I've seen this title recommended on the Escapist forums several times before and I've decided to give it a go. As in the title, as of writing this I've finished episode 8 and while I'm enjoying the behind-the-scenes noncombat action, the space battles leave me deeply unsatisfied. Both sides use two-dimensional tactics, and whenever someone faces one of the protagonists, they grab a hold of an idiot ball so huge, Han Solo would mistake it for a moon.
So yeah, much of it is alright, but the parts I were really looking forward to kinda rub me the wrong way and I'm not sure I want to sit through 100 more episodes for nothing but mildly interesting political intrigue. Do they fix this?
The first battle has 3 allied fleets of 13k ships facing off against an imperial fleet of 20k. They are so distant from each other, that the Imperial fleet manages to isolate and eliminate the allies and despite that being a fairly basic tactical maneuver, at no point do the allied commanders consider consolidating their formation. Furthermore, The 20k imperial fleet manages to take the first 2 allied fleets while suffering low enough damage to still hold a significant advantage over the last allied fleet.
The battle for Iserlohn was if anything, even worse. The whole thing hinges on infiltrating the fortress, which in turn hinges on the infiltrators getting to the commander under the premise that their leader holds confidential information. Leader who is pretending to be severely wounded despite not being so at all. This means a severely wounded man has not been given any medical attention (even if the premise is he may expire at any moment, this would improve his odds of making it to the garrison commander to relay the information), that the station has had no-one onboard with an adequate intel clearance to debrief the wounded captain (which is odd, because a major fortress of strategic importance should have at least a resident intelligence officer, not just to protect against infiltration but also to deter mutiny for example) and of course that the station staff allowed the infiltrators to bypass any security measures. We do see one of the officers request ID cards, which is resolved, but is that really ALL they had? No scanners that could detect the hidden weapons? No eyebrows raised by the fact that a ship that was either not in the imperial ship registry, or has been at best designated as lost some time ago claims to have been recently ambushed on patrol? And the commander of the garrisoned fleet is no better, he just charges in blindly in full force without establishing a perimeter, scouting ahead, ANYTHING, like he wants to get his arse handed to him, then falls for a cheap bluff and THEN decides to commit suicide along with his entire fleet, men, materiel and all because apparently that's more honourable than preserving 15000 ships (a sizable fleet by the in-universe standards, apparently) for future engagements. I know the guy's supposed to be a reckless glory hog, but DAMN, if his tactics are basically your average game's mook's aggro mechanics, couldn't the attacking force have as well pulled him into a cloud of the stealth explosive gas from episode 5?
Also, isn't jamming kind of OP? Don't they have uninterruptable short range comms? AFAIK back in the day, people would sometimes communicate in Morse using hand mirrors to "blink" messages to each other (this features rather heavily in a movie The Guns of Navarone), and there are modern direct laser comms devices operating on roughly the same idea. Even if such devices didn't exist in at the time LotGH was made, the basic premise of using light to convey a message is quite old and that they either don't have any short range comms at all, apparently, or have never thought to organize a relay (I'm thinking a series of comms buoys) to use short range comms to indirectly circumvent jamming until they're flanked.
And how has Phezzan stayed neutral through a 150 year war if they keep dealing with both sides openly enough, that they broker a purchase of a high powered Alliance defense system by an Imperial rebel world, and it's known widely enough that the rebel's advisor almost immediately realizes where the system came from? Or have they only recently emerged as a neutral force, but if so, how have they managed to acquire such wealth in short order as a rebel side?
The battle for Iserlohn was if anything, even worse. The whole thing hinges on infiltrating the fortress, which in turn hinges on the infiltrators getting to the commander under the premise that their leader holds confidential information. Leader who is pretending to be severely wounded despite not being so at all. This means a severely wounded man has not been given any medical attention (even if the premise is he may expire at any moment, this would improve his odds of making it to the garrison commander to relay the information), that the station has had no-one onboard with an adequate intel clearance to debrief the wounded captain (which is odd, because a major fortress of strategic importance should have at least a resident intelligence officer, not just to protect against infiltration but also to deter mutiny for example) and of course that the station staff allowed the infiltrators to bypass any security measures. We do see one of the officers request ID cards, which is resolved, but is that really ALL they had? No scanners that could detect the hidden weapons? No eyebrows raised by the fact that a ship that was either not in the imperial ship registry, or has been at best designated as lost some time ago claims to have been recently ambushed on patrol? And the commander of the garrisoned fleet is no better, he just charges in blindly in full force without establishing a perimeter, scouting ahead, ANYTHING, like he wants to get his arse handed to him, then falls for a cheap bluff and THEN decides to commit suicide along with his entire fleet, men, materiel and all because apparently that's more honourable than preserving 15000 ships (a sizable fleet by the in-universe standards, apparently) for future engagements. I know the guy's supposed to be a reckless glory hog, but DAMN, if his tactics are basically your average game's mook's aggro mechanics, couldn't the attacking force have as well pulled him into a cloud of the stealth explosive gas from episode 5?
Also, isn't jamming kind of OP? Don't they have uninterruptable short range comms? AFAIK back in the day, people would sometimes communicate in Morse using hand mirrors to "blink" messages to each other (this features rather heavily in a movie The Guns of Navarone), and there are modern direct laser comms devices operating on roughly the same idea. Even if such devices didn't exist in at the time LotGH was made, the basic premise of using light to convey a message is quite old and that they either don't have any short range comms at all, apparently, or have never thought to organize a relay (I'm thinking a series of comms buoys) to use short range comms to indirectly circumvent jamming until they're flanked.
And how has Phezzan stayed neutral through a 150 year war if they keep dealing with both sides openly enough, that they broker a purchase of a high powered Alliance defense system by an Imperial rebel world, and it's known widely enough that the rebel's advisor almost immediately realizes where the system came from? Or have they only recently emerged as a neutral force, but if so, how have they managed to acquire such wealth in short order as a rebel side?
So yeah, much of it is alright, but the parts I were really looking forward to kinda rub me the wrong way and I'm not sure I want to sit through 100 more episodes for nothing but mildly interesting political intrigue. Do they fix this?
