Any "spiritual successors" to Homeworld?

[A horse of course]

It's been a long time since I played anything like Homeworld 2. The last space RTS I can recall playing is Empire at War and I have no idea what people play these days to get their "capital ships blowing the shit out of each other" kick. I keep hearing either Sword of the Stars or Sins of a Solar Empire bandied around, but what would the Codex recommend for an old Homeworld fan? Bonus points if it has some sort of modding scene.

 

[Destroid]

Neither of those games will do the trick I'm afraid. You are probably better off playing HW2 mods.

 

[Deakul]

What? Both of those games are quite good.
Sins especially, though it's a bit unbalanced these days... but it does have a huge modding scene.

There's also Haegemonia, Conquest: Frontier Wars, Star Trek: Armada, and a few others I'm sure.

 

[Angthoron]

I'm not entirely sure if this is the case (never got too far in the game) but Star Wolves tried to take Homeworld's design ideas and from the little I saw, it more or less works as intended. I just didn't have time to play it at the time, but really, it felt quite decent.

Don't know about capital ship battles though.

 

[DraQ]

Haegemonia is pretty shit, but it's admittedly pretty. Also, ship design is blah.


I'd recommend Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, but it has some serious balance issues, retarded aliens (luckily you don't get to experience that too often), and is overall a different game, where you guide and micromanage a limited fleet of space vessels, rather than building and commanding huge armada like in HW.

It has awesome, utilitarian ship design (especially early on), enjoyable story, noticeably attempts to fake Newtonian flight, and has some nice, atmospheric moments.

It's not quite HW1, but it's certainly a quality game on its own and much, much superior to HW2.

Too bad it doesn't stick with relatively low-tech, low-key corporate space combat of the early missions through the entire game, but goes rather epic instead. It would have been much better this way.

Screen:

Beginning of the game.

 

[The Dude]

Neither SoaSE nor SotS are anything like HW really. SoaSE is just a pretty regular large scale RTS taking place in space. SotS is more of a spiritual successor to MOO1 with pew pew lasery tactical RT battles (I love it though.). I'm going to agree with DraQ that Nexus is a really good capital ship blow em'up. Great feeling of scale, interesting tactial decisions and ship customization.

Star Wolves is more of a RTS/RPG hybrid than something like HW. It's mostly focused around fighters and levelling up their pilots, though you have a mothership and get to blow up quite a few larger ships through the story. Number 1 is decent all around (though it was ages since I played it), the sequel is a horrible buggy mess that was never sufficently patched. The 3rd one is a mod that was deemed good enough to be sold as a new game. The translation is less than stellar, though a bit funny sometimes. It is somewhat free roaming and the mothership has a bigger role than at least the 1st one (you get new motherships a few times throughout the story, that's also a branching one). If you can look past the silly dialogue it's a decent game.

 

[Deakul]

Nexus would've been amazing with a skirmish option.
And it was buggy and crash happy, I recall a mission getting bugged out in towards the middle where I couldn't even continue because a script fucked up or something.

 

[MetalCraze]

Haegemonia isn't a "spiritual successor" but it's like Master of Orion 2 RTS Edition - worth a try.

 

[DraQ]

Haegemonia isn't a "spiritual successor" but it's like Master of Orion 2 RTS Edition - worth a try.

Haegemonia is mostly purty space battles plus spectacular planets with shit RTS attached.

 

[Paperclip]

I like how in Haegemonia you can camp jump nodes with military bases which will obliterate any enemy ship attempting to pass through.

 

[DraQ]

I like how in Haegemonia you can camp jump nodes with military bases which will obliterate any enemy ship attempting to pass through.

Isn't that standard tactics - place 2-3 bases around a wormhole, watch the carnage?

Still the game part of the game is shit - very few different ships, pretty much no distinct combat roles, restrictive limits on fleet numbers meaning you are best off concentrating on what hits the hardest and so on.

Looks like heavan, plays like turd.

 

[Exmit]

Nothing can rival Homeworld to be honest. I just rewatched the intro again...... HW story is the best

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrW4jkQdmjI

 

[DraQ]

Nothing can rival Homeworld to be honest. I just rewatched the intro again...... HW story is the best

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrW4jkQdmjI

Homeworld was one of the few games of which I completed the demo and immediately ran to the store demanding them taking my money.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I just realised I've never played Homeworld.

Time to fix this decline.

Thanks, thread.

 

[MetalCraze]

There are no spiritual successors to Homeworld apart from Cataclysm.

Even HW2 wasn't one.


I haven't seen a single space RTS with such atmosphere and varied campaign before or since. There are however space games worth giving a try.

SoaSE with all addons is quite OK for a few evenings

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

SoaSE with all addons is quite OK for a few evenings

Got bored after one evening.

Any "spiritual successors" to Homeworld?

Not fucking one (not talking about the other HW games).

 

[DraQ]

There are no spiritual successors to Homeworld apart from Cataclysm.

No, just no.

Cata wasn't a bad game, but it lacked strong "core" units till late in game, focusing on very niche curiosities instead, broke gameplay balance with retarded homing energy cannons which rendered strike craft obsolete by allowing supercaps to hit them with 100% effectiveness, broke incentive to diversify forces by enforcing very strict limit on unit numbers, and had ultra-retarded animated backgrounds.


DAT BACKGROUNDS...



FFGNHJ$W%TEHTHDRTJTJNHTHTR#$F!!!111111111

Siege cannon, modules and repair bots were cool, tho.

HW2 is much closer to spiritual successor to HW, except the story sucked, retcons sucked, background lore sucked and plotholes could swallow a galaxy whole, so not really either.

 

[procrastinator]

Conquest: Frontier Wars

It's just an ugly, mutilated version of Starcraft. Not worth playing.

 

[MetalCraze]

DAT BACKGROUNDS...

You mean dat shitty white skies instead of space in HW2?

it lacked strong "core" units till late in game

Which was great till the late game. Lacking strong "core" units is exactly what sets a good RTS apart from a bad RTS.

That's exactly why the best RTS by Westwood - Tiberian Sun - was the least popular out of all their RTS'es.

Hint: it didn't belong to the bad category.



I completely hate when in RTS it's enough to build the same type (or two) of units and you can buttrape the enemy just using them.

Yes that goes for that 'late game' in Cataclysm too where Dreadnoughts come.

 

[DraQ]

DAT BACKGROUNDS...

You mean dat shitty white skies instead of space in HW2?

No, I mean insultingly retarded flickering offensive to anyone with at least half a brain born after fucking XVII century.

The moment entire galaxy starts blinking at me is the moment where they might as well plaster the background with trollfaces.

Besides, how are HW2 backgrounds different from HW1 ones?

it lacked strong "core" units till late in game

Which was great till the late game. Lacking strong "core" units is exactly what sets a good RTS apart from a bad RTS.

Nope. Lacking the core units is like trying to wage a war exclusively with Hobart's Funnies.

All combat units in Cata after Acolytes and prior to Destroyers were fucking novelty units. Ramming frigate or multibeam frigate, or hive frigate would be nice *additions* to, not replacements of assault frigs and Firelances. Similarly you had only 2 fighter and one notreallycorvette in Cata (I don't take MCV and Mimic into account as actual combat units).

TL;DR:
Skyway is a 'tard.

 

[MetalCraze]

No, I mean insultingly retarded flickering offensive to anyone with at least half a brain born after fucking XVII century.

Oh noes something is blinking in space

The moment entire galaxy starts blinking at me is the moment where they might as well plaster the background with trollfaces.

The moment where the ships fire lazors and there is a pew-pew sound is the moment where they might as well plaster the background with trollfaces

Besides, how are HW2 backgrounds different from HW1 ones?

About this much

Nope. Lacking the core units is like trying to wage a war exclusively with Hobart's Funnies.

No lacking the core units = waging combat using unique features of multiple units, forcing enemy to counter-act that shit.

Having core units = lawl I've built 30 armageddon tankz all ur base are belong to us

 

[DraQ]

No, I mean insultingly retarded flickering offensive to anyone with at least half a brain born after fucking XVII century.

Oh noes something is blinking in space

I would try to explain it to you, but it would be a lot of wasted effort and I don't really care *that* much about fixing stuff inside your malformed little head.

The moment entire galaxy starts blinking at me is the moment where they might as well plaster the background with trollfaces.

The moment where the ships fire lazors and there is a pew-pew sound is the moment where they might as well plaster the background with trollfaces

The moment we have wizards casting fireballs, we might as well have sun flicker randomly and scenery sparkle with bursts of disco lights to avoid being too static.

Nope, you're still retarded, sorry.

Besides, how are HW2 backgrounds different from HW1 ones?

About this much

Wait...

No, sorry:

You're still retarded.

Nope. Lacking the core units is like trying to wage a war exclusively with Hobart's Funnies.

No, herp derp

Fixed.

In HW you had several different specialized fighters, a lot of corvettes including stuff like salvage corvettes and minelayers, specialized frigates, two different destroyers and a multitude of utility ships.

In cata you don't even have any anti-capship craft before you get to build anti-all destroyers and dreadnoughts equipped with homing plasma cannons. For large portion of the game your heaviest ships classes are retrofitted tug and rather extravagant ship dedicated to protecting nonexistant heavier combat ships against strike craft.

Hobart's.
Funnies.


P.S. Have I mentioned that you're still retarded?

 

[MetalCraze]

Did it take almost an hour for you to find a screenshot with a black space in HW2?

Congratulations!

In HW you had several different specialized fighters, a lot of corvettes including stuff like salvage corvettes and minelayers, specialized frigates, two different destroyers and a multitude of utility ships.

Yes

In cata you don't even have any anti-capship craft before you get to build anti-all destroyers and dreadnoughts equipped with homing plasma cannons. For large portion of the game your heaviest ships classes are retrofitted tug and rather extravagant ship dedicated to protecting nonexistant heavier combat ships against strike craft.

I remember I had no problem killing big ships with hive and ion frigates supported by small shits.

Maybe you just suck?

 

[DraQ]

Did it take almost an hour for you to find a screenshot with a black space in HW2?

No, to find decent HW1 shot past M8.


And to get through internal server errors.

I remember I had no problem killing big ships with hive and ion frigates supported by small shits.

Maybe you just suck?

So you admit it's even worse? Not only are you forced to use narrow niche units like drone frigate 2.0 and ion version of multigun corvette upscaled to frigate, but also they excel in roles completely different to ones indicated by their descriptions (like multibeam - slicing up fighter squadrons)?

Slamdunk.

 

[Oarfish]

Starfarer is shaping up to be a damn good game. The strategy components are not implemented yet but the real time tactical combat is sweet. 2D though, but a bro can handle that.

http://fractalsoftworks.com/