A Homeworld 2 rewrite

[Antares]

So is this just an idea, a mod WIP or an already finished mod? I've never seen something like this showing up on relicnews boards.

[White Haven]

I'll /definitely/ have to have a look. A game with realistic tactical options dictated by sensible ship design sounds far more interesting. I dunno about you, but I'd scream blue murder if I were stuck crewing something as lightly-defended as most HW2 caps. And, er, never mind that the kinetic weapons on capital-grade warships are railguns, and hence /quite/ fast and wouldn't actually be that bad against fighters

[Chris OFarrell]

You people are whinging about Cat being involved in HW2 based on GAME MECHANICS?



Well I've heard all the stupidity now. The MAJOR problem with HW2 was that it pretended HW2 didn't exist. Relic's big problem was that Barking Dog refused to wank all over Karren like they wanted them to (hence their overkill with her in HW2) and they punished them by pretending it didn't exist. ANY game has inherent problems with gameplay balance. And saying that Cat is orders of magnitude worse the HW is just pathetic and petty.

Oh so they have homing energy weapons. Big fucking whoop! Its a fucking Science Fiction Game! Physics accuracy is not a major concern in ANY of the HW games. You might as well bitch about HW2's flack frigates and their ability to chew threw fighters far WORSE then Cats energy cannons. I would say that Movers are GROSSLY more over the top then ACV's.

You say Instant Kill/Hit energy cannons are munchy? I say the Missile Frigates from HW1 are even more munchy.

You say Replusor Fields are munchy? I would say that it pales to Defence Platforms.

You can argue back and forth over munchyness if you want to and frankly I don't care. All that Relic NEEDED to do was to fucking acknowledge that Cataclysm happened in some meaningful way. They don't have to have Super Acolytes (and frankly you can argue that Laser fighters / Pulsar Corvettes are direct descendents from the SA fighter), they can easily fudge their vanishing. Hell they happily fudged the whole mystical hyperspace core BS, the Vagyr coming from nowhere and the Taidani mysteriously being 'absorbed' into them.

On second thoughts, Relic are more then happy to take from Cataclysm when they want to. The fact that there are none of the Bentusi left for example apart from Bentus is a direct nod to the Beasts wide scale ravaging of them. Or the subsystem ideas. Or the EMP weapon. Or the armour upgrades. Or the Engine upgrades negating fuelling.
But they are too up themselves to even *mention* the Beast Wars in the introduction. Which would have been the minimum they could have done for a game that made them a hell of a lot of cash and kept the fan base alive.

I've seen people across God knows how many web forums speak quite positively of Cat. Just about all my friends who played HW brought Cat and they loved it. It was never going to be as heavy an impact as HW did to all of us, its no longer an original idea. But people who try to defend Relics attitude to Cat citing GAME MECHANICS as a valid reason I find are almost always the vocal minority who fawn over Relic as if they are Gods who can not make a single mistake.

[Vympel]

I don't understand Homeworld "politics". Can someone explain to me the controvery in detail, like Karren "wank" (what the hell's a Karren anyway?) etc?

[phongn]

So is this just an idea, a mod WIP or an already finished mod? I've never seen something like this showing up on relicnews boards.

It's only a 197 page thread

[White Haven]

Chris is angry that a major character in Homeworld 2...is a major character in Homeworld 2. Or something like that. As for including Cata in HW2, I see you neatly dodged the biggest issue. Hiigaran possession of Super Acolyte technology is a little like Superman with powered Kryptonian battle-armor or some shiz like that. The threats you have to devise to pose even a remote threat are so fantastically out there that it's downright silly.

[Chris OFarrell]

Chris is angry that a major character in Homeworld 2...is a major character in Homeworld 2.

And WH is a Relic appoligist who rabidly will defend any slight on the almightly and holy plot of Homeworld.

To answer your question V. Essentialy. In Homeworld, the Mothership required an advanced Neutral interface to control its systems. A Kushan scientist named Karan Sejet took this position. She was the voice of 'Fleet Command'. So if you klicked on the Mothership, you heard her and she was one of the two 'commanders' of the Mothership. Nothing more or less.

In HW2, we find out that because for some reason she was hooked into the Mothership, she became a religious icon to the Higarens. Then for some insane reason, being close to the Hyperspace Core for some reason imparted imortality to her. She comes back to command the Mothership in HW2 declaring that only she may command da core. Then she takes command of an insane new ubership, combined with all three cores and starts a new age, the "Age of Sejet".

Originaly she was no more or less then simply the 'computer core' for the Mothership and a commander. She ended the Homeworld Saga as a living God. They took an interesting but essentialy sideline character to YOUR game and made **HER** the game in HW2.

Or something like that. As for including Cata in HW2, I see you neatly dodged the biggest issue.

No I didn't. You just ignored my response. The possession of the technology can easily be rectified as being present in the Pulsar Gunship technology and "Laser Fighters", neither of which have a contempery in Homeworld, only in Cataclysim.

Besides which it could even be said that the Higarans lost the ability to produce them after the battle thanks to damage to the Kun-Lan and that the Bentusi were not inclined to give it back. Or that improved hull armouring made the 'special ion beams' on them highly ineffective, leading to their retirement. There are PLENTY of ways to deal with teh technological differences between the games. It however is completly unacceptable for Relic to simply pretend the EVENTS never happened.

If you want to put your hands over your ears and scream that Relic forgot Cat simply because they were too bloody lazy to even TRY to think about rationalisation, you can. But given how readily they instigated direct contradictions between even HW1 and HW2, I fail to see how ANYONE can logicaly supoprt this position.

[White Haven]

So capitol-grade fighter-mounted ion beams became fairly rare light anti-corvette beam weapons. I see. As for S'Jet, yes, she was silly in HW2, but there's no basis for that being in any way related to Relic's decision to bypass most of Cataclysm. 'We didn't want to use it, and it was a century or so ago anyway,' doesn't equate to 'They didn't center on Karen S'Jet, so we're not going to use it.'

[Alyeska]

Basicaly Homeworld 2 shit on the rest of the series. It had minor mentions of the original Homeworld while it completely pissed away Cataclysm. Even still, Homeworld 2 pulled some insane stuff. The Hyperspace core crap just didn't make sense. Technicaly it wasn't a contradiction to the original, but it came damned close anyway.

Stories, element, and politics from Homeworld and Cataclysm were outright ignored and treated as if they didn't exist in Homeworld 2. In Homeworld I felt the struggle the Kushan were dealing with. In Cataclysm I was gripped by the story. In Homeworld 2 I didn't give a shit and was just trying to finish the game before boredom took hold.

[Chris OFarrell]

So capitol-grade fighter-mounted ion beams became fairly rare light anti-corvette beam weapons.

"Fairly Rare". Interesting take given that Pulsar Gunships and Laser Fighters are some of the core fighters of the game. They could say that the records and all of the prototypes were lost after the Nagrenock's destruction thanks to Battle damage and combat loses after the 'game' ended. The text on them in the Kun-Lan says that they are so far beyond the technology of the Higarans that no-one has a clue.

They could have said they required very specific resources of which the Kun-Lan had gathered precious few and were impractical for wide scale implementation.

They could say that the superbeams on the ships will cause massive radiation poinsoning and death if used more then a few times as they are unstable, hence were dropped.

The MOST logical reason I could think of would be that said beams were not in fact very powerful but (like the seige cannon was) tunned specificaly against the Beast. Causing catostrophic damage to them, just not much to normal ships. Hell, the fact that the Tradeships don't have a dozen or two light mounts of that firepower that completly own everything might be an indicator that the beams are not THAT powerful.

And as usual, your completly missing the POINT. They can easily justifiy the SA being trashed with a little thought, just like they turned the Hyperspace Core from a prototype constructed bassed ON blueprints in the Kara-Toba to the recovered core that is indestructable and grants imortality for some reason. But they didn't, THAT is the stupidity Alyeska and I dislike.

I see. As for S'Jet, yes, she was silly in HW2, but there's no basis for that being in any way related to Relic's decision to bypass most of Cataclysm.

Yes it is. Unfortunatly I have no proof to offer you as all the links, pages and reports are long dead. But many of the Barking Dog people have publicly said that when they presented their overall storyline to Relic, the Relic reps were asking instnatly 'what about Karen'. Someone confused, the Barking Dog reps said that she was disconnected from the Mothership and probably was on Higara. They tried to get them to have Karan be the commander of the Kun-Lun and it be a Sejet, not Somtow ship. They refused and Relic basicly washed their hands of it. Oh they were happy to receive their cheque in the mail, but they pretended it didn't exist.

Their claims that they ignored it for Game Balance is just Bull. THe ONLY question mark is the Super Acyloyte and that can be easily written out. And they had no problems ignoring or rewriting facts from the original Homeworld when it suited them, so that doesn't fly. And we're left with what then?

I frankly don't care if you belive me or not. But don't try to pass of their ignoring of a whole chapter of Homeworld both in HW2 and publicly because they didn't like some of the UNITS in it. They acted like Children. Thats why Aly and I wrote our possibility the way we did, so it ALL linked in as a fucking story arc SHOULD!

[Xon]

The MOST logical reason I could think of would be that said beams were not in fact very powerful but (like the seige cannon was) tunned specificaly against the Beast. Causing catostrophic damage to them, just not much to normal ships. Hell, the fact that the Tradeships don't have a dozen or two light mounts of that firepower that completly own everything might be an indicator that the beams are not THAT powerful.

The super-acolyte construction program could also have had a self destruct biult into it. Remember, all the Bentusi did was tranmist a program which drove the Kun-Lan construction line. The crew of the Kun-Lan didnt have a clue what it would do or how the ship would preform (beyond insanely well), it was just a computer program running on their system.

So the Bentusi did not have to give them the technology, only lent it out for a while.

[Chris OFarrell]

The MOST logical reason I could think of would be that said beams were not in fact very powerful but (like the seige cannon was) tunned specificaly against the Beast. Causing catostrophic damage to them, just not much to normal ships. Hell, the fact that the Tradeships don't have a dozen or two light mounts of that firepower that completly own everything might be an indicator that the beams are not THAT powerful.

The super-acolyte construction program could also have had a self destruct biult into it. Remember, all the Bentusi did was tranmist a program which drove the Kun-Lan construction line. The crew of the Kun-Lan didnt have a clue what it would do or how the ship would preform (beyond insanely well), it was just a computer program running on their system.

So the Bentusi did not have to give them the technology, only lent it out for a while.

I can see that.
*Somtaw piloting along thinking how cool he is when a speaker activates*
"Lent out vessel will be regreatfuly destroyed"
"Hey what the-"
*SA blows sky high*