Homeworld 3

[Blackhawk]

That (in general terms) is the reason that I have everything going through Gmail accounts that forward to the one account that I actually read. I can delete old messages all day long, but they're only the copies forwarded from the original accounts. If anything comes up, I just switch to the original account and every email I've sent or received in the last decade (or however long) is there.

[Unagi]

All of that makes sense - they can't really ship you a product without your address

True. But I've never had to sign a release like this for every object I've bought that was shipped to me, have I ?

[Paingod]

6 hours in now. I absolutely know I'm taking longer than I need to. I'm someone who goes out of their way to acquire as many enemy ships as I can while minimizing my own losses.

Denuvo hasn't been a performance hit for me - or if it is, it's negligible. It's worth stating that I overhauled my PC less than a year ago with second and third tier parts, so it's pretty dang fast and can handle the load. The gameplay itself is smooth and load times are measured in seconds.

A couple of complaints resonate with me from reviews.

Pathing. I'm quite tired of my ships and enemy ships getting stuck on my Mothership. For some reason, whether upright or laying down, there's a strong tendency for ships to try and pass through my Mothership instead of around it. So they just dry-hump my hull as they slowly slide across to one side. It's particularly irksome when I have an attacker on one side and the ship that wants to kill it is pushing on the other. Like ... come on. That's it, though. Pathing around other obstacles has been fine, though ships sometimes see tunnels and "going around" things as the fastest way to a point. Maybe it is. I had one mission where my Resource ships captured a couple of frigates and ran them back to my Mothership through a tunnel instead of straight there. I'm guessing the AI considers one axis before it considers another instead of trying to draw a straight line and adjusting it when it hits an obstruction.

Small maps. Homeworld 1, 2, and Cataclysm (Emergence) used HUGE maps that you navigated your fleet across with multiple objectives on each map before you finished. Homeworld 3 gives you maps that are maybe 1/10 the size and gives you two or three objectives on each before you move on. On one hand, it means you don't spend minutes waiting for your ships to get from A to B. On the other, you don't really get to spend much time in any one place so you don't develop any sense of familiarity and there's a limited sense of scale.

I'm close to changing my review on Steam to Negative. There's too much stacking up.

Denuvo. Tiny maps. Amateur story. Very short game (in an EPIC series).

The actual game is beautiful and the combat works well. Mechanically it's Homeworld. Intellectually it's not. The developers nailed it. The designers dropped it.

Some day I'll learn to stop assuming beloved titles can't go wrong.

[Blackhawk]

All of that makes sense - they can't really ship you a product without your address

True. But I've never had to sign a release like this for every object I've bought that was shipped to me, have I ?

Of course not, but it's not a good comparison. They're covering more than just shipping physical products in this. They're covering online purchases, physical purchases,tech support, surveys, online services, third party integration, etc.

[Montag]

I was ready to plunk down the big bucks and go all in, but it seems it is a shell of what it was. I will consider this when it is on sale and had time to cook. Big disappointment. Fortunatley I still have more BG3 and Elden Ring to play through; however, Helldivers 2 is still getting the majority of my attention.

[Paingod]

I was ready to plunk down the big bucks and go all in, but it seems it is a shell of what it was. I will consider this when it is on sale and had time to cook. Big disappointment. Fortunatley I still have more BG3 and Elden Ring to play through; however, Helldivers 2 is still getting the majority of my attention.

My only regret so far is the purchase price. I really should have waited a few days, but the shock of seeing a new Homeworld title when I wasn't expecting one sent me into a tizzy. Again, mechanically it's absolutely more of the same and great for that; intellectually (story, scale) it's stunted.

Unfortunately, no amount of extra time in the oven will fix the story. I'm hoping the DLC pass I bought adds more hours and maybe some larger maps.

[Paingod]

Total playtime to campaign end: 13 hours, could have been 12 if I hadn't been persnickety about capturing ships and keeping them alive.

The tunnels & cover mechanics were utilized frequently by enemies, never really needed by me to finish stages. Persistent hull damage is neat, but after a few missions your ships all start to look like they're 'artifacting' (like if your video card is overheating) and have turned into masses of orange & black streaks. Camera controls and pause/order was pretty intuitive. Pathing is problematic, with ships finding their way into odd crevasses or getting hung up on walls or each other. Voice acting was okay but not great. There were times when audio was out of sync with mouths moving.

Ended the Normal campaign with:

Spoiler:

• 160k resources; went into the last fight with 195k but churned through Interceptors, Bombers, and Corvettes like candy
• 79 out of 50 Frigates, peaked at 107 out of 50; I only wish I had more Repair Frigates - made 12, lost 8 by the end and couldn't make more
• 3/3 Carriers (almost completely pointless additions to the fleet)
• 34/8 Destroyers (all captured)
• 0/8 Battleships (couldn't build them, too many Destroyers by the time they unlocked)
• The further I got, the sloppier I was with fleet control - using larger and larger groups, and it didn't matter. By the last mission I was just using F4 to select all military ships and ordering them to steamroll an area, rinse, repeat - everything else was set on "Follow".

The storyline was scattered and unfocused, sometimes in opposition to itself:

Spoiler:

• The push to go out and fight the big bad was completely out of left field and the writers pretended that it wasn't
• Karan's Mothership is "buried deep in glacial ice to mask it's hyperspace cores" only when you find it it's right on the surface covered in a thin crust.
• The big bad was basically an immortal, petulant 8 year old with Navigator and mind control abilities
• In many places it felt like the story skipped two or three beats and just ignored that it happened
• Why do I have to keep using Hyperspace Gates? What the hell are my Hyperspace cores for? I can jump around by myself, except when it's not convenient for the story.
• "it's impossible to Hyperspace jump and rip through a solid object! how did they do that?" and then later your Mothership literally does this with no fanfare, research, or acknowledgement.
• Oh noes! The Gate Network is down and we're stranded ... except we know they can make new Cores and travel via Hyperspace. Haha! Oh, wait, they're not going to do that?

The last fight was:

Spoiler:

Very straightforward, and relatively easy. Sweep the map, destroy batteries on production facilities, lay an egg in three different areas, fend off a "Titanship" that runs every time it gets to 75% and 50% health right until the end moment. Having functionally unlimited resources, over 100 Frigates, and 34 Destroyers made this mission largely trivial and mostly just a matter of waiting for things to die as I rolled over them.

I have heard that playing on Hard is actually Hard, but I have no inclination at this time to do that - nor do I feel like War Games or Skirmishes.

[UsulofDoom]

Ouch, reviews are at 41% positive now. Multiplayer must be bad too since only 978 player are in game at 3:30 PM est.

They seemed to have dropped the ball on this one. Don’t know if they can pull a Cyberpunk make over. Time will tell.

[Paingod]

They seemed to have dropped the ball on this one. Don’t know if they can pull a Cyberpunk make over. Time will tell.

I doubt it. Cyberpunk had a good, long, rich story that was hindered by a wildly buggy release, broken combat mechanics, and other performance issues. Homeworld is a badly disjointed and poorly written story, short campaign, and lackluster tiny multiplayer maps. Mechanically, it's almost as good as it can be. Unless they re-release the game with a whole new story and larger maps, it's not going to satisfy the majority of the player base that was looking for an epic space saga.

[Hrothgar]

New Dev Update:

Open maps & “claustrophobic” maps
Though terrain is a major feature in Homeworld 3, we’ve heard that many of you miss the vast, empty maps of earlier Homeworld games. Some of you also feel that Homeworld 3’s maps can be too small or “claustrophobic.” We have already started work on our first new Skirmish map without large terrain — just open space. We’ll also look at other maps to make sure you can pull the camera out far enough and, if necessary, make further adjustments.

Strategic pacing & directional damage
We have heard your thoughts on the overall pace of combat. Homeworld 3 is definitely a faster-paced game, and many of you feel like you aren’t able to maneuver properly or employ tactics like flanking. We’re increasing the health of units. This will allow you more time to maneuver in an engagement to make use of things like directional damage.

And, just to dispel any confusion, Homeworld 3 has directional damage!

There’s been some doubt about that, which we think is due to the pace of combat and that it wasn’t present in the War Games demo. We’re also increasing the efficacy of directional and flank damage. We think this will increase Homeworld 3’s strategic depth by incentivizing unit positioning and smart maneuvering.

Improving unit behaviors
Speaking of maneuvering: During the next several weeks you’re going to start seeing improvements to unit behaviors. For example, things like larger ships needing to engage from the same plane of combat and various other behaviors will be addressed over the coming weeks and months. We also have fixes for issues like units occasionally forgetting their orders and improvements for various units like Suppression and Torpedo Frigates.

Hyperspace Jumps & a new tech tree in Skirmish
Skirmish has long been a staple of Homeworld and RTSes, and there’s a couple of things we think we can do to improve this experience. Notably, we are exploring implementing Hyperspace Jumping in Skirmish, allowing you to teleport ships across the map for some audacious gambits. We’re also reworking the Skirmish tech tree to help make strategic player choices more meaningful and allow early game fleet compositions to be more nuanced.

Tactical Pause & Time Dilation for solo Skirmish & War Games
This will be coming up in our June 1.1 patch. For users who want to pause or slow down combat in solo games— now you can, just like in the campaign!

Also coming in Patch 1.1 is a new War Games Artifact that'll unlock the ultra-powerful Heavy Suppression Frigate variant.

Mod tools incoming!
We’re continuing to work toward the launch of Homeworld 3’s official modding tools. If you’ve browsed the mod.io dashboard within Homeworld 3, you’ve already seen the cool things the community is creating. Our mod tools will only empower that effort. Officially, they can be used to create and share Skirmish maps, but for adventurous modders who aren’t afraid to go into uncharted territory, there’s a lot more that could theoretically be done — and we can’t wait to see what this community creates.

To be clear, all of this will be moving forward in parallel to our ongoing bug-fixing and improvement efforts. By the time Patch 1.1 drops in June, we’ll be on target to address over 150 issues and counting — including performance improvements, better support for AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards, and many, many other things.

Tactical Pause in solo Skirmish and War Games could be a game changer for me since I don't click as fast as I used to.

[Anonymous Bosch]

I was eager to see MandaloreGaming's review of this title, since his detailed and thorough reviews of the Homeworld Remastered Collection and Homeworld Cataclysm clearly reflect his appreciation for the original games.



YMMV, but after watching the relevant "Story (SPOILERS)" section of this particular review… ? Yeesh. Homeworld 3's narrative and dialogue seem so spectacularly, mind-bendingly terrible, it's almost impressive in a perverse way. Suffice to say, as someone who fondly remembers the original games, I've now consigned Homeworld 3 to the same metaphysical dustbin of non-existence as the cinematic abomination that is Highlander 2.

[TheMix]

Highlander 2? Ha. Good one. Next you are going to tell us they made several more after that. You, sir, are a card!

[Punisher]

There can only be one...highlander movie..