Star Wars Rebellion: Strategy and Tactics

This FAQ is not to be published in any media other than its free
distribution on the Internet. It is not to be sold in any manner nor included
in any product that is sold. No money is to be made in any way by or because of
this FAQ. Nobody should ever have to pay to view this FAQ. Copyright (c) 2002
by Rogue (Philip Ryan Ott).
Please note that anything I have written here that is related to the
actual mathematics the game uses to compute probabilities of success for
missions and other things I obtained at the official LucasArts website for
Rebellion at http://www.lucasarts.com/products/rebellion/. Neither the game nor
the booklet ever states them, and this is the only place I've found them.
Everything else I have written here is directly from my own observations, so
it's not "official information," so don't bitch at them if I screw something
up. I suggest you give the website a look, as it is very helpful and can
clarify a few things.
If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, you can reach me at
FAQage@yahoo.com.
----------------------------------------------------------------------v.1.0
"~FINAL" 10/12/02
First Public Release - What you see is what you get. There may be a few things
I've forgotten about and may add later or there may be some new strategies I'll
learn about and decide to add, this being a strategy FAQ and all. However the
basic and main points of this FAQ are completed, and if I add anything it'll
just be additional minor tactics. As such I'll give this version a tentative
"~Final" label because while I don't think I have anything more to add, I may
discover a few small things to add later.
V. 1.1 "~FINAL" 5/16/03
- I knew that somewhere I had to have made a mistake on something, and thanks to
J.R. I noticed a mistake in the Jedi Training Mission section. I think I read
somewhere that you can only perform the mission once per Jedi Candidate but J.R.
has pointed out that you can perform it as many times as you like. I've also
done a little editing and rewritten the section "5.Conventional Military
Strategies - g) Tactical Mode Strategies - i) Utilizing Starfighters" to account
for the recent ass-kicking I received from the computer. Again, this should be
the final version unless someone notices yet another of my mistakes. =)
----------------------------------------------------------------------My FAQ Philosophy
Pretty much I don't believe in listing unit stats or rewriting character
bios because well, they're already in the game manual and in the in-game
encyclopedia, so rewriting them is not only time consuming, but pointless. I'm
here to show you some strategies you may have overlooked, some new ideas, and
some things from my own experience, not to repeat readily available
information. I will only go into detail about units or characters if the manual
or encyclopedia are either too vague or don't cover a certain aspect very well.
This FAQ is already large enough, and I don't want to clutter it up and make it
even more incomprehensible. Enjoy.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Table of Contents:
1. Basics
a) Loyalty
b) Uprisings
c) Colonization
d) Production Complexes
2. Characters, Special Forces, and Jedi
a) Special Forces and Character Stats
b) Officers
c) Prisoners
d) Traitors
e) Jedi
i) Discovering Minor Character With Force Ability
ii) Stat Growth with Force Growth
f) Major Characters and Their Events
i) Luke Skywalker
ii) Han Solo
iii) Leia Organa
iv) Emperor Palpatine
v) Darth Vader
3. Strategic Covert Missions
a) Detectors
b) Decoys
c) Mission Types
i) Espionage
ii) Sabotage
iii) Diplomacy
iv) Abduction
v) Rescue
vi) Assassination
vii) Incite Uprising
viii) Subdue Uprising
ix) Research
x) Recruitment
xi) Recon
xii) Death Star Sabotage
xiii) Jedi Training
d) Practical Applications of Covert Operations
i) Liberating Planets
ii) Mobile Agent Platform (MAP)
iii) Counter-Insurgency
4. Tools of the Trade: Military Units
a) Starships
i) Weaponry
ii) Repairing Ship Systems
iii) Maneuverability
iv) Bombardment
v) Hyperdrive
vi) Damage Control
vii) Detection Ratings
viii) Ship List
b) Starfighters
i) Classification
ii) Proton Torpedoes
iii) The Squadron Effect

iv) Bombardment
v) Maneuverability
vi) Star Fighter List
c) Troops
i) Attack/Defense/Bombardment Defense Ratings
ii) Detection Rating
iii) Troop Regiment List
5. Conventional Military Strategies
a) Raiding
b) Planetary Bombardments
c) Planetary Assaults
d) Blockading
e) Footholds
f) Tracking
g) Tactical Mode Strategies
i) Utilizing Starfighters
ii) Formations
iii) Navigating
iv) Maneuvers
6. The Big Picture: Overall Strategy
a) Playing as Rebels
b) Playing as Empire
7. Special Thanks
----------------------------------------------------------------------1. Basic Concepts
The game booklet has some wonderful tutorials laid out that can very
easily teach you how to play the game. I highly recommend doing those before
reading on, since a basic grasp of the controls of the game makes it easier to
understand grander concepts. This section is about basic stuff that doesn't
directly involve fighting or blowing up things that the booklet or the
Rebellion website don't address very well.
a) Loyalty: There is no way you can win the war without first winning over
the hearts and minds of galaxy. If a planet you own has more loyalty to the
other side, then it'll take garrison troops to stop the planet from going into
an uprising or from leaving your cause. It would be far too expensive to have
to keep garrisons on most of your planets, so it's good to hold their favor.
The more a planet supports you the better, but it is never necessary to have
their loyalty bar completely your color; 9/10s or 8/10 your color is perfectly
fine. Below are events that affect the loyalty of systems. In the parentheses
next to the event are how many planets the event affects and how it affects
loyalty for the perpetrator of the event. For example if you conducted a
successful Diplomacy mission the planet it affects would have more support for
you, so it would be a "positive" effect. Also some of these events do not work
all of the time, only usually, so for those events that are guaranteed I'll put
a "100%" by it.
- Successful Diplomacy missions (single system, positive, 100%)
- Successful Incite Uprising missions (single system, positive, 100%)
- Successful Subdue Uprising missions (single system, positive, 100%)
- Invading a planet (single system, negative)
- Bombarding and destroying non-military structures on a planet (whole sector,
negative, 100%)
- Destroying enemy ground troops through planetary bombardment without hitting

non-military
- Destroying
- Death Star
affect Outer

structures (whole sector, positive)

enemy capital ship (whole sector, positive)
destroying a planet (the whole galaxy, negative, 100% [may not
Rim planets])

And finally, when a system changes sides without being invaded it affects
the whole sector. If the planet switches from one side to another or from
neutral to one side the effect is positive for whomever it joined. If the
planet switches from one side to neutral, the effect is negative for whoever it
left.
b) Uprisings: If the loyalty of one of your planets is not strongly in
your favor you will need a garrison on it to keep it in line. The garrison
requirement can range from 1 - 6 depending on how loyal the planet is to you.
If you let the garrison requirement exceed the number of garrison troops on the
planet, then the planet will go into an uprising. This is just bad news all
around for you. First all production on the planet ceases. Secondly any
personnel or troops you have on the planet are at risk. Personnel can be
injured by simulated riots on the planet, and even troops on the surface will
spontaneously be destroyed if you let the uprising fester long enough. This is
extremely dangerous because the game will NOT inform you that the troop
regiment was destroyed; they'll just simply disappear. While a planet going
into an uprising does not affect other planet's loyalties, if you wait long
enough and let all of your ground troops be destroyed your planet will switch
alignment, which an be devastating to your sector-wide support.
The best way to quell an uprising on one of your planets is a swift
response. Gather as many Special Forces and characters as possible and send a
single massive Subdue Uprising mission to the planet, and get as many garrison
troops as you can spare onto the planet. The defenses menu for the planet may
indicate that the planet has a garrison requirement from somewhere from 7-12,
or some requirement above the normal high of 6. Even if you meet this, it
will NOT end the uprising right then and there, but it's a start. Eventually
with enough garrison troops and a subdue uprising mission the planet will
change it's tune and come around to your side. But it's important that you
respond swiftly to an uprising, as a minor annoyance can turn into a sectorwide crisis.
c) Colonization: A great way to expand your resource base and create new
production facilities is to move out into the Outer Rim Territories (the
sectors on the outside of the galaxy whose planets look initially like stars on
the galaxy map. You won't find out anything about these planets until you send
a ship to check them out). Unfortunately this takes an agonizing long time
before it bears any real fruit, so it's a good idea to start early. The systems
in the Outer Rim will either be inhabited or uninhabited. Uninhabited systems
have no loyalty bar, because technically there's no one there to have loyalty
for either side. To bring an uninhabited planet under your control simply orbit
a troop carrying ship around it and click and drag the regiment onto the
planet. You cannot invade the planet, just move the regiment to take it.
However technically the planet still doesn't have a population. If you remove
the troop regiment the planet will go back to being uninhabited, and sector
wide support for you will fall, because technically you "lost" a planet. To
fully colonize the planet you have to place a building on the system. It
doesn't matter what building it is, once the planet has at least one it gains a
population and a loyalty bar. You can now remove all the troop regiments from
the planet and it will remain under your control. It will start completely
loyal to you, but remember that it can still be influenced by the enemy so
don't assume it will remain loyal to you for all time. The inhabited systems on
the Outer Rim tend to have very fewer energy and mineral resources while the
uninhabited ones usually have many of each. Thus, it's a lot easier and cheaper
to colonize an uninhabited planet than to take the time to send a diplomat all

the way out there or to conquer the planet and keep a garrison there.
Colonization starts out very slow. What I usually do is take a small troop
transport at the start, fill it fully with troops, and send it on it's merry
way to a nearby Outer Rim sector. I scout out the planets and the uninhabited
ones that look worthwhile I drop a troop regiment on. Once the ship runs out
of troops, I just send any I can spare out there. Colonization shouldn't have
the highest priority, so it may take a while before you have a spare regiment.
Plus is takes a while before the troops can arrive at the ship, and it also
takes a while for any structures you build to reach out there, which is a big
reason why it's a very slow process. The very first building you should send
out there is a construction yard, because that way you can build your own
buildings without it taking 40 days to arrive. Build more construction on the
planet so it builds structures even faster, then whatever you think should come
next. The goal is to make your colonized sectors self-sufficient, so they can
build whatever they need to start making troops and ships for you.
d) Production Complexes: The more of a certain production facility
(construction yards, training facilities, and shipyards) you have on a planet
the faster they produce. Now if you wanted to, you could have 2 of each type on
every planet you own, that way you can work on several projects at once.
However whatever you're building will build very slowly, especially if it's one
of the more advanced units. This is why I recommend you build very large
"production complexes". Basically this means that one or two planets in a
sector are devoted to construction yards, and you build like 4 or 5 on each.
This way you can quickly build any structure you might need in a very short
time. Very useful if an enemy fleet is on its way to one of your systems that
doesn't have enough shield generators. Likewise you devote a planet or two to
training facilities, so troops and Special Forces are built very fast. Shipyards
are a different matter. The more advanced ships late in the game tend to get
very expensive and take a long while to build. A shipyard complex of 5 or 6
shipyards is very useful, but it would also be smart to have one or two "supercomplexes" that have around 12 shipyards somewhere in the galaxy. These can
produce Death Stars and Super Star Destroyers in a reasonable amount of time. I
also recommend that you build construction yard complexes first, because
logically that way you can build the other complexes much faster.
The major problem with complexes is that they require many energy
resources, for the complexes themselves and for defensive structures you'll
need to defend these valuable producing machines. Most Core planets in the
galaxy have most of their energy resources taken up by mines and refineries,
and while you can do without a few of these here or there, the refineries and
mines on those Core planets are what provide the backbone of your raw materials
and maintenance. It takes a long, long time to build new ones, and it may be
a while before you can build many of them in colonized Outer Rim sectors. So be
careful you don't go overboard, especially with super-complexes, because if you
don't have the maintenance or resources to build new things, then the complexes
themselves are pretty useless.
----------------------------------------------------------------------2) Characters, Special Forces, and Jedi
Special Forces are those units training facilities can train that conduct
covert missions, units such as Infiltrators or Espionage Droids. These units
only do specific missions, and I shall list which unit does which below, so
that it's easier to refer to when reading this FAQ. Special Forces are very low
cost, require little maintenance, and train fairly quickly, so it's very
economical to create lots of them, since even if you don't need them
immediately you probably will soon because they tend to live very short lives;
covert ops being as dangerous as it is. The one shortcoming about Special

Forces is that their stats never improve. Even if a Bothan Spy completes a
hundred missions successfully, it will never gain extra points in espionage.
Also Special Forces are never taken prisoner, so if detected they may be
destroyed and become unrecoverable.
Characters are just what their name implies, they're characters you'd
probably recognize from either the Star Wars films or books. They only do two
things: act as officers or conduct covert missions, but we'll get to officers
in a bit. All characters can do every mission that a Special Forces can
(excepting only Recon Missions, those can ONLY be conducted by certain Special
Forces), plus a few more. However, some characters are better than others in
certain missions others depending on their stats, but we'll get to that in a
bit as well. You start with the same group of characters plus two random
others, and the only way to get more is to send your characters on recruitment
missions. Look under Recruitment Missions below to see which characters can do
this.
One of the advantages of Characters is that they tend to be doubly as
effective in certain areas as Special Forces are, for example characters that
are good in espionage tend to have twice the espionage rating as that of
espionage Special Forces. Certain characters can also use the Force and become
jedi, making them even more capable than the average Special Forces or
character. Another advantage is that when a mission they're on (and they are
NOT acting as decoys) is successful, they gain a one point increase in the
stats that the mission required, such as if a diplomacy mission is successful
then the character's diplomacy rating is raised. In this way your characters
become better and better at their jobs, unlike Special Forces. A third
advantage is that if your characters are detected, there's a chance they will
be captured instead of killed. This means that there's a chance you can recover
them at a later date. This brings us to the biggest shortcoming of characters,
and that is there're few of them. You can always build more Special Forces if
some of them die, but if a character dies or is taken prisoner you can't build
a replacement for him.
One last note about Special Forces and characters is that they take up no
room on ships. Troops require space on a ship, but Special Forces and
characters don't. You literally can have a hundred Special Forces or characters
on a ship that can't carry any troops. There's no limit.
Alliance Special Forces
Bothan Spies

conduct: Espionage

Infiltrators

conduct: Abduction, Rescue

Sabotage, Death Star Sabotage

Guerillas

conduct: Incite Uprising,

Subdue Uprising

Y-wing Longprobe

conduct: Recon

Imperial Special Forces

Espionage Droids

conduct: Espionage

Commandos

conduct: Sabotage, Incite Uprising,

Subdue Uprising

Noghri Death Commandos

conduct: Abduction, Rescue,

Assassination
Imperial Probe Droid

conduct: Recon

a) Special Forces and Character Stats: All of your personnel have four types of
stats that determine what they can do well. They are as follows:
Diplomacy: The higher this stat is the more successful the person
will be at Diplomacy Missions. That's it.
Espionage: The higher this stat is the more likely the person will be
undetected while on a mission, the person will be a better decoy, and the
person will be better at missions that are dependent on this stat, such as
Espionage.
Combat: The higher this stat is the better the person will be at fighting
off potential abductors and the better the person is on missions that depend on
this stat, such as Abduction.
Leadership: The higher this stat is the more effective an officer the
person is and the more successful the person is on missions dependent on this
stat, such as Incite/Subdue Uprising missions.
b) Officers: Certain Characters can be different types of officers. You can
find out which ones a character can be in their status menu. Basically,
Officers enhance military units. Admirals enhance fleets, Generals enhance
troops, and Commanders enhance fighters. Admirals and Commanders make their
units faster and more responsive in Tactical Mode and Generals make their
troops much stronger and more effective. Basically, except for Generals, I
don't notice Officers boosting your units combat effectiveness that much. Their
main strength lies in their ability to drastically increase the detection
ratings of their units. This can greatly increase your defenses against enemy
covert missions. So, it would be a good idea to post an officer on your more
important planets to protect them. Even when you have an idle character and
just don't have anything for him/her to do, you can always make them an officer
for added defense in your territory, that way they're not being wasted.
c) Prisoners: If a mission is detected by the enemy there is a chance that any
characters on the mission will be captured. It's also possible that they will
be killed, but it's far more likely that they will be taken prisoner. This
basically means that they can't work for their side and can only be moved by
their captors. You can also capture prisoners with Abduction Missions.
Prisoners can be left alone on a ship or planet, but if you want to move them
off of whatever they're on, such as from a ship onto a planet, you must select
an Special Forces or character along with the prisoner and move them together;
the Special Forces or character acts as a kind of a jailor, escorting the
prisoner. Only one jailor is needed to escort any number of prisoners at one
time.
Prisoners will sometimes randomly escape on their own and return to a
friendly planet, without needing a Rescue Mission. I don't know of any way to
make this less likely, even the presence of a jailor or two doesn't seem to
prevent it, so jailors only help you move prisoners, not to guard them. However
the presence of military units with detection values, such as troops or ships,
can recapture them before they even get off the planet. Another way they can
escape without help of a Rescue mission is if the planet they're on is captured
by their side or a ship they're on is destroyed in battle. There's also a
chance they can get killed in either of these events, but I've rarely seen
that happen. They may also stay captured and be moved to another planet, but
that too is rare.
Whenever a prisoner escapes, even if enemy forces immediately recapture

him, his side learns about the planet or fleet he was imprisoned on, including
things such as defenses, presence of military units, and who's in the area.
This means that you should be careful where you hold your prisoners. Keep all
of your prisoners in one place, then when one escapes the enemy will know where
all their captured comrades are kept, and will send Rescue Missions. Keep them
on a fleet moving to invade enemy territory, and the escaped prisoners can
reveal your location. And especially take care when holding prisoners at your
headquarters. If they escape, they'd reveal information about its defenses.
This can be doubly devastating for the Rebels, because this would give away the
secret location of your HQ.
To try to prevent random prisoner escapes I used to constantly transfer
all my prisoners from one planet in the Outer Rim on one side of the galaxy to
another planet on the other side. The trip usually took over 100 days and my
idea was that the more time the prisoners are in hyperspace, the less time
they'll be on a planet and then they won't have any time to escape.
Unfortunately it didn't work. How long a prisoner stays in one place does not
at all affect when he or she will escape, nor does the fact that they're in
hyperspace prevent them from escaping. The game will randomly assign a
character a certain day when they will escape, and when that time comes they
will escape, and if they're in hyperspace at that time then they will escape
the day they arrive at their destination. The only advantage to my little trick
was that the more time a prisoner spends in hyperspace, the less available they
are for a Rescue Mission. However should the other player set up a blockade
around the prisoner's destination they may free them, so be wary of moving them
too much.
One final note about capturing prisoners, when your people are on an
enemy planet on a mission, take care if you are thinking about moving your
fleet above the target. If there is an enemy fleet above the planet then when
your fleet arrives a battle will initiate. If on that same day the covert
mission is completed, almost without fail your team will be intercepted by the
enemy fleet when they try to leave. Any characters you had on the mission will
almost certainly be captured by the enemy fleet. This means that you may have
to risk the character's life by destroying the ship he/she is on, or that the
enemy fleet may retreat, taking your people away. While an enemy fleet over the
target always poses a threat to covert teams trying to return home, a space
battle above the target seems to be an even larger threat. I'm not sure if it's
a bug and your teams will always be captured, but I've never seen an instance
where this has not happened.
d) Traitors: If things are going really bad for you and your side, your
characters may turn traitor. I've rarely seen this happen, in fact even when I
purposely screw things up for my side and turn over most of the galaxy to the
enemy, none of my characters turn traitor. The only time I've ever had someone
betray me was when I was playing around with my friend and I let him destroy
two of my Death Stars. Only after that did someone actually turn traitor. Once
a character is a traitor they do not join the other side. The only thing I've
seen them do is purposely cause a mission they're on to be foiled. The only
time I've seen this happen was when Bevel Lemelisk turned traitor after my
second Death Star was destroyed, and he kept reporting that the research
mission I'd sent him on was being foiled. Now research missions can't be foiled
unless the enemy captures the planet it's on, and that wasn't happening, and it
confused the hell outta me until I realized it was him purposely foiling it
when Vader informed me that he'd discovered that Lemelisk was a traitor. The
other side does not actively control the traitor; he or she works on their own
to screw you up. To avoid this I would suggest you simply prevent major
political catastrophes like losing a Death Star or your HQ. Again, traitors are
very rare, and simply losing a planet or even an entire sector to the other
side will not cause your characters to turn on you. I believe only major
political events trigger it, and even then it's uncommon.

e) Jedi: Any character that can use the Force I characterize here as a Jedi, no
matter what their training is. Jedi tend to have much better stats in espionage
and combat than non-jedi, hence they are much better spies and saboteurs, and
they tend to avoid capture more often. Other than inflated stats jedi also get
special abilities. They heal faster than non-jedi and when they're strong
enough they can detect traitors among your personnel. They can also eventually
detect enemy jedi on missions and can then foil the missions. Remember how
Vader detected Luke when Luke was going to destroy the Death Star Shield at
Endor? It's the same idea.
Whenever you start a new game there are a total of four characters that
can definitely use the Force. Other characters are randomly given this ability
in each new game, but you won't know which characters can become jedi at the
start of the game. It's random each game, so if for example Page can use the
Force in one game, he won't necessarily be able to in the next. This random
Force assignment also does not follow the movies or books as to who can and who
cannot use the Force, and a good example of this is when in one game I played
Chewie was Force sensitive, which was pretty funny.
The four people who can definitely use the Force are Luke, Leia, Darth
Vader, and the Emperor. Vader and the Emperor both start as Jedi Masters, while
Luke starts as a Novice rank (more on ranks in a bit) and Leia can't even use
the Force yet. This gives the Empire a huge covert bonus at the beginning of
the game, but since Vader and the Emperor are needed for diplomacy and
Recruitment early on, it isn't that big of an advantage. (Note: specific
numbers and the jedi ranking system I provide were received from the LucasArts
Official Rebellion Website at http://www.lucasarts.com/products/rebellion/)
Jedi Ranking System
Rank
-------------Novice
Trainee
Jedi Student
Jedi Knight
Jedi Master

Force Points Required

--------------------------10
20
80
100
120

There's no way to check a character's Force points in the game, but these
are what were given on the Rebellion website to give an idea about how long
each character has to go between each rank. They gain a point each time a
mission they're on is successful (if they're not a decoy of course). Whenever a
jedi gains a new rank, or when you discover they can use the Force, his/her
stats get a boost and their ability to evade capture increases drastically. For
example, once Luke becomes a Jedi Master he's almost impossible to catch. I've
sent him into Coruscant with the whole Imperial Fleet in orbit, and still he
escapes unscathed. He's been captured when I did this when he was a Jedi
Student or a Jedi Knight, but much less often than normal non-jedi characters.
i) Discovering Minor Character With Force Ability: Only two people in the
game can detect which minor characters have hidden Force abilities, Luke and
Darth Vader. Vader starts as a Jedi Master and can detect and train jedi
candidates from the start of the game. Luke however cannot detect jedi
candidates until he is at least a Jedi Student. Even though Luke cannot conduct
a Jedi Training mission until he is a Jedi Knight, he can still detect them.
According to LucasArts Luke and Vader are supposed to do this when they go on a
mission with someone with latent Force ability, but in my experience this
hasn't always been so. Sometimes they won't discover it when on a mission with
the unknown jedi, and sometimes just being in the same system with the
character can cause them to discover it. It seems kinda random, but it does
happen.

ii) Stat Growth with Force Growth: From my observations, it seems that for
every 2 Force points a jedi gains they gain a one point stat increase in their
occupational stats. What I mean by that is, whichever stats the jedi excels at,
those stats will increase. For example, Luke is a fighter, so his espionage and
his combat ratings will increase along with his force. Leia on the other hand
is primarily a diplomat, so her diplomacy rating will go up along with her
combat, but her espionage and leadership will not. Of course, these are just
based on observations; I can't find any real facts about it, but it should give
you a general idea on how your jedi get stronger faster than non-jedi do, since
they get extra stat increases. Also note that the character must know that he
or she is a jedi, their Force Points do not increase if they don't know they
can use the Force yet, and thus they don't get the extra stat increases.
f) Major Characters and Their Events: In the game there are six major
characters: Luke, Leia, Han, Mon Mothma, Vader, and the Emperor. You always
start every game with them, and none of them can be killed or retired. While
Leia and Han do not have to be captured by the Empire for them to win the game,
they are still major players in the game and have special importance and
events.
i) Luke Skywalker
Dagobah: Luke can start growing in the Force from the start of the game,
but will eventually go off to Dagobah to train with Yoda within days 100-1000,
where he gets a huge Force boost. Usually with me he'll jump from a Novice rank
straight to a Jedi Student rank. And even though he can technically go off to
train within the first 1000 days, I've never seen him leave after day 400. He
seems to usually go to train roughly around day 300. The training usually takes
about 100 days. If he is on a mission at the time he's supposed to go train,
he'll finish the mission first and then go off to see Yoda, so you can't "miss"
the training by keeping him on long term missions. If Bounty Hunters should
capture Han while Luke is training, Luke will leave Dagobah prematurely, like
he does in the movies, and try to rescue Han. This would be horrible because
then Luke would be way behind in his Force powers and you would be without a
trained Jedi Knight for a long time, so try to keep Han safe when Luke is
training.
Encounter with Darth Vader: Whenever Luke and Darth Vader are in the same
system, whether one is on a mission or one is on a ship in battle above the
planet, they will have an encounter. It seems to be pretty random whether or
not Luke is captured or injured, he tends to escape unhurt more often than not,
but the higher his Force rating is it seems there's less of a chance he'll be
caught or injured. Every time they meet and Luke escapes, he gets a whopping
25% bonus to his Force rating. The first time they meet Luke learns about his
"heritage." According to the manual he supposed to be injured for a while after
this to show how upset he is, but he never seems to be injured when I play.
Note that if the Rebels capture Darth Vader before Luke has an Encounter with
him then neither Luke nor Leia can discover their heritage unless Vader
escapes.
Encounter with Emperor: Again, if Luke goes anywhere near a planet that
the Emperor is on he'll have an "encounter" with him. There's always a chance
he'll be caught or injured, but I've only seen that happen when Luke has a
rating lower than a Jedi Knight. He gets a 20% increase in Force ability every
time the Emperor does not capture him, so if you find the Emperor on a planet
that isn't heavily defended, a great way to train Luke very fast is to send him
on missions on that planet. Make sure he has a decoy or two and maybe some
other people on the mission with him, because there's still a chance of him
being captured from military units. The reason I don't suggest this with Vader

is because in my experience Vader tends to capture Luke much more often than
the Emperor, and the payoff with escaping the Emperor is still very big.
Final Battle: If Luke ever gets captured there are several outcomes. If his
Force rating is below 60 then he is treated like any other prisoner. If his
Force rating is above 60 however, then the stage is set for the Final Battle.
Once the Emperor is available, meaning that he's not captured, on a mission, or
in hyperspace, then Vader (once he too is available) will automatically leave
wherever he is and will travel to Luke. If he is on a mission he will wait
until the mission is over before going to Luke. Even if you move Luke he'll
follow. You cannot control Vader during this time. When he gets there he will
take Luke with him to the Emperor. If during this time the Emperor becomes
"busy" again, Vader and/or Luke will stop moving on their own and be yours to
control again. They will repeat it all over again as soon as Palpatine is ready
again. Once Vader finally gets Luke to the Emperor the Final Battle is
initiated. If Luke's Force rating is below 100 he will then be captured and
injured. If it is above 100 however he will capture BOTH Vader and the Emperor
and bring them back to the Alliance. That's 2/3 of the Alliance's objectives
right there if you're playing the regular game and not HQ Only. The Final
Battle only happens once.
Evasion Bonus: Not really an "event" per se, but whenever Luke avoids
capture, such as when his mission is foiled but he escapes capture anyway, he
gets an evasion bonus which increases his Force Rating by one. This does not
happen to any minor character with the Force however.
ii) Han Solo
Bounty Hunter Event: According to LucasArts, every 1-100 days there is a
30% chance of a Bounty Hunter Encounter with Han. Generally the chances that
the Bounty Hunters will kidnap him are extremely low. Out of all the games I've
played I've had dozens of these Events and only once did they capture him. If
the Bounty Hunters fail in their attempt, then all that happens is that the
Empire is informed of Han's location. If they are successful then Han is taken
to Jabba's Palace (you can't ever go there even if you own Tatooine, it's like
Dagobah; you just can't go there yourself and rescue him). Luke, Leia, and
Chewie (if not captured) will then finish whatever mission they may be working
on and then will immediately try to rescue Han. They individually attempt the
rescue; so if say Leia fails then only Leia will get captured by Jabba, not
Luke or Chewie. If any one of them is successful, then Han is released, anyone
else captured by Jabba in the rescue attempt is released, and any other rescue
attempts will be aborted. If all three fail and are captured they and Han are
then all sent to Vader (I don't know what happens if Vader is a prisoner of the
Rebels at the time; I've only seen this Event once and the rescue attempt was
successful). Keep in mind that the one time I saw this happen, Han was on a
system completely loyal to the Rebellion, the Rebel HQ was stationed there, and
there were many ground troops and a large fleet orbiting it, so apparently the
presence of military units or high Rebel loyalty cannot protect him. The only
way I can think of where you can actively do something to keep Han safe is to
keep him on missions. I've never seen an encounter occur when Han was on a
mission and I don't think it can.
Millennium Falcon Effect: Not really an event but definitely worthy of
mention is the Millennium Falcon Effect, which means that when Han isn't on a
starship and is traveling by himself and with characters ONLY, not Special
Forces, he is presumed to be flying on his ship, the "fastest hunk of junk in
the galaxy", the Millennium Falcon, which gives him and his companions a +50
hyperspace modifier. This essentially makes them travel twice as fast as they
normally would. Thus, not only is Han very good on missions, but he can get the
team to the target and back twice as fast as normal.

iii) Leia Organa

Her Heritage: Once Luke has an encounter with Vader and learns about his
heritage, he can then tell Leia about their heritage. The way Luke tells her is
exactly like how he discovers potential jedi candidates. It's supposed to
happen when they're on a mission together, but just being near each other seems
to work just as well and just as often. Leia can then immediately use the Force
and she gets a stats boost.
Evasion Bonus: Leia is the only other jedi other than Luke who gets a onepoint increase to her Force rating whenever she avoids capture. Of course, this
only happens once she knows she can use the Force.
iv) Emperor Palpatine
Seat of Power: As long as the Emperor is in the Coruscant system, whether
on a ship or on a mission, he is assumed to be on his throne and as such all
Imperial characters will get a large boost in their leadership stats.
v) Darth Vader
All of Darth Vader's events have been covered in other character's
sections, since he does not have any just by himself. He gains no stat
increases from an encounter with Luke nor from the Final Battle.
----------------------------------------------------------------------3) Strategic Covert Missions
"You call down the Thunder, and I'll reap the Whirlwind" -Ghost, SC
There are two halves to warfare in Rebellion: The overt and the covert.
Overt consists of ships, fighters, and troops, and covert consists of the
secret missions conducted by Special Forces. Now by "halves" I don't mean just
two different parts of warfare, I mean actual HALVES, meaning if utilized
correctly covert operations should take up a full HALF of your resources,
strategy, and attention. Of course, this doesn't mean you can win without using
conventional overt means, but it does mean that a series of covert missions can
be just as powerful a tool as several heavy bombardments on half a dozen
planets.
a) Detectors: There are three possible outcomes for any one mission. The
mission can be successful and the objectives achieved, or it can be
unsuccessful. There are two ways a mission can be unsuccessful and the game is
specific with the words it uses for both types. When a mission has been
"foiled" it means that enemy detectors discovered the mission's team and
attacked their hideout, driving them off of the planet. This usually results in
the death or capture of at least one Special Forces or character. If a mission
has "failed" it means that the team was never detected, the mission was
completed, but the team simply failed to achieve their objectives. Notice that
when the mission has "failed" the game will still say that the mission was
completed, whether it was a success or a failure, so make sure you read the
whole message and not just the first five words.
Pretty much, a "detector" that can foil a covert mission is any military
unit with a detection rating, pretty much any ship, starfighter, or troop
regiment. The higher the rating is, the more the chance of them detecting your
mission (I don't know the math involved). Pretty much, around 3-6 enemy ground
units at the target planet will require you to send decoys to cover your real
mission, while you can usually get away without decoys with 1 or 2 ground
units.

An orbiting fleet around a planet provides another line of defense against

covert missions targeting something on the surface, because the Special Forces
have to get through the fleet to the surface, avoid the ground people, and then
go BACK through the fleet, if it hasn't moved. Sometimes the trip back is what
gets them. An example of this is when I once had three characters as prisoners
on Coruscant. Two of them on their own escaped, but immediately were caught
again. Why? Because they escaped from the ground troops, but the fleet around
Coruscant caught them again. So I get two messages "so and so escaped at
Coruscant" and "so and so was captured at Coruscant". Confused me for a while.
Remember, three or four small ships aren't a major threat, it's the big ships
loaded with troops and fighters that kill your people.
Officers are probably the best defense against covert missions. They
increase the detection ratings of your units substantially, making it MUCH
harder for enemy covert missions to remain undetected.
b) Decoys: Pretty much decoys work like this: the better the decoy's espionage
rating, the better their chances of preventing enemy detectors from discovering
the real mission. They're just decoys, they don't help the mission at all; they
just provide interference against detectors. So instead of the enemy detectors
discovering your personnel on the real mission, they may detect instead one of
your decoys. This poses no harm to the decoy, it simply means that the real
mission wasn't discovered and it still has a chance. Characters as decoys DO
NOT get better stats if the mission succeeds, only characters on the real
mission. If there are any military units at the target site, it's always a good
idea to bring along a couple of decoys, but if there aren't any, or the target
is a neutral or friendly planet then decoys aren't needed. Usually I myself use
1-3 decoys, depending on how many detectors there are at the target site. I
rarely go above 3, except in extreme cases. Each additional decoy makes it more
likely the mission will remain undetected, but there is a limit to the
practicality of it. While you technically can have as many as a hundred decoys,
most often you don't need more than a handful. It is true that there are a few
targets that would require a vast number of decoys, such as a planet with 10
ground troops, 12 fighters, an orbiting fleet, and officers. However, this is a
bit impractical, since it devotes a serious amount of your covert personnel to
a single mission. With enough decoys you can theoretically pull off any mission
against any target, no matter how well defended, but sometimes it's just too
impractical. It may even be possible that the fifty decoys you assigned weren't
enough, and then the mission gets foiled and a good number of all your
personnel get captured or killed, which would be devastating to say the least.
Plus remember that detectors aren't the only way to discover an enemy mission.
Enemy Espionage conducted on the system you targeted can detect your mission.
This would allow the enemy to send sabotage or abduction missions against your
personnel on the real mission, effectively foiling it.
Eventually you learn to judge how many decoys are need for different
missions, but just remember that sometimes the target can simply be too well
protected and your covert missions will just not work against it.
c) Mission Types
Here I will describe each mission Special Forces Personnel and Characters
can perform, the possible outcomes and consequences, and any other relevant
information. I will also list the number of people on the real mission I
usually use for each mission type. These numbers aren't the only ones that will
work for a specific mission, nor do I claim them to be the best, they're just
the ones that seem to work the best for me, and I've tried dozens of
combinations. Please note that the numbers I present to you represent numbers
of Special Forces not characters. Since characters tend to have twice the stats
that Special Forces do, I roughly count them as worth two Special Forces each.
Also note that the limited knowledge I present in the ways of the math behind
how likely a mission will succeed I got from the LucasArts official Rebellion

website, and in case you missed the address above it is

http://www.lucasarts.com/products/rebellion/.
Under each mission type I will also describe the "probability of success"
for that mission. Barring that the mission is foiled, whether or not the
mission is successful or fails is determined by your Special Forces' and
characters' stats, and by luck. I will describe which stats are relevant for
each mission type. After the simple math of adding up your Special Forces
relevant stats and subtracting or averaging other factors you should arrive at
a single number. The higher that end number is the more probable the mission
will be successful, simple as that. I never really calculate out anything while
playing the game, it's just important to know which stats are important for
which missions. Please remember that only the stats of your personnel on the
real mission, not decoys, contribute to the mission's success.
i) Espionage: Information is vital to any military operation. Knowing
where your enemies units are and what their defenses consist of is simply
invaluable. This will be one of your most used missions. Let's call anyone who
can conduct an espionage mission a spy, just for simplicity's sake. Probability
of success is determined by the total espionage rating of personnel.
Pretty much, one spy can do the job. When it comes to spy missions, if the
mission is successful, then you get all the info about the target planet, so
more people on the job doesn't make it more efficient. It's just that the more
espionage stats your personnel have, the more likely the mission is, however a
single Bothan Spy or Espionage Droid will be sufficient most of the time.
However if you desperately need to know now and don't want to risk one spy
screwing it up, using two or three spies may work better.
When you successfully spy on an enemy planet you learn everything there is
to know about the target planet, and another enemy planet. The second planet
you get information on is randomly determined, but it will never be an enemy
planet on the Outer Rim. That's how you can sometimes know what's on Coruscant,
without actually sending a spy mission there. The info you get tells you what
buildings are on the planet, what personnel are there, what missions are being
conducted on the planet, if there are any military units on the ground or in
orbit, and the arrival date of anything en route in hyperspace to the planet
(including enemy fleets!).
Spying on your own planet or a neutral planet does two things:
1. Tells you if an enemy fleet is incoming and when it arrives (sometimes
the fleet icon won't tell you when the fleet will arrive, but if you click on
an individual ship, it'll tell you when that ship will arrive. This usually
only happens when ships are joining the fleet when they arrive, and won't
arrive on the same day), and
2. Any enemy missions on the planet. Usually detectors are your only means
of foiling enemy missions, but if you spot an enemy mission on your planet or
on a neutral one, then if you send your commandos to capture or kill all of the
people assigned to the real mission, then that mission will fail (killing
decoys doesn't matter, as long as the people on the real mission are all
neutralized, then the enemy mission fails and all decoys go back home).
Generally, you only need to send spy missions to neutral planets if you thing
the enemy's diplomaticing it, and spy on your own planets if the planet is an
important one that's reasonably near the enemy and you want to protect it.
Sending spy missions to ALL of your planets or even to all of your important
ones is time consuming, too expensive, it's hard to keep up with them all, and
usually pointless. If a friendly system is sectors away from the enemy, random
espionage checks aren't necessary since it's very unlikely they will send
anything that way. You probably have more important things to do.
ii) Sabotage: This is my most used mission, with spying as a close second,
because you can spy once on a planet and then send multiple sabotage missions
to different targets on the planet. You can target anything from a ship, to a
fighter squad, to a building, to a Special Forces. One thing that took me an

hour to figure it out when I first got the game is when you're selecting the
target, click on the specific target. You can't just select a planet when you
want to sabotage a structure on it, you have to open up either the planet's
manufacturing window or defenses window and then click on the actual structure
or troop regiment you want to target. I don't know, maybe that's painfully
obvious but I didn't see it initially and maybe a few other people didn't
either. The probability of success is determined by the average of your mission
team's total combat and total espionage ratings.
Generally, if you're going after a structure on an undefended world, only
one Special Forces is needed, no decoys. A single saboteur by himself works
just fine, because a single Commando or Infiltrator unit is fully capable of
destroying any facility on his own, and if there's no units at all on the
planet, then there's no way you're mission can be foiled. The only exception
being that a jedi on the planet detects a jedi on your sabotage team, but that
rarely happens. However if you're going after a military unit on the ground,
like troops or a fighter squad, then two Special Forces on the real mission
will get the job done more often than one. Three if your missions keep failing
and it's annoying you. I think buildings are easier to sabotage somehow, so
almost always only one Special Forces will work, but you should go with more if
going after a military unit.
iii) Diplomacy: Diplomacy missions are another mission type most often
used. This mission is progressive, meaning the character keeps trying and
trying at this mission until he/she cannot do it anymore or you abort the
mission. Every time they're successful a system's loyalty will move a small
amount in your favor. If they fail then they'll simply try again. Probability
of success is determined by the character's diplomacy rating minus the system's
loyalty to the enemy (I have no way to know how to figure out a number for the
system's loyalty, just know that the more of the bar that is the enemy's color,
the harder it will be for the mission to succeed).
Pretty much in my experience anyone with a diplomacy rating of below 60
isn't much use for this mission. Characters like Han or Chewie with diplomacy
ratings of 13 each really aren't effective at ALL at diplomacy missions.
However it's the TOTAL diplomacy rating of the whole mission team that counts,
so if you send like 6 characters with low diplomacy ratings together to a
planet, they will be as effective as a single character with a high diplomacy
rating. I wouldn't recommend this much, since people with low diplomacy ratings
tend to have high espionage and combat ratings so they're much useful at other
things, but it is possible when needed. Using more than one professional
"diplomats" (characters with over a 60 in diplomacy) also increases the chance
of their success, but remember they will be working on only one planet, and
since one "diplomat" can convert a system on his own without problem, it's
generally better to assign one "diplomat" to one planet so you're working on
several planets at once. Of course if a planet is completely loyal to the
enemy, having two "diplomats" work together on it may help it along much faster
at first, since even one will have problems initially because it's so
resistant.
You also may want to wait a bit before taking a diplomat from a planet
they just won over. Let them raise the loyalty a bit more, so that in case
another planet in the sector joins the enemy, it won't be so quick to go
neutral. Diplomaticing until the bar is completely full isn't necessary, unless
the diplomat has nothing better to do; just about 8/10 of the loyalty bar
should be sufficient for every planet.
Also, decoys really aren't necessary for this mission since you can only
conduct this mission on friendly or neutral planets, so the probability of
enemy detectors being around is really rather nonexistent.
iv) Abduction: Any time you see an enemy character that isn't protected by
too many detectors, it's a good idea to go try to kidnap him. Probability of
success is determined by your mission team's combat rating minus the combat

rating of the target. But generally if the combined combat rating of all your
personnel on the real mission is double the target's combat rating, then you're
pretty assured of success, at the very least you may injure the target, making
him much easier to abduct the next time. If you're going after a diplomat with
a very low combat rating like Jan Dodonna then you probably won't need more
than one Noghri unit on the real mission. If you go after someone like Han Solo
with a combat rating of around 100 then you need a lot more people on the real
mission.
Now, if you're going after a jedi, you're going to need even more people,
since they tend to be VERY good at combat, so you might not be able to pull
this off if there's too many detectors around the target. If you're going after
Darth Vader however, the Dark Lord of the Sith, the living symbol of the
Empire, then you need to blockade the planet, eliminate all the ground troops,
and call in every Special Forces in the tri-sector area. THEN it'll take about
3-4 tries to get him. What can I say? He's a bitch.
v) Rescue: Generally, you want to eliminate as many detectors as you can,
and send like 3-5 Special Forces's on the real mission to rescue a character.
Combat rating is the only important stat here, and it takes quite a bit it to
get them out, so just 2 people most likely won't be sufficient. Actually, three
probably won't be either, but it's possible. The more combat rating you have,
the better the chances of success, just don't make your team too big.
vi) Assassination: Combat rating is again the important stat here; the
more you have the better. Again, the rule of doubling your target's combat
rating works well for me. You'll most likely kill or at least maim the target.
If the target's injured already then it's a lot easier to kill him. Also you
can't assassinate or even kill "main characters" meaning: Luke, Mon Mothma,
Leia, Han, Darth Vader, or the Emperor.
vii) Incite Uprising: This is another progressive mission, meaning that
the team will keep working until the planet leaves the enemy or you abort the
mission. Probability of success is determined by the total Leadership of your
team minus the target's loyalty to the enemy.
It basically works like this: An incite uprising mission, if allowed to
continue, will gradually turn an enemy system's loyalty away from them and
toward you. It's basically like a Diplomacy mission on a hostile system. A real
advantage of this mission is that it's very likely your opponent won't notice a
single one of his/her planets slowly drifting to your side, and the only sign
of this would be if the system were to go neutral or to openly revolt. It's
especially dangerous if there are no ground troops stationed at the target
planet, because if there are then once the system's loyalty leans toward you
enough that the garrison requirement for the planet equals the amount of troops
on the ground, the enemy will get a message telling them that the planet is
close to revolt. However, if there are no troops on the ground, the planet may
simply turn neutral without any warning. The moral of the story? The only sure
way to protect a planet from this mission is to have at least 6 ground troops
stationed there, because a planet cannot go into an uprising with that many
troops on the ground, even if it is totally loyal to the other side.
Generally a team of 5 works well on a lightly defended planet, but if
there are many detectors I'd recommend using 4 or 3. Having 6-7 Special Forces
on the real mission gets the job done much quicker, but they're very likely to
get caught if there are any detectors around. Having 1-2 people on the real
mission may be somewhat effective on a planet whose loyalty is already divided,
but if it's very loyal to the enemy, chances are they won't accomplish squat.
Like in a diplomacy mission, your Incite Uprising team will periodically
have a chance to shift the system's loyalty to your side. Sometimes they do,
sometimes they don't. If they don't then they send you a message saying that
they're not being successful. However, when they do succeed they won't send you
a message. The best sign that they are being effective is that you don't get a

message saying that they were unsuccessful for long periods of time. Another
less reliable sign is that you may get frequent messages about informants
helping you on the planet when the team is doing well. This seems to happen
when the system's loyalty moves slightly in your favor. The only time they will
send you a mission "successful" message is when the planet switches sides or is
enflamed in an uprising.
viii) Subdue Uprising: Again the leadership of your team minus the
target's loyalty to the enemy determines your probability of success. This
mission also works just like a diplomacy mission, slowly moving the target's
loyalty over to your side. Uprisings are very serious matters, since all
production on the planet is stopped and garrison troops are slowly but surely
destroyed, so send as many characters and Special Forces as possible, all in
one major subdue mission, to get it over quickly. Decoys here really aren't
necessary, because you own the planet, so enemy detectors aren't a problem.
Also, you may want to conduct on espionage mission on your planet in an
uprising to check for any enemy Incite Uprising missions that may work against
your Subdue mission.
ix) Research: There are three types of Research mission: Ship Design,
Troop Training, and Facility Research, but they're all inherently the same so I
put them under the same section. If a character can research a certain field
(it tell you in their status menu) then get them researching ASAP. It speeds up
R&D real fast, and there are always other characters to do spy work or be
officers (I always want to make Ackbar or Thrawn my main fleet's admiral, but
they can research ship design, so it's much better to make them research).
There seems to be no real difference between sending multiple people on a
research mission than sending them on individual ones, at least not that I can
see. I usually send them on individual missions however, because that way I can
spread them out across the galaxy, so if I lose one planet with a research
mission on it, I'll still have other missions working, instead of losing ALL my
research in that field. Ship design missions can only be conducted on planets
with shipyards, troop training missions on planets with training facilities,
and facility research missions on a planet with construction yards.
If a researcher sends you a message saying "valuable" results have been
produced, you just researched something in that field. If he says "no new
progress" just keep him running. It's a progressive mission and he'll make
progress eventually; just let him research until you've researched everything
in that field.
Now, there's only three ways for this type of mission to fail: 1. You're
an idiot like me and scrapped the relevant facilities on the planet the team is
researching on (at least once a game I will scrap the sole shipyard on the
planet that Wedge or Ackbar is researching ship design on because I don't need
it anymore and I forgot they were researching there. Remember, the relevant
facility has to be there, or they can't research). 2. One of the people
assigned to the mission is a traitor (see more about that under the Traitor
section) and keeps failing the mission on purpose. It's a very good sign that
someone has turned traitor, because it's impossible to fail the mission other
than these two ways. 3. The planet is invaded or switches sides. This mission
can only be conducted on a planet you own, so decoys are not necessary. In
fact, the only people who can become decoys for a Research mission are those
who can do research, so it's infinitely dumb to waste their talents as decoys.
I believe that your research rate in an area is also determined by the
number of production facilities in that area you have. I'm pretty sure that the
more you have, the faster you research. At the very least, I do know that if
you have none of a certain production facility then you will not research in
its area at all. Each additional facility you have however seems to contributes
VERY little to your research rate, so it's pointless to have facilities that
aren't building, just so they can research. Facilities contribute a near
insignificant amount; it's your research missions that do the bulk of the work.

x) Recruitment: A very important mission, you should always have at least

one person recruiting new characters until you can't recruit anymore. The
probability of success is determined by the leadership of the character minus
the planet's loyalty to the enemy's side. It doesn't matter what planet you
recruit on, any planet works fine, in fact you could recruit on the same planet
to get every character. Plus there are only a handful of people who can recruit
("main characters only"), so you can't be picky about leadership stats. Just
recruit on a planet that's mostly loyal to you, and the Recruitment missions
should work most of the time.
xi) Recon: Imperial Probe Droids and Y-wing Long Probes are the only
things that can conduct this mission. The main purpose for this mission is to
do recon on outer rim territories, searching for hidden rebel bases, and
otherwise looking for planets to colonize. However, another use for this
mission is for a quick recon on enemy systems. If there are any enemy detectors
at the target, chances are almost certain that the mission will be foiled,
however you will then gain information about enemy ships in orbit around the
target, or if there are no ships then about enemy ground troops. This can be
invaluable when either hunting down enemy ships or when quickly checking that
the target is clear of ships so you can move a fleet in. There are no stats
relevant to this mission. It's always successful as long as there are no enemy
units at the target, and if there are it's almost always foiled.
xii) Death Star Sabotage: This mission is exactly the same as a regular
sabotage mission, just the target is a Death Star. The only conceivable
difference is that Death Stars tend to be (or at least they should be) pretty
loaded with fighters and troops and escorted by numerous ships. Basically this
means that any DS Sabotage mission you launch is very likely to be foiled, due
to the high amount of detectors around. However, if the Empire becomes gets
careless, then this is a real low-cost high-payoff way to really hurt them.
xiii) Jedi Training: Quite possibly the longest mission in the game, it
takes around 90 days to complete. Once Vader or Luke (Luke MUST be a jedi
knight or a jedi master before he can do this mission) discover a jedi
candidate, the candidate then can use the Force and gets a huge stat boost.
However, the candidate must start as a jedi at one of the lowest rankings. The
value of this mission is that it boosts their Force rating by a good amount.
Not quite the amount Luke gets when he trains with Yoda, but this mission does
give them quite a boost nevertheless. I recall dimly that somewhere I heard
that the loyalty of the planet the training is on makes it that much more
successful, but the Rebellion official website does not list this, so I'm not
sure. I have never seen this mission fail randomly, but I have heard from
other people that it can. However, I have tried this mission dozens of times and
even when I conduct it on planets I own that are completely loyal to the enemy
it has never failed for me. My best guess is that an enemy
abduction/assassination attempt on one of the characters on the mission
interrupted the mission. While the enemy's attempt failed, it may not have been
foiled and as such the person would not have been informed of an enemy mission
being detected. However I could be wrong and this mission could fail randomly,
however if it does then it is very rare. The only other way for it to fail or be
foiled is if the enemy should invade the planet or if the planet should
otherwise leave your side, by going neutral for instance.
The only drawback of this mission is that it puts one of your jedi
knights/masters and a jedi candidate out of commission for a very long time.
While a trained candidate is better than an untrained one, sometimes using the
untrained one on missions now is more useful in the long run; after all they
still are more effective than characters without the Force and will still grow

as jedi with more successful missions. It's your call. As far as I know you can
conduct this mission as many times as you want on any candidate.
d) Practical Applications of Covert Operations
Here are a few techniques of using a number of covert missions to help
further your war effort.
i) Liberating Planets: This is an incredibly powerful tool if implemented
correctly. By using only covert operations without any conventional planetary
bombardments or invasions you can literally bring an entire sector to your
control. And I'm not joking or exaggerating, I've seen it, I've done it, and
it's been done to me. An Incite Uprising mission isn't the only way to cause an
uprising on an enemy system. Many times you may find an enemy system that
requires a garrison due to low loyalty (the Empire tends to start with a lot of
these), yet you lack enough capital ships to bombard away the garrison and free
the planet (this happens a lot to the Alliance). An alternative way is to send
sabotage missions to destroy the garrison troops until the planet goes into
uprising, sending espionage missions frequently to check if the enemy has moved
any more troops to defend the planet. Keep doing this until there are no troops
left and the planet is free to choose its own alignment. Whenever a planet
shifts allegiance without the help of a planetary invasion it affects the
loyalty of every other planet in the sector. If a planet is allowed to leave
the Empire on it's own whim, then every other planet in the sector will lose
loyalty for the Empire. This can create a domino effect. Let's say that one
planet leaves the Empire, it can cause another system with divided loyalty in
that sector to also leave the Empire, which can cause a neutral planet to decide
to join the Alliance, which causes an Imperial planet to require garrison
troops, and so on. Sometimes even if the planet you liberated doesn't join your
side and only goes neutral, it's impact on other planets' loyalties may cause
them to shift allegiances, which impacts the original planet and causes it to
join you. While this domino effect may not bring half a sector to your side
after liberating only one planet, it's consequences in the sector are profound.
If it doesn't bring another planet to your side, it'll at least make it that
much easier to bring another planet under your banner with a few more Sabotage
missions. Augmenting your efforts with Incite Uprising missions can help speed
along the process.
ii) Mobile Agent Platform (MAP): Is there a sector in which you own no
planets but the enemy does? Do you lack the ships and troops to bring your
influence to the sector? Is the sector too far away to practically send precise
covert missions to? Well worry no more. An incredibly invaluable tool to extend
your influence to sectors that are mostly enemy or neutral is the Mobile Agent
Platform, a cute little name I made up. More often that not you won't have
enough ships to cover every sector in the galaxy at once, and sending covert
missions to another sector takes a very long time and is usually less than
fruitful. A MAP is essentially an obsolete or unused capital ship that carries
a bunch of Special Forces. Special Forces can be based on either a planet or a
ship, and they will return to whichever they started from after a mission is
over. So send a single ship loaded with Special Forces to a wayward sector.
This way the time the team takes to get from the ship to the target will be
MUCH shorter than if you'd sent the team from another sector. They'll return to
the ship they started from without having to travel 30 or more days back to one
of your planets.
Load your MAP with a lot of Special Forces with a good variety. Bring
people to spy on planets, people to sabotage targets, and even people to
diplomatize neutral planets, if you can spare them. Having a lot of saboteurs
with no spies can be just as good as having no saboteurs at all, since you

won't have information about the whereabouts of targets. I like to bring every
type of Special Forces with me on MAPs, as well as any characters I have to
spare.
A Neutral planet is a MAP's best friend. By orbiting your MAP around a
neutral planet the enemy cannot know that you're there without sending an
espionage mission or having a blockade around the planet, and generally they
don't want to waste ships or missions on harmless neutral planets. So you're
practically invisible while you send mission after mission against enemy
targets.
Usually I like to send a nearly worthless ship like a Bulk Cruiser or a
cheap ship like a Carrack Cruiser as my MAP. Generally though a ship with laser
cannons and thus an edge against enemy fighters is ideal, because those neutral
planets may not stay neutral for long and you may need to move your MAP to an
enemy system for a little while. You can always move your MAP away before enemy
ships arrive to drive you off, but if there are a sufficient amount of fighters
around the planet when you arrive, you may have to fight them off and a ship
with laser cannons has a better chance at that.
There are of course drawbacks to this idea. First and foremost is the fact
that you are operating in enemy territory without a good amount of conventional
support. Should the enemy figure out what you're doing, they may start searching
with heavy cruisers of their own. Should you run into to one of these you will
probably have to turn and run. And remember, whenever you retreat you will
retreat back to the nearest friendly system, which in some cases this may be in
another sector, and it may take you a good long time before your MAP can return;
a good long time the enemy has to build up without your interference. A good way
to avoid this is to frequently move your MAP from one neutral planet to another,
since a moving target gets found less often than a stationary one. However, even
here you must be careful. A covert team will always return to their starting
point, unless that starting point happens to be a ship that is in hyperspace
when the team is ready to return. Be careful by sending off teams and then
moving your MAP, because if it's not back in real space by the time they're
ready to come home, they will go to the nearest friendly ship or system, which
may be in another sector.
To avoid being found, there are two things you can do other than by moving
constantly. One is to send espionage missions to the planet you're orbiting.
This will tell you if there are any enemy ships incoming, which will then be
your cue to run. Another way to avoid coming face to face with an enemy heavy
cruiser is to send recon missions to where you're planning to move. Sometimes
you may have to move to an enemy system for a moment, and to make sure there
aren't any enemy ships orbiting the planet to chase you away a single recon
mission is very helpful. Chances are the mission will be foiled by enemy
forces, but it will still tell you if and what ships are orbiting the planet.
Like I said, it's good to bring every type of Special Forces you can. While
espionage missions can be just as effective or more so, they can take a good
while and a recon mission is much faster for when speed is essential.
Another major drawback is reinforcements. Operating in a sector dozens of
days away means that sending replacement Special Forces to your MAP may take a
long while. There is little you can do about this fact, only frequently send
more Special Forces to your MAP as soon as they are available. Even if you
don't need more Special Forces on the MAP, send them anyways because mortality
rates in the covert world are rather high and chances are you will need
reinforcements eventually.
As I mentioned before having a ship with anti-starfighter weaponry is
better than one without. Sometimes all ten planets in the sector may belong to
the enemy, so you would have to orbit around enemy planets. It's pretty

embarrassing to have to end the entire campaign in that sector simply because a
few squads of fighters drove you off, so being able to fight off fighters can
be extremely helpful.
As for defending against MAPs, the best clue to an enemy MAP operating in
your sector is if you detect numerous enemy missions in a short amount of time
in a sector you mostly control or especially if the enemy has no planets in the
sector. If you're sure an enemy MAP is working against you, try searching any
neutral planets with capital ships. Recon missions to every neutral planet in
the sector at the same time could be a much faster and cheaper option. If
necessary you may want to regularly send these recon missions to make sure any
new enemy MAP's don't arrive, but being obsessive about this can take up a good
deal of your attention. Having a good number of fighters can help by not only
preventing an enemy MAP from orbiting one of your planets, but also it can
provide extra detectors against enemy covert missions.
This MAP tactic has proven extremely useful to me. By having a MAP conduct
the tactic of liberating planets mentioned above I have taken entire sectors
without needing to use a single ground troop in the sector. One of the first
things I do when starting a game is to prepare a MAP. While the chances of
losing the MAP or having to send them fleeing home in hyperspace for a good
forty days are pretty good, you can get much for spending very little in the
way of resources. The fact that a MAP can't defend itself is simply the
tradeoff for the stealth and capabilities it offers.
iii) Counter-Insurgency: Whenever you conquer all or most of a sector,
especially Outer Rim sectors, it's always a good idea to build several Special
Forces of every type and station them on one or two well-defended systems.
Should you move the bulk of your fleets to other sectors then this way you have
a way to strike back at the enemy should he invade the sector. Since it's
likely that the sector will be loyal mostly to you then the enemy will require
garrisons on any planet they capture. In that case your Special Forces can then
send Sabotage and Incite Uprising missions to those captured planets and
possibly bring them back to your side, or at least create uprisings on those
planets. Going along with this it's a good idea to keep training facilities on
a few planets so that you can train more Special Forces should the need arise.
It's a hell of a lot faster and cheaper to defend your sectors this way than to
have large numbers of troops on every planet. While the troops along with
defensive facilities are the most solid defense, with a counter-insurgency
force you have at least a modest defense before you can build all that.
----------------------------------------------------------------------4. Tools of the Trade: Military Units
This is after all a war game, and thus you're going to have to take at
least a shot or two sometime in the game. The second half of battle in
Rebellion consists of the actual ships and troops duking it out on the
battlefield.
a) Starships
For clarity purposes in this FAQ, I shall refer to those capital ships
that are designed to attack mainly other capital ships as "cruisers," and those
capital ships that are designed to attack primarily starfighters as "antistarfighter platforms," or ASP's. Here I'll give a brief rundown over several
important concepts. Things like Tractor Beams that aren't really important and
don't have much else to them than is already explained in the game have been
omitted for brevity.
i) Weaponry: There are three types of canons in the game (actually four if
you consider the lasers on the fighters but they're probably just laser canons

just really weak, the game never specifies, but let's just say there're three).
Turbolasers, laser canons, and ion canons, and each ship has a different arc of
range for each weapon that it has: forward, aft, port, starboard. Generally a
ship that's confronting another ship will turn its strongest arc to the enemy
ship for maximum damage, but the other arcs are there for when the ship's
surrounded or to track a moving enemy.
Turbolasers: The heavy guns of a capital ship. Never really see them in Xwing games, but they're the weapons in the books and movies that take down
other starships, destroy fighters in a shingle shot, and turn planets to slag.
These are the most effective weapon against other starships, yet are pretty
crappy against fighters. Pretty much, I don't really consider a ship as a
"cruiser" unless they have primarily these babies. Their main use is against
other starships, though they can fire at starfighters, but are less effective
than laser cannons. Ships wielding only turbolasers won't fire at fighters
automatically; you have to order them to do that.
Laser canons: As you would've guessed, the anti-fighter guns. The guns on
a corvette are the best example of these, made for tearing up fighter squads,
yet really weak versus other starships. Ships with only these can still attack
other starships, but you have to use several ships to be effective, and only
minimally at that. They will not attack other starships automatically; you have
to order them to do that.
Ion Cannons: No ship has ion canons as powerful as the ground based ones
in Empire Strikes Back, but they can still be pretty powerful. Any ship system
can get damaged when lasers hit the hull, but the ion cannon's specific purpose
is to disable those systems faster than lasers. They won't damage a ship's
hull, but they will damage shields. They don't disable every system upon
impact, but eventually will if kept firing. These never fire on fighters.
ii) Repairing Ship Systems: Every ship has a certain amount of points in
its systems and some ship types have more in certain systems than others. When
a ship's shields are down, the hull suffers damage, and so do systems with
every shot, and here ion canons prove devastating. The system icons of a ship
in Tactical mode show you how damaged that system is. Sometimes though, this
can be misleading. Like, on a corvette, the maximum points in the shield
generators is 12. When the power goes down to 9:12 the system icon in battle
will show the generators as slightly damaged, but it will not show the
different icon when the power is at 10:12 or 11:12. This can be very confusing,
because in the Tactical mode all your systems may seem nominal, but when in
Strategic mode and you look in the fleet menu, you see little explosions around
the ship, indicating that the ship is damaged. It's just that the damage is so
slight that the icon in battle didn't change.
The only way for a ship system to be damaged is when the ship is hit with
shields down, EXCEPT FOR THE SHELD GENERATORS (Actually I've seen the engines
completely go out once, they didn't even get damaged first, just went dead with
shields at full, but I'm guessing it was a game defect). If the shields are
constantly being hit, but the lasers just aren't powerful enough to actually
bring down the shields before they regenerate, the shields stay up but it's
taxing on the generators, and slowly but surely they'll get damaged. Let it
continue for a long time and eventually they'll be disabled. Now, when your
generators are out, any shields you still have left stay up, they just won't be
regenerated. Between battles a ship fully charges it's shields so that it
starts the next battle with full shields, but I'd like to see if that still
happens when a ships generators are disabled and aren't repaired between
battles, probably nothing changes though. When a system is damaged but not
disabled, it's less effective. Your cannons are less powerful, shields don't
recharge as fast, your ship moves slower, etc., depending on which system is
damaged.

Now, to repair ship systems and hull you have to be in orbit around one
of your planets.. You can't repair around an enemy or neutral planet. It's
kinda stupid, because in battle your systems repair (I don't think hull does
though), so they should be able to when in enemy territory and not fighting. Oh
well. Actually sometimes it seems you repair faster in battle than you do out
of it. I have once actually gone into battle for the sole purpose of letting a
ship's shield gen.'s repair. Actually, twice, but it only worked the first time
because the enemy's Ties kept bringing them back down to the same level as
before, so be careful when trying this. A damaged ship in orbit of a friendly
planet with shipyards repairs sooooo much faster than without the shipyards, so
if possible station those ships near shipyards. I don't know if the more
shipyards a planet has the faster the ship repairs, but it seems logical.
iii) Maneuverability: The maneuverability ratings go from 1 to 4 points.
Actually, the Death Star does have a rating of 0, but it doesn't matter in
battle mode since it can't move anyway. Most ships have a rating of 1 or 2,
with notable exceptions of the Lancer Frigate, Assault Transport, and Corvette
with a rating of 3, and the Corellian Gunship, as far as I know, is the most
maneuverable ship in the game with a value of 4. Something to note, Alliance
ships tend to be more maneuverable than Imperial ships. Almost all the Rebel
ships have at least a rating of 2, with only a few ships with a rating of 1.
However, about half the Imperial vessels have a rating of 1, including all the
star destroyer models except the VSDII. It's a small advantage for the rebels,
considering that Imperial ships tend to have much more firepower. This
attribute you can mostly ignore, except in a few cases where you may want to
send ships to attack the rear of the enemy formation and get them back quickly.
iv) Bombardment: Want to capture a planet but it has too many defending
troops? Raining down fire from the skies is a pretty good idea, as long as
there're no planetary guns. Most ships have bombardment modifies, which I
suspect multiply the weapons ratings of the ship to make them more effective in
planetary bombardments. Pretty much, as long as a ship has turbolasers it has a
modifier, with the exceptions of the Interdictor Cruiser and the Corvette. The
Indictor has turbolasers, but the in-game encyclopedia says it doesn't have a
modifier, and the turbolaser-less corvette does have a modifier, but these may
just be typos. Almost every ship has a modifier of 2 or less. No Alliance ship
has a modifier above 2, except for the Bulwark Battlecruiser, which has a
rating of 4. The only ships in the Imperial navy above 2 are the SSD, with a
value of 3, and the VSD classes. A first generation VSD has a rating of 4,
which is greater than an SSD's, and the VSDII has a rating of 5, which is the
highest modifier of any conventional ship in the game. This gives the VSD class
a distinctive use in the imperial navy, for they have very strong turbolasers
as it is, and their high modifiers make them extremely effective in planetary
bombardment.
v) Hyperdrive: I'm pretty sure that the more points a ship has in it's
sublight engines, the faster it'll enter hyperspace in battle mode. In fact the
more points in any system a ship has, the more effective that system should be.
The hyperdrive seems to be the only exception, why I don't know. However, the
fewer points a ship has in hyperdrive, the faster it'll travel. Most ships have
a rating of either 60 or 80, and the faster ship I've seen is the Assault
Transport, with a rating of 50. Most likely hyperdrive ratings won't have any
impact on your ship selections, however should the need ever arise, a fleet
composed of only the fastest available ships may be useful for defensive
purposes in-sector, being quick enough to intercept an enemy fleet. However,
this ability has limited use, as the only ASP in the game with a hyperdrive
rating of 60 is the Carrack, and ASP's are very important components of fleets.
vi) Damage Control: Another aspect of starships worth mentioning that
isn't covered in the manual, is the damage control rating. Now it isn't really

an important factor in much of the game, you want to use those ships with
greater shields and firepower more than weaker ships, however it does have use
in certain situations, mainly in small-scale battles. By small-scale battles I
mean when there's only 1-4 capital ships on either side, and not dozens upon
dozens of fighters involved. Knowing relative damage control ratings of the
ships can give you an edge. Example: I once experimented with the computer by
attacking a lone Mon Calamari Cruiser with a VSD, a VSDII, and an ISD, Now some
of those ships have stronger shields and even stronger weapons than the Mon
Cal, however without fail the Mon Cal won the engagement every time. This
puzzled me until I paid closer attention to the ship systems during the battle.
Apparently even with stronger shields and/or weapons, the shield generators of
the Imperial ships I was using started to fail long before the Mon Cal's
generators. This is because the of the damage control rating. The Mon Cal is
famous for it's redundant systems, making it hard to cripple, and that
characteristic has been brought to Rebellion. A quick look over the various
ratings of ships shows the average to be from 20-30. However the Mon Cal has
the second highest rating in the game, 50, second only to the Death Star with
its rating of 60. This meant it had at least 20 points more than the ships I
was throwing at it, and because of this it's shield generators held the
longest, and since neither ship, it or one of mine, had a vastly superior
firepower advantage enabling to bring down the other's shields without needing
to knock out the generators first, the battle came down to whose generators
would last the longest and keep the shields up the longest, which was the Mon
Cal. So, a good familiarity with damage control ratings of ships can help you
decide whether to push forward in a small battle, or to retreat.
vii) Detection Ratings: Just a brief note, generally starships have poor
detection ratings no matter the size, even a Super Star Destroyer has a superlow one. A ship by itself in orbit can be very vulnerable to sabotage, but a
sizable fleet and especially ships that carry several fighters and troops can
provide excellent protection from enemy covert missions not just for the planet
but also for the individual ships. In other words, if possible don't let a ship
stay alone no matter the size; instead let it orbit a planet with other ships
so that together they collectively provide enough of a detection value to
protect them from enemy missions.
viii) Ship List
The game encyclopedia descriptions don't really do the ships in the game
justice, so I figured I'd just comment on them. They're listed in order of
which they are researched, starting with the Nebulon-B Frigate for the Rebels
and the Lancer Frigate for the Imperials, because you start with the ships
listed earlier and do not have to research them.
Alliance Ships
Bulk Cruiser: Hmm, one word to describe this thing...useless? Naw, a good
tactician finds use for everything, even this thing. Never waste resources
making more, but if you start out stuck with then there're only two real uses.
As a Mobile Agent Platform, and when it's real early in the game it still has
some decent firepower and at the very least can drive off or destroy any antistarfighter ship. A few of them can even manhandle an enemy dreadnaught (both
sides have dreadnaughts). But once the game has progressed, their only use is
as either a MAP or as scrap metal.
Dreadnaught: It can carry troops, so it's mildly useful later on, but never
build more of these guys. By the time your halfway done with them, you can
build better. You'd be better off building bulk transports. These guys are just
a tad better than bulk cruisers, so like 3 or 4 of them can cause trouble for a
Victory Star Destroyer, if you're lucky and with fighter coverage, and they are

good at driving off anti-starfighter ships.

Medium Transport: Carries two troops and has gun turrets weaker than those on
the Millennium Falcon (if the Falcon could go into Tactical mode that is), but
then, the Falcon has a few illegal upgrades here and there. Don't build more of
these, because bulk transports are so much better even though they have no
guns, since this ship's gun turrets cannot hold off 5 squads of Ties. Pretty
much, these things are good for exploring and colonizing Outer Rim Territories,
which takes a long time anyway, so the 2-troop capacity isn't as limiting as it
may seem.
Bulk Transport: This is the only real advantage the Rebels have over the Imps
in terms of starships, the ability to carry large amounts of troops, 6 of them,
without needing many capital ships to do the job. Make quite a few of these,
especially early on when you can't produce anything with real power.
Corellian Corvette: The best anti-starfighter ship in the game when you start.
Make a few more of these if you need to, but remember that the more advanced
Gunship will be researched later. This is a Tie's worst nightmare; it can take
on 2 whole Tie squads by itself, and lose only a bit of shield generator power,
if any. I've even taken on even 4 squads with just one Corvette (not Tie
Defenders of course), but its shield generators really suffered some damage.
Alliance Escort Carrier: Sometimes, you just need some extra fighters. This
baby's hold for 6 squads can provide just that. I'd make quite a few of these
guys to bolster the fighter capacity of your fleets. Good for having enough
fighters to bring down a Death Star.
Nebulon-B Frigate: This is the MOST versatile ship in the game. It can hold
it's own against Ties and light cruisers. Three of them in conjunction can
cause serious trouble for a SD, while holding off a few squads of ties. It's
the only ship that has turbolasers, laser cannons, and ion cannons except for
the Interdictor, and that ship is way underpowered. An incredibly useful ship
for the Rebels; make sure you start building several as soon as you can. A lot
of the time it may be the flagship for your only fleet in a whole sector, for
operations that don't require taking a heavier cruiser away from the main
conflicts. It's not exactly a "cruiser" or an ASP; it's more of a hybrid of the
two. It can't hold a candle to the massive ships you get late in the game, but
it still has it's uses then and is invaluable to the Alliance early on. It's a
multi-role vessel.
Mon Calamari Cruiser: The backbone of the Rebel fleet, the awesome Mon Cal.
These are the babies that took on the Death Star and the imperial fleet at
point blank range AND lived to tell the tale. Well, most of them did. They are
the first real heavy cruisers the Alliance gets. More than a match for the
Victory, its firepower rivals and even exceeds the Imperial Star Destroyer in
terms of turbolasers. It even matches a VSD II's firepower. Plus they can carry
3 fighter squads and even 1 troop regiment, and are incredibly durable thanks
to their high damage control rating. They'll become the most important ships
you have for a long while. I just love these guys.
Corellian Gunship: Just an upgrade to the corvette, a bit more firepower and
speed and it's also less expensive. Make sure you have quite a few Corellian
ships around to protect your heavy cruisers.
CC-7700 Frigate: The Rebel's version of the interdictor cruiser. It too sets up
a gravity well generator, preventing the enemy from jumping to hyperspace. Its
shields aren't as strong as the interdictor's, but it has more laser cannons
and makes an effective anti-starfighter platform. Having two of them in a fleet
is a very good way to insure that the enemy won't be escaping any time soon.

It's very useful for holding those annoying stray enemy ships that do hit-andrun raids on your planets and turn tail from your fleet when you find them.
Assault Frigate: This ship is the second heavy hitter for the Rebels. The only
real improvement it has on earlier ships is that it has the strongest shields
thus far, but its weapons aren't any stronger than the Mon Cals. However, its
shields do let it go to the front and take the bulk of the enemy's shots. It is
a fine ship, and I'd recommend making several, but don't think it'll replace
the Mon Cal. It may have stronger shields, but the Mon Cal can still go longer
without its systems taking damage. It also can't carry troops or fighters, and
eventually Bulk Transports and Escort Carriers run out of room so I'd suggest
keeping the Mon Cal as your fleets' mainstay ship for now. This ship is meant
to augment fleets, not lead them, in my opinion.
Liberator Cruiser: What's the word I'm looking for.sleek?...swift?...ah, sweet.
This is just a very sweet ship. Holds 6 squads and 3 troops, very handy, and
can hold its own in a battle. It won't be taking on any Imperial Star
Destroyers any time soon, but it can deliver a nasty sting to enemy cruisers in
conjunction with your heavy hitters. It's every admiral's dream, a transport
ship that can defend itself, and does it quite well in fact.
CC-9600 Frigate: A very good warship by all accounts, just that by the time you
research it, you already have ships that are equally as good, or better. It's
just another ship to add variety to your fleet. As a side note, the game says
it can carry two troop regiments, but it can only carry one. I suppose it is a
bit cheaper than an Assault Frigate and can carry one troop regiment, but by no
means should you hold off building the Assault Frigate in anticipation of
these.
Dauntless Cruiser: This is the Rebel Alliance's Battleship. Massively powerful,
heavy shielding; this thing can go toe to toe with ISD II's. It really is
dauntless. It's nearly ungodly. It's the first ship the Rebels get that has
undeniable power, so by all means make as many as you can. I like naming my
first one "Dauntless," just for kicks.
Bulwark Battlecruiser: The Rebel's answer to the SSD. It can't carry as much,
and it's shields and ion cannons are a bit weaker than the SSD's, but it's
forward turbolaser arc has 100 more points in it, meaning this sucker isn't
something to be trifled with. Actually, it's something to turn tail from, jump
to hyperspace and never come out in fear of it. Just think about it, this thing
is made to COUNTER the SSD. Drool.

Imperial Ships
Imperial Dreadnaught: Pretty much exactly the same as the Alliance Dreadnaught.
Carrack Light Cruiser: Basically it's an imperial Corellian corvette. The only
difference is that it's laser cannons are weaker and it has some really weak
turbolasers that really don't do much damage to other ships, they just make it
a threat to a corvette, but not much of one. Its job is exactly that of a
corvette's: find and kill starfighters.
Galleon: Your basic unarmed troop transport. Not much to say about it, except
build many because since the empire doesn't have the bulk transport it's hard
pressed for troop spaces in fleets.
Imperial Escort Carrier: Almost exactly like the Alliance carrier (the only
difference is some laser cannons in the rear), it provides more fighter space

for your fleets. Its laser cannons provide some protection from fighters, and
it's useful because the imperials always need more starfighters to counter the
Rebellion's superior fighters, so build quite a few of these. They're also
helpful for carrying a massive fighter screen to protect a Death Star.
Victory Star Destroyer: The ISD's little brother. It's easily more powerful
than anything the rebels have at the start, and the Imps start with it. It has
more powerful turbolasers than an ISD, I guess to compensate for its small
size, but it lacks ion cannons. Just remember what it says in the Rebellion
poster: "This vessel was designed with planetary bombardment in mind." It
carries quite a wallop when it comes to planetary bombardment, with a
bombardment modifier higher than most of ships in the game. All in all, a
pretty deadly capital ship.
Imperial Star Destroyer: The absolute best part about being imperial for me is
to command these suckers and watch them in action. You can almost hear the
Imperial March. The bad boys of the empire, this is the imperial fleet's
mainstay ship. It's got heavy turbolasers and ion cannons, and it's meant to
thrust into enemy formations like its dagger-shape implies. I read somewhere
that just four of these can turn a planet into slag. Not to mention it carries
a butt-load of fighters and troops, making it a very well rounded war ship
indeed.
Lancer Frigate: Because rebel starfighters are so powerful that they can
destroy death stars, these things were invented solely to combat them. The most
powerful anti-starfighter platform in the game, they provide great protection
from fighters. Around four or five of them banded together could also put a
dent in another capital ship. Always bring a few to escort your heavy cruisers.
Star Galleon: The best the Empire can do is to have cheap ships to carry three
troops at a time. Nothing smaller than an SSD can carry more than that, and
these babies do it cheaply. Build lots of them, and by lots I mean LOTS.
Assault Transport: It carries only one troop regiment, so you won't need many
of these, if any at all, but they do have pretty powerful laser cannons. It's
actually more powerful against fighters than a carrack cruiser, so you might
consider making these a viable ASP choice. One of these guys can at least stay
in the rear can protect the other transports from fighters. The only other
conceivable purpose for these guys is that when you're scouting the outer rim
for possible bases and you accidentally run into a rebel planet with a few
stationed fighter squads, you won't have to retreat all the way back to another
sector, cause it can fight them off. Even though it has the fastest hyperdrives
in the game, the fact that it can only carry one regiment makes it a poor
colonizer since you'll waste more time sending the troops through hyperspace to
the ship than you would if you'd used a ship with a larger carrying capacity. I
suppose you could make a small fleet of like 6 of these so that they move fast
and carry lots of troops, but you are at war here and your shipyards probably
have something better, and deadlier, to build. They would also be great MAPs,
due to their speed and ability to fend off planetary fighters.
Interdictor Cruiser: We Star Wars fanatics all know what this baby was meant to
do. Gravity well projectors prevent the enemy from escaping, making those very
annoying hit-and-run raiders easy prey. Strong shields and light weaponry make
it a marvelous starship indeed.
Victory II Star Destroyer: An upgrade to the VSD, with the same turbolaser
complement, but now ion canons and much better shields. It can't carry troops
anymore, but it has the highest bombardment rating of any conventional ship,
making it very useful.

Strike Cruiser: The beauty of this ship was that it can be mass-produced very
quickly, but I don't see that happening in this game. They build just as slow
as other ships. They're less expensive than Star Destroyers, but still have a
good complement of weapons. Pretty much, they're good medium cruisers with very
powerful shields, so build a few but don't concentrate on them.
Imperial II Star Destroyer: Or Impstar Deuce for short, this thing has twice as
powerful weaponry as its predecessor and over twice the shields. Add to that the
fact that it has the same fighter and troop capacity as before and the fact that
you can't destroy its shield towers in Rebellion, this baby is everything you'd
want in a heavy warship. Hey, even I'd make it in the form of a phallic symbol.
Build as many you can, but remember how expensive they are and how long they
take to build, so if you need ships fast, these may not be the best choice for
the moment.
Super Star Destroyer: This is it, the ultimate starship in the galaxy. Over a
thousand laser cannon batteries and missile launchers, and I'm pretty sure this
baby could carry a whole ISD in its hold. With room for 12 fighters and 9
troops, this thing is u-n-g-o-d-l-y. They don't call it "super" for nothing.
Need I say more? Actually, yes, just one more thing: RUN, as fast as you can if
you're the Rebels.
Death Star: We all know what its main purpose is. Its super laser detonates
planets. However it has several other uses as well:
- It carries a TON of fighters and troops; it literally can drop 20,000 cargo
ship loads of whoop-ass on a planet.
- Its mere presence can bring garrison requirements down and can cause open
revolts to cease on every imperial planet in the sector.
- Its super laser can also be directed at enemy ships, and every several minutes
or so it can instantly turn any rebel ship, including Dauntless and Bulwark
cruisers, into space dust.
- It has an incredibly high bombardment modifier. It never attacks any other
ship in battle mode with its turbolasers or ion cannons but the reason those
stats are in the status menu for the death star is because of that modifier,
making it incredibly useful for planetary bombardments without destroying the
planet. This is not to mean it can bring down three Gencore Level II's by
itself, but it could with a number of other ships.
How to kill it:
1) The Traditional Way: Send starfighters in the Tactical Mode on a Kill Death
Star Mission. Any type of starfighter can do it, even A-wings which don't have
torpedoes can conduct this mission, but be warned that I've NEVER seen A-wings
succeed, even after over three dozen attempts. The only catch is if the
Imperials have as many or more squadrons of fighters in the battle as the Rebels
do (total nuumber of squadrons regardless of type), then the Rebels CANNOT
conduct a Kill Death Star mission. The only time they can is when they have more
squadrons of fighters in the battle, so you may have to kill some TIEs before
conducting this mission. Only one squadron at a time can do it, and the more
squadrons the Rebels have than the Imperials, the greater the chance of success,
I think. Personally I've never seen this mission fail with torpedo carrying
fighters, so it's very important for the Imperials to carry large numbers of
fighter squadrons with the DS to protect it. NOTE: The DS is impervious to
fighter attack as long as it's around a planet with Death Star Shields, like it
was in Return of the Jedi.

2) The Covert Way: Send a Death Star Sabotage mission to destroy it. This can
be difficult to pull off, because chances are the Imperials will be smart
enough to have lots of other ships, and fighters, and troops nearby to detect
covert missions.
3) The Stupid Way: Since the DS can bombard a planet the normal way, it can be
vulnerable to planetary guns while doing so. Just to screw around, I once
bombarded a planet with heavy shields and two Level 2 Guns with a sole Death
Star. The DS couldn't punch through the shields, and took heavy damage each
time. It took about 5 tries but the DS was eventually destroyed. It's not
something the Rebels can actively do to destroy the DS, but it's still
possible, so be careful while conducting bombardments with it (The DS is never
vulnerable to planetary guns when it destroys the planet, only during normal
bombardment).
Whichever way the DS is destroyed it is very traumatic for the Imperials.
Even if you own over 2/3 of the galaxy and the rebels own only a handful of
systems, should you lose one or two death stars your characters may still start
to turn traitor on you. Read more about this in the Characters section under
Strategic Covert Operations.
The major problem with the DS, you guessed it, is it's incredibly expensive
and takes a looooooong time to build. It's also very slow, very vulnerable to
fighters, and you can only have one around a planet or in a fleet at a time.
It's hyperdrive is very slow, and it's the only craft I've seen that has a
sublight engine rating of 1, meaning any fleet with a DS will escape to
hyperspace extraordinarily slowly. Pretty much, this is not something you'll
really need to build, unless you and your opponent are on relatively equal
grounds, you want a large advantage, you have a LOT of resources to spare, and
you have a very large shipyard complex. Also, another downside is that every
single planet in the galaxy, even uninhabited planets you colonized, will lose
support for you every time you destroy a planet (I actually found a bug in the
game, if you keep destroying planets to the point where the support of every
system in the game is fully for the rebels, and if you keep destroying planets
after this point, they will start to slowly gain support for the empire again.
Might be fun if you wanted to cut down the size of the galaxy to one half it's
original size and regain your empire the way it was before, but this bug only
happens sometimes, not every time.). So pretty much, the planet-destroying
capability should be saved for that rebel HQ that couldn't escape in time but
is behind 5 Gencore Level 2 shields, 4 Level 2 Guns, and 2 Ion Cannons. If you
ever find yourself just not wanting to waste the opportunity to have the most
powerful weapon in the galaxy, just remember this: the first death star in the
movies incorporated the resources for more than dozens of Star Destroyers and
hundreds of fighters, ships which could have overwhelmed the rebellion, and in
the end it accomplished in only making the galaxy just that much madder at the
Empire for the destruction of Alderaan, and killing only a handful of
starfighters before being destroyed by an X-wing and a Corellian freighter. The
second Death Star only destroyed a few Mon Calamari Cruisers before also being
destroyed by just an X-wing and a Corellian freighter. That's not what I call
getting my money's worth. Death Stars are not needed to win a war and are only
useful if used wisely.
b) Starfighters
"Pretty," Donos said. "What do we blow up first?"
Wedge, ahead of him in the pilot's chair, turned to glance at him. "Write
that down," he said. "That ought to be the Wraith Squadron slogan."
"Good point. Squeaky, record that."
"If I must."

-(Star Wars Solo Command, Aaron Allston, 1999)

Okay, unfortunately you can't send them on deep space raids to attack
convoys or supply depots, since supplies work automatically and you can't keep
anything raid-vulnerable anywhere in space except in hyperspace or on or around
a planet, but fighters can still turn the tide of battle.
i) Classification: In the X-wing series of flight combat games the
fighters on both sides were given classifications based on their abilities and
specific jobs. In Rebellion they've kept those abilities and jobs, so I'll just
describe the classifications so that you have a better idea what jobs to assign
to different fighter types.
Air-Superiority: This isn't really a classification; it's a job really. As
the name implies fighters with this job take control of the air, or rather of
space. Whatever it takes to do just that, these fighters can do it, whether it
means being a bomber and dropping some torps into a capital ship, or being an
interceptor and protecting your capital ships from enemy bombers, or if need be
just blasting other fighters into dust. Their laser power, maneuverability and
occasional torpedoes allow them to do a range of missions. Fighters under this
category are X-wings, Tie Fighters, and Tie Defenders.
Bombers: As has been the trend since WWII, bombers in this game are slow,
sluggish, and are not maneuverable. However they also have strong shields, if
they have shields, and they carry the heaviest load of proton torpedoes as well
as ion cannons. Pretty much, never send them to fight other fighters, unless
you have like 300 squads worth and the sheer overwhelming numbers will be
enough, because they'll be chewed apart. They're meant to attack capital ships,
and once its shields are down they're once of your most powerful tools to
either disable or destroy it. The bombers in Rebellion are Y-wings, B-wings,
and Tie Bombers.
Interceptors: The exact opposite of bombers, interceptors are fast and
agile and made to fight other fighters. They're not as powerful as fighters
designed for Air Superiority; their main strength lies in their
maneuverability. Their main job is to "intercept" enemy fighters attacking
capital ships and bombers. The interceptors of the game are A-wings and the Tie
Interceptor.
ii) Proton Torpedoes: The real edge against capital ships fighters have
is their torpedoes. The problem is that they won't fire their torps unless the
target's shields are down, otherwise fighters would be way more important and
the rebels far more powerful. Again, YOU FIRST HAVE TO BRING DOWN THEIR SHIELDS
before the little white lines that represent torpedoes will fire at the ships
and cause massive destruction. Once they are used, they are incredibly
devastating against a ship, more so than turbolasers. Only ships that could use
torpedoes in the original X-wing game are the only ones that can use them here.
Unlike in X-wing Alliance, you can't just change the launcher tubes and add
whatever projectile you feel like to a fighter, though it added more variety to
Alliance. This means that A-wings don't have torps (and there are no concussion
missiles in the game), but everything else does, except of course for Tie
Fighters and Interceptors. You can look up the torp power in the status menu
for each type of fighter, but generally those ships built to be bombers,
meaning Y-wings, B-wings, and Tie Bombers, have more torp power than other
fighters. Also, as far as I know, fighters never run out of torps. I figured
that the number their torpedo rating gave might signify their total number of
torpedoes, but they will keep firing them more than that number, so I suppose
the torp rating is simply how powerful each strike is.
iii) The Squadron Effect: Every single fighter icon flying around in the

Tactical Mode represents a single squadron, no matter how many fighters it has
left in it. As long as there's at least one fighter left in a squadron its icon
will be shown. Every time you see a laser or a torp fire from the icon, it has
the strength of all the fighters in the squad alive in it combined. Whenever
you hear a target destroyed message when the target is fighters, that means an
entire squad is destroyed, not just an individual fighter.
Every time something fires on a squad, the second time it fires, it won't
necessarily hit the same fighter that second time. An example of this and of
the power of fighters: Once all I had was 5 X-wing and 1 Y-wing squads to
defend a planet against a single ISD. Now, every time something fires on a
squad of unshielded fighters, one of those fighters will die, no exception.
However, when it fires on shielded craft then the shields will protect the
fighter for like one shot, and until it regenerates the fighter is then
vulnerable. Now, I didn't lose a single fighter against that ISD because of
those shields (remember, the ISD has only turbolasers, not effective against
fighters). See, a ship won't necessarily target the same squad every time it
fires, and when it does it won't necessarily hit the same fighter it did
before. When it fired at my Y-wing squad, it took out the shields of one of
them, but even if it fired at the Y-wings immediately again, it didn't hit the
same fighter, the one without shields. It simply hit another Y-wing and took
out its shields. By the time it targeted the Y-wings again, and hit the same 1
out of 12 fighters it hit first, that fighter's shields had regenerated, and it
could take another shot. I was amazed. Technically, in "reality" the combined
torpedoes of the 6 squadrons should've ripped that ISD apart, but in this game,
they won't fire until the shield are down. Instead, painstakingly slowly, they
damaged the shield generators bit by bit, until the shield generators got
weaker and weaker. The computer was smart enough to know it was a losing
battle, and pulled out, but my fighter screen alone drove off an ISD. Pretty
cool.
iv) Bombardment: Every fighter squad with proton torpedoes has a
bombardment value of either 1 or 2; depending on how many torps the squad can
hold. Just something to keep in mind when conducting bombardments, make sure
you bring a bunch of fighters if you're having trouble getting past some
Gencores.
v) Maneuverability: You can check the stats if you want in the status
menus for the fighters, but generally speaking bombers fly slower than other
fighters and interceptors are the fastest fighters. The point being, it can
help if you know the relative speeds of fighters, because if you send your
fighters all the way across the battlefield in battle mode your interceptors
will arrive first, and your bombers will lag behind all exposed to enemy
fighters. Just a warning.
vi) Star Fighter List
Alliance Fighters
X-wing: My personal favorite starfighter of all time, it's pretty much the most
well rounded fighter in the game in terms of speed, maneuverability, shields,
and firepower. Don't know what you want a shipyard to build? Just have it build
a few of these, since you can never have too many.
Y-wing: These guys were made for taking and giving punishment. However, be
careful because in Rebellion these things get chewed up real fast by enemy
fighters, so NEVER send them to engage fighters. Their usefulness is in their
extra torpedo strength and ion cannons, but B-wings make them obsolete, so
don't make too many of them.
A-wing: Their profession is intercepting fighters quickly. Just too bad they

don't have torps.

B-wing: Heaviest shields and ion canons of any fighter in the game, plus pretty
good laser power, but they can't hold their own against enemy interceptors.
They also carry the most amount torpedoes of any fighter in the game. Just
protect them so they can destroy the big ships. They replace Y-wings, so don't
build any more of those if you need bombers, just build these guys.
Imperial Fighters
Tie Fighters: The cheapest things ever made, but a lot of them can still do
plenty of damage to X-wing squads and light capital ships. Just think of the
Swarm tactic.
Tie Interceptors: Stop making Tie Fighters when you get these. They'll be your
main attacking fighter until Defenders come along, because they're even better
at air superiority than Tie Fighters are, even though they're designed to be
interceptors.
Tie Bombers: According to the X-wing series Tie Bombers shouldn't have ion
cannons, Defenders should, but I guess for the sake of balance the game
designers decided to give the Imps a fighter with ion cannons earlier than they
would if the Defenders had them. The Bomber is the only fighter the Imps have
with ion cannons, and the first fighter they have with torps.
Tie Defenders: Has The most powerful laser canons of any fighter in the game,
but is much more expensive and take much longer to build than other Imperial
fighters, so don't build them when you need a quick fix for fighters. They are
the only Imperial fighters with shields and they have a pretty good torp power
as well. They're the best fighter for the air superiority role in your fleets,
but they aren't maneuverable enough to replace Tie Interceptors as the
interceptors for your fleets. However, stocking your fleets with only these
babies can be a good strategy, since they can do just about any fighter job and
they have shields so they last longer. The only problem is their high
maintenance cost, so you very well need a mix of these and other unshielded
fighters in your fleet.
c) Troops
"Now just remember, no poor bastard every served his country by dying for his
country. He served his country by making some other poor bastard die for his
country."
-General George S. Patton
i) Attack/Defense/Bombardment Defense Ratings: Pretty obvious, the higher
the value a regiment has in either of these categories, the better it is in
that category.
ii) Detection Rating: A very easy aspect of troops to overlook is their
detection rating, especially since it's only mentioned in the Status Menu when
you right click on a regiment. The higher the value a regiment has the more
often it'll detect and foil enemy missions, and with more troops with high
detection ratings you'll foil even more missions. Troops are the first line of
defense against enemy covert missions and if you have none on the surface the
planet's facilities are easy pickings for sabotage missions. So I suggest you
familiarize yourself with the detection ratings of troops to decide which
regiments are the best to use as either garrison units on an unruly planet or
as defense against enemy covert missions. The only time I'll list stats is
here, because I know it's such a pain to look up and remember these ratings
since you can only view one at a time in the Status Menu, and detection happens

to be a very important rating, as opposed to ship maneuverability which isn't

as important.
Alliance Troops
Troop Type
---------Army Regiment
Fleet Regiment
Sullustan Regiment
Mon Calamari Regiment
Wookie Regiment

Detection Rating
---------------10
15
35
20
20

Imperial Troops
Troop Type
Detection Rating
------------------------Army Regiment
15
Fleet Regiment
20
Stormtrooper Regiment
25
War Droid Regiment
5
Dark Trooper Regiment
30
iii) Troop Regiment List
Here I'll list the different troop regiment types and a brief description
of them, starting with their stats in a Attack/Defense/Bombardment Defense
format.
Alliance Troops
Alliance Army Regiment: 3/5/5 The basic defensive army unit of the Alliance.
They have an alright detection value; these things are your best ground defense
at the beginning of the game. They're balanced in strengths, but stronger in
the defensive side, yet they're not useless in an invasion force.
Fleet Regiment: 6/3/5 The basic attacking unit of the Alliance. With an
alright detection rating and balanced strengths they're useful as in any role,
but before you get wookies try to attack with mostly these as they are the
strongest attackers the Rebels have at the beginning of the game.
Sullustan Regiment: 1/4/5 They're alright in defense, though not the best in
bombardment defense, but they're nearly worthless in attacking, so never use
them to invade. They're main purpose is as garrison units because not only are
they the cheapest units the whole game, (only one point of maintenance!) but
they also have the best detection rating in the whole game. It's always good to
have a few of these on planets with important structures, since they make it
just that much harder for enemy covert missions to remain undetected.
Mon Calamari Regiment: 2/8/9 The best defensive unit in the game, nobody has
a better defensive rating and nobody else has a better or equal bombardment
defense rating. And their detection rating is nothing to sneeze at either.
They're also relatively inexpensive to maintain compared to other troops.
Wookie Regiment: 8/4/4 They are the heavy hitters of the Alliance; just think
about it, an entire regiment of wookies attacking. Nothing's gonna stand in
their way. 8 is the highest attack value in the game, and this regiment is the
only alliance regiment that has it. Plus they have better defense than imperial

War Droids, their imperial counterpart, so they have a pretty good chance of
holding a planet once they take it. The problem is, they're the most expensive
troop of the Alliance and they take a long time to train, but once you build
them they're well worth it.
Imperial Troops
Imperial Army Regiment: 3/5/5 The only Imperial unit specializing in defense,
it's exactly the same as the Alliance Army Regiment, just with a better
detection rating. When Stormtroopers are too expensive or unavailable use these
for defense.
Fleet Regiment: 5/3/2 Pretty much, just a weaker version of the Alliance's
Fleet Regiment, with weaker attack and bombardment defense values. When
Stormtroopers are too expensive or unavailable use these for offense.
Stormtrooper Regiment: 6/6/6 A regiment of insanely fanatical soldiers? Not
bad. They're actually the best unit at the start of the game, with a hellish
6/6/6 rating in all categories. Very well rounded, they're good for all
situations, especially since they have one of the highest detection rating in
the game. The only problem is, they take longer than other starting regiments
to build and are more expensive, so you'll still want to build the others as
well, but these guys are the best you have at the start for either invading,
defending, or detecting.
War Droids: 8/2/2 For that planet that has too many units on the ground,
these are the babies to call. They have the attack rating of wookies, the
second regiment of three in the game with an attack rating of 8. The only
problem is that's all they're good for. They have the lowest defense, bombard
defense, and detection ratings of all the troop regiments in the game. I
suppose having a few of these guys defending a planet is better than having no
troops to defend it, but you could always build better defensive troops much
faster than you can these guys. If possible never use these guys for defense.
Dark Troopers: 8/8/6 Hands down the most powerful troop regiment in the game.
Nobody who's ever beaten Dark Forces on any difficulty can forget the power of
these guys. The Empire has no Mon Cal regiment, but these guys cover that
defensive role, AND have the attack power of wookies. They are the third unit
in the game with an attack rating of 8. The highest attack rating, the highest
defensive rating, and the second highest bombardment defense, beaten only by
the Mon Cals in that aspect, all in one unit. Their detection rating is also
the second highest among troop regiments. Their only downside is that they're
the most expensive regiment in the game, and they take the longest to build.
But by far they're worth it. By faaaaar.
----------------------------------------------------------------------5. Conventional Military Strategies
Almost no war can be won with covert means alone. No matter what you will
need conventional muscle behind your war effort. As an example, no sabotage
mission will ever succeed against a fleet with over two dozen capital ships,
not to mention with troops and fighters and officers. Covert operations are
meant to support conventional units, not to do the fighting for them. However,
an important thing to remember is that conventional warfare isn't just about
invading systems and destroying large fleets, it's also about little harassments
and disruptions for the enemy.
a) Raiding: A very effective and VERY annoying tactic is to conduct raids in

enemy territory, which the computer will do a lot. In the real world raids can
consist of capturing resources, but since you can't do that in this game
without a full-scale planetary invasion, raids are simply search and destroy
missions. Basically you send a small fleet with bombardment and antistarfighter capabilities into a sector owned entirely or mostly by the enemy
and bombard the hell out of their defenses on their planets. This gives the
enemy something to worry about plus decreases the amount of ground troops they
have available. Plus if the sector were almost solidly loyal to the enemy, then
you'd be free to attack civilian structures and seriously slow down their
production. What's best though is if the enemy has a planet with ground troops
but no defensive facilities. If you can destroy the ground troops with
bombardment without hitting any civilian buildings then sector-wide support for
you will most likely increase. I suppose it's because the residents don't want
to support a side that can't protect them from bombardment. This can bring
neutral planets to your side and can even create uprisings and garrison
requirements for the enemy (however, this does not work one hundred percent of
the time, why I don't know). And if the enemy should bring a larger force to
destroy you, you can always retreat into hyperspace, but be wary of
Interdictors and CC-7700 Frigates because they can trap your ships and let the
enemy's force devour yours.
The best way to defend against raids is to take it slow. Conquering too
much too quickly doesn't give you time to build ground troops and defensive
structures. Shields are always a good way to go, but sometimes building a
single planetary gun is faster and just as effective for the moment. While it
can't cause much trouble for a large fleet it can at least deter smaller fleets
from raiding. Another thing you can do is to be careful where you hold your
ground troops. Troops on a planet without any defensive structures just beg the
enemy to bombard them and decrease support for you, so make sure to build
shields and guns on systems that require troops.
b) Planetary Bombardments: A catch with bombardments is planetary defenses. If
the system you're bombarding has strong enough shields then your shots won't
make it through. There's no real way to determine if you have the firepower to
bust through the shields, just assemble as much whoop-ass as you can and try
it. If you don't make it through the first two tries then you probably won't
make it through the ninth or tenth times. What are even worse than shields is
planetary guns, because whenever you bombard you're in range of the guns and
they can tear apart very large ships, no matter how advanced the gun is.
Sometimes if you just have to bombard a planet with guns, make sure you bring
LOTS of ships because if you get enough firepower together you may destroy the
guns while only losing a small ship or two.
c) Planetary Assaults: Before you can invade any system the system must have at
most one shield generator. Any more and it's impervious to ground troops. Then
you have to worry about any ground enemy ground troops. If there aren't any
then just make sure you have enough troops to prevent the planet from going
into an uprising. Invading with six troops is usually a good idea if you're not
sure how many you'll need as garrisons, because six is the maximum you'd ever
need. If there are ground troops then it's a different story. If you don't have
the firepower to bombard away the troops or you don't want to risk hitting any
collateral targets then you'll have to use brute force. Naturally you'd want to
invade with only you troops that are designed to attack, such as Wookies or War
Droids. However you should be careful when using a large fleet with various
types of troops. When you make the command to invade the computer will randomly
choose which troops will be used for the assault, which means that it may throw
in some of your defensive troops who will get chewed up. To avoid this, take
your troop transports with the troops you want to attack with and make a new
fleet. This way you can tell only that fleet to assault the planet, and if it
has only Wookies then it can't attack with anything other than Wookies. Just
make sure your new fleet has a few more troops than six, just in case you lose

any when invading.

A good idea before attacking is to send your attacking fleet to a friendly
or neutral near the target. Should the enemy Espionage on his own planet, he
won't have as much of a chance seeing your fleet coming in if the trip to the
target is a short 5 days than if were a good 30 days.
d) Blockading: Whenever you park any ship around an enemy planet, no matter the
size, it effectively cuts off all resources and maintenance the planet give the
enemy. Thus you can knock off a few hundred points of maintenance by spreading
out your fleet over hostile systems. It also gives the enemy less places to
move their ground forces to, and any personnel or troops on the blockaded can
be stuck there if your fleet is large enough to keep them from sneaking
through.
There is of course, a major weakness in this tactic. Holding a single ship
above a hostile planet leaves it wide open to be sabotaged. Those characters you
have trapped beneath it are in a perfect spot to try such a thing. Thus, use
much caution when attempting this. Use Espionage missions to make sure there are
no saboteurs or training facilities to train saboteurs on the ground and to
alert you of any sabotage missions. Spreading out your fleet in a massive
blockade campaign is haphazard, so I don't suggest it. However, a small fleet,
with an admiral, several ships, and a few troops and fighters along with other
their relevant officers can remain virtually safe against enemy covert action.
So instead of letting it just hang around, you could use it to disrupt enemy
supply lines. Just be cautious against enemy missions, and remember that while
your ships are around your enemy's planets, it leaves the space above your
planets unprotected and it tells the enemy exactly where your some of your
forces are.
e) Footholds: It's important to try to get at least one system under your
control and heavily defended in every sector. Even if it doesn't have anything
of use on it, it can serve later as a haven to build up your forces and
assemble your fleet when you do decide to invade the sector in force. Likewise,
you'll want to prevent the enemy from obtaining footholds in your strongest
sectors.
f) Tracking: It's important to keep track of your units at all times. Nothing
sucks more than when you need a ship, or troop regiment, or an Special Forces
immediately, and you can't find one because you lost it. It's also important to
not leave stray units lost on systems you don't pay attention to anymore late
in the game. If you're winning and are larger than the enemy, extra units
everywhere that aren't being used tend to suck up your maintenance, rendering
you unable to produce anything more. Keeping track of them lets you know if you
have more units than you need, and thus you can scrap them. The best way to do
this seems to be to keep units repositories in each sector. Like say, extra
troops and fighters you don't need at the moment you can keep on one or two
systems, so you know where to get them if you need them. It's always smart to
keep moving extra troops with your fleets when you're advancing into enemy
territory, because when the fleets run out, it'll take awhile to build new ones
or for your spares to travel between sectors, which can halt your progress and
give the enemy time to regroup. However, it is still a good idea to keep some
extra units behind, in case of invasion, in case of enemy Incite Uprising
missions, just in case of anything, and repositories can help you keep track of
them.
g) Tactical Mode Strategies
When two fleets engage each other around a planet you enter Tactical Mode.
The basic and most direct way to win a battle is to have all of your ships

attack a single ship in the enemy fleet until it's dead or fully disabled, then
move onto another target. The only thing you need to remember when using this
is to not overkill your target. If the enemy fleet is mostly corvettes, and
you're sporting a dozen ISD's you don't need every one of your star destroyers
to attack a single corvette. A few can take it down very quickly and the others
can concentrate on other corvettes. However, there are a few other aspects of
battle besides this direct method that can give you an edge.
i) Utilizing Starfighters: Keeping your fleets balanced between capital
ships and fighters is a necessity in Rebellion. A few dozen squadrons can be
just as powerful as a Super Star Destroyer but swifter in battle. The best piece
of advice I can offer for fighters is to keep them together and not send them
after targets piecemeal. There is strength in numbers, and this is especially
true for fighters. The only exception to this rule is bombers; you'll want to
keep them separated from enemy fighters as much as possible while your other
fighters engage them.
What you do with your fighters at the onset of a battle is solely up to you
and your situation. You can send them all against a super-strong enemy capital
ship to cripple it before it can hit your own capital ships, or you can keep
them back to defend against enemy fighters trying to disable one of your ships.
Obviously once the battle progresses into chaos you will need your fighters to
respond to whatever comes up. That's the beauty of fighters, they can deliver
the force of a cruiser to any point in the battlefield very quickly. When a
capital ship's shields are down it is doomed to die if several squadrons of
torpedo carrying fighters are nearby.
ASP's are one of the two biggest threats to fighters, so you should choose
the targets farthest from them. However don't be too scared, for an overwhelming
swarm of fighters can easily disable an ASP with the loss of only a few
fighters. Enemy fighters are the other largest threat, and if possible you
should try to engage them nearby your own ASP's. There is a good rule of thumb
for fighter-on-fighter combat without other ships nearby: Rebel fighters will
always defeat Imperial fighters of similar or slightly larger number. Rebel
fighters and their shields are vastly superior to the Empire's finest, and even
Tie Defenders cannot seem to bridge this gap. As such, the Empire should be very
careful with their fighters and should always try to battle Rebel fighters with
the aid of several ASP's, because every time a laser is fired at unshielded Ties
in the Tactical Mode one of them IS going to die.
It all depends on the balance of fighters you have, whether they have
shields or not, and your particular style. Again, you just have to learn to feel
your way through a battle to use fighter effectively.
ii) Formations: Let's face it, if you're using an aggressive strategy
where you rush forward to attack the enemy fleet, then formations are really
hard to hold, given the variances of maneuverability's between ships and their
single-mindedness. The only way I can think of to hold a formation is to play
defensive and stay where you are. By using the navigational points to place
ships at different points you can create a defensive formation. Only practice
can teach you how to set up your formation, but a few obvious ideas do hold.
For instance ships designed solely for troop transport that have weak shields
and few guns belong at the rear of your formation. Your most advanced ships
with the best shields and the strongest guns belong near the front, with ASP's
supporting them. Whether you make your formation dagger shaped, spherical, or
some geometric monstrosity, is up to you. No battle is the same, and no
formation can win them all, but knowing how to situate your ships so that you

take the least damage and deliver the most damage does help. Just remember that
formations hold only for so long before the battle erupts into chaos, so they
are only marginally effective.
iii) Navigating: By navigating I mean when you select a specific point and
right click it to tell the ship to go there. The key to managing ships is to
not micromanage. They will fire and move very well on they're own. I myself
have to fight the temptation to come up with complex battle plans, because it
takes the ships too long to respond, and they never hold formation. The only
times you'd really need to navigate would be to move a damaged or overmatched
ship out of the fray to keep it safe. Whatever you do, don't try to add over 2
waypoints for a ship to follow (you shouldn't even need that many most of the
time) because sometimes they don't register, and it rarely does what you want.
The only other thing is, give them time after sending them an order, it'll take
a ship a number of seconds before it'll change from one order to the next. By
all means don't repeat the order if you think the game missed your mouse
clicking and the ship didn't hear you, as long as you hear an acknowledgement
the ship knows what it's doing, and repeating the order just makes them take
even longer. Sometimes they're just thinking like Battlecruisers from StarCraft
and the commander's saying "Take it slow."
iv) Maneuvers: Maneuvers aren't really all that useful; you probably won't
use them that often if ever. Basically you just want your ships to destroy the
other ships as quickly as possible, and sending them directly at the enemy
ships works best with that. The only real use I can think of for maneuvers is
if you want to strike at the defenseless troop transports (bulk transports,
star galleons, etc.) at the rear of the enemy formation without having to go
through the middle of the enemy fleet and take a pounding. Depending on how the
enemy fleet is formed, a right hook or a bottom hook could keep a few ships
safer from enemy fire while they home in on their prey. You may also want to be
careful with these because if the target is too close, then when they're
conducting a maneuver your ships may overshoot their target and pass it, and
then proceed to move out of range in order to finish the maneuver. If you can't
think of any reason why you would need to use a maneuver, then don't use one
just because they're there. Most of the time you can get along just fine
without any.
Alas, but given the constraints in game play it's pretty much impossible
to be a Grand Admiral Thrawn and defeat a seriously overwhelming and more
powerful fleet by using a certain set of strategies. The best way to win a
battle is to practice. Know when to pull your damaged ships out and to the rear
so they can repair, know how many of your ships can handle how many of theirs,
know when to stop firing on a target which is mostly disabled and poses no
threat anymore, and above all know when to retreat.
Since every battle is different there is no precise step-by-step method to
winning every one. The best way to get better here is to practice. Once you get
a feel for the tactical mode, it gets easier and easier.
----------------------------------------------------------------------6. The Big Picture: Overall Strategy
"Therefore in laying plans compare the following elements, appraising them with
the utmost care" - Sun Tsu, The Art of War
There is no real formula to win the game. No magic secret plan that'll
ensure victory each time. Each game is different, so you pretty much have to
make it up while you go along. Take each punch as you see fit. However, there
are some general guidelines for playing as the Rebels and as the Imperials, and
I'll just list some suggestions for each. Game play in mostly the same for

both, consolidate your fleets together to protect them from sabotage,

constantly send covert missions, diplomatize anything as quickly as you can,
etc., but there are a few vital differences between military units and starting
positions that are worth mentioning.
a) Playing as Rebels
- Immediately when you start, get Han to take all the characters on Yavin
to wherever they'll be more useful. Get Wedge and anyone else who can research
doing so ASAP. You might also want to move any units on Yavin to somewhere
else, because they're pretty useless all the way out on the Outer Rim.
- Have whomever you want to Recruit, as long as you always have someone
Recruiting until there are no more characters left to recruit. I usually have
Mon Mothma recruit at the HQ and then diplomatize nearby systems on the Outer
Rim, but that way it takes the characters a long time to reach the Core and do
something useful. You could also have Luke or Han recruits in between sabotage
or other missions, but I always keep Leia on diplomacy missions because good
diplomats are rare at the start of the game. Also, I suggest that you keep Mon
Mothma in the Outer Rim Territories. While she is a capable diplomat, in a
regular game she is an objective for the Empire, so keeping her hidden and
diplomaticing small systems with a few mines and refineries not only helps
prevent the enemy from winning, but also wins some resources for you. Obviously
Force sensitive Luke Skywalker does not need to be hidden in the Outer
Territories, since a jedi is much harder to capture than the physically weak
Mon Mothma.
-Since you already start with transports and troops on the Outer Rim at
Yavin and your HQ, you can get a jump-start on colonizing.
-Early in the game, have your shipyards build either bulk transports or
fighters. All the other ships you have aren't worth building since better ones
will be available soon, and you'll want to get working on them ASAP. It's also
better to get those transports now while you can, because later you might not
have time to wait to build more because your fleet can't carry enough troops.
-Your ships are vastly outgunned at the start of the game. They are for
most of the game in fact. So you may want to group most of your ships into one
or two main fleets, because that way if you bump into a stray imperial ship,
you may stand a chance.
- Resist the urge to frequently change the location of your HQ. Sometimes
when you move it off a system, the system will lose a bit of loyalty for you,
and that can cause informants to give information to Empire, which will reveal
the location of one of your hidden colonies. Besides, as long as the Empire has
never shown its face in the sector, then moving your HQ isn't necessary.
-Your starfighters are vastly superior to the Empire's. While they easily
defeat Ties whose numbers equal theirs, do not be overconfident because swarms
of Ties will still inflict many casualties upon you, especially your bombers.
Just know that while unshielded Ties usually cannot drive off cruiser on their
own, yours can, within reason, because of their shields and torpedoes.
- The Empire starts with several systems that require garrisons. Try to
quickly find these and send sabotage missions to incite uprisings or to free
them before the Empire can send its diplomats in.
- For most of the game, your ships won't be able to go toe to toe with
imperial ships in battle, so direct confrontations should be avoided.
Therefore, you should probably concentrate more on raiding and covert
operations, including MAP's, to fight the Empire until you can build up enough
conventional muscle to bring to bear.
- Be on the lookout for stray imperial ships. While you probably couldn't
destroy one of their star destroyers with the ships available to you at the
start, sabotage missions on lonely SD's can help your forces to breathe easier.
b) Playing as Empire

- At the start of the game I highly recommend that you keep the Emperor
Recruiting on Coruscant and send Darth Vader on diplomacy missions. It's a
tradeoff, since only those two can Recruit for the Empire, however the Empire
does also have very few diplomats and several planets require garrisons, and
Vader can help fill this deficiency.
- Speaking of planets needing garrisons, make sure these are well
protected from enemy covert missions, with either units to defend with or
officers. Send diplomacy missions to them quickly, or at least send them to
other systems in the sector to win over some planets and increase loyalty on
yours.
- Try to bring Coruscant's sector (the Sesswenna sector) completely under
your control. Rebel or neutral planets can act as platforms for covert strikes
from them, and if you let them entrench themselves in the sector it can pose a
serious threat once they have a large conventional force.
- Speaking of Coruscant, while it is not an immediate need, you will want
to put as many defenses down on it as possible. Think about quintuple shields
protection and fields of planetary guns, basically as many as you can build
with the given energy resources. While you do have some time before the Rebels
have enough ships to start dreaming about taking on the might Imperial Fleet,
do know that it is possible for the Rebels to take Coruscant early on. If they
put all of their ships together in one single fleet, and take as many fighters
and troops as they can with them, it IS possible for them to conquer Coruscant
within the first 70 days. While it is extremely unlikely that they will be
strong enough to hold Coruscant against a counter-attack by you, if you're
playing the game with the HQ Only option, that doesn't matter much because
they'll have already won. So, it would be a good idea to keep around at least
two or three star destroyers over Coruscant, since Corvettes and Dreadnaughts
haven't got a prayer against them.
-It's hard enough for the Rebels to be outgunned. It'll be even harder for
them to fight without production facilities. If your covert personnel can knock
out their shipyards and stray ships and they won't be able to get a fleet up
and running.
- As soon as it is convenient I suggest you task a training facility to
build somewhere around 10-20 Imperial Probe Droids to search for the Rebel HQ.
They found it in the movies, and they can find it in the game. No matter what
size you set the galaxy as, there's a lot of space to cover, so be patient. At
the very least they can tell you where Rebel colonies are or aren't. I would
also suggest you switch the system that they're based on after awhile.
Eventually you'll cover the Outer Rim sectors closest to where they are based,
and it'll take them longer and longer to Recon other sectors. Thus, you should
move them to sectors closer to unexplored Outer Rim Territories, or even onto a
MAP without the spies and saboteurs, so that you can explore even quicker.
-Don't fret if your opponent keeps moving his HQ once you find it. Instead
of trying to deal a decisive blow by knocking out their HQ early on, which is
hard to do and ties up your ships, you should concentrate more on destroying
their support and overall military strength. Once you evict them from most of
the Core sectors, they will have less and less places to hide on. Going blindly
after your objectives solely is not the best way to win.
- Your star destroyer can pick their teeth with the Rebels tiny ships.
Don't be afraid to get into engagements with their capital ships, but be wary
of their fighters. Bring your own fighters to escort your ships, because a good
number of Rebel fighters can repel your star destroyers if you do not have
adequate fighter coverage.
----------------------------------------------------------------------Special Thanks
Special thanks to LucasArts and Coolhand for making such a great game, and
for posting a helpful website at http://www.lucasarts.com/products/rebellion/

that cleared up a few things for me.

Special thanks to AJ- for helping me (while it may have been a reluctant
help at times) test hypothesis and ideas in Rebellion for this FAQ and for
helping in proofreading it.
Special thanks to CjayC for having such a wonderful idea as Gamefaqs and
for maintaining it as well as he does.

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