Homeworld
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"100 years ago, a satellite detected an object under the sands of the Great Desert. An expedition was sent. An ancient starship, buried in the sand. Deep inside the ruin was a single stone that would change the course of our history forever.
On the stone was etched a galactic map and a single word more ancient than the clans themselves: Hiigara. Our home.
The clans were united and a massive colony ship was designed. Construction would take 60 years. It would demand new technologies, new industries and new sacrifices. The greatest of these was made by the scientist Karan S'jet who had herself permanently integrated into the colony ship as its living core. She is now Fleet Command.
The promise of the Guidestone united the entire population. Every mind became focused on the true origin of our people ... ... every effort on the construction of the ship that would seek it out among the stars."
- – the prequel elaborates on how that happened
Perhaps the greatest true 3D space RTS, Homeworld was what Relic made before they started their work on Dawn of War. Released in 1999, it was their first project and boy did they make it happen - in addition to being set in true 3D space, it also featured physics-based damage model, extensive formations to your ship groups and even fuel system for your fighters and bombers.
A quick rundown of the plot, in case you missed the game or haven't played the remaster: You are Kushan people, the inhabitants of a desert planet Kharak, and you have just finished building a mothership so that you can leave your adopted world and go back to your original homeworld (as described in quote at the top of the page). After testing out the hyperspace core on the mothership, as well as encountering unfriendly neighborhood space pirates, you come back to Kharak to find it burned down by asmospheric deprivation munitions. Out of 300 million people, only 650,000 survived by virtue of being stuck in cryopods in orbit. After defending them from the mop-up fleet left behind and interrogating one of the ship crews, we learn that Kharak was burned down by the Taiidan Empire because we have violated a 4000-odd treaty on hyperspace tech ban. Naturally, our first priority becomes catching and destroying the fleet that burned down Kharak, then getting to Hiigara (a matter complicated by the fact that it is now the throneworld of Taiidan Empire). Along the way we encounter the Bentusi (nomadic traders that used to be Galaxy Police before stepping down), the Kadeshi (raiders inhabiting the Garden of Kadesh nebula and who descended from the same people as us) and eventually the Taiidani Republic rebels (because burning down a planet on the galactic fringes to enforce an ancient treaty is a surefire way to make your population like you more /s).
Homeworld 2[edit]
So, the Kushan people won back their homeworld, killed the Taiidan emperor and earned their happy ending, right? Yes, but not really. They got a breather until they get attacked by Vaygr, space Mongols led by warlord Makaan. Why is he doing that? Because it turns out the hyperspace core the Hiigarans used for their generational prison ship was one of the three original ones (everyone else is using their copies which are not nearly as powerful), and the Bentusi have one too. With Makaan in possession of the third core, he starts a goose chase after the Hiigaran core, figuring it would be the easier target. And the Hiigaran mothership, upgraded and renamed to "Pride of Hiigara", will give them a run for their money as failure means Hiigara burns just like Kharak burned.
If homeworld 1 was akin to a Biblical story (specifically, Exodus of the Jews), then Homeworld 2 is a war story through and through. The mysticism of the first game is replaced by "every sufficiently advanced technology" explanations. That is because originally HW2 was very ambitious, with a giant galaxy-spanning conflict known as Dust Wars taking center stage, and fights that were supposed to be taking place near or inside of megastructures like Dyson Spheres. Unfortunately, the scale had to be severely downscaled due to budget limitations.
In gameplay terms, there were changes that were both good and bad. Fuel for mosquito fleet? Gone, and now they're built in batches. Physics-based damage model? Gone, replaced by an RNG system that works off hit probability. Formations and tactics were rolled into one thing, with aggressive tactics automatically making your group into a claw formation as an example.
Homeworld: Cataclysm (aka Homeworld: Emergence)[edit]
A semi-canon interquel taking place between HW1 and HW2. Hiigarans are settling into their reclaimed homeworld, but their fledgling space republic is facing enemies on all sides. While the did get an ally in the form of Taiidani republic, some Imperial Taiidane refused to step down. They either formed their own petty bandit kingdoms or have declared an eternal war against the Hiigarans and the Taiidani republicans in hopes of returning the status quo. As for you, you are a captain of Kuun-Lan, a mining mothership of Kiith Somtaaw (a kiith that was religious at first, but then turned to mining all the way back on Kharak). One day you help repel an Imperial incursion on Hiigaran space, only later to be drawn into a power gamble by your superiors. See, your research ship needs to be escorted to a point in space where there was discovered a object outside of this galaxy. Oh, and it's also a million years old, literally older than any of the precursor objects in your galaxy. And just as luck would have it, that object was a distress beacon from an equally old ship infested by a being from hyperspace called The Beast. And as The Beast starts its rampage across the galaxy, your best hope is to look for someone who knows how to deal with this thing (at first).
This is a different game for a number of reasons. Asymmetrical sides, units not seen in HW1 (and HW2, for that matter), and the overall tone shift towards a pretty impressive and haunting scifi horror for an RTS.
Sometime later, the game was renamed to Homeworld: Emergence, due to Blizzard messing around where they shouldn't and hoarding the name "Cataclysm" for their WoW expansion (which is a damn shame because the events in the game make it deserving of it's subtitle). And it's unlikely it'll get a remaster any time soon, seeing as the developers tools were lost and reverse-engineering the retail copy would take a considerable amount of time.
Oh yeah and one of the Kiith Somtaaw's ships is one that can disguise itself and then have it's pilots go for a sneaky kamikaze attack on an unsuspecting enemy. The lore states that the pilots of these suicide ships are people who were frozen but woke up to the fact that they are practically the only living member of their families, thanks to all the stuff that happened in HW1. So with nothing left to lose they decide to become suicide bombers, very Grimdark.
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak[edit]
Homeworld crossed with Dune. A prequel set at the "100 years ago" part of the Homeworld backstory. Instead of commanding ships in space, you command crawlers in the desert. Two words: desert carrier. Overall a solid RTS that (sadly) illustrated that the RTS genre in general is starting to feel a bit dated in the 2010's. Very much a rock-paper-scissors affair, meaning multiplayer gameplay was about forming a deathball more efficiently than your opponent.