Looks picturesque right? Finding peace in the vast emptiness of space.
And then get shell shocked as space battles become chaotic fast.
Game Information
Let's start with the most important thing, Is the game Pay To Win?
(Homeworld Mobile's Cash Shop)
No It's not, Instead, It's pay for convenience, everything can be grinded(except skins and some cash shop limited Flagships.)
You can spend Cash Currency to speed up production of Crafting and Refining.
You get a daily supply of it so it's not all that bad,
And besides, there is no PVP (I have not yet encounter it so far).
Unlike the juggernaut that is EVE Online where you control a single ship, In Homeworld Mobile you control a fleet.
(EVE Online screenshot, another MMO in the same genre)
Your fleet is composed of A flagship, a combination between strike crafts and corvettes, and escort ships ranging from frigates, support cruisers, to destroyers.
The game has tiers as a core game mechanic, you start the game at tier 0 and make your way up to current maximum tier of tier 4.
A tier 0 fleet, tiers are annotated at the the top right of each item.
The Nimbus Galaxy is divided into tiers which depicts the difficulty of enemies as well as the tiers of resources you can mine at each system.
Even crafting the materials and components have tiers,
But it's not all bad as it's streamlined and easy to understand.
The gameplay is mostly divided into two parts:
There's space combat which lasts about three minutes,
and then there's asteroid mining. (and remote mining)
The game let's you roam the Nimbus Galaxy, meeting different factions that inhabit this galaxy.
Travel between points is instantaneous, if you are looking to be a space trader look elsewhere as this game doesn't have any economical systems in place.
The crafting aspect of the game requires you to craft(or hunt) materials and blueprints to craft your items such as ships of all sizes, flagship weapons, parts, and etc.
These are sorted into tiers and rarity as well.
In this game you are able to research techs that can unlock blueprints as well as improve statistics of your ships, Some research are locked and can only be unlocked by owning Research Projects.
You can also assign officers which will improve the performance of your fleet, this includes flagship abilities, ship performance, crafting speed, research speed, resource collector mining performance, and etc.
And finally an MMO can't be called an mmo without multiplayer.
You can see other players mining at asteroids or chilling at hubs and bases.
There's also a matchmaking lobby for 'Strikes' an instance dungeon.
You can also create a party of 3 and roam the Nimbus galaxy together.
World Chat and Clans exist as well.
Synopsis of the Story
(Screenshot of Homeworld 2 Remastered.)
Yes, that's the gist of it.
Gameplay
In this section I will talk about how to play Homeworld Mobile.
This is the [Galaxy View] and the game starts with most of everything in the Nimbus Galaxy marked as [Unknown Signal], By using the [Scanner Button] at the bottom of the screen you can reveal the contents of the unknown in a nearby area.
Once revealed, a [System] is accompanied by icons on the right side of its name that represents whether the [System] has a Asteroid Field, a Shipyard and/or etc.
Traveling to a new [System] is done by selecting it and activating the [Jump] action to travel to that [System], You can only travel to [Systems] where your Hyperspace Strength is allowed to.
This is the [Combat Screen] and the fleet is located in the Lazarus Trading Station, A safe area. A menu pops out on the right side displaying actions you can do in this location.
This is the [System View], most if not all activities are hidden until you use the [Scanner Button] at the bottom of the screen. Missions, planets, and asteroid fields are revealed on successful scanning.
Missions varied from destroying enemy fleets, rescue a distressed friendly vessels, to recovering cargo and attacking a mining operation. Missions resets daily and requires the system to be scanned again.
The [Galaxy View], [System View] and [Combat View] is located on the top right of the screen.
In [Combat View] you are free to order your units to move, this is done by tapping and hold the vessel you wish to move and letting releasing it on the position you want. Alternatively you can tap your units icon at the bottom.
On the left side of the screen are abilities enabled for use by your officers assigned in the bridge of the flagship, these abilities help tide the battle into your favor.
[At the middle top of the screen you can see a crosshair icon with an A in the center, when enabled, your units will attack the nearest enemy.]
The [Combat View] also has a [Area View] similar to Homeworld and Homeworld 2, accessible by pressing the middle button at the top of the screen.
At the top right of the screen you can see the [Emergency Jump] icon, This ends the mission instantly without repercussions, So if things are going south it's better to just use it.
Using the list on the right side of the screen you can select units in the [Combat Area], You can select your units, your enemies' and your allies'.
You can set your units [Groupings] as well as Strike Crafts and Corvettes' formations.
Resource collectors and its variations are used to repair flagship and escort ships, mine asteroids and gather cargo floating in space.
You can't repair strike crafts and corvettes but you can make them dock your flagship restoring full health, simply relaunch them after they dock.
Should the need arise you can swap a strike craft or a corvette with a resource collector even while in combat as long as it is docked, helpful when doing recovery missions.
Then of course is mining, like everything else in this game they are also divided into tiers and types.
When you have had enough of mining you proceed to refine the ores into usable metals.
Which will be then used to craft things in the fabricators & Shipyards.
Later in the game you can have multiple fabricators and refineries installed on your flagship.
When it comes to officers, you can combine six of the same rarity to get one with a higher rarity, I find faction missions as a good source for getting officers.
And that's pretty much it,
Rinse and Repeat.
Ships and Impermanence
Let's start with capital ships, There are three types of capital ships.
Explorer Class - carries medium and small weapons, four slots for strike crafts, best sensors, and maneuverability.
Carrier Class - carries medium and small weapons, six slots for strike crafts, additional slot for escort ships.
Battlecruiser Class - carries large, medium and small weapons, four slots for strike crafts.
Flagship weapons are fully interchangeable limited only by the size of the weapon slot, If you want to go all lasers you could, a mix of torpedoes and cannons, you can.
As for diversity, you get to select a Kiith, something like a specialization. You can change it later on by spending cash shop token.
You also get to change color schemes for a more personal touch.
Flagships are permanent and cannot be destroyed.
(In multiplayer your allies can revive your flagship.)
Next on the list are escort ships, the ship in the image above is a destroyer, Destroyers take 2 escort slots while frigates and resource controller take only 1 escort slots.
And then there are squadrons, could be strike crafts such as fighters and bombers, or corvettes that are either equipped to combat against strike crafts or bigger vessels.
Escort ships, Strike crafts and Corvettes are lost when they are destroyed.
Combat Score, Tiers, and Rarities.
Combat Score is represented by a numerical value on the top left of each units,
While it does indicate a unit's combat ability it doesn't however tell how effective it is against different types of enemy units.
On the right side of the screen you can check for the available missions currently on the system, this too is divided into tiers and subtiers that approximate the difficulty of a given mission.
Within a given tier are rarities which is represented by a color, Common(Blue), Uncommon(Light Blue), Rare(Green), and Epic(Purple).
Armor, Hull, Damage types, Accuracy, and Evasion.
Hull Health is represented by green bar and the light blue bar below it represents the armor, Armor needs to be depleted first before the hull takes damage.
In Homeworld Mobile there are three damage types.
Kinetics - Cannons mostly, deals equal damage to both armor and hull.
Explosives - Missiles or Torpedoes, deals less damage to armor but significant damage to hull.
Beam Weapons - Beam Lasers or Pulsars, deals high damage to armor and less damage to hull.
Accuracy and Evasion
What I think about Homeworld Mobile
Homeworld mobile is a good game to pass the time idly, It doesn't require mental concentration that competitive games do. You just boot it up, Check your refineries and fabricators, and even do some missions that requires minimal inputs that lasts for at most three minutes.
Once you play Homeworld Mobile long enough the missions end up being repetitive, Although it could be because you end up having units tiered above the difficulty of the missions.
The wait time kills the excitement of the game, You want to progress but are hindered by long crafting times but yeah you could spend real money to speed things up.
What I like:
Based on the Homeworld Universe.
Missions that take only about 3 minutes to complete.
Easy to understand gameplay concepts.
Graphics are very beautiful.
Space Combat is satisfying to watch.
Sound and Music are pretty good.
Manageable amount of popups advertising the cash shop.
Not Pay to Win as far as I can tell.
Having a fleet instead of a single ship is a nice thing.
What I don't like:
Latency. I know it's a type of game where you don't need to do many actions but man, Real-Time Strategy and high latency don't mix.
Loadouts do not function as Loadouts, rather they work as if different set of fleets entirely.
Bugs, lots of it. as I said loadouts work as a different set of fleets, you can research/refine/craft on one loadout but it will not reflect on the other loadout, while that could be a good thing on paper, the problem lies that if they are not your active loadout the progress won't advance.
The rock, paper, scissor thing regarding damages are poorly balanced, If for example you built a fleet that deals purely hull damage, Your damage output against armor would not so much as make a dent.
Somethings that are worth mentioning that I don't have any strong sentiments:
Aside from the Flagship, you can lose ships when destroyed, which requires you to find another blueprint of it.
The ability to create a personalized username and to access the community features are further down and not at the start of the game.
Grind is somewhat insane, for example to get the tier 2 carrier blueprint it required me to rerun a Strike mission atleast 120 times. While it makes me worry how many mats I am required to farm for a tier 3 carrier blueprint, I think it will be fine.
Crafting time isn't really a demerit since you can build multiple refineries and fabricators.
Mining is also a non-issue as you can equip the escort ship [Resource Controller] which allow remote mining, basically sending them to the void for 4 hours and carrying ores when they return.
Storytelling is not it's strong suit, it's there, barely.
Would I recommend it?
Haha. No, This game is a dead end. However if you want a game to just play to waste short bursts of time such as a game to play while traveling on public transport then it might be worth it.
I do however enjoy this game quite a lot.
When I rate things, I always use a three-point system.
1 for Bad
2 for Okay
3 for Great
I must point out that I have very low standards and is easily impressed.
so it's very hard for me to give a score of 1,
and very easy for me to give a score of 3.
I give it a score of 2/3. Not for everyone.
Special Thanks to Raizel of the Hive Gaming Community for the dividers, I'll probably use them from now on.
Cheers Everyone! Happy Holidays!