WC4 Mod For Homeworld 2 In The Works (June 5, 2006)

I like the idea of ships not appearing very easily. It seems like the only way to locate fleets and gather intelligence in the games (at least up to WC4-not sure about Prophecy) was to fly a recon fighter into sensor range.

Well, not even that. Cloaking is still a rare and special thing in WC4 and while the Black Lance has the technology to exploit doesn't mean ALL their ships should have it.

I'm not at all criticising czacen's ideas at all - he probably has a better understanding about gameflow and balance that I ever will. But too much cloaking is simply too much cloaking. A ship that cannot be seen by sensors is something else entirely - a cloaked ship cannot be seen by sensors or by the human eye. (Stealth ships decloaking, attacking and recloaking around my mothership in the first Homeworld was bad enough - I cannot fathom the horror of Black Lance/Dragons doing the same thing!)

(However, this also may not make sense considering the BL would have the "Jammer Ship" as well - so maybe Im jumping ahead of myself)
 
LeHah said:
a cloaked ship cannot be seen by sensors or by the human eye. (Stealth ships decloaking, attacking and recloaking around my mothership in the first Homeworld was bad enough - I cannot fathom the horror of Black Lance/Dragons doing the same thing!)

That's an interesting possibility since there really wasn't an 'anti-cloaking' device that we know of in the WC games. It might have been an extra element that Confed had to deal with; we know of the devestating results of such a nightmare when we hear about Kilrathi stealth ships decloaking and destroying Blair's ship, and he takes the blame for it.

Why that didn't continue and how Confed conceivably countered this threat; I don't know.. does Loaf have an explanation for how Confed dealt with this 'horror' and why the Kilrathi didn't destroy every Confed ship in this manner?

I liked Homeworld2, but I would prefer departing from the way it played in favor of Wing Commander 'realism' where possible. For instance, I would prefer if carriers didn't manufacture fighters since this didn't happen in the game. New shipments of fighters and capships could simply be jumped in conceivably from other fronts or from industrial centers.

Resources could still be used and units "purchased", but they would simply be a measure of the areas strategic value, warranting the shipment/relocation of other military assets. Maps could also be used that spread out resource patches throughout the map with random starting positions so that the enemy wouldn't know that the fleet was at the clump of asteroids every time. Resource shipping could occur over the map so it was possible for fighters to intercept a transport or new shipment from a jump point (which might be a completely different area than the resource patch) as in the Wing Commander games.

I still prefer the old fashioned Wing Commander way of finding units, where you have to fly a fighter into their vicinity.

I prefer commanding units and spending more time using military tactics and strategy rather than building units, buying research, and ordering resource collecters. I would rather have a large starting force that wasn't as easy to replace. This may throw the whole project off on a tangent, and might not be as fun for other people, but it might have more of a Wing Commander feel and I just thought I'd share a dream. If Czacen spent his time on anything more though, I'd prefer to have a Kilrathi faction complete with a Dreadnought before this was attempted though.
 
i've been thinking (yep, occurrs from time to time):


couldn't it be done in a way that random jump points are placed on the map, which have to be captured by space marines boarding craft. once captured they would generate a certain amount of supply ships spawning there and flying to the HQ, delivering credits used for the fabrication of new craft. increasing the spawn-per-minute rate of such supply ships would be done by purchasing the standard harvesting ships in the build-ships menu in the HQ/outpost station. what do you think? is it possible to realize?


btw, i like the exeter II czacen, only, you might perhaps want to decrease the the height of the mid-ship where the first turret is located, so the ship will look more 'stealthy';)
 
On another note, IIRC some people have commented that bombers are too powerful and destroy capships too quickly. IIRC, it takes a bomber about 12 seconds while within firing range of a capship to lock and fire a torp. It only takes a fighter about a second to fly on it's tail and fire off an IFF missile to blow it up. If this 12 second timespan at close range and this missile power from fighters could be implemented, I think we would find it quite a challenge to take out a capship..

Of course lasers and standard missiles can still destroy capships with relative ease in Wing Commander games- so THIS could be a problem, but I don't think we'd find the bombers to be overpowered if they're easier to take out and are forced to expose themselves for so long.
 
Why that didn't continue and how Confed conceivably countered this threat; I don't know.. does Loaf have an explanation for how Confed dealt with this 'horror' and why the Kilrathi didn't destroy every Confed ship in this manner?

Despite what the games seem to imply, cloaking ships are a real rarity until Prophecy - and then the bugs can detect cloak ships (as witnessed in an unfinished, unused level early in the game)

For instance, I would prefer if carriers didn't manufacture fighters since this didn't happen in the game. New shipments of fighters and capships could simply be jumped in conceivably from other fronts or from industrial centers.

What you suggest is impossible. Not only does the game not allow ships to jump on and off map at will, but it wouldn't make sense to allow a supply ship onto the map. Why would anyone send the ship other than their HQ? Sending it out anywhere else is just asking to have it blown up.

What you're asking for is an unnessessary level of complexity that would probably hinder more than help gameplay.

Resources could still be used and units "purchased", but they would simply be a measure of the areas strategic value, warranting the shipment/relocation of other military assets... Resource shipping could occur over the map so it was possible for fighters to intercept a transport or new shipment from a jump point (which might be a completely different area than the resource patch) as in the Wing Commander games.

I can safely say that some if not all of the things you suggest here are impossible within the confined of either Homeworld game.

Random spawn points are common in multiplayer levels of HW, though.

I still prefer the old fashioned Wing Commander way of finding units, where you have to fly a fighter into their vicinity.

What, you mean you never used "Autopilot"? That usually brings you right to the waypoint you need to be at. :)

Seriously though, with few exceptions like the jammer missions in WC4, you're sent out to find ships that Confed/ConFleet knows are in the area. Otherwise, why would there be fighters deployed on a "seek and destroy" mission?

I prefer commanding units and spending more time using military tactics and strategy rather than building units, buying research, and ordering resource collecters.

Anyone I've played in an RTS - be it Warcraft 2 or Homeworld 2 or Dawn Of War- would crush you within minutes. The secret to all these games is the speed in which you harvest/mine resources.

As for "military tactics" - there is no such thing in HW2, lest you mean the FOUR fleet arrangements you get. And even then - there were several more fleet arrangements in the first Homeworld that didn't make it to this newest game - claw, sphere, box, etc.

This may throw the whole project off on a tangent, and might not be as fun for other people

Then why are you still talking?

On another note, IIRC some people have commented that bombers are too powerful and destroy capships too quickly. IIRC, it takes a bomber about 12 seconds while within firing range of a capship to lock and fire a torp. It only takes a fighter about a second to fly on it's tail and fire off an IFF missile to blow it up. If this 12 second timespan at close range and this missile power from fighters could be implemented, I think we would find it quite a challenge to take out a capship.

That would be nice but would do nothing to change the fact that a player could build dozens of bomber flights and just torpedo any craft into oblivion with a single strike.

While the bombers do fire a torpedo every X number of seconds, it's not possible to allow them the 12 second delay for a "lock on".

I'm sure czacen can elaborate.

Of course lasers and standard missiles can still destroy capships with relative ease in Wing Commander games- so THIS could be a problem, but I don't think we'd find the bombers to be overpowered if they're easier to take out and are forced to expose themselves for so long.

You haven't even played the mod yet, have you?

couldn't it be done in a way that random jump points are placed on the map, which have to be captured by space marines boarding craft.

I had a similar idea - that since the game allows only "player specific" jump points that marine landing craft could "steal" them for another players use. Sadly, the game does not allow this for reasons I cannot explain. Perhaps czacen could?

Needless to say though, capturing them wouldn't do much good, unless you linked it to a previously existing buoy. And even then, czacen is looking into preventing "on the fly" buoy link changes.
 
also i needed to ask, is the destroyer class with open rear bay sheffield or coventry?

They're the same class. I believe the common term used for the hangar-equipped version is Flight II.

Also, I don't believe we ever explicitly see a class of capital ship named after a previous class (with the notable exception of the two Concordias - and those are very much the exception.) You might want to consider a different name; there aren't really any hard and fast rules in this regard, but destroyers tended to be named after either places (Exeter, Sheffield, Coventry, Durango, Delphi,) mythological figures (Gilgamesh, William Tell, Achilles, Ajax) or qualitive terms (Valiant, Intrepid.) After the war, of course, we see the Murphy-class, named after a person (in this case Sean Murphy, Origin artist, though of course that's probably not the in-universe name.) One of the notable examples of this class is, however, a place (Arkangelisk.)

(I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Johann; she is, of course, actually the TCS Gwenyvaer, captured and renamed by the Kilrathi, but her name at least didn't seem unusual enough to raise any suspicions.)

This is all off the top of my head, by the way; you'd do best to consult the ships list.
 
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Also, I don't believe we ever explicitly see a class of capital ship named after a previous class (with the notable exception of the two Concordias - and those are very much the exception.)

Fralthi II seems to be the inspiration everyone is taking for adding 'II' to capital ship names these days.
 
Oh yeah, that's right. Hah, can't believe I forgot that :\

Still, it isn't a Confed ship type, so at least part of my point remains valid. I think.
 
Oh, I agree with you completely in everything but ability to prove your point -- adding a number to an existing ship name has always seemed somewhat tacky to me.
 
good to see you here luxchamp :) check the forums a few pages back there was a discussion about random jump lanes on each map. Loaf i was a bit confused with the last post, do you agree with bob or not, i got the sarcasm but didnt get whether you thought Exeter II sounds ok or not?
 
I don't really like adding 'II' to things in general -- but it's a personal opinion, not one that has anything to do with whether or not it's appropriate in the continuity.
 
It's worth noting that I've never heard of any navy using the practice of designating ship classes with a "II" moniker. The British Royal Navy, for example, produced two classes of King George V battleships within twenty years and at least two classes of Dreadnaughts - one a battleship in 1906, the other a 1960s nuclear submarine - and never felt the need to add any sort of addendum.

I haven't seen it used much (or to my memory, at all) in other science fiction either.
 
good to see you here luxchamp :) check the forums a few pages back there was a discussion about random jump lanes on each map. Loaf i was a bit confused with the last post, do you agree with bob or not, i got the sarcasm but didnt get whether you thought Exeter II sounds ok or not?

my friend, there was no sarcasm back there, only an honest proposition. the design of the exeter is very good (the name is too).

i would never show sarcasm here, i rly appreciate your work, and since you're on your own, respect you for it ;)
 
I don't really like adding 'II' to things in general -- but it's a personal opinion, not one that has anything to do with whether or not it's appropriate in the continuity.

Can you suggest another designation, maybe?
 
my friend, there was no sarcasm back there, only an honest proposition. the design of the exeter is very good (the name is too).

i would never show sarcasm here, i rly appreciate your work, and since you're on your own, respect you for it ;)


whoopsy daisy, got smth wrong there ~~~. just had an exam, was still preoccupied by it...:p
 
Aaron, would you like to have feedback from technical issues that were noticed from playing your preview? Would you rather have those written on here, through pm, or email? Things like sound levels, and minor glitches.. there weren't very many of them and it looks pretty solid.

I can't really suggest anything as far as the grahics are concerned because you did such a good job with them that it looks in some ways even better than the games! I think the motherships only had one resource drop off point which caused it to take a long time before you had the resources to build capships. The mining transports weren't too expensive, but IMO it's more fun to build fighters and capships than the transports.

I think providing a carrier at the opening of the game might make more sense. Carriers weren't known for being very combat effective in the games since most of the time you were babysitting them on missions. They were mainly just to carry and support fighters. Since you don't need them to carry and support fighters in most Homeworld2 games (except for hiding and repairing units), maybe they should just be provided at start since it may not make sense to build them given the time and cost it takes.

Capships in general seemed too expensive to build and take too long compared to their value in combat. Perhaps making them cheaper and quicker to build, or making the fighters more expensive? Another thing that made capships difficult to make was that the mothership was the only one that could make them. I didn't see much of a point in making the starbases.

I would like to see more laser fire in general and especially on capships (I missed the long yellow stream that often comes from a capships main weapon. Perhaps someone with lasers on a different mod can give you the info to put on the game (People from a StarWars Mod or something like that?).

The relative cost of the fighters might need some tweaking since they are all currently about the same price? It's hard to tell their relative combat effectiveness because you only have resources and bases to attack. Also, the platforms were about the same price too which I'm not sure makes sense. I didn't think the bombers were overpowered which was something I read on the Relic forums; but I haven't tried combat verses an actual person. Nice job on the longbow's rear turret, that was a surprise when I saw it working and scoring hits!

The speed of the fighters didn't seem to be all that different. I lined up one of each fighter on one side of the map and had them fly across the map; they arrived at nearly the same time. Are they relative in the Homeworld2 engine as they are in WC? If so, perhaps consider their relative afterburner speed in making their Homeworld2 speed.

I like that you're making new capships for the Black Lance faction since Confed and the Border Worlds are nearly identical in their capships- the ones you've made look excellent! I'd like to play this in multiplayer, so if anyone wants to set up a game, you can pm me!
 
Error with mod

i downloaded the launcher, and i can't play... I was trying to start a player vs. CPU game, me being border world and CPU being Confed. Here's the log:


Thu Dec 14 01:16:23 2006
UTIL -- filepath failure, path doesn't exists 'C:\Games\Homeworld2\data\locale\English'
Uing ..profiles\ for profiles folder
GAME -- Using player profile Wind
Changing from a 32 bit colour depth in winNT (5.1 build 2600), Service Pack 2
Using NVIDIA Corporation's 1.5.2 GeForce4 MX 460/AGP/SSE/3DNOW! renderer (Suspected driver is nvoglnt.dll 6.14.10.6693)
SOUND -- created destination [ fdaudio ], handle [ 4 ] with [ 48 ] channels created
SOUND -- created destination [ fda streamer ], handle [ 5 ] with [ 8 ] channels created
Build name: Sajuuk-Khar - AutoBuild3498 - Ordered by smmatte
Built by : mrbuild
Data path : C:\Games\Homeworld2\data
No mapping for font 'GenericSubtitleFont' - using 'default'
Resetting fp control word.
CmdLine: -mod C:\Games\Homeworld2\Bin\Release\wca.RAR -Refresh 75
Starting Level: data:LevelData\Multiplayer\Deathmatch\2P_HOSTILITIES_END.LEVEL
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(1) that doesn't exist.
VGR_BUOY is marked as captureable in the shiptuning but has no capture points!
VGR_BUOY is marked as repairable in the shiptuning but has no repair points!
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(1) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(1) that doesn't exist.
VGR_OUTPOST is marked as repairable in the shiptuning but has no repair points!
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(1) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(1) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(1) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(2) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(1) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(0) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(1) that doesn't exist.
EngineTrailStatic::getTweaks requesing index(2) that doesn't exist.
 
Hi everyone
I downloaded the launcher, and when I launch a battle against the CPU, AI does not do anything: it does not produce vessels, is not defended... Moreover, I cannot play the Black Lances Faction, each time the game crash and turns over under Windows.

Could somebody helped me?

PS: I'm French, then I kindly request to you to excuse my possible mistakes.. I'm not very skilled in English :/
 
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