Gearbox's Homeworld 1 & 2 HD Remakes - A New Hope

[Severian Silk]

I hope GearBox doesn't give up on the game and abandon it....

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

So far I have found so many issues with the game specially on hw1 I decided to make a list where people need to put good explanations of their bugs:

so list:
capturing frigates on mission 3 fails to give you back the captured ships.

because the physics (ballistic) system is not being used gearbox modified all the unit stats and balance around the RNG system, meaning ships like destroyers are hard countering frigates, ships move weirdly.
I did warn people about this change, but everyone said it was not a big deal... now you are seeing the consequences.

Multiple queues are limited to 2, this broke balance further in hw1.

Support frigates needing to dock with ships means they cannot repair fast nor at long range nor actually support.

support frigates cannot hyperspace while carrying strike craft.

Formations are completely broken (they are not working at all) this also is because the game is using RNG instead of ballistic system.

capturing carriers or alike will not allow you to build ships with them.

because they are using triggers instead of game mechanics capturing resource collectors on missions where you have to destroy them, will consider them as alive and keep giving resources ad infinitum to carriers to magically keep popping fighters or frigates.

capturing ships sometimes will make them pop out ships from the enemy team (carriers).

the special ability keys mostly do NOT work with bandbox selection, this includes salvage frigates (and pretty much means its a pain to use them).

because ships aren't taking onto account collision paths on the asteroids missions fighters will not evade asteroids and will get massively crushed.

friendly ships keep attacking ships that are already being hold by enough salvage corvettes meaning they often destroy your prey.

shift+click for queuing fast 5 on 5 ships does not work.

there seems to be an arbitrarily low strike craft build limit active?

The UI ships icons are night impossible to clearly identify what do you have selected.

the mouse seems to be lagging (is it hardware accelerated?)

salvage corvettes suddenly seem able to easily capture enemy corvettes (this is because it seems... evasion mechanics were disabled because they do not affect the RNG system) so they fly linearly and just get clamped easily.

salvage corvettes are not showing their capture beam animation.

the camera zooming out seems to be limited so much you cannot have a good view of the battles unless you go into tactical view which...

tactical view Is broken.

the game randomly crashes on missions 4/5

missing select unused harvesters button.

gearbox did it on purpose but why research needs to cost resources at all? it could have been left to work just like hw1, this seems to be an unnecessary change.

anyone else with bugs and issues to report? I suggest you post them here. along with the support system of gearbox.

This is a totally different game. Thank God I still have all 3 of my original three HW games on discs.

 

[Perkel]

huh so this means basically that this remaster is mostly to get HW2 working in hd + some graphical effects + engine fixes for Hw2 unit cap limit

hope they will fix those problems but i don't see how they can fix lack of ballistic model.

 

[Angthoron]

Removal of ballistic model and fucking up the AI is a real shit move. Also, is it me, or were the ship death animations (on capships, naturally) more detailed and longer in the original? I distinctly remember slow explosions with debris and shit lingering a while, now it seemed so far (well, didn't play long, had other things to do) that it's a pretty short animation and then the whole thing just fizzles out.

 

[DraQ]

That's a pretty weird thing to do, especially considering there are pretty drastic differences in the way the two games handle strike craft.

The really weird part is when you remember Kadeshi swarmers and their fuel pods.

(ok, it's official, I can't type without my caffeine)

 

[DraQ]

physics (ballistic) system is not being used

 

[Infinitron]

The Classic versions are unaltered though, right?

 

[Perkel]

yeah which is a good thing it comes with this. So newbs will be able to play broken HW1 campaign and :monocle: can play true HW1

 

[SCO]

says it will support hundreds of ships in battle
disables collision avoidance

just another day in PR-land

 

[DraQ]

says it will support hundreds of ships in battle
disables collision avoidance

just another day in lalala-land

Remastered.

 

[Gord]

Can someone explain what exactly the ballistics system is doing in Homeworld? It's been ages since I played the Homeworld games. Come to think of it, I probably only ever played HW2...

 

[SCO]

you had momentum and could turn the ships without altering trajectory. I dunno if this is what it's about, but it was useful, especially when you placed guards on another ship. You could move that ship while the others kept up at the same time they pew-pew-ed the pursuers.

 

[Dayyālu]

Can someone explain what exactly the ballistics system is doing in Homeworld? It's been ages since I played the Homeworld games. Come to think of it, I probably ever played HW2...

As far as I remember, it's an attempt to model realistically bullets and cannon shells. They "physically" exist and can connect with other ships: for example, the heavy shells of a Heavy Cruiser could, by a stroke of luck, hit a strike craft that was doing an evasive manoeuvre and destroy it, in contrast with typical hitscan weapon you saw in most RTS of the age( where the shell is just a graphical "ghost"). Plus, craft physics were kinda well modeled. But I don't know.

From what I'm reading it seems pretty bad. Gosh, I hope they will support this well at least.

Someone can explain what they mean by "RNG" system?

This is a totally different game. Thank God I still have all 3 of my original three HW games on discs.

It sounds like a mod. Not bad, of course, but a HR mod is still only a graphics mod.

Aw. All my disks are old and scratched and Cata does not work on Win7. Drat.

 

[Angthoron]

Ballistics system was "That shit flying from ships towards other ships in an attempt to blow them up" was actually "there", like flak shards flying out from the flak cannon in Unreal. Now it's just cosmetic while weapons are acting on a RNG hitscan basis. Or so it is to my understanding.

RNG = random number generator. Random hit/miss, completely detached from actual things on the screen.

 

[DraQ]

Projectiles also seemed to hit or miss their targets based on actual collision. They also transferred momentum to objects they hit - I once tried to smash an autoturret by pushing a derelict into it at Karos Graveyard (Assault Frigs worked the best for that, for some reason).

Also:

Did vanilla HW2 have ballistic model?
If not I retract all my statements regarding it containing mechanical improvements over HW1.

 

[Ulminati]

Can someone explain what exactly the ballistics system is doing in Homeworld? It's been ages since I played the Homeworld games. Come to think of it, I probably ever played HW2...

Ships could coast along pointed in another direction than they were flying, allowing capship escorts to function like turrets. In some big bights, fighters could fail an evasive maneuver and crash into other ships, dealing damage to both. In a crowded fight, it was possible for ships to shoot things other than their target as the bullets kept travelling past. Especially when you were fighting near a capship.

 

[DraQ]

Someone can explain what they mean by "RNG" system?

Shooting and rolling virtual dice to see if you hit.

It's more like an RPG this way.

Spoiler

 

[Angthoron]

Someone can explain what they mean by "RNG" system?

Shooting and rolling virtual dice to see if you hit.

It's more like an RPG this way.

Spoiler

Homeworld 3: RTS RPG WITH A BILLION GAJILLION GUNS, DUBSTEP AND CLAPTRAPS!!!! WRITING BY THAT GUY NOBODY LIKES!!!

 

[DraQ]

Can someone explain what exactly the ballistics system is doing in Homeworld? It's been ages since I played the Homeworld games. Come to think of it, I probably ever played HW2...

Ships could coast along pointed in another direction than they were flying, allowing capship escorts to function like turrets. In some big bights, fighters could fail an evasive maneuver and crash into other ships, dealing damage to both. In a crowded fight, it was possible for ships to shoot things other than their target as the bullets kept travelling past. Especially when you were fighting near a capship.

Yeah, it was awesome that ships could travel backwards or sideways.

I remember there being a mod that tried to make HW1 Newtonian, but it just didn't go well given the existing AI and fuel system - it usually ended with ships scattering away from battle in random directions at ludicrous velocities reporting lack of fuel.

 

[Idiott]

Fun times.

 

[Perkel]

ok i did rerun of first 3 missions in HW1 and remastered.

First of all. It is basically HW1 campaign in HW2 engine. This basically is what most of people already knew. No ballistics, formations are useless, tactics changed from evasive, neutral and agressive as actual type of combat to who they will attack instead.

In HW1 for example if you are fighting slow bombers who can't do shit to fighter then you would switch to agressive. This meant that fighter will hold formation, they will slow down and won't do evasive manuvers so they can shoot weapons all the time where in case of evasive they will only shoot target briefly but they will be using weapons at full speed and changing their model flight a lot so enemy weapons won't hit them.

This naturally worked in HW1 engine because it supported mentioned ballistics as bullets were objects flying toward ship and since shops are not stationary they could evade those projectiles where in case of HW1 remastered there is chance to hit and even if ship will do evasive maneuver it will decide if it will hit it or not.

Like poster above also said HW1 model is closer to proper space ships could simply move sideways avoiding fire where in HW2 engine they behave like planes in air.

Homeworld 1 remastered is basically like i said HW1 on HW2 engine with all changes it introduced.

I guess HW1 remastered is viable thing as it will get people awesome campaign but nevertheless it is bad that they couldn't replicate HW1 gameplay which stands on its own compared to HW2.

Still original is in this collection and seems to be working ok so if you are butthurt about HW1 remastered not keeping hw1 gameplay you can switch original on.

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

So they fucked it up. What a surprise.

Spoiler

 

[DraQ]

Did HW2 do away with ballistics or was it GB's own fuck up?

 

[Raapys]

Well this is hugely disappointing...

Any chance "modders can fix it"?

 

[Perkel]

Did HW2 do away with ballistics or was it GB's own fuck up?

yes HW2 changed it for chance to hit. Still it isn't some OMG change. That downgraded a bit gameplay but overall HW2 is still fucking good game + it introduced some good changes as well.

And complex exist only on HW2 engine which is superior to any HW including HW1 even with % to hit changes.

Here are three webms i created to show difference between tactics and how different HW1 fighters fly and shoot things:

Evasive:

This formation protects fighter squadrons from concentrated fire. So flack cannons are are way worse on that formation than on other. Also ships move at max speed when they attack so they only briefly are in range of enemy cannons but it comes at cost of firepower as ships will rarely attack enemy ships.



Neutral:

mix between agressive and evasive. In this formation ships will try to keep formation and try to fight one enemy at time which is something good for bombers that shoot slowly. So they will deliver their payload and move away as fast as they can. This is also good to fight other sqadrons as concentrated fire will quickly anihilate each ship instead of sapping whole squadron slowly.



Agressive:

Just watch they clip. 0 defense all attack. Preferable to hunt defenceless bombers, frigates and so on that don't have good fighter defense.




Those collision detection problem with asteroids are probably bugs since HW2 ships don't smash into asteroids or other things.

Well this is hugely disappointing...

Any chance "modders can fix it"?

No because they would need to basically recreate HW1 gameplay changes into engine that doesn't support projecticles being actual projecticles which means they would need reverse engineer engine.

I assume this is why Gerbox didn't do it and instead they just made mod to HW2 called Homeworld 1 campaign.