RE: Homeworld (1, not 2)
Evasive did have fighters evade fire.
Depending on the stance, they would take "rolls" and execute evasive maneuvers when fired at, rather than direct pursuit of the target, evasive stance had the probability quite high, but they never did on Aggressive.
They still used collision detection, so a hail of bullets/ stray bullets/ etc could still hit, even if it got an "evasion roll".
Or the projectile velocity could be simply so fast that they would nearly always hit even if evasion was attempted (such as corvette/defender guns)
You could still "dance" your scouts/fighter on aggressively by rapidly changing formations/orders, and get aggressive scouts/fighters to "dodge" and be harder to hit.
The settings also modified firepower, projectile velocity, acceleration, and speed (scouts had the additional afterburner/speed boost special function that could be micro'd for even more effectiveness - evasive speed bursting scouts were quite hard for missile destroyers to take down, and were good distractions/cover for attack bombers to take it out)
Personally, I don't like micro'ing how the individual units fight.
I don't like spell caster units and such.
Its not progress quest - its choosing which unit types to build, which order to send them in (ie, evasive scouts, speed bursting at a missile destroyer to get it to deplete its missile supply (particularly effective if your opponent liked to use missile volleys where all missile tubes were dumped at once) *then* send in the attack bombers)
When do you advance, retreat, where do you amass your units (more important on terrain with chokepints, and maps where you must spread out more than just high oil turtling in base), what is the order of engagement, etc.
There is far more to strategy games than a clickfest of micro'ing individual units.
Sure in starcraft you can use a single marine to kill a lurker if you micro the crap out of it, but.... that like a lame fps, or old atari shooter game.
Homeworld had just the right amount of micro and "casters" for my tastes
Micro was proportional to unit number.
Micro in battles was done at a mass level of entire fighter formations, or by chosing specific enemy capital ships as targets, and individual unit micro was basically only done with capital ships
It also possessed very few hard counters - not like heap bombers against flamer tanks, with water separating them.
Every unit could kill every other unit, with enough numbers.
Though the defense field frigate was a pretty hard counter, I remember a game where I was being overwhelmed and lost the early fighter battles, and held out much longer due to the timely introduction of defense field frigates - which blocked over 90% of incoming projectile fire - making them and nearby units extremely resistant to anything except mines, missiles, or ion beams.
My Assault frigates clustered around a DFF or two were thinning his strike craft swarm- he focused heavily on corvette research, which the AF gun's could semi reliably hit, a support frigate was able to somewhat manage the amount of damage getting through the field, the early attempts at using mine layers on bombing runs were somewhat effective, but I was able to micro my frigates to target the slower and more expensive minelayers - he gave that up.
Then he came out with his own frigates- fire an assault frigate or two, easily dispatched, as their weapons are blocked by the DFF most of the time as well, then Ion cannon frigates appeared - while a lone assault frigate can beat an ion frigate by micro, trying to keep all my frigs (all 5 or 6 of them
) out of the ion beams fire, and within the DFF field, was hard.
2 ion cannon frigates, beat two assault frigates, by simply spreading out and covering each other.
The only way an AF beat an ICF, was using its 8% higher speed, and likewise higher HP, to close the distance, and circle just outside the firing arc of the ion cannon (fixed forward firing - though even a lone ICF occasionally picks off a scout or two when swarmed), where 2 of the 4 turrets of the AF can still fire at the ICF- this leaves 2 turrets on the other side, and the fixed forward plasma cannons of the AF useless, and it takes a while to kill the ICF- the ICF.
At this time, my AFs simply outnumbered his ICF, and could take them out 1 by one as they were made (it was a small map, I could see his mothership).
But the damage from his swarm, though reduced to < 10% was taking its toll, all was focused on my DFF or support frigate.
His swarm had moved on and taken out my collectors ( I managed to get a DFF to protect them, which allowed them to take in enough loads to more than pay off the DFF) but I was spread to thin - the fighters could strike at my resource collectors, and be gone long before my frigates got there to help - which left my MS/ research ship vulernable, having no interceptor wings, my resource collection collapsed when the local resources were depleted and I had to move them farther away.
It was only a matter of time, as my frigs fought on inside their bubble.
more ICFs targetted my DFF, he mass launched mine layers on bombing missions (fly at target, release the mine like a bomb) he had stored inside his Mothership, my DFF's fell, and the rest of my forces were obliterated shortly thereafter.
