• Note: All prior in-game saves are no longer valid. Campaign progression is still valid; you just have to restart any missions you are currently on.

Gameplay

• Entire game rebalanced. (Singleplayer and MP!)
• Formations have been completely rewritten to better support HW1 formations
• Formations will break on combat into combat groups based on the ships that are part of the formation. This is to more closely emulate HW1 and to make sure that ships perform as optimally as you would expect.
• Formations have a unit cap depending on the ships and formation used. This is to ensure formations are as effective in combat as possible and so that the game performs at a reasonable speed.
• All ships have been rebalanced to work with formations
• All ships have had a pass to improve flight dynamics and engagement behaviors.
• Weapons will now use ballistics when set to do so. (Many ships are set to this by default now.)
• Tactics have been split into "Rules of Engagement" and "Stances" to better emulate HW1 and HW2 gameplay at the same time. (Hot keys updated accordingly.)
Rules of Engagement:
• Offensive. Ships will attack all enemy ships that enter range.
• Defensive. Ships will retaliate against attackers of allies and themselves.
• Passive. Ships will not retaliate, even when fired upon.
Stances:
• Aggressive. Aggressive strike craft receive bonuses to weapon damage but penalties to speed. Aggressive ships will fight at closer ranges and will fight and stay in formation during combat.
• Evasive. Evasive strike craft receive bonuses to speed, acceleration, and take reduced damage. Evasive ships will break formation as soon as they enter combat and attempt to dodge incoming fire. Evasive strike craft fight at longer range. This stance is intended as a delaying or harassing action.
• Neutral. Normal power shunting, ships receive no bonuses or penalties. (Default)
• Ships will now automatically try and fly away from large ships that are about to explode. (Splash damage is much more meaningful now.)
• Ship Dock Holds and UnitCaps have been reworked to account for HW1 and HW2 ships being traded/salcapped and to allow a more flexible system for modders.
• 2p_Shields start locations tweaked for more balanced gameplay.
• 4p_ironcurtain, 4p_lostfalls start locations fixed to not cause rush protection damage
• 5p_treeoflife, 8p_hyerspacearena, 8p_scattered, 6p_radialsymmetry – RU locations and amounts better balanced
• Swarmers now refuel much more effectively.
• Waypoints can now be closed, creating a patrol loop. Ships can leave their patrol to attack enemy units encountered while on patrol and return to the patrol based on their Rule of Engagement or even ignore enemies altogether.
• HW2 Mission 2 – Elite Bombers are granted correctly now.
• Lagging is much less likely to cause a desync now.
• General MP game desyncs are much much rarer now.
• Drones no longer count as ships when calculating relic value
• Relic game mode balance/behaviors tweaked.
• New Magnetic field used for Tai_DefenseFighter, Tai_FieldFrigate
• Carriers Only game mode rebalanced
• Races can now have race specific formation variations.
• Various research requirements tweaked to better balance game.
• Dockpaths for Capital Ships, Motherships reworked to be quicker/more efficient.
• The salvage capture command can now be issued to multiple targets.
• Salvage capture corvettes will now stop chasing a target if it becomes obscured by fog of war.
• Added a selection modifier to select all ships not in any strike group. (Mapped to the "-" key by default).
• Fixed various drone frigate issues including some targetting issues, removing command "response" audio from drones, an issue with CPU players spamming activation, and drones sometimes not being properly destroyed.
• Cleaned up some issues with changing targets when the kamikaze command is running.
• Fixed a possible crash when cancelling a waypoint move command with no waypoints set, then issuing a move command.
• Fixed some docking issues with ships carrying back large salvage chunks (and fixed an issue with Homeworld 1 resource collectors not being able to return salvage to carriers).
• Ships running a capture or salvage capture command will break out of it if the target hyperspaces.
• Hyperspace inhibitor and defense fields will now stay active if salvage capture corvettes are latched on, but they aren't at the "returning with capture" stage.
• Fixed an issue where the Homeworld 1 scout speed boost could stay on permanently.
• The magnetic field is no longer visible through fog of war.
• Fixed the GravWell Generator so the hyperspace command is more reliably disabled when the gravity well is active.

UI

• UI is now contextually aware of what the ships are doing. The Move Icon highlights when the ship is executing a Move Order, cooldowns are represented on the icon, and available formations/active formation highlights.
• Formations are now represented as single icons in UI. (Option to use previous flat view is in the options.)
• Launch menu performance optimized. (Also uses grouped icons. Same option to use flat view affects this as well.)
• Marine Frigate capture button is now properly displayed.
• Timer moved over to allow for better layout of subtitles and other items.
• Subtitles are forced on in tutorials. This fixes a lot of odd issues with tutorial progression we were seeing.
• Chat screens cleaned up to layout and display “Left the game” messages better.
• Game saved text is displayed when a game is quick saved now.
• Cursor is more contextually aware of the player’s commands
• Stances/Rules of Engagement icons changed to match TO icons and to be more consistent in general
• Invalid save games are not displayed to user or are greyed out depending on reason.
• Population Cap screen optimized
• MP Lobby views now auto-refresh, unless disabled.
• Fixed an issue where chat messages sent to CPU players would be sent to the host of the game.

Visual/Rendering

• Dust clouds, veins, and Nebula are much easier to see.
• Various ships have had visual tweaks to improve appearance. (Geometry, texture, animations)
• Sensors screen visual fidelity updated. (Rounder shapes, clearer tactical dots). Red tactical docs are now scalable in options screen for really high rez monitors.
• Game will no longer crash on load when primary screen is in portrait mode.
• Lens flares: fixed to be occluded as intended by designers.
• Engine Glow/Burn/Trail visuals improved slightly and performance optimized.
• Merged all Goblins into ship meshes to improve performance. (Goblins no longer supported)
• Command Line: Added -fakeFullscreen option. Allows use of a fullscreen window that does not capture the device. Use this option at your own risk as it is not officially supported.
• Command Line: Added -facetCount=XX option. Draws screen in vertical slices to prevent distortion, 'bends' the view. Can allow for 360 degree rendering, etc.
• Fixed a few mismatched portrait icons.
• M02 sun and flare now align correctly.
• EZ13 mission performance greatly improved.
• Game will try and use a discrete GPU rather than integrated GPU when available. This applies to Windows Vista and Windows 7 only. Windows 8 and Windows 10 users are advised to ensure a profile exists in the vendor's control panel to ensure optimal performance.
• OpenGL initialization improved to compensate for legacy overlay rendering performed by 3rd party software. While 3rd party overlays are not officially supported, overlays should no longer cause inappropriate translucency ordering or difficulty streaming.
• Added DOK badge.
• Capture/Latch points refined.

Misc

• Various Localization fixes.
• Executable load time improved by removing most DLLs.
• Removed DirectX 9 dependency check on startup.
• Russian save games now work properly.
• Keybindings in Russian and other languages are now consistent with English.
• Handfull of new keybindings/adjustments. See keybindings menu for details.
• Plus key bound to selecting ships not in a Formation.
• NumPad now works correctly.
• Removed necessity to sign up for SHiFT to play MP.
• Selections using mouse input should feel a lot better in general.
• Improved level load times.

Modders

• Added Scenario system to allow saving and playing back of starting fleet arrangements. (-loadScenario/-saveScenario)
• Added dropdown menu control.
• Buttons now have the ability to have different behaviors based on if the alt/shift/ctrl keys are being held down. Tooltips react to inform players of changed functionality.
• Ship turrets are instanced, allowing the base game assets to be easily modded via the new mod patching system that allows base assets to be nondestructively altered.
• .HOD format has been updated. HODOR/RODOH updates to come in the near future.
• Ship performance and behaviors can now be modified depending on what stance they are in. Formations also share these modifiers and can stack on top. Bullet speed, firing rates, weapon damage are just some of the things that can be changed. A formation of Laser Corvettes can turn incrementally slower as more ships are added to the formation or accelerate faster as the formation gets smaller due to losses.
• New flight maneuver abilities allow for more intuitive behavior- for instance it is now possible for fighters to slow down during their attack run to maximize time on target and speed up when coming back around. This behavior feeds into the ballistics system-ships caught going slower during a strafing run are easier to hit.
The original, Homeworld 2 classic requirement for a ship to be mine-laying capable before it will consider firing at missiles/torpedoes/mines has been removed. Additionally, all missiles/torpedoes/mines have been separated from the generic attack class “projectile” to provide ease-of-use for mod authors wishing to create ballistic anti-missile/torpedo defense systems.