Civ V I bought on the strength of the brand name, and it was pretty weak. Never again.

Assuming Relic Entertainment survives the recent troubles that its publisher THQ is currently embroiled in, you should post those ideas in the official RelicNews forums to see if they can be implemented in Homeworld 3 (assuming it gets made, given how the genre of space-based RTS games is at a low point now), or incorporated into a HW2 mod. I think many of your suggestions would help to make starships in HW2 more valuable, but some of it’s been done (not very well, I’m afraid) before.

A Hero system has been tried before in space-based RTS games, most notably Digital Reality’s Haegemonia: Legions of Iron and its expansion pack. Unfortunately, the
Soldier heroes were not particularly spectacular (Planetary Governors or Spies, however, were much more useful). While soldier heroes could indeed increase certain parameters of combat spacecraft to levels not reachable otherwise when research was maxed out (such as the effectiveness of a starship’s shields, the accuracy of weaponry, the toughness of a starship’s armour, etc.), they weren’t anywhere close to making their assigned ships into game-breaker units–pitting even a fully-experienced soldier hero in a maximally experienced starship unit (yes, this game had an experience system for ordinary units) against a bunch of ordinary units of the same class but lower experience would kill the hero-equipped ship in short order, unless the odds weren’t more than 1:3, partly because heroes gave no special abilities other than stat increases to their assigned units/planets. So losing an experienced warship wasn’t anywhere near as bad as losing your planetary production lines (because pumping out reinforcements still ruled the day, barring extraordinarily good luck or incompetence from your opponent).

This is in contrast to Warcraft III, in which your hero was the crux of your army (and a good part of its fighting power), or in Dawn of War 2, in which heroes are a big help on the battlefield (but whose survival and continued aid is not anywhere near as important as it was in WCIII).

And some of the features you propose were originally supposed to be in Nexus: TJI1 in the first place. Ship captains gaining experience was mentioned in the manual, and crews evacuating in life pods happens in the game (with lost life pods equating to lost experience also mentioned in the manual), but sadly time ran out and the experience gain or loss system is really just for show, because with repeated playthroughs you’ll notice that only two starship Captains, Marcus Cromwell and Dr. Veldtman, gain experience, and always at the same missions (regardless of the number of hostile units their own starship has destroyed).

Lost ships in Nexus do get different names the way you describe (i.e., the first replacement for the lost Brutus is the Brutus A, the second replacement is Brutus B, and so on). However, a replacement ship’s equipment is the same as it’s original fresh-from-the-shipyard’s version was, so it’s invariably terrible (and is plenty of reason to keep all your ships alive, if you want them to stay combat-effective when the going gets tough!). An addendum to your suggestions might be that if you choose to upgrade a particular ship or ship class, rebuilding a ship with those upgrades will always be more expensive (or in the case of unique upgrades, close to impossible) than just repairing the original damaged ship. Such a thing would give players more reason to retreat a damaged unit for repairs rather than counting on enough reinforcements to be pumped out.

Perhaps a game like you describe, which combines RTS-style economy and construction with the tactical combat of Nexus, might have to be done in a hybrid turn-based strategic over + realtime tactical combat style like the Total War RTS series (i.e., you make strategic maneuvers, conduct R&D, build ships/facilities, and recruit/train personnel via a strategic overview screen, but fight tactically in realtime). That would be awesome to see the devs make (it would essentially be the Imperium Galactica 3 that Digital Reality promised us at first), but right now I’d be content with more tactical combat, just enhanced with a better game engine and better abilities + units for our use.

I guess what I’ve found with Elder Scrolls games is that, as mentioned above, they always seem to be more about “OMG! Isn’t it COOL what a huge SANDBOX we have?!” And to be honest, I have come to the conclusion that “sandbox” games bore me after a while. Usually, this is because they try to let you do so much, but none of it with a ton of depth. Or to the extent that there’s “depth,” I just don’t CARE about any of it.

Some games handle the “sandbox” element better than others, of course, and I tend to think that Elder Scrolls games do it better. At least all the “stuff” I can do is stuff that I find somewhat entertaining and which sort of matters to me. By contrast, GTAIV let you do all kinds of things like…take your annoying cousin to eat burgers…or…shoot pigeons…or…go on dates so that your controller can vibrate. Or just drive around carjacking people while fighting against the crappy controls more than the cops. Swell.

I’ve come to realize that I like a more focused game. Fallout 3 let you wander, but the core game itself was always pretty compelling. I’ve never really felt that with Elder Scrolls games.

I own Fallout New Vegas too and did not like that game at all. Even though I very much prefer scifi to fantasy settings. For me Fallout 3 was a much better experience. I played it three times from beginning to end. And might even play it a fourth time. Fallout New Vegas will never see me again.

I agree wholeheartedly with you about the Homeworld player’s lack of care for individual units. But on the other hand I also understand that the Homeworld gameplay concept, in which you research virtually every ship type and have to build it yourself, would result in this.

I do like this research &development part of Homeworld very, very much and would not want to see it diminished in any way. I like to have a shipyard and see it construct my fleet. If anything I would want to see this part of the game intensified.

I have thought about this a lot and I think a game like Homeworld could somewhat increase this ‘caring’ for certain units by introducing a few other things (:

- Allowing the player to name the larger ships and have this name displayed on the hull. Same names can not be used but sequential numbering is possible if a ship has been destroyed. So you can use Nemesis I and Nemesis II, but only if Nemesis I has been destroyed.
- Introducing personnel management. Frigates an larger ships will experience personnel casualties and with it a certain loss of effectiveness. Because of this the player will not forget that there are people dying on board of his ships. Loss of personnel will also be heard via radio shatter.
- Introduction of heroes. The player can place special heroes on board of ships that will give perks to that ship and in certain cases to the ships in its battlegroup. Heroes can be captured.
- Every capital ship class has a named commander/captain. Commanders gain experience in battle and can be issued to other ships. Commanders can be captured.
- Introduction of legendary ships. Certain ships will get legendary status after being successful in battle several times. This will give a ship bonuses and perks.
- The player can designate a ship (class destroyer and up) as his flagship. This is not the same as the mothership. The flagship will always have a hero on board and will get special command bonuses. The flagship will be active in battle and its perks can turn the tide in a battle (compare to the general in Shogun).
- When a ship is irreparably wrecked or destroyed, the personnel on board will try to flee in shuttles and escape pods. They will return to the personnel pool if successful and can be sent to other ships that have suffered casualties.

This is a rough sketch of what I have in mind to enhance the connection of the player with his fleet and the care for individual ships.
I have several more ideas like this and I believe it will make the Homeworld battles more interesting and more personal without losing the typical Homeworld gameplay concept. Individual ships will mean something to the player. They will get a personality.

But I also believe there is ample room for a game that uses the Nexus gameplay style.
I would definitely want to play them both.

I’ve read the Internet, and discovered that when it comes to Skyrim, people complain of being high level, yet getting beaten up by giants, dragon priests etc. I am having another problem. I am level 29 now, but ever since around level 22, I had nothing left to fight that possesses any challenge at all. This makes me no longer want to explore and do quests, because even if I do get better items or level my skills a few more points – it really does me no good, since nothing can stand up to me anyway. When I was 24 I took on 2 giants and their mammoth (just to see what’ll happen) and they never even got to hit me before expiring. I’ve also completed the main quest (the boss fight was incredibly underwhelming) and now I really don’t know what else to do.

Any recommendations for some hidden, incredibly powerful enemies, which to hunt?

P.S. – I never used any companions, just my summoned daedra.

In case you didn’t already know, the respect Nexus 1′s engine had for Newtonian mechanics in its fully 3D space combat makes it very suitable for emulating the space battles of sci-fi franchises that also respect Newton, such as Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica, or the older Babylon 5. There have already been some mods that import starships from those franchises and the result is nothing short of stellar. You should search for some videos of those mods yourself.

If Nexus were more well-known, the devs could earn quite a lot making licensed games for those franchises where you tactically command starship fleets.

If the devs ever restore the RTS part of Nexus 2, it’d be interesting to see how they’d handle the economy and production side of the game (like it would have been in Imperium Galactica 3, if Digital Reality hadn’t abandoned the franchise). Then again (as I said before), it’s hard to feel concerned about the fate of your units if you can pump out ones just like them fairly easily.

I would like to believe that the game industry still recognizes the potential in this enough to see that this game should be funded. Will it? Sadly, I don’t think anyone can honestly say.

Since Discovery no longer shows anything worth watching (other than Mythbusters), I’ve found that Law & Order, CSI and the like are surprisingly entertaining.

I find myself enthralled with the Elder Scrolls and Fallout storylines on about an equal level. With Fallout 3, I really didn’t care about finding my father, but I was interested in what was happening to the world and the people in the world. With Skyrim I’m more at ease in the environment, but I’m curious to see what my role will in that world towards the end of the game. I’ve heard that the different guilds don’t really affect the story that much besides weapons and stats.

Either way, I’m to meet a fellow Bethesda fan who isn’t blinded by what can be some hard-to-swallow production blunders. My three all-time favorite games are Fallout 3, Skyrim and Read Dead Redemption and all three for the same reason: the world. I loved losing my connection to the real world in these fantasy environments.

I purchased FO3: New Vegas for my PC, but I trying to play through some more recent titles before I become absorbed in another Bethesda title.

“Nexus 2 should be properly funded and promoted.” I agree whole heatedly.

Nexus has two things above Homeworld 2, actually.

First, because you can’t replace your ships in the middle of a mission, every ship is valuable and you’re forced to take better care of them then, say, you would frigates in Homeworld 2 (a ship class that was easily destroyed and had to be continually replaced if you were relying on them to win).

Furthermore, both Homeworld 2 and Sins are played on “invisible parking garages,” which in other words means that all spacecraft must return to a common horizontal orientation (much like how you can drive up or down in a parking garage, but your car is limited in the horizontal orientations it can assume due to the fact that its wheels must stay in contact with the floor). Nexus is the only space-based RTS game where you have direct control over a fleet of starships and can move about and attack in any direction and any orientation (other games like Star Trek Bridge Commander let you do this, but they only give you direct control over one starship).

All the more reason why Nexus 2 should be properly funded and promoted.