Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Correction after playing a few more missions (finished Great Wasteland). The fighter squad was indeed tutorial only. Homeworld ships fly just like I remembered them. Everything is playing exactly how I recalled it too, except I think they either made salvage corvettes tougher or made enemies much less likely to target them. I remember having a hell of a time even being able to capture the ship in the third mission when I played the original long ago, and now my corvettes were grabbing ion array frigates left and right (and one even tanked a glancing hit from said frigate on the approach).

The UI showing ship health is a fantastic addition as well. I can peel damaged ships out of formation and tell them to dock up mid fight, which is amazing.

Oh, one big difference, I don't think fuel exists anymore. Didn't your interceptors have to go back and refuel every so often in the original (although to be fair I never bothered much about fuel and aside from a few "we're running on fumes here" radio announcements I never noticed any bad effects)? I'm wondering how that change in mechanics will effect a certain mission involving significantly superior enemy ships with very limited fuel endurance...

So having never played HW1 I gotta say, this game is brutal. I love it! hahah.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Oh, one big difference, I don't think fuel exists anymore. Didn't your interceptors have to go back and refuel every so often in the original (although to be fair I never bothered much about fuel and aside from a few "we're running on fumes here" radio announcements I never noticed any bad effects)? I'm wondering how that change in mechanics will effect a certain mission involving significantly superior enemy ships with very limited fuel endurance...

Fuel was a pretty massive hindrance to fighters in the original. That's what Support Frigates were for mostly, refeulling your fighters. They removed Fuel because it really wasn't a fun mechanic - it's been out since Cataclysm.

It's worth noting that Fuel is still in the game about mid-way through the campaign. There's a set of missions against a particular enemy that has swarms of fighters with very low amounts of Fuel, with support frigates that refuel them. Taking those frigates out was a key tactic to beating them. They left Fuel in for those missions, against those enemies. Taking out their need to refuel would have mode those missions unneccesarily hard.

 -Loki- wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
Oh, one big difference, I don't think fuel exists anymore. Didn't your interceptors have to go back and refuel every so often in the original (although to be fair I never bothered much about fuel and aside from a few "we're running on fumes here" radio announcements I never noticed any bad effects)? I'm wondering how that change in mechanics will effect a certain mission involving significantly superior enemy ships with very limited fuel endurance...

Fuel was a pretty massive hindrance to fighters in the original. That's what Support Frigates were for mostly, refeulling your fighters. They removed Fuel because it really wasn't a fun mechanic - it's been out since Cataclysm.

It's worth noting that Fuel is still in the game about mid-way through the campaign. There's a set of missions against a particular enemy that has swarms of fighters with very low amounts of Fuel, with support frigates that refuel them. Taking those frigates out was a key tactic to beating them. They left Fuel in for those missions, against those enemies. Taking out their need to refuel would have mode those missions unneccesarily hard.

Gah that mission was absolute hell, until a friend told me to take out the support craft. Then it was much easier.

That was the one with the multiple motherships and the quad ion ships that jump in on you, right?

I think playing through that mission the last time I did the campaign is one of my favorite Homeworld stories. I can not remember a dang thing about how I handled it, except that it started, I blacked out, and I came to an hour later to discover the mission was over, I'd captured all the ion ships, and apparently salvaged some fuel pods (I had more RU than when I started. That's the only thing I could think of). Plus I'm pretty sure I hadn't lost anything bigger than a corvette.

I am not good at Homeworld, but apparently I had my once in a lifetime brilliant fleet admiral moment that day.

I've never managed to capture their multiple Ion beam frigates. I will make an effort to.

I always loved the Turan Raider Ion frigates though. I captured those whenever I saw them. The way they look like a flower bud that blooms to unleash Ion death was always awesome.

 -Loki- wrote:
I've never managed to capture their multiple Ion beam frigates. I will make an effort to.

I always loved the Turan Raider Ion frigates though. I captured those whenever I saw them. The way they look like a flower bud that blooms to unleash Ion death was always awesome.

That is a very poetic way to describe them. I can see it. I liked the quad ion ships since you can get 4x the iony death in every single package.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Correction after playing a few more missions (finished Great Wasteland). The fighter squad was indeed tutorial only. Homeworld ships fly just like I remembered them. Everything is playing exactly how I recalled it too, except I think they either made salvage corvettes tougher or made enemies much less likely to target them. I remember having a hell of a time even being able to capture the ship in the third mission when I played the original long ago, and now my corvettes were grabbing ion array frigates left and right (and one even tanked a glancing hit from said frigate on the approach).

The UI showing ship health is a fantastic addition as well. I can peel damaged ships out of formation and tell them to dock up mid fight, which is amazing.

Oh, one big difference, I don't think fuel exists anymore. Didn't your interceptors have to go back and refuel every so often in the original (although to be fair I never bothered much about fuel and aside from a few "we're running on fumes here" radio announcements I never noticed any bad effects)? I'm wondering how that change in mechanics will effect a certain mission involving significantly superior enemy ships with very limited fuel endurance...

Capturing in the original was pretty easy, send a ship to lure in their bigger ships, then capture them.

The mission before last where there's a huge sphere of ships guarding a beacon that you have to destroy. I hung out there, cleared 1/2 the sphere by capturing the ships, then went to the last mission and just crushed it. Might not work in the remake because cataclysm changed it so captured ships counted against your total.

the UI for showing damage was also original if I remember correctly, just had to know the right button to push.

Captured ships always counted towards your population total - they just let you also exceed it. You just couldn't then build more until you were back below your cap. But you could always capture more. And more.

The reason capturing is harder in Remastered is, again, due to being in the HW 2 engine. It's got better AI. In the original, ships would target the first ship they saw and not rest until it was dead. That made it easy to send in some Scouts on evasive to distract enemies while Salvage corvettes snuck up.

In HW 2, enemies change their target priority as more ships enter the fight. Salvage units have a high target priority, for obvious reasons. So once they enter the area, enemies reallocate their targetting to the salvage units.

Now you just need more than the usual amount to weather the incoming attacks and have enough left to salvage.

Still means mission three is best won through salvage spam though.

The whole first game is still best won with salvage spam. It's basically a kleptomaniac simulator.