HW1 Remastered: Classic Balance Mod WIP

Homeworld Remastered Collection Homeworld Mods and Modding
#1

I just finished the first rough pass of rebalancing and tweaking to make Remastered feel less like an awful mishmash of HW1 and HW2 and more like Homeworld 1’s pacing, balance, and general gameplay mixed with the conveniences of HW2. So far it only applies to Kushan, because it would’ve been a pain to duplicate everything while I was working on it for Taiidan. Once I nail down the numbers I’ll get Taiidan working.

There’s a few special ships (drone frigate, cloak fighter, etc) that haven’t had their damage/speeds adjusted, but the HP values are correct across the board.

Features:

  • HW2 armor system removed, 10 damage is now 10 damage no matter what a ship is shooting
  • Damage, rate of fire, and HP values lifted directly from HW1
  • Ship speeds ported over from HW1 at 0.4 times to keep in the correct scale and feeling
  • Weapon ranges ported over from HW1 at 0.5 times the range, again to keep with the correct scale and feeling
  • Muzzle velocities ported over from HW1 at 0.5 times speed for same reasons as above
  • Bullet effect for Corvettes beefed up so you can still see them at their high speeds
  • Interceptors now built in squadrons of 4
  • Scouts now built in squadrons of 3
  • Accuracy of all weapons tuned to better approximate their HW1 counterparts and situations

The effect of this all is that the game now just feels so much more right. Destroyers now longer plow through walls of frigates. Frigates are no longer tissue paper cannon fodder. Capital ship battles have length to them and aren’t over as soon as somebody pops out the designated counter. Destroyers and Heavy Cruisers now feel balanced with the rest of the ships. Interceptors aren’t worthless garbage and actually have relatively high DPS in a fragile, but speedy platform. Corvettes are heavy tanks that have slow firing weapons, but they’re very high velocity, hard hitting, and generally accurate.

Screenshots don’t really do this justice, so here’s a hastily recorded video.

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#2

Well, you move faster than I do. The scale factor that will probably work best is 0.3048, not 0.5. There’s compelling evidence for using HW1 units as feet instead of meters when porting to HW2 meters, and that’s the scale factor that gets it done.

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#3

As EatThePath says the scale factor is a bis smaller, good job anyway you where really fast with this! XD

Yet If we want to have the mixed multiplayer this kind of balance doesn’t work, unless you increase all the values for HW1 ships or decrease them for HW2 vessels.
A third option would be to make the shis much cheaper and cost effective: an heavy cruiser is more or less as strong as a destroyer? Good, make it cost the same or less, it has no upgrades…

#4

I suspected the same thing, but Homeworld 2 maps are both larger and have a significantly longer draw distance. With both of those in mind, it’s pretty safe to slightly increase speeds and weapon ranges. It doesn’t affect the game much at all aside from looking a little nicer (IMO) and because the speeds are 0.4 rather than 0.5, the travel times across comparable HW1 and HW2 maps are about the same. The slight relative improvements in weapon ranges also help make up for the HW2 AI’s lack of maneuverability.

To be frank, I’m not really concerned about maintaining balance between the two games. I’d much rather have a more authentic HW1 than the ability to play both games against each other.

That being said, I’ve always wanted (and have in the past) to scale down the HW2 damage and HP numbers so that they fell in line with the pacing and balance of Homeworld 1. I’ve never liked the way HW2 handled frigates and capital ships and always preferred the much more normalized values of the first game. In HW2 one destroyer can kill 10 frigates and let’s not even get started on how ridiculously powerful the battlecruisers are.

Once you get those late game ships, the enemy is completely boned unless they start bringing out their own destroyers and battlecruisers immediately. It’s too much of a race to the top, and not about smartly using your units and keeping them alive. A capital ship is an amazing asset to have for sure, but it’s not the be all end all.

Anyway, mini-rant over. Ideally, I’d love part of this mod to be to bring the HW2 ships into a more HW1 style of balance between classes. I don’t want to touch them beyond basic normalization of HP/damage because I actually really like the diversity and ships of HW2 otherwise, I just hate the class-based rock paper scissors balance. However, for the time being, that’s outside the scope.

#5

I suppose that’s fair. My plan of attack is to use the 0.3048 values for as a starting point and then tweak based on playtesting. You got to playtesting a lot faster than I did though. :smile:

#6

For the mod autor, some youtube user make this question

Have you got the ships flying
like they did in HW1 yet, with the strafing and the turning? I know
someone else has been working on that and it’s very doable.

i’ll Remember than for Homeworld 2 classic there was an old mini mod called Dynamic capships, for make them move likes Homeworld 1, in hw1 capital and supercapital strafe and moves, since the remasterization is based in Homeworld 2 engine, if the old mod of Dynamic capship is readapted to work with your mod should work.

Ill mean it’s cool how ships in homeworld 2 moves but what dont like much is than when a group of frigates start to defend against a masse of fighters the frigates stays ecliptic and only the turrets moves. not the entire ship.

#7

I think you are doing the right thing by bringing HW2’s ships in line with HW1 instead of the reverse. Good luck!