If one race’s fighters are stronger than another races, so what? What is your point?
If you make them even, why not just erase one of the races?
You have different ships for different reasons. Use them. If the enemy brings superior ships, use something to counter it. There is always an answer to the enemy fleet. Always. Every good tactician knows this. Maybe you just need to practice more?
If you’d actually read anything we’d said, we aren’t saying that HW2 fighters are winning because they are physically stronger, because they actually aren’t. I am saying that they are more powerful because of their behaviour and their mechanics in-game. In my original post I said that if you simply put them into squads and gave them the same flight and attack behaviours that the HW2 fighters have, every single balance issue with them would more-than-likely completely disappear. They don’t need to buffed, they just need to behave the way fighters are intended to in this game’s engine. The mechanics for Homeworld 2’s fighters are what makes them superior.
Furthermore, all of the strategies you guys are suggesting are brought out as if you literally start the game with all of the later counters to them.
“Oh look I’m being bomber rushed, hold on let me just really quickly build my gravity well and 30 multigun corvettes.”
From what I have read here and experienced in game, I think I have an idea on what the fundamental problem is with the HW1R strike craft problems. The issue is two fold, being both how Homeworld2 and HWR weapons are handled, and the manner in which HW2 originally handled strike craft such as fighters and corvettes. Please let me know if I am incorrect in my initial assumptions.
TL;DR
[QUOTE]Individual Homeworld 1 ships are being treated as HW2 squadrons as far as combat & flight AI is concerned. Formations and strike craft grouping for HW1R ships serve no purpose beyond logical grouping of ship types. The weapon system in HWR compounds the problem because of the difference.
HW2 squadons == single “ship” with multiple weapon hard points. Can cover larger firing cone and angles of attack negating the negatives of not having ballistic weapon hitscan augmented by formations.
HW1 ships == single ship with typically one weapon hard point; limited firing cone and angle of attack; formations useless due to usage of HW2 strike craft flight AI rendering weapon hit chances extremely low.
[/QUOTE]
The original HW1 strike craft were created individually and were grouped together through the formations that we all know and loved from the original. The original HW1 engine calculated hit chances based on an cone of attack and simulated ballistics of the projectiles fired. Formations for strike craft played a big part in making this paramount to the usage of strike craft. Different formations had varying effectiveness against enemy ships. Some allowed fighter craft to have better or worse survivability and others would grant better/worse attack angle on vessels depending on the formation used and what said fighters/corvettes were put up against. So when you would see a ship fire, it had a line of fire against the target and would only do so if it had a reasonable probability to actually connect.
Example of this would be say the usage of the Sphere Formation with Attack Bombers against Frigate-class and higher vessels. The formation grants every single ship a direct cone of attack for their weapons to hit the vessel, this in turn limited their mobility and evasiveness against retaliatory fire. Another example would be the Claw or X formations. This was the staple of fighter/corvette formations as it granted the group a sweeping attack angle as they passed by doing noticeable damage, but allowed for manoeuvrability against returned fire.
In conjunction with the above, the ability for the craft to quickly change formation depending on the tactical situation gave the ships a much longer life span and sometimes a tactical advantage in dogfights against other strike craft or frigate class vessels.
That brings us to the Homeworld 2 and Homeworld Remastered situation. Neither game uses the method that Homeworld 1 did of simulation of ballistics to determine if a weapon successfully hits or not. Instead they use a simple RNG (Random Number Generator) and/or a probability model for determining whether or not the ships would attack.
Each ship has various weapons on them and those weapons hard points have various statistics regarding accuracy, penetration, DPS, angle of attack, firing cone, etc. These settings are what determines how often the weapon hard point fires, how accurate it will be to hitting a ship, and various other details related to the weapon. Depending on how each weapon was configured, the settings on said weapon makes the probability of attacking, and then from there figures out the probability of it hitting and so forth.
Homeworld 2 made usage of strike craft in squadrons of typical 3 or higher. So you can almost think of it as a single unit with multiple weapons firing at similar or slightly different firing cones and angles. Against another single target or a squadron the weapons would be mostly effective. Occasionally you would see that weapons effects would fire out at goofy angles contrary to the direction the ship or turret was firing. This is a symptom of how the weapon system wasn’t quite perfect since it was based on percentages of accuracy, firing cones, and numerous other factors.
The formations in Homeworld2 were very limited as the weapon system did away with needing to have formations augment the weapons to gain greater effectiveness in combat as you now no longer needed to have a formation to ensure survival, just have more numbers and you’d “out gun probability” the other group since they were under the same designed weapon systems. The HW2 formations were oriented around squadrons of multiple ships, not individual ships grouped together and so the flight AI assumes that the “squadron” had multiple guns and thus multiple weapons to attack with negating the discrepancy of the weapons missing with more guns firing to compensate.
This now brings us to where we are at with Homeworld 1 Remastered. With the original ballistics system gone, and using the statistics of weapon probability hits, and ships now being single vessels with effectively a single weapon it throws a wrench in the entire situation. We are now able to see the weakness or at the very least the significant differences in the weapon and hitscan systems between HW1 and HW2.
Formations and strike craft flight AI are still oriented as assuming squadrons of strike craft; not individual ships. Because of this formations are immediately ignored once combat begins and each individual ship for the most part acts like a unique individual “squadron” (despite the ships being in a group) trying to attack enemy strike craft who are doing the exact same thing. This results in the much longer engagements people are seeing with Fighters and Corvettes and how most of them are missing their shots. Typically the only way the engagements win in your favor is by throwing overwhelming numbers to saturate the field of attack.
So what do we do about this?
Ship Flight AI (specifically a focus on Fighters and Corvettes). They need to keep formation before, during and after combat. I believe that if this is done, it will alleviate a lot of the headaches we are currently seeing with necessarily lengthy combat encounters. In addition, combat flight AI needs to either be designed for the individual HW1 ships NOT acting as individual squadrons. The group itself needs to be the “squadron” and that group needs to act together. The problem currently is that the formation and group designation serves zero purpose beyond logical groupings.
Strike Craft Weapon Systems - Once the flight AI and formation issue is resolved, at this point it would be a matter of re-balancing the weapon systems on each strike craft as to maximize their effectiveness to render it closer to what we would expect from the original HW1 system both using and not using formations.
Both of the above resolutions could be applied to both the HW1 and HW2 races to facilitate balance between the two systems for multiplayer.
Exactly! Someone else gets it! You said it way better than I’ve been trying to express.
The TLDR of what he said was FIX Formations, then let’s check the balance and tweak the RNG.
I was going to say, my gut feeling is that once hw1 ships are able to fight in formations as effectively as the HW2 ships, a lot of this will resolve itself. But you said it much more technical terms. 
Gearbox has been working on this game for awhile, though. I really feel like if it was possible to “fix” formations in the way you’ve suggested, then they’d have probably actually done it already.
The thing is; formations aren’t broken and are actually working as intended. They have completely different mechanics because this is a completely different game engine, and as this is the multiplayer beta forum it makes sense to incorporate this games mechanics into their units in the multiplayer module as if they were designed from the ground up to use those mechanics in the first place.
There have been mods for HW2 that have tried to use lone fighters before. I really don’t know why nobody already saw these problems coming. The engine just wasn’t made for it.
Oddly enough I’m discovering Taiidan heavy corvettes to be quite powerful against hw2 fighters and most corvettes. So much firepower.
Yeah, so are the multigun corvettes.
I’m also all for fixing the HW1 formation characteristics/behavior…it would be a benefit to the HW1 strikecraft, for sure.
I have seen a lot of people complain so far but did you ever stack up the cost? I was playing as hiigarans for once comming from kushan and taiidan and was shocked , 500 for interceptors even 350 for scouts whereas I can get 4 interceptors single and and multiple scouts to spread out. The initial research takes longer and is more costly as well as to get the production even running.
In the end once ressources weren’t that much of a problem anymore after claiming multiple ressource belts it was fine but while I can see hiigaran (eventually vagyr too) having a way stronger lategame due to modules and ship upgdrades to hp , speed and even manufacturing time and the fact a higaaran battlecruiser can easily mop up kushan and taiidan destroyers and even their heavy cruisers head on. However unless you play on a really huge map and give the hw2 player enough room to spread out you should easily be able to spread out and overpower them amassing a force way before they should be able to.
Remember , while you do have modules and research to upgrade the build speed (which is pretty costy as well) , the hw1 factions are able to build 2 types of units at the same time from the get go.
I played a couple of matches as taiidan and I was able to overwhelm players with the sheer amount of units I could produce as long as I had the ressources to back it up. He got frigattes earlier than me but by that time I was able to produce assault and ion frigs from both my flagship and my carrier at the same time quickly mopping the force he had.
And a couple of minutes later after my ion’s took out most of his assault frigs I added insult to injury and even got the ability to produce destroyers and missile destroyers at the same time , quickly taking the field with 2 of both , engaging his mothership head on and quickly crippling it targeting the engine before taking it down completely.
I am aware not every game is gonna that way, but I see a lot of potential in the hw1 races and while you cant trade well in 1 on 1 situations, you can easily make sure you’re never outnumbered or outgunned.
HW1 races have an advantage in the early state of the game that’s true.
But as longer the game goes on this will turn into a really huge disadvantage. Even a HW2 fleet with a few upgrades will slaughter everything that a HW1 player can build. Those upgrades are way too powerful for HW1 ships to compete with. And it doesn’t matter which shipclass you use, you always will have a huge disadvantage.
The only thing you can use HW1 races for is rushing, but they are nearly useless in late game. This needs to be changed! All four races should be playable in late game.
I don’t believe you’ve played enough games to be able to come to that conclusion Lord_Morpheus. I’m finding HW1 ships quite powerful late game.
I don’t believe you’ve played enough games to be able to come to that conclusion herecomethej. I’m finding HW1 ships quite weak late game.
Maybe it’s your playing
Sorry but your posts are just about something you believe. No facts at all.
But I know it because I actually have tested it. It has nothing to do with playstyle it’s just a matter of fact.
Let’s take one example Battlecruiser vs Heavy Cruiser. Unupgraded they are very similar in terms of firepower, health and speed. But fully upgraded Battlecruiser will have nearly twice(!) the hitppoints, much more firepower and is faster. Ok Cruisers are expensive and you won’t see many of them of the battlefield. But with destroyers and frigates it’s the very same thing. Same with corvettes and fighters. Your playstyle doesn’t matter. If the game will past a certain amount of time you will always lose* against a HW2 race if you playing a HW1 race.
*Skill on the same level
Corvettes might be broken and aren’t cost effective at all (even multi-guns), but interceptors seem to be fairly equal to HW2 interceptors in combat, they could use a slight cost decrease .
BTW: putting corvettes into squadrons won’t work since what’s making them useless is their unit behaviour which is gimping 75% of their coverage.
Bombers are also a point of interest as HW1 fighters don’t have improved bombs as an upgrade…
i’m messing around with Kushan a lot lately, trying to max out the potential, but i can say for sure by now, hw1 does downscale A LOT as game progresses, way too much I would say, unviable, mostly cuz of the lack of upgrades, however buffing it is not an option, since they are pretty good already in early games, we need to figure out a system to make it scale to late game
Old classic HW1 strikecraft were very powerful, but the stats weapons and attackstyles in the remastered version dumb down their effectiveness and survivability, ships like frigates and bigger are the only ones that would need heavy upgrades to keep up with the HW2 races if you used the classic stats as a base.
What if research hubs allowed for additional ship slots? So that the kushan and taidan can increase their numbers late game. If the hubs had increasing costs for each additional one as well that would be a reasonable way to balance it.
I totally agree with you. HW1 races are slightly better in the early game. Just buffing them would make them even more powerful there and would make them even more “rush races” then they are now.
But giving them an upgrade system too, will make them even more HW2 races with HW1 optics. This would be bad in my eyes they should play different. I am already have another solution in mind, will make a threat about it, when I got home.
Nice, waiting for it, it is nice to see the community work togheter to find a solution for that late game issue.