How Homeworld Deserts of Kharak Solved Starcraft



It's becoming more difficult to spot a really good game. Some studios have such sprawling resources and can afford to crank such incredible amounts of content into a game that it's easy to overlook quality in the absense of quantity. I think this is abundantly the case with Homeworld: Deserts, which seems to get a bad wrap for a short campaign and a comparably thin assortment of units. I can't say with any certainty that I would have given it a fair chance myself if not for the fact that Homeworld and I go way, way back. But I've enjoyed it immensely well after 100 hours in, and the best way I can think of to explain why is to compare the game with the analogue in RTS that I know the most about: Starcraft... or perhaps more specifically, Starcraft II.



I've already harped on the thing that puts Deserts at a disadvantage to Starcraft - it simply doesn't have as much content. There are 4 factions in the game now, 2 of which are DLC, but besides that it is tough to in any way construe that there is more of anything in Deserts than there is in Starcraft. Of course, what I really want to focus on are the things that Deserts has done that more than make up for this. In order to do that I'm going to have to point out some of what I consider to be major weaknesses (or developer blindspots) of Starcraft II:



1. "The Death Ball"

This term is probably ubiquitous among people who have played Starcraft II, and likely many others among the ground-based RTS genre. It's that tendency for your army to get hodge-podged into a non-descript blob of units all occupying the exact same point on the map. Starcraft has great capacity for micro-management, but anyone I've ever seen get into the late-game ends up with a blob... and ususally what decides the game is both players sending their blobs at each other and seeing whose comes out on top. Top-tier people may know how to avoid this, but admittedly that's not me. It's incredibly easy to get roped into Death Ball tactics in Starcraft for two reasons that I can see... first, that the collision meshes seem to be so supportive of it with many, many units, and secondly, that there really isn't much insentive to learn how to keep your units spread out. If anything the opposite is true... Starcraft units take up a lot of screenspace and the units in general don't have the attack range to make up for it, meaning that in order to get everything into weapons range, they almost have to be clustered, especially with all the RAMPS in the game. Now the flipside... Deserts. This game WILL teach you to array your forces in logical patterns rather than keeping them all so tightly pressed together that no one - not even you - are really all that sure what you're lobbing into the fray. Major reasons why: 1. SERIOUS AOE, 2. ranged units. As to the area-of-effect, sure there are some weapons like this in Starcraft, but they are slaps on the wrist in comparison to the ones in Deserts. If you had all of your things in tight formation and you come across an enemy gunship, artillery cruiser, or Honor Guard cruiser, it will in all likelyhood be too late for you to do anything but regret your decision, because their AOE damage is both devastating and wide enough to punch whole armies at a time. Starcraft AOE usually only punched widely enough to damage a couple of units unless the targets in question were extremely small, and few punched with the ferocity of Deserts AOE. Then you have your ranged units. Range is serious business in Deserts, with some units being able to reach considerably farther than the size of your screen in top-down view. But the premier ranged unit - Rail Guns - are so incredibly fragile that merely parking tanks in their midst is usually not enough to avoid taking losses. You want tanks or light attack vehicles out in front where they can sweep would-be counter attacks, and moreover, you NEED them there, because the sensors range of rail guns doesn't even begin to reveal the distance that they are able to shoot. Ranged units are only at their best when they have a line of forward units to spot for them. And because of the various iterations of AOE mentioned earlier (many are ranged attacks as well), you're even better advised to deploy your ranged units with a wide berth from each other. The result is intense micro and positional tactics, both of which are reinforced by several other game mechanics as well.



2. Scale

Starcraft is sufficiently fun that it's easy to forgive their wildly impressionistic and cartoonish sense of scale. If they didn't have the incredible cutscenes to remind you of the real size of things you might never think of it. But the thing that's impressive by contrast about Deserts is that it proves there is no need to fudge size and physics to have a good strategy game. Your production vessels are actually capable of nesting the units they build and you get to see them come down exit ramps/landing strips and everything. This concrete sense of scale and adherence to physics (you will see great execution of physics in hit effects and pathing [watching a baserunner make a reverse two-point turn is a thing of beauty]) makes you feel like you're conducting real battles rather than just abstractions of them; you're assured that the cutscene world (which is actually the more impressionistic of the two) and the gameplay world are one and the same.



3. Chokepoints and Terrain

I mentioned SC ramps eariler. Choke points are one thing... SC's ramps keep you down to like 2 units astride. This is but another thing that causes the game to always gravitate toward a Death Ball (or in this case, kind of a Death Snake(?) I guess). And these ramps are everywhere. I can't even think of a map where your base is not on a raised platform or in a valley or in some spot reached only by ramp. This is getting stuck in your ways. Deserts started out with a very narrow assortment of maps, but it has grown into a wonderful selection, and each is a distinct experience in some way... they all manage to create their own challenges. Rather than always giving you the benefit of a chokepoint entry to your base, Deserts has all kinds of starting locations, including some that give substantial advantage to the attacker. Terrain is much more dynamic in general and their are gradations in topography rather than walls everywhere (there are walls too, but bear with me). These wispy hills are a major part of the gameplay, as height can afford an attacker greater DPS ("I have the high ground!"). More importantly, units behind hills lose line-of-sight and can't shoot units on the other side (unless they are artillery ships). This allows the game to create a seemingly endless array of challenges and experiences by simply playing with the shape of the map. Using the terrain to your advantage can be absolutely huge and is a considerably more gradated art of strategy than in SC.



4. Atmosphere

No review of Deserts would be complete without mention of this aspect. The music, while not the best in the series, dynamically shifts based on what is happening at any given moment, becoming ambient in moments of respite and urgent during battles, and this happens seemlessly enough that you often don't notice... it's the best execution of dynamic game music that I've ever heard. The sound effects are great and filtered magnificently to reinforce the idea that you're viewing the battle from a considerable distance, as you often are. Of course if you have the camera in tight (and you are easily able to do this), sounds seem more clear and present as well. The designs of the craft are outstanding in general... they convey a sense of real-world utilitarianism and never get overly 'sci-fi-magicy'. All these elements together are exceptionally

cohesive.



Out of typing space. But in conclusion: even in the long and rich tradition of Dune-Buggy-Prequels, this game is a standout!

How Homeworld Deserts of Kharak Solved Starcraft It's becoming more difficult to spot a really good game. Some studios have such sprawling resources and can afford to crank such incredible amounts of content into a game that it's easy to overlook quality in the absense of quantity. I think this is abundantly the case with Homeworld: Deserts, which seems to get a bad wrap for a short campaign and a comparably thin assortment of units. I can't say with any certainty that I would have given it a fair chance myself if not for the fact that Homeworld and I go way, way back. But I've enjoyed it immensely well after 100 hours in, and the best way I can think of to explain why is to compare the game with the analogue in RTS that I know the most about: Starcraft... or perhaps more specifically, Starcraft II. I've already harped on the thing that puts Deserts at a disadvantage to Starcraft - it simply doesn't have as much content. There are 4 factions in the game now, 2 of which are DLC, but besides that it is tough to in any way construe that there is more of anything in Deserts than there is in Starcraft. Of course, what I really want to focus on are the things that Deserts has done that more than make up for this. In order to do that I'm going to have to point out some of what I consider to be major weaknesses (or developer blindspots) of Starcraft II: 1. "The Death Ball" This term is probably ubiquitous among people who have played Starcraft II, and likely many others among the ground-based RTS genre. It's that tendency for your army to get hodge-podged into a non-descript blob of units all occupying the exact same point on the map. Starcraft has great capacity for micro-management, but anyone I've ever seen get into the late-game ends up with a blob... and ususally what decides the game is both players sending their blobs at each other and seeing whose comes out on top. Top-tier people may know how to avoid this, but admittedly that's not me. It's incredibly easy to get roped into Death Ball tactics in Starcraft for two reasons that I can see... first, that the collision meshes seem to be so supportive of it with many, many units, and secondly, that there really isn't much insentive to learn how to keep your units spread out. If anything the opposite is true... Starcraft units take up a lot of screenspace and the units in general don't have the attack range to make up for it, meaning that in order to get everything into weapons range, they almost have to be clustered, especially with all the RAMPS in the game. Now the flipside... Deserts. This game WILL teach you to array your forces in logical patterns rather than keeping them all so tightly pressed together that no one - not even you - are really all that sure what you're lobbing into the fray. Major reasons why: 1. SERIOUS AOE, 2. ranged units. As to the area-of-effect, sure there are some weapons like this in Starcraft, but they are slaps on the wrist in comparison to the ones in Deserts. If you had all of your things in tight formation and you come across an enemy gunship, artillery cruiser, or Honor Guard cruiser, it will in all likelyhood be too late for you to do anything but regret your decision, because their AOE damage is both devastating and wide enough to punch whole armies at a time. Starcraft AOE usually only punched widely enough to damage a couple of units unless the targets in question were extremely small, and few punched with the ferocity of Deserts AOE. Then you have your ranged units. Range is serious business in Deserts, with some units being able to reach considerably farther than the size of your screen in top-down view. But the premier ranged unit - Rail Guns - are so incredibly fragile that merely parking tanks in their midst is usually not enough to avoid taking losses. You want tanks or light attack vehicles out in front where they can sweep would-be counter attacks, and moreover, you NEED them there, because the sensors range of rail guns doesn't even begin to reveal the distance that they are able to shoot. Ranged units are only at their best when they have a line of forward units to spot for them. And because of the various iterations of AOE mentioned earlier (many are ranged attacks as well), you're even better advised to deploy your ranged units with a wide berth from each other. The result is intense micro and positional tactics, both of which are reinforced by several other game mechanics as well. 2. Scale Starcraft is sufficiently fun that it's easy to forgive their wildly impressionistic and cartoonish sense of scale. If they didn't have the incredible cutscenes to remind you of the real size of things you might never think of it. But the thing that's impressive by contrast about Deserts is that it proves there is no need to fudge size and physics to have a good strategy game. Your production vessels are actually capable of nesting the units they build and you get to see them come down exit ramps/landing strips and everything. This concrete sense of scale and adherence to physics (you will see great execution of physics in hit effects and pathing [watching a baserunner make a reverse two-point turn is a thing of beauty]) makes you feel like you're conducting real battles rather than just abstractions of them; you're assured that the cutscene world (which is actually the more impressionistic of the two) and the gameplay world are one and the same. 3. Chokepoints and Terrain I mentioned SC ramps eariler. Choke points are one thing... SC's ramps keep you down to like 2 units astride. This is but another thing that causes the game to always gravitate toward a Death Ball (or in this case, kind of a Death Snake(?) I guess). And these ramps are everywhere. I can't even think of a map where your base is not on a raised platform or in a valley or in some spot reached only by ramp. This is getting stuck in your ways. Deserts started out with a very narrow assortment of maps, but it has grown into a wonderful selection, and each is a distinct experience in some way... they all manage to create their own challenges. Rather than always giving you the benefit of a chokepoint entry to your base, Deserts has all kinds of starting locations, including some that give substantial advantage to the attacker. Terrain is much more dynamic in general and their are gradations in topography rather than walls everywhere (there are walls too, but bear with me). These wispy hills are a major part of the gameplay, as height can afford an attacker greater DPS ("I have the high ground!"). More importantly, units behind hills lose line-of-sight and can't shoot units on the other side (unless they are artillery ships). This allows the game to create a seemingly endless array of challenges and experiences by simply playing with the shape of the map. Using the terrain to your advantage can be absolutely huge and is a considerably more gradated art of strategy than in SC. 4. Atmosphere No review of Deserts would be complete without mention of this aspect. The music, while not the best in the series, dynamically shifts based on what is happening at any given moment, becoming ambient in moments of respite and urgent during battles, and this happens seemlessly enough that you often don't notice... it's the best execution of dynamic game music that I've ever heard. The sound effects are great and filtered magnificently to reinforce the idea that you're viewing the battle from a considerable distance, as you often are. Of course if you have the camera in tight (and you are easily able to do this), sounds seem more clear and present as well. The designs of the craft are outstanding in general... they convey a sense of real-world utilitarianism and never get overly 'sci-fi-magicy'. All these elements together are exceptionally cohesive. Out of typing space. But in conclusion: even in the long and rich tradition of Dune-Buggy-Prequels, this game is a standout! Check this box if you received this product for free (?) Do you recommend this game? Yes No Cancel Save Changes