History Headscratchers / Homeworld

[[Headscratchers: How exactly Taiidans managed to react so fast?]]

* The Kushans spend 60+ years and enormous resources building the Scaffolds and the Mothership, a million-ton grade space objects. Wouldn't it be more practical for them to use a fraction of those resources to build a sunshade for a planet, and if not saving Kharakh (which may be impossible by that moment), but at least giving themselves much more time to work out evacuation?

*** He needs the Mothership core and is baiting them to Balcora.

** Because they stopped to care long ago, after Kushans fell into barbarity and stopped to be even the potential threat.

** [[TheWikiRule The Encyclopedia Hiigara]] says that they are remarkably similar to [[http://homeworld.wikia.com/wiki/Low_Orbit_Atmosphere_Deprivation_Weapon thermobaric weapons]] (i.e. fuel-air explosives). It's probably on a much bigger scale, and with a lot more bombs involved, than the modern-day [=FAEs=] like the "Daisy Cutter."

*** He's a good sport?

*** ''Cataclysm'' explains that they didn't, the Empire imploded on its own due actions the Kushan triggered: with the Empire already in trouble with the Council and its neighbours, the Burning of Kharak started a large rebellion that, while suppressed and almost wiped out, weakened the Empire and distracted its forces allowing the Kushan to sneak inside going through the various weak spots of the Imperial defensive net (the latter is openly stated in-game); as a consequence of the various commitments, the Empire couldn't muster enough forces to defend Hiigara, and the Kushan, with help from the surviving rebels, managed to kill the Emperor; as chaos ensues in the wake of the Emperor's death and the Bentusi and the Council impose on the Taiidan to leave the Kushan alone, the rebels destroyed the gene bank containing the data to clone the Emperor; with no ability to clone the Emperor (implied to be a clone of his predecessor himself) and all other candidate successors having been killed on his orders, the Imperial military fragmented, with most siding with the rebels and their Taiidan Republic and the rest founding bandit kingdoms that planned to topple the Republic and wipe out the Hiigarans.

*** That's a pretty massive assumption, given the teeming nature of the galaxy they're in. And that leads to another question: if the second dreadnought berth is in plain sight of the first, why didn't Makaan grab both while he had the chance?

*** In the mission where you acquire the Dreadnaught, if you look out of the map bounds you can see another dreadnaught berth...

** My theory is that since the Hiigarans aren't actually human, the writers just decided that they could breed like rabbits. That, or TheyJustDidntCare.

** It's also reasonably logical in some other ways. The Kushani at least, wouldn't have much of a concept of naval warfare. On land, tanks are ''utterly'' dependent on infantry to be their eyes and ears, and for point defense. In the air, it's a tradeoff between anti-fighter capability and bomb load-out. It's only in the seas (and in space) that you can have a massive vessel bristling with guns for shooting all sizes of things. And the Taiidan ship designs do tend to have better turret placement.

* Initially, whilst telling the Kushani fleet about their history, the Bentusi spoke of the Angel Moon, a beautiful satellite that used to orbit Hiigara but was long since gone. Only for you to arrive in the Hiigara system at the end of the game and have it sitting there in the background exactly as its described. [=HW2=], even uses the thing as a big shiny rally point almost right at the beginning of the game. Why did they do this?

*** ''Also'', the Kushani hyperdrive technology being reverse-engineered and still rather imperfect was cited as the reason why the Mothership had to make such an epic journey. It was implied that with a proper hyperspace core, they could have simply jumped straight into the Hiigaran system. This, at least, appears to have escaped being retconned, as it is never a lack of range that has the Mothership leave hyperspace in [=HW2=] (nor in Cataclysm, actually...).

** As well, the Mothership is forced out on its journey before its sublight engines can be brought online and spends the entire game as a stationary object, jumping through hyperspace from one fixed location to another. Yet the opening cinematic of [=HW2=] shows it cruising along surrounded by its fleet very ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|Classic}}''-like. In skirmishes and multiplayer matches, the Mothership ''is'' mobile however, as it is in [=HW2=] as well.

*** In the mission where you acquire the Dreadnaught, if you look out of the map bounds you can see another dreadnaught berth...
** There are a number of statements like that that are shoehorned into the game, especially the ending. "[After the hyperspace cores were united] Ancient conflicts came to an end." Why? How? "The Eye of Aran was discovered." The what? Why has this never been mentioned before? "It was opened by the power of the three." Why? Slow down! "A great network of hyperspace gates, perfectly preserved in the void..." STAHP

** Possibly because fleet coordination is down at that time-- Karen has been knocked out, and she's the one who manages all the hundreds of incident reports from every ship in the fleet. Basically, without her, the Kushan fleet is a hundred unconnected eyes, relying on voices rather than electrochemical signals to get information between them. Its entirely possible the Kushan, and, hence, the Taiidani rebels, simply didn't have a complete enough picture of the battlefield, or significant ability to communicate plans between one another, to set such a joint attack up.

** Maybe there were still enslaved descendants of the ancient Hiigarans, or the Kadeshi survivor, after the Exiles broke out, decided to go out with a bang and assault Hiigara before the Taiidan went for them only to find the Taiidan Imperial Guard annihilated by the Kushan and joined them.

** [[WikiRule The Encyclopedia Hiigara]] says that they are remarkably similar to [[http://homeworld.wikia.com/wiki/Low_Orbit_Atmosphere_Deprivation_Weapon thermobaric weapons]] (i.e. fuel-air explosives). It's probably on a much bigger scale, and with a lot more bombs involved, than the modern-day [=FAEs=] like the "Daisy Cutter."

** A hiigaran year is longer than a Terran Year. It says in the manual that there were no elders of children on the Mothership and that Somtaaw recons are manned by young women. Either they are cramming tweens into their fighters, or their years are a bit longer. They also said that it took four generations to build the Motherhsip (15 years each). Still does not explain everything, but should be worth mentioning.

** Information about the other one is probably in the computers of the one the Hiigaran just grabbed. And since it wasn't there, well... assume you enemy took it.

** Also, it was heavily implied that trapping people in the nebula was at least in part nessecary to avoid being discovered by the Taiidan Empire.

** Actually, there is a quite reasonable conclusion. Kadeshi are stated to be descendants of the ancient Hiigarans, in other words same people as Kushan. They could not have been wiped out in few battles they fought against Kushan, yet in the next game Imperialists are not worried at all about going into the Garden of Kadesh, despite the far stronger Imperial fleet of the Taiidan's heyday avoiding it like a plague. Only possible conclusion is that Kadeshi have left for whatever reason. Now consider that the only reason they were so adamant about Kushan not leaving the nebula was that they wanted to prevent the Taiidan Empire from finding about them. But the Taiidan Empire has fallen, and Hiigara has been reclaimed, so they do not have any reason to stay in the nebula any longer. CHances are, they have decided to join the Kushan on Hiigara.