I will be honest, I have enjoyed corey and his team's mods for quite a while now, and it's been nice to see how they progress and how new mechanics get made (or even uncovered from the hidden depths of EAW's source code).

Though, not every update is always a positive one, and in fairness, these things happen.

My biggest complaint this update has got to do with the Republic and how it's set up, and how that particularly shines through painfully in this update (and I'm not just talking about the broken CIS AI making the republic quite hard to play as right now)

I understand there is often a bit of a reverence for handling things such as how they would in lore, and I suppose to some degree it's not that bad of a thing to hold dear. It's only fair that the republic can't start pumping out ISDs before they've even gotten their Venators.

That being said, there is a prevalence in the EAWX mods with era-specific units and unique units you can only get through specific situations.

On one hand, I think that's fine, especially how the factions in TR are set up to have their own unique rosters and ideally they should only be able to get unique things in certain situations because of the fractured nature of the galaxy in that scenario.

On the other, you have this mod, wherein the Republic is supposed to be theoretically getting its ♥♥♥♥ together and forcing its way through trying to win a galactic scale war (and with palpatine manipulating the whole situation, it does pretty good at that).
In most situations, for some reason, maybe some preconceived notion about balance or something..? the Republic is just deciding to discard not-that-old tech for new things which, sometimes, aren't even better.

Take the Acclamator Assault variant for instance. Very good upper-medium ship with some decent fighter carrying, good health, speed, and firepower all in a relatively cheap package that can be discounted by two of your arguably most important shipwrights and is effectively available near the beginning of the war.

It's then replaced by the Imperial-I frigate, which is just outright worse than it in every way. It is likewise also not discounted by Rothana Heavy Engineering.

There's also arguably more egregious instances, such as infantry variants. Those nice new airborne, recon, and blaze troopers you have? Hope you enjoy how few of them you've got, because you'll only be able to happen-stance upon a mission to get a couple more units of them if you're lucky, and naturally you're not allowed to build any more because.. you just can't, okay?!

Not even to mention the AT-XT, which for whatever reason just kinda goes away early into the war and doesn't get replaced by anything, even though we've seen them appear in late-war sources and even in post-clone wars stuff like Galaxies, which takes place after the battle of yavin. Not replaced by the Pod Walkers which the Hutts have in TR, nor an early AT-ST variant or just straight up the AT-ST itself. It's just gone with no alternative.

Or the Invincible Battlecruiser, which, while old, we know does continue getting used by the Empire. Heck, Yularen ends up getting a late-war upgrade into one of them now. Why can't we just keep building them, even if there would be arguably better ships for their role and fleet pop cap?

Not to mention stuff like the CorSec troopers, Temple Security guards, or Republic Heavy troopers.. the list goes on..

Or even the new Providence variants. You'd think they could be a permanent cost-cutting alternative to throwing all your eggs into one basket, getting the best of one quality or the other instead of spending all the money on a carrier-destroyer, but nah, they're kinda just there for a few minutes and then it's all about the hybridized version forever.

Nevermind some still prevalent issues from the last version, like the CIS being able to swarm you to death with fighters because they have a bunch of tinies who give a bunch for very little cost, as opposed to having those kinds of swarms locked to the larger ships like Lucrehulks. (looking at you, C9979 and Hardcell)


And another issue, relatedly..


While it is also cool to see the Rothana Rising battleships join the Republic's roster, they are also annoyingly locked behind a gimmicky mechanic which relies on there being a specific circumstance where a ship of that type shows up on a market. I get it, playing the CSA in TR is fun. But the mechanic is so much of a patience test that it really only works for the CSA because they're meant to stay into their little corner for a long time until they're ready to explode an insane amount of resources out into the wider galaxy.

This has just been an issue for the past few versions, and unfortunately not one they've thought to fix or change in any way possible.

Meanwhile as you're just waiting for the right ship(s) to try and build your fleet around, the CIS is able to just research their way into an infinite amount of Bulwark 1's and 2's, throw a little bit of money at Grievous to get him into Malevolence, and also get a handful of other Subjugators and an infinite amount of wartime-configuration Lucrehulks because of the time you, the republic player, spent sitting there waiting for your own proper battleships.

Holistically the only way this would really feel fair or "fun" by some metric is if the CIS was forced to the same kind of market for their own major ships. Then you'd have most of your fights consisting of classic Venator vs. Providence lead fleet actions, and then when you see something like a Lucrehulk show up it feels more impactful (especially to destroy it) instead of just knowing they have like 15+ of them ready to go elsewhere.

Or otherwise, just not having the Kuat ship dealing as it is now, since it's so painfully sluggish and not very fair when the enemy can pummel you with many big ships while you're still waiting for your own.


That being said..


There is a way I'd surmise you could fix the other issue with units even if you want to argue that letting the republic keep too many of their things in their core roster would be overpowered or "unfun" by any metric - in fact, a way that is done to handle a lot of these things already - Influence or unique structures.

This method is ordinarily just used to grant you otherwise unaffiliated units, but, what if it could give you factionally-based units as well? For instance, all the new clone variants. They're fine and dandy, but you otherwise can't really get them all that well, and it generally comes off as a disappointment because they die as fast as your ordinary buildable clones. What if you could instead get those unique variants directly from the training centre on Kamino? It could either be attached to the current Cloning Facility building, or even be its own unique building.

The same could apply to units like the CorSec troops, Jedi Temple Security, and ORSF Special Tactics troopers and so on; even maybe adding some permanence to units like the Assault Acclamator and the AT-XT that get replaced in your main roster - but all of this more directly applies, since there already are buildings in the mod such things could be tied to.

Even just the idea of making those kinds of things a higher influence reward would allow you to use them more frequently, but only through means of holding down those specific planets they come from.

Such things I have noticed outright in submods before, and I will admit it feels a little silly when I don't see such changes present in the main EAWX mods when they would be fairly easy to add, at least in theory.

By no means am I trying to say the update was bad, I am very happy that we still have an active modding community and by all means I endorse people to keep playing the EAWX mods, they are loads of fun a majority of the time, it just pains me when feasibly smaller issues like these stick out like a sore thumb. As someone who had experienced older versions of Republic at War, believe me, some of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that happens here is nothing compared to issues mods used to face. It's good to see the whole community & the scope of the mods grow over time potentially even to the point where we wouldn't even need an EAW 2. And I've loved TR ever since seeing a video on it in like 2012. Corey and his team are good people who deliver a great product to us, essentially for free, so it'd be rude to just ♥♥♥♥ on their hard work even if I don't entirely agree with some of the decisions made.

But that all being said, you can tell me your thoughts, personally. I would like to hear anyone and everyone's thoughts on this.