[General Battuta]

Right, and part of the fun with HW1 was the feeling that you'd assembled your ragtag fleet from humble beginnings, defying the odds and the Empire in order to construct an impressive war machine.

HW2 had that rapid turnover, and since it was so militarized you never really felt like the underdog -- all your ships were polished, professional, and interchangeable, instead of precious and beautiful assets.

[Flipside]

HW1 was probably one of the best RTS for ambience I had ever played.

And since An0n isn't around, I'll do it....

Kharak!!!! 

Edit: It also one of the few games with 'Battle Chatter' between units, I'd love to see that idea enhanced.

[Ashrak]

Right, and part of the fun with HW1 was the feeling that you'd assembled your ragtag fleet from humble beginnings, defying the odds and the Empire in order to construct an impressive war machine.

HW2 had that rapid turnover, and since it was so militarized you never really felt like the underdog -- all your ships were polished, professional, and interchangeable, instead of precious and beautiful assets.

+ the AI was a cheating mother****er.

[Flipside]

Right, and part of the fun with HW1 was the feeling that you'd assembled your ragtag fleet from humble beginnings, defying the odds and the Empire in order to construct an impressive war machine.

HW2 had that rapid turnover, and since it was so militarized you never really felt like the underdog -- all your ships were polished, professional, and interchangeable, instead of precious and beautiful assets.

+ the AI was a cheating mother****er.

I think it was over-scripted, HW2 was written using LUA scripting, and they got utterly carried away, which is always a risk when using technologies like that. That's why the AI was so easy to beat in Multiplayer, because it wasn't actually that good, it relied on outnumbering the opponent 4-1 and having a location advantage (admittedly, like most other RTS games with a single-player campaign).

[phatosealpha]

I think he probably means they way they took the fleet-size difficulty scaling from HW1 and exagerrated it from barely noticeable to game crippling.

[Flipside]

Yup, I was kind of odd at the end of a mission trying to reprocess as many ships as you could so that your fleet was tiny at the start of the next mission, HW1 felt like a story, HW2 felt like a bunch of skirmish games in different locations.

[General Battuta]

One thing that always amused me was using cheats to get a ton of resources going into the Balcora Gate mission, and then seeing how many of the 30+ Vaygr battleships I could kill.

[Polpolion]

One thing that always amused me was using cheats to get a ton of resources going into the Balcora Gate mission, and then seeing how many of the 30+ Vaygr battleships I could kill.

I like it how everyone always whines and complains about that stuff. AFAIK, when the computer spawns hostile ships for the missions, it doesn't take the ships you captured into account. All you do is capture a few Vgr BCs, and you're set.

Although, you probably wouldn't even need to do that if the guard AI was even remotely decent.

[General Battuta]

...er, I wasn't whining or complaining, I thought it was fun!

Although it was irritating that, like in Cataclysm, you couldn't capture over the support limit.

[Flipside]

Yup, I hit that last level of Homeworld 1 with something like 200 captured Ion Frigates

[Scooby_Doo]

Ya thats what really sucked about homeworld 2.  It was less strategy and more Total Annihilation.

[Ashrak]

yeh in HW1 i captured almost every frigate or bigger ship i could get my hands on, eventually my fleet didnt fit on the screen could only see it from tac overlay

[G0atmaster]

Well, if you actually consider how large those crew transports you had to dock with were...  there's a whole lot of room.

And as far as the difficulty of HW2 in general, Ryan.  Try to retire a good portion of your fleet at the end of the mission before the one you can't beat, and then rebuild it when that mission starts.  The game goes by a dynamic difficulty.  The better off you are (shipwise, not moneywise) at the end of a mission, the harder the next one will be (again, shipwise).  So, if you start a mission with a huge fleet, the enemy will have an indomitable armada.

[redsniper]

Another thing I never got was why are you using the mothership in HW2 at all? Wasn't it's main purpose just to get your people to Hiigara? It's not meant to be a warship so why is it used to fight the Vaygr?

[Ransom]

Um, they built a new one, didn't they?

[Polpolion]

...er, I wasn't whining or complaining, I thought it was fun!

Although it was irritating that, like in Cataclysm, you couldn't capture over the support limit.

Sorry

I didn't really mean that directly towards you personally, just everyone who addresses that issue as a flaw in the game in general.

On top of my previous statement, it's really not smart to just indiscriminately start building ships. The only times that I build ships purely for the sake of having them is on the missions when you're under pretty much preferment, regular attack.

[phatosealpha]

I was under the impression the Higaarans rebuilt the mothership simply because it was a known working hyperspace design.  Given the state of things in the beginning of the game, they probably didn't have time to design a new hyperspace capable warship, let alone test the design.  Given the consequences of failure, a known working, if suboptimal mothership which is capable of creating ships to do it's fighting for it certainly beats out a completely untested warship.

IIRC, homeworld 2 based it's difficulty on the total value of your fleet in RU.



And there's a fan patch out for HW1, that does nothing but change the layout of the parade formation, simply because people captured so many ships that the formation was putting ships completely off the map and crashing the game.

So much you could do in HW1.  Besides the grand theft auto, you could get those beautiful missile vettes, and then there was the trick on Sea of Lost Souls that let you get around the fleet build limit.

[Scooby_Doo]

For parade formation I just editted the tables so that all the caps ships (at least the frigates) docked with the mothership before jumping.

[Hellstryker]

I still have a copy of HW 2, but i need to get a CD drive, seems as how my DVD drive isn't cross compatible for some reason 

[Flipside]

My Homeworld 2 doesn't seem to like the multi-core, I get terrible stuttering, and things like the Point Defence mod grind the game to a halt.