Discussion Forum: Remastered is (almost) Here!

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Point Defense Systems » Point Defense Systems Remastered Project » PDS General Discussions

Remastered is (almost) Here!
Ironwatsas	#1 Posted on 25-02-2015 02:28
Posts: 856 Joined: October 21 2005	Well atleast Steam is Pre-loading as of this moment. So, save up some time over the weekend to play and enjoy it. Let me know if you like it/think it sucks/if it's going to be more of a pain in the ass to mod then we thought. Then the real work begins. Edited by Ironwatsas on 25-02-2015 05:20


Homdax	#2 Posted on 25-02-2015 10:45
Posts: 762 Joined: August 30 2005	Waiting for Amazon, mid next week. king-o'da'bigfile


Warman1	#3 Posted on 25-02-2015 12:33
Posts: 146 Joined: September 08 2005	Mine is in the mail, slated to arrive today...but it gets to my PO box which takes a day to sort the mail. T-T


carl	#4 Posted on 25-02-2015 15:12
Posts: 28 Joined: February 11 2015	It's heeeerrrrre... Put a thread about the artwork in the R&D labs btw


Homdax	#5 Posted on 25-02-2015 20:41
Posts: 762 Joined: August 30 2005	Quote Amazon UK: Due to a distribution issue, "Homeworld Remastered Collector's Edition" from your order # 202-4630857-0445949 will be delayed. Your order should be on its way to you by Friday, 27 February, 2015. As a token of good will, we'd like to offer you code that you can use to play the game online until your order arrives. So i get it about now, but barely have time for a couple of days. king-o'da'bigfile


Ironwatsas	#6 Posted on 26-02-2015 06:01
Posts: 856 Joined: October 21 2005	So, my first impressions of Homeworld remastered are generally positive. Having played partway through the Homeworld 1 campaign, and a few player vs CPU skirmishes. I can make a list of pros and cons I've encountered so far. PROS: It's pretty to look at. You can fight HW1 ships against HW2 ships Homeworld 1 strike craft are single build again. All Homeworld 1 special abilities (gravity wells, drones, defense fields, etc) work. Salvage corvettes can salvage debris. Skirmish mode has tons of options. AI has improved somewhat. You can set the AI to behave in different ways. (Defensive/Offensive/Balanced/etc) It's on Steam. Steam workshop support. In the singleplayer campaign, your fleet color changes to whatever your previous skirmish colors were. Homeworld 1 resource collectors have really awesome asteroid sucky downy beam effects. *Formations and* Strike Groups*. Battle chatter is less annoying. CONS:* No fuel option. Homeworld 2 strike craft still use squadrons. Squadrons still just fly around in a gaggle and don't manuver. Homeworld 1 ships use Homeworld 2 style manuvering profiles. Sphere formation no longer works like it used to (I.E. with guard commands). Taiidan designs are kinda roundy offy looking for my tastes. Some classic ship sfx have changed. Taiidan DFG frigate works like the HW2 hiigaran one (manually engaged). We will need an incredibly badass texture artist to achive parity with Remastered Ship quality. I'm not sure how the player teamcolor thing will affect custom scenarios. All in all, most of the flaws can be solved with modding, and barring any unforeseen complexities with the nuts and bolts of modding the game, we should be able to create something incredibly awesome.


Warman1	#7 Posted on 26-02-2015 19:16
Posts: 146 Joined: September 08 2005	Last night I played a few rounds with a friend of mine and I had some opinions. I won't restate things that Ironwatsas posted. Though the game is REALLY pretty. There is an interesting balance going on between HW1 and HW2 ships. The HW1 capital ships (and frigates!) all have an intrinsic capacity to engage in hyperspace jumps. The HW2 ships of course require modules for this purpose. On the note of hyperspace jumps, unless my memory is a bit faulty, I do believe they made it MUCH cheaper to jump ships around. Heck, the mothership's price to jump is obscenely cheap, I remember it being prohibitively expensive. A weakness for the HW2 ships is of course that their hyperspace modules can be shot off. An advantage for the HW2 ships is that they can build hyperspace inhibitors, which the HW1 ships cannot. Additionally, as was noted HW1 fighters/corvettes build individually whereas HW2 build in squadrons. The HW1 craft I believe are correspondingly cheaper/more capable on a per ship basis, but between the two, they build at 'roughly' equal rates. Possibly favoring the HW1 craft because of their ability to be producing two ship types at the same time out of a given producer. That said, the HW2 craft again have the weakness of modules. I might have lost a fight against my friend last night if he had realized earlier than he did that if he could blow up my fighter module that I would be cut off from producing reinforcements. Definitely one weakness for HW1 races is that only the mothership can produce their heavy units. So no destroyers, missile destroyers, or heavy cruisers without it. Whereas the HW2 races can obviously keep on chugging even with the loss of their MS. A few issues I've noticed. Sometimes the hyperspace drives are...temperamental. In our game we had several points where we were launching a fleet of ships, some came out where they were supposed to, others got stuck in inhibitor fields like they were supposed to, and then others....came out of hyperspace nowhere near where they were supposed to. Either way out further but the right direction, or the wrong direction, etc. Also the number of ships (usually production ships, but I don't know if that means anything) that are told to hyperspace and then...get stuck as an unselectable unusable unit that doesn't go anywhere, is disturbingly high. By the later matches I was strongly debating if HSing my mothership was worth the risk that it would die this way. I do like the addition of Relics and Crates to the game. Crates are spots that if you send a ship to, it can reward you with money, instant research, or free ships. (my equivalent to 'I got a rock...' was getting an ion cannon platform...) The relics are a little more interesting because they are these spots that you can capture and they give you money in ever increasing rates. However, if someone removes your ships and captures them, then they get the money, and if all else fails, they can blow it up and then it will respawn somewhere else eventually. On the whole, I am pretty happy with where things are and I am interested to see where they go. For balance reasons, I wouldn't be opposed to the idea that one of the things we add is a post HW1 shipyard facility.


Ironwatsas	#8 Posted on 26-02-2015 20:28
Posts: 856 Joined: October 21 2005	I'm already thinking of ways that some of the stuff can benefit something like PDS. The AI seems to be able to recognize and go after relics and crates and such, so using that fact could be an interesting way of setting up "Defend/Capture the base" Scenarios/infrastructure protection. Quote Sometimes the hyperspace drives are...temperamental. In our game we had several points where we were launching a fleet of ships, some came out where they were supposed to, others got stuck in inhibitor fields like they were supposed to, and then others....came out of hyperspace nowhere near where they were supposed to. Either way out further but the right direction, or the wrong direction, etc. Actually... you've given me another idea here. A scenario in which a fleet is trying to hyperspace toward an objective, but suffers a navigational error and ends up scattered across a region. So the player is forced to rally his fleet while evading enemy forces until they're gathered up and in full strength.


Warman1	#9 Posted on 26-02-2015 20:59
Posts: 146 Joined: September 08 2005	Ooh, as in a preplaced scenario where you have ships of assorted types (battlecruisers, destroyers, etc) that start scattered across the map (perhaps in varying levels of health), and you need to reforge the fleet. Mmm, I am kind of imagining one of (or maybe the single one you have) battlecruisers spawning in an unrecoverable position. Surrounded by enemies too numerous to fight off, it could be a trap to the player in the scenario if they try to rescue it. If you wanted to make the situation more tactical, you could set things up so that there are no resources on the map at start. You can harvest bits from ships you destroy or retire, but other then that, nothing. By the way, earlier you mentioned fuel. Is your intention to have PDS mod back in fuel requirements for small craft?


Sun Tzu	#10 Posted on 26-02-2015 21:34
Posts: 528 Joined: September 08 2005	Quote Ironwatsas wrote: ... CONS: ... We will need an incredibly badass texture artist to achive parity with Remastered Ship quality. ... . Bah, you already have it


Ironwatsas	#11 Posted on 27-02-2015 06:35
Posts: 856 Joined: October 21 2005	Quote By the way, earlier you mentioned fuel. Is your intention to have PDS mod back in fuel requirements for small craft? It'd be a nice touch, in that it would add a certain degree of realism. I'd like fighters and small craft to be less spammy and more substantial (except ones which are meant to be spammy. I.E. Vaygr Assault Craft). But also to have a fuel requirement, necessitating the use of light carriers, support frigates, repair corvettes, etc. To avoid micromanagement, perhaps implement a script wherein fighters will automatically repair/reload at the nearest dockable friendly (I recall we had something like this circa PDS 6), unless set to aggressive tactics. Kadeshi swarmers apparently do need to refuel, so there should be code in there we can abuse to our purposes. We'll need to look into it.


Warman1	#12 Posted on 27-02-2015 15:59
Posts: 146 Joined: September 08 2005	I always did like the idea of small craft operating as part of a carrier task force. Sort of like a carrier, it's fighter/bomber/corvette wings and several frigates operating around. Very occasionally I'll use such things to poke at enemy resource operations.


Ironwatsas	#13 Posted on 28-02-2015 23:40
Posts: 856 Joined: October 21 2005	That's basically what I plan to concentrate on. Mothership-strike groups and fleet level operations are comparatively rare affairs, most of PDS' focus has historically been on small to mid sized unit operations. That's actually kind of paradigm set with the "Tactical Strike Operations Groups" of PDS' past: A fast, mobile group built around a fleet carrier, and attendant frigates and fighters, designed to get in quick, conduct an operation, then hyperspace to safety before big scary things show up. That's kind of the opposite to the "Line Combat Divisions" which are meant for large-scale capital phalanx maneuvers on (relatively) symmetrical battlefields, which vanilla Homeworld/Homeworld 2 tends to favor.

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