[Polpolion]

lookie here

Has anyone played this mod for Homeworld 2? If you haven't, you should. It's CRAZY!! It's harder than the vanilla HW2 campaign (didn't think that was possible, did you?)!! Although it doesn't have an official campaign, it has five scenario missions in which you take part in a battle during the Vaygr invasion. It's pretty confusing at first, but you just have to play 1 on 1 against the computer until you get a feel for what ships are good for what tasks. This game is all about "realism", or at least as real as the Homeworld universe is. Anyone here have any experience with this? Or any with Homeworld 2 at all?

[Ghostavo]

The skirmish modes were fun, but I disliked the scenario missions.

Also, the vanilla HW2 campaign is easy. All you have to do is disband most of your fleet at the end of each mission.

[Mefustae]

Meh, I prefer the likes of Warlords, Complex and the assorted inprogs. Of note; Fleet Commander is getting damn good damn fast. And yes, I still play HW2 regularly, and I could undoubtedly kick your arse in vanilla multiplayer with my usual hail-mary if I so wanted to.

[Dysko]

I also played it and it was very good, but I mostly spent my time with the Warlords mod

A bit off-topic: I found HW2 in a videogames magazine, with a CD full of mods (where I found PDS and WL). On the magazine there was written: "Only on the DVD: FreeSpace: Command: the FreeSpace mod for HW2". It is the same thing as FreeSpace: New Age?

[Polpolion]

IIRC freespace fleet command turned into FSNA.


About Warlords, all of the ships were way too small.

[Mefustae]

About Warlords, all of the ships were way too small.

Build the Executor and say that again.

[Unknown Target]

PDS is ok...I played it once. Too many different ship choices to be readily accessable, and honestly, even "realistic" fleets don't have over 40 something variants of fighters (dunno if that's the real number, it was just a lot). It was an interesting mod, but nothing amazing IMO.

[Polpolion]

PDS is ok...I played it once. Too many different ship choices to be readily accessable, and honestly, even "realistic" fleets don't have over 40 something variants of fighters (dunno if that's the real number, it was just a lot). It was an interesting mod, but nothing amazing IMO.

they had like three variants of fighters (light, intercept, heavy), two of bombers (assault, heavy), two corvettes (remember, the Lavi was a frigate), two drones. Frigates and capitols were the ones that they went overboard with. Look at FS2. We have 9 fighters and 6 bombers in servivce. For the Vaygr, I think they had even less fighters, but I forget about the corvettes. But what I found to be the most confusing, was the weapon designations.


@mefustae: Just look at the ships, then watch the movies. You know the bays on the Nebulon B frigate? You couldn't fit a half a fighter in the bays in the game. the Cap ships are way disproportionate to the fighters. Thats pretty much what I meant. IIRC the Carrack had an external bay for fighters. (they were attached to the hull somehow.), but thats kin of difficult with size.

[SadisticSid]

Warlords was fun but pathetically balanced. Example: a hundred XWings or a dozen Dreadnauts vs. an ISD - barely a scratch on the Star Destroyer. If you wanted to take out fighters easily you just built nothing but Lancer Frigates. Considering what I'm used to from XWing/TIE Fighter/Alliance and the films, fighters were far more powerful.

[Fineus]

Homeworld always did lend itself to capital ship scale battles though... but that said enough fighters could swamp most things.

[Dysko]

I remember that when I played Cataclysm I almost never used capital ships. I built as much ACVs as possible and used swarm tactics against enemy ships. It was extremely fun seeing the Beast mothership blowing up at the second passage! Yes, I had some problems with the infecting beam, but overall the tactic worked very well.

[WARNING SPOILERS!!!!!]

The only problem I had with this tactic was in the last mission. The Naggarok was too fast for my ACVs
So I built a lot of Bentusi Super Acolytes, waited for the Naggarok to eat one of my (few) capships and used a combination of Siege Cannon and Super Acolytes
The Siege Cannon destroyed also all my fleet and fighters and all the modules on the Kuun-Laan (leving only half of her life), but the Naggarok was destroyed!

[Prophet]

My tactic for Cataclysm was to build as much capships as possible, then point them towards the objective and go make some coffee. Just grouping them all in to a sphere around the mothership worked well against those stupid suicide fighterwings. And few measly frigates that might show up. Naggarok was easy too. Just wait it to come eat one frigate. And while its doing that just hammer away. When it leaves, rebuild the ship it ate, and wait for it to come again.

[Col. Fishguts]

IIRC, the easiest way to beat the Naggarok was to EMP it and then throw everything you've got at it.

[Mefustae]

IIRC, the easiest way to beat the Naggarok was to EMP it and then throw everything you've got at it.

How would throwing things at it do anything? A much more efficient tactic would be to use your guns.

[Dysko]

IIRC, the easiest way to beat the Naggarok was to EMP it and then throw everything you've got at it.

My Acolytes (uhm... it's a lot of time I don't play Cataclysm, so I don't remember if it's the Acolyte which uses EMPs ) could never reach the Naggarok, it was too fast... I could have the chance to attack it only when it "ate" my capships.

[Polpolion]

What I do in Cataclysm, is I toss as many workers as I can at an enemy and capture all their ships. very easy. At one point, I had like 3 tidaan destroyers, 3 Heavy cruisers, a missile destroyer, and a couple of frigates. (not counting the ones that were given to me for free.)

[phatosealpha]

Salvage was the fun part of HW.  Grand Theft: Starfleet, really.

I think you've mistaken HW for Cata though.  With the support limits - not to mention the plain unsalvagibility of beast ships, salvaging in Cata wasn't very useful.  Especially since the heavy ships you could salvage were vulnerable to infection.

[NGTM-1R]

You could salvage some Taidanii heavy cruisers, and that was fun.

Salvage was a mess in HW2.

[Polpolion]

I think you've mistaken HW for Cata though.  With the support limits - not to mention the plain unsalvagibility of beast ships, salvaging in Cata wasn't very useful.  Especially since the heavy ships you could salvage were vulnerable to infection.

No, I got all of my ships not from the beast (obviously). I got most of my most of my ships from that one mission where your hyperdrive was sabotaged and a whole bunch of Taidanii warships attack you. IIRC, I got two HCs from it and two destroyers. I got my first HC from that one mission you escort that one carrier past that outpost I forget about everything else.

[General Battuta]

I was on the PDS dev team for a while, as a fluff writer.  The project's run by this guy named TelQuessir.

It's astounding.  He's driven the place into the ground.  We've had a staff turnover rate of something like 1200% in the past year.  People get sucked in by how awesome it looks, last maybe a month, and then quit in disgust. 

Of late, Tel has taken to posting descriptions of his day-to-day experiences in military terms.  As far as I can tell, he's completely serious.  He thinks he's a tactical genius, confronting impossible situations and triumphing against all odds.  "Every night is a battle," he says.  Odd thing is, he works in a kitchen.

That said, the older versions of the mod (7.3 and below) are a great deal of fun, but I think I prefer other HW2 mods.