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Kibayasu posted:If I say nothing else good about Homeworld 2, I will say that as an opening to a war story missions 1 and 2 and their cutscenes/music are fantastic and really got me hyped for the rest of the game. At that point I was only doing a little bit of a Yeah, say what you will about the Vaygr entrance being ripped point for point from the Turanic Raiders (It was) but I love the Vaygr theme. The core aesthetic for their fighters is also pretty nice.
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Apr 21, 2015 06:06
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at the hyperdrive MacGuffin plot and was willing to see where it went, and the troublesome mechanics only really rear their ugly heads in, as mentioned, in mission 3 onward.
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:So already there are a few questions brought up by the game's plot. First, why do the Higaarans need a whole new Mothership considering they presumably aren't trying to transport several hundred thousand colonists, and second, why did they stuff the poor woman from the first game back into the mind-machine merging rig? I think both questions are answered in the manual. Basically, they needed a new Mothership because the first one lacked power systems strong enough to fully power the mystical super-core they put in it. As for why Karan is in it, it's because she insisted. In the time between Homeworld and Homeworld II, she basically just sat on the ruling council whatever, not saying much but being highly revered as this living saint figure. Then when the decision to build a new Mothership and put the mystical Super-Core into it came down, she insisted that she be put back into the new one as its core just as before, and nobody was really going to argue about it with her.
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Apr 21, 2015 10:22
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I like the elite ships you get. I think I managed to keep the elite bombers though almost the entire game. Though the elite corvettes always get lost a lot earlier. Also, I forget: Does the game ever explicitly tell you what the practical advantage your super-core gives you is and why your Mothership is so important, or is that also hidden in the manual?
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Apr 28, 2015 00:11
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Yeah, I wasn't sure if it should be talked about or not. But it's important to note that what makes it important is that the core forms perfect hyperspace waveforms. So if it can be powered enough, it can go from any point to any other point in a single jump. The entire Homeworld game would have been done in one jump, except the original Mothership didn't have the power to do it properly. That's why the fleet based around the Mothership is such a big thing. Because they can organize a fleet around the Mothership, and drop it literally anywhere. I think it's also much harder to stop a jump with the Mothership. Standard Hyperspace Inhibitors might not be able to block its jumps. I'm not 100% sure on that one, since this game was a long time ago for me, but it makes the Mothership fleet a nearly unstoppable strikeforce which can attack anywhere at any time with no warning.
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Apr 28, 2015 02:14
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Calax posted:I'd have to dig up the info from the strat book but IIRC having the mothership with the Core was the major portion of how they achieved hegemony over the previous centuries that they had an Empire. Basically they had a smaller fleet when you put it together, but it could outclass almost anyone because they could choose their battles and show up out of nowhere. They ended up falling from grace because EVERYONE ganged up on them and the Bentusi decided to help out. They managed to figure out a trap and snarl the Hiigaran fleet in a massive fleet of their own barely winning, with the Hiigaran leadership deciding to abandon the battle and making a quick jump to hyperspace that landed them on Hiigara's moon. They retrieved the Core and smuggled it into exile with them and the Bentusi decided to disarm because they were so horrified at how the other nations (I guess we'll call em nations) dealt with the Hiigaran's after victory. It was even worse than it should have been because the Hiigaran's didn't give up the drive Core and said that it was lost on the moon, causing the Taidani to pitch a fit. It's a long, long story about what happened, but basically it went like this: The Hiigarans and the Taiidani were at war. The Galactic Council was massively corrupt, and the Taiidani used that to bribe the members on it to declare that the war must end and Hiigara must give all the desputed territory to the Taiidani and agree to all the Taiidani terms. The Hiigarans found the second core, and went, "gently caress that," and launched a surprise attack on the Taiidani homeworld. They crippled the Taiidani shipyards and then zoomed away, leaving the Taiidani unable to produce ships to continue fighting with. In response, the Taiidani went to their shills on the Galactic Council and got them to demand the total, unconditional surrender of Hiigara. At the time, the Bentusi were the muscle for the council, and the only other ones with a long-jump core like the Hiigaran had, so the Hiigaran reasoned that if they crippled the Bentusi fleet, nobody else would have the balls to gently caress with them anymore. So they agreed to surrender their fleet, but only to the Bentusi. The Bentusi showed up, the Hiigarans jumped them, but couldn't quite overpower them and got wiped out. And, well, you know the rest from Homeworld.
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Apr 28, 2015 07:11
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Mikl posted:It was never fixed? Hard enough that they released an entirely 'remastered edition' and didn't fix it. I have no idea why. Maybe with the game's 'scaling difficulty' thing, people were getting murdered by enemy frigate fleets at the earlier levels when they had actual armor?
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May 3, 2015 20:21
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RBA Starblade posted:Are you guys sure they didn't fix it in Remastered? I heard a lot of talk about how they did (and broke flak frigates/missile corvettes so they do double damage to everything now). I am not, no. I don't have the Remastered version myself, I'm just going off of what was said in the previous thread.
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May 3, 2015 21:50
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Oh! Now that we've seen them, I'll point out that in case you were curious: Soban's ship is a modified Marine Frigate.
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May 4, 2015 01:32
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Oh man, you didn't capture the destroyer? I don't think I've ever not captured the destroyer that's on the other end of that hyperspace gate in that mission.
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May 11, 2015 23:05
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berryjon posted:Nah, it's a 'bonus' for people who follow the dotted line, but if I didn't have to worry about that damned auto-jump, I would have taken the time to do that. Yeah, that happens automatically when you kill the third hyperspace inhibitor, so I always clear out 2 of the gates, capture a third, then marshal my fleet to go though the gate, hit that op, and come back to finish off the inhibitors afterwards.
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May 12, 2015 05:03
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ZeeToo posted:I was a big fan of the first two, but am coming into this one relatively blind. Well, you do get larger ships, at least. And I always thought the visual design was pretty good for the two. The Vaygr fighters are very dagger shaped with rigged fins along them, while Hiigaran fighters are very boxy with pods on the sides. Vaygr corvettes are very boxy with cockpits high up, usually extended a bit from the main body, and fixed weapon mounts on the sides. Hiigaran corvettes are flat with central cockpits and weapon turrets on the top and bottom. Frigates are pretty similar, with Hiigaran frigates being flatter, thicker and shorter, and also Vaygr frigates do this thing where they have tall spire-like bridges that separate them from the body of the ship. Vaygr capital ships tend to be very vertically designed with the main weapons pushed forward, while Hiigarans tend to be horizontally designed with the main weapons further back.
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May 13, 2015 23:31
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RBA Starblade posted:It's a little weird not being able to build ships the rest of Hiigara is apparently using. Well, that's loosely explained in that they're still bringing the construction facilities online. They get the equipment needed to build one type of ship ready and then move on to the next.
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May 19, 2015 02:19
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berryjon posted:No, the worst part is that you are never given a chance to organize and rebuild the fleet at the end of the mission - which is usually after a major battle. They usually give you some time to do so at the beginning of the next mission. Not always, though.
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May 19, 2015 07:27
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Man, I hate the first mission with the Movers. It's just so slow and repetitive, and the Movers take so long to kill until you get the anti-mover weapons research. That's the mission I usually lose the advanced ships you get from Mission 2 in. It's just such a meat grinder that it's really hard to keep anything specific alive though it. Movers themselves are fun, though. I always thought of them as Corvette-class bombers.
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Jun 2, 2015 00:40
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RBA Starblade posted:The radiation-proof Vaygr are the primary reason I gave up trying to beat the original HW2. Combined with the scaling it was just too much. Yeah, I really hate it when they make a hazard and then make it so all the enemies are immune to it.
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Jun 2, 2015 06:42
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radintorov posted:I have to say that I'm not a big fan of the Destroyer, not just because of the change in role but the design: I don't think the "WWII in space" design meshes well with Homeworld. Well, to a point most RTS games are 'World War II in X', because modern warfare involves a lot of tactics that you wouldn't really find engaging as a game. I kind of doubt you'd enjoy a game where all you did was fire high-powered guided missiles or large railguns from an entire map away. For the destroyer though, it makes sense that you can load a lot more huge guns by putting them on the broadside of the ship. I don't know why they stopped at four, though. It would have made more sense to have 3 on the top and bottom and a heavy missile tube in the front, but I guess that was too many guns.
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Jun 2, 2015 11:18
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SlothfulCobra posted:This is also the first real mention of AI in the entirety of the Homeworld series, and it's not really significant. It seems more than anything to be just an excuse to have the player fight something other than the Vagyr while you get all this plot dumped on you. They weren't even really doing anything before you came around, they just don't like you poking their space derelicts. They don't even really talk, which is just as well, since fleet command never really tried talking to them, which in itself is a major departure from the rest of the Homeworld games. We did learn one neat thing about the Progenitors here, though. We learned they were native to another galaxy. As far as I know, this is where the 'Progenitors were humans' theory comes from.
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Jun 10, 2015 10:40
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berryjon posted:The Energizer bunny runs out first, that's how long it keeps going and going. I know exactly the mission. It nearly got me to stop playing the game, and it's the main reason I don't attempt replays.
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Jun 14, 2015 10:09
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There is a lot that bugs me about this mission. Why did the Keepers show up? Were they just really angry that you took the Dreadnaught? I thought they were supposed to be tending the remains of their mothership. If they were after the Dreadnaught, how come they're trying to blow it up now? If the Keepers are supposed to be like Progenitor frigates, and the Dreadnaught is more like a Progenitor destroyer, then how come the Dreadnaught can't destroy the stupid Keepers? And why did the Bentusi come by in the first place? Did they come explicitly to fix the Dreadnaught for you? The sacrifice was also completely pointless. Because the Bentusi say 'there's only one way to stop the Keepers' but you know that's not true because this isn't the first mission you encounter them in, and last time you found another way. You know that they can be overloaded by a strong enough power spike. Sure, you had to do that using Progenitor keycards and randomly placed power generators before, but you can't tell me that Karan couldn't kick that down to the engineering department and come up with EMP missiles or some crap to do the job out here. Then at the end, they start spouting prophecy again. How do they even know any of this stuff? What is this stupid prophecy, and where did it come from?
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Jun 29, 2015 12:50
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SlothfulCobra posted:I can't believe there were 5 minutes of nothing there. The really boring stuff that is still important to the plot is supposed to happen in cutscenes, the cool actiony stuff is supposed to happen in gameplay, not the other way around!. Also Bentus just shot itself in the head to get rid of a really annoying car alarm. That sucks. To be fair, I'm pretty sure the uneventful 5 minutes as was a bug. It's been a long time since I played, but I do sort of remember having constant attacks that built up in frequency and size until the end where you're fighting like six Keepers at once. As for Makaan, it's very much an instance of 'told and not shown.' We're told he's evil and bad and shouldn't be allowed to run things, and he is waging a war of conquest against the Hiigarans, so he's probably not a very nice guy. What would the universe look like if he took over? Who knows. The Vaygr seem to like him, and given his style of ruling seems very decentralized, it would probably be very easy for him to lose control if he weren't actually well-liked, so I assume he's not terrible to the people under his rule. But screw that, right? Something something the homeworld.
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Jul 5, 2015 20:55
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RBA Starblade posted:This is the mission I couldn't beat because at launch there were just endless battlecruisers everywhere chilling in radiation. gently caress this mission. Vaygr battlecrusiers are interesting beasts. I don't know if Berryjon plans to go into it, so I won't say much now, but their design means that they're super powerful if they're allowed to do their thing, but they can be outmaneuvered and outplayed by some good micro.
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Jul 7, 2015 01:06
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I would liked to have seen the Vaygr as an enemy whose adaptability could match the Hiigarans. Instead of having everybody with all their tools from the outset, and having the plot be about saving the homeworld and chasing a prophecy, I would probably myself have tried writing it in a direction where the Hiigarans outsmart and stop the current Vaygr strategy, then the Vaygr come back with something that stops the Hiigarans, and the war goes back and forth for a while, with the Bentusi in the background warning that at this rate, the Vaygr and Hiigarans will completely destroy each other. Then the prophecy is offered as an alternative, and Karan follows it because she's desperate for a way to end the war without the catastrophic causalities that are projected at the rate they're currently going.
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Jul 8, 2015 08:11
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I like the core idea for this mission. You have your entire fleet, presumably at full strength for the first time, so the game is like, 'here are a lot of enemies to test out your new fleet against!" It's kind of the first time you're given your full strength and told to go at the enemy at their full strength, no holds barred. In practice though, it's way too drawn out. Also I think this is the mission most people gave up on the game in, because before the adaptive difficulty thing was patched, this mission had a habit of walls of 10-12 Battlecruisers for you to fight.
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Jul 20, 2015 22:31
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I think Makaan already knew where it was, and they were trying to interrogate him about other unrelated stuff, like Higaaran defenses.
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Jul 21, 2015 01:34
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berryjon posted:Hell, it's not even clearly bigger than the Shipyard! It's just the same design as the Carrier and Shipyard! Yeah, it really sucks compared to the original design of the Vaygr mothership. 
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Jul 21, 2015 02:03
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radintorov posted:It's interesting how that ending seems to be designed to be a really sad moment with how the Mothership shuts down and starts drifting away, but the issue here is that unlike the previous two games there really isn't that big of an emotional attachment to it: unlike Homeworld it's not the last hope of a dieing race fighting against a ruthless oppressor, and unlike Cataclysm a mining vessel that was forced to take up arms to stop a terrifying threat that they had unwittingly unleashed on the universe. I actually like the idea that in another thousand years, another group of people fighting a desperate war might travel though the same gate to retrieve the Mothership that you abandoned there.
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Aug 3, 2015 00:06
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Let's be fair about Sajuuk here. It's most likely that the ship was named after an actual person, because it makes no sense otherwise. Remember how huge the Progenitor mothership was? It was so huge you'd need a hyperspace gate just to get from the front to the back of it. Sajuuk the ship is pathetic compared to that, so why would this big religion form up around this random rear end ship instead of that? It's much more likely that Sajuuk was a guy who fled to Balcora after their mothership was destroyed to hide out from whatever blew it up, and people just call the ship after its captain.
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Aug 3, 2015 22:04
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anilEhilated posted:
And you knew the gate was needed to get into the center of the black hole cluster, so it just makes sense that the gate would be needed to get out as well.
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Aug 3, 2015 23:29
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Cythereal posted:Those might be the lamest planet killers I've ever seen in sci-fi. Admittedly badass intro aside, they don't do anything, are completely defenseless, and we saw a fleet consisting of a carrier, a destroyer or two, some frigates, and various strike craft employ them in the first game. I like the idea of this mission, but it's horribly underwhelming like so much else. Including Sajuuk. For a starship god its central superlaser sure doesn't make much of an impression. Sure Sajuuk carved up a shipyard like a Thanksgiving turkey but its main role in the mission is to sit there and slowly make the health bars on the planet killers go down. Well, I'll give them this: Since none of the missiles got though, you never actually got to see what they did. Every time a missile gets though, a huge part of the planet in the background turns into a firestorm, so every missile that hits visibly fucks up the planet below. I definitely do think there should have been one planet-killer with a massive defense that tested the entirety of your fleet, though. Maybe with a constant supply of friendly ships fighting in from the sides so you could warp Sajuuk around assisting allies to help them push in from the flanks while the bulk of your fleet charged up the middle. I was actually with this game all the way up until the end there. It was that ending that finally tore it for me. The whole, 'oh by the way the real prize was that random space artifact. You never saw it but it was totally sweet and changed everything! Good job you are now space-Messiah."
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Aug 10, 2015 23:26
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The shipyard is replaceable. I believe it can be 'built' from a carrier, though I honestly can't remember.
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Aug 11, 2015 21:01
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Ah. Well then yeah, that's terrible game design. Though to be honest all you really need for that final mission is Sajuuk and a bunch of fighters to chase down missiles.
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Aug 11, 2015 22:00
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