Gung Ho Ships & Other Points

[Fellblade]

I am impressed, very impressed, with the demo of Homeworld 2. I've played through the tutorial, the single player missions, and played for about 3 hours with a friend vs the AI.

The game is excellent - but this is the feedback forum, right?

Some feedback:

• Gung Ho Ships - when there's a battle going on on the other side of the 'map', and I make a number of interceptor squadrons, they have a tendency to fly all the way over and get into the battle. This means that I have no shortcut to grab control of them, and when I go to do it... they're all already dead after attacking a gunship corvette. It's practically impossible to make a feint attack without half your fleet rushing to the defence of the doomed scout/interceptor wing. I didn't think it was possible, but I've actually had 2 torpedo frigates that I'm sure I set to 'passive' running after a resource collector.
• Turret Targeting - the Gun and Ion turrets do not, by default, attack enemy resource collectors. Change possible?
• Shadows bug - needs fixing
• Build menu - when I'm running at 1600*1200, this thing is taking up about a quarter of the screen. Very irritating.
• The ship listing in the upper right from the original. Back please!
• Is it possible to make the 'Queue' screen permanantly visible instead of being able to close it by hitting 'esc' (eg: You have the queue on, open up a build menu, hammer escape to close it, and the queue goes as well)
• Could we have the 'double click on ship type selects all of ship type on screen' back?
• Seems to be a little bit of a lack of 'feedback' on what damage Pulsar Corvettes are doing - you don't get a feel for the power of the gun at all, they feel very weak
• Could we have a definition of how strike groups work somewhere? Extremely confusing... inconsistent results when I use them.

All I can think of at the moment. I'm very impressed with the game, love the 'hull breach' effect you get with a scorched hole in the exterior of ships and flames pouring out. Oh, and the guns. And the ion beams.... and.... and...

[Psycho-SoniC]

All valid points. I would appreciate a comment by a relic official on these minor issues.

[airguitargiles]

fighters are weak against corvvets* and frigets*

[Psycho-SoniC]

Yes but they're the fastest units in the game. Use them as raiding hit n run party against enemy harvesters. Run if vettes / frigs come to defend them. The only threat to your bombers are fighters, which are faster than bombers. In that case, you should have interceptors handy to buy time for your bombers to return to your base. Don't forget the bomber engines upgrades.

[Fellblade]

Does anyone else have this problem with ships running off all over the shop, or am I blowing it out of all proportion?

[danwatt]

I think it depends a lot on tactics. If you set your units to agressive, and they are just sitting around, they will run off to fight nearby ships. Though, I have never seen them go clear across the map

[Zakua]

I didnt notice ( "notice" being the key word) my ships running off half cocked. they seemed to do very well.

[Fellblade]

These were fresh out of the mothership - a fight going on the far side of the map, and they just ran over there without prompting. I went back there to grab my bomber wings to make a mass attack on a resource node I'd lured the enemy away from and... they weren't there. I found the remainder of the bombers (2 left) getting shot up by a flak frigate that they had decided to attack one squadron at a time as they were created...

[JamesX]

Set them to passive stance. i think its F1 or F2.

[Fellblade]

This means that I have to sit next to my mothership or re-focus on it every time that something is built to stop it wandering off by switching it to passive...

[PeanutR]

Originally posted by Fellblade
Does anyone else have this problem with ships running off all over the shop, or am I blowing it out of all proportion?

I dont think you are, I've been pretty annoyed with this as well. It's screwing up my micro, when the frigates I'm trying to pull back rush to the aid of the ones i sent to the front line to soak up the damage...

About the doubleclick selecting though, I can do that, so I was surprised to see it on your list. Or maybe I've missunderstood what you meant...

[Sebas_V]

if an ally or one of you own ships is under attack at other side of map your freshly build ships/fighters will just head there right away. that is how i lost a 2v2 CPU game today a whole strikegroup just was vanished (they were aggresive i know)

[Fellblade]

I might well have messed that up - it was in the middle of an extremely heated battle with the AI and I was trying to find out where my interceptors had run off to this time, when I remembered the old homeworld methodology for selecting all of unit on the screen... and I couldn't get it to work.

[PeanutR]

I've never had them run all the way across the map either, but I have had both fighters, vetts and frigs engage from several kilometers distance (outside of any enemy ships threat range). But the reason for this might be that I like to keep my carrier close to hotspots, so my ships haven't had that far to run on their own...

[Venom]

I have had several cases where my defensive group of Flak Frigates guarding the carrier and turret formations in the middle of the map had decided to run off and beat the crap out of a wing of bombers attacking a retreating group of ships from another battle at least 1/3 of the map away.

While it saved what was left of my retreating force it cost me the middle of the map

[Arconin]

I have had all sorts of ships race into battle one squad at a time just top have their engine ports handed to them. It is really annoying and makes it hard to build up coherent reinforcements that will actually do well to supplement the front lines.

BTW loved the game, I began to find how to use strike groups better, but not for sure...more experimentation is needed. Perhaps the Manual will have in depth descriptions.

[Antra]

Make sure that there aren't any larger ships, such as a carrier or the mothership, set to aggressive. You can see by hitting tab a few times that they will target the nearest enemy they can sense EVEN IF they don't actually move to go attack it! So, that target will then target *them*...making the ships guarding the mothership/carrier, even on Defensive (f3) tactics, freak out and go attack whatever it is that's targeting the mothership/carrier.

Try it. Hold your cursor over an agressive-set mothership/carrier and tab until you hit the highest detail level. You'll see a red line streaking towards a nearby (or not-so-nearby) enemy. And, likely, a return targeting line, which is what causes things to go haywire. My advice is to be careful about setting capitals on aggressive, and to not order mothership/carrier to attack a target that IS in range (say, fighters) without being certain that that target won't be running away.

[Drakonsfyre]

That makes sense Antra, it explains why I never had the free-range frigate problem, as I keep my momship and carriers on passive.

[Antra]

You don't know the half of it my friend. Not just free-ranging frigates. But everything and anything with guns on it just up and "WOO! Targets! GO GET 'EM BOYS!" :vikingb:

It was sad. Single player, sure, I won it easy. Multiplayer, I kept losing my squadrons to anything red . I think it's because in HW and HW:C, I was used to putting my mothership and carriers on f4 to get them to attack as soon as something's in range.

[JamesX]

Originally posted by Fellblade
I might well have messed that up - it was in the middle of an extremely heated battle with the AI and I was trying to find out where my interceptors had run off to this time, when I remembered the old homeworld methodology for selecting all of unit on the screen... and I couldn't get it to work.

Cap-lock is select all in HW2.

Edit: It is probably combinable with the military ship selection key. (Dont' remember off the top of my head). That way you won't select all those hard working Resourcers.