Well, the formations do NOT function as they did in the original, which is too bad, both aesthetically and functionally.
Evasive, Neutral and Aggressive stances are replaced by Aggressive, Defensive and Passive attitudes.
Some pros:
I definitely prefer the non-modal approach to build, research and launch interfaces.
The pause and give orders facility is a critical upgrade for me as well.
Also, right-clicking to move on a plane in space, and clicking on a destination to move is MUCH preferable to the original’s way of doing things
In betweens:
double clicking a unit in HW2 selects all units of that type, which is convenient. However, I would prefer this facility combined with HW1’s drag select, which creates a list of all the units selected by type in the upper right hand corner of the screen – clicking on a list item then selects all the units of said type from the drag selection. This can be very convenient for micro-ing a local battle, but is clunky when I just want all my bombers to head to a capital ship, say.
This game is a hell of a lot slower than i remember, or maybe i’m just getting old.
Even on the very first mission after the tutorial i am spending 5-10 minutes just watching my resource collectors go back and forth and building my fleet. I can’t do anything else before then because it will trigger an event which i won’t be powerful enough to defeat without all of the build up.
How does this work in the new one ? I remember in the old one you click a button (m??) and then a disc came up and then you clicked to move. You could use shift to set “height”. I always really liked that method. How is this one different?
I think the comparison is apt. Both HW2 and Aliens were very good in their own right, but missed something that made the originals special. (You are talking about the Alien movies, right?)
If this thread devolves exclusively into HW1 Remastered bashing, however, I think that would be very sad. I hope that formations get fixed and the “ballet” returns, and someone mods in some of the UI advantages of the classic (while retaining the control advances of modernity); until then, I’m going to enjoy having these graphically updated versions (alongside digital copies of the originals) that still look and play wonderfully. This lemonade is still delicious.
It has that same feature, but you can also initiate moves by right-clicking on a destination – either an object or a point in space. I’m sorry I wasn’t clear. It’s the old way PLUS a new way which is preferable in some situations.
IIRC, the original HW1 allowed movement on the current plane as the default, but if you moused over an enemy ship it would default to an attack order instead (like most RTS).
The best feature was the attack band-boxing though, which I think used the ctrl key. (e.g., ctrl+drag selecting a group of enemy ships would order all your selected ships to target all the enemy selected ships, with intelligent target assignment).
As for camera movement, HW1 and 2 both allowed you to set your ‘focus’ on an object or ship, and this was often the best way to navigate in my experience. (So you’d watch a battle with your camera anchored to a single ship or a group of ships, and if you wanted to see something else you’d zoom out and switch your focus).
@HotFreak: I’m glad to have people in here commenting on the changes (and their actual gameplay impact) between HW1 and HW1-Remastered, but I personally agree with you that this doesn’t seem like a ‘sky is falling’ situation. It looks like these games have a lot to offer regardless of some of the finer details.
That said, if they can’t add most of those little details back into the HW1 remastered, I’d probably opt to play the original HW1 instead. I made the mistake of loaning my copies of HW1 and Cataclysm to my brother in law years ago… So I’d love to have a digital copy of the original game in all its boxy, low-res glory.
One thing I’m noticing about the band-boxing is that it doesn’t seem to work for Support Frigates or Salvage Corvettes (in HW1 single player, at least). In other words, you have to micro manage those now.
It did! This was, however, easily my most disappointing CE ever. When I have bought CE’s with statues over the years, generally I have held my nose and done it because I want something else in the package, soundtrack, etc. In this case, the “statue” was the thing I wanted most.
This started out great, in that the box was excellent. Once I opened it, though, pas bon. The ship itself is so thinly plastic that it is almost lighter than air. I would throw it up to see if stayed but I would be concerned it wouldn’t survive the float down. In all seriousness, its difficult to understand how jarringly unsubstantial it is. The bay doors are obvious blue cellophane and the light wasn’t great, either. The base was a nice polished stone but its solidity just highlighted how incredibly thin the ship was. The rest of the contents of the box were a keychain, some >100 pg. manual-sized combo lore/artbook (shamed by the Dom 3. manual) , and card with a code to a website for which to register on for a Steam code for the game.
From a distance in a darkened corner of my office it doesn’t look too bad, I guess, and there is a touch of hyperbole here, to be sure, but I would still be disappointed if I paid $10 for the statue, if only because of the lost opportunity, rather than the $100 I actually did.
