I'm disappointed by Homeworld

[thelastmccabe]

I started playing Homeworld for the first time about a week ago, and I'm a little surprised that no one (no reviews I noticed) ever talks about how much downtime the game has. I like the music, the graphics still look great, the story seems good, and everything about it is cool except the lack of any ability to speed the game up is close to game breaking.

After I've eliminated all the enemies in a mission, I basically just tell my harvester to harvest and then leave the room for an hour or more with the game running (because the game won't run minimized) to wait for my harvester to get everything. That's seriously messed up! But because the game is pretty tough and I can't replace my fleet, I feel like I'm compelled to do this to get every scrap of resources I can.

Now having to leave the game running like this is one thing, but the same thing is starting to make the missions themselves a little bit painful. I'm on mission 10 right now. In this mission, there's a supernova star nearby emitting radiation, which apparently restricts the path you can take lest the radiation damage your ships. There are lots of mine fields in the path, and I have to travel a long distance fighting a few enemies to reach a research station I'm supposed to destroy. So I spend lots of time slowly moving my capital ships across the map, I hit a few mines, I stop everything and repair them, move again, rinse and repeat over and over again. I encounter enemy fighters and call my own fighters out of my carrier to kill them. Once the fight is over I then have to wait literally 5 minutes just watching them all dock again. (I'm hiding the fighters in the carrier because the game has suggested the radiation would hurt them in a hurry if I happen to run into it). If I could replace my fleet I could be less careful, but I have to be super careful lest I find out 5 missions from now that I don't have enough ships to continue and I need to repeat this mission. And I actually like the fact that your fleet carries over from mission to mission.

The lack of ability to speed up time also means I don't want to experiment with other ways to do this mission. I feel like it would take forever just to try an alternate approach, so I'd rather not deal with it.

Wow, this got pretty long. Anyway, I'd be curious to know if anybody felt the same way or if anyone wants to encourage me to finish the game. I don't mind a slow paced game, but this is just ridiculous, and I'm kind of ready to play something else. I've never played KOTOR and it's sitting on my HD all lonely.

 

[Antari]

Keep in mind it was made for computers with single CPU and GPU combo's. Not many games had adjustable time scales for the simple reason that the computers couldn't handle it very well then. Even Homeworld 2 is like that. It is a bit time consuming, but still a good game. I figure its a small price to pay. Besides its not so bad when your doing skirmishes later with 5 ai on the map. You don't want things going any faster if your side starts taking heavy hits. I treated the missions of the game more like an extended tutorial for the skirmishes.

Edit: Also keep in mind to speed resource collection you can build more harvesters and recycle them once you've cleaned up the area.

 

[The Madman]

Game came out in... 1999? Jeez, I suddenly feel old. But yeah, it's a pretty old game by todays standards and some of the stuff we've begun to take for granted such as time compression and speeding up gameplay simply wasn't an option then for various reasons. Especially so in Homeworlds case when you take into account that game looked absolutely mind-blowing when it was released, I'm talking top-line video card selling good.

 

[LookingGlass]

I played through it for the first time only a few weeks ago, so I know what you're talking about. A few different time settings like what was in (the original) Operation Flashpoint would be really nice.

However, since that was just about the only place where I could fault the game, I decided it was an acceptable price to pay and just watched a few episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm during those end of mission harvesting sessions.

I didn't mind the slow travel speed that much during missions... it just let me relax and watch the journey. I only did 1 or 2 missions per night though, so I didn't get sick of it.

 

[repeating integers]

Speaking as the biggest Homeworld fanboy there is, you are absolutely right. It's a brilliant game in most respects, but by far its biggest flaw is the lack of a time speed-up function.

And yes, it is a good idea to nom all the asteroids, because by GOD is it a hard game.

 

[Sangnz]

Yep 100% agreed only thing that annoyed me a bit.

Good thing about this is HW2 fixes this by auto harvesting left overs so you don't have to wait and do it manually.

 

[repeating integers]

Yep 100% agreed only thing that annoyed me a bit.

Good thing about this is HW2 fixes this by auto harvesting left overs so you don't have to wait and do it manually.

But am I right in saying it also doesn't let you build things when you've done harvesting?

Cataclysm's compromise (being able to alter the speed) was probably the best way to go.

 

[thelastmccabe]

Edit: Also keep in mind to speed resource collection you can build more harvesters and recycle them once you've cleaned up the area.

Wo, I can recycle ships and get RUS back??? How do I do that? I read most of the manual but I missed have missed that.

 

[Antari]

Edit: Also keep in mind to speed resource collection you can build more harvesters and recycle them once you've cleaned up the area.

Wo, I can recycle ships and get RUS back??? How do I do that? I read most of the manual but I missed have missed that.

The commands buttons the onscreen ones have a second page to them it should be in there "retire" as long as they are near a carrier,shipyard,or mothership they'll dock and recycle for 100% return.

 

[Stall]

Misrea the title. Shit happens. I'll revise my statement:

It's an old game that has not aged well, and the only reason it is somehow relevent today is because too many people are blinded by nitaliga.

 

[The Madman]

Was anyone else expecting this to be a nercro? I'm surprised anyone still gives a shit about THQ's flop of a modern warfare game.

...

Methinks you didn't read the OP or anything else for that matter, we're talking about an old RTS by Relic from 1999 set in the far flung future.

 

[sms_117b]

Go play Haegemonia: Legions of Iron, it's like Homeworld but you know, good, and has a speed multiplier, can speed up to x4 makes the game quite difficult on higher difficulties and otherwise brings the speed up to a good RTS

 

[Zhukov]

Was anyone else expecting this to be a nercro? I'm surprised anyone still gives a shit about THQ's flop of a modern warfare game.

Kids, always remember that it's in your best interests to read at least the first post in a thread before making your own post.

Not doing so can result in looking like a complete and utter tool.

PS. Homeworld. Homefront. Different. Significantly so.

 

[DexterNorgam]

Yea, Homeworld's age is starting to show for sure, that said, I don't buy any bunk about nostalgia carrying this game. It was unique among the droves of RTSs of the day. Graphically it was cutting edge at the time, and it was an honest challenge. Probably the first game to just solidly whoop me so badly that I had to quit it for months and come back later. Also, if you weren't in a matchup of wildly different abilities, multiplayer was quite good.

So, yea, it doesnt hold your hand like modern games, and its not concerned about how convenient it is for you to play it. It is here to show you how stupid easy most RTS are and to kick your ass square.

That's exactly why I like it.

 

[jacilon]

Get the gundam mod, change the way you play

 

[DexterNorgam]

Brevity Snip.

Oh yea, also, Key to being able to using your resources most effectively are salvage corvettes. Couldn't come close to beating this game until I mastered them. Stealing a goodly number of enemy frigates (particularly the twin beam frigates) is a great way to stretch your resources along other avenues.