Star Wars: Rebellion

Star Wars: Rebellion (released in the United Kingdom as Star Wars: Supremacy) is a 1998 real-time grand strategy game for Windows 95, published by LucasArts and developed with Coolhand Interactive of Palo Alto, California. LucasArts described it as its first Star Wars grand strategy game. The player commands either the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire across a whole galaxy, managing planets, production, fleets and characters.

Setting

The game starts just after the destruction of the first Death Star in A New Hope. It has no scripted story; the course of the war depends on the players.

Gameplay

The galaxy

The galaxy contains 100 to 200 star systems, grouped into 10 to 20 sectors of ten systems each. The player chooses the galaxy size and a difficulty level when starting a game. Each system has its own loyalty, resources and forces.

A system's loyalty (popular support) is separate from control (who owns it): the Empire can control a planet whose people fully support the Alliance. Loyalty can be won by diplomacy or by force; force works quickly but can leave a resentful system that later switches sides. Planets need enough garrison troops to prevent uprisings.

Time

The game runs in real time rather than in turns. Time passes in game days, and the player can change the speed or pause.

Resources and production

Mines produce raw materials and refineries turn them into the refined materials that every facility, ship, troop and special force needs. Each mine-and-refinery pair also adds 50 maintenance points; the maintenance pool limits how many units a side can keep, and blockades stop maintenance from getting through. Construction draws refined materials in portions, so a build is delayed, not refused, when materials run short. There is no real build queue: changing the quantity of a build in progress resets it.

Characters and missions

Characters lead fleets and armies and carry out missions such as diplomacy, espionage, sabotage, abduction and research. The LucasArts site gives 55 characters in all (28 Alliance, 27 Empire), drawn from the films, the Zahn novels and Dark Horse comics, with one or two created for the game; the same site's image gallery mentions 60 heroes and villains. Force-sensitive characters can be trained as Jedi.

Tactical combat

When opposing fleets meet over a system, a real-time 3D tactical battle begins. The player can command task forces and fighter squadrons directly or let the computer resolve the battle. The 2003 SWRebellion review called the tactical mode a forerunner of games such as Homeworld.

Winning

• Alliance: capture Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, and take Coruscant.
• Empire: capture Luke Skywalker and Mon Mothma, and destroy the Rebel headquarters, which starts in a random location and can move.

Multiplayer

Two players can play against each other over a LAN, modem-to-modem, a direct connection, or the Internet through The Zone (zone.com).

System requirements

The original release required Windows 95, a CD-ROM drive, a Pentium 90 processor, 16 MB of RAM and DirectX 5.0.

Availability today

The game is sold digitally on Steam and GOG (the GOG version is DRM-free), and is described as working on Windows 7, 8 and 10. The community Rebellion Fix improves compatibility with modern versions of Windows, and the game can be modified with editors such as RebEd and the Star Wars Rebellion Editor (.NET). A community remake, Rebellion 2, entered alpha in 2026.