines and refineries, the outcome of which has a direct impact on each other’s strength when it comes to strategic engagements.

One of the selling points of the game at the time it was released was that when it comes to fleet fights, you switch from the strategic/galactic overview, to a tactical interface via which you can order your units. It’s a really old game, so it’s not too complicated here, but you do look forward to these fights, as your choices in the tactical mode do matter, and it’s satisfying to see yourself doing damage to his fleet, even if the explosions are far from pretty :). One of the great things about this game is that the time and resources it takes to build up a fleet, particularly capital ships in the early game, mean that they feel like a precious commodity, and it hurts to lose them.

Anyway, I think that’s enough text, since the majority of people reading this won’t be interested, but if ever your current game collection is boring you, or you’ve some time on your hands to kill, think of me sitting here with very few people to play what is an old, but very good little game. I did mention this on the forums about 5 or 6 years ago, and Axel responded (he compared it to Master of Orion), so I’m hoping someone else might take an interest, since we’ve lost touch with him :(.

It’s easy to get hold off from Torrents (isohunt.com last I checked, and weighs in at 500mb roughly), but if you get a copy just bear in mind the AI is terrible, and that the only way to play it is versus a human opponent. It’s actually still very stable on all versions of windows, with the only complication being in setting up a multiplayer game, for which you need to use a virtual serial cable connection :shock:, but don’t let that put you off, I’ve got it down to a T, and it seriously only takes about 5 minutes to sort out from scratch.