Homeworld 3 Trailer

[Grim.Reaper]

I'm really enjoying the campaign so far. It has that Homeworld immersive feel and they have nailed the aesthetic and sounds of the original titles. Story is good and the combat is fun.

No regerts here yet.

I bought it yesterday as well, probably against my better judgement.  Not because it is a good or bad game, just because I don't understand it well and a lot going on.  Didn't get a ton of time with it yet, certainly going to have to start with the basics to figure it out.

[Jarhead0331]

I'm really enjoying the campaign so far. It has that Homeworld immersive feel and they have nailed the aesthetic and sounds of the original titles. Story is good and the combat is fun.

No regerts here yet.

I bought it yesterday as well, probably against my better judgement.  Not because it is a good or bad game, just because I don't understand it well and a lot going on.  Didn't get a ton of time with it yet, certainly going to have to start with the basics to figure it out.

Don't forget it has active pause! If things get to hectic, stop the action and plan with all the time you need.

[Grim.Reaper]

I'm really enjoying the campaign so far. It has that Homeworld immersive feel and they have nailed the aesthetic and sounds of the original titles. Story is good and the combat is fun.

No regerts here yet.

I bought it yesterday as well, probably against my better judgement.  Not because it is a good or bad game, just because I don't understand it well and a lot going on.  Didn't get a ton of time with it yet, certainly going to have to start with the basics to figure it out.

Don't forget it has active pause! If things get to hectic, stop the action and plan with all the time you need.

Did the tutorial this morning so a more makes sense.

[Destraex]

We lost a lot of features. Pretty dumbed down. Potential spoilers below... so read at your own peril.

I just finished the campaign (but have not played a skirmish game yet) and I am really not sure why the devs would leave so much out of HW3. I mean I know we lost refuelling from HW1 to HW2 but now we have lost so much more with HW3. The original HWs charms were because they felt very star wars or other sci fi space combat with some neat role play that made you feel like a fleet commander. Now for vets of the series I imagine that we all feel a little disappointed that instead of improving this feeling by giving us some more complex features or at least keeping the older features. We have instead gone backwards again. Each time we have a new homeworld we seem to be getting a simpler product with less to think about and enjoy.

* Resource controllers are your only option and come with 3 harvesters each. This means supply Lines not a thing anymore, harvesters never have to make it back to your capital or later resources controllers when you can afford them. Your resourcing operations are now little self contained and easy to hide. Their impact is limited to them being late game powerhouses in their peak form right off the bat. Everybody is on a level playing field here, no need to manage your operations in any capacity except keeping them alive. There are no supply lines to worry about.

* No "physical" modules to destroy, which means no pinpoint surgical strike raids. Your either grinding the full health bar or don't bother coming.
This means we miss disabling engines, destroying particular fabrication modules to stop the enemy building particular units, destroying missile modules or bothersome turrets and so forth. Capital ships are simply health bar tanks now. You no longer get the feeling that a large ship can take hits and damage without being out of the fight. Limping along fighting bravely and then retreating to repair the modules or rebuild them. That gameplay arc is not part of the game anymore.

* No shipyard. So the slow moving mega capital yard that even a mothership could no build and was so vulnerable because once you found it short of hyperspace it could barely move to escape. Because it needed to be larger than a standard ship. That arc is gone. Which means faster more mobile players that did not bother with a shipyards arc is also gone. Everybody can just build everything from the mothership including battlecruisers.
Perhaps their is a shipyard in skirmish which I have not played yet?

* I have not found a way yet to keep the fleet together come hell or high water apart from leaving passive or neutral orders on, but then I issue a move order and it seems to go to crap as they all race off. I think this is a me problem and I still have to learn in this area and it's possibly my formations or ctrl groupings. But It seems without individual orders carriers hand back and fighters rush in etc. I guess it just seems to be a giant mess as every time you issue an order the units either ignore you or cancel any previous orders and throw away all caution. As I said I think this is a me problem.

* There seems to be no option to close to guns range and so battlecruisers seem to always stand off at missile range. Could it be I am just not seeing the guns fire?

* Special Ability[/b[ spam buttons or "excel spreadsheet stats buttons" seem to have replaced physical mechanics now. I consider this to be more board game abstraction rather than legitimate ways of making an RTS interesting to physically play and watch things happen. I don't mind cloaking abilties because they manifest physically in game and work physically. Over charge and things like that are just fiddley extra buttons to press that may as well be on auto cast.
I will be playing some skirmishes to see if it grows on me, but this shiney new Homeworld toy may only be good for the campaign in the end. This may be another Dawn of War 3.


That's all for now. Trying to gather my thoughts to eventually post as a steam review.
So far I don't mind the game but it's average and compared to the originals underwhelming. A little like Deserts of Kharak, made for the story and little else. I am wondering at the moment how many skirmish maps I will find and have zero interest in "wargames" mode which just seems like a way to get you to press the fancy ability buttons all the time to win rather than to be tactical or strategic.

SPOIILERS
[spoiler]The graphics are great and the story sequences were pretty good quality but I felt like the story was not aimed at me the hiigaran fleet commander and hiigaran civilisation but more some kind of superhero story with far too much emotion and not enough lore. But I liked it over all. It just felt less like homeworld and more like a family drama now. Most of the characters just seemed plain silly. I never felt the competence or responsibility of leadership from them, I did feel the recklessness and emotion though[/spoiler]

[Jarhead0331]

I'm very much enjoying the campaign. Maybe you're a HW purist or something, but I think the game is great. My hands are full managing fleets of interceptors, bombers and frigates, so I'm not sure if my brain could handle any additional complexity. I think it feels right as is.

The one complaint I agree with is fleet management. I'm yet to figure out a good way to do it. Although I organize classes of ships into groups, once they've taken losses and get mixed up in the heat of battle, I've found it to be nearly impossible to keep them organized and ordered. There must be a way to do it, but I haven't figured it out yet.

As far as your criticism of resource collection, I disagree. Those controllers need to be protected. They do get attacked. And since they are off gathering resources, they are often times deployed away from the mothership or the bulk of your combat forces. Since resources are life in this game (as they were in the originals) I find this to be strategic in and of itself.

As far as the comparison to DOW3...I don't get that...like at all. This isn't a MOBA. Not even close.

[Destraex]

The DOW3 comparison was more in the vein of a game that simply did not bring a lot of it's predescessors features with it and departed from the original formula, instead introducing things like power up skills as replacements.
Thinking about HW3 more. It's more like HW1 in terms of features minus the fuel mechanic. I don't think HW1 had module targetting or shipyards for example. That alone made me realise that HW2 my favourite, is the superior HW game.

I will give you a few examples of why I miss some of the mechanics from HW2.

When I used to play with friends I remember distinctly following harvesters back to carriers or other capital ships and locating fleets that way. A lot of people could not afford until late game or did not use resource controllers at all you see. The individual harvesters really were a supply line that would lead you to the "army" so to speak.
Now you can send resource controllers into the void and every unit is a self contrained operation that you never have to manage or worry about revealing bread crumbs back to the fleet. From the beginning you can be assured that they will never travel more than an insanely short distance to a drop off point. Additionally it means the old resource drop off modules could not have been destroyed even if they were in game. Which used to be a big deal and I have done many times.

Another event I remember is working out what the enemy was building and then raiding their capital ships to destroy the production module that was building them. You can't do that anymore. You have to kill the whole ship, which because the mothership can build anything now, means you have to kill the mothership entirely. Which is game over anyway. If not strategy the immersion of doing a star wars style surgical strike with snub fighters is kinda gone.

Yet another example is when we used to destroy battlecruiser turrets on one side, usually the top and then rain hell on them from the top while they could do nothing. To stop this you needed to escort your battlecruisers. Which they have hangars for. In HW3 their is really nothing you can do but run the basic numbers of hitpoints you might be able to take out before you are destroyed. Making the game much more linear in nature. Which is my basic complaint about games like stellaris, they become simple math equations. Rather than battle stories of great deeds and smart play.

Research like a lot of things just reminds me of Deserts of Kharak. In short it reminds me of deserts of kharak. A short campaign that I enjoyed with skirmish which was "ok", only had a few maps and was full of power up abilities. An average entry into the series that is not a failure but neither is it outstanding.
The devs always said they were concentrating on the story side of things and I read into that statement that gameplay would be less than homeworld2. It is. But it's still a solid entry into the series despite those facts.

[Jarhead0331]

^all certainly fair points. It's just that I'm reminded about how people reacted when HW2 was released. I think many felt the same way. It was different, so they didn't like it. Eventually, players adapted to the new system and it became the standard. Not saying that will happen with HW3, but it will take time for players to explore it and develop new strategies based on what this new game offers, not on what it could have been or what some hoped it would be.

I know that multiplayer focused guys may be more disappointed than guys like me who are just looking forward to a solid single player experience, so that ain't lost in me. Regardless, I look forward to your official review for grogheads. 

[rss334]

Somewhere along the line I picked up Homeworld 2 on epic store for free.   Never played it.  Yet I'm somehow tempted to add homeworld 3 to my collection of un-played games