Hiigaran Support Frigate

Homeworld 2

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"Well, something we are working on right now is evaluating all the mechanics and asking "Is this fun or is this work"? And the support mechanic right now is one of those that we are evaluating. Is this something we actually want to keep in the game? Is this fun and add a lot of strategy to the game? Or is this just something that adds work for the player. So we are doing a lot of testing. Currently, the way the system works is support frigates, carriers, mothership, shipyards can actually increase your limit and the same thing with a production facility. Obviously the bigger the ship the more limit it takes up." - Josh Mosquiera, Lead Designer

The initial discovery of the Support Frigate caused some hope that fuel for strike craft might be returning in HW2, but that has turned out not to be the case. The Support Frigate (and its Vaygr counterpart, the Transport Frigate) have been removed from the game since E3. There is an entry for the ship in the release-game version of the .big, but no data or geometry.

It was armed with a single topside turret, and had six sets of docking pads on the starboard side (under a convenient gas-station-like "roof"). It now appears that the row of lights on the port side, originally thought to be separate docking pads, are just lights. It still possible, though, that there might be another six sets of pads on the underside of the "roof."

Since fuel is not modeled in HW2, we're unsure what role the Support Frigate was originally intended to play. Überjumper insists that they couldn't repair fighter squadrons nor capital ships. At E3 Josh Mosquiera said that they added to the support limit, allowing for more ships to be built. If this was their only remaining function, it's easy to see why they were dropped (when support units were removed).

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