14 DAY TRIAL // After one week of intense play, including a 12-hour-long session on launch day, I might finally be able to take a relatively long break from Homeworld Remastered Collection even if I have not yet finished either of the campaigns and there are plenty of more skirmishes to play and test strategies in.
Getting through the missions, which are still tough enough to lead to plenty of restarts, I have remembered some of the strategy lessons the two games taught me long ago and which served me well in a variety of other titles.
In the first Homeworld title, solid tactical deployment of assets and careful planning are important, but maybe the most important concept that can make future battles easier is to salvage as many enemy assets as possible in order to use them against enemies.
The corvettes seem at first as a unit that is just included in order to help the player push the storytelling forward.
But some carefully implemented distraction against the bigger enemy ships means that it's relatively easy to slip in the salvage vessels, which tend to be mapped to Group 5, in order to convert them to a more important cause.
The ion cannon ships that can be obtained early in the campaign can be invaluable later on, especially if they are carefully protected and repaired.
Homeworld 2 makes scouting crucial
In the second title in the series, salvage is no longer so easy and Marines need to be used to take out enemy crews before a ship can be used.
The computer is also more capable when it comes to repelling such actions, which makes it harder to have fleets that use the enemy's own assets against them.
In Homeworld 2, scouting and knowledge of the battle space is very important, especially during those missions in which certain areas are dangerous for travel.
Scouts also have the handy EMP, and that means that in addition to making it easy to know where to deploy forces, they can also be used to delay a strike or to make sure that it losses at least part of its punch.
Knowing how to deploy salvage craft and scouting does not make it easy to get through Homeworld Remastered Collection, but it certainly increases the enjoyment.
