The Interface And Gameplay (Continued)

As for the interface, the Production, Research and Launch tabs and display are well arranged on the right side of the screen. You can choose to close the entire interface if you wish to have a full-screen view of everything.

The Production section allows you to decide what subsystems you want to build and what units to produce. Both can be queued as requested. However, the queued subsystems will not be displayed. As for the queued units though, the interface is pretty cool in that it is smart enough to proceed with next available option if one unit type has reached its limits.

For example, you can only support a maximum of 14 fighters and 12 corvettes. So, if you had earlier queued a bunch of fighters and corvettes, the fighter production will be put on hold when you reach the limit for fighters. The queue will just carry on for the next available unit. The queue will stop if all unit types have reached their limits and production will resume once there is an available support space, assuming, of course, that you have the resources required.

The Research section is rather disappointing as it only allows simple 1 - 2 levels of speed and armour upgrades. In addition, only a few units are allowed to have weapon upgrades, i.e. the torpedo frigate and bombers. The only good thing about this section is that it allows queuing of technologies to research.

The Launch section is pretty simple, it determines which of your docked units will auto-launch or remain docked. This is very handy if you want to keep non-contributing units from harm's way.

The interface is generally good. However, it is a hindrance when it comes to mine-laying. Mine-laying cannot be set when the cursor is on the interface so you will have to get used to pulling the range towards the left-side of the screen, instead of right-side. It is not a major problem. I am just very used to dragging boxes from the left to the right.

As usual, the game offers the sensor view where you can see the Tactical overlay of the mission area. This is probably the single most important feature in Homeworld games. In this release, the units are clearly marked with various polygonal shapes to indicate ship category - triangle for fighter classes, squares for corvettes and various others for frigates, capital ships and even smaller units like probes, collectors and gun platforms.

Another nice feature of this interface is that your grouped units (numbered group) have their own tab for each group. And these tabs are displayed right on screen. Tabs with a clear background indicate an inactive group (not in use).