Galactic Civil War Update

"'The Galactic Civil War is being introduced with Update 15. With this update, your GCW points are directly responsible for control of cities, planets, and the galaxy. You will see these changes reflected on your planetary and galactic maps.'"

Game Update 15, or the GCW Update was first discussed with producers at FanFaire 2009, and is hyped as being the largest, most complex and most exciting addition that Star Wars Galaxies has seen in the past few years. Producer "Teesquared" had said, "This update will bring with it the most engaging GCW content we have ever put into the game," whilst teasing the content in his | Producer Note in November 2009. Various aspects of this mammoth Update started to appear on the Test Center on the | 3rd December and the | 16th December. The Update is expected to reach live servers in early 2010.

The Update was designed with one sole purpose: To bring the GCW to the forefront of the game. The intention was to make sure that every player was affected by the very real Civil War that the Galaxy was in the midst of and had, until this point, not quite made its mark on gameplay.

The Update has included, amongst other things; a regional, planetary and galaxy-wide control game, the "factional helper" system and large scale planetary invasions.

Galactic Civil War Screen
This new part of the User Interface allows players to see the control that each faction has over certain areas of the Galaxy. Percentage of control in all different aspects for all planets can be accessed from this User Interface, as well as other features.

Regional Control
Regions are shown with one of three symbols showing Imperial Control, Rebel Control or Contested.

Planetary Control
As well as overal military control of the various regions, Planetary Control can be influenced by other aspects of the game. The GCW screen shows percentage scores from Trading, Entertaining....(ETC)

Galaxy Control
In the top left hand corner of the screen the be-all-and-end-all control of the Galaxy is shown as a percentage score. Every act taken in the Galactic Civil War serves to tip this balance slightly and give one side the advantage.

SWG Control
Above all other modes of control is this cross-server leaderboard. A faction that could claim majority dominence over not only their Galaxy but over every single one of the Star Wars Galaxies would be a force to be reckoned with!

GCW Invasion


"'Another system added to the upcoming publish is a city invasion system. We have built a framework that can be used to populate a city with GCW aware structures, spawners, events, and quests. The new framework will allow us to quickly add an invasion to more cities in the future.  In the GCW update, we have built out three cities for the invasion system which are: Dearic on Talus, Bestine on Tatooine, and Keren on Naboo.'"

The three affected cities are:


 * Bestine, Tatooine
 * Keren, Naboo
 * Dearic, Talus

In each case, the battle unfolds in two stages. The first is a Construction Phase and the second is a Combat Phase. Each Phase has missions that all professions can take part in. Missions are obtained from the Offensive and Defensive Camps that can be found outside and inside the cities respectively. Defensive Camps are also the location of the defending General whose defeat is the objective of attacking forces (and as such their survival is the objective of defending forces). Invasions take place in each city once every three hours. Completing missions in either Phase grants the player GCW points and GCW Tokens. To partake in these missions all players (including Entertainers and Traders) must be at least combatant, and setting your status to Special Forces grants twice as many rewards and tokens.

Phase 1: Construction
Everything that is required for the construction stage is provided in the contested city so that all that players need to do is arrive at the correct Terminals at the correct time to begin their role in this Phase. Both sides of the invasion take part in the Construction Phase to increase the number, type and offensive/defensive skills of the combat units that will be available to them in the Combat Phase. This Phase lasts for 30 minutes.

Traders begin by constructing Tools using resources available freely from Terminals in the Camps. The quality of these resources can be changed by Spies slicing the terminals.

All players can then use these Tools to add resources to the Pylons that can be found scattered throughout the city or on the invasion route. Traders are the most efficient Pylon crafters, although other professions can take part in this stage. For every Tool that is uesd in building up a Pylon, a trader adds ten resources whilst combat professions add only one. Pylons of different levels which are dependent on the amount of resources used in their construction.


 * Level 0 Pylon - 0 resourecs used.
 * Level 1 Pylon - 1 to 49 resources used.
 * Level 2 Pylon - 50 to 99 resources used.
 * Level 3 Pylon - 100 resources used.

Each Pylon also comes with a specialisation that determines what part it will play in the coming battle. Pylons that remain at level 0 will not transform into a combat resource once the Construction Phase is over.

Constructing these Pylons cause the builder to suffer from fatigue. Entertainers can remove this fatigue and by doing so speed up the construction rates of their side.

Soldier Patrol Pylons
These Pylons become Patrol Spawn Points and spawn NPCs during the next Phase of various quantities and levels.


 * Level 1 Spawn Point: Level 60 NPCs
 * Level 2 Spawn Point: Level 90 NPCs
 * Level 3 Spawn Point: Level 90 elite NPCs

Vehicle Patrol Pylons
These Pylons become Vehicle Spawn Points and spawn Vehicles during the next Phase of various quantities and levels.


 * Level 1 Spawn Point: Level 60 elite vehicle
 * Level 2 Spawn Point: Level 90 elite vehicle
 * Level 3 Spawn Point: Level 90 boss vehicle

Barricade Pylons
These Pylons become Barricades and shields nearby players and NPCs during the next Phase. They do not have levels, but their hit points are increased by 5000 for each resource used.

Turret Pylons
These Pylons become Turrets that are controlled by an AI and fire on enemy units. The different levels of the Pylon gives the turret increased damage per shot, each resource used also increases the hit points by 5000.

Tower Pylons
These Pylons become Towers that give buffs to nearby NPCs and vehicles. Once again they do not have levels, but their hit points are increased by 5000 for each resource used.

The Pylons remain as Pylons throughout the Construction Phase. Each of the above five Pylon types are represented by an icon that can be seen floating above the Pylon. They are converted to the correct item once the next Phase begins.

Phase 2: The Invasion
The invader's objective in the Invasion is to eliminate the defending general, so it follows that the defender's objection is to defend the general. This Phase lasts for a further 30 minutes. Within these overarching objectives are a whole host of other missions that include all professions.

Rewards
The GCW Update involves lots of new Galactic Civil War Era rewards and items, including Battle Worn Armor and Factional Capes.