Summary
Homeworld 3has been a long time coming. Released over 20 years after the second title, Homeworld 3 is the first time many players will be jumping into the role as Navigator and escorting their fleet to victory. Playing an RTS game like this can be daunting for newcomers, but this game has plenty of features to help newer players.
Adjustable difficulty settings, fully customizable controls, and similar features make this a great entry point to the Homeworld franchise and RTS games in general. If it’s your first time exploring deep space, these tips will put you ahead of the competition.
9Use Formations
Formations are a crucial part of Homeworld 3 and not clearly explained in-game. Selecting multiple units will allow you to set them in a certain formation by pressing forward slash.Unit behavior varies depending on their current formation.There’s a large variety of formations to cycle through, but we find you only need to worry about four.
You can beat the entire campaign without using formations, but they substantially increase the efficacy of your fleet when used properly. Create groups of ships that best take advantage of each formation type, assign them to certain group types (Ctrl + any number), and you’ll be able to cycle between optimized squads of ships at a moment’s notice. This is key to winning matches in PvP multiplayer.
8Avoid Aggressive Stance
Every ship in Homeworld 3 can be set to an aggressive, neutral, or passive stance. This influences how the ship AI behaves when it enters combat. Passive ships never attack, and neutral ships focus on staying alive during fights. Aggressive ships will focus on killing the enemy at any cost, attacking adjacent ships as well if possible.
This is generally a bad idea for most ships. Setting a ship to aggressive doesn’t adjust its damage, fire rate, or any core stats. However,aggressive ships tend to ignore cover,which will get your fleet killed in certain situations. Unless you’re willing to micromanage your ships, it’s best to keep your ships on neutral stance.
7Dock Your Fighters After Combat
All fighters and corvettes have the ability to dock into nearby motherships and cruisers. This seems like a useless feature at first, butdocked ships are repaired to full healthbefore they are redeployed. This makes docking your smaller ships a cost-effective way of rebuilding your fleet’s strength after a fight.
Press ~ to select every unit, then press F3 to select all currently injured ships. you’re able to then order your smaller ships to dock with a single click.
6Customize Your Settings
Customizing your settings should be nothing new to PC players, but it is especially important in RTS games like Homeworld.Homeworld 3 has made some major changes to its control schemecompared to the previous titles. If you’re a long-time veteran player that prefers the older control scheme, you can change this in the “Options” tab of the main menu.
Two presets are offered by default, with a third tab that allows for more granular changes:
Experiment with these control schemes to see which one feels right for you. And if you want a mix of both schemes, select the “Custom” ribbon to mix and match both control profiles.
5Move With V
This tip only applies if you use modern controls. Legacy controls do this by default.
Since Homeworld 3 allows you to move ships in 3D space, it can be tricky to move your ships in a precise manner. One way around this is tomove your units by pressing “V”.This will project a circle around the unit that locks the Z-axis, making it much easier to use cover and tunnels. You can also adjust the Z-axis while in this state by holding down the Right Mouse Button.
4Play Around Cover
Speaking of movement, you shouldfight near coverwhenever possible. The megastructures and asteroid belts in the distance aren’t just for show. You can hide behind most visible objects as cover to block line-of-sight or avoid incoming fire.
The easiest way to enter cover is by using the movement disc. Press “V” to make a precise movement order. The holographic disc will give you an idea if your ships are level with the nearby terrain. Setting your units to neutral stance will also encourage them to use cover when possible.
3Diversify Your Fleet
A one-trick fleet isn’t going to work in most situations. Diversifying your fleet is critical to success in the later campaign missions andWar Games playlist. Ships in Homeworld 3 are broken up into categories, each with its own population cap. You ideally wantcounters for every ship typeat the ready. Create a few Support Frigates to heal your units, and you’ll be fine for most of the campaign.
2Turrets Are Surprisingly Helpful
Partway through the campaign, you will unlock the ability to create and deploy turrets. These act as a unique category of ship that can attach to any static surface, notably walls. Deploying them is somewhat tedious, but pausing the game with “P” makes this much less stressful.
Once your turrets are deployed, they will decimate anything that gets close. They’re perfect for destroying smaller strikecraft, and the torpedo turrets are surprisingly useful at destroying frigates and other large vessels. If you need to defend a location or remain in a certain position, don’t be afraid to make turrets. They’re cheap, easy to use, and highly effective.
1Salvage Everything
This should come as no surprise to veteran players, butsalvage everything you may.Resource Controllers as the backbone of your fleet’s economy in Homeworld, and they need to salvage derelict ships and map resources to keep your fleet in good shape. Ideally, you want to command your Resource Controllers to salvage nearby materials (“H” by default) when a mission starts, then salvage enemy ships after a fight.
Unfortunately,the campaign immediately starts the next mission once you complete the final objective, so you’ll need to be quick when harvesting ship debris. But if you can actively keep your Resource Collectors working throughout a match, you will find Homeworld to be a fairly forgiving RTS game.
