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Homeworld 2


Forever Light
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quote:

Originally posted by Sebbish:

They kept the time compression from Cataclysm, right? That was very useful, because I hated having to wait to harvest all the asteroids at the end of a mission.

Relic didn't make Cataclysm. Barking Dog Studios did. But, if I were a bettin' man, which I'm not, I'd bet they integrated something similar.

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Just played through the demo. quite interesting to say the least, most obvious change is the new interface and the "squads" of units. Graphically there has been some improvement though the big area seems to be texture resolution and the inclusion of shadows.

Intro cutscene was nice liked the fade in from hand drawn to realtime.

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Ran smooth with all the settings at max, SP start mission was reminescent of the HW1 start mission, Nifty little graphics enhancements like the high res textures, damage textures, and shadows on units. THere seemed to be more ingame cutscenes than with HW1 and the intro did an awsome fade from 2d to ingame, was almost imperceptible where the transition came in. Music was fitting for the game, seemed to have a heavy indian influence. other than that the gameplay seems more streamlined with the better interface and there are alot more options in the development of your fleet with all the various modules you can build.

Haven't tried the MP or IA portions, but will do so. I've read of the AI doing some nice counters.

overall I'd say that the demo does a nice job whetting the appetite for the full release. I'll probably be picking this up when it comes out or a month or two after.

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Gameplay itself is an improvement. Its more complicated than ever since almost no ship you build will be totally obsolete. Fighters are effective against cap ships, corvettes are effective against fighters, frigates against corvettes, cap ships against frigates. Many variations along that line since there are flak frigates which are sure effective against fighters but not so much against anything else. But one thing for certain it expands upon the rock/paper/scissors combat in great magnitude. And this is only the demo. Ill end up getting this one when its released but I can only hope to have enough time to actually play since the multiplay games and singleplayer missions all drag out to what seems like an eternity. Depending on how much free time you have that may or may not be a good thing. I played a multiplayer game with a friend of mine and that one game in the demo map took a few hours. If a player plays carefully there are many places to go out in space where a single carrier can hide. Which is fun for the person with the carrier but stinks for the person trying to find him in a massive 8 player map. On that point im speaking figuratively since I havent seen any homeworld 2 8 player maps. But I can imagine in a map like old homeworld's "hyperspace arena" the games could go on a looong time...

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That's why you smash those darned engines and hyperspace thing when you get close. Subsystem targeting is a big improvement. Maybe they will have gravity wells like in the first Homeworld that will allow you to hold them out of hyperspace long enough to smash them.

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I also noticed that the AI tends to send ships on specific missions. after I started building Ion Cannon frigates and flack frigates the AI attacked with fighters and bombers and promply got annihilated. The next attack completely ignored my frontlines and targeted only the frigate module of my mothership. I destroyed the attackers but they still got the module. I also like how resource collectors can repair ships when you upgrade.

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played 2 mp games with some friends from planetside, and OMG it's cool. First game i was second best (4 players) and second game i was losing but I crashed

on a good homeline it gets laggy even with 4 players. Then again considering all 4 have about 50 units each ..

maps in the demo are pretty small, doesn't take long to fly and meet the enemy, or even see it.

kinda fun (or not, depending on your side) to hyperjump carriers and frigates to the enemy mothership and kick some ass

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Ive always held the homeworld games in high regard. The single player missions for old homeworld still strike a tone with me. Although I have always had some difficulty adjusting to multiplayer. It always was a bit tougher for me to get the hang of a good strategy and implement it successfully. Its easier for me to get overwhelmed with a massive battle with frigates, carriers, fighters, corvettes, all these different ships that need great multitask ability to use effectivly. I havent tested it but when telling a mixed fleet of ships to attack I havent been able to tell if certain ships make a beeline for enemies they are most likely to be... "geared" to kill. Like in a battle the frigates automatically take a preference to the corvettes, fighters preferr the cap ships or other fighters, corvettes beeline for the fighters ect.. Ill have to play with that a bit and see if they do display a preference on ships they would find it easier to kill.

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quote:

Originally posted by Forever Light:

Ill have to play with that a bit and see if they do display a preference on ships they would find it easier to kill.

Yes, they do, it's practically the entire concept behind part of the design improvements. Fighters will automatically go for any target in order most appropriately suited for their capabilities - Interceptors will focus on anything generally small and anti-fighter before going on to other targets, Bombers will go right for Capital ships, etc, etc.

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quote:

Originally posted by Parias:

quote:

Originally posted by Forever Light:

Ill have to play with that a bit and see if they do display a preference on ships they would find it easier to kill.

Yes, they do, it's practically the entire concept behind part of the design improvements. Fighters will automatically go for any target in order most appropriately suited for their capabilities - Interceptors will focus on anything generally small and anti-fighter before going on to other targets, Bombers will go right for Capital ships, etc, etc.


Ahh interesting to know, i wasn't sure about that, it's not too easy to manage fleets when you have about 30 units/squadrons going in combat with an equally large opponent.
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hehe

Order of importance is right

from what I witnessed

I had 25 squads (10 bombers,10 intercepters and 5 scouts) damn big group.. well the enemie used 15 flak frigates and 10 torps.. the bombers went after the the flak frigates first (5 went after one another 5 went after another) the intercepters took on the enemie intecepeters and my scouts (being on passive) annoyed the enemie frigates enough for my bombers to take them all out

in all

I lost 2 squads of bombers and 5 squads of intercepters...

Can't wait for the full game to come out then we'll be able to use destroyers and such.. btw I heard that the fighters there are just the tip of the iceberg.. according to what a board post said before it was deleted =

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Bombers on aggrisive and scouts on passive can screw up Flak Frigates preatty good. While they concentrat on the pesky scouts my bombers concentract on the flak frigates.. although im preatty sure the Intercepters lended a hand cause they did take out all enemie fighters before the bombers took out the flak frigates

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Just downloaded the demo today and finished the demo (too short!!) but it's great graphics are a vast improvement over HW1. Too bad they didn't get Yes again for a new title track. Actually the back ground music is kind of reminiscent of Jon Anderson's Olias of Sunhillow which has a strong Indian influence also. Anyway looks like I'm going to go broke this month between Jedi Academy, Tron 2.0 and Homeworld 2 .

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As long as the computer can see your forces, it will adjust strategy to match. Send out squads of fighters to keep their prying eyes away and you will find that the computer's strategy and build orders suffer immensely.

It's like they are lazy if they don't know what you have. But I took on 3 computer AI opponents on the Medium level and was able to annihalate all 3 within 45 min.

Build lots of harvesters and set them to collecting, and use your fighters and bombers as primary forces until you get up a sizeable force of Ion and flak frigates (I don't even touch torpedo frigates). Focus on the goal of creating a huge capital fleet, and a huge support fleet. Send your main fleet in on a quick destroy mission of as much as you can, while the support fleet stays in reserve to defend yourself. I was able to simultaneously carry out a devastating attack on the enemy forces of one Computer opponent, while destroying the attacking fleet of another. And turning my victorious forces against the 3rd.

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quote:


Originally posted by $iLk:

As long as the computer can see your forces, it will adjust strategy to match. Send out squads of fighters to keep their prying eyes away and you will find that the computer's strategy and build orders suffer immensely.

It's like they are lazy if they don't know what you have. But I took on 3 computer AI opponents on the Medium level and was able to annihalate all 3 within 45 min.

Build lots of harvesters and set them to collecting, and use your fighters and bombers as primary forces until you get up a sizeable force of Ion and flak frigates (I don't even touch torpedo frigates). Focus on the goal of creating a huge capital fleet, and a huge support fleet. Send your main fleet in on a quick destroy mission of as much as you can, while the support fleet stays in reserve to defend yourself. I was able to simultaneously carry out a devastating attack on the enemy forces of one Computer opponent, while destroying the attacking fleet of another. And turning my victorious forces against the 3rd.


it seems that upgraded torp frigates have a faster firetime, heavier damage, and much longer range than ions. I agree with you though once the comp can see your forces it adjusts itself pretty fast.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well I finally got the chance to play through the demo. Very cool (I never played HW1). The only problem I had was finding my units. I ended up pausing the game and bringing up the sensor map often and finding units that way. Isn't there a way to bring up a list and zoom in on them by double clicking the name? Maybe I'll run through it again and figure it out what I'm doing wrong.

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