I like ground based RTS games, but never played anything like Homeworld. I see they remastered it a few years ago, so I figure it’s held up well. Seems like the reviews are good.

Or is there something else newer in the genre that I should try?

I also ran across Stellaris on sale on Steam, might try that instead.

The remastered is great,  the prequel is ground based and great as well.

Short answer, yes. It was and still is a great RTS. I love watching assault and ion frigates go to town on the enemies. HW: Cataclysm (screw you Blizzard) was pretty cool also.

It's a great game, but the unit caps are stupid low for an RTS.

Agreed.

And the retarded enemy ship scaling based on your fleet at the end of each mission for the HW1 campaign....

So I bought Stellaris instead since it was on sale, and I think I hate this game. I like the idea of it and it seems like it has a lot of potential, but it's way too hard and the tutorial is absolutely worthless.

First game I played on the second easiest setting, and was just getting dominated by everyone. Finally after a whole day of playing, one of my neighbors just decided to rape me for no reason, so I gave up in frustration.

Second game, I think I learned a bit from my mistakes, and I'm getting the hang of it. Still, I bump it down to the easiest setting just to learn more and have some fun, figuring I'll dominate. Nope, at best I'm in the top third as far as advancement and expansion. Again, after a day of playing, the last straw was when one of my colonies (which was doing okay) rebels against me. I send an armada and tons of ground troops to take them back, but it won't let me enter the system or attack them. WTF? I try to declare war, but no dice. I try to lay claim to the world, but still can't attack. What type of strategy game won't let you declare war against your enemies?

And WTF is up with the tech tree, or lack there of??? I have no idea what the hell I need to research to get where I want to go. I feel I'm pretty far into the game, and the best naval vessel I can build is a destroyer.

Again, I feel like there's some potential here, but it's way too hard to enjoy. And what's the point of a game if you're not having any fun, even on the easiest setting? I'm no stranger to these types of games, having grown up on the Civilization franchise. Maybe I'm playing it completely wrong, but I don't feel like anything I'm doing (researching new techs, upgrading outposts, building fleets, expanding into new systems, etc.) has any bearing on my progress. And the combat is just boring and feels like the player has zero influence, other than attacking with a bigger number than the enemy.

And that’s not counting the half day it took me to get it to run without freezing on the load screen.

Homeworld is amazing. BUY IT.

Have you considered Battlestar Gallactica Deadlock? You just missed a 75% sale on the base game a few weeks ago. Check that out before you go full retard on the DLCs.

Kharn

@HKocher

Stellaris can be a very fun game when you understand some of the mechanics.  Choosing ethics, civics and traits that fit your playstyle is pretty important and I would stay away from those civics that are Genocidal such as Fanatic Purifier, Determined Exterminator and Terravore/Devouring Swarm.  They give you a permanent -1000 relations with other species for understandable reasons.  Technology is a random card system and the general outline is available here though I'm not sure what the current version is.  If your scientist is in the same field as a certain technology then it gives that technology an increased chance to come up.

Fleet size can be important, though isn't everything.  I've had games against an endgame crisis where my fleets were around 1m fleet power and were able to destroy the enemy fleets at around 2-4m fleet power because my ships were designed specifically for them.  Building fleets to counter an enemy will see success.  

Colonies will rebel if their stability is below 10 and if their rebellion isn't swiftly put down they'll go independent with -100 relations to you, and they'll usually get annexed by a neighboring power.

Here's the Stellaris wiki.  https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Stellaris_Wiki

It's a relatively difficult game to learn, but once you get going you can do some pretty fun stuff in it.  I've played according to Steam 992 hours of it, so I'm more than happy to help you out with getting rolling.

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I'm liking Stellaris so far just started this week, but I've always preferred turn based over RTS and since this allows full control of giving orders while paused it's basically turn based
it does have a bit of a steep learning curve and even the advisor guy isn't very helpful

so far no one has declared war on me so I'm just chugging away fighting the occasional pirate spawn

Stellaris is a great time suck... Best strategy ive found is set your science ships to explore down a line to cut off a chunk of galaxy, then further cut off that chunk, create a few more science ships to explore the cut off chunk, colonixing so you have isolated that chunk, ignore the sometimes overpowered (10Kish)  space entities and just concentrate on cutting off your chunk and strategic hyper lane points.

once oyu get boxedc in by other empires doing the same you have a chunk that is still virgin, use it. you end up with more territory and planets, and resources usually than they have. build up things, then cut off chunks of their empires at strategic points, don't on take on peer empires, take on weak ones that aren't allied. soon you are a power house.

wormholes thare aren't BOTH inyour territory need a massive base at them if the other end is near an enemy.

once oyu get them gates need to be EVERYWHEWRE in your turf(never more than 4 jumps to ANYWHWERE in your turf), makes reinforcing fleet s a breeze.

Key word about Homeworld series:

MODS


Homeworld has so many mods and total conversions out there, name a sci-fi universe and it's got one. For HW1 there are plenty of unit cap mods and the campaign is persistent. HW2 did not sadly carry over that persistent fleet model, but I'd wonder if someone found a way to mod it in. Homeworld was a classic for a reason.

If you like star trek, you check out the new horizons mod for stellaris. Might make it a bit more recognizable.

Homework is one of the greats if all time.


Up there with Doom, Half-life, etc...  definitely play it if you haven't.

Well... after reading through this thread I learned 2 things.

1. Buy Homeworld


2. Stay far away from Stellaris

Homeworld Remastered is on sale right now. 80% off.

Just a heads up!

I bought Homeworld remastered a few weeks ago, and while it’s a good game, some of the levels are brutally hard. Or maybe I just suck at gaming these days.

Once I figured out Homeworld, it wasn’t so bad. I basically captured every capital ship the enemy threw at me, but HW2 nerfed the shit out of that tactic. Marine frigates suck compared to salvage corvettes, and no more exceeding the unit cap. Also no more support frigates, and dual purposing resource collectors as repair vessels was lame.

So I get to level 9, when you need to repair the dreadnaught, and I just get my ass handed to me over and over again. I’ve tried about every tactic I can come up with, but the enemy just seems to have endless units and resources. I started the mission with a full fleet, but resources are scarce

My best effort has been to bring the mothership to the shipyard and circle the wagons. I built a bunch of gun platforms around the two, then send my warships out, first to destroy all the jump gates, which best I can tell there are as many as 10, and I suspect they are building more after I destroy them.

Second, I send out the bombers and warships to destroy the first wave of carriers. I know there’s also an enemy ship yard way out there, and have sent a fleet of bombers to deal with it, but they got slaughtered. I figure I’d need a big chunk of my fleet to deal with it, but it’s too far away for the slower ships, and there are too many other priority targets, so I leave it.

At this point, there are no resources to be had, and the fleet is looking pretty rough. Now comes the second wave of carriers, again sent bombers/warships out to destroy them. After that, I’m down to only my capital ships.

Now the dreadnaught is repaired, and I get attacked by a battle cruiser and shit load of destroyers, I’m able to destroy all the capital ships, but all I have left is my dreadnaught and I eventually get bled to death by hundreds of fighter and corvettes that never seem to stop coming (presumably from the ship yard and new jump gates).

If I remember right send out a strike team of bombers for the gates and leave your mother ship, capitals and gun platforms around the dread.

But if you don’t deal with the carriers, won’t they just keep spawning smaller ships to send after you?

I went back to an old save when the dreadnaught is fixed, and finally beat it. It required a ton of pausing and micromanaging but I did it and was able to save three destroyers. I pulled everyone back (only had 5 destroyers, a few frigates and two bomber squadrons at the start of the save) behind the mothership and shipyard and let them soak up some damage while the gun platforms went to work.

Once my platforms were all destroyed, the destroyers were in range. I lured them in as best I could and took them out one at a time with my DDs and the dreadnaught. Then the battle cruiser came in and I pulled everything back again and let it go one on one with the dreadnaught. After the BC was dead, pulled back the dreadnaught for repairs and I got everything else back in play (just three DDs and two bomber squads) against all the remaining carriers, then finally picked off the ton of frigates, corvettes and fighter/bombers remaining.

Not sure where the enemy ship yard went, it disappeared before the mission completed.

I think it depends on what you’re looking for. I was looking for something a lot more casual right now. I think Stellaris could be an entertaining game, but you obviously need to put a ton more time into it than I’m willing to at this time.

I think my biggest two grips about Stellaris (aside from the difficulty scaling) is that tech research doesn’t seem to have a ton of noticeable influence and the combat seems to be based solely on numbers. In games like Civilization, the tech tree could make or break you and combat outcomes seemed to have some strategy involved.

Not exactly right. Tech makes a huge impact on combat, and there are differences between different approaches. But yes, you gotta really get into it to see big differences.

I recommended the new horizons mod mainly because people know ST and the "tech" so it makes some sense.

So I'm giving Stellaris another try, again on the easiest setting. Feeling pretty good about myself a couple days into it, then I get ass raped by marauders who I accidentally neglected to pay off.

This is the shit that makes this game completely not fun. My biggest fleet is about 20K military power with two titans, a couple battleships, etc., and some fucking pirate race with a handful of systems somehow gets a fleet of about 100K power.


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It's official. I suck at Stellaris and I hate this game.

Keep in mind I'm playing on the easiest setting. About 20 hours into this playthrough and again, I think I'm doing okay. I've got four decent fleets spread around my empire, each with a titan and a couple battleships, plus smaller ships (about 20K power each, give or take). I've expanded well and established a bunch of colonies, citadel starports and I'm feeling pretty advanced technologically.

Then I get attacked by the super pirates with the 100K fleet. After that's done, I get war declared on me by three superior empires, who then proceed to attack me from all different sides of my empire. While I'm dealing with them (poorly), I get attacked by a "Fallen Empire" with a 200K power fleet.

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Also keep in mind, other than being expansionistic, I've never done anything aggressive towards any other empires.

I get it, this isn't a game for casual playing, but on the easiest setting, it shouldn't be this difficult. It's just not fun at all.

Sounds like you're in the early mid-game. Best to not piss off the fallen empires (don't build starbase within 1 spot of them), bribe the pirate dudes with whatever resource you can get back easily, and try to expand only so far as chokepoints lanes take you (one way into your territory).

The AI likely saw your fleet get spanked and attacked as you had not much defense left.

It's it normal for the AI to gang up on you like that? I could have handled any one of those fleets alone (except for the fallen empire), but not all three.

Only thing I can think, was I just got done researching a planet killer ship. Maybe that provoked them?

Bought homeworld and the map is confusing. The persistent fleet is neat. Still kinda lost on what I'm supposed to be doing though.

I enjoyed stellaris, but it drags on after a while. Last playthrough I played as a ravenous horde and killed everything.

What do your starbases look like? Have you been upgrading them? Have you been upgrading your ship weapons as you reseach them?

just started playing that a few days ago. Love all the events and anomalies that are based on episodes. had to save scum on the xindi arc though Click To View Spoiler as it is a tad hard to get enough resources early on to build much of a fleet.

Yeah, never mind, I give up on this game.

I went back a bunch of saves and made a lot of different choices. Paid off the marauders. Even tried to befriend one of the empires who attacked me, while bulking up my fleets. Apparently I’m not good at diplomacy.

The galactic community even voted to open borders and fight the Khans together, but the end result was one empire wussed out and became a vassal to the Khans and no one else attacked the Khans. Instead the three empire coalition used the resolution to attack me again.

Then I decided to cheat, for shits and giggles, to see if they’d leave me alone if I pushed their shit in. Max resources, massive instantly built fleets. Nope, it seemed like every cheat I did, the AI countered with their own cheats, and then the fallen empire attacked me.

This game just isn’t for me.