| This is the article on the ship used in Homeworld and Homeworld: Cataclysm. For similar ships in other games, see Resource Collector. |
The Resource Collector is a non-Combat Ship designed to harvest resources from space matter used by the Kushan and Taiidan Empire in Homeworld.
Overview[]
Resource Collectors are one of the most important ships to any fleet. Without one, the fleet will be unable to construct any new ships, which will leave it defenceless. As long as the fleet has one Resourcer present, the fleet will still be able to construct ships, but the amount of ships that can be built at once will be slowed if there aren't enough to provide a steady stream of resources to be used for construction.
Since it is so important, enemies will almost certainly target them quickly, either by attacking them or by capturing for their own uses. This means they should not be sent into areas of space where they are at risk of being attacked by enemies, and should always be escorted in some form, preferably by strike craft or Assault Frigates.
By default, resourcers will attempt to deliver their load to the Mothership but this is often unwise because resources will always tend to be some distance away from it, so they should always be near a Resource Controller or Carrier to hasten the unloading of harvested resources.
Resourcing ships have been vitally important on all sides during the Homeworld War and in later conflicts, however by the Beast War the designs had started to change somewhat as the bulkier collectors from previous years were ill-suited for navigating large asteroid fields or wreckage from other destroyed ships. Kiith Somtaaw perfected the smaller resource collector design with a Worker, which eventually became the de facto standard by the Vaygr War when smaller, more mobile units could harvest resources, although the capacity had significantly dropped on these future units.
Trivia[]
- In the Homeworld: Cataclysm manual, the Kushan ship is codenamed Providence: the codename for the Taiidan equivalent is unknown and is one of the few ships not to have such a codename given.[1]
- The ability of the resource collector to perform a hyperspace jump is not used in the single-player campaign: instead it will behave like a regular strike craft vessel by docking with the Mothership at the end of a mission. Collectors can only perform jumps in multiplayer.
- As a result of Homeworld Remastered being an improved version of the Homeworld 2 engine, the logic of the resource collector matches that of the one used for the Homeworld 2 counterpart: they latch onto a resource, the PDA beam harvests resources and then it returns to a dropoff point. The circling ability of the original Homeworld could not be recreated in the game; however, this is a visual change that does not impact gameplay.
- Homeworld Remastered made some changes with regards to the function of the Resource Collector:
- In the original Homeworld, the Kushan Resource Collector has a single slot for refuelling strike craft vessels, although it would not repair them. This ability was extremely difficult to use, as such ships would rarely use collectors as a docking point to refuel, preferring to use Support Frigates, Carriers and the Mothership itself. As Homeworld Remastered does not have fuel present, this feature was not included.
- In the original Homeworld, resource collectors were capable of doing damage to any vessel, despite not being a combat ship. This was done by the use of force-attacking, which would cause the collector to use its Phased Disassembler Array to slowly cause damage to its target. This feature did not actually harvest resources and Homeworld Remastered prevents the ship from attacking others.
- In the original Homeworld, the storage capacity of a resource collector matched the amount of resources it took to build one. In Homeworld Remastered, the collector costs slightly less, but returns only 500 RUs per deposit.
- Despite being only around 80-100 metres in length, Resource Collectors were unusually dense at 40,000 tons in weight.
Appearances[]
References[]
- ↑ Homeworld: Cataclysm manual