Capturing ships
Cloaking (invisibility)
Pausing
Keyboard shortcuts
Readers' Contributions

Spoiler Alert

These hints may spoil your fun playing through the game. Using what is contained on this page, the game may suddenly stop being a challenge. I recommend you exercise self control and only look at this page if you do not mind possibly seeing such information.


Manuals

Having the manuals (and actually looking through them) helps when you want to know if your ship will be able to outrun the enemy ship 'coming up ahead. They are in .PDF format and are installed to the Homeworld\Documents directory. They are available from the Downloads page predominantly for people who do not own the game but would like to browse through them to get more of a taste of the game before buying it.


Cancelling Orders

Set the hotkey for "Cancel Orders" from 'tilde' (the wiggly hyphen ˜ ) to 'O'. Pressing tilde did nothing for my ships, but 'O' works fine.


Keyboard Shortcuts

You'll be much more efficient if you learn the keyboard shortcuts associated with the various formations, commands, etc. rather than going through the right-click menu each time. As well as commanding your units, Control Groups can be assigned in a Command&Conquer style to select groups of units with one keystroke, no matter where on the 'map' each unit is. To assign a Control Group, select the units you want to group together and press Ctrl-n where n is a number from 1 through 0 on the number strip. To select a group, press the number associated with that group. To focus that group, press the number again. To zoom-in close to the group, press the number again. A single unit can be assigned to several Control Groups. For example, my Interceptors were 1&2, MGC's were 3&4, SC's 5, AF's 6, IF's & IAF's 7, D's 8, MD's 9 and then all my ships were in group 0 so I could keep track of losses. Strike Craft will get confused if you reassign their Control Group while (some of them are) docked.


Support Frigates

All your units are likely to get damaged by your enemy's (or your own) fire so it is important thet you repair them when necessary. All your Capital Ships (except any rescued IAF's) will automatically repair themselves slowly and do not require fuel. All StrikeCraft cannot repair themselves (a Repair Corvette can repair other ships) and do run low on fuel. When going into battle, it is often a good idea to have a row of Support Frigates Supporting your Capital Ships. They will (hopefully) prevent any Caps from being destroyed and are close at hand for Strike Craft to refuel and repair. If they are attacked, you must concentrate fire on the attacking enemy ship because Support Frigates will not last long under fire. They can heal each other, however. Divide the group into two halves and set each half to Support the other. They will last much longer this way, but won't be able to repair any other vessels. (NB: A Support Frigate must turn to face its ward before it can start administering support. This takes time.)

When commanding your wing of Support Frigates to Support other Capital Ships, it is best to assign each individual SF to a selection of targets as opposed to setting your entire collection of SF's to Support all of your other ships. If they are commanded separately, they can act independantly but if you command them en-mass, they will fly around en-mass to the most damaged ship in their target list and all administer that one ship while others in danger are ignored!


Docking

When Strike Craft get low on fuel or 'health' you should Dock them with a Support Frigate, Carrier or the Mothership. Note that Strike Craft docked using "AutoDocking" at the end of a level will NOT be refuelled or repaired when they emerge at the beginning of the next level. They certainly have time to be refuelled and repaired; you can build four or five ships during a Hyperspace jump!


Launch Manager

It is often advantageous to turn Autolaunching off on your Mothership and all your Carriers so that as you HS into a new level, they don't all spill out and get melted before your Cap Ships are in range to deal out some serious damage. The Launch Manager can be accessed by pressing 'L'. If the level includes lots of asteroids flying around or Grav Well Generators in front of the HS entry point <hint hint>, it is probably adviseable to keep all Stike Craft docked. But if you want a selection of Strike Craft to launch during the cutscene following the HS jump, put them in a Carrier and everything else in the MS. Set autolaunch on for the Carrier and off for the MS.

Fleet Command only likes you having up to 4 Carriers but you can easily capture all seven. The Build Manager and Launch Manager only cater for up to four Carriers, however, so doing anything with the last one other than using it as an oversized Resource Controller is, at first consideration, hard. Having more than four Carriers screws up the Autolaunching and the ordering (when in Military Parade with the MS) and who needs more than four carriers? Just retire the extras for 1200RU's each. But if you have more than four and you want to use a specific Carrier for a task, you have to select and focus it before entering the Build or Launch Manager. This usually works.


Forced Attacking

In some circumstances, you may want to attack something that isn't normally flagged as 'enemy'. Such items may be Bentusi Mothership, the Junkyard Office, asteroids, Captain Elson's Destroyer, the Mothership's scaffolding in Lev01, etc. This can be done (in most cases) by holding 'Ctrl' and 'Shift' while clicking the desired target. If the pilot of the attacker is dubious about your orders (for example, commanding your team of Heavy Cruisers to attack your Support Frigate) then you'll hear the pilot say something like, "It's your call..."


Scouts and Interceptors

I found it very effective to have a wing of fighters consisting of mainly Interceptors with only one or two Scouts. Place the Scouts at the tip of Delta formation. The enemy ships automatically target the lead ship (the first to come into their view). When the wing is flying normally, it will stay in formation. As soon as you order the wing to attack enemy Strike Craft, however, the Scouts will leap forward. They will shoot at the enemy and then pass them by. The enemy will turn to follow the Scouts. The Interceptors still have the enemy in their sights and blast them from the rear (so don't have to keep turning, which wastes time and fuel). The Scouts will dodge most enemy fire (especially if set to Evasive). After the battle, the wing will reform to Delta since the individual units were not given specific commands; merely the entire wing. The Interceptors don't get shot and the Scouts don't get to shoot.


Scouts scouting

In later levels, Scouts are next to useless in battles; they have next to no armor and have to refuel frequently. So I stopped building them after Lev04 and still had some left at the end of Lev16. Once proper fighters can be built, use your scouts as mobile Probes. They haven't got such a large field of vision as a probe, but they are more useful since you can take them to the next level. They can also be useful in 'activating' events when the craft that activates the event is sure to die doing it. Or they can be used for detecting Grav Wells <grin>. Lots of uses. Little point 'Retire'ing them since they are so cheap (you get 60% of the buying price for retiring a ship, no matter how damaged). They can out-run a missile swarm. If you just tell them to Move, they can last for a few seconds. If you get them to Move with Evasive, most will survive for quite a while. But if you activate their Afterburners (by pressing 'Z') they streak ahead. Missiles are 'discarded' once they loose sight of their target.


Version conflicts

The v1.04 updater comes with this readme file. It fixes many bugs in the game. It enables the Homeworld CD to be in any CD drive at game startup. Many people were having "the Build Bug"; they could build any ship but frigates. The game would take RU's and time to build a frigate but one would never emerge from the mothership. This is now fixed. I started playing the game unpatched, then patched it around Lev04. Halfway through Lev15 I took my SavedGame file to a friend's (his HW was unpatched) for a few days until I had almost finished Lev16 then, brought back the updated SavedGame file to my computer and completed it there. No problems at all. But this is not recommended and SavedGames can become corrupted through mixing versions.


Command-line switches

There is a number of switches you can use when launching Homeworld. To add them:

  1. Left-click the [Start] menu
  2. Move to the [Programs] submenu
  3. Move to the [Homeworld] submenu
  4. Right-click the [Homeworld] menuitem
  5. Left-click the [Properties] menuitem
  6. Ensure you are in the [Shortcut] tab
  7. Left-click at the right end of [Target] field
  8. Type the desired switches, each prefixed by a forwardslash and delimited by a space
The command line I use is:
[D:\Homeworld\homeworld.exe /enable3DNow /disableavi /pilotView]
I have an AMD Athlon with 3DNow!. I don't want to watch the Sierra and Relic movies as I launch the game each time. I like to view the battles sometimes from the cockpit of one of my MGC pilots




These are many of the hints that I can think of for Homeworld. If you want to suggest any others, please let me know and I'll put them up here.