HOMEWORLD 3
Even in space, you need to use terrain to your advantage
THOSE FRIGATES ARE GUARDING A SEGMENT OF A COLOSSAL, DERELICT SHIP
It’s the third mission of the game, and, if this was Homeworld 2, I’d be screwed. Right now, I only have access to recon ships and interceptors – basic fighters that, per Homeworld’s rock, paper, scissors design, are weak against the bigger, meaner frigates. And I’ve been tasked with securing an area protected by two bigger, meaner frigates.
But I’m not playing Homeworld 2. I’m playing its successor, a game that Blackbird Interactive describes as being 20 years in the making. A game that takes concepts once considered back then, but dismissed because the technology of the day just wasn’t up to the task. I’m playing Homeworld 3, a space RTS that’s all about terrain.
Those frigates are guarding a small segment of a colossal, derelict ship, which acts as the battlespace for this mission. Blackbird is keen to point out that the environmental artistry that Homeworld is known for – the grandeur of space, its asteroid fields and derelict ships, is no longer just part of the skybox. It’s now an active part of each mission.
“Terrain was a huge feature that was not able to be done at the time with the technology that was available for Homeworld 2,” says game director Lance Mueller, “and that was part of the original vision. There was a lot of concept art brought over from Homeworld 2 that we used to find the foundation.”
This is good news for me, and bad news for the two enemy frigates, who are guarding a section of the map that’s littered with panels that have broken off the derelict ship. By right-clicking on a section of this debris, my interceptors will fly up and take cover. If the missile frigates can’t get line-of-sight on my ships, they’re safe to continue their approach.
SECRET TUNNEL
And so I continue, moving closer until finally I’m in range. But rather than send my visible but covered squad into a close range suicide attack, I instead unleash my second surprise. While the frigates have been attempting to get a lock on my squad of well-protected interceptors, my main squad was hiding underneath – in a tunnel running through what would have been the derelict ship’s engines.
Tunnels like this provide a route between two points that block line-ofsight, meaning they’re perfect for flanking manoeuvres and ambushes. My squad surprises the frigates as they fire pointlessly at a target they can’t hit. I take some losses – they’re still just interceptors – but come out far better off than I would’ve in open space.
“The convenient cover in mission three is to set up the hard counters and soft counters of the game,” says Mueller. “Terrain is supposed to be more of a creator of soft counters. In previous Homeworlds, if you brought a bunch of fighters against a bunch of frigates, there’s nothing to stop them from just launching all of their weapons at you. Now you’re able to move your fighters and use the terrain and get on top of something, which now means you’ve increased that time to kill, so that you don’t die before you get there.”
The irony of Homeworld 3 is that it does feel like a Relic RTS – a more modern one from the post-Company of Heroes era. The use of terrain gives it a strong flavour of modern RTS design, even while it retains the design philosophy – and the vibes – that built its legacy as a cult classic of the genre. I’m eager to see how these elements play out in a more organic way, in a mission where they aren’t being so clearly tutorialised to the player. But if done right, Homeworld 3 should be a meaningful progression of the series – one that almost justifies that 20 year wait.