Been playing through the Homeworld games recently, having never played them before. Homeworld 1 was before my time, so I never played it or Cataclysm/2. There are threads for them but not really a need to necro them. I got Deserts of Kharak and the remastered 1/2 on steam and have been playing chronologically, having just beaten Deserts and now playing the beginning of HW1.
Deserts of Kharak was actually surprisingly fun and a very solid RTS in addition with theme and atmosphere! Though very easy to cheese the campaign, since being attacked is very easy to predict:
1.) Enemy AI has a few production cruisers spread around the map that produce the occasional strike craft raiding party. So long as you don't have any spread out units, you can defeat these raiders without casualties. Said parties also never have AA, so you can bomb them to hell before they ever see your units as well.
2.) Substantial enemy attacks always occur as you finish specific objectives. So while an enemy carrier may arrive mid-mission and pose some challenge, you can fill your fleet to max and mine all the resources+artifacts on the map before doing the next objective to be overprepared.
That and abusing your own carrier for attacking. That's always fun. By the last few maps I relied mostly on excessive amounts of artillery cruisers, my carrier, and a few attack/support cruisers for good measure (as well as a moderately-sized group of strike craft I built before offensive cruisers were unlocked).
But yeah. Actually really fun, and I always could have played on harder difficulties or just avoided cheesing it but I am a coward who gets anxious around this kind of economy with limited resources on the map.
Homeworld has been fun and surprisingly... inventive? But it comes at the cost of so much micromanagement jesus christ I am not good at micromanagement send help. Just how all the systems work from docking, to especially formations (how you select them as a whole group is a really neat mechanic, actually) and the 3d nature as horrible as my brain is at anything regarding spatial logic.
It's tricky since I love the presentation of the game, the theming, and just the mechanics as a whole but it feels like everything in the game has managed to single out the things I'm worst at in RTSs. Hopefully I'll be able to manage it, and hopefully my current tactic of "letting the enemy send single attack frigates at a time to the mothership for me to yank via salvage corvettes" will work out.
Overall though, I definitely am happy with the choice to play through the games.