So, as said above, this will cover fundamental stuff. It will also cover a few things that are different from the normal space RTS life. I will also show a bit of the research ship and harvester.
This is our Fleet Intelligence(adviser). His word is law. He gives out mission objectives, and tells us lots of stuff. He also doesn't tell us a lot of stuff. Fun stuff. Anyway, he will always be talking(along with any other dialog) at the top of the screen. I will try to catch some of it occasionally, but right now it isn't important("testing cryogenic sections A-F").
This is your all vital bar that you use when your too lazy to use hotkeys. It only appears when your mouse is at the bottom of the screen(nifty, huh?). Objectives are displayed in the bottom right, and I will probably be taking quite a few pictures of those. Besides the blue buttons, I don't really use the rest of the bar.
This is the all so vital sensor screen. It works a bit different from most RTS's (like most of the game, RTS's should really have more of what this game tried). This is a zoomed out screen shot. It shows the entire game field and general areas. Oh, and you can only hyperspace in skirmishes(sorry, it was probably a balancing issue. Throwing your mothership half way across the map probably would have ruined the balance. I mean seriously, these guys thought of everything. You cant "harvest" your mothership(though you can happily harvest your scouts, no RU return though). There are other things that I will mention later in a spoily).
This is zoomed in. From it we can see individual dots, and the profiles of some of the more larger ships(in this case the mothership and scaffold). Also, this is how radar works in Homeworld. You can have radar across the entire map(at least I think, its long enough for the missions anyway). However, groups of enemies will only return as 1 red dot. That incoming enemy? It may just be a probe. Or it may be 10 ion frigates with a missile destroyer escort. You wont know, at least for now. Once you have LOS(line of sight), the individual units will show up on your sensor screen.
Oh, and a key. Green units are yours(duh), yellow units are neutral or allies(either they are fighting you or not, so neutral doesn't really happen unless its some kind of special wreck or objective), red dots are enemies(duh), and brown dots are numerous bits of space dust. The big ones are asteroids(I harvested them all, so there aren't any). Oh(I keep forgetting stuff), the light blue area is your LOS.
Sigh, one VERY last thing. Tactical Overlay is used to show what unit is what(corvette, strikecraft, mothership, ect). I will use that later on so you guys get an idea what each green dot it. However, right now, it doesn't matter at all.
This is the build screen. You build stuff. The nifty thing about this screen is that the picture in the top right can be rotated in all direction. You can build simultaneously, but two units of the same type have to build one after another(I guess supposedly that they have a unique foundry for each unit). The bottom bar is the progress on the unit being built, and the top bar shows the total progress on the entire order of that unit(so have 2 done, and you ordered four scouts, the top bar will be half way there). The descriptions below the picture are all basic stuff, though of note the mass determines how much inertia it has. So acceleration, deceleration, turning, and ect.
This is the research screen. It shows our researched techs and techs that we can research(they will be unlocked as we play). To the right it shows a picture of the "designs", and info about the selected tech. In the middle are our available research ships, and shows if they are researching or not(with a bar going from left to right below the picture). Research is free, but multiple research ships can research faster.
Next we do launch right? Well....no. I almost -never- use that screen. Its basically used if you want to keep the units you docked...docked, show progress on repairs(docking repairs and refuels, more on that later), and gives you the option if you want to keep units docked or launch them. I may show a screen later, but it wont be really that useful till we get carriers.
Most units have two bars. The top is their health, the bottom is their fuel. If they are harvesting something they have a brown bar(representing how much room they have left). If they have an orange bar that is for something special(I think).
Now Homeworld has a fuel system, as mentioned before. Fighter craft and corvettes have a limited amount of fuel(due to their small size), and have to refuel from time to time. Corvettes have more fuel than fighters. If they run out of fuel, they move at a painstakingly slow speed and are easy targets for...well....anything. Ion beams(anti capital ship weapon) can cut through them. Frigates and up are self sufficient and don't need fuel(or at least have enough fuel to last days).
Units come out of these types of areas when they are either built or coming out of docking. They also enter through there when docking. Finely, captured units will go in there....to be captured. I don't know, maybe they microwave the crew and put our own crew in there. Make up your own ideas.
Finely, we will end this update with two very specialized units.
This is a harvester(or something like that). It harvests space debris with a phazed dessembler ray or something. I will get into that in the next update. It harvests and harvests till it fills up, and then....
It docks at the closest drop off point, in this case the back of the mothership. It drops off its resources which are converted into RUs(resource units). These are used to build, well, everything. So this is kind of important.
I thought I would mention something quick about another unit, the research ship. While we will likely have one the entire game, when more than 1 are built, they connect, merging their armors so that they have more health. Only a max of 6 can be built.
Since I'm not really sure where to put this(the sensor area is pretty large), I will just drop it off at the end of the update.
The map is a 3D environment, not some silly 2D with 3D models. That means movements are made in 3D.
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Topic: Homeworld: Space RTS Play-Along - Mission 4: Great Wastelands - Update 17 (Read 32786 times)