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Homeworld Remastered |OT| All of this has happened before and will happen again

Nzyme32

Member
Also, everyone who also got the upcoming Deserts of Kharak should have received a digital artbook in their Steam folder for Homeworld Remastered Collection.

It is a PDF version of the book that came with the Collector's Edition - it contains concept art, the original manual with some (faulty?) re-writes to bridge HW1->HW2, and some other stuff.

Did not know about this, will check it out tonight

So I've been looking up what the status of the patch efforts by Gearbox to fix the Homeworld 1 mechanics and system and it seems there are some good news:



And some comments from one of the developers who is fixing the remaster:

I think I already mentioned this in another thread, but I'm glad they have worked on it. I'm going to wait to finish my HW1 playthrough till they release the updates. Can't wait. I want to play Deserts of Kharak after going through HW1 and 2 properly, which I've actually never done despite owning both.
 

Lime

Member
Also, I saw some LEGO models of Homeworld ships that I found sufficiently impressive to share:

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mantidor

Member
Those are so cool :O


The changes in the manual are retcons as far as I know, meant not only to bridge HW1 and HW2 but Deserts of Kharak as well.
 

Giolon

Member
A new update from the developers on formations:

http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/t/update-and-a-bit-of-a-tease/1203614

Gearbox said:
Hey guys!
With all the fervor around DoK launching tomorrow, I wanted to quickly let everyone know we haven't forgotten about RM! Here are some screenshots of the WIP patch that the RM team is working on! (Formations - Cough)

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Thanks to Sastrei and BitVenom for their shots! Might add a few more later.

The choice of HW2 units was intentional - to show that units with 'rigid' squadron groups prior to this patch can also be arranged/used as a 'formation'. Showing HW1 units doing this can appear to just be HW1 units in the pre-patch Strikegroups.

There's little of any detail that I can go into aside from what's already been said. Burleson up there is who you'll probably hear any 'new' stuff from...

At this point we're working, will continue to work, and want to get this out and in everyone's hands (mice/keyboards?) as soon as possible.
 

Lime

Member
Wow that looks so good. It would be amazing to play Homeworld again immediately after playing Deserts of Kharak. Going from planetary conflicts between the Kiiths to a united exodus to Hiigara.

I hope the fix will be out soon.

Also, the fact that formations will be able to be used in Hw2 is pretty fantastic - I've always missed the sphere and claw formations.

Now, I just hope they fix the balancing issues in HW1 and make strike crafts and frigates actually usable.
 

Giolon

Member
Wow that looks so good. It would be amazing to play Homeworld again immediately after playing Deserts of Kharak. Going from planetary conflicts between the Kiiths to a united exodus to Hiigara.

I hope the fix will be out soon.

Also, the fact that formations will be able to be used in Hw2 is pretty fantastic - I've always missed the sphere and claw formations.

Now, I just hope they fix the balancing issues in HW1 and make strike crafts and frigates actually usable.

I wonder if they will make the sphere formation work properly when defending other units and attacking, by surrounding the target of the attack/defend, rather than just rolling up along side lol.

I keep hearing this about Strike Crafts and Frigates being useless in HW1R. Is this multiplayer or skirmishes or something? I played through the entire campaign using nearly every ship in the same role I used them playing through the original and most everything still had its place (except for missile destroyers which seemed questionable this time around, and minelayer corvettes were just as useless as ever). I had swarms of bombers taking out capital ships, interceptors and corvettes taking out enemy bombers and fighters, and assault frigates taking out corvettes and fighters.

Did I miss something?
 

Lime

Member
I wonder if they will make the sphere formation work properly when defending other units and attacking, by surrounding the target of the attack/defend, rather than just rolling up along side lol.

I keep hearing this about Strike Crafts and Frigates being useless in HW1R. Is this multiplayer or skirmishes or something? I played through the entire campaign using nearly every ship in the same role I used them playing through the original and most everything still had its place (except for missile destroyers which seemed questionable this time around, and minelayer corvettes were just as useless as ever). I had swarms of bombers taking out capital ships, interceptors and corvettes taking out enemy bombers and fighters, and assault frigates taking out corvettes and fighters.

Did I miss something?

Interceptors and bombers got chewed up by destroyers and battlecruisers. Usually both strike craft (more maneuverability) and frigates (more HP) were harder to kill in the original Homeworld, whereas here you can lose 30 interceptors in a 5 minute battle. Best example: Karos Graveyard is completely different because strike craft are so weak and vulnerable that they get chewed up by the auto guns.

All you need to win the HW1R campaign is basically just destroyers and battlecruisers. Hell, even in the end, destroyers get pummeled by ion cannons by the BCs.

At least that's my experience.
 

Giolon

Member
Interceptors and bombers got chewed up by destroyers and battlecruisers. Usually both strike craft (more maneuverability) and frigates (more HP) were harder to kill in the original Homeworld, whereas here you can lose 30 interceptors in a 5 minute battle. Best example: Karos Graveyard is completely different because strike craft are so weak and vulnerable that they get chewed up by the auto guns.

All you need to win the HW1R campaign is basically just destroyers and battlecruisers. Hell, even in the end, destroyers get pummeled by ion cannons by the BCs.

At least that's my experience.

Yeah, that's true, esp. the bolded. The big difference to me is that unit counters are much harder counters than they were in the original. You could send up a fleet of Assault Frigates against some Ion Frigates or a Destroyer and you could expect them to last a little while, if only as a diversionary tactic. Now, if you do that your Assault Frigates will be gone in like 3 seconds each. Similarly, fighters could last a long time as a nuisance if you put them in Evasive mode. Now, send them into battle against Assault Frigates or Corvettes and they'll be toast pretty quickly. I would like to see some of those counters softened to behave a bit more like HW1 - whether that means beefing up the health of strike fighters and frigates or lowering the damage output of the bigger ships (or both), I don't know. However, I wouldn't say they're useless but they do have to be used more carefully than before. I just loaded up my final mission save and I've got 63 fighters and 10 Assault frigates in my final fleet, in addition to the rest.

I know GBX has an official massive re-balance mod they started beta testing in September (incl. new, smarter AI patterns for ships like multi-gun corvettes), but has been all quiet the last several months. Hopefully some of those changes will make it back to the main game before too long and ideally back into the campaign.
 

Lime

Member
So I'm sitting here and reading the Art of Homeworld (must-have book) with the interview with Aaron and Rob and funny thing they say in regards to aliens not being in the games and then appearing in Cataclysm:

AK: But all along, our basic theme was tasteful restraint. We were a little disappointed with what they did with Cataclysm, because they went with the space meat. Considering all the things you could think about space - it could be pirates, plus tentacle beasts, plus energy cloud beasts - we though, No, we have enough material with people and pirates. We care about drama, we write good stories. That's enough. You always have the other stuff to go to if you need to, but as I said, tasteful restraint is what we cared about.
 

mantidor

Member
Yeah, I read that as well and I don't get it, I felt the complain was out of place, Cataclysm had a pretty good story and still showed the restrain Homeworld has.
 

Lime

Member
Yeah, I read that as well and I don't get it, I felt the complain was out of place, Cataclysm had a pretty good story and still showed the restrain Homeworld has.

I guess it's more about aliens being part of the narrative that Aaron was referring to. I don't necessarily agree though, since the high sci-fi concept of hypercores, the chosen one, a magic old space gun to save us all, etc. all reach a sort of magic or divine level (but that was mostly in 2). I think 1 was much more restrained in a way.
 
Has anyone seen this issue in Homeworld 2 Classic?

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The collector's exhaust trail is dotted, it flickers in-game. This same issue persists for all fighters and small ships with exhaust trails. I can't find anything about it online.
 

Lime

Member
Has anyone seen this issue in Homeworld 2 Classic?

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The collector's exhaust trail is dotted, it flickers in-game. This same issue persists for all fighters and small ships with exhaust trails. I can't find anything about it online.

There's a mod in the steam workshop for that
 
I have never played HW but would love to play HWI-II-Kharak. From this thread, it seems that waiting a bit to get something a bit closer to what HW1 classic was in HW1 remastered would be a good idea?
Or - keeping in mind that I have never played the game and have no attachment to older mechanics - should I just play the remastered now? Or force myself to play classic?
 

ShadowOwl

Member
From this thread, it seems that waiting a bit to get something a bit closer to what HW1 classic was in HW1 remastered would be a good idea?
Waiting wouldn't hurt but I still enjoyed both campaigns very much and liked HW2 better in terms of missions design (although HW1 has a much more interesting story). Didn't play the HW1 back in the day and just a bit of HW2 (mostly skirmish and mods), HWR was still a fun ride for me.

Your call I guess since the game isn't on sale right now anyway.
 

Lime

Member
I have never played HW but would love to play HWI-II-Kharak. From this thread, it seems that waiting a bit to get something a bit closer to what HW1 classic was in HW1 remastered would be a good idea?
Or - keeping in mind that I have never played the game and have no attachment to older mechanics - should I just play the remastered now? Or force myself to play classic?

Wait until the big upcoming patch if you want better audio and visual

Or just play classic with widescreen edit.
 
Waiting wouldn't hurt but I still enjoyed both campaigns very much and liked HW2 better in terms of missions design (although HW1 has a much more interesting story). Didn't play the HW1 back in the day and just a bit of HW2 (mostly skirmish and mods), HWR was still a fun ride for me.

Your call I guess since the game isn't on sale right now anyway.

got it with kharak. Seemed like a decent deal, and I had always wanted to play HW. I'll wait for the patch.
 

Nzyme32

Member
Good to hear they are making some progress. I actually stopped playing HWR waiting for this update to arrive. Then I can finally move on to DoK
 

Giolon

Member
Good to hear they are making some progress. I actually stopped playing HWR waiting for this update to arrive. Then I can finally move on to DoK

There's no real reason to hold off on playing DoK until after the older games is there? I haven't beaten it yet, but it's basically just the backstory to Homeworld 1.
 

mantidor

Member
:O so gooood.

They've said that will probably never happen in the current HW2-based engine.

They have to implement something anyway, if formations are just a cosmetic change it would really not change much gameplay wise. And there are so many mods that implement it so close to the real thing I really don't think is that difficult.
 

Portman

Member
I was looking at the deals during the daily Newegg e-mail and I happened to see a link to the CE of the remastered edition and it is actually in stock and sold by Newegg. Just wanted to pass it along in case anyone couldn't pick one up back when they were released.

Newegg Link

Makes me realize that I need to go home and actually unbox the mothership to be sure mine works will spares are able to be ordered if I need one. I went for the game and never unboxed that part.
 

Giolon

Member
My oh my, what's this?


BitVenom said:
While some of this is subject to change, I should note that the BC shots above show some 'new' stuff beyond just a moving Sphere. The units are actually arranged with slower/larger units near the belt, and as you move away from that things get smaller/faster. Also, it isn't strictly a 'Sphere' because the top and bottom are truncated a bit - it packs better, and just generally works better.
 

Giolon

Member
Were still getting "Soon" (on March 26 they even said "we are SUPER CLOSE to releasing a huge patch for HW:RM") from the developers on the release of the next patch, but here's a new image they posted recently:

 

Nzyme32

Member
The big patch finally has a release date: June 7.



Because I didn't already have enough to play in June.

FINALLY!

I'm still putting off playing all of them till it is out, mostly due to OCD and wanting to play them in release order. Still looking forward to it. Will be good to play in between the E3 action!
 
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