Gameplay tips on loyalty, control and garrisons summarizes how the official "Rebellion - Gameplay Tips" web page describes loyalty, control, uprisings and the Agent's Manage Garrisons setting in Star Wars: Rebellion. The page belonged to the game's official site; see LucasArts Rebellion website (2004 archive).

Three separate ideas

The page defines three terms that it calls integral to success:

• Loyalty is the popular support a system gives to one side or the other.
• Control is ownership of a system, whichever side its people favor. The page notes that the Empire can control a planet whose population fully supports the Alliance.
• Diplomacy is the ability to move a system toward a player's side.

How events spread

Actions taken in the game change loyalty and, through it, control. The page's examples:

• Winning one system over by diplomacy may also win over a few other neutral planets in the same sector whose loyalty to that side was already greater than 50 percent.
• Taking planets by force can lead to uprisings, because the population did not back the conqueror.
• Destroying one of a player's own planets with the Death Star, in a sector where the player's other planets are not fully loyal, can push several of them into uprising and may lose some of them.

In general, an event on one system affects other systems in its sector to some degree, and destroying a whole sector can have a galaxy-wide effect on the core sectors. The page says that the page says rim systems seem unaffected, in loyalty, by what happens elsewhere in the galaxy. It also says that control of a planet is often held only because the controller keeps enough troops there to meet the garrison requirement and so avoid an uprising.

Uninhabited rim planets

To control an uninhabited rim planet, at least one troop regiment must be moved from a fleet at that system onto the planet itself. The garrison requirement shown for such a planet is zero, yet moving the troops off before the planet is developed loses control of it. After a facility has been built there, loyalty is full and the troops can be moved on.

The Agent's Manage Garrisons setting

With Manage Garrisons switched on, the Agent tries to prevent uprisings and to give each planet a minimal defense against invasion, always keeping one troop regiment more on a planet than the number needed to prevent an uprising. If more regiments are needed and none can be found, new ones are built. When a system is already in uprising, the Agent looks for or builds enough regiments to end it. Regiments beyond what is required are scrapped to reduce maintenance. See also Garrisons.