Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Ok, this is officially cool as all hell. There is no multiplayer in the demo, but I can seriously imagine a multiplayer game of Galactic Conquest making Civ 4 look like a game of tic-tac-toe in terms of time to totally complete.

Basically the game plays rather like a MOO-series game, with planet to planet conquest and an orbital combat and ground combat for control. Construction and resources are planetary. When you attack a planet, or a fleet in space, it will take you into a CnC style map-based combat where you play out the conflict in RTS mode.

There are some REALLY REALLY cool aspects of the gameplay, though. For instance, all the rebel tech is aquired by "stealing" it from the Empire. Only the Empire can research, which means they are always a tick or two ahead in tech. The "Rebels" however, are mostly invisible to the Empire unless they have been detected by probe droids. The rebels can also use a smuggler as both a planetary recon and to siphon money of an Empirial planet. The if you are Empire and you see a planets production drop, however, you can hire and then dispatch a bounty hunter to eliminate them. These styles of "hero" units come from inherent structures on planets (cantinas and Hutts, respectively), so there are differing advantages to controlling the planets.

Space combat is friggin intense. Partially because all your craft make their attacks in runs at the enemy, and a squadron breaks out from their central point in a big animation fest. Caps and stations have attackable subsystems, then bomber units can drop on the subsystems bypassing shield status. Also, if you have a bomber unit in orbit during a ground attack, you can call in bombing runs against a timed special.

No kidding. There is an ASSLOAD of stuff in this game. If anything, though, it reminds me how tactically rich I always imagined SWG could have been, but... aah... isn't.

It is looking like LEC has following up Republic Commando and the Battlefront series with another real winner. Star Wars gaming is back... an it's baaaaad.