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Hello, and welcome to Homeworld 2. What is Homeworld 2? Homeworld 2 is the last game in the Homeworld series (at least until we get Homeworld: Shipbreakers). You can view my LPs of Homeworld here, and Homeworld: Cataclysm here. Knowing the plot of the first helps with this game, but Cataclysm's story-line and factions are not needed for this game. Like it's predecessors, Homeworld 2 is a 3-D Real Time Strategy game. In this, you can move your ships around in all six cardinal directions, and can fight in the same. You build your persistent fleet over the course of the game to respond to the threats presented to you, and shepherding your forces becomes a viable... option..... I'm sorry, this game is flawed. Massively so. The original concept for Homeworld 2 was a grand and epic story centering around a series of conflicts called "The Dust Wars". This would have included truly colossal battles, and set-pieces so large that you would fight around them, if not so large they were levels unto themselves. Then bad things happened to Relic, and they were forced to scrap their designs and force out the game you are about to watch me play within a year, using the assets that were already in place. You can see this a lot in the heights to which this game reaches, but the consistent failures are just a reminder of what could have been. This isn't to say that Homeworld 2 is a bad game, it just suffers from rushed development and could really have used another year or two cooking. As I play the game, I will explain some of the problems in the game engine, highlighting where things go wrong and how they do so. I cannot recommend reading the Homeworld 2 Manual as a lot of the great lore that should have been there as per the previous games was instead placed into the Prima Strategy guide which I haven't been able to locate online. I hear there's a Remastered Version! Why aren't you playing that? While Homeworld and Homeworld 2 did receive an HD remake from Gearbox, I found that game to have no significant changes from Homeworld 2 to justify LPing that version of the game, especially when I have already done the original and Cataclysm as they were originally published. That is not to say I won't do the Remastered versions sometime in the future, but I want to show you this game as it was first presented, with it's highs and lows, rather than reject this game in favor of new-and-shiny. So, how will the LP be done? Like my previous LPs, this one will be a subtitled VLP. I will edit out the empty spaces in later videos, and will try to keep each individual mission down to under 30 minutes as best I can. The combat pacing in this game has improved, but there are still stretches of boredom that cool off the player between objectives. I will be doing post-production group commentary over the multiplayer skirmish videos in the future, which will show off both the Hiigaran and Vaygar fleets and a few of the nifty toys that appear in MP format. Homeworld 2 still has an active modding community! It does, and while I considered playing a few of them for this LP, I eventually scuttled that idea as I was getting burned out at the end, and none of the mods were 'recordable', by either being incomplete, or by being too long. As in 2 hour Skirmishes long. What does Frigate Lost mean, and why did you put it in the title of the LP? I'll explain in mission 3. Videos! Campaign
Skirmish
Information So, after Mission 3, I was informed by one of the members of the thread, "ThisQuietReverie" that the information I had about Frigates was incorrect. TQR worked on Homeworld: Remastered as an Artist, but he still had access to the raw files involved, and provided corrected information. To begin with, I would like to present how I was informed damage and armor worked in HW2. First, every unit has two values assigned to them; being ARMOR and HP. Armor acted as damage reduction from all attacks, while HP was the health of the unit, and once it was gone, the unit was destroyed. My concern was that for all Frigates, the value of the Armor was effectively "1", which might as well be "0"for the scale of numbers being used, and thus Frigates would be destroyed far quicker than they should be. Secondly, all ships had data tables for their weapons which indicated how they would perform in combat. To give a couple examples, I will create whole-cloth an interpretation of certain weapons utilized by ships. These are not official tables or numbers, merely creations to demonstrate tendency. quote:FLAKCANON In this example, the Flak Canon would have a certain baseline damage that would be applied to all ships after modifiers for class or size, with accuracy to better reinforce how ships are better against certain classes than others. TQR pointed out that this is not how it works. He extracted the data for the Hiigaran Interceptor, and provided it as follows: quote:--=========================================================================== Simplified without accounting for Damage per Second (DPS) or Shorts Per Burst (SPB) is that the maximum damage an Interceptor can do to a Frigate is (Damage * Penetration) or 37 * 0.7. The "0.7" comes from Frigates being assigned "MediumArmor" - which has no inherent value in numbers or math assigned to it. The game checks to see if the target has a listed Armor type, then performs multiplication accordingly. TheQuaintReverie posted:What berryjon purports is that the ",damage=1"in the "setAccuracy" section (Frigate=0.6,damage=1) "sets the frigate armor to 1 and causes all weapons to do full damage against them". This would be 100% true IF the ",damage=1" flag was set in the setPenetration section. What can also be gleaned from that bit of information is that Frigates take 120% damage from anything not directly to the front, and for some reason the AI will target them above all other classes of ships, bringing disparate firepower to bear on them. TQR added something else when his first example wasn't clear for some people: quote:Yeah, sorry if that was obtuse. berryjon fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Oct 12, 2015 |
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Apr 20, 2015 22:54
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From what I remember of the original HW2, Remastered's campaign is nearly identical except bug fixes and Fleet Command and Intelligence's voice actors were replaced with HW1's VAs. Still, I was never able to finish HW2 because of the absurd scaling later on, so it'll be fun to see how someone else actually managed to do it! Also I love the picture in the cutscene with the Kushan Mothership framed with wreckage. e: Not to nitpick but you misspell "Vaygr" every time in the subtitles, btw. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Apr 20, 2015 |
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Apr 20, 2015 22:59
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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  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.I'm also interested in seeing how someone else handles the later missions because I only ever really knew 1 way.
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Apr 20, 2015 23:34
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RBA Starblade posted:From what I remember of the original HW2, Remastered's campaign is nearly identical except bug fixes and Fleet Command and Intelligence's voice actors were replaced with HW1's VAs. Still, I was never able to finish HW2 because of the absurd scaling later on, so it'll be fun to see how someone else actually managed to do it! Yeah, it's mainly HW1:R that's changed. HW2 has minor audio changes and a few visual enhancements, but basically 'feels' the same. Thread title is perfect.
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Apr 20, 2015 23:35
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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, if the plot was just about the Hiigaran/Vaygr war it would have been fine. They have good atmosphere. I wish we heard the strings that play when Tanis falls in the second cutscene more often; the Vaygr get a battle theme but that little series of notes is about the closest the Hiigarans get to a leitmotif.
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Apr 20, 2015 23:36
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RBA Starblade posted:Yeah, if the plot was just about the Hiigaran/Vaygr war it would have been fine. They have good atmosphere. I wish we heard the strings that play when Tanis falls in the second cutscene more often; the Vaygr get a battle theme but that little series of notes is about the closest the Hiigarans get to a leitmotif. Yeah, the Hiigarans don't get much in the music department. The Bentusi get an amazing theme, though.
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Apr 20, 2015 23:57
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Homeworld 2 suffers from classic bad game design: if you can't be interesting, be frustratingly hard and hope the players blame themselves. We see the problems right off the bat, too: where Homeworld actually shows you the threat you're facing by burning your world, and further highlights it by being clever and subtle (like when the scary cultists freak out at the possibility of you catching the Taiden's attention), Homeworld 2 just tells you that the Vagyr are some terribly powerful fleet for some reason, and then sends you running around the galaxy on a magical quest to find god. Unsurprisingly, the game isn't very interesting, which is kind of odd when you consider that Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War came out a year after it. DoW became pretty much everything Homeworld 2 was supposed to be.
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Apr 21, 2015 02:40
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Right off the bat, it looks like this isn't a story about some people trying to forge their own way against the odds in a big galaxy, it's just a big dumb spacebattle between two huge military powers. It might as well be a prequel to back when the Kushan were duking it out with the Taiidan the first time.
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Apr 21, 2015 05:17
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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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This game is really really really easy to cheat at... specifically, after each level there's a .lua file created in one of the directories, which you can easily open in notepad. The .lua files contain a snapshot of everything you had at the end of the previous mission, a few copy-paste's later and you've got 2000 fighter squadrons in mission 2. This gets ridiculous with later missions, due to the nature of the "adaptive AI" that they implemented which is basically the game takes what you had, and adds modifiers to it to give the AI it's starting fleet. So if you go into Mission two with 1000 fighters, you could appear in the face of 3000 Vaygr squads. Also, a LOT of the homeworld 2 backstory (and HW1 by extension) are put in the strat guide, not the Manual.
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Apr 21, 2015 06:30
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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?
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Apr 21, 2015 06:39
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Nuthin to see here.
Dreadwroth fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Apr 22, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 06:48
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The answer is probably that Hiigarans are predisposed to be religious whackjobs and are doing it for the sake of symbolism and because she's some kind of Messiah figure. Also the reason why they don't just give up their core to Makaan so he'll leave them alone, it's theirs and they want it.
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Apr 21, 2015 10:10
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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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For anyone interested, Homeworld Access has the "History of Hiigara - Prelude to the End Times" backstory document: http://www.homeworldaccess.net/downloads.php?cat_id=9&download_id=73
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Apr 21, 2015 10:26
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For all the poo poo the game gets for its bland story, messed up scaling, and bugs, it still holds a place in my heart for being one of the only games that does 3D space combat well.
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Apr 21, 2015 11:36
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And it is finally here. Sajuuk have mercy on us all.
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Apr 21, 2015 11:43
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It's spelled "Vaygr", not "Vaygar" or "Vayger". Also, "Taiidan", not "Taidan", Berryjon It's also worth pointing out that re: tactics and formations, this is absolutely worse due to the loss of flexibility. Sure, now you don't have to assign every five fighters to their own special squadron to have them in little clawlets, but you were the only person I ever saw actually do that, so  Man, this game. The ship designs are pretty great, it's very pretty, but holy poo poo it's like they didn't even do more than skim their own backstory before making it. On the other hand, this is the game that pretty much confirms my theory that all of the major Homeworld races are actually post-humans.
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Apr 21, 2015 14:19
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As flawed as this game is, I have to respect that the UI for construction and research is much better than the first game's UI. You can still see what's going on while you're ordering a new batch of frigates.
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Apr 21, 2015 14:43
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One of my all time favourite games I made it in the orginal rather than the remaster to mission 12 where it became impossible. I found it much much easier in the remaster. Yes HW is the better game but I have a lot of fondness for HW2 especially the capital designes I really like battle cruisers and destroyers.
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Apr 21, 2015 14:43
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Gothsheep posted: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. Alright, then. Follow-up question: why are these answers not within the work itself? It's one thing to put background and setting material aside in a supplement, but these are questions that need answers in order for the plot to make sense. It's not like they couldn't have had the narrator exposit for just a little longer to clear this stuff up.
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Apr 21, 2015 18:27
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This game isn't as good as it's two predecessors, but I liked the story. It's science-fantasy instead of science-fiction, but that's fine with me. The design flaws are what prevented me from replaying the game more than once.
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Apr 21, 2015 21:44
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I'm kinda glad you went with the original instead of remastered version. I'll finally see what's all the commotion about this game.
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Apr 21, 2015 21:49
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Most of the commotion is about the stupid story and that would remain the same. Anyway, since the video implies they could not even be bothered to fix frigate armor and AI fleet scaling in the remaster, there does not seem to be much point in it unless you really want those super shiny graphics.
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Apr 21, 2015 21:57
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That also depends on if he's using the patched version or not. If he isn't you'll see the amplitude of the problem in full. Unless he retires his fleet at the end of each mission.
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Apr 21, 2015 21:58
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I'm just glad we're finally out of the dark forest of software rendering 
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Apr 21, 2015 22:22
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SIGSEGV posted:That also depends on if he's using the patched version or not. It's worth pointing out that the patched version is still pretty bad, it's just less stupidly bad about it.
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Apr 21, 2015 22:49
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I really really loved HW1 and Cata, and I really really wanted to like HW2 but for some reason I got turned off on it about two missions in and never went back. I hear the mod community was great, and I remember the game looking gorgeous, so I'll watch this LP and live vicariously through it. So far so good. Good luck!
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Apr 21, 2015 22:58
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anilEhilated posted:Most of the commotion is about the stupid story and that would remain the same. Anyway, since the video implies they could not even be bothered to fix frigate armor and AI fleet scaling in the remaster, there does not seem to be much point in it unless you really want those super shiny graphics. I don't know I found the remaster to be much easier in regards to scaling especially when built around a big capital blob as the AI didn't seem as aggressive so your dealing with penny packets of their fleets. Also they don't seem so agressive in rebuilding all the missions I found super hard I found that much easier in the remaster. It made some of the difficult missions that much more manageable
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Apr 21, 2015 23:59
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Englishman alone posted:I don't know I found the remaster to be much easier in regards to scaling especially when built around a big capital blob as the AI didn't seem as aggressive so your dealing with penny packets of their fleets. Also they don't seem so agressive in rebuilding all the missions I found super hard I found that much easier in the remaster. The remastered version definitely fixes the scaling and as far as I know the frigate armor bug too. On the other hand, they added more aggressive scaling to HW1, so I got 50 free assault frigates from the Ghost Ship.
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Apr 22, 2015 05:22
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Yeah, it was...interesting, staring down a shitton of Assault Frigates and only being able to attack them with fighters. But it did make the next mission way easier since I had said 50 frigates to throw at the enemy in suicide missions.
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Apr 22, 2015 05:25
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Didn't the Remaster also introduce the issue that fighters no longer dodge the asteroids in that asteroid thicket mission?
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Apr 22, 2015 09:19
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Nuramor posted:Didn't the Remaster also introduce the issue that fighters no longer dodge the asteroids in that asteroid thicket mission? I believe that was a bug which they patched out although I haven't played that level since launch
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Apr 22, 2015 09:43
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Polaron posted:It's also worth pointing out that re: tactics and formations, this is absolutely worse due to the loss of flexibility. Sure, now you don't have to assign every five fighters to their own special squadron to have them in little clawlets, but you were the only person I ever saw actually do that, so As for the behaviours, there's a massive loss of depth as well: in the previous titles the behaviours would change the combat effectiveness of a fighter by increasing the firepower at the cost of speed and vice versa, while also telling them how long to focus on a target and when and how to break formation and go evasive. In Homeworld 2, from what I recall, it's just a standard RTS auto-attack everything in sight / everything that gets close / don't auto-attack.
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Apr 22, 2015 10:02
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radintorov posted:..in the previous titles the behaviours would change the combat effectiveness of a fighter by increasing the firepower at the cost of speed and vice versa.. I have tried to do science* on that fact, but haven't found anything that supports it. As far as I can tell, the speed of strikecraft is the same regardless of their tactics. Their behavior in combat does change, though. *: Science == I raced two strike craft, one on aggressive, one on evasive. Inglonias fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Apr 23, 2015 |
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Apr 22, 2015 15:38
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I can understand, from an artistic point, why that initial angle was chosen. I just wish it didn't blind me!
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Apr 27, 2015 21:35
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It bugs me how subsystems just appear and disappear when built or destroyed. They could have had an explosion or something!
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Apr 27, 2015 22:06
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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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Gothsheep posted: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. It's magical, sacred and divine. Also it allows you to make long(er) jumps, termed Long Jumps.
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Apr 28, 2015 00:30
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Gothsheep posted: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. Hidden in the manual. Basically it lets you hyperspace really far distances as opposed to shorter jumps, like from mission to mission instead of from one end of the multiplayer map to the other. In HW2 only super-capital ships that aren't destroyers can get short-jump hyperspace modules and jump, everything else has to be within a certain distance of them (though they don't necessarily have to have the ship with the module go with them, they can make one way trips). How the Taiidan got to Kharak with that retcon is a mystery unless they were just hauling rear end for centuries hoping they hyperspaced at some point or another. The Mothership isn't important except in that it's a Mothership and also it worked the first time so why not. It's never said ingame (and I think not even in the manual, like in the guide or some cut dialogue or whatever) that Karan S'Jet realized immediately all the flaws with pretty much everything about the Mothership when plugged in to it the first time and the Pride of Hiigara is the actually good version of it. It's never explained in game how she's still alive 100 years later either but that's also because of the core. The core has another thing about it but that's explained in the plot. Also I think the Pride of Hiigara needed something to break up its design, the Kushan banana looks way better because of the top part, imo. RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Apr 28, 2015 |
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Apr 28, 2015 00:32
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