Does/did anyone play it? And if so, are there any alternatives to GameSpy for servers, or groups who still play? No one ever signs on to GameSpy. But then, perhaps the game is dead. Unfortunately HW2 never had the following that the original did.

I played it before
But i don't play
If i can recall,at my time when im playing theres usually servers online&stuff
but for now im not sure if there are alternatives since i dont play anymore
i forgot alot of things in HW2

Well this may be the cause for an opening for a new game
a chance for other games to go up
Because as the game itself gets older,people who play it tend to
get bored and so.....
But if the game is Highly Addictive,i'd bet HW2 would still be running servers

Well for GameSpy,i sign in for other games

Well, it's sad that such a great game went under the radar. It really is strange...what makes a game popular or not.

With the Homeworld series, I have noticed that a lot of people take one look at it and react something like this: "Wow, that looks cool, but the learning curve looks too hard." Which is funny; once you get used to the extra axis it's not that complex a game, really. One resource, relatively small number of units to manage. Yet there is a lot of variation in tactics and overall strategy to make it a great game. Though since it's set in space, you don't have varied terrain to deal with...which is one drawback.

I play it (and the first one) every once in a while. I haven't beaten yet, but I'm pretty far into it.

Speaking of it, if you're a fan of Star Wars, you should check out the Warlords mod for Homeworld 2. I don't know how much it's been developed, but when I downloaded it, it was still in a beta and was fairly buggy. Still, it's Star Wars space combat as it should be, lol.

Both games have great single-player missions and stories.

In Homeworld, my advice is to always stick around in a system to collect resources before you hop into the next one...and to capture as many enemy ships as you can since anything you capture will be added to your fleet as you progress through the game (which is an aspect of the game(s) I love...I hate that traditional RTS's make you rebuild your base and "re-research" your tech over and over for each mission).

Homeworld 2 has some great missions in it. Toward the end you get a very cool new toy to play with, but I don't want to give away the story! I seem to recall that one of the toughest missions is that early one in which you have to protect a shipyard in one spot and your resource operations somewhere else. Of course, the final mission in the game is crazy-go-nuts!

I actually liked the main antagonist in the HW2 storyline; both his character and the acting were pretty good for a game. I generally think villains are more interesting when they have some inner conflict, some almost forgiving qualities...as opposed to the "Snidely Whiplash" model.

Did you ever play Cataclysm, the stand-alone expansion for Homeworld?


Oh, as for Warlords, yeah I have messed with it. It looks great, but as you say it runs sort of buggy. As for new versions, I kept an eye on it for a while; it appeared to be just one person working on it in his spare time so it didn't progress very quickly. He would usually just release a file here and there to add to the current build. Last time I looked he had suspended further work on the project.

I have to say I liked the combat better in HW2 than Warlords. Yeah, it looked great, but what's the point of a ship with 20 turrets if only 3 track on a target and any given time while the rest just fill the sky with pretty lasers? Granted on the movies it looked cool, but when you need concentrated fire on a specific target cinematic effects don't seem that important!

Cataclysm was good, it had, curiously enough, an enemy that behaved kinda like the Borg in the Star Trek universe. It added a good dimension to the game. You used to, in the original HW, be able to send a fleet of capital ships with a few frigates guarding into the fray to cause major damage. With the new enemy, they can hit your ship with a kind of beam that infects a ship forcing you to self destruct or let the enemy gain control over it. It's nowhere near as difficult as HW2.

Yes DJBPace07, "The Beast" in Cataclysm was somewhat Borg-like, but I thought the story line was even more creepy.

I loved the ships in the game; especially the Multi-Beam Frigate, which could fire ion beams in many directions simultaneously. Of course, the Dreadnought kicked all kinds of booty.

As I recall, the Dreadnought could withstand an infection-beam attack without being "assimilated." When ever a Beast cruiser came on the scene, I would always try and have the Dreadnought first in line so it would be the first target. The repulse beam on the 'Nought would push the cruiser out of alignment so it couldn't take another shot for a few seconds; then the rest of the fleet could attack from multiple vectors.

I liked the way missiles and ions were integrated into both the 'Nought and Destroyers, rather than having a seperate Missile Destroyer to micro. Oh, the Acolyte Interceptor kicked butt as well...carrying a couple of missiles on each one for a "special attack." A large group of fighters, firing their missiles all at once, could take down almost any cap ship.

I do wish that Cat had included in its multi-player mode the ability to play the Taiidan forces; that way the original Homeworld navy would be represented. That would have made for some interesting multi-player games! Also, the unit cap was a bit restrictive.

I would love to see a multi-player mod for Homeworld 2 that allowed you to play as one of the navies from any of the games, all modeled in HW2-esque splendor. Even the Turanic Raiders would be fun to control...

I found Homeworld 2 much harder than the first game.

I have completed Homeworld 2 twice, the first time with luck, the second time with cheats.