Homeworld

Ah, okay. I remember when I played it for the first time a few years ago I left it on the Tac view in the Garden of Kadesh gathering all of the resources while I went to dinner and it annoyed the hell out of my roommate because of the constant beeping XD

edited 21st Jun '15 3:34:58 PM by theLibrarian

Playing Homeworld 2 now. Are upgrades permanent? Do enemies still scale depending on how many units you start with? Are fighters ever not useless in this one?

edited 1st Jul '15 11:11:43 AM by Spirit

Yes, no, and yes, I believe.

It's probably a very late reply, but enemies do scale. I once experimented with giving myself ten battlecruisers for the Balcora Gate mission, only to see the enemy start with 30. The AI is not even trying to be fair.

And fighters... well, bombers are crazy good now. Fighters, though... I'd rather build flak frigates, if I were you.

I thought that they patched that out of this version.

Also, Aspyr has done it again! They've ported Homeworld over to the App Store and a Mac version will soon be on Steam.

Wasn't talking about Remastered.

Ah, okay.

Damnit wrong thread, sorry guys.

edited 14th Jan '16 1:34:52 AM by YoKab

Just started HW: R - didn't realise they'd upped the scaling from HW 2 (Think it's due to the Engine) so mission 3 gave me a shock with the 7 Assault Frigates that pretty much insta killed 2 Cryo trays.

Which are apparently made from tissue paper now.

So, replay of mission 2 needed and then scrapping half me fleet. Still a thing I hate, as it discourages you from doing well and getting a well balanced fleet and instead makes you start from scratch each mission.

Well you can turn it off in the settings (which I am definitely going to do)

NILPS - that's the scaling for ship size, not mission scaling sadly. And apparently in HW: R captured frigates now just turn into RU's. So no more 100 strong Ion cannon cheese fleet. But the game looks pretty and plays well - plus they still have the original version bundled.

Query for you Homeworlders; anyone actually make use of Marine Frigates? I realize mass Salvage Corvette cheese is popular amongst HW 1 players, but I've lnly ever encountered one other HW 2 player who actually uses Marine Frigates (primarily in multiplayer).

I find them a bit fragile, and only really useful if the other fleet's attention is elsewhere, or I'm gunning for an undefended carrier or somesuch.

I only ever used a marine frigate in skirmish against AI once. Happened years ago, so my memory could be a bit rusty.

I was wrecking face with a battlecruiser when it got zergrushed by about half a dozen infiltrator frigates (I was paying attention at the carrier the battlecruiser was shooting, the frigates came from the opposite direction so I didn't see them until it was too late) and captured. I brought in my bomber wing, blasted apart the cruiser's engines and was bringing in the marine frigate to retake the ship.

The second the battlecruiser spotted the approaching marine frigate, it hyperspaced out to avoid capture. Needless to say, I was swearing at the screen quite heavily for not having anticipated that.

edited 2nd Feb '16 3:29:38 PM by amitakartok

Ah, yes. I've had that happen. Often enough I generally just wail on enemy hyperspace modules before actually hitting the ships themselves. HW 1 ships in MP have no targetable hyperspace modules.. cue rage.

I've only ever had one significant victory with them; in a Homeworld Remastered carriers-only match. Managed to distract the other guy just enough (pulsar rush!) to hyper in a pile of marine frigates and nab it, handily winning the game.

According to the other player afterwards, he was swearing at his screen when he panned the camera back over, and noticed the capture bar almost filled.

edited 2nd Feb '16 3:45:33 PM by Error404

Marine Frigates are terrible. I never used them in HW 2 once I realized how bad they were. I haven't played the Remastered version, though.

^ This. At first I was ecstatic at a unit that can capture without dragging a unit back to the Mothership and then fly back to the front lines. But then I saw that it takes forever to capture the unit, they are still active while being captured, and the enemy now prioritizes them.

On another note, how is Deserts of Kharek? Worth a buy now, or should I wait for a sale?

Been watching a Let's Play of it. It definitely has the mood of the older games. Gameplay is highly similar and heavy on micro, leans more towards the HW 2 engine's frantic skirmishes than the HW 1 engine's sluggish slugfests.

And the soundtrack, well... it's Ruskay's handiwork. Nothing else needs to be said.

I recently started playing HWR a few weeks ago. Just as good as I remember it, and frigates don't turn into R Us. I've captured a lot of them myself.

I remember when concept art started coming out for Deserts of Kharak, some people complained that having so much wrecks on Kharak is an arbitrary retcon.

For those who haven't played the game or watched videos of it, this gets explained roughly halfway through the campaign: the hyperspace core inside the Khar Toba is emitting an interference field that causes all ships passing near the Kharak system to get violently yanked out of hyperspace and into the planet. In at least four known cases, the "into the planet" part was literal, which is where the Gaalsien suddenly got all their tech from - and in one case, the field interdicted a Taiidan carrier, which I think might be why the Taiidan were paying so close attention to Kharak that they later responded to the Mothership's first jump within hours.

edited 2nd Feb '16 4:39:05 PM by amitakartok

I'm definitely interested in grabbing Deserts of Kharak. Lots of positive reviews from both the professional reviewers and the community itself. Just won't be doing it anytime soon, my gaming backlog is getting a bit too long to complete.

Yeah the Taiidan left a nice little surprise in Orbit. Which was I think their fairly "humane" way of keeping people on the planet. When the Kushan get into space, I think they probably remove that orbital weapon and that means that the taiidan then respond with the more extreme policy, rather than just shutting the Kushan down with kill-sats on space heading targets

Do K is VERY much Homeworld. It evokes all the right feels. Even has capturing, but it's a pain. You need to manage your "fleet" a bit more carefully. The AI isn't very smart, but they can still chew your troops up if your try blobbing. And you definitely need to make use of abilities. And the carrier / main ship is actually useful this time, rather than just a big unit selector.

Missions tend to be a bit samey but there're some nice twists and a really distinctive feel to each unit. They kept the Unit veterancy as well which has a NOTICEABLE impact on troops - a fully upgraded railgun is a lethal sniper.

The voice acting and art is spot on. Only complaint is it feels a little short and some of the missions are really easy.

But then it throws a mix of units at you that chew you up for being lazy and not planning ahead or making effective use of terrain / unit mobility. It has a lot of potential depth and frankly I think it will improve with DLC / sequels.

And Marine frigates can... yeah they can go die in a fire. Would rather have had a corvette do something similar - a troop transport. The fact that in HW 2 frigates are made of tinfoil (Unless they're Vaygr) makes things a bit annoying. Though I'd forgotten how psychotically powerful strike craft were in it. Though lost 4 squads of Interceptors on mission two without noticing. But bombers seem weirdly capable of shooting down Vaygr strike craft...

edited 23rd Jun '17 1:35:12 AM by JerekLaz

Good news for those hoping for the return of Cataclysm: it's back, though under "Homeworld: Emergence" since Blizzard has the registered trademark on "Cataclysm" so the name was changed to avoid any sort of confusion and/or legal standoff. Given that the source code was apparently lost and that the now-defunct studio is under another copyright holder (in this case Rockstar), which would result in a potential legal nightmare, I never thought this would see the light of day...

edited 22nd Jun '17 8:19:53 PM by GrafVonTirol

Now all we need is for somebody to make this an addition to the Homeworld: Remastered Edition pack.

It's already being sold as part of that on GOG, and I'll definitely be picking it up at some point.

Will it connect to the Steam version of Homeworld: Remastered?