More HW2 demo comments

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Fri Sep 05, 2003 5:55 am

Wow. Last night the computer beat me, twice, on the "standard" difficulty setting, which is the second of 5 settings. Obviously there's some new stuff going on, because the only way the CPU ever gave me that much trouble in HW1 or Cataclysm was when it cheated. Some of it is my needing to learn the capabilities of the new ships and how they interact, and how to research/build what I need quickly, but a good portion of it was the AI tactics, too. Example: At one point a group of four or five ion frigates, without escort, was approaching one of my positions on a direct course from the main NME position. Fine, so I sent a batch of bombers over there to mess 'em up. Whoops, not fine! While I was concentrating on that diversionary force, a significantly larger force approached (vertically) on my undefended flank and caused a critical amount of damage to my operation there. A word of advice to other vets - Build lots and lots of ships. Really. The old set of 20 or so fighters that worked so well before? Nope. Now you need like 20 5-ship squadrons, and you'd better vary the types, because the rock-scissors-paper stuff has really been amplified. <img src="http://www.xmenclan.org/xmengambit.gif"/> XMEN member Card-carrying DTM OKL Fish-napper Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained.  The Tao of Programming

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Sat Sep 06, 2003 4:04 pm

<a href="http://well-of-souls.com/homeworld/hws/ ...  Hmm. This is a useful link. I still haven't gone through the tutorial, so maybe it's covered there, but there's a section on this page that really helped me understand what a strike group is and how to use it. Now I gotta go try it out.

Spinning Hat · Post by **Spinning Hat** » Sun Sep 07, 2003 10:14 am

There's a lot of info there, and it's all very good. The nice thing about it, is that it's all quotes from the Devs themselves, so it's not hearsay, and it has some basis of fact <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/happy.gif ALT=":D"> Now, I'm gonna go try out those strike groups, and see how it works. <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/happy.gif ALT=":D"> <hr /><div style="text-align:center"> "Never, Never, Never Quit" -Winston Churchill</div>

Spinning Hat · Post by **Spinning Hat** » Sun Sep 07, 2003 11:31 am

Ok, so I played around with the Strike Groups in the Skirmish vs CPU, on easy, and it was incredibly effective. I masses a giant Armada, and set the whole thing to one Frigate Line Strike Group, and I lost all of 10 ships while attacking the NME's 85 ships. The Ion Frgates are killer against cap ships, as a dozen or so of them will take out the mothership in about 8 or 10 vollies of coordinated fire. All in all, the Strike Groups worked well, keeping all the ships in formation, and while on agressive, you can see the Interceptors protecting the Frigates, while the bombers were advancing on the NME Frigates, and the Various Gunships were playing Cover/Cleanup of the NME Interceptors and Frgates, and the Frigates went to work on their own targets, wether it be the Cap Ships, or Fighters, or the Torpedo Frigates taking on other Frigates and Cap ships. The whole game too about an hour, with the final battle taking about 2 mins. Kind of Anti-Climactic, really, but incredibly effective. The AI did make an attack early, but I had a Fighter screen up, with bombers and Interceptors gaurding the Mothership and my 5 Carriers, while I built my Corvette and Frigate Facilities, and Gathered Resources. And that Brings me to another point. The Mobile Refineries are every bit as useful as their counterparts in Cataclysm, but their capacity is reduced to the point where thay can only reliably handle 4-6 Harvesters at a time, and that's only if they're in their own RU belt. In a big group, the RU Harvesting is incredibly inefficient, and I've found that many small units of Harvesters and Refineries works much better. I had the refineries gaurding the Harvesters, and all in 1 squadron, so I could jump between them very quickly, and make sure they were doing OK. It's amazing to see how quickly 4 Harvesters can collect 10,000 RU's in the right situations. What kinds of observations have you guys made while playing the Demo? I know the game is due out soon, and I get more and more excited with every play session. <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/happy.gif ALT=":D"> <hr /><div style="text-align:center"> "Never, Never, Never Quit" -Winston Churchill</div>

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Mon Sep 08, 2003 8:11 pm

I saw this posted in the HW forums and had to post it. It's just too funny. Look at the decal. And what color is the ship? <a href="http://community.vugames.com/WebX?233@6 ...

Spinning Hat · Post by **Spinning Hat** » Tue Sep 09, 2003 11:50 am

<img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <img src=http://www.boomspeed.com/natila/falldownlaugh.gif ALT=":roll"> <hr /><div style="text-align:center"> "Never, Never, Never Quit" -Winston Churchill</div>

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Sat Sep 13, 2003 9:14 am

Victory at last!! Yesterday I finally beat both maps of the vs. CPU skirmish with the CPU set to "standard" as opposed to "easy." About time. (No, I haven't been playing it every day... <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smile.gif ALT=":)"> ) Not sure if I want to try "hard" or not. Then there's "expert" above that. Yikes. <img src="http://www.xmenclan.org/xmengambit.gif"/> XMEN member Card-carrying DTM OKL Fish-napper Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained.  The Tao of Programming

Spinning Hat · Post by **Spinning Hat** » Sat Sep 13, 2003 11:20 am

Don't forget the "closed" Setting.. <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/happy.gif ALT=":D"> I have beaten the CPU on Standard in single vs CPU.. Haven't tried the Multi vs CPU opponents yet. I've found that on the Standard Setting, they LOVE to attack resourcing Ops you have away from the Mothership.I had one last nite that I had to send my whole fleet there to protect it, then slowly reinforce it, and then finally move on to attacking the core fleet. They had a good use of vertical space too. It kept 1 carrier of theirs way up high, building Frigates. And they used Gun PLatforms a lot too. Little note- Don't ever ignore them. You need to destroy them pronto, or the Ion Array Gun Platforms will eat your frigates for breakfast. <hr /><div style="text-align:center"> "Never, Never, Never Quit" -Winston Churchill</div>

XMEN Ashaman DTM · Post by **XMEN Ashaman DTM** » Tue Sep 16, 2003 5:00 pm

lol @ pic I've only played it a few minutes. Haven't gotten around to getting back to it yet. It's VERY pretty, but I think I like my Hegemonia graphics better. (Except for the tiny fact that when a ship descends to a planet, it looks kind of funny. But the space combat looks awesome! And in HW2, the space combat seems like a blast from what I've been able to gather. (And your guys' comments. <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/happy.gif ALT=":D"> )

Ambush Bug · Post by **Ambush Bug** » Tue Sep 16, 2003 8:56 pm

Finally got a chance to really sit down and muck with the game yesterday. First off, it's on my 'must-buy' list. As soon as that puppy comes into the Rochester BB, it's mine. Bad Stuff: Second, I do have some gripes: mainly, where's the total-ship-cost number for my build queue? In HW and Cata, when you queued up ships, you'd see a total of your RUs, and you'd also see how much your queue was going to cost. Not so in the demo, which made balacing out spending rather difficult at times. Also, adding carriers didn't seem to add to the unit cap, which was annoying. I'd see the computer come at me with a gargantuan fleet, complete with a full allotment of carriers (4), and when I'd build carriers to up my cap, it wouldn't go up, so I'd be stuck with a smaller fleet. I'm hoping this is just a bug. Mobile refineries aren't all that smart when it comes to defending their workers. I'd set one on aggressive and have it defend a pod of workers, and if the enemy didn't attack more than one, it would just sit there, quiet and drooling. The refineries also seemed to have a hard time following any orders that didn't involve workers. I can sort of understand this, but at times I wanted 'em to move places when a fleet was bearing in on them, and they'd just crawl instead of move at their normal somewhat zippy pace. Camera Panning: In a word, I hate it. One of the things I really, really liked about the HW seriers before HW2 was that if you wanted to see some part of the map, you had to put a ship there so you could focus on it. That opened you up to some risk, especially if you sent your ship straight out from your home base and the enemy could just back-track the angle to find your mothership. You had to be careful sending out scouts so as not to give away your position. Now you can just pan over to the area in question and see everything that's on your sensor net. Yes, it gives one a slightly better grasp of the battlefield while not in the sensors manager, but I feel it detracts from the HW and HW:C skillset. And yes, if you haven't got sensor data for the area in question, you won't see any ships, which is cool enough. I guess the thing that really bothers me about camera panning is that it robs the game of that wonderful sense of massiveness and vast distances you got originally. Good Stuff: My God, Strike Groups are da bomb. These should have been in the original. Grab your ships, group 'em up, hit your SG key, and bam, instant tactical formation. And they're smart, too. The bombers will hit the frigates, the frigates and corvettes will smash whatever targets they're suited, for, and the interceptors will cruise around and take down anything that poses a threat to another group element. Well done. Except for flak frigates. Damn, the guys that captain those must have brains of brick. Sure, they hang back and defend the other frigates when there are fighters around to shoot down, but once the fighters are dead, the flak frigates charge forth and get right in the face of the other frigates, thereby drawing all of the fire and getting pot-roasted quickly and messily. That aside, I can't wait to see SG's made of larger ships, and I can't wait to have enough ships on hand to form two or more large SG's. Great addition on Relic's part. I like the new interface. Once I get the keyboard shortcuts down for the most frequently used items, I'll be able to cut it down even further than it is now. It's clean, functional, and out of the way for the most part. I don't like how you have to toggle the special-commands card to get mouse access to ship commands, but that'll be a set of keys I'll just need to memorize. However, the ship selection bar at the bottom right is a godsend--text and graphics to make sorting through ship types much eaiser. I just wish that the little set of pips for fighter//corvette groups would show you how many ships were left in the group--that would be very useful. Rally Points: About fricking time! 'nuff said! Platforms: These are nice... really nice. They're a great way to shore up a resourcing operation without having to have a carrier with fighter groups constantly hanging around. Pretty vulnerable to torpedo frigates, though, but still a nice addition. Resourcing: I like how they did it this time. Much more easily handled, and the resourcers are actually smarter this time around. Having the resources in dense clumps like this makes the game a little easier to manage, and it's also easier to see where you need to attack and defend when it comes to resource ops. No more of your workers wandering off into the wilderness chasing a small speck of a split asteroid (major annoyance for me in Cata) Fighter//corvette groups: Huge improvement here. Not so many ship overlay triangles and squares cluttering up the screen, and a bit easier to manage when it comes to building. Overall, I'm buying this just as soon as I can. Can't wait to find out what the plot will reveal, though I do hope there's a nod or two the Cataclysm storyline.

Post by **XMEN Gambit** » Wed Sep 17, 2003 5:42 am

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>...though I do hope there's a nod or two the Cataclysm storyline.<hr></blockquote>It's supposed to be referenced indirectly. What the heck they mean by that, I'm not sure - perhaps they mention the status of the clan you played in Cata? Oh, a note on the refineries. Apparently some players think there is a balance issue with them. They're cheap, and relatively heavily armored. Sounded like some peeps would build large forces of these things and send them out offensively. Weird. I always thought their popgun was puny.

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