hey gang-

so i'm totally new to the homeworld franchise (despite having been a sci-fi and RTS nut for as long as i can remember). HW1 remastered has been fantastic so far, but i'm finding the tutorial utterly basic and just now i'm restarting the campaign after reaching the halfway point 'Cathedral of Kadesh.'

since there has to be others out there like me (new to the game, but perhaps well familiar with RTS), i thought it'd be useful to have a thread where new and old fans alike can share whatever pearls we've gleaned and help each other out.

so here's one of mine. forgive me if it's basic, but it's something i wish i knew before i started.

-your fleet carries over from mission to mission- and oftentimes this is fundamental to the mission design. BE CONSERVATIVE WITH YOUR SHIPS (gather intel, use appropriate counters rather than brute force), and DO NOT PRESUME YOU'LL HAVE A LULL TO BUILD AT THE START OF EACH MISSION.

last RTS i played in a serious way was starcraft, and HW1's campaign early-game is fundamentally different. starcraft it feels like you more or less have a clean slate each mission (with a few exceptions). this one- not so much.

and now here's a pretty screenshot i took:

NOW POST YOUR OWN TIPS!

Control-box selecting stuff (Ctrl+Click and Drag Left Mouse) is useful. Want a wing to assault a specific group of enemies? Select the wing then control-box select the enemy. Same goes for repairing a group of your own ships, or setting guard ships (e.g. Resource Controller guarding some Collectors, will follow them around). The H key will make Harvesters do their thing without specifying asteroid or exploded ship bits.

Also, steal enemy ships. Having you own Destroyer is cool, but taking an enemy Destroyer is cooler. Also you can retire them for more money.

The pause key is your friend. So are Probes (though remember, they're a one-shot thing).

Umm...learn to use 3D space effectively (the maps are huge once you factor in that). For any long distance camera work - hop out into the map view (spacebar) and move that way rather than panning the camera. For Homeworld 1, stay after the mission and harvest everything for money. I mean, you probably don't have too, and sometimes it takes forever, but money is money and I liked me some money. It looks like HW2 auto-harvests resources once the mission is complete.

Stuff I've learned by myself and from other folks, and this is the first time I've ever played the series. Pretty damn fun.

Also, fuck Junkyard Dog.

Always suck up every last resource in a region before warping to the next mission.

You can totally warp a cap ship inside another cap ship for big explosions.

X and Claw formation seem to be most effective way to organize bombers and fighters.

in HW2 it will auto collect, but yeah in HW1 waste that hour and harvester after the end of a mission.

Do max out your captial ships limit cap.. that way you can steal enemy ships and go over the cap. in the last mission in HW1 I had like 4x the cap of destroyers and 2-3x cap of battleships.

very perdy game (here it is in 4k)