HW2 Warlords Ship Apprication Thread

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2006-03-16 12:31pm

Many of us fans of the RTS Ship game "Homeworld2" know and have loved the work of the team over at SW Rebellion for their work in the wonderful Warlords Mod.

With the final and last release of his mod, version .50, I am curious what the majority of those who have used it think of the insane amount of ships that have been added.

EU, Non-cannon, WEG, even vague sketches from concept art and comic books. Several dozen ships that for most of us, we never knew existed, have been detailed, crafted, and made into respectable (if sometimes wankish) starships.

As such I am curious what are some of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly out there?

The Good?
Carrack Cruiser - Good price for a strong ship that can double as both anti fighter and anti frigate work
Marauder Corvette - really cheap but very quick and powerful ship, a pack of these are wonderful for early game raids.
Harrow Destroyer - Taken from a Comic book, costs less then an ISD-I but with Heavy Rockets is almost more powerful
Sacheen Frigate Have no idea where this ship came from, only that it's cheap, small, and wonderful for anti corvette and fighter work.

The Bad?
Quasar Fire Carrier - from some EU book, most useless ship ever with 2, count'em TWO lasers!
Independence Cruiser - Flagship of the Rebellion, twice the size of an ISD, and a grand total of 60 Turbolasers
Missile Boat - A fighter group that costs as much as a dreadnaught (about 9000RU) sure it can hurt a capital ship, but watch it destroyed in seconds by my 3000RU Lancel Frigate!

The Ugly?
Corellian Heavy Gunship - 225 meters long, smaller then a Carrack, but has 15-Double Turbolasers, 12-Quad lasers, 8-Ion Cannons, 8-Missile Tubes. WEG Wank anyone?

Overall, there is a LOT more that’s good then bad or ugly, but it is funny to see what happens when you take WEG and EU stats and apply them literally to an RTS game.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-03-16 12:55pm

The Independence (Home One right?) was a carrier and command ship, as I recall. Just because the ship is big doesn't mean it has to be bristling with guns. Warlords generally impliments fighters poorly, but if it didn't a carrier would be much more useful of a warship.
Basically, fighters would need to auto-repair/resupply, auto dump all their torpedoes at once and then resupply. Fighters also need to dock/launch much faster (and from multiple locations on a single ship, if you ask me).
As it stands right now fighters are pretty worthless; but if they could take advantage of that fact that they're extremely fast to "repair" they'd last a lot longer and be much more useful.

'Course, that's only my opinion

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-16 03:50pm

Watch out - I've been chastised for chasing this sacred cow before. Yes, the CHG is stupid. Now I have to play it again to get the names for the four ships I build.

Where's the Tyrant thing from? That wierd-shaped, missile heavy cap? It's neat, and all, but what's it from? EJ and his insane 'include everything no matter how stupid/useless/redundant/inaccurate the source' philosophy notwithstanding, it's certainly an *interesting* design.

In 0.50 they made the Vengeance (evil Sith guy from JK's ship) white like regular Imperial ships. Bah!

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-03-16 04:01pm

Erm, where is .5, I still see .45 on their website.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-16 04:30pm

Linked in the forum. It's still in 'testing' I think. It's got a fair few new ships, remodels of some of the larger ones, etc. It's a significant improvement.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-03-16 04:36pm

I'll have to give it a try when I'm back at a computer which can handle it.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-16 04:40pm

Actually it's far, far more efficient than 0.45. They seem to have changed the TL effects, so they're easier on the GPU but look more 'movielike' than the previous, 'long triangle' type. It's a pretty significant improvement performance wise.

I just checked the name, and I like the Enforcer. The mini-ISD thingy, not very well armed but cheap for it's size. I loathe the assault shuttles et al: I'm not even sure boarding is possible in Warlords, but one of the shuttle types is actually pretty good at shooting down fighters. Grrrr.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-03-16 04:53pm

In one of the previous versions the medium transports, which came in squardons of three, were disgusting assault ships; for whatever reason they were nearly impossible to hit; but even when you did that his this absurd ability to regenerate their hitpoints extremely fast. They also doubled as repair ships; truth be told it takes a shitload of time to acutally capture anything worthwhile (destroyer+), but it is indeed possible. Acutally; once the capture meter get's to some point it loses fire control and then movement ability. By the time it's at 75% captured or so it's essentially disabled.
In .45, as I recall, they are much larger, don't come in groups and are fairly flimsy.

Count Dooku · Post by **Count Dooku** » 2006-03-16 05:06pm

I like the Clone Wars mod EvilJedi did for Homeworld 2 more than his Warlords mod. But that's just me.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-03-16 06:56pm

I played the first release of clone wars; weren't many ships; and the venetors were way too good for their price.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-16 08:00pm

Clone Wars is now integrated with regular Warlords: I'm not sure if they fixed the Venators, although they're not very good ship-to-ship. I *do* know the Seperatist capital ships suck ass except for the Providence, which is a shame.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2006-03-16 08:09pm

Yeah I noticed that too.
Seperatist Capital Ships<Venator<Providance. One thing I like to do is just save up and build the Armada Super Cap. Seperatist Crusier totally owns the Republics Über Cruiser. Oh yeah, NEVER build Donut ships, look nice, but no guns.

As for other ships, I don't mind the "Include every ship imaginable" thing He has going, mainly because 1: it's free, and 2: it's FUN!

Sure I use maybe 5% of all ships.
ISD's, Enforcer, Carracks and a mix of smaller ships are about all I'll build. One of the things I'm looking forward to in .50 though is build rstrictions. IE a game where, say, you can't build anything bigger then a Victory SD. Once the Über ships are out of the way, it adds a much larger aspect of stratadgy.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-03-16 08:51pm

Crossroads Inc. wrote:IE a game where, say, you can't build anything bigger then a Victory SD. Once the Über ships are out of the way, it adds a much larger aspect of stratadgy.

They do have the tech limits (for victory class as the limit that'd be Clone wars, I think), that plus destroyer limit. The tech limit is nice; as it lets you play with ships which you might not otherwise use. For instance; why would I use a dreadnaught? Well... if my enemy is only fielding victory SD's, a dreadnaught is a pretty fair thing to field (though I submit that all in all, the Dreadnaughts and the alliance heavy frigate (the upgraded dreadnaught) need a serious looking into as their guns seem completely ineffective at everything, especially for the money (I'd take a loronar anyday, even for anti-fighter work).

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-16 08:58pm

In .50 they've put some effort into the sort of game-defining you describe: you can limit ships by class or time period, and adjust the unit caps. The unit caps are always going to be a problem for a SW game: it doesn't make much sense to have a super-cap and 20 squads of largely-useless fighters.

The TradeFed battleship was very disappointing. They're the largest CIS warship, but EJ and his amusing attitude toward research left it horribly under-armed. OTOH, many ships in .50 seem to have been remodelled and retextured: the middling ships (Corellian Gunship et al) especially look a lot better.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2006-03-16 09:20pm

InnocentBystander wrote:the Dreadnaughts and the alliance heavy frigate (the upgraded dreadnaught) need a serious looking into as their guns seem completely ineffective at everything, especially for the money (I'd take a loronar anyday, even for anti-fighter work).

Yeah it's wierd, technically a Carrack crusier (5000RU) has the same amount of heavy guns a Dreadnaught has (9000EU)

Now I know that the WEG says Dreads have 10 Heavy Turbolasers, but I'd imagine they would be much stronger then a 350 meter long strike cruiser.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-16 09:38pm

That's EJ for you. I was just on the GalCiv2 forums, and he proudly proclaims he uses WEG stats for his mods. Ugh. Honestly, he's clearly simply too cheap to buy anything published in the last decade. But he makes such technically excellent mods!

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2006-03-16 09:42pm

Yeah, WEG or not you really can't complain can you? I mean, the detail and skill in his models, its t! :drool:

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-16 09:44pm

It's such a shame that the only person (almost in the world) making decent SW games is such a backward, blinkered sort. He's a nice enough guy, but he honestly believes RPG stats from the 80s are the best source. Le sigh.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2006-03-16 09:53pm

Well, if you got enough SD.neters together and enough Ca$h, you could always, you know "Hire" him

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2006-03-16 11:58pm

Could someone perhaps show him the difference between the original donuts and the Episode III donuts? Those things are just bristling with weaponry.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-17 12:01am

Believe me, I've tried. He's a lost case.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2006-03-17 02:34am

Stark wrote:In .50 they've put some effort into the sort of game-defining you describe: you can limit ships by class or time period, and adjust the unit caps. The unit caps are always going to be a problem for a SW game: it doesn't make much sense to have a super-cap and 20 squads of largely-useless fighters.

Those have been apart of the game since I started playing several versions ago.
My favorite limit is the one which limits you to 1 destroyer

(taskforce maybe, or strike group; I forget)