Homeworld Remakes, It's Actually Happening!!!

[Lord Pounder]

I'm really going to need a kick ass gaming PC to play this aren't i? What's the going rate for kidneys on the black market?

Looking at the HW1 ships they also seem to have the sub systems feature. I wonder will this make it even easier to rob an enemy fleet if you can get the fighters in to disable the engines first.

[Steel]

I'm really going to need a kick ass gaming PC to play this aren't i? What's the going rate for kidneys on the black market?

Looking at the HW1 ships they also seem to have the sub systems feature. I wonder will this make it even easier to rob an enemy fleet if you can get the fighters in to disable the engines first.

I don't think the system requirements are going to be too onerous, it doesn't look VASTLY better than HW2, and hardware is easily 50x as powerful at the same price point as 12 years ago in 2003.

I wonder if they'll 'correct' the HW1 fleet size system to stop you salvaging ships beyond the fleet cap? That might upset some people, but would make vastly more sense.

[Zaune]

I hope they put salvaging back to how it was originally intended, and force you to bring a ship's HP down to 50% before it can be towed back to the Mothership.

[Purple]

I hope they put salvaging back to how it was originally intended, and force you to bring a ship's HP down to 50% before it can be towed back to the Mothership.

Same here. The boarding system they used in HW2 just made things too easy. However I think that the old system was too restricted as well. One thing I'd love to see is a marriage of the old capture-and-drag system from HW1 and the subsistem system from HW2. Simply put, let us remove the damage requirement for salvage. Allow the player to salvage and tow the other ship even at 100% HP. However, allow the other ship to fight back using its own engines. So if you want to drag away a cruiser with a few corvettes you'll end up getting dragged away instead because the total power that cruiser can shove in its engines beats you. So if you want to capture anything, you better make sure you've disabled its engines first. Also, any guns that can fire at your corvettes as well.

[Terralthra]

I think once I latched salvage corvettes onto the Turanic Raider carrier in Mission 4 of Homeworld 1. Can't salvage it, no matter what. Its guns keep working while you have 7+ corvettes latched on, too, so it gradually blows up all of your corvettes.

[Zaune]

I think once I latched salvage corvettes onto the Turanic Raider carrier in Mission 4 of Homeworld 1. Can't salvage it, no matter what. Its guns keep working while you have 7+ corvettes latched on, too, so it gradually blows up all of your corvettes.

Yeah, I tried that too. You've got to go in and mod the game to make it salvageable because the model's too big to fit inside the Mothership, and you can't actually use it as a carrier if you do so it's not really worth the bother.

[phongn]

I think once I latched salvage corvettes onto the Turanic Raider carrier in Mission 4 of Homeworld 1. Can't salvage it, no matter what. Its guns keep working while you have 7+ corvettes latched on, too, so it gradually blows up all of your corvettes.

Yeah, I tried that too. You've got to go in and mod the game to make it salvageable because the model's too big to fit inside the Mothership, and you can't actually use it as a carrier if you do so it's not really worth the bother.

The twin ion cannon and all those anti-fighter guns are pretty useful, though.

[Crossroads Inc.]

So... Apparently my 99$ Pre-Order of the game is now worth 300$ ... WOOHOO!

[AniThyng]

Initial thoughts - formations in hw1 remastered worthless. I noticed some comments that it's basically a hw1 mod of HW2 in that aspect and it seems to be the case from my own testing ( up to the scouring of kharak now) Pop cap of hw2 is there too.

Also saw some review indicate micro of repair ships is needed where hw1 did not need such before, haven't tested that yet.

Does look pretty tho.

[Purple]

What have they done to the movies? Do we still get the old animated clips? Also, the music and general atmosphere?

[AniThyng]

What have they done to the movies? Do we still get the old animated clips? Also, the music and general atmosphere?

Animated clips remain and unaltered. In game cutscenes may have been enhanced but so far I think are basically the same plotwise. No complaints about the music and atmosphere but it be clear that this is basically a HD reskin with some ui changes and remastered ost.

[White Haven]

Man, you really do have some rose-colored glasses there, AniThyng. No, the animated clips are not unaltered, they're totally redrawn by the original artist and reproduced quite faithfully without all the pixelation and janky artifacting from the original.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Soooo
If I have the pre order... How do I download the game?

[Eternal_Freedom]

My God this is beautiful.

EDIT: And the HW1 bit kept the parallel building, I'm so very happy at this point.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ah, they seem to have implemented the dynamic enemy strength system from HW2 into the HW1 version...mission 5 has waaay more Taiidan assault frigates than I remember.

[Nephtys]

The cutscenes were basically traced over so they could be upscaled. The originals were 640x480, so they'd never have worked at a reasonable size nowadays.

Also, I guess they never went into the awkward 'Second Core' stuff in the revised HW1 background book, and kept the 'copied the original hyperdrive but upscaled it 12x'.... not that such made any sense anyway. You don't build a battleship engine by upscaling a tractor engine 12x in all dimensions...

[phongn]

Ah, they seem to have implemented the dynamic enemy strength system from HW2 into the HW1 version...mission 5 has waaay more Taiidan assault frigates than I remember.

They pretty much ported the HW1 campaign to HW2's engine. It's slightly broken, though.

[Nephtys]

I dunno. I remember getting utterly swamped by frigates on multiple missions in the original HW1.

I suppose dynamic opposition is the 'fix' to salvage madness that was the core of HW1.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah Mission 5 took me three attempts. Still stole two destroyers, a support frigate, two ion frigates and a carrier though.

The realy "swampy" frigate missions are 14, namely the "OMG how are there so many ion cannon frigates" mission and 15, the "oh fuck oh fuck I can't kill all these assault frigates fast enough" mission.

[Steel]

The cutscenes are identical in their content, just vastly increased in quality. Looking at the new ones, you think you're looking at a slightly enhanced version of the 15 year old ones, but if you look back at the actual originals, the old ones look like a can of crushed arseholes.

Game overall looks beautiful. The persistent scarring damage on ships looks great, and overall the graphics look wonderful.

Fuel is gone, and some unit abilities have changed. The main one I have encountered so far was that drone frigates rather than deploying their drones permanently can only deploy them for a short time, after which they must launch a new wave (which seems to have to be done manually). Not sure what will have happened to the Kadeshi ships, I have just reached the garden though, so I'll find out when I get to play next time.

I was originally going to try a playthrough without "salvaging all the things", but I got to mission 5 and then found I actually could not legitimately beat 3 destroyers in close formation, so I nicked two, and so I begin my descent into absurdity starting with the carrier. I will say that actually in the original HW1 there was indeed dynamic difficulty scaling, it was just that it capped the enemy forces out at a much lower level (possibly wasn't constructed with salvagespam in mind), so you were almost always strong enough to be seeing the maximum quantity of Taidan forces.

I would have really preferred that they kept the formations and ballistic system of HW1 as opposed to the pure fiat combat effectiveness of HW2. I much preferred the hit and miss dynamics being due to the things that you were actually seeing happening, as that gave a great feedback on why certain things were effective and others were not.

[Eternal_Freedom]

There are definitely a uckton more assault frigates around the damned Ghost Ship. Last tiem I played HW1 it was a pair of Assault Frigates, two multi-beams, an ion array and the missile destroyer. Now there are upwards of 20 assault frigates.

[Steel]

There are definitely a uckton more assault frigates around the damned Ghost Ship. Last tiem I played HW1 it was a pair of Assault Frigates, two multi-beams, an ion array and the missile destroyer. Now there are upwards of 20 assault frigates.

Yeah it does feel like there are more enemies than there were before, I just couldn't be sure given the 15 year gap...

[Iroscato]

So...I take it these games come with the SDN seal of recommendation? They do sound like something I'd be interested in

[AniThyng]

Man, you really do have some rose-colored glasses there, AniThyng. No, the animated clips are not unaltered, they're totally redrawn by the original artist and reproduced quite faithfully without all the pixelation and janky artifacting from the original.

I grant you that point - I just assumed they (somehow) had HD copies of the original animation (i know, i know, that logically makes no sense when in 1999 even DVD resolution is super high def)

[loomer]

There are more enemies because you're salvage-fucking the game. Quit salvaging everything and the scaling won't fuck you up.