Homeworld 2, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hyperspace Core

This is what a sequel truly should be. Relic hasn’t drastically altered anything that made Homeworld rock; but they’ve improved on a lot of stuff that didn’t, making this a tasty morsel indeed.

What’s been improved?

-Ships are no longer made one by one. They now come in squads of 3 or 5.
-Formations and squad micromanaging have been streamlined. Generally speaking the units know what to do; better, if you group fighters with slower capital ships, the fighters will slow down to accomodate the capitals, etc.
-Better taskbar makes management a snap.
-Scenarios are a little more manageable, and interesting.

What hasn’t changed (cuz it didn’t need to)?

-Great black-and-white cinematics really punch the story. Seeing Tanis base explode brought a tear to my eye (and my father’s, come to think of it).
-The music fits in perfectly, be it cinematic or scenario (Vaygr invasion, woo).
-Ship design. Both Hiigaran and Vaygr forces have that polygonal, yet complex, and jagged style. In fact the Mothership is the same.

Overall, Homeworld 2 kicks ass even moreso than its predecessors did. Ignore Gamespy’s rating of 83; that’s what they gave AoM, they have no taste in RTSes.

…Oh, did I mention I haven’t bought it yet? Yeah, all I’ve done is play the demo (three times, as a matter of fact…had to save all 6 Bishops). If that doesn’t convince you…

I’m also looking forward to picking it up on Tuesday; I just want to add a few items I liked about the game (or at least the demo).

-Unit balance has been greatly improved, fighters are now much faster and have upgrades to improve their attack power, and a wing of bombers is now a real threat to your capital ships.
-Capital ships (or at least the mothership and carriers, I don’t know about the rest since those are the only 2 available in the demo) have upgradeable, and more importantly destroyable sub systems. If for example in the last several engagements your enemy’s carriers have been hyperspacing out when the battle turned against them, instead of running after them every time send a wing of bombers to take out their hyperspace module (and blow up his engines while you’re at it.)
-All units do far more damage, but have far less HP, this means that casualties on both sides will rise at a much faster rate. This makes battles more realistic and much more exciting.
-Module system allows you to customize your carriers for specific roles, rear line harvesting operation, production facility, front line support, etc.
-When the mission is over, its over, no more waiting for 3 hours while your harvesters suck up every particle of space dust on the map, all resources remaining on the map are automatically harvested and added to your total once the mission is over.
-Ship detail has been greatly improved, the Higarans no longer look like they’re flying space cars, and the Tidanii don’t look like they’re flying giant fish.
-Assault tactics have been greatly improved, sentry guns make attacking an enemy emplacement much harder than before since they cost very little and hurt like hell.
-Attack vectors are much more important now, attacking from the front on the same plain is a really bad idea now since the enemy will be able to lock more guns on your than he might have from a different angle. For example if you attack an ion sentry gun from bellow or above it can use 2 cannons against you, if however you attack it on the same horizontal plain it can use 4 cannons against you.

US gets the game today, we gotta wait till thursday, not fair!

or get the iso -_-…

Nice.
I have the first game and liked it, I’m the person who get confused by three dimensional environments in games though.

I think I’m going to do what Drak hinted to.

PRobably gonna have to wait till christmas for this one. My balance is sitting at a nice fat $4.52

Those bastards, how could they do this to us poor Canadians.

I guess I could download the iso, but Homeworld is one of those nostalgic games I remember so fondly, besides they’ve always had great fiction in their manuals and being a manual nut I’m just going to wait until Thursday and buy it.

“Remember, the target is down there, and we’re up here…” - Ender, Ender’s game

I’ll soooooo be getting this. =)

I’m still lose my orientation in it, at least in the demo. But the improvements are nice.

Can’t talk, enjoying too much.

But seriously…it owns, the tactics haven’t changed that much although the Vaygr’s obsession with rocketry makes them easy pickings when you engage from below, but at the same time evading their shots is hell on a frontal engagement. The battlecruisers with their dual ions, eight standard cannons and their Arbiter beam PLUS the fact they can house 5 squads of strike crafts PLUS build modules (cloaking and hyperspace anyone? Or cloaking and hyperspace jammer?), all that together is just sweet. Standard destroyers are still good of course, and the fact you need a specialised Shipyard for BCs make it a bit long to get (shipyard 3600 RU, BC 4000 RU)

Overall I’m pleased so far, even if Mission 4 suprised me and got me keeled.

Minor update on Mission 4, found a weakness in their fleet, massacred them with the loss of a single interceptor squad, their fleet is too frigate concentrated and so an assault of 3 pulsar corvettes and nine bombers kinda ripped them apart, since they’re missile frigs for anti-capital ship duty, missiles are too slow. All you gotta do is make sure your bombers retreat when down to 1-2 ships and have lv2 armor.

The game is a blast, but maybe a little on the easy side, I picked it up this afternoon and I’m on mission 12. That being said the balance is excellent; there is no godlike unit like in Homeworld 1, or Cataclysm (Super Acolyte anyone?). The battlecruiser is insanely powerful, 6 of them can take out a shipyard in one or two salvos if they can bring their primary cannon to bear, but an improperly protected battlecruiser can be destroyed by a wing of 12 bomber squads extremely easily and with virtually no loses. Everything is good against something and weak against something else so balancing your fleet is essential, build too many capital ship killers and you’ll get owned by fighters, build too many fighter killers and you might not be able to take out that battlecruiser that’s about the jump on top of you.

All the units seem to have gotten a massive power boost and a huge reduction in health, you’ll need to rebuild your ships constantly during the mission, its happen to me once or twice that I’ve run up bills of 40,000 RU just rebuilding my 700 RU frigates, that’s about 56 frigate loses during a single mission, gone are the days of Homeworld 1 where you could have fleets of 200 ion cannon frigates and own everything the computer threw at you.

The story is excellent, you get to revisit some of the locations you went to in the first game and learn a little more about them. Several of the in game cut scenes are very dramatic, you’ll know what I mean when you get to the mission where the Hiigaran’s try out their new prototype battlecruiser and almost blow themselves up trying out the particle cannon.

Originally posted by Dark Sand
The story is excellent, you get to revisit some of the locations you went to in the first game and learn a little more about them. Several of the in game cut scenes are very dramatic, you’ll know what I mean when you get to the mission where the Hiigaran’s try out their new prototype battlecruiser and almost blow themselves up trying out the particle cannon.

No kidding, that thing rocked…and the mission itself was hard, I lost the Nabaal shipyard trying to hold the frontline so I had to make my own, my frigates ALL died so I had to remake those from scratch, my destroyers didn’t fare any better BUT my Marine Frigates (don’t ask how) not only survived but also snagged the first enemy Battlecruiser that shows up, hoo-hah!

More on this after class, no doubt.

I haven’t seen you two this enthusiastic in a long time … :stuck_out_tongue:

Well the game is fun, if a little short, I’m on the last mission and I just got my ass handed to me, not only did I fail to defeat the Vaygar force blockading Hiigara but I managed the entire Hiigaran race wiped out. The mission is a rear bitch, even with the super dreadnaught that takes out a battlecruiser in 3 hits. Mass extinction aside the mission is like something out of Babylon 5, very dramatic.

I just got HW 1… its kinda fun except for the fact that the missions take forever! now that the harvesting have been speeded up in HW2, i think i’ll like it :slight_smile: i’ll get it eventually… >.> after i finish HW1 :slight_smile: