Homeworld 3's Weird Meta (skirmish gameplay analysis)

PROCLAIMER: This video is not a paid ad, unlike most of the others. I'd never take a bribe to shill a game or otherwise give preferential or censored coverage. I'm a Homeworld player of 25 years since the demo of the first game, and I wanted to make this to evaluate Homeworld 3 and give my findings impartially and with basis in my expertise and history with the games.
I decided to get to the heart of the gameplay of Homeworld 3. No better way than a 1 vs. 1 against the AI. I wanted to do actual MP (and I usually always would) but I read about people waiting in the lobby for 10m and I definitely wasn't risking that happening while I'm recording this all in one go.
#homeworld #blackbird #gearbox
0:00 intro
1:20 explaining the oversimplified economy
2:40 explaining how research is not a system of choice, but a pace forcer
4:00 contrasting Homeworld 3 resource spot spam with C&C ore fields
4:55 showing the "firing cone" of fighters, contrasted with HW1's fixed rotary cannons.
5:10 fighter backing-up hiccupping in mid-space
10:00 already saved up almost 30k(!!!) because the game expects me to SPAM loads of crap.
10:25 explaining how the old economy was always deeper and richer and more meaningful (it was still actually part of the game, whereas this game wants to obviate it)
19:53 - Battlecruiser passed through the lid of the Mothership
20:28 - No damage in collisions between MS and enemy ships
21:33 - Battlecruiser simply disappeared before its dead and Game stuck on Mothership split
33:40 explaining how range and the capital ship balance should feel
38:39 - fire is fired through the lid of the Mothership
44:00 destroyers in "aggressive" being totally braindead and PASSIVE.
46:00 destroyers being absolutely pathetic against a similar number of frigates
46:05 frigates blobbing around me like hoverflies because destroyers are so terrible
46:00 a frigate prancing past my battlegroup utterly pathetically
47:30 my heavy battlegroup in "aggressive" being politely pacifistic towards the mothership during the flyby
Best way to support me and what I do:
/ volound
❤️ Thanks to all supporters ❤️
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @volound
My complete gaming setup:
www.amazon.co....
Join my Discord server and elevate those sons of bitches:
/ discord
My FB Page for ranty longposts:
/ volound
My Twitter shitterings:
/ volound
My Twitch:
/ volound

[@_ZeusWrath_]

Homeworld3 is a f*cking disgrace. I have a feeling that it was made by single-celled imbeciles! Rob Cunningham or Aaron Cambeitz did or control it ? Either they fell into marasm or they didn’t do it! When this game gets praised, I'm perplexed.After looking through only 10-15 minutes, you can come across a lot of nonsense and shortcomings: 19:53 - Battlecruiser passed through the lid of the Mothership 20:28 - No damage in collisions between MS and enemy ships 21:33 - Battlecruiser simply disappeared before its dead 21:43 - Game stuck on Mothership split 38:39 - fire is fired through the lid of the Mothership 43:30 - platform shells disappear before reaching the target This content is simply low quality and very stupid.

[@Volound]

amazing observations. well done., and couldnt possibly agree more. 100%.

[@khuenguyen2827]

man 60 bucks for non-existing map roster (like hell even HW2 20 years ago got triple the maps and there are maps without those debris on the way), starcraft-2-ish like tactics (resource collectors can be replaced easily and collection being safe without guards, unit each has active skill for the micro guys to spam APM and win) and ship variety (lmao back then HW2 ships was a bit lacking but the dev put in the modules system for us to play around and create our own ships and ship-attacking strategies like cripple them with engine shot, prevent them from escaping to hyperspace with shooting hyperspace module, etc.) man this is so disappointing to see my childhood crashed and burned like that

[@Volound]

you said a lot in one paragraph. 100%.

[@rystiya7262]

Pretty sure Star craft 2 has way more tactics and depths than this game...

[@riesstiu2khunning]

@@rystiya7262 Apparently, they are working on a new map without megaliths now. The ONE MAP.

[@wuji8305]

If they want to keep simplified Resource Controller (complete with 4 harvesters) they need to blob up the RUs into dense contestable areas so make them areas of conflict (instead of spread all over the map like a lawn). Increase the RU cost of Resource controllers to around 2500. Two reasons to make you inclined to protect those controllers and guard the patch.

[@Wourghk]

Strategic considerations might be too much to ask from these devs, who obviously love Starcraft more than their own franchise. They don't know how the genre works. Even if they implemented your advice, they wouldn't understand the reasoning behind it, and they'd invariably change other things for the worse because it "felt necessary". You'd have to be hired as a full-time consultant to straighten out this sad, gender confused game.

[@chrisschmidt2245]

I'm absolutely mystified by the randomly spread out clusters of RU's. They hyped terrain to be such a big thing, you'd think that the resources would either be A) close to it so you can use the terrain to defend yourself with turrets and such (because what other purpose could turrets serve? I guess you could debatably throw them on random asteroids and stuff and have them snipe at enemies coming in?) , and they would fit together like that with battles logically taking place near terrain, and ship combat and such largely focusing on how best to use the terrain, or B) they'd be far away from the terrain and that would be the dynamic instead, like you've got to leave "your base" and be exposed to danger, to collect resources, and then you retreat to safety when attacked and you're kind of striking out to secure resources and build up to take further, richer patches. But they're just randomly spread around with no rhyme or reason, and as far as I can tell, doesn't seem like there are "rich" or "poor" patches. They all seem to be the same value. I've never seen a strategy game do this kind of "sprinkling". Like, how does a player defend their resources? Do you even bother? It doesn't seem like it matters because the balance of opportunity cost vs the resources you can gain is all wonky, and the time to pay off the investment is so trivial that the only situation where it wouldn't be economical is if you were already fighting on a patch and just sent a resource collector to try and gather from it while it was in play. Which...nobody would ever do? I wonder what the real time to pay off a collector from a patch actually is

[@dannyblitz2122]

@@chrisschmidt2245 My first thought was that it's a kind of anti-capitalist, resource/wealth distribution universe that unconciously made its way out of the devs brains into the game, laughing at myself. Then I stopped laughing because that's not even a weird thought anymore.

[@sety5591]

@@Wourghk what do you mean by Starcraft? I don't see any similarities.

[@tersse]

You are right, Tesla had it all wrong you solved the universal diferential colidice neutreno faze shift problem.

[@ColonelHess]

What I think is funny is that they go on and on about how you would value the lives of your men, and then they make a game where they only way to win is to throw wads of people into a meat grinder (its like a sick joke)

[@juggernaut9994]

A real shame it turned out the way it did, though it's not surprising. Disappointing, botched releases have become the norm over the last decade. Anyone shilling for these kinds of products should be held accountable for their actions.

[@Volound]

yeah, and the shilling for this was just about the worst ive ever seen. basically everything that has been done happened due to a bribe being given.

[@Axel-vt8no]

@@Volound Elaborate on the bribe

[@Volound]

@@Axel-vt8no they give money to youtubers to get them to make videos. they throw money at them. thats a bribe. for a sellout.

[@Axel-vt8no]

@@Volound It's more accurate to say that it's a business relationship. If you had liked the game, you wouldn't have viewed it as a bribe. It's normal for gaming companies to reach out to youtubers and twitch streamers as a form of advertising.

[@Volound]

nah thats far, far less accurate. thats head back mouth wide open in full guffaw levels of euphemism right there. thats like saying the bombers "serviced the target" at dresden, or that the whole family of the suspected hamas fighter was "neutralised" when it got hit with a 1000lb bomb, or "he passed away" of someone that fell from a 40 storey window onto concrete. super inaccurate and obviously deliberately so. deliberately vague. this is cold hard shilling. taking money to pretend to approve of a game. because if they would approve of it for free there would be no need for money. duh. even the official discord servers moderators (people with a conflict of interest and strong incentives to stay in line) are absolutely disgusted by the grotesque overblown shilling: www.reddit.com/r/Volound/comments/1cswika/comment/l47wc35/

[@Volound]

ill be gradually building timestamps for the video periodically over the next 24h or so. if you have any of your own notable observations point them out and ill add them in.

[@jimgiraffe5253]

this game story is very cringe

[@doltBmB]

Some of these mechanics are holdovers from HW2, where those mechanics tended to make more sense.

[@scipher99]

It looks like most of the budget went to getting Lord Farquad to play Imogen.

[@agentduck9285]

Man I really hope that modders can pull this one back, if anyone even wants to mod hw3 that is. But even saying that, it really shouldn't be the *community* we are hoping will fix the game, sadly might be the only hope for it though depending on what happens. Edit: Also man... the lack of ship variety HURTS, like PHYSICALLY, where are my defenders? where are my missile destroyers and heavy corvettes? Having 3 strike craft (recon, interceptor, bomber) is bad enough, but having ONE CORVETTE?Earlygame is basically nonexistant and where is the midgame? Corvettes are an entire tech stage just forgotten. Even hw2 had a LOT of interplay between hiigaran and vaygr corvettes, and that's just not here.

[@agentduck9285]

@hellsingds4324 It's like, I really want to like hw3, it looks cool and to a degree it's got the feeling of a homeworld game (bar those awful cutscenes), but things like ship and map variety being so nonexistant is just... ugh. I'd literally be better waiting for FX galaxy to mod it into remastered and fill in the ship roster gaps.

[@Battlecry17]

I will consider making a TFS mod for HW3 that fixes a few basic things: fighter maneuvers, capital & frigate movement and health, time-to-kill, and generally trying to make the game feel more like HW2. But I don't know if I'm willing to put in the same amount of effort in this game that I put into HW2 modding a decade ago.

[@agentduck9285]

@@Battlecry17 wait and see what the devs do first, they might update something that breaks mods this close to launch I reckon.

[@agentduck9285]

@hellsingds4324 yup, played remastered today and boy is there a difference in how strikecraft move.

[@honeybadger6275]

No, I'm sick to death of modders propping up objectively bad games, this has been the case for years in the Bethesda community and I'm just tired of seeing it. Let all these corporations go bankrupt.

[@osta.t.8905]

Homeworld 3 is NOT from Homeworld 1/2 storyline. Cash grabbed did us bad guys.

[@Battlecry17]

The game devolves into a unit spam with little tactics, and high apm that's hard to manage because of bad UI and missing controls. They need single or at most, dual build queues for production-capable ships. Fighters need to perform evasive or aggressive maneuvers to boost their survivability and make it easier to manage them; they should probably be built in HW2-style squadrons that can be manually broken up if desired, where it's easy to dock and repair them (for a discounted RU cost, say 75% the cost of building a new fighter) to encourage smart strikecraft management / conservation. Capital ships need to have more health to be worth using and be easier to visually distinguish from frigates at a distance. They need to re-add the CTRL + RMB ability to make multi-unit selections from bandbox selections. These few steps would go a long way to making the game feel less "spammy" and more strategic.

[@Volound]

well said.

[@Battlecry17]

@@Volound I'll be posting a comprehensive review of the game on Steam tonight touching on many of these issues in detail; I'm posting feedback on the Discord channel in the hope of getting the developer's attention to improve the meta and add some strategy back in the game. I hope Homeworld 3 can be saved from its current dumpster-fire state.

[@Volound]

what a fatuous remark.@@SteinerNein

[@HansAlRachid]

Devs (or at least the market researchers that publishers listen to) keep thinking that the RTS genre needs streamlining to resonate with consumers, when the reality of things is that this genre needs a certain degree of complexity to function at all. If you intend for your RTS game to have long-term success, you need to give players something to really dig into for years and years, this genre is just not built for short-term engagement, ease-of-entry design priorities.

[@homeworld2evolution]

43:19 - The projectiles fired by the platform disappear before they reach the target, lol! Absolutely everything about the game - its plot, characters, gameplay, game mechanics, damage model, physics, ballistics, AI, performance - it all looks mediocre or secondary. None of this looks revolutionary or cutting-edge. All ideas, events or unit designs are copied from previous games or other franchises, such as Star Wars, and as a result are implemented worse than the originals. Everything done (except for graphics) is not done better than what was done 21 years ago, and in some places even worse or simplified. Some parts of the gameplay, such as the lack of hyperspace with inhibitors, subsystems on ships, lack of shipyards, research modules, attackable parts of ships - such as engines/weapons. This shame... Dumb Swett Baby propaganda, idiotic plot, no tactical depth. After 21 years, There is not a single achievement in this game except graphics. Basically, this is shit wrapped in a beautiful wrapper, in the hope of selling it

[@Guelo6891]

Homeworld 3 is a cash grab with the name Homeworld on it for its money extraction purpose. It’s so bad that the Developers locked the discussion on Steam and I heard also on Discord.

[@Chuck90120]

So great start for Gearbox

[@chunkblaster]

I don't understand how we went from the success of homeworld Deserts of Kharak to fucking homeworld mobile and borderline-live service level bullshit with HW3. Gearbox has been a plague on this series.

[@Jimoshi1]

@@chunkblaster >success of homeworld Deserts of Kharak You mad it was literally same shit. It had same plot and they mostly ported gameplay from it too.

[@ReginaldArthurWolfe]

On Discord the mods are hard shilling.

[@antiquechrono]

Hard to cash grab when the game already fell out of the steam top 50 sellers. They are probably going to lose money on this one.

[@BobMcBobJr]

They plan to release each individual corvette type as it's own $5 DLC.

[@Matizicov]

Capital ships felt incredibly underwhelming when I was playing through the campaign. I felt ok about mixed groups of destroyers and frigates being effective in a lot of flights, but i lost it at how weak battle cruisers are. Not nearly enough armament to feel like a threat when you can just swamp whatever threat with a number advantage like you showed. Did remind me to reinstall homeworld 1 and 2 though. Soo...?

[@Battlecry17]

Battlecruisers were too powerful in HW2, and unit power creep was an issue. But HW3 went in the opposite direction and made everything worse from a gameplay perspective.

[@BobMcBobJr]

@@Battlecry17 BCs need to be absolutely deadly to frigates, even ion frigates and good against destroyers while being weak to bombers (and a bomber type corvette cough cough) in the game. Right now a BC loses to 5 assault frigates. I think just adding more ion turrets and upping damage a bit would fix it though I absolutely miss the old ones. Cost wise, they have a destroyer at 1/2 a BC so I think 3 destroyers should be able to face down a BC with with a trade of 1 or 2. Scale it guys.

[@Battlecry17]

@@BobMcBobJr I completely agree with your points. I think Bombers should be really effective against Battlecruisers though, more effective than HW2 bombers were. Other than that, i agree that Battlecruisers should absolutely dominate Destroyers and groups of frigates.

[@DarylMetzler]

This is a pretty spot on critique. The way its described here really is the "feel" in the game. The balance is based around strike and frigates, with support and econ and capital ships secondary. Thats a big divergence from the originals.

[@Quackerilla]

"You don't really choose anything here, you're basically just going bigger bigger bigger bigger." Turns the tech tree from a decision to an obligation. 10:00 I feel like the game wants you to build a specific fleet comp that counters whatever the enemy happens to be building and sending at you, but the depth of that counter might as well be "build enough of X ship type, then swap production to Y ship type" as the attrition fight drags on. And the X and Y seem to be just ASSAULT FRIGATES. 18:00 These destroyers are... lmao. Where's their firepower, what're they supposed to do? wtf. And all the Awakened frigates just sort of piddle around the mothershp as its CIWS feebly engages hostiles. There's this weird window to just watch things happen, but what's happening is weird. And the battlecruiser falls out of the mothership just to get its teeth kicked in, barely firing its weapons. You'd think a CAPITAL grade ship would at least be lashing out at every target of opportunity, but they just casually fired their ion cannons at one target at a time. 45:00 these ships are at point blank range, where it'd be IMPOSSIBLE not to see the giant enemy mothership out of any window, yet they refuse to engage? And even when they do, it's this piddly capital grade weaponry.

[@ReginaldArthurWolfe]

When you make the shorts may I request OG Homeworld 1. In the remaster the physics is also busted. For example Heavy Cruiser guns don’t recoil.

[@Volound]

ofc only classic homeworld 1. absolutely.

[@GunbusterDX]

It's like the extent of development, testing, and balancing was: Boot game --> Is it pretty? --> Yes Sorta, if you side eye it and dont look too deeply --> Dont make the pink hair & nose ring lady mad --> Close game --> Ship it

[@solkaz4175]

This is such a failure. I thought we would have seamless space and land battles by now. All they had to do was conceptually combine deserts of kharak with homeworld space. They would only have needed a strategic or operational layer with its own mechanics to glue everything together like the logistics surounding motherships and the reach of their fleets over regions of space. It would have been cool to watch vaygr assault frigates drop their pods onto a planet before the arrival of the ships that carry the land carriers.

[@StrudelerOfTheTSociety]

It really feels like trench warfare in space, they just forgot the trenches. Spam things to the shell the enemy. Can't stop shelling because the lines get restocked instantly. You are left lamenting how the tug-of-war RTS is something expected of old flash games, only this is allegedly worth money.

[@martindejonge695]

I would consider myself capable when it comes to Homeworld and the thing that put me off in the demo was how fast everything was. It felt like combat was faster and the scale is too small. You make contact right away. Take the missions in the Garden of Kadesh, it is some of the best missions in HW in my opinion because it really requires you to understand what is good vs what, you need to understand when to chance fighter stance

[@czarkusa2018]

The small size of HW3 multiplayer maps (and what I can't verify but FEELS like faster frigates) abandons how big of a commitment it used to be to send a large ship in any particular direction. Way less thinky. Both factions only having one variety of corvette locked into anti large is pretty sad too. Frigates have taken on the role of old corvettes now, of a medium speed ship that shrugs off fighter cannons while destroying fighters and bombers efficiently with the suppression/missile frigates. Also RIP the old missile frigates that took a minute to reload all tubes.

[@Fauxstus]

it finally reached mostly negative overall rating on steam. have a drink in celebration!

[@verihimthered2418]

I think im going to just quit gaming. Nothing but disappointment after disappointment

[@motoboy6666]

Yup, thats what gaming feels like nowadays, spot on

[@MrDominatord7]

if you're looking for RTS, maybe consider Beyond all Reason. its open source remake of total annihilation which is giving me the most amount of joy in gaming at the moment

[@motoboy6666]

@@MrDominatord7 Hey that looks cool!

[@isaacshultz8128]

​@@MrDominatord7i love TA

[@joshjonson2368]

Yeah gaming is shit tier now, you're better off sticking to mobile games

[@MiseRaen]

I hope that Homeworld 3 gets the Starfield treatment because the two games are somewhat the same in depth.

[@chrisschmidt2245]

23:05 game starts. 24:45, first contact with the enemy, a wave of strike craft. I can't believe how FAST combat happens in this game. Less than 2 minutes to being properly engaged. And this engagement literally doesn't ever end. It just starts at 25:00 and keeps going for the rest of the game, endlessly fueled by an unremitting torrent of reinforcing spam from the enemy mothership. It's not even that enemies are showing up in organized attack waves. Watch the background of the combat and you'll see new contacts just streaming in randomly in ones and threes.

[@EnterpriseKnight]

The battle cruiser argument is so real. I've been playing Hw1 remastered lately and one of the tactics I rely upon is just making an enemy battle cruiser so busy so i can sneak salvage corvettes just to steal it.

[@Sky_Eden]

On a sidenote, Starcraft 2 seem getting popular again with the new mod that add SC Brood War faction (with some balance change). Even the pro seem to play aswell.

[@warbandplaysAU9178]

Hey dude atleast they got giantesses

[@fonesrphunny7242]

I'm impressed how bad HW3 turned out. The last franchise I still cared about and it's a banger.

[@seanzibonanzi64]

It's such a shame how shallow this game is compared to the depth of its predecessors.

[@jules2326]

You mentioned Nebulous fleet command, one of my favourites, do you have plans to show it off on the channel in future?

[@Volound]

no plans. the developer is cool but after manor lords and how they exclude critics, im motivated to boycott the publisher from now on. if a small publisher is already acting like matured AAA corporate cancer, i dont want to see what they do when they have real market share.

[@jadahuton7035]

Game has dropped to 41% on steam. Too much is fundamentally wrong with this game to recover it. They'd have to essentially remake the game to fix it and that's not practical. Just gonna play the older HW games.

[@LegendaryAbysss]

Idk why I didn’t see this in my sub feed. Either way thank you for showing the issues the game has

[@jessemacaspac443]

Unfortunately none of the units look or feel powerful. Even in HW remastered, Fighters and bombers were devastating. Destroyers and Heavy Cruisers swept the field unless they were hit by strikecraft. But Destroyers and Cruisers in this game look woefully underequipped and unarmored? Unless that's some coop upgrade you only get after missions. Those carriers should have been taking massive damage in that fight and none of those capitals seemed to take down a single ship. It's really bizarre I think I'll stick to waiting for Nebulous to get finished.

[@Volound]

exactly. thats it. the units all look and feel shit.

[@jessemacaspac443]

@@Volound I’m afraid of the StarCraft2-like mindedness of balance here. Where the power of units are solely defined by cost instead of cost effectiveness. If that’s the case, then we can see only a few units ever take the spotlight while the rest lie impotent.

[@sety5591]

​@@jessemacaspac443 This happens naturally when units are balanced only by nerfing. A strong unit gets nerfed multiple times to fix unwanted meta, eventually making all units weak and uninteresting. Conversely, balancing by only buffing units leads to unwanted meta. For example, in HW1, the salvage corvette could capture every enemy ships in the single-player campaign, this is an unwanted meta. Fixing the salvage corvette without nerfing and making it weak, how to?

[@jessemacaspac443]

@@sety5591 salvage corvettes were only strong in campaign. A player could not capture player ships unless they were afk. If they are too strong just give them less health and armor. Lol

[@arczer2519]

​@@jessemacaspac443 indeed, so long player pays attention even lone cruiser could defend itself on reasonable scale. Campaign AI in many mission was specifically Not coded to prioritize Salvage Corvettes and even then AI is pretty easy to exploit making for easy captures. Thought-out interactions and mechanics make for good games, buffs like nerfs can be overdone and can create slop in need of rebalance...

[@salvatore771]

Homeworld 3 is a huge dissapoiintment, they had such a good base to work on and they neglected all the good features and gameplay the previous ones had, less ships, less research less tactics, smaller campaign, broken a.i, im enjoying playing 2 right now, i cant enjoy playing 3

[@rystiya7262]

46:00 I think the destroyers are mostly functioning, but the battlecruiser is not firing its main weapons for some reason.

[@rystiya7262]

These battlecruisers have only two single ion turrets, one at the top and one at the bottom. Meanwhile, they cannot pitch up and down toward enemies on a different height level. As a result, they can only fire one ion beam most of the time...

[@MarktheRude]

The ranges for weapons are so short and ships are unable to try to orbit their targets, combined with just the sheer lack of weapons on capital ships makes them nigh useless. So the always winning strat is probably to park your mothership next to theirs and spam everything without even trying to counter anything specifically as there are no particularly viable to counter to spamming.

[@motoboy6666]

Just so sad that we could have been enjoying a new HW title right now … 😢 But had the feeling of this since the first teasers, but didnt think it would be as bad tbh. Well back to remastered it is

[@severdislike4222]

I've got to wonder if this suffers from one of a particular stupid hard-code issues that the AI enemies of HW2 happened to suffer from. Operating on an entirely different rule-set than the player when it comes to resources. What do I mean? HW2's AI (And by extension the "remaster") has infinite RU's, it will always be producing even if there is no way in hell for it to have any resources at all.

[@dannyblitz2122]

Does this mean the only reason to attack enemy resource operations is to steal, because it makes no difference to the enemy resource total anyway?

[@severdislike4222]

@@dannyblitz2122 If it's operating off of hw2 hardcode, yes.

[@ragnarok400]

Just something I noticed but it seems missile frigates can out range and kite destroyers forever. I think any non fighter or corvette would never be able to kill a torpedo frigate. Which makes me prefer the incarnate fleet better. They have 2 types of missle frigates, one for big ships and 1 for fighter and they have a dedicated unit for capturing instead of using a resource collector to capture.

[@BritGeeks]

The more content I see on HW3 the more I come to the conclusion I'd be better off playing HW2 if I want to get a HW fix. Between this and CoH3, there's been a real disappointing wave of lacklustre sequels.

[@Volound]

yeah i dont see this game having any real long term interest. they cant even patch it to fix things really, but things as fundamental as fighter movement is terrible.

[@SunderMount]

Having unlimited production queues and being able to build every type of ship at the same time is just too busted, especially with such high economy. It just completely negates decision making.

[@sety5591]

The lack of decision-making isn't because of unrestricted build options but due to soft-counter design. In this design, players can spam one specific unit to destroy all others. In contrast, hard-counter design means players lose if they choose the wrong unit, encouraging better decision-making.

[@cloacky4409]

Homeworld 3 was such a disappointement. Everyone, do yourselves a favour and just play the remasters of 1, 2 and maybe give "Nexus: The Jupiter Incident" a shot. It's like Homeworld, but putting more emphasis on tactics with a much smaller scale. It's an insanely good game and if Homeworld 3 caused a hole in your heart then this game will surely fill it ;)

[@borlumi4664]

The horizontal mothership kinda freaks me out every time. Did they derive ship designs from Deserts of Kharak?

[@darkfireslide]

Seeing the player count when loading into an AI skirmish is so fucking funny, I feel bad for the people who have to work on these games and have no time to polish them and make them even half as great as they deserve to be, leaving us with nothing but the unfinished mess

[@motoboy6666]

Yeah its really nothing to hope for or anticipate anymore

[@rystiya7262]

44:15 I just noticed that the shape of the battlecruiser and titanship look way too similar...

[@walterscientist]

Frigates are the ones that do the killing in HW3 - relying on Hiigaran Destroyers is not gonna work.

[@Volound]

and the video proves it perfectly

[@Jayy997]

For all those holding out for modding to save the game it's a bit late. The sales have been abysmal due to the poor player reviews and player counts are going to drop even further. This is a dead game and possibly (deservedly) the end of Blackbird

[@hippiehippiehippiehippie]

I don't it's fair for you to talk about the "meta" without playing against a real person. I have played against real people and I agree with most of your points

[@Volound]

thats because im right, so it is obviously 100% fair. i uploaded this without even doing any PVP to make a point. maybe it was lost on you.

[@hippiehippiehippiehippie]

@@Volound I only talk to people who play PvP instead of PvE

[@Volound]

@hippiehippiehippiehippie there must be a joke in there. it cant just be a blatantly dumb lie and thats it.

[@handles_are_a_bit_rubbish]

@@Volound The joke is the idea that this game has a multiplayer community.

[@Volound]

yeah exactly handles. i actually feel sorry for anyone that is sitting out there in youtube comments or discord or reddit and actually LARPing out this whole thing as if the multiplayer for this game is serious. theres a reason i never even bothered going into the actual MP, and it isnt just that it would take 10m to find someone else playing it. imagine acting like there is actually anything here to do the whole online gamerbro pretentiousness over. just cringe.

[@RomanHistoryFan476AD]

Volound you heard about the possible new Total War might be Star Wars.

[@Volound]

months ago.

[@RomanHistoryFan476AD]

@@Volound I just heard about it a day ago. Tells how much I care about Total war news these days. It won't work, the Total War engine unfit for that combat. Better off using the COH engine or Halo Wars 2 engine.

[@SolarFlareAmerica]

I feel like this is a good point for me to reccomend Starsector to everyone. Hehe

[@beetheimmortal]

What pathetic capital ships. Homeworld 2's Battlecruiser was one of the coolest ships in any sci-fi media ever, and now we get this pathetic garbage?

[@yovos6385]

ye unfortunately its not what we waited for so long.

[@AryaStarkTheExplorer]

BBI laid off a significant proportion of their staff. There have been many layoffs across the tech industry and gaming industry. The game was released to soon by Gearbox without proper testing. With patches, I can see many issues being fixed. Almost all games across the industry are suffering due to executives cashing out the stock and wanting to raise the stock price for a quick buck.

[@motoboy6666]

If theres any staff to patch it

[@l4dfanatic11]

you mention nebulous: fleet command, but i cant seem to find videos by you on it...why not cover good games as well and prop up devs who are doing things right? (unless you think nebulous is bad?)

[@Volound]

covering good games is what 99% of my videos are. youre subscribed only to my main channel so youre subscribed only for my coverage of contemporary AAA and this is what you get.

[@l4dfanatic11]

@@Volound apparently I've searched your 2nd channel before but im not subbed, so THATS fixed now. Good shit

[@Volound]

@@l4dfanatic11 sound. been doing a lot of classic citybuilders like caesar 3 and anno 2070 and frostpunk, and more recently songs of syx. thatll be continuing soon.

[@l4dfanatic11]

@@Volound ah I recently got interested in songs of syx ever since Sseth did a vid on it. Hard to get into though for me. Looking forward to the vids!

[@Brandon34098]

looks like all you need is an engine a gun and a lot of them and you can take out any ship pretty quickly with how they balanced things not sure why the mother ship has one gun looking back it makes the first mission make sense those 3 fighters were a real threat

[@Delta-es1lg]

My first match of Homeworld 3 i was totally taken off guard by the ai spam. I was used to HW remastered's much slower pace so the AI completely overwhelmed me. Not really a big fan of it, tbh.

[@silent0089]

It's just all pretty graphics, that's about that

[@yovos6385]

not even that, the hiigaran mother ship is out of proportions completly

[@silent0089]

@@yovos6385 should've stick a banana ship instead manta rays

[@tersse]

I wouldent be surprized if experinced units weigh the balance of engagemnts.

[@Ellrise]

Sorry my comment is not about the video, I'd love to see more total war shogun 2 videos and especially historical battles since you did not do all of them (Nagashima, kawagoe, okehazama, sekigahara)

[@ReginaldArthurWolfe]

Thanks for making this.

[@chunkblaster]

There *is* standoff buuut... it's the missile frigate. Their siege mode doubles their range. And thats literally it. I can see a meta rapidly developing around reaching cap on missile frigates ASAP and just protecting them as you snipe the enemy mothership. Capital ships are TRASH in this game its so sad, a group of battlecruisers are atleast serviceable but destroyers are hopelessly ineffective.

[@Jimoshi1]

Also i would say i never liked defence platforms. idea is cool and all but its better if its some huge thing with decent range and HP but you can only make FEW of them.

[@sety5591]

Units should be limited by cost, meaning players can only afford a few of them instead of being restricted to making a few. Players should be controlled by an economic simulation rather than hard-coded rules.

[@OUTLAW1345]

Sigh i relly hoped that at least it will be severable

[@Volound]

same, and the combat fundamentals are weak too, even down to the individual fighter movement in dogfights that i highlighted in my 3h launch day session.

[@Bashelorparty]

The maps seem so small.... what happened?? I was so hyped for HW coming back... this is just a clusterF**k

[@Volound]

yeah i had a feeling the maps would be small so i picked the biggest one i could see. confirmed the fears.

[@Dragonborn1178]

sadly the more i play this and watch these videos the more the honeymoon phase is over for me wonder if the massive issues can be fixed or if devs will care we should all play hw2 mp like people usto do when remaster came out its so sad man loved the game day 1 and day 2 but more i watch animations and just spam units and everything else i was like wow tryed 1 match of skurmish nad the ai just build fughters intercepters and spam the entire game

[@motoboy6666]

Could you make a video with the positives? 😅 if you see any, i just want to like this game in any way. Got a need to play HW

[@Volound]

im a gameplay guy and it just sucks for that. the graphics can look good? lol

[@motoboy6666]

@@Volound 😂

[@Jimoshi1]

in second vide your battle ship didnt made a single shot! Turrets on top didnt even moved. And i mean before you clicked an ability that stops fire for some reason.

[@biglbigl9229]

jokeworld

[@doltBmB]

HW1 was bad in MP, notorious for being a single-unit game with very few viable builds. The campaign encouraged much different player behaviours because of the persistent fleet but it just didn't work well in MP. It's odd to complain about spam then contrast it with a game that has it's meta defined by the three keys to build one unit.

[@Volound]

notice how the shittiness here overlaps perfectly with the 3h run i did of the first 1/3 of the campaign. the gameplay is spam and attrition. thats really boring. i did a perfectionist run of homeworld 1 and barely built anything but salvagers. even now i could build a mercenary salvaged fleet and beat the campaign with nothing but captured units deployed in small battlegroups like a tactical swiss army knife. no such thing here. and homeworld 1 was fun for casual play in MP between friends. matches lasted 2 hours sometimes and involved chasing motherships and carriers as they tried to hyperspace to safety and rebuild. some of the best homeworld play ive ever done is with the remaster with a combined HW1 and HW2 with major cat and mouse maneouvreing in big open arenas, and is uploaded. ive relied on clips from those videos for my exposition pieces. good fucking luck having a homeworld 3 MP match that isnt just a spamfest of blobs meeting in the middle like in a moba, like what you saw here.

[@doltBmB]

@@Volound Salvette spam is the other major outstanding problem with HW1. I know they actually wanted to nerf it but were simply not allowed to produce more patches by Sierra. You should try to complete it without abusing it because it is basically easy mode, but you seem to have a bit of a problem with not playing to the meta sometimes, like how you always complain about modifiers in TW but never just turn them off even though the button to do so is right there. I do think they overnerfed it for HW2 though, capture frigates are more or less useless there. And is capturing even a thing in HW3?

[@doltBmB]

And I just want to make clear this is not a defense of the spammy gameplay in HW3, just pointing out it's odd to contrast it with HW1 which had a similar problem in MP.

[@Delta-es1lg]

Capturing is a thing in HW3. The higaarans use their resource controller to do it, while the other faction, the incarnates, has dedicated capture corvettes like in HW1.

[@jessemacaspac443]

@@doltBmB I fail to see the problem of using salvagers when HW1 is a game about limited manpower and your mothership is the literal last hope for your species. But this is just a problem of the older games. HW3 should improve on its past games and not make the same mistakes or even worse mistakes.

[@karinaser6359]

Surprised you didnt go for actual mow2 by now

[@Volound]

go for as in rip it to shreds?

[@karinaser6359]

@@Volound Yes, considering people are praising it for having a lot of content, (less than the older games) and it being more of a disgrace to the games before it than COH3 was.