Hiigara or Bust - Let's Play Homeworld - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Hiigara or Bust - Let's Play Homeworld

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

There's a lot of weird audio issues in this game, and not all of them are intentional. Anyway, going to watch the hell out of this - I love Homeworld; even if it took until Cataclysm to get the gameplay right (and then they hosed everything up with the sequel), the story and atmosphere is top-notch. A couple later missions in particular are just hauntingly beautiful (everything Kadesh), the game conveys the eerie loneliness of being lost in a vast space perfectly.
Of course, then it starts ramping difficulty up with outright dick moves, but hey, nothing's flawless.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Oct 3, 2014

# ¿ Oct 3, 2014 18:22

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:51

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Steak Flavored Gum posted:

So I take it that the IP disputes over Homeworld have finally been resolved if they're making an HD remake? If any game deserves one, Homeworld is it.

Yeah, after the THQ shenanigans Homeworld apparently somehow ended up with Gearbox. Totally not complaining.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2014 20:50

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

I don't think Homeworld ever got popular enough to start getting ripped off by other devs. It floats alone.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2014 09:14

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Well, that and frigate armor doesn't work in HW2.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2014 09:36

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

radintorov posted:

The voice actor for the Fleet Intelligence does a great job trying to sound professional but with bits of emotion showing in just the right places to provide a memorable performance.

It actually helps that we don't ever get (most of) their names or their characters, just the emblems and voices in the radio and function descriptions. It's so serious it's sterile and it really gives you the image of people trying to stay professional in an impossible situation.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2014 12:31

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Michaellaneous posted:

Oh yeah, sorry. But it is by all intentions the same thing.
Also I just realized this game actually has a female protagonist. When I played it Fleet Command was just always kinda there for me, overwatching everything and being helpfull. It is difficult to relate when she, you know, is basically turned into a giant AI. She was a normal person once.

Yeah. Cataclysm does a much better job with this, both because the story is considerably less epic in scope (at least at the start) and because Somtaaw are basically adorable losers who aren't in control of what happens in the slightest. It's a much more human perspective than the perfectly rational last resort plan the base game presents.

e: Oh, no doubt about it, this game's storytelling is top-notch; I've been gushing about it here for pages. It's interesting to play around with the depictions of what exactly stands for humanity (kushanity) where and how it's represented, though.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Oct 4, 2014

# ¿ Oct 4, 2014 17:46

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

radintorov posted:

Oh yes: that is a massive, massive plot hole not only when you take into account this game and Cataclysm, but the fact that capital ships in Homeworld 2 can also jump, just to make it ~epic~ or something

Actually, in multiplayer, anything Frigate-sized or larger can jump, it just costs ridiculous amounts of resources. Of course, whether this is canon is another matter altogether.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2014 10:05

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Kellanved posted:

Salvage corvettes are the scariest motherfuckers in space though.

Oh come on, the Kushan ones are downright adorable.
Still, there's a reason why they removed them from the sequels.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2014 10:27

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Koorisch posted:

I haven't played HW2 to the finish because I don't like how fragile all of the ships became, frigates aren't supposed to blow up quite so easily!

They literally aren't. Frigates' armor coding is messed up in that game, I don't think it was ever fixed.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2014 14:01

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

It really comes down to how much attention you want to pay to your fighters. Micromanaged scouts beat interceptors in just about everything, but interceptors perform better when on autopilot.
edit: VVV To be honest, I don't use either much; went through vanilla HW relying almost exclusively on corvettes for my escorts. Still, survival isn't exactly a priority for fighters.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Oct 8, 2014

# ¿ Oct 8, 2014 18:44

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Fairly sure the best Ion frigate design goes to the Kadeshi, both function and looks-wise.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2014 20:54

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

IthilionTheBrave posted:

A fun little tidbit regarding Ion Frigates: The systems needed to utilize an ion cannon are so massive that rather than mounting the cannon on a frigate, it's more like they built the frigate around the cannon. Keep this in mind for some of the later capital ships that show up. Such as destroyers mounting a pair of fixed ion cannons, or the Heavy Cruiser packing two turrets that each have a pair of ion cannons mounted in them.

I think it shows technological progression rather nicely. Ion Frigates are the first and crudest design, it makes sense they'll improve on it.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2014 22:05

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

GhostBoy posted:

Aye, you can get by, if you know what you're doing (especially if you know how OP salvagers are). Eventually I worked it out, but that first run was a mess. Really my main problem was not realising the full power of salvagers until later, and becoming bored with cleaning out levels before jumping to the next mission.

For all the talking up of Homeworld we do here, it's an incredibly cruel game for a first-timer. The campaign is out to punish you for not knowing what comes next or - God forbid - using weird ship compositions (we haven't run into the real noob-trap ships yet but will soon). Not mining out the entire maps? Don't even think about that one.
It's a great game once you know what you're doing, but when you're still fumbling around and trying to figure out the mechanics by trial and error, you won't be having fun. I think it's part of the reason why it wasn't a smash hit - in addition to being complicated, it's also unintuitive as heck.

edit: I'm fairly sure the Bentusi Exchange is the most powerful ship in the game. Makes a certain scene in the expansion even more awesome.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Oct 13, 2014

# ¿ Oct 13, 2014 15:08

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Superstring posted:

I want to say that in the original un-patched version of the game, the Defender was a hellacious fighter wrecker and was subsequently nerfed, but I don't know if I'm remembering right.

Yes. Their damage-per-shot was completely insane on release and it got nerfed from something like 20 to 5. Which is a shame because the Kushan variant in particular looks really adorable with its little pop-up guns.
Speaking of visuals, Taiidan destroyers. Sleek, menacing, devastating, it's like someone based the design on a sports car. In my opinion the best-looking ship in the game.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Oct 18, 2014

# ¿ Oct 18, 2014 09:02

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Night10194 posted:

Original War is a fantastically weird and wonky game, but it's basically this. Your troops are irreplaceable, though you sometimes get reinforcements or you can build some (relatively poor) AI or remote control vehicles to preserve them. They also all have their own stats and skills and level up if you keep them alive. It has its flaws, but I always appreciated that.

Someone seriously needs to LP that so I don't have to replay it. Anyway, I think this is the idea behind units gaining experience and veterancy in a lot of strategy games. Of course, it's double-edged there since big units will still be more important than the cheap ones...

IthilionTheBrave posted:

Ah, I see that attack bombers are as prone to exploding spectacularly as I recall them being.
Kushan does tend to make more sense for the players, though, as their "samey" designs imply minimal modifications to the same base chassis rather than spending time whipping up an entirely new one for a brand new ship of that class.

Another thing you can notice about it that proves that Kushan are the "canon" race even if you can play the campaign as both: if you watch the ships in the background of the propaganda broadcast, some of them have a distinctly Taiidan design.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2014 14:55

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Well, there's open/close, and there's a fleet of space phalluses spraying beams everywhere.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2014 07:50

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

I'd suggest spoilering that just in case. Anyway, Cataclysm's antagonists were a lot more interesting than what HW2 came up with.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2014 17:05

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Taiidan may have slightly insectoid strike craft, but their capitals are majestic. Kushan frigates and up look just... flatulent.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2014 18:47

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Kibayasu posted:

I've always liked the Kushan Ion frigate and Carrier more than their counter-parts, and the the utility ships of the Kushan always seemed more appropriately industrial or sciencey to me, but yeah, for the most part the Taiidan capital ships just have a much meaner and sleaker look to them, appropriately so.

Flatulent frigates, constipated cruisers and digestive disorder destroyers. Kushan would be hopeless if their Defenders weren't so goddamn cute and adorable.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Oct 24, 2014

# ¿ Oct 24, 2014 11:49

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Right, boring parts of the game are behind us.
To Kadesh!

# ¿ Oct 24, 2014 23:01

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

azren posted:

This mission kinda bugged me- is the mothership incapable of slowing down in-world? It seems like "slow down a bit so our ships have more time to clear a path" is a better plan than "LET'S JUST KEEP GOING, GUYS!"

I always rationalized it as plotting any kind of course change for the mothership taking a whole lot time, prototype that she is, so they just have to keep moving anyway. It'd also explain why you can't move her in normal missions.
Of course, multiplayer throws that out of the window.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2014 18:08

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

They can't keep up.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2014 10:36

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

sebzilla posted:

Spending RUs on Ion Frigates is for chumps.

Very much so, but the reason why will become apparent in the next mission or maybe the one following that. Still, support frigates are a pretty huge waste since you don't really use detached unit groups in singleplayer - and when you do, you just send the loving carrier with it anyway.
Assault frigates also remain decently powerful and are a pretty good use of the RUs at pretty much any point in the campaign.

Mind you, the corvette cap isn't a big deal anyway, you'll just have a group of salvagers and heavies and both of those take constant replenishing.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2014 18:40

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Looks like Homeworld was a fluke, then.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2014 12:36

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

I still maintain Cataclysm is the best Homeworld game. Still, the thread is getting dangerously off the rails. We need an update. But no pressure.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2014 20:05

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

I hope it's the one I accidentally suggested in the Sandcastle for this, because that's the best loving line in the series.
WE WILL NOT BE BOUND

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Oct 28, 2014

# ¿ Oct 28, 2014 20:27

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Loxbourne posted:

There's a special fighter type we haven't seen yet that's optimised for defence. It's excellent for protecting resource operations, and also has a very quick build time enabling you to scramble them quickly when you see a raid coming.

Actually, I'm fairly sure he can build Defenders by now and they were at least mentioned, if not shown off. They're pretty good, although nowhere as broken as in the release version where they were capable of tearing frigates apart.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2014 22:01

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Kadesh! These two missions are brutal, will kick a new player's rear end in multiple ways and I absolutely love them. The atmosphere is eerie, you're fighting an enemy you don't know anything about and the Swarmers have you on desperate defense the whole time because even if you figure out their weakness you still have to deal with them for at least a minute.

One thing I really like is how in the opening shots, you always see the Mothership from a closeup and it does a great job misleading you in of how big the whole thing really is. You start off thinking it's some kind of a probe, then you get the shot of it launching strike craft by the dozens along with frigates and you know you're in deep poo poo now.

And they still haven't brought along their deadliest unit yet... Looking at the parting shot of your entire fleet, I can't help thinking "morituri te salutant".

edit: A tiny bit that kinda bothers me with the subtitles, you seem to be mixing up "lose" and "loose" a lot. Just nitpicking.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Oct 31, 2014

# ¿ Oct 31, 2014 16:42

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Krumbsthumbs posted:

The only part about Multi-Gun Corvettes that I don't like is how they nearly obsolete your Heavy Corvettes in one fell swoop. Sure, they have weak guns, but the 6 guns with tracking allows them to still put up some heavy damage against anything smaller than a Destroyer. Also, those suckers are fast for Corvettes.

Yup. I think the game could've benefited from either sticking a plasma bomb launcher on the heavies to differentiate them more - as it is, both light and heavy corvettes are pretty much obsolete and the one we have yet to see is pretty much useless. Corvette class essentially boils down to salvagers and multigunners, which is a drat shame.

PurpleXVI posted:

I love the Kushan multi-gun corvettes, but I honestly always felt like their Taiidan mirror unit looks goofy as hell.

I won't heard any slander on the "calamari" multi-gun corvette-class ship here. Although in fairness, all of the Taiidan strike craft seem to hammer the whole "evil empire" point through.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Oct 31, 2014

# ¿ Oct 31, 2014 17:54

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Krumbsthumbs posted:

Heavies actually have a special "Z" attack which is a sort of shrapnel blast in front of them. It does some serious damage to targets right in front of them but it hits friends and foe alike. You have to use X or Wall for it not to blow up your own Heavies. Also, the range on it is rather small and it is really hard getting that tasty group of strike craft into the right spot to use the shredding attack.

Wow. I actually didn't know (or remember) that. Thing about heavies, they do get the job done, but in 90% of the situations multiguns are just better.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2014 18:12

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Dalael posted:

One of my biggest regret in Homeworld series, is never getting to play cataclysm. Didn't have a pc nor cash back when it came out. Time went by and I completely forgot about it.

How was it in terms of gameplay, and story? Does it have anything to do (story-wise) with the first homeworld?

It's more of a sequel than HW2 and gameplaywise it's the best of the bunch. The story takes a bit of a different direction but one of the main theme is still that the galaxy is a loving terrifying and mysterious place.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2014 10:38

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Markovnikov posted:

Couldn't you just recreate Cataclysm in the Homeworld 1 engine? I don't remember much about Cataclysm so I don't know how much was different about it.
PS: Taiidan fleet > Kushan fleet

Well, two completely new factions, couple completely new mechanics, an entire different storyline's worth of missions... It's a standalone game on the HW engine.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2014 17:58

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Okay, so here's what the skilled playthrough doesn't tell you: this mission is a literal crusher. All three Kadeshi motherships start moving to yours when they spawn and if you take too long dealing with the first one, you're essentially hosed because dealing with multibeams and swarmers on two fronts will take way too many casualties out of your fleet to be able to defend the mothership efficiently.
Now imagine that coupled with not knowing that the third one will run away. I haven't played this game in years but the Kadeshi battle music still gives me the creeps.

This is also the mission where the game tells you to stop using so many of those strike craft. Up until now, it's possible to plow through using heavies and bombers. Sadly, any bomber that comes into the attack range of a Swarmer pretty much blows up - hope you weren't relying on those. Yup, the game teaches you by killing you.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2014 08:58

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Everything went wrong and you're not missing out on anything.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2014 18:12

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Sylphosaurus posted:

No, gently caress whoever wrote the plot for Homeworld 2.

That's the real answer. Way HW1 presents it, it's really hard to tell who was in the right with history - in fact, it's one of very few games that actually does that, only other one that comes to my mind is Morrowind.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2014 20:45

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

I think the most plausible explanation is that the crews of the captured ship are either brainwashed or spaced.

Leave it to this game to throw this mission right after the two levels guaranteed to kill any bombers you might have had. Anyway, I forgot you get access to Gravwells this early; these babies are amazing and I'm fairly sure some of the later levels can't be beaten without them.
Also Taiidan continue to have kickass capital ship designs, that missile destroyer looks like a pissed off squid.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2014 18:03

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Depending on what version of HW canon you prefer, you can see it as them trying to make amends.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2014 20:28

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

The point is still that salvagers are the biggest baddest motherfuckers of the universe.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2014 15:25

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

That's the thing; the original devs apparently hated Cataclysm, which ended up being a much better game - don't tell me they couldn't come up with another spooky space story. Homeworld without the constant feeling of dread isn't Homeworld.
I can understand the logic behind the change - mainly the fact that most players simply won't appreciate a subtle atmosphere and as such Homeworld didn't get much recognition - they really wanted to mainstream it. Very rarely do good things come up from an idea like that.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2014 12:30

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:51

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Now that would be an amazing thing to include in the HD version.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2014 20:21

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Hiigara or Bust - Let's Play Homeworld

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