Homeworld Remastered Collection

Homeworld Remastered Collection

Homefront
Riekopo 7 Feb, 2017 @ 8:16am
What's Going On? The Future is Near!
This is a crosspost from the ModDB page from June 4th 2016.

Today, as I checked my phone on my lunch at work, I was rewarded with valuable knowledge. It turns out that Update 2.0 to Homeworld Remastered is slated to release on the 7th of June!

Well, what does that mean for Homefront?

If you've been gone the last month, you would have missed that we slowly started revamping some of our models and textures in anticipation for a new release. Business has been slow for a very long time, and that is in part to yours truly helping out the ARMA III mod, Operation: TREBUCHET. And while I enjoyed my time helping those talented folks over there out, I've neglected Homefront far too long. What better time to get into the swing of things than Gearbox updating the engine and fixing the mod tools?

We've been wanting to get back in the saddle for quite some time, and in our long hiatus, we've figured out a pretty precise gameplan. Halo: Fleetbattles couldn't have arrived at a much better time in our long dev cycle, and there are some big changes coming to Homefront, so without hesitation, we're going to lay it on you!

One of the biggest challenges we've faced working on Homefront is breaking the traditional mold of Homeworld gameplay. We've tried everything, asymetric units, stations instead of shipyards and much more to the point where we've lost track of what made Homeworld so great in the first place! This is where Fleetbattles comes into play, and it's as if they wanted us to finish Homeworld! Que the Orion, a new ship recently introduced, that is designed in the same manner as the Halberd (used to be called the Thanatos), which used space age armor configurations. Except, this ship is intended for expeditionary action. Capable of being it's own production house, it was intended to infiltrate deep space and attack the enemy from within their territory. That's great, because we needed a mothership! But what about the other craft - carrier and shipyard? Well don't worry because Fleetbattles has those bases covered.

The Epoch-class Heavy Carrier is a perfect candidate for a carrier equivalent vessel. It's large enough to produce frigates and has room for subsystems.

And the Punic-class Supercarrier fits in as the perfect shipyard. Bear in mind we are still experimenting with asset placement and the final look can change at any time! We're pretty confident you guys will like what we end up with.

So what's up with the stations? Well they were pretty resource intensive, large static objects and they didn't fit with the playstyle of Homeworld. That isn't to say they will be deleted from the mod, but they will most certainly not be useable in the player arsenal. Moreso, they'll be pushed to different game modes we have planned, such as Firefight, Colony Defense, and even just static objects on maps.

"But wait!" you say "Don't these ships have armaments? How are you going to keep them from bum rushing the beginning of the game?" Well, I'm glad you asked! We've broken it down for you:

  • These capital ships are production first and combat last. Ships will initially spawn with a modest array of AA, just like vanilla capital ships.

  • After the Research subsystem is built, more research options will open up per vanilla HW2, but will also unlock special combat research. Depending on the ship, they will open up advanced combat subsystems to purchase on your ship. This will mostly be Archer banks.

  • When the Advanced Research subsystem is built, more combat research is revealed. These open up the ability for the capital ships to maintain power to production while also engineering a powerplant to support weapon systems such as MACs (in the case of the Orion and Epoch) or an array of mini MACs (Punic).

  • Once the last combat research is unlocked, then a final combat research will be revealed. Make no mistake, R&D is expensive and to upgrade a powerplant to support Super MACs (Punic) will be a costly venture.

  • In order for this type of balance to exist, the Covenant will also be set up the same way. The "Turn Research On/Off" feature will also no longer exist because we want you to play the mod the way we intended. We'll reveal more as time progresses!

So there you have it! We're pretty ambitious with getting the mod ported over. This will also mean that we will be starting from bone stock. The way turrets, ships, weapons, etc are handled will also be changed. We're going for a complete overhaul, getting rid of a lot of useless junk and we'll publish a changelog as we move forward.

Also the Covenant won't be left in the dust. Our friends at Sins of the Prophets has offered models in textures, so you may see some familiar faces about until we can get back in the swing of things!

We hope you all like what we're doing!

tl;dr: Homefront won't be what you remember it as. We're moving forward, read the article!
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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments
SoN NightHawk 10 Feb, 2017 @ 8:59pm 
YAS. Its been so long that i thought this amazing mod had long been abandoned. Yet here you are proving me wrong!
Delta-118 10 Feb, 2017 @ 11:02pm 
yey! So excited! This mod is the reason I bought Homeworld!
Cat Barf Lover 17 Feb, 2017 @ 5:57pm 
love it but maybe in the future flood?
Dat ODST fan 18 Feb, 2017 @ 9:06am 
Originally posted by thedoomturtle:
love it but maybe in the future flood?
I don't think the flood will be making a presence in this mod. Trust me, from what I played of SOTP (sins of the prophets) I don't think that the Flood's style of combat will make the mod good. They would just bum rush you and attempt to infect your ships. Even if they were a playable faction, they would still force you to bum rush enemies until you either destroy or infect all of their ships. Also, I kinda wish that they didn't take away the "Turn research on/off" button because it helps majorly if you just want to get into the game for a quick match. Although, I am excited for the new ships that they plan on introducing, such as the Epoch and the Punic. From playing them in SOTP, they are great ships to have.
ISNIPEDOUT 18 Feb, 2017 @ 11:22am 
this is one of the main resons i got homeworld
Jake Paul 23 Feb, 2017 @ 2:10pm 
nice!
Soul 24 Feb, 2017 @ 9:27pm 
So great to hear the best space game for Halo is getting some TLC, thank you so much for your dedication and drive to continue work on this amazing mod!
Slime 5 Mar, 2017 @ 9:46pm 
Just curious will we see new ship classes for the Covenant like the heavy destroyer and the heavy corvette and maybe new fighter/bombers like phantom gunboats and different variants of serpahs and banshees as you progress? Love homefront its my favorite homeworld mod not to kiss any ass.
SoulTechnology 6 Mar, 2017 @ 9:31pm 
Originally posted by thedoomturtle:
love it but maybe in the future flood?

flood as a map hazard would be neat to see, maybe replace some of the hazerdouse radiation clouds we see in HW with spore clousds that slorly convert (board) your ship for map AI that will attack and try and baord more ships? maybe a flood AI survival gametype? maybe add in with working boarding ships for the current factions? just shooting ideas. obciously more important things are likely on the list.
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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments
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