Homeworld 3's last major update adds superweapons, campaign interludes and a new armour system
Mildly dissatisfactory space strategy game Homeworld 3 will receive its last major update this week, developers Blackbird Interactive have announced. Due to launch on 21st November, Update 1.3 will deliver "a gargantuan number of improvements, fixes, and some entirely new features". These broadly consist of combat and balance overhauls together with changes for the Skirmish & War Games modes, though they've shown the campaign a little love as well.
The devs announced that they would condense the game's launch roadmap back in September, so update 1.3 is actually several updates rolled into one.
As regards the game's combat, Blackbird want to "increase the importance of strategic decision making", "make those decisions more intuitive and relevant to the outcome of battles", and "eliminate inconsistencies between how you'd expect units to react to orders and how they were actually behaving".
To be specific, they've introduced a new armada-wide armour system that groups ships according to four tiers of damage mitigation - 10% for light armour, 20% for medium armour, 30% for heavy armour and 50% for mothership armour. This accompanies a new approach to directional damage: shots to the rear now have a 2.5X multiplier, but there's no longer a multiplier for damage to the side of a ship, "to better emphasize the advantage gained from clever positioning".
Other highlighted changes from Blackbird's announcement post include increasing the potency of strike craft. Calling upon community playtester feedback, they've shortened the distance strike craft fly before turning for another run on the target, beefed up bombers across the board, and made it harder for capital ships to shoot fighters and bombers down. The future is now, Hiigaran Torpedo Frigate captains!
With regard to controls, Blackbird have added a "reinforce targeted ship" ability to all ships. Command a ship to partner up with another using this ability, and it'll automatically adopt the formation, stance
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