Maybe a friendly! The bullet would also impart physical force to the target, visibly pushing back a frigate, for example. It may then travel on past the intended target and hit something else. A stray fighter could pass in front of it and be obliterated, or the target could suddenly change vector causing it to miss. When a Heavy Cruiser fired a bullet from one of its cannons, that bullet traveled through space as a physical object toward its target.
HW1 used an ahead-of-its-time physics-based model for weapons. Now they are just cannon fodder to fly around and distract the enemy whilst outputting Evasive level damage all the time.
The combination of formation and tactics you chose for them made strike craft very versatile and useful units to have around. Again, strike craft suffer the most from this change. They only determine your units’ engagement setting (don’t engage/engage nearby/pursue enemy relentlessly). In Remastered, you still have three stances available, but they are nothing like what I just described above. The default Neutral tactics provide a happy medium between these two: your ships will hold their formation, however they will spread out a little and perform small jinking maneuvers during attack runs to dodge some incoming fire. Your fighters will move slower and attempt no evasive maneuvers, but they will close to a tighter formation and put more shots into the enemy, doing more damage.Īre you at a disadvantage and need to bog down the enemy in a protracted dogfight to buy time for reinforcements to arrive? Evasive tactics will cause your strike craft to break formation, split off into pairs, and make quick passes at the enemy while performing evasive maneuvers, doing less damage but living longer. Is the enemy coming at you in small groups? Do you have a keen numerical advantage? Use Aggressive tactics. Tactics worked in combination with formations when choosing how you want to engage the enemy. They still mostly function, but the biggest hit is to strike craft, which are FAR less effective without formation coherency. Capitals will float around doing their own thing, bumping into each other and getting into each others’ way instead of remaining in an organized wall formation. Strike craft will split off and fly around the enemy in a disorderly fashion, failing to concentrate fire. That is to say, upon contact with the enemy your ships will immediately break formation. In Remastered, all these formations options are still technically available, however they only affect the basic parade stance of your ships. There were many other formation possibilities, but those are a few examples. You could also use Sphere to, say, have a squadron of Defenders form a defensive screen around your Heavy Cruiser to protect it from bombers. Ships in Sphere formation would surround their target, all facing inward pouring maximum shots into the enemy at the tradeoff of being fairly immobile and vulnerable to return fire. You could have capitals concentrate into a tight wall to focus fire.įighters could form a claw formation to envelop/focus their targets while still remaining mobile and making passes. The various formations had intrinsic tactical advantages for different situations. In old HW1, ships would hold their formation while engaging the enemy (unless you set them to evasive tactics more on this later). For new players who don’t understand the significance of this or older players who are a little fuzzy on how these worked, please set your sights on the wall of text below. There are some big problems I have with the way HW1 was ported to the HW2 engine: formations, tactics, fuel, and the ballistics model.įormations and tactics from the first game are thrown out the window in this remaster. Modern screen resolution options are available without hacking the game. The good things are obvious the graphics are pretty, the textures and backgrounds are nice, the new UI is “ok” and scales with your screen resolution. I never played HW2 and haven’t played HW2R yet. This review was posted by Bobamelius on the Steam community and is for HW1R specifically.