Homeworld 2 appreciation thread

[WarLocke]

This game definitely needs more press.

Therefore, I'll start this thread for any discussion that may take place.

In the hopes of jump-starting some (more?) interest, I'll supply some screencaps I've taken (unfortunately from the demo :( ); note that these were taken at 800x600 (resized to 600x450) at the default settings for my rig (most everything set to low or off). The only change I made was to turn off NLIPS (Non-Linear Inverse Perspective Scaling), which makes the game scale all ships by the same factor, truly showing how small fighters and corvettes are compared to the capital ships.

Screen 1: A squadron of attack bombers screen my carrier's starboard side as my strike group leaves the protection offered by my mothership and her gun & ion platforms.



Screen 2: My strike group has encountered the enemy forces. One of my interceptor squadrons, short one fighter, engages an opposing corvette squadron.



Screen 3: When I broke through to their resource operation, I was shocked to discover that the enemy had two carriers! After a protracted furball, I managed to reduce the opposition's fighter/corvette coverage enough that my bombers could focus on his production facilities. Finally, the first carrier is destroyed.



Screen 4: My forces had moved out before I had the resources to begin frigate construction, and my carrier had no frigate facility, so I resorted to qeueing up several from my mothership and sending them across the map as they were finished. During the later stages of the battle, one of my torpedo frigates makes its presence known to the enemy's second carrier.



Now, this was a quickie skirmish game against an easy computer. Besides the second carrier, it had kept to building fighters, corvettes, and a few gun platforms. If it had produced frigates, it would not have been such an easy fight. The full game includes even more ship types (minelayer corvettes, destroyers/dreadnaughts/battlecruisers, etc.) and would have allowed me to shoot some Hiigaran-on-Vagyr action, dangit.

Overall, I think HW2 is a must-buy. It was done by mostly a new crew, so there are some noticable differences in gameplay, though. For example, HW2 feels a bit more 'RTSey' than Homeworld did, because everything happens just that little bit faster - you produce ships faster (and in 3- or 5-ship squadrons for strike craft), they move faster, and they're more fragile. Homeworld was a very conservationist-type game: there were rarely enough resources to go around, so throwing units away in a battle of attrition was seldom a wise move. That type of gameplay seems to be easier in HW2, due to the quicker game speed and abundant resources (at least on the maps available in the demo).

[WarLocke]

Well, I've got to gush, and since this thread seemed to tank, I might as well do it here so'se I don't spam the forum.

I just finished Homeworld not 15 minutes ago. My reaction:

Holy crap... :blink: :blink: :D :ph34r: B)

When I first purchased the game, I only played up to mission 14, Bridge of Sighs, where you're faced with a spherical formation of ion cannon frigates numbering... oh, at least a hundred. At the time, I thought that was pretty damn intimidating (especially when you fly a destroyer wedge into the formation and they swarm you like ants).

But, last night I finished that mission in my second playthrough. As I started the next scenario, Chapel Perilous, I thought, "Some big rock? Ooh, I'm scared!"

Holy crap, I should have been. :blink:

The damn thing was bigger than a heavy cruiser, with dreadnaught engines mounted on it! And escorted by a friggin' fleet! I counted at least 18 assault frigates, 4 destroyers, and at least 1 heavy cruiser, not to mention swarms of defenders and multi-gun corvettes.

That mission was the first time I'd managed to get Homeworld to slow down at all. With at least 60 capital ships and more than 200 strike craft in this humongeous furball, it was just awe-inspiring. I had to start over twice before I could destroy the asteroid before it hit, but dayum, when I did it it felt good!

I also learned how very deadly strike craft are in large groups. At one point one of their destroyers was hammering my support frigates, so I gathered all my strike craft in one big-ass group (umm, 40 each of cloaked fighters and attack bombers, and 30 multi-gun corvettes), took them off CAP and set them to aggressive, and turned them loose on the offending pig. 2 passes later, it was space dust. Ninja fighters. :ph34r:

Hiigara, the last level, was almost an anticlimax, since no single battle was as large as the previous mission's. But the were several large engagements, and just as they managed to batter down my strike craft screen and put a dent in my capship groups (despite a few I had managed to capture), reinforcements hyperspace in for my side. Talk about holy freaking awesome timing. B) I managed to loose them though, because they went after the rest of the enemy fleet without waiting for me to make some sense of my shattered line. I sent my strikecraft as an escort, but by the time the main battle was joined they were low on fuel and picked off by missile destroyers. :(

By this time I had my forces organized, including several new destroyers and a heavy cruiser I had captured. I gathered my 30+ caps in a Wall of Doom and sent them over to the enemy's mothership. One more heated battle later, the last obstacle between me and the Homeworld ceased to be.

Holy crap, I love this game. #2 right behind Torment, A+++ would play again.

[Guest]

I only play online pvp so my perspective is different. I consider HW Cataclysm one of the best games ever, but I am not sure yet if I like the changes. I liked the old pop up interface, but that may just be an issue of habit.

I kind of stepped away from HW2 after the first few days. Ill probably get back into it soon and may like it more then.

[WarLocke]

I haven't picked up HW2 yet (I'm determined to play through Cataclysm first), other than the (I assume) first two tutorial-type missions in the demo.

The interface will take some getting used to, I agree, but there are some areas in which it's definitely improved. Being able to manage your launch facilities and build qeues without going to a wholly different screen, or being able to set move orders to a ship/object by clicking on it (and not having to mess with the Z-axis) is very nice. And the game itself is gorgeous, even running spartan.

Lurking on various message boards, I've read that the SP game rushes you along though, in a bad way. This may not matter if you play mostly online, but I enjoyed the lull at the end of Homeworld's missions, when I could replace losses, adjust command groups, or just look at the purdy ships. ;)

[TaiDaishar]

That's the whole point! What's the point in rebuilding your forces to their fullest and only then going to the next mission?

Not to mention that it fits story-wise to not waste any time at all (being because your homeworld is under siege and all...) and the amount of resources on every map is certeinly not enough to get you to full forces at most maps anyway (a lot of times I ran out of resources after depeleting every asteroid belt on the map and had to resort to destroying enemy carriers for the resources).

[WarLocke]

That's the whole point! What's the point in rebuilding your forces to their fullest and only then going to the next mission?

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I have no problem with the rushing from a storyline point-of-view (as it does make sense), but it grates from a purely gameplay perspective.

The great thing about Homeworld was that, although it was an RTS at heart, you didn't have to stoop to the iconic "build a horde of units and toss them at the enemy, send replacements in as necessary" gameplay model other RTSes use (see Warcraft, Starcraft, C&C, etc.). You certainly could play it that way (with creative rationing of RUs), but you didn't have to. You could just as easily sit back, decide what mix of forces you needed, and then come up with however a complex plan-of-battle that you needed.

The impression I'm getting about HW2 is that that style of play is no longer really viable. Start a mission; BAM, you're under seige by opfor. You start pumping out units to win a battle of attrition, and finish the mission with a ragtag fleet. Without giving you time to replace losses or even reassign strike groups, you're jumped into the next mission, where - BAM - you're under seige again.

Maybe the information I'm getting is exaggerated. But it sounds to me like HW2 lays much more like a "main stream" RTS, which would rob it of much of the uniqueness and charm that is its' inheritance.

[TaiDaishar]

Also a thing I discovered recently is that it doesn't matter the amount of units you have at the start of a new mission because of a dynamic difficulty that makes the computer bring into account your units in the starting of a mission and then generates units to comperhend.

What I like in this game however is the absolute necessity of diversity, Bombers will do squat against fighters and corvettes while ion/torpedo frigates will have a hard time against anything that is smaller than a frigate.