Homeworld issues?

[Firestormalpha]

I was rooting through some old-ish games and decided to run Homeworld. 3D space RTS.

I'm on the 2nd mission, just after testing the hyperspace jump and I'm trying to collect every last scrap of resources in the area. Unfortunately there is one dust cloud very close to the wreckage of the Khar-Selim. My harvester will fly toward it, but when it gets there it seems to lose it. Fleet intel declares all resources have been drained, but there's the dust cloud sitting there taunting me.

Is this some kind of glitch? Is it fixed with the patch? or am I basically gonna have to settle for leaving those resources behind?

[Olorin]

It's been awhile, but I seem to remember similar things happening in my games. It could be that some of the dust clouds aren't coded properly, or the graphics glitched and didn't remove them when the resources were drained out of them the first time. If I recall correctly, it happened in more than one system--I just learned to accept that there either wasn't anything left in the cloud, or it was too small an amount to worry about.

Great times playing Homeworld. I remember one run where I focused on hijacking as many enemy capital ships as possible. I ended up with a killer fleet (way more cap ships than you can build normally due to caps on # of ships in different size classes).

It was a lot of fun having a small swarm of captured multi-beam frigates tear apart enemy destroyers. They are wildly inaccurate, but something about putting them into sphere formation helped to keep their quad beams on target, and then they were just devastating (plus they're spread out enough to avoid most of the friendly fire problems).

[Firestormalpha]

Hmmm... that kinda sucks. So, no fan made fix pack for that kinda thing. I know I've seen a few mods, but that's not exactly the same thing. I'm trying to have at least six salvage corvettes before I head back to Kharak. sadly I can't do that without that last cloud. The idea being that I want to grabe as many of the assault frigates in the next mission as possible.

Home world is definately not the kind of game you want to use a laptops touchpad.

Would you suggest the other Homeworld's, or was the 1st one pretty much as good as it gets?

[Olorin]

I was never able to have 6 salvagers online for the return to Kharak either. There is a way to grab all the assault frigates though

Send in a small fighter wing to distract the frigates while you salvage corvettes get into position. Grab the closest frigate with a pair, but for the others, just have one salvage corvette go after each one. One by itself can't lockdown a frigate and tow it home, instead, it will start spinning it. This will stop it from attacking crew pods, and if all of them are disrupted, they won't be able to try to snipe the salvage corvettes off their buddies (try to time them fairly close, as they will attack the salvage corvettes once they latch on).

You can be resourcing while this is going on to get enough for salvage corvette #6, and as soon as 1 and 2 are done hauling in the first frigate, they can go back out to help bring in another two--just make sure to repair them if they're damaged. Even with a corvette latched on, those assault frigates can do some damage if their main gun happens to be spun in line with any of your ships.

As for the other Homeworlds, I've played part of Cataclysm, but never finished. I haven't tried Homeworld 2.

[Firestormalpha]

Just had a thought, if I were to try and salvage some of the corvettes that are launched at me near the Khar-selim, I could possibly retire them for enough RU's. But that would put existing salvage corvettes at risk, and I'm not sure the captured ships would bring in enough RU's even under a best case scenario.


UPDATE: Tried my salvage idea. They largely ignored my corvette, but they move as fast as if not a little faster and they don't sit still for anything, so no captures. On the bright side, I only lost 2 interceptors in the whole mess. I'm sure there's a way to not lose any, but I'm not sure what that way is at the moment.

So I went through with 4 salvage corvettes, and by the end I snagged the required frigate and one more, but lost 2 salvage corvettes, an interceptor and a scout. I could care less about the scout. I'd rather not lose the corvettes though. Seeing as there are 4 frigates perhaps snagging a corvette on each till I can get a 5th into play to bring them in. Also I'm gonna say that the frigates need to be damaged for the corvettes to do anything more than latch on. At least, that appeared to be the case.

[Firestormalpha]

Mission 4 might be playable, if the stupid computer wouldn't rip the focus to the other half of the map at critical moments.

[Firestormalpha]

Finally managed it with massive losses. Had to replace my harvester and that wasn't much fun. So, time to try it again, and go for a better run. And I'm finding that strategy guides are horrendously off on the number of craft that are sent after you.

ok, first successful run, I went with an offensive defense. cranked out what assault craft I could and ended the mission with:
14 - Interceptors
9 - Heavy Corvettes
2 - Assault Frigates (captured from the previous mission)
3 - Ion Cannon Frigates
2 - Ion Array Frigates (captured of course)
2 - salvagers
1 each of research vessel, resource collector and controller.
RUs remaining: 396

My second run I went for a more passive defense, cranked out some extra salvage corvettes put almost all my strike craft on guarding my resource collection.
Ended with:
5 - Interceptors
5 - Heavy Corvettes
4 - Assault Frigates (3 captured from the previous mission)
8 - Salvage Corvettes
8 - Ion Array Frigates (All Ion Arrays from this mission captured and accounted for)
1 each of research vessel, resource collector and controller
RUs remaining: 1284

I'd probably have more salvagers left but I tried to capture the Turanic carrier. I forgot that it's actually coded as a mothership class vessel. Anyway, it didn't last long with 8 Ion Array beams focused on it. all in all, I think I like the results from my second run much better.

[Olorin]

You're right about not being able to catch enemy corvettes to salvage. They are too fast and maneuverable to catch. There are some Fuel Pods in some later missions that can be salvaged that I think are technically corvette class, but they are useless except for scrapping since you can't catch the fighters that are able to dock with them (even after they run out of fuel, they somehow resist getting captured).

But just wait until you try to capture Destroyers. They take 3 (or is it 4?) salvagers each, and one of them always seems to attach itself right in front of a gun battery, so it keeps getting shot as the destroyer is being towed in. Very hard to capture without losing one or more salvage corvettes. I advise bringing at least 5 salvagers for the job so that you have spares for any that get destroyed along the way. And as for Missile Destroyers, you're better off building your own than trying to catch them.

[Firestormalpha]

What is your prefered formation for fighters escorting your capital ships? Cuz sphere makes them sit still for enemy target practice. Also, I ordered my Ion ships to fire on an enemy carrier only to watch them sit around playing dumb while the carrier plowed right through three of them. Fortunately, I saved before all heck broke loose so I still have the possibility of fixing it.

UPDATE:So far claw formation with evasive tactics has worked pretty well, still lost a bunch of my heavy corvettes though. Also, when faced with the choice of capturing a destroyer or a carrier, go for the one with big guns first. (or at least destroy the one with big guns first)

[Firestormalpha]

Nice, I captured the enemy carrier. The real question now is whether to keep it or turn it into resource units. I tried to snag one of the destroyers too, but the it was in front of the carrier and he kept picking them off. So I lost 3 salvager's in that attempt. It was a piece of cake taking the destroyer down with 10 Ion beams trained on it.