GOLIATH – Make Battlecruisers Great Again

Ever want to build Dreadnaughts in Multi-player or in skirmishes against the CPU? Now you CAN!!!

Let’s face it: after the HWRM 2.1 update, if you wanted to win, you’d better build some freaking frigates. With GOLIATH, there are multiple paths to victory: overwhelm your opponent with frigates, slowly wear him down while you get stronger and stronger with destroyers, defend yourself until you can build mighty battlecruisers, be a sneaky weasel with sub-space weapons, or crush their spirit with unstoppable lumbering dreadnaughts. The possibilities are endless!

The purpose of this mod is not to make a new game that you have to learn all over, but to even up the races and add some new ship tiers in order to be able to break deadlocks and create new paths to victory. You should be able to dive right in! Teach your opponents the true meaning of the word respect with dreadnaught-class ships and Sub-Space weapons. But beware. There are unconfirmed reports of even the most experienced Fleet Commanders being handily defeated by CPU-controlled adversaries.

Additions and changes:

1- The HW1 races suck, right? Not anymore! The races have all been balanced with the addition of new ships and a more flexible research tree so that the HW1 guys can also choose to rush the ships that they want without having to develop the crap they don’t want.

2- The AI is too weak, right? They WERE too weak. We usually play 2 vs.6 together against the CPU and we were starting to win all the time. Not anymore… 😉 The levels are:

a. Fuddy-Duddy – Like playing against your toaster: It has the smarter AI, but gets slightly less resources than a human and doesn’t have any build speed bonuses.

b. Beefy – Like playing against Robby the Robot: a good challenging game for an experienced player, but you’re probably going to win.

c. Butch – Like playing against Bishop: you’d better keep the pressure up from the very beginning because if they get strong enough, your once-proud fleet will be reduced to smoldering space junk right before your tear-filled eyes.

d. Gorilliös – Like playing against Data: they might think your strategy is ‘intriguing’ or ‘interesting’ but what they’ll really mean is ‘cute’. Your hindquarters will be spanked to a bright rosy-red like the puny human that you are, a laughing stock for artificial people everywhere, but should you prove yourself worthy by defeating such an enemy… your name shall be recorded in the Hall of Awesomeness for all eternity…

If they’re too mighty for you, put some AI players on your side at a higher setting than the other team, give yourself some starting research, or increasing the free RUs usually makes the CPU weaker in relation to humans. (There can only be four difficulty settings, otherwise we would’ve made some wimpier CPU settings too.)

3- There are a lot more game set-up options for you to choose from:

a. The starting research level of each slot can be set individually. So fighters + corvettes, or Battlecruisers + Dreadnaughts, etc. can be granted at the beginning of the game. This function can also grant all research and replaces the ‘complete research’ function from the game. (Might not have noticed it, but there was a bug in the old ‘complete research’ mode that made the Vaygr WAY too butch.)

b. Specific ship types such as Dreadnaughts, Battlecruisers, Insurrection Frigates, etc. can be turned off for the match.

c. Map resources, starting resources, bounties, and resource injections can be incrementally set to be REALLY high. So if you want, you can play a game with no resourcing at all. You know what they say, ‘Life is too short to be poor.’ 😀

4- All races have a Dreadnaught-class battleship as a path to break long deadlocks, as well as your enemy’s spines…

a. Kushan: The Heavy Destroyer is equipped with militarized planet-core mining technology: Deep-bore Lasers which melt high-tensile steel armor as if it were candle wax. Geothermic Refractive Plating prevents any attempt of capture or unfortunately, repair.

b. Hiigaran: The disassembly of the Progenitor Dreadnaught was a bold decision, but the loss of such a great vessel revealed its dark secrets. Now you shall judge your enemies with the mighty power of the ancients.

c. Taiidan: Despite the most advanced torture methods of The Empire, our scientists were unable to reproduce the main weapon of the Progenitor Dreadnaught. However, a power source for the Cyclone Ionizer had finally been found.

d. Vaygr: Our fallen Emperor’s soul can be extracted from the nether… for a price. A crew of our most honored dead reanimated as automata. The Emperor’s lost soul recovered and bound to the most powerful battleship ever constructed. Caution: Science Division is concerned that a battlecruiser of this magnitude may overload command and control systems.

5- Battlecruisers are back in their old glory! Remember playing HW2 and if you forgot to build a Gravwell, the CPU would hyperspace a battlecruiser right up your rump roast, and you just couldn’t freaking kill the thing? Like that! Destroyers also take no crap now, and frigates have been left at their newfound butchness from HWRM. Costs and build times have been adjusted accordingly.

6- All races can develop Sub-Space spacecraft, equipped with a Dimensional Scalpel, these vessels have the capability to cloak indefinitely. Combined with powerful Neutron Torpedoes, the Insurrection Frigate can lurk behind enemy lines waiting for the perfect time to strike. However, the Neutron Torpedo has unfortunately proven itself to be somewhat… unstable… (think space submarines that can also be used as bombs to clear out small stuff)

7- A PLETHORA of new weapon, armor and other assorted ship upgrades! There are also plenty of counters to each other so that none of the new ships or upgrades is too mighty.

8- The HW1 battlecruisers and motherships have an integrated Gravwell because the AI can’t use the normal ones to save its buttocks.

9- Laser corvettes are back! We tried to make them just like the ones in the original game, where you can hold off huge waves of frigates as long as you can keep them repaired or replenished.

10- Cloaked Fighters have been replaced by the expensive but deadly Sub-Space Fighter-Bomber, because let’s face it… they were a joke.

11- The Taiidan can now call upon one of the newest additions to the empire. These ‘Vaygr’ have proven themselves to be most loyal, and their bands of Elite Auxilia have proven themselves to be most deadly.

12- The HW1 support craft can’t repair small stuff anymore. This was the only way we could find to really solve the bug where members of squadrons would go missing if they docked with them. Therefore, the repair rates have been greatly increased.

13- The Hiigaran build-speed upgrade is 40% instead of 30% in order to compensate for their fewer build slots.

14- HW2 races get a second shipyard. HW1 races get a shipyard with one large build-slot.

15- The cost and build times of the HW1 small stuff has been changed to reflect their suckyness. The HW1 bombers are in a squadron and are on par with the HW2 bombers now.

16- The Return to Sarum maps have been included in a new Goliath version. More maps to come!

The sinister space music in the main menu is Evil Morty from We Rabbitz – they’re on Spotify so go check ‘em out!

Other changes are listed in the updates because the description is getting too long.

If you find any bugs or think something should be changed, please let us know. We want the Mod to be AWESOME. Like, you’re never gonna play the normal game ever again, awesome. Have fun!!!

We’ll keep updating as we get stuff done. 😉