Its a shame that stuff like this can’t get a foothold any more. The PC has all but been ceded to MMOs, which don’t use anywhere near its potential. I’ve heard that Skyrim’s steller numbers on PC have reignited some interest from a lot of devs, but we’ll see. I would damn near kill for a proper Master of Orion inheritor, or a new Simcity (that didn’t suck), or a new Total Annihilation, or..

Actually, I find PC still the superior platform for strategy games of most genres. Part of that may be because there is less demand for strategy games among console jockeys.

However, I have also noticed strategy developers taking a queue from the console community and instead of planning big expansions, they are investing in smaller DLC that cost much less to purchase.

I haven’t noticed that, except with Civ 5, which was garbage anyway.

So strange that even after so many years there still are no competitors for superior Space RTS games like the Homeworld series and Nexus the Jupiter Incident.
In Nexus I especially enjoyed playing with the realistic Human ships featuring in the early missions.

Yes, it’s tragic that the Space-based RTS was a casualty of the “casual gaming revolution,” which gave the rise of console gaming dominance, browser-based games, and “waggleware.” As a result, it is now a minority of gamers who have the patience to learn how to play a more complex RTS well.

Sadly, the decline in space-based sci-fi isn’t only in the media of gaming either. TV and Movies have largely turned their backs on it too. I’m at a loss as to what might reinvigorate this genre, but if this game were released with a large enough marketing campaign, it could help.

I’d love to have something that looks like Sins of a Solar Empire, but with the scale and strategy of Total War.

I would rather have something with the ship design quality and battle visuals of the Homeworld series. As far as I am concerned Sins of a Solar Empire failed miserably in the visual design department. I bought that game and played it for eight hours or so, after which I realized I would rather spent my time with Homeworld 2 and Nexus. Playing Sins I felt more irritation than joy. Considering the promotional campaign for Sins I had expected a game that would give me beautiful Homeworld like battles with an enhanced strategical component. I was terribly disappointed.

Even after all these years I still love to watch the Homeworld 2 battles and listen to the chatter of my pilots and the exiting music. There is nothing quite like it. When I watch the ships in Homeworld and Nexus I dream about standing on that mighty Battleship’s bridge and overseeing my fleet. When playing Sins I feel nothing at all.

Andreas,

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.

Hey guys, glad to see you stop by and enjoy my little writeup. If HW2 didn’t have Yes then that is 3 things

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

Pardon me, Chip, but what do you mean by “If HW2 didn’t have Yes then that is 3 things”? Do you think you could clear that up?

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.

Oh, and I forgot to mention this, Chip.

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.

@ mazryon

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.

Andreas,

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.

This is just a heads-up for the fans of Nexus who run or write for this site; the kickstarter fundraiser campaign for Nexus 2 is currently on right now. The URL is here for anyone who’s interested in bringing the sequel out:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mostwanted/nexus-2-the-gods-awaken

Thanks for the heads up

http://www.avault.com/news/nexus-sequel-seeks-funding/#comment-112917

As far as I am concerned the problem with this kickstarter sequel is that they seem to concentrate on adding alien races and stuff like that.

What I liked most of all about Nexus was the first part of the game in which you were a human soldier piloting realistic near-future human vessels in our own solar system.
The ships felt very real. They used forward facing thrusters to break and rotating elements to create gravity. I loved doing battle with other greedy mega corporations for resources and knowledge. Strange enough one of the missions that stayed with me is a very simple one in which you have to intercept and scan a freighter belonging to a Japanese corporation. Very simple, but it all felt so real and hands on. I can see stuff like this happen 50 to a 100 years from now.
I also loved approaching and docking to a space station in an asteroid field. For me that was an awesome experience too. It was like watching a hightech simulation. Very impressive.

When the game changed pace and I had to pilot the alien ship it all became more average scifi RTS to me.

I would have liked this game to be a prequel in which we had to pilot the same quite realistic near-future spaceships in our solar system. I would have loved to protect mining operations in the Kuiper belt, intercept ships, gather intel, do battle, oversee the construction of a gas mine in low orbit of Jupiter, do stealth missions with special ships and stuff like that.

I would have liked this to be the first space RTS that tried to be very realistic and without any aliens.

I would have liked to start as a humble commander of a corvette, get promoted to command my own squadron, get promoted to command a frigate and so on.
I would have liked to have to manage my crews, know my commanders, manage my ships systems, weapons, defensive systems, engines, damage control, fuel, being able to call in and rendezvous with refueling and repair ships, seeing them dock to my ships etc. etc.
I also would have liked to eventually setup my own base of operations in a location of my choice.

I think they made the wrong choice. They do what so many others already do. The story will be mediocre space RTS fare and forgettable, I bet.

Having said that, I still believe the game might be worthwhile. It depends on if they can stay true to the original Nexus and improve the game mechanics that made that game strong.

Argos,

Nice that you’re nostalgic for the “hard sci-fi” portion of Nexus 1. However, I actually thought that those sections were a little tedious because it took so long to wear an enemy ship down, there was no way to regain even a part of your strength (because you had no shields in that part of the game), so the game was very unforgiving at that point. I’ll respond to the rest of your post in the “Nexus sequel seeks funding” news post on the avault.

Still, you should still pledge and make your desire for a DLC campaign involving old-school Earth ships only known to the developers.

@ Mazryonh

“However, I actually thought that those sections were a little tedious because it took so long to wear an enemy ship down, there was no way to regain even a part of your strength (because you had no shields in that part of the game), so the game was very unforgiving at that point.”

I agree wholeheartedly with most you have stated Mazryonh. I never meant to say that there was no room for improvement. There certainly was.

Although I am not quite sure that having shields would have made a significant difference here, because if both, you and the enemy, would have had shields, both would have been able to regain strength, which would have prolonged the battle just as well. I do not think the lack of shields is the real problem. It is a question of balancing: increasing damage output of the weapons, and/or increasing vulnerability of the vessels.
In the game I envisioned there would be no shields in the beginning of the game. Ships would have different types of upgradable armor only (which could easily be made very interesting). Later on shields would become available after they are invented. This could be even an interesting and important part of the story or a few side missions. The competing Corporations would do battle to get their hands on the invention etc. etc.

I am not against longer battles in general. But for that the battles should be more visually spectacular. For example I very much deplored the shortness of some of the Homeworld engagements. The frigates in particular were much too vulnerable as they got wiped out like flies, in seconds, so you could hardly see them in action. In Homeworld 2 I loved the mods that made the battles take somewhat longer because the things you saw happen on the screen were spectacular and extremely entertaining. I very often even forgot to give my ships follow up orders because I lost myself in the beauty of the battle. I frequently fixed my view to a particular ship, whether it be a fighter or a capital, and watched it do its thing until it got destroyed. It was not just the visuals, but also the radio chatter of the ships that made it all such fun to experience.

Perhaps a balance could be found between the tediousness of the longer early nexus battles and the much too short battles of Homeworld.
Most of all the battles must be a joy to watch. If that is achieved, battles will not be perceived as tedious at all.

@Argos: I am not against longer battles in general. But for that the battles should be more visually spectacular. For example I very much deplored the shortness of some of the Homeworld engagements.

Yeah, I’m sure you would find many Homeworld fans who would agree with you there–some have derisively suggested that Homeworld 2 be subtitled “Frigate Lost” given how many you had to pump out and how quickly they were lost.

On the other hand, you can have spectacular visual effects while losing ships faster than your chips at a casino. Check out this quick video from Digital Reality’s Haegemonia: Legions of Iron:

http://youtu.be/jmjJpy4ubgs

The ship destruction effects in that game are better than Nexus 1′s, but you can still see battleships being pounded into spacedust pretty quickly. Admittedly this is a byproduct from Haegemonia being a 4X game, where pumping more units than your opponent can destroy them is a valid (if cheesy) strategy, but the point still stands.

The key thing that Nexus’s post-Stiletto chapters achieved was the balancing act the developers achieved. Combat was spectacular-looking, cinematically epic, could be quickly decisive, AND was not completely unforgiving, though you could very well lose several of your ships quickly if you weren’t paying attention and adjusting your ship’s power levels to its various systems or adjusting your battle tactics. I hope that this balance is retained for Nexus 2.

If they DO make a prequel DLC campaign like you and other fans are pining for, I hope they do make it less unforgiving. Right now it’s like this:

-My ships took too many slugthrower and missile hits early on and I’m in a pinch? What should I do?!
-Computer says: YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME!