This is a place we can civilly post criticism and ideas for Homeworld 3. The devs watch this subreddit actively. I think the demo demonstrated that they listen to the community. Put each individual idea into its own comment below!
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I posted this in an impressions thread, and realized it would work here too:
- Overhaul how strikecraft work. The player has to manage dozens of strikecraft individually, which die almost instantly, so they have to rebuild them manually, reorganize them into strike groups, etc. Halfway through the campaign I stopped bothering with them.
- Give the player more precise control over the facing of units on movement and attack. The game has a directional damage system (attacks from the sides/above below deal more damage), but there's no way to control the facing of your ships.
- Allow ships point at targets in 360 degrees. Despite the advantages of attacking from above/below, ships tend to drift onto a level plane with their targets, even if you specifically micro them to attack from above/below. It's space!
- Skirmish could take better advantage of terrain. The terrain is definitely cool. I wish multiplayer had more obstacles between spawns or special zones to capture. When I saw the default 1v1 map had like a tube thing I figured one ship would start above and one below. Nope, they are facing each other over the tube. The terrain doesn't really come into play.
- It should be very clear what my ships are doing. It's very hard to feel confident in what my ships are doing. If a mixed composition of enemy ships attack (which is what I want to see), how best to respond? If I select my whole fleet and band-box attack the enemy fleet will my ships attack their appropriate targets? Do I have to select each ship type and manually target what they should shoot at (almost impossible)? Should I attack move into the area and hope they target the right things? And once I drop selection of my ships its impossible to tell what they are trying to do.
- Research should cost more and take longer in PvP. The research and resource system feels pretty broken in skirmish. I'd like to see resources come in slower and research cost more and take longer. There aren't any interesting teching strategies at the moment.
Your 5th bullet speaks to me. In the more chaotic melee fighting in HW2 it was easy to select my whole mixed fleet and set them to attack the enemy, and I was reasonably certain that they would intelligently target appropriately.