Anyone remember the old classic HOMEWORLD?

[Ravioli]

I remember back LONG LONG LOOOOOOOOONG time ago..well actually, it was 1999, but it seems to be LOOOOONG time ago. I remember my dad sitting playing some "space" game all night long, all he played was homeworld. I didnt know english that well so i didnt understand anything in the game, and as you Homeworld players know, its a very hard and strategic game, so therefore i hated the game and cursed it to hell and played my loved FPS games.

Till now, i looked through my games and in a plastic bag full of old game, i found Homeworld and thought..."well, what the heck, it cant hurt". So i tryed it out.

My first impression was WWWWAAAAOOOWWWW. I have never experianced this game like this, its so different since the first time i played! Maybe because i finally understand what "WE ARE UNDER ATTACK" means lol

I have been playing for hours straight these days, and im getting better and better. Its just so amazing, i cant believe i missed out on this game...i feel so left out now that no one plays it anymore, no more multiplayer games, no more clans..no more nothing...just me. I still havent finished the Singelplayer campain, but will soon, i really love the story, they should make a movie out of it. I really came in tuch with this game because it was so DIFFERENT you know...the full 3 Dimentional RTS was just a BLAST. The strategy, the maps, the sounds, the gameplay, the background, EVERYTHING makes it feel like im really the only one that can save the human race from instinktion.

I later found out that there is a Homeworld 2, and the videos and screenshots amazes me even MORE. I tried the demo out, and its amazing. Its a bit different from Homeworld 1, but i still like it. I have only played the Tutorial though, gotta play the rest soon.

I hope that they make an Homeworld 3, HW2 has awesome graphics and i dont think it can become better, but maybe a NextGen Homeworld3 would be good...with HDR and that stuff

Anyway, my dad is a great fan of the series, i showed him EVE and he loved it to, though he never played it yet, neither i becuase i was just using the Trail.


Anyway, are there any of you Homeworld fans here? PLEASE, there gotta be SOMEONE!!!!!

 

[Pesmerga]

One of my life's biggest regrets is that I never really learned how to play RTS games. Homeworld, along with a few other RTS games, are absolutely some of the best games in the world. Reading Ender's Game re-sparked my interest in Homeworld enough to buy Homeworld 2.

 

[theotherguy]

Homeworld was a brilliant game, it was the second PC game I bought when I got my first PC in 1999. (the first was starcraft and the third half-life) And I loved it. It felt like so much freedom and control over traditional 2D RTS games. Homeworld 2 was alright, but it wasn't as immersive as the original. That was, until I discovered the Point Defense Systems Mod.

If you get Homeworld 2, the PDS mod is an absolute must.
www.pds.hwaccess.net
(get version 6.1 or 7.0 anything higher is utter crap)
PDS originally started as a mod to add simple point defense machineguns to capital ships so they could shoot down incoming missiles, and it evolved into a total conversion, loading all of the ships up with tons and tons of weapons and rescripting the flightpaths so that all ships smaller than the battlecruisers moved aroudn in 3d space and dogfought. Sadly, its "new" versions removed the RTS aspect altogether and made it into a "naval simulation game" with no more than 2 ships on the screen at a time in extremely boring skirmishes. 6.1 up to 7.0 are what you are looking for if you want classic homeworld-style gameplay with insane numbers of ships, weapons and tactical options.

a typical battle zoomed out in PDS 7.0

 

[Pesmerga]

utter chaos

 

[torso boy]

The Homeworld series is one of my favorite(If not my favorite, period.) RTSes.

 

[Viperidae]

Awesome, awesome game. Recommend it for just the atmosphere alone--it really felt like you were in space.

 

[Laivasse]

Homeworld was awesome, I love the sense of spaceand scale. Some ofthe backgrounds, nebulae and the like, were really beautiful.

However I fired it up to try and complete it a second time a while back and I had become terrible at it. I got to the map where you have to survive the asteroid belt and just gave up in frustration. Maybe I'll give Homeworld 2 a shot one of these days.

 

[B_MAN]

damn
makes me wanna dust it off and install

 

[destrukt]

trying to find my homeworld box [cd] now, but i can't and i want to try this mod.

One of my life's biggest regrets is that I never really learned how to play RTS games. Homeworld, along with a few other RTS games, are absolutely some of the best games in the world. Reading Ender's Game re-sparked my interest in Homeworld enough to buy Homeworld 2.

i finished reading ender's game a few days ago, amazing book.

/me puts on flash suit and plays some ta.

 

[Mr. Redundant]

it's funny hearing people refering to Homeworld as old heh.

epic
Enigma Force
or even Ascendancy heh those are old

 

[Ravioli]

wow, good to see homeworld players here!

I have now come to the mission were i am to destroy some Outpost of some sort, and there is Radiation in the area. My armes are getting punded by hundrenths of mines floating in space...and when i finally reach the Outpost..my entire fighter army just burst up in flames while the tougher ships doesnt take a scratch..wtf? I destroy the escaping ship..yay...but then i got 999999999 enemys turning my last ships and friges into dust...then im left with nothing and no money.

I gotta work something out...

 

[xcellerate]

i bought the game when it first came out, but never actually beat it itll about 2 years ago.

That one level where they have all their cruisers set up in the sphere around the base...i could never beat that one!

 

[Kyorisu]

wow, good to see homeworld players here!

I have now come to the mission were i am to destroy some Outpost of some sort, and there is Radiation in the area. My armes are getting punded by hundrenths of mines floating in space...and when i finally reach the Outpost..my entire fighter army just burst up in flames while the tougher ships doesnt take a scratch..wtf? I destroy the escaping ship..yay...but then i got 999999999 enemys turning my last ships and friges into dust...then im left with nothing and no money.

I gotta work something out...

Small ships have no defence agains't radiation. Load them all into some carriers and launch them when your past the cloud. (The base if your on the mission I think you are doesn't have any close around it.

Use Frigate class vessels more. Whilst small ships are uber, it's just easier to work with bigger ships.

I usually go with a large battlegroup with a few bomber wings and anti bomber wings.

i bought the game when it first came out, but never actually beat it itll about 2 years ago.

That one level where they have all their cruisers set up in the sphere around the base...i could never beat that one!

That was a piece of cake. Step 1 Lure a few away, then destroy them. Step 2 Repair, repeat step 1.

 

[15357]

I have homeworld 2 (Came with BF2), but got bored with it.


*hugs starcraft*

 

[Razor]

The 3 rts games that any serious gamer should of played are Total Annihilation, Red Alert and Homeworld .

Loved Homeworld, loved Cataclysm and loved Homeworld 2. Never heard of this total conversion mod though but it definately sounds like something i need. Theotherguy, why is the latest version, all i could find is pdsv7r1 and pdsas76, first is 70megs and the second is 20megs, which do i need?

 

[kupocake]

I have homeworld 2, but got bored with it.

Unsurprising. The development team made massive compromises because of publishing demands, and the resulting game was distinctly sub-par. (2003 was a bad year for sequels. I very nearly lost faith in PC gaming because of crap games like this).

Homeworld 1 pisses on Homeworld 2. It's basic premise is so simple and comprehensive (exiled race return to home planet), it never needs any more than rudimentary fleshing out (though the manual which came with it had a massive and brilliant backstory nontheless). HW2 attempts to create a mystical tale of god-like technology which needs a hell of a lot of explanation, and gives the player exactly the same ammount of missions as the original to get the story across (and no brilliant manual this time either). The resulting story is a mess, especially as Relic insisted on cramming other events away from the main thread into the game (

Spoiler

The rather random and pointless death of the Bentusi

and the dull inclusion of a reoccuring character named "captain soban"). It wouldn't matter if the game was actually fun, but they made the biggest unit far too powerful and all those below that far too weak. In the original Homeworld, you felt some kind of ownership over your units because you could easily maintain them and they wouldn't die in five seconds. In Homeworld 2, everything seems to be geared to showing off the pretty explosions, and you simply don't care for the army you build up. Resources are far too plentiful, so you just rebuild constantly, send units off to their death and rinse and repeat.

I'd go as far as saying that the Psuedo-Expansion, Homeworld Catacylsm is far better than Homeworld 2. Sure, the story is one big walking cliche (Oh noes, the Borg are attacking!), but at least it's well managed and there is some decent variation in the missions (escorting a damaged ship, saving a allied convoy, finding a big f***-off cannon to strap to the side of your mothership, those kinds of things). There's some great units in there too, even though they truely define overkill (those Super Acolyte fighters in the last mission were awesome)

 

[sHaDdoW]

Completed homeworld 2. Its not as hard as i would of liked it to of been. Felt abit short.

Spoilers

Hw2 does not have god like technolgy. Gatekeeper ship(Could be wrong ship i'm thinking of. The ship that you capture and acts as a key for the gate) weapons can be combated quite easily with battleship weopons.Ie Ion cannon's and trintity cannon's

The strange alien capital ships that you fight have loads of hp though

 

[Lucid]

Never got into Homeworld, sadly.
It looked cool and stuff... but the 360 degree warzone always kinda've turned me off.

 

[StardogChampion]

I thought the Homeworld 2 demo was pretty good at the time, but I never got around to buying it.

 

[sHaDdoW]

Never got into Homeworld, sadly.
It looked cool and stuff... but the 360 degree warzone always kinda've turned me off.

its more than 360 degree . 360 degree is a circle on a 2d plane. I'm guessing.

 

[Lucid]

its more than 360 degree . 360 degree is a circle on a 2d plane. I'm guessing.

Alrighty the whole 3D-Space warzone then x.x

 

[theotherguy]

. Never heard of this total conversion mod though but it definately sounds like something i need. Theotherguy, why is the latest version, all i could find is pdsv7r1 and pdsas76, first is 70megs and the second is 20megs, which do i need?

70 megs is what youre looking for. 7.6 (the 20 MB version) is this new "naval tactical simulation" that is hardly even worth looking at.

I think these is probably the newest versions that still had RTS elements (ie actual collecting of resources and building of ships, something that was removed from 7.5 and up)

http://www.pds.hwaccess.net/downloads.php?cat_id=3&download_id=6 (this is version 7.0, where they removed all engine trails and made all of the mass drivers into energy weapons, something I disliked)

http://www.pds.hwaccess.net/downloads.php?cat_id=3&download_id=5 (this is version 6.1 the version I still play because engine trails still existed in it and the gameplay was more similar to the original vanilla HW2. However, it lacks certain key features like battle carriers, flagships and nuclear missiles)

A battle in 6.1(notice the engine trails on the missiles)

A battle in 7.0 (notice how the mass drivers are firing ion cannons)

So really which one to get is a matter of taste.

 

[kupocake]

Hw2 does not have god like technology.

Sajuuk says you are wrong.

As for Homeworld 2's difficulty, I think they made big mistakes. On replaying the game, I always get stuck on the third or forth missions, they're really bloody difficult! After that though, the game is surprisingly piss-easy. I think most of it is the resource units. You have far, far too many of them by the end of the game, and you just spend all your time rebuilding fleets uber-fast instead of pissing around maintaining them.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

I'm hoping to see a a new space RTS that takes advantage of Ageia PhysX to make the battles more interesting

 

[Pesmerga]

I'm hoping to see a a new space RTS that takes advantage of Ageia PhysX to make the battles more interesting

Eh? I don't see how physics would make a battle more interesting.

 

[Mutley]

Is Homeworld still worth getting today? Looks really good graphics for 1999.

Is there an open-ended / skirmish mode?

 

[Pesmerga]

Is Homeworld still worth getting today? Looks really good graphics for 1999.

Is there an open-ended / skirmish mode?

Yup and yup, there's also a boat load of custom maps (you may think open space is... easy to map, but well, it is, but oh well)

 

[Ravioli]

i finished the Homeworld2 demo, then tried multiplayer but no one was there

 

[sHaDdoW]

Sajuuk says you are wrong.

As for Homeworld 2's difficulty, I think they made big mistakes. On replaying the game, I always get stuck on the third or forth missions, they're really bloody difficult! After that though, the game is surprisingly piss-easy. I think most of it is the resource units. You have far, far too many of them by the end of the game, and you just spend all your time rebuilding fleets uber-fast instead of pissing around maintaining them.

Spoiler
Sajuuk thing sucks. Wasn't as powerfull as i thought it would of been. All that work just get that thing. All those prophecies about its power and stuff. I would of thought it would be able to take out battleships ships with one hit. But no



it was just a ship left from ancient race! So its not a god

 

[Ennui]

relic does good strategy.

 

[staticprimer]

Catyclism is definately underrated. Like Kupo said, the story kind of sucks, but the ship design and balance was great. My personal favorite ship (behind the Ion Acolytes, of course) were the revamped Multi-Ion Frigates. Think of the Ion Frigates from HW1, except instead of one powerful beam, you have 5 or 6 fast firing weaker beams. Group 5 or 6 of these together and anything less than a Frigate is nothing more than an afterthought. They can even take down other capital ships pretty easily in enough numbers. Then there's the Dreadnaught, the behemoth moving weapons platform. Just having one of those is a sight to behold, they are so much cooler than HW1's Battleships. Man, now I'm going to have to dig up that game!

 

[pvtbones]

Never played HW1 but I have played HW2 (never beat it though ) there are some very good mods out for HW2

the already mentioned PDS

The warloads mod (Starwars mod, make sure you have a good computer)
http://warlords.swrebellion.com/

Battlestar Galactica (not yet released, will include both the new series and old series)
http://battlestarmod.cjb.net/

and many more.

 

[Mutley]

Just installed it and gave it a quick blast. Real good. Took a few minutes to figure a few aspects out but was really good fun for something in 1999 (normally I can't play old games without been put off).

 

[Eejit]

Yeah it being a space sim kinda helps the graphics not age. You don't need bumpmaps or HDR or complex shadowing on your big-ass battleships flying through space
I quite liked the Babylon 5 mods for HW1 since I was a fan of the TV series.
I never got around to completing HW1, I got stuck on one of the missions with a time limit. My RTS playstyle doesn't like time limits, which is why I suck at online play.

 

[sHaDdoW]

One of the reasons homeworld was soo good was because of the scale.

Big ass capital ships kinda attracted me to it ofcourse.

 

[DarkStar]

Seriously.....Homeworld was so awesome and innovative. Relic was swinging for the fences with that game and those guys hit it out of the park..

But then something happened. Relic lost their edge. What happened to Relic? I played that Warhammer game and it was nowhere near as cool or unique as Homeworld. It was kinda like a 3D, less-balanced, shorter version of Starcraft.....which is like a 8-year-old game. Now they've come out with The Outfit for the 360, which I played and set aside within two hours. Guess they just burned too bright too quickly too keep up the kind of pace that Homeworld promised.

 

[hungryduck]

homeworld was always awesome over a lan too....
it still is...

 

[kupocake]

it was just a ship left from ancient race! So its not a god

In the mythology of the series, Sajuuk was their god, hence "god-like technology" (the whole basis of their religion basically stemmed back to the races which came before and their god is basically a big spaceship). Then there's the forge for the three cores which is something like 80 times bigger than the Mothership. And on top of that, you've got the whole mystifying of the hyperspace cores which appear to grant Karen S'jet eternal youth among other things (and all of a sudden the core you used is said to be a special, "far jumping" core, which makes little to no sense given that the original game said the core was a copy and not the original core as HW2 claims).

Talking about scale, that's one of the specific areas that Homeworld 2 was a big let down. Early on, there was talk of "Megaliths"- enormous structures to fill out empty space that could be used in the whole strategy of the game by being bases for turrets and various things. When the ambition of the project was scaled back, they were cut out. (http://shipyards.relicnews.com/hw2/index_misc.html) The biggest objects in the game are relatively unimpressive, like the Balcora gate and Tanis shipyard. They copped out and did the whole "massive structure in painted background" thing. Shame.

One other reasons why Homeworld was great. Agnus Dei. That Mothership launching sequence,

Spoiler

the burning of Kharak, the story of your race's exile and the final assault on the Enemy Mothership

were all the more drammatic for it. The non-interactive sequences were well directed, and the black and white animatics were brilliant.

 

[Greatgat]

^ Totally agree with all you said. The animatics were just so perfect for the way the story was told. And that music playing while you sailing those epic fleets through space? *drool*

I did find myself disappointed a little with Homeworld 2, unfortunately. It just seemed to lack that extra bit of awe that made the first one so great.

 

[Lucid]

Wasn't Homeworld released for free a while ago? >.>