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

[LeHah]

Lehah is there a step by step you can make for ppl so that more ppl can try out multi-player.

It wasn't any different than setting up a MP game in Homeworld 2. You just use the mod launcher instead of the HW2 one. Then, we connected via Direct Connect and there you go! Nothing needed to be added or changed.

i think lehah we need to keep a track record of changes needed on a per ship basis for future releases.

Thats a good idea. As it stands, I think I'm perfering the Border Worlds over Confed.

 

[Iceblade]

Yeah, that is way too many. For my mod the Ranger has only one wing of 4 avengers. Of course the Ranger can't carrier more than 40 fighters (although I would think that 2 or 3 ferrets or epees would count as one fighter cause they are so small).

 

[Winnyfred]

The battle scenes look awesome! I wish skirmishes worked, single player I haven't tried yet, is it any fun?

 

[LeHah]

Two pictures from tonight's match...





Heres a couple other things of note

*Transports move too slow. I mean, they should move slow - but not quite THIS slow, as it endangers the strength of gameplay. You have to wait about 5 minutes for the thing to reach the middle of a small map, and if you're trying to deploy jump buoys, this is a major hassel.

*I had been on the fence but mercury pointed out that carriers should not have the ability to accept harvesters. This is something that the Lexington from Armada was able to do - but that was a special case, so it more or less rules out harvester docking.

*There doesn't seem to be a "anti-fighter" ship. Homeworld 2 had Gunships (or even Pulsar Gunships) that were brutal against fighters but as is, the mod doesn't seem to have that capacity. Perhaps something like a corvette class would help, because as it is - all you need is a ton of fighters to win the map. (EDIT: I talked to LOAF tonight to bounce some ideas off of him. He suggested changing the role of the Destroyers to a more anti-fighter capacity. That flies in the face of their use in HW2 - but it makes some sense given that you also have Cruisers, which are devistating against capships.)

*Is there anyway to make the jump buoys "generic"? In the sense that any side could use them, no matter who deployed them? This would force players to guard jump points, which would add a great tactical sense to the game.

mercury had this to say...

"the HQ and starbase units should also be able to build jump points." (I agreed on this depending on the role starbases play in later versions)

 

[czacen]

lehah carriers dont accept harvesters. originally the hq and starbase were allowed to build jump buoys, but since jump buoys cant be made ultra mobile like in original hw2 (for obvious gameplay reasons - something that was realised in early testing) their slow speed and very low maneuverability made it pointless to build them from a HQ that is so far away from extra resources and combat. however the transport being sped up to compensate for this is a fair trade off. they cruise at 85 now i could bump them up to 95 or so, ill check it out.

 

[LeHah]

We did another run through, testing a couple scenarios of Type X ship against Type Y Ship. Heres some notes I dashed out on some post-its...

*Do bombers have working rear turrets?

*Why are there 2 Longbows versus 4 Avengers?

*No repair ships? I realize that this has been a point thats been gone over and over and over, but how else to repair capships when fighters can be healed after docking with a HQ/Carrier/Cruiser?

Most of it was just "Lets see what one flight of fighters do against Cruisers" (Cruisers get taken out by Longbows) or "Lets see what one flight of fighters do against Frigates" (Banshees take forever, but get the job done).

I had a thought about the ships having more unique capships. While everything is beautifully modeled - the capships to both sides are the same. What about throwing a Exeter or Venture class onto the UBW to make them look a little more...worn out than Confed? Just a thought.

 

[czacen]

bombers and thunderbolts/vindicators have working rear turrets however there is some screw up with the weapon fx that doesnt play properly on all rear turreted ships. well actually speaking 4 avengers and 2 longbows was just a gimmick i wanted in the game. the stats are in fact more in favor of longbows. the torp damage of confed torps is slightly more than double that of bw torps so damage potential is the same or in fact little more on the longbows, plus longbows refire quicker than avengers also adding to their advantage. i think the best anti-fighter ship is the caernaven class for bw - it fires 8 missile volleys and its turrets are quite strong against fighters. try a bunch of them against a large fighter group. also for better ship to ship differences try a ubw cruiser vs a confed one or ubw destroyer vs confed destroyer. btw have you guys tried any proper marine landing issues? also harvesters repair capships. just do the repair upgrade research and then latch them on to a dying ship to repair it.

 

[LeHah]

btw have you guys tried any proper marine landing issues?

Well, tell weasel to not blow up my marine ships and I could tell you if it works or not

also harvesters repair capships. just do the repair upgrade research and then latch them on to a dying ship to repair it.

The mod doesn't allow you to research the repair advancement. Its just not an option in the research mode.

 

[czacen]

are you sure? its enabled when i play. thanks for letting me know lehah, rest assured it is available in the mod, i must of deleted an extra line while cleaning up the scripts before packing the archive. entirely my mistake ill check into it.

 

[ELTEE]

Those battle pics are nice...so...many...fighters!!

 

[Chicken]

I plan to test crash this mod when I'm done with the bulk of my finals. Currently, I got the thing to work after some stupid problems on my rig and fixed a few things so it would.

However, for an old machine using a GeForce3 gpu, it runs surprisingly smooth. Warlords would simply cause it crash, and few other mods sent it to hell and back (e.g. Battlestar Galactica mod).

I'm much pleased czazen. Let me know how what you want it crashed and destroyed in the name of bug fixing.

 

[czacen]

yeah i wasnt too worried abt it running on older rigs since my machine is abt 5 yrs old. im working on a slightly overclocked athlon xp 2600+ with a radeon 9500 pro 128 card with only 512 mb ram. heh barely meets hw2 min specs

 

[czacen]

i dont think the following pics need any explanation, the legendary ships arrive. please note however that the st.helens is not planned for the mod. i have made it and kept in just in case.

 

[DeFrancoj]

I think game balance would be better served by making fighters kill each other faster. I can't really explain this in words right now because I am hung over, but I will ponder it at work and post again later. The idea is that fighters should be relatively fragile, just like in WC4. So, they're powerful, but they don't last too long in battle. Also, then fighter screens might actually havea shot at taking down bombers before they drop their ordinance, which would allow God (Czacen) to keep the fantastically rendered bombing scenes just the way they are.

 

[LeHah]

The idea is that fighters should be relatively fragile, just like in WC4.

You touched on something I noticed from last night. The fighters heal a little too quick. I had sent a single flight of Banshees at a frigate and one of those fighters would take two consecutive missile hits - and still be alive. By the time they were making a second pass at the frigate, it was fully healed.

This also lends to the question if cap ship missiles should be stronger.

 

[Wibby]

Long time lurker but first time poster. Great mod by the way, fun as hell just doing the skirmish against the cpu even though they don't fight back. One thing I noticed is that carriers (at least the border worlds carrier) won't attack the confed hq. Don't know if others have tried this but I just couldn't get it to attack. It would attack the harvesters but not the hq. If this has been addressed before then my apologies.

Anyways, great mod can't wait for the full thing, and if anybody wants to play multiplayer just pm me. I really want to give mp a try.

 

[LeHah]

One thing I noticed is that carriers (at least the border worlds carrier) won't attack the confed hq... If this has been addressed before then my apologies.

I had the exact same question ealier in this thread. Apparently, carriers won't attack other ships like other craft would; ships have to move into the carrier's range for them to fire.

 

[BrynS]

@ LeHah
Thanks for the multiplayer comments. How are you finding game performance when playing online with large numbers of units onscreen? Smooth and responsive or choppy/laggy or perhaps somewhere inbetween?

The rationale behind making transports the only unit able to deploy jump buoys was to give them some purpose/utility beyond being cheap scouts/cannon fodder -- it should add another gameplay element in that one needs to protect/escort the transport en-route to the preferred jump point area and similarly, targeting enemy transports could affect the enemy's ability to construct jump buoys and hence strategically move their forces around the map as well as exploit resources.

It's been a while, but I think you can fool a carrier into combat by moving it close to or in a passing motion to the target and hope that the target or nearby enemy fighters begin to attack it, causing it to open fire defensively -- not ideal if you want to target a specific sub-system, unit or just go in all-guns-blazing, but is largely in keeping with the notion of most WC carriers, even the heavy Concordia class, as being limited to a defensive posture versus other capital ships.


@ czacen
The Vesuvius is looking pretty sharp! Will a player using the Black Lance faction only be able to build/use one at a time?

Just an idea I'd thought I'd float, although the balance/gameplay considerations are probably too awkward for it to be universal, assuming it is even practical to implement: allow capships and maybe even fighters/bombers to kamikaze ala The Victory in the WC3 losing path (useful for destroying or at least heavily damaging the Vesuvius) and possibly similar to the scuttle feature? Alternatively, tweaking the scuttle feature to do area effect damage should do the trick? Perhaps the Border Worlds could have the exclusive use of fighter kamikaze; useful for destroying that incoming mass wave of Confed Longbows! From testing experience, I don't actually recall trying to scuttle a capital ship right next to an enemy capital ship, base and/or fighters -- does the scuttle feauture result in some sort of area effect damage other than the destuction of the scuttled ship?

Keep up the excellent work!

Cheers,

Bryn

 

[LeHah]

Thanks for the multiplayer comments. How are you finding game performance when playing online with large numbers of units onscreen? Smooth and responsive or choppy/laggy or perhaps somewhere inbetween?

I have a pretty powerful computer - 3.2 GHz with 2 Gigs of RAM - and given this game is a couple years old, I don't ever have lag. Well, until last night. There was one brief moment where I was trying to make a break for a jump point when I was swarmed with fighters. To give you an idea of how many, the cruiser went from 3/4 health to dead in about all of 5 seconds.

Aside from this - Ive never run into lag.

it should add another gameplay element in that one needs to protect/escort the transport en-route to the preferred jump point area and similarly, targeting enemy transports could affect the enemy's ability to construct jump buoys and hence strategically move their forces around the map as well as exploit resources.

I hate to be a wet blanket, but this part of the game seems to fly in the face of a large part of WC tactics. I don't know how HW2 works really, but if theres a way to make "generic" - that is, non player specific - jump points, it would add way more to the mod.

You'd be forced to protect/mine jump points to prevent the enemy from jumping in. That alone would make you have to take serious precautions and split your forces up. As it stands, you can only use your side's buoys, which is pretty silly. Then add to that you can switch buoy destinations whenever you want - it just doesn't work.

Obviously, theres bound to be things in HW2 that you can't really change for this most - you can't name ships, I know that - but it's still something that should be looked into.

It's been a while, but I think you can fool a carrier into combat by moving it close to or in a passing motion to the target and hope that the target or nearby enemy fighters begin to attack it, causing it to open fire defensively

Thats exactly what I meant - I just worded it very badly. Carriers only have defensive fire, as opposed to any other capship. I kinda like that idea, myself.

allow capships and maybe even fighters/bombers to kamikaze ala The Victory in the WC3 losing path

Homeworld 1 actually had this option. I believe the hotkey was "K" for kamikaze, in fact. I remember doing this with harvesters quite often in MP.

does the scuttle feauture result in some sort of area effect damage other than the destuction of the scuttled ship?

I don't believe there is any splash damage when it comes to explosions. I don't even know if you can change that, either.

 

[czacen]

st helens isnt in because it would have be on confed's side (seeing as how confed is the force that deployed it against the vesuvius in wc4). however that would just make confed too strong. then issues of balance become huge between bw and confed. Black lance already have a deficiency in their fleet with the absence of cruisers, so the vesuvius makes up for that by being a battleship crossed with a carrier.