I stand corrected.
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.
1 Like
The Re-balance MP/skirmish game rules are by default to āDestroy all production shipsā (am I right?)
Maybe introduce victory conditions like some of the mods, so adding āDestroy MS onlyā would level the field a bitā¦
p.s thx Rata/ RedDevil/ Cloaked, for answering my previous Corv question 
1 Like
Itās true that the loss of the MS is a near fatal blow to the HW1 player, itās also part of the asymmetric nature developing in HWR. Remember that the HW1 MS as a unit by itself is far superior to the other MSes. It can jump alone and it has dual production. It can produce repair vettes from the start, and support frigates as a tech one research. Giving the HW1 races the ability to call in a new one would just be a really bad idea for that race and the lore behind it. Itās not a volunteer or enlisted Navy commanding that ship, itās the last of your race. Protect it as such.
I would entertain the thought of beefing the overall HP of the MS. We noticed the other day in raw MS+ CCs + Ship Yard that combined HP, the HW1 races are far behind. But I personally could never get behind calling in a replacement MS, or a HW1 SY equilivant. This is one of the key disadvantages of your choice to be HW1 and should be resolved tactically and strategically.
We did, however, account for MS sniping in our balance discussions. The nerf to BCs and buff to GW inhibitors combined were considered due to how easy it was to jump a BC into a GW sitting at the HW1 MS. BC with its own inhibitor and range would pretty much trap the MS unless you had your well positioned far between the BC jump origin and the MS. Now the inhibitor range gives you time to react to an MS snipe.
2 Likes
Why not just make make a hw1 SY equivalent with only 1 production queue. and limit the ability to only be able to call in one only if the mothership goes down? I donāt think that would really break the balance to be honest. When you lose your mothership even as a hw2 player, thereās a very good chance youāre not going to come back from it. For all intensive purpose, a battle cruiser is far superior to a hw1 cruiser in terms of its utilitarian roles, it can repair fighters and build on grav wells/fire control towers.
Though to be fair, a come back play for hw1 is more of a wish in the hopes of some more interesting games when playing on large maps. Itās not really my biggest gripe as it stands, (Besides I can mod it in myself for fun) I do agree that the MSās feel pretty weak in terms of health. One battle cruiser or heavy cruiser can still easily kill an MS. (This is partly why I like Cataclysm, because you could upgrade your MSās and they had specially strategic abilities. The loss of that in HW2 always bugged me)
My biggest over all concern is more on the terms of Vaygr and their damage application and how expensive HW2 races are to play, which make them not so viable for HW1 maps. I plan on playing some more, thereās more things I need to experiment with. I guess my largest issues with the hw2 races is that there are so many hoops to jump through to get production going. with only one production queue and the need to build the required facility for the ship class.
All the balancing so far has been with all the settings to normal/medium. @thisquietreverie, maybe take a look at high unit caps and try to carry over some of the good stuff from normal unit caps. I noticed back in march that on high unit caps 2 Shipyards + 1 Mothership may be pretty OP vs just 1 hw1 Mothership.
Regarding hw2 having to spend ru on upgrades while hw1 does not: some of the hw2 upgrade costs are semi-built into hw1 research, or hw1 ships. For example Hiig Ion Frigates cost 700ru, while Kushan Ion Frigates cost 900ru. This isnāt universally applied in one specific way, but Iām sure @thisquietreverie has taken this into consideration.
Hiig and Vaygr destroyers will kill each other perfectly every time. Just like Hiig and Vaygr battlecruisers do. Iāve seen several posts with concerns about how Vaygr missiles take more time to hit their targets than say Ion cannons. This is well known and was balanced out with the appropriate damage for Vaygr by Relic back in 2003.
Additionally missiles have a positive and negative aspect that should be pointed out. First, Ion Frigates often overkill a target and waste damage. Extra Vaygr Heavy Missile Frigate missiles will retarget another enemy when their first target dies, so that no damage is wasted (as long as thereās another target nearby). This is the positive aspect. The negative aspect is that Missiles must atleast be half way to their target or they will explode. Generally the positive aspect out weights the negative aspect in practice.
Additionally Vaygr destroyers can be kited with micro against Hiigaran destroyers. A Vaygr destroyer does all its damage in one volley, so it can get in range, fire, and pull out while taking very minimal damage from a Hiigaran destroyer. If this micro is repeated, a Vaygr destroyer can situation-ally beat a Hiig destroyer.
Regarding ship ranges: The main weapons for all destroyers have the same range at 4500. Hiig Ion Frigs and HMF have 4000 range. Kushan and Taiidan Ion Frigs have 4250 range. Hiig Torpedo Frigs have 4500 range.
1 Like
Iād like to test those ranges, and the Vaygr destroyers effectiveness. Because from all my experiences, the Hiigaran and the Taiidan seem to shoot farther with their item cannons. Maybe its just me, and those Iām playing with, maybe its got something to do with how we play, its just how it feels regardless.
As for the Hiigaran and Vaygr destroyers killing each other perfectly. I have to wonder about that. When dealing with vaygr destroyers in general they donāt give me that much trouble as a HW1 player. The Hw1 destroyers seem more effective than the hw2 destroyers. Iām going to do some more testing on it. Back in 2004 I never complained about balance too much because I was only dealing with Hiigarans as a Vaygr player. HMFS were the core of my fleet most of the time, supported by a mix of laser/missile vets and strike craft. The destroyer still seemed weak compared to the Hiigaran destroyer however.
Additionally, Itās not really the fact that HW2 races have to spend RU on upgrades. that bug me, its all the hoops you gotta go through to start building the ships, another poster in this thread had already pointed this out. Which makes HW2 Races very difficult to manage on HW1 maps.
So you think having to build research mods to build corvette and frigs are big hoops to jump through for HW2 races? Because you get a pretty nifty default frigate with those mods, no research cost required.
You know you got to build the mods for any of the other ships so I think they are pretty small hoops.
It isnāt like you are locked in to a specific path, you research upgrades, not each individual tech to open access to the ship (except Vaygr). You donāt have to research engines, drives, chassis, guns, ions. Hell it seems like 90% of your offensive power is available with no research at all, just building the required modules.
HW1 races have to build each research ship to get improved research speeds, they have a very limited build queue before any research is completed, every ship unlocked is done so at the cost of tech researched, when going down a path they canāt quickly change to a different path due to having to research the requisite techs, each tech has a time and RU cost that differs greatly making it highly costly to get it wrong at the start.
I think all the races have their own hoops to jump through and no one race is better suited to early tactical options thank any other, the hoops are all just different, not bigger or more numerous, at least IMO.
SO much this. Itās really hard to stay adaptive. And the research ships cost so much and take so much time to build I have to stick with a single-node ship for the first half of the match because I canāt compete with the HW2 factions that have completely finished establishing their second harvesting operation by the time I finish making my 4th collector.
Theyāve already build 3 squads of cepters by the time Iāve started building mine.
If I donāt double up like they do I wonāt have a stable economy in the late game to survive and I sure as hell wont be able to support the 5 build queues (one of those being research)
@Battlecry was able to demonstrate to me that he can get going with vaygr so fast with HMF spam that the only way for me to counter it is if I KNOW heās going to do it and start spamming bombers the first second I can. And even then he just made assault frigates and clean them all out before I could kill his carrier. He rebuilt his frigate facility and I just barely had a couple ions out at that point. The ions were barely able to stand up to the HMFs which he had twice as many of than I did.
By the time I started gaining an upper hand he had researched corvettes and his flag ship was throwing out laser vettes. Now I have to switch to assault frigates, which is a losing battle, and I havenāt even had a chance to START my own corvette research yet as a counter.
The ONLY way I could see surviving it is if I was playing as Taiidan and had the DFFs to give me the effective HP boost. The HMFs can be spammed faster than my ions and had a much better economy in the long run.
It also didnāt help that we were fighting on a dust cloud and several times had my frigates shoot at the wrong enemy because heād send his HMFs into the dust after firing a volley, Iād lose sight of them, and my aggressive units started flying for the next available target which was behind them.
That part Iāll attribute to good micro, but damn do HMFs have a great advantage in a dust cloud when thereās no proxys near by.
@Alpha 1, I have played all the races to this point, each one very extensively with this mod over the past week, I can get pretty much get a good offensive going much earlier as a HW1 player. Nothing about this changes the fact that Homeworld 2 races are more expensive. for instance Vaygr have to spend 4350 RU to get 1 assault frigate out. That doesnāt even include the cost of the carriers needed as the extra building platforms (Not to mention replacing the facility that gets destroyed in an early attack with bombers). So Yes to an extent, I do find the hoops a bit on the extreme side, this never bothered me back in the days of Homeworld 2 classic, but since we are now faced with factions that can get ships out much quicker, that have been made more effective, all Iām asking is for some though to be given on this, thatās all. Especially on the HW1 maps.
@Xercodo I donāt know why you were out produced or what settings you were playing on. but it seems to me that you didnāt get your early game down. I immediatly have my carrier building a research ship and 5 collectors with my MS building 2 controllers, soon as research ship is done, go for fighter drive. and fighter chassis, then from there its on to whatever I think is appropriate, the thing here is that you have 4 production queues right at the start, HW2 races have 2, how you use them is really what matters. What I can say for sure is that HW1 Interceptors and Bombers are at a good advantage, since the hw2 player has to research the speed upgrade for their ceptors to be on par with the HW1 ceptors.
That being said Iād like to get a game going with some people here, feel free to hit me up on steam Iād be happy to do some trial runs against players. Username on Steam is Avetorian
3 Likes
The upgrade cost might be a problem for hw2 fighters, we are taking a look at it.
1 Like
I start with one ship making a collector and a research ship, and the other making a collector and controller.
Once those 4 are done (cause they all seem the finish at nearly the same time), I start researching. and making another 6 collectors and one controller for the expansion. By then Iāve prob researched drive and chassis and am moving on to frigates.
@Xercodo @Avetorian Hereās a tip for you guys:
On most maps, you guys will get a lot better results by just building resource collectors and using your mothership for harvesting at one spot, and your carrier for harvesting at another spot. Controllers should only be used to take a 3rd asteroid patch later in the game, or if you plan to get aggressive and move your mothership and/or carrier towards your opponent. Otherwise your spending 800-900ru at the start of the game on something that your mothership and carrier can do for free.
Yup thatās what the first 2 were for. But yeah I can see how all 12 can work on one field because while one drops off the other mines.
Avetorian and I use our production ships more aggressively, so thatās why his advice mentioned the Controller. We use that approach just fine with HW1 races and generally still outproduce HW2 ones.
Yeah just to re enforce that statement, I generally donāt have an issue getting ships out as a HW1 player I was merely pointing out what I generally do. Now thereās something myself and Stormhawk found out when playing against the CPU, expert difficulty ofcourse. We put a hw1 and a hw2 AI against us. The HW1 AI outclassed the HW2 AI in every aspect, the HW2 AI was vaygr. For the most part it got to a point we could have ended the game in about 15 minutes, we decided to just mess around and build up our fleet. After awhile I decided to nuke the Vaygr, since their production was not good. It was the HW1 AI that put up more of a fight. by the time the game ended, my ally out of synced and I continued on. The HW2 AI had only built 260 ships, the HW1 AI had built 1060.
We started with just 1k RUās and normal unit caps, Achievements and bounties were on, I was getting most of the construction awards lol. I was out producing them and out killing them. The reason the HW1 AI built so many is because Iād keep killing them and letting them regroup. until finally I decided to end the game.
And yes, I do play aggressively. I have the controllers and or refineries out because my mothership is moving towards the enemy.
In this game I was playing as Taiidan.
Also mothership, for all races, is the ship that can process rus faster
I think Iām having more fun playing hw2 battles as opposed to hw2 vs hw1 with the mod.
Do you mean you like the way HW2 feels vs HW2 more so than before, or you just donāt like HW2 vs HW1 in this mod. I canāt tell if this USA partial complement.
I like the way hw2 feels against hw2 in this mod. I guess part of me always has, mod or not.
I donāt really like the hw1 versus hw2 feel of itā¦yet. Iām just not inclined to play against hw1 swarms. They were bad enough in vanilla to deal with when facing a skilled player. In the same hands now with the mod, it feels like too much to handle. Will keep playing to see if I am missing something.
The mod sort of slows down the game which I personally like because it makes for more intense battles. It feels more encouraging of micromanagement.
Though what I have noticed that could use just a teeny bit of a speed increase is the rotational speed of the Hig BC? It feels just a tad bit slow. It feel just a bit too pronounced in its slowness. To be honest, Iām not sure if this was changed at the moment.