Waiting for resource harvesters to drain asteroids of their mineral treasures is quite tedious at times, though.A rock-paper-scissors balancing system makes it fairly easy to determine what ships you should send to counter the enemy, though you usually have options. That deliberate movement has the advantage of keeping things from becoming overwhelming during the heat of battle even though IвЂ™m managing dozens of ships at once, I rarely worry IвЂ™ll miss something crucial. A side effect of the huge maps is that thereвЂ™s quite a bit of downtime, and a slow pace in general as huge, plodding starships make their way from one side to the other. I find the ability to send your ships up and down the Z-axis is more essential to HomeworldвЂ™s imposing sense of scale than its mission design or fleet tactics вЂ“ the vastness of space becomes clear when you realize these maps are as large vertically as they are horizontally. Subtle improvements, like the elimination of the need to refuel fighters and corvettes periodically, makes moment-to-moment gameplay move a little smoother than it originally did.ДЄctually, the full-3D navigation is rarely used in missions, as most of the action takes place on a 2D plane. Admirably, the interface does all of this without getting in the way of the action - even the build and research menus are mostly kept collapsed and out of sight. The toughest trick is giving orders to travel to a specific point in space - you have to give a move order, then hold Shift to adjust the altitude, and you have to constantly shift the camera around to get a sense of depth.

Zooming out to a tactical view of the area and giving orders to control groups makes things manageable, and double-clicking to select every unit of a type lets you take command of fast-moving and scattered ships. HomeworldвЂ™s interface does a good job of helping you wrangle your forces, though, especially now that many of Homeworld 2вЂ™s improvements have been retrofitted to the original. Getting used to tethering the free-floating camera to ships or objects in the area youвЂ™re interested in is the equivalent of finding your sea legs when youвЂ™re accustomed to having solid ground under your feet. Controlling fleets that can move freely in full-3D space is challenging to get the hang of, and it can be difficult to even figure out whatвЂ™s going on when two armadas of fighters, bombers, and corvettes are all swirling around in a giant furball of a dogfight around frigates, destroyers, battlecruisers, carriers, and the massive mothership itself. A good-sized engagement of a few dozen ships is like a ballet mixed with a fireworks display of violent explosions, lighting up the already colorful nebula-tinged skyboxes like a laser show.Homeworld and Homeworld 2 definitely arenвЂ™t simple games, but their complexity is the rewarding kind. That breathtaking attention to detail, along with the newly refreshed models, textures, and effects highlight the creatively distinctive and often asymmetrical spaceship designs. The way fighters strafe and weave in combat is really impressive вЂ“ they almost never have physics-breaking bumper-car collisions вЂ“ and I adore watching individual turrets on larger ships track their targets. But of course I did play Homeworld in 1999, and a great many games since, yet these two 15-hour campaigns are still some of the best large-scale space battles IвЂ™ve ever taken part in.

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