General Information:
- Name of Scenario: STAR CONTACT: Part 1 – THE STAR WARS
- Final Score: 17.5/30
(Breakdown: 0-10 terrible /11-15 Average/ 16-20 Good/ 21-25 Excellent/ 26+Best possible) - Type of Scenario: Science Fiction
- Name of Author: Nikola Kupresanin
- Name of Reviewer: Kobayashi
Summary of Scenario:
|
You play as the Empire right after the Battle of Yavin when the first Deathstar is destroyed. At first you try to discover hidden Rebel Alliance bases and destroy them. Other tribes are the Trade Federation (a loyal Imperial ally), the League of Free Planets (a weak alliance of technically developed star systems), Jabba the Hutt’s gangster empire, the Neutrals and finally the extra-galactic visitors. At first some of the non-rebel tribes are allied with you but the rebellion catches on and eventually everyone is trying to splinter off a piece of the empire. To make things worse you encounter a fleet of extra-galactic visitors who aren’t too friendly. |
Playability – Section Sub-total: 4.5/5
Were you able to finish in a reasonable amount of turns? (Score: 1 )
| Yes. The ships can move very far in one turn and there is no super defense unit which can stop a properly assembled and sizable invasion force. |
Did the scenario avoid being tedious or repetitive? (Score: 0.5 )
| No research, too many cities and units = a very tedious game. There are so many units you have to wait over five minutes between each turn. Even so, the repetitive elements do give an impression of a vast galactic empire. |
Did the scenario capture the essence of what it was suppose to portray? (Score: 1 )
| I do not for a moment doubt the Star War-ness of the scenario. Full marks. |
Was the choice of interaction between races appropriate? (Score: 1 )
| I think the way each race slowly turns against the empire is quite well done. Choice of races seems to be an intelligent grouping of different star war political groups. |
Did you enjoy playing the scenario? (Score: 1 )
| To some extent. The scenario has the beginnings of a great game but the author has failed to capitalise on many aspects of the civ2 game engine. |
Units – Section Sub-total: 3/5
Were the majority of units changed from the default Civ2 units? (Score: 1 )
| All units were suitable and of good quality except for the Calamari Cruiser and Fleet Carrier which were someone blurry. The full range of Star Wars ships and smaller craft are present. My only complaint is that Star Trek Olympia class ships were used as space station and the extra-galactic visitors were represented by Battlestars (a la Galactica). |
Were all of the sounds appropriate for the units in the scenario? (Score: 0 )
| There were absolutely no sounds and the scenario warns you to turn off your speakers. I suppose this is better than no warning at all but even then – zero points. |
Was the scenario free of ‘unbalanced’ units? (Score: 0.5 )
| Mostly OK, the scenario plays like a pacific theater carrier/battleship game. I thought that X-wings scrambling to defend against TIE bombers shouldn’t get decimated every single time. There was insufficient distinction between many units and some lack of balance. For instance it takes either one star destroyer or 20 TIE bombers to kill one calamari cruiser. A star destroyer costs 52 while 20 TIE bombers cost 320. Why build TIE bombers at all? |
Were there innovative combinations of special unit abilities? (Score: 1 )
| One particular unit merits mention. This is the assault transport. Its a helicopter and gets carried by Star Destroyers (carriers) which normally cannot carry troops. Because of their weak attack, they can’t be used to assault planets like the ground troops carried by corvettes (transports) but they can be used to take over a planet after bombardment has killed off all resistance. |
Any other unit related problems (like shield placement)? (Score: 0.5 )
| Shields were sometimes 75% covered by some units making it hard to tell who they belonged to. |
Research – – Section Sub-total: 2.5/5
Were advances properly related to new units and obsolescence? (Score: 0.5 )
| New designs were made available through events not research. Although these were few and far between, they made a crucial difference. The scenario needs some unit obsolescence built in – like the TIE fighter remains buildable even when the TIE unterceptor and even the advanced TIE fighter becomes available. I must also mention that there are two types of super star destroyers, the original executor and a generic superstar destroyer (same as the Executor but has sub attributes added) both using the same graphics. I would have preferred to see an Executor class followed by the Eclipse class instead. Also, there is no progression from the Victory Class star destroyer to the Imperator Class star destroyer. Instead, many unit slots are wasted by having too many types of similar fighters and frigates. |
Were non-event messages amended to suit the scenario ? (Score: 0.5 )
| Some messages were adjusted. It says "units may only hyperspace between planets on hyperpath". But There are still messages like "our words are backed by nuclear weapons." |
Was the civilopedia properly updated? (Score: 0 )
| A definite no. Entries still go "All ocean squares produce one more shield" |
Were there dysfunctional improvements or useless technologies? (Score: 1 )
| None that I cam across. The root advance for the happiness improvements was correct. |
Map & Terrain – Section Sub-total: 3/5
Were you impressed by the Map in general? (Score: 0.5 )
| A huge map with planets scattered all over. Put this together with a lack of recognizable terrain formations like nebula clouds, movement allowances of 15 to 20 and you get utter confusion. It would be better if Jabba’s empire and the Rebels weren’t both yellow. There were also two races which were a close shade of blue. |
Was terrain properly adjusted to fit the scenario? (Score: 1 )
| The map looks and feels like it should. My only comment is that the open areas use space with lots of white particles while the rest of the terrain and cities had a very black space background. This leads to a jarring visual transition from open space to squares with terrestrial bodies. |
Were you happy with the city, fortress, terrain improvement graphics? (Score: 1 )
| There were no fortresses, airbases or terrain improvements. But this is compensated by the concept of having different planets for cities in such a way that it maximized the use of city size, style and era. Of course the planet changes completely when you conquer it but that is an acceptable price to pay. |
Were city names and the placement of cities correct? (Score: 0.5 )
| I am not as familiar with Star Wars as I am with Star Trek but the more common planets where present and in appropriate proximity of each other. In my opinion, there were too many planets and they were too densely packed. There were some non-star war planet names – many were from Asimov’s books and some from our own galaxy even though it is supposed to be a galaxy far far away. The unspoken rule of not having more than one city starting with the same three letters was broken repeatedly. |
Were there innovations used in relation to Terrain? (Score: 0 )
| None that I could discern. |
Care & Details – Section Sub-total: 3.5/5
Did you find the documentation adequate? (Score: 0 )
|
There was no documentation to speak off and that made playing the game very difficult. Coupled with the fact that a) the science advisor/goal/unit method doesn’t work when you only have future tech left to research. It |
Was the events file sufficient for the needs of the scenario? (Score: 1 )
| I would say that the events were adequate although they could have been better. For instance, when the millennium falcon is destroyed, it just says Han Solo is dead but does not trigger anything. |
Were you happy with the improvement and wonder icons? (Score: 1 )
| Nothing much new here but the icons look appropriate and there were a few Star Wars specific icons. The choice of things to use as wonders was very good and showed some effort. |
Did you find any very apparent errors in any category of the scenario? (Score: 1 )
|
No crashes and nothing fatally wrong. I should note that the economic aspect is not given proper treatment. Since there was no need to research and no need for luxury (fundamentalism government), I put tax at 80% and got a surplus of 1800 per turn. Even then, it didn’t spoil the game – full marks. |
Do you think a lot of effort was put into doing this scenario? (Score: 0.5 )
| There definitely was some effort, the map is huge and the units have been done well. However, I can’t escape the feeling that the scenario was left incomplete. I attribute this more to a lack of knowledge. For instance, the bulk of the units were air and sea domain units- not to difficult to make just a few sounds for these. Probably the author made the units and map first only to discover that there was no way to fit the sounds in without redoing everything. |
Originality and Technical Proficiency – Section Sub-total: 1/5
Were the sounds unique and different in the scenario? (Score: 0 )
| There were no sounds, no music – nothing. |
Did you discover many unit GRAPHICS not used in any other scenarios? (Score: 0 )
| I think that the bulk of units were obtained from the existing body of star war units floating around out there. Most of them are the common Star Wars units originally done by StM (I think it was Stephen Meissl) and used before by many others like Paul Cadwell, John Valdez and Alinestra Covelia & Hu Man Ning(unfinished). |
Is the theme of the scenario completely novel? (Score: 0.5 )
| No but then Star War scenarios are not that common either. |
Were complex events used to carry the story line or enhance the AI? (Score: 0.5 )
| No, most events were simple messages but they did an adequate job – the spelling could be improved. |
Did the author deal with all areas which could be modified? (Score: 0 )
| No sound, no tech tree, no pedia entries, no points for this question. |
Overall Assessment and Other Points of Interest
Normally
when I start a new scenario and discover that there are no sounds, no
tech tree and tons of cities and units, I give up immediately. But
somehow, I was drawn to continue playing in this case and even to do a
review. That speaks volumes for how the author makes up for what is
missing by using what is there skillfully. That’s why there is almost
full marks for playability. On the other hand, the scenario’s lowest
score in in the technical proficiency stage and I sincerely hope that
there is a version 2 eventually that fixes all the deficiencies. If you
are a fan of Star Wars do not hesitate to play the scenario and if you
are not, this scenario is still worth a try.