Okay so I have some input based on my experiences so far with the new balance changes, having played all the races, with friends in different scenarios over the past week, some of you may have seen me hosting private games, my apologies for not responding as we were always full.
First Iād like to point out that I play on high unit cap settings, as my preferred enjoyment comes from larger battles and longer games. Second, I will never disable cruisers, they are and have always been an integral part of homeworld, for me its just not the same excluding them. I can adapt and deal with them as needed. Now for my findings.
HW1 Kushan. I noticed that their corvettes are better at taking out single targets, and have more focus fire. If you get a good number of them, they can pop frigates pretty fast and even take out destroyers. They are dangerously effective in high numbers. The ion frigates and ion cannons from the destroyer cruiser and frigates seem to have less range than the Taiidan or Hiigaran forces. Interceptors and bombers from both races seem about equal I canāt find much difference between the two, same for the assault frigates. I havenāt played around with the drone frigate much.
HW1 Taiidan. Their corvettes are better at firing on numerous targets than a single target than their Kushan counterparts, Iād say its only a minor difference but noticeable. Their ion cannons have superior ranges to the kushan. Missile destroyers tend to feel about the same in effectiveness. Their fighters and bombers are really effective against homeworld 2 fighters and bombers and even corvettes.
HW2 Hiigaran. Oh boy. Okay so honestly I have to say After playing HW1 extensively, I feel like the hw2 races in general are always at a handicap. They are more expensive and annoying. The HW1 ships donāt need upgrades, they already have them, so for instance, the interceptor starts with a top speed of 455 for taiidan, (WOW) the HW2 fighters are at 355 or something. My suggestion would be to remove the speed upgrades for interceptors and make them start at the 455 mark by default. Moving on to the corvettes. Gunships feel lacking compared to the HW1 Corvettes, pulsars are decent but I still feel like the Hiigarans got lazy for abanding a basic heavy and multigun corvette. IMO those vettes are superior. They were more utilitarian. The Pulsar is only good at taking out other vettes and subsystems, but why would you use that when you have bombers, researched improved bombs and youāre bombers will have a field day taking out sub systems and even groups of frigates. Torp frigates and Ion frigates are really good in their intended roles not much to say about them, and then you have flak frigates which makes me wonder about the use of gunships or pulsars. Iām not an expert Hiigaran player so I guess someone who is could help me out with that one.
Moving onto the destroyer. Again with only one destroyer class here, I feel the cap ship line up is a bit bland I have always felt that way about the homeworld 2 races in general, and no support frigates, ouch. Onto the destroyer itself, itās a lot better than its vaygr counterpart. Its kinetic weapons are more powerful and it of course you have to look at the fact this destroyer inflicts its damage on enemy frigates and destroyers right away, like the ion cannon destroyers from the homeworld 1 races. The Hiigaran destroyer has better damage application than the vaygr.
The battlecruiser feels better now as its not so over powered with its beams so it doesnāt insta kill things right away like it used to.
HW2 Vaygr. Okay so the vaygr are an interesting race to play, they have always been a very difficult to learn race because they are all about specialization. Their ships are very good at what they do, and very bad at what they donāt do. First while I did play HW2 in a more competitive environment back in 2004/2005 I will say that Iām not a competitive HW player today. I canāt say for sure if I will ever get back into that. I can however tell you my experience as a competitive vaygr player. Some battles Iād win some battles Iād lose. This race requires you to anticipate your opponent and make the correct choice, facing off against hw1 players I imagine this would be a lot more difficult. Infact, this race now needs some serious work in its cap ship department. Here is why.
Damage Application I have to emphasize that because In the strike craft and corvette department. HW1 races will always be able to deal with them, Hiigarans however can have a disadvantage. This is due to the over all gameplay style of HW2 races being vastly different than hw1. So lets take a look at the heavy missile frigate. This ship is a primary anti capital frigate. However its torps take forever to actually apply that damage. It will be shredded by ion frigates and hw1 assault frigates from either hiigs or hw1 races before that damage is applied, meaning youāll need BIG numbers of torp frigates for them to start proving their worth. Youāll need laser vettes and missiles vettes to support them against other cap ships, while your strike craft are swarming the enemy fighters. This worked in hw2 back in the day, but not so well now. Because the resource requirements to get such a sustainable defense and offense is insane. you need several carriers producing different classes of ships.
Then you need research the upgrades, so they are on par with HW1 races. The torps for Vaygr in general just suck. The hiigaran torp frigate fires its torpedos at a higher velocity than the Vaygr with their HMF. The fighters and corvettes are fine they are very effective at their roles and donāt need much of a change. Looking now at the Vaygr destroyer. Alright I expect people might disagree with me on this. However Iām gonna say it, The ship is just aweful. It has a slow rate of fire, so terribly slow that a HW1 destroyer and a HW2 destroyer will be vastly ripping into its hull before it even begins doing damage. If you were to put an equal number of destroyers from either HW or Hiigarans and face them against each other, Vaygr would lose every time.
The destroyer itself looks like it should be a special ship, yet it does not do a whole lot for its worth. My suggestion. increase the rate of fire and the speed of the torps, not the damge, just how the torps work. They are too slow and too ineffective in their damage application. I played a game called EVE, and the caldari in EVE uses torps on their battleships all the time, it took CCP years to figure out they had to increase the speed of the torps and have better damage application before people finally started to use them in PVP. It is similar with the vaygr. Their torps arenāt all that practical. Yeah, a good number of missile frigates can do massive damage. But I seriously doubt a competitive hw1 player or hiigaran player will let me get that many out.
The battlecruiser should be an example of what to follow here, its like the vaygr were smart this time when designing this ship, yes it can only fire in a forward arc but the trinity cannon applies its damage instantly, and the fusion torps are more of a support. I believe the vaygr destroyer could have a cannon in its spinal mount, maybe not a trinity cannon but something that can either aid the ship in applying its damage, or increase the speed of the torps.
Regarding HW1 Maps. After playing on multiple maps including the ones that havenāt been updated with their resource count. I will say that on all HW1 maps the HW2 races suffer at a big disadvantage, save for fields of plaz and hyper space arena, resources are scarce and too finite.
HW1 races in general I believe they should be able to have some come back play if they lose their mother ship, like their carrier being able to call in a new mother ship or something, just make it really expensive. Because the hw2 races can come back and continue super cap production in longer games. HW1 races are screwed the moment they lose their MS.
Thatās all I have for now. Thank you to devs and players who take the time to read this. I hope it helps.
