Our representation of Halo's iconic space combat in the Homeworld 2 engine, which puts the player in command of some of the most powerful weapons fielded by the UNSC and Covenant and to provide a balanced and competitive experience.
The new ship
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Description
A ship that we don't know what to do with.
Comment about what you think it should be.
Looks like a deadly machine, death to the Covonant!!!!!!!!
man, i like it!
awsome
ONI stealth ship? maybe even that stealth cruiser/destroyer they have in Ghosts of Onyx?
possibly a new concept flagship that requires its own research tree :/ maybe
but looks frigin awsome guys nice work
how about a dreadnought or new prototype UNSC ship with more powerful mac guns or larger amount of archer pods
awesome model nyway
A dreadnaught... something between a Marathon and the Astreaus perhaps?
yep, another idea, this could be a ship which launches tactical nukes at Covenant ships instead of firing macs and archers
Almost any UNSC ship can be equipped with tactical nukes. All the way down to longswords.
The Point Of No Return (The ONI Stealth Cruiser) really has no proper role in our mod, but we can throw some ideas around.
Don't know how big it is in game but looks to be pretty similar to the Halcyon except the front and the large undercarriage.
To me the most prominent feature is that lump underneath which extends below the engines unlike the Halcyon or Marathon class ships. This means they needed more space in the design for something. Initially i thought carrier but you have one already. Then my ideas changed to something more experimental. Maybe it's a massive generator to allow for a prototype weapon like a laser (upscaled Spartan laser) where the MAC would be which makes it more effective against Covenant shields. That or it is a pod filled with ECM and C&C equipment to support other ships in battle. Command and Control equipment grants some bonuses and the ECM weakens enemy shields and jams sensors.
Basically I think it's a ship designed to overcome one of the Covernants biggest advantage, their shields. Make it fairly expensive and limit other weapons to a few cannons and missiles.
An electronic warfare ship... I'm starting to build up what I think this ship should be :P
As a carrier was one of our more favoured options, the carrier we have no isn't very special looking...
Like i said, that bulge is the most prominent feature to me so i think it should have some purpose for having it. The more i think about the carrier option, the less i like it though. The extra size allows for more fighters yes, but it doesn't seem to have many places to launch them from. Also the armour shape looks like it's built for frontline combat. Does the UNSC ever experiment with their own shields on ship scale as opposed to just MJOLNIR armours? If so could this be that ship?
Also how do the plasma torpedoes track their targets (if they do)? Could this have chaff or PD guns or whatever to provide fleet coverage and deflect or destroy incoming ordanance? Beam weapons unaffected of course.
Just a few more ideas for you to play with. If i come up with more a can post them or would you prefer i shut up now? :P
Keep the ideas coming, we want to know what the community wants :P
We don't know if the UNSC experiment with ship scale shields, but we have always said, no UNSC shields, we want the two races to feel completely different, even if it is just 1 ship.
Plasma torps track UNSC ships via creating a concentrated magnetic field around the plasma and moving it towards enemy ships. This can easily be jammed by just creating a very strong magnetic field, which we know the UNSC has the technology to do, seeing as they use magnets in alot of their weapons. EM warfare/flagship type ship seems to be making most sense...
Looks like a modified Marathon cruiser. Maybe a plasma torpedo signal-jamming ship?
Ok i checked up some stuff on halopedia (not sure if its accurate or whatever but most people seem to use that as a reference in mods i've seen). Basically i looked at the covenant starship weapons and they have plasma torpedoes, pulse lasers and the energy projector.
Going with the EM warfare idea and use of magnets they could block the torps as you say but the other weapons still get through. Have it as an ability like the defense field in HW2 and that could work.
I did think about them generating some kind of gravity well which would pull incoming weapons away from the ships (it would be created near the ship) when generated, even the laser weapons as light is affected by gravity, but i don't think they have the tech for that so probably best to stick with the magnetic fields.
The problem with having the ship generate an EM field is that any UNSC ships within range of the field would have their electronics fried by it (just like with nukes that are detonated too close to UNSC ships). You'd have to either modify existing UNSC ships with onboard EMP protection (a Farraday Cage, for example), or find some way to generate the EM field far enough away from the fleet that it wouldn't cause any harm to UNSC ships.
I was kind of thinking literally magnets. Magnetise the hull to repel the magentic field of the plasma torpedo if that would even work? That way there is no effect on other ships. After all the torps are guided by a magnetic field which seems to have no effect on covie or UNSC systems.
Another thought i just had was for a suicide ship. It's packed with explosives (whatever kind, nukes if that takes your fancy) and it just charges at opposing ships. It's a pretty bad idea and even i'm not a fan of it but thought i'd put it out there anyway. Desperate times for the UNSC and all.
What if it's a carrier/cruiser hybrid? It doesn't have to be as big as a full-fledged carrier but a little bit scaled down to be a carrier for scouting? Like, you send a regular scoutship somewhere and it gets destroyed before it can even relay some data, that's why you send a scoutcarrier for extended and specialised recon? The more i think about it, the more it sounds stupid =) but hey, we need stupid ideas to think of better ones right? ;)
Idea: what if you make the bulge on the underside a massive launcher for some kind of EMP torpedo? By launching and detonating an EMP pulse in the space between the UNSC and Covenant fleets (like a nuke), you could still get the plasma torpedo-jamming effect without wiping every computer in the UNSC fleet.
While in the books and such, that would make sense, in the game, ships probably aren't going to stay in neat little square formations taking pot shots at each other...so the likelihood of a "no mans land" between the fleets to detonate it would only exist in the opening moments of a battle.
Even if the EMP pulse could only be used once or twice in a battle, it would still give the UNSC a huge advantage in long-range combat. Plus, doesn't Homeworld 2 offer a number of different "neat little square formations" for a fleet's ships? You could use that to maximize the number of ships that can be protected by a single EMP cruiser.
Hmm... I just thought of an upgrade for UNSC ships...
You research Faraday Cage hulls which turn the entire hull of the ship into a huge faraday cage, this also gives Hierokon a defense field ability which completely negates all plasma torpedoes.
It would of course cost absolutely loads...
For balancing's sake, you might want to either have the cage negate only a portion of incoming plasma torpedoes (like in the Higaaran Defense Field Frigate in Homeworld 2), or give it a limited operating time before it needs recharging.
Sound like an idea but thinking about it, if the entire ship was a cage then no signals could get out either. This means that sensors and comms would still need to be external and would still probably be fried in the field.
Guess if you ignore that it's good and would provide much needed protection without giving them full on shields.
That's another good reason why it should be a limited ability; commands couldn't be issued to a ship while its EMP "shield" is up. Thus the effect should only last for a few seconds before needing a short recharge time.
Or you could just say that humanity's overcome the communication problem with Faraday cages. It IS 500 years in the future, after all... :P
Your fleet tends to start disolving into a giant melee even when set to those fleets in my experiance. There'd also be a questionable advantage in keeping in formation and at range for the UNSC, as it'd mean alot more Archers are going to be intercepted. For the opening part of the battle it would allow them to co-ordinate the first MAC volley, but keeping them in formation means you're going to suffer long term. I also believe they were planning on a ship exploding damaging ships around it, which would further encourage you to not stay bunched up for too long.
The books suggested that Archers weren't much good in long-range combat anyway, since their slow travel times meant that most of them could be easily destroyed or evaded by Covenant ships. MAC guns, however,can fire at greater range and have faster travel times than Covenant plasma torpedoes (if you notice, in the books the UNSC always gets the first shot off in a long-range battle). And since it takes multiple MAC rounds to take down a Covenant ship (at least one for the shields, and one for the ship itself), you'd be better off firing in volleys, at least in the opening stages of a battle.
Archers aren't the best weapons, but they're still effective enough to use. The UNSC rarely ever "destroy" Covenant ships as in making them explode, but hit them so heavily with MAC's and archers the ship becomes useless and deformed. Archers are important to this as when the shields are down, they can deliver large ammounts of damage over a spread area on a Covenant ship once the shields are down.
MAC's take up to a minute to recharge, and plasma torpedoes have a similar charge period, the thing is, most ships have one MAC, while Covenant ships can fire atleast 2 plasma torpedoes at once, with much less chance of missing due to being guided.
after reading the books it wouldnt make much sence to have an EMP ship in the unsc fleet. If the unsc had that kind of tech wouldnt they have used it in the battle of reach? or Sigma Octanus IV?
unsc tactics have been to fire as much as possible first into the covadent and then to hopefully survive their response, however i dont know how much maneovers will come into play in this mod but the first barrage is one of the most important. Infact long range combat is exactly how most of the battles startout in the books.
The space battle involved the UNSC fleet of 48 ships led by Admiral Stanforth against a smaller but technically stronger Covenant Fleet. The UNSC ships first formed a tight, "checkerboard" formation and fired all their MAC guns at the Covenant fleet. The repair station Cradle then moved in front of the UNSC formation, absorbing all Plasma from the Covenant fleet's first salvo. This allowed the UNSC ships to dedicate all their engine power to recharging the MAC guns and fire a second salvo after the destroyed Cradle moved away. After this salvo, only eight Covenant vessels remained: Cruisers and Destroyers. The UNSC fleet then scattered and proceeded to engage the Covenant fleet from halopedia, battle of Sigma Octanus IV
The unsc even sacraficed Cradle in order to get another concentrated volley off from the fleet, then move in for closer engagements.
As far as that goes it would be more unsc like to outfit this new ship with redicouls amounts of archers and MAC's and use it as a support crusier, or even a short ranged support carrier by outfitting it with large amounts of fighterbays inorder to counter act the covies second line of attack and give the unsc a little more of an edge in outweighed battles.
Make it into a command Battleship. Im not sure of the limitations on homeworlds battle mechanics, but could you not give it set abilities that boost the overall effectiveness of all ships close by? Something like boosting a ships chance to hit, attack power, or defensive capabilities? By having it heavily armored but with little offensive power alone, it would make it a hard choice on the covenant player to decide weather the threat it poses in making other ships stronger is more then the amount of time it would expose a player to unrelenting waves of UNSC hits. That decision would have to be maid on the fly depending on the composition of forces under the UNSC players control. Also for variety, maybe you could give it a expensive super ability like the UNSC N.O.V.A nuke. Really anything making it a specialty unit would be good.
I think, along with the bottom pod, the two little sparkles at the tip are very interesting...Perhaps a command ship that has capabilities similar to the Higarran Fire Control Tower as well as two upscaled SPartan Lasers (the 'sparkles'). The lasers would quickly cut through shields but do little structual damage.
I personally like the Support Carrier roll for this ship, in which you have a few options to choose from, but you can only have 1 of the many choices. It starts off as a basic Support Carrier.. speed of a destroyer, armor of a light cruisers, and some point defense and archer missile pods, along with a production facility to produce fighter class ships. Then you get to choose 1 upgrade. Increased Production - Allows two fighters to be produced at the same time. Increased Defense - Increases armor and point defense. Increased Offense - Increases # of archer missile pods and adds a some addition armor, but less than with the defense upgrade. Increased Detection - Larger Sensor Range along with slipspace detection sensors. Heavy Production - Allows Corvettes Class Ships to be produced. And any other options the dev team can think of, but you can only choose 1 per Support Carrier or Axillary Carrier, whatever they think the name should be, along with a production limit of 2 of these for Normal Cap Game Rules.
I also think this ship has a "Light/Support Carrier" kind of look to it, I'm no expert on balancing or game creation, but in my opinion, something like, a hybrid cruiser/carrier seems like a good idea to me, say, a Light MAC (like on the Autumn), a few dozen Archer pods, around a dozen Point Defence Guns, the ability to build fighters, SOME limited ECM (or something of the sorts), and (in assumption of being from a time period AFTER the Autumn was refit), perhaps even power in line with the reactors installed on the Autumn. All in all, to me, it looks like a "Jack-Of-All-Trades" Cappital ship.
Well I think it could make a promissing Battlecruiser. But I dont really know how big this ship is in compairison to others so idk. If it was a battle cruiser it would have to be rather large
make it a dreadnought! a very big ship with enormous power and about 75% as effective as a covie assault carrier
Seems to me, and this is just my theory, that this is a Bombardier class cruiser, with many arch missles, a mac, and is able to be large enough to house alot of bridge crewmen, and many troops and supplies and it also seems to me like it could hold a small town, alsmot like a colonization capital ship...but thats just my theory :P...
Looks like a big carrier thingy, maybe it can launch longswords, shortswords and some kind of boarding crafts to capture covenant ships with???
It honestly looks like an Immense cargo vessel to me, something that could be used to transport HUGE amounts whatever is needed, Munitions, fighters, ground forces ect. The Bulge on the bottom looks almost like an additional hull or "box" fastened underneath, essentially like a huge cargo container for different purposes.
Personally, just for something different, it also looks like it could even be purposed as a large temporary fabrication yard in places too far away from active supply lines or shipyards, or simply in places too dangerous for the safe construction of a permanent construction yard.
In my opinion it looks perfect for the role of a "frontline" support vessel capable of acting as a mobile resource refinery and/or constuction yard with that bottom "bulge" a tucked in fabrication suite (albiet more limited in it's production than a dedicated base) while the upper hull is designed to facilitate a decent defensive array. I just imagine the bottom part being detached or even lowering and "unfolding" revealing scaffold-like bays ect like a small constuction yard.