Homeworld 2 Retunes and Remixes
These mods keep the original ships and the Hiigaran and Vaygr sides, but add a lot of extra ship types and game tweaks. Usually these mods are compendiums of a lot of smaller mods, and you'll find a few mods will share a lot of the same custom ships and features.

Indicates the mod comes in .big format.

RTSC reckons: "This is well worth your while!"

See the RTSC Homeworld 2 Complex Mod page!

One of the basic assumptions made by this mod is that Strikecraft are a little too imbalanced, and that the free reinforcements philosophy of Homeworld 2 is both illogical and unrealistic. I think this mod was designed for the game before the 1.1 patch came out. These issues are addressed by:

Dropping the squadron size down to one, if you want.

Platforms can now pack and unpack, so you can move them around.

Friendly Fire is now implemented.

Instead of point defences, Motherships and Carriers get anti-Strikecraft missiles.

"Genuine" 3D movement.

Current version: 0.9. More details at its Relic News Forum thread.

Turns Homeworld 2 into a tactical game: each player gets a large pool of ships to work with, and that's it. Instead of simply churning out more ships, you must rely on your own tactical and strategic skills to prevail. Armour on everything has been strengthened to compensate. At the moment, you can only get this mod by emailing its creator. There are two versions:

1.5 gives all players a large starting fleet, to do with as they will - you can get some serious action out of the AI's.

1.6 starts you off with a lone Shipyard and 1000 RU's, from which you get to purchase some bargain basement shipping.

Choose wisely though! There's no resourcing and once you've spent your cash, that's it! Unfortunately, the AI's have no idea what to do in 1.6, so this is strictly a player vs player affair.

NGCS is an offshoot (or more accurately, a continuation) of the Point Defence Systems Mod (and one of many continuations - the author refers to them as "Eras"...) NGCS seems to be an R&D project for pushing what the Homeworld 2 game engine is capable of doing. Essentially, the intention is to produce a combat sim and AI based on Newtonian physics for HW2, with the ultimate aim of becoming an serious wargaming simulation along the lines of Harpoon. Should be interesting to see how it all turns out. Like the Dynamic Fighters and Dynamic CapShips mini-mods, NGCS will be used to drive ships and units in other mods, in particular the Gundam Mod, another third party project called called Rhapsody of the Stars, and a single player campaign for the PDS Mod.

Current version: NGCS 9.0. Its been discontinued apparently, and incorporated into PDS - Aetus Secondus, which I believe is the latest incarnation of the Point Defence Systems Mod. You can track its history on its own forums - but be warned, it feels less like a modding project and more like the denizens there live this stuff. See also: RelicNews forum thread and modDATABASE entry.

Yo ho ho. This mini-mod started by Homer Jnr. adds a third force: a gang of space pirates for you to torment the Hiigarans and Vaygr with. These aren't the Turanic Raiders from Homeworld 1; these Pirates are are a much lighter and leaner force with quite a few tricks up their sleeves. Their fleet is a collection of reverse engineering and units swiped from by the Hiigarans and Vaygr, but there's also a big number of completely custom ships, some rejigged versions from the original game, others apparently new models built up from scratch or borrowed from other custom mods. Fighters are light and can be outgunned by the regular cast. There's really only one fighting Corvette, the Multi-Gun Corvette from the Modernization mod which packs some serious firepower in the middle of a fight, but the Pirates have all manner of sneaky units, designed expressly for pillagin' and high terror on the high seas. Pirate players need to rely on cunning and tactics to survive, using stealth, immobilizing and hijacking enemy units. There's about as many ships designed for immobilized, hijacking, jamming the enemy and salvaging stuff as there are units with guns. Neutralizer Frigates

There's a few extra game features tossed in for garnishing and some extra ships added to the existing fleets. Its pretty playable so far, although I've noticed it does tend to crash a bit. Well worth your while! A genuinely interesting third party for the Hiigarans and Vaygr that isn't just a mass of overpowered ships with too many guns. Current version: 0.3. You can track it at its RelicNews Forum thread or suss out its obsolete old web site.

Note: this entry really needs a good update... this is now the PDS "Classic" version. PDS has now become PDS: Unsung Era.

All that single-minded attention to detail certainly seems to pay off, though. There's a huge amount of extra stuff in here to give most people something to play around with for a few days. It really does complement the epic scope of Relic's game models very nicely. Its not too shabby at all, but it'll test the network resources of any serious netgame with the amount of weaponry going off every second. While the number of units might have dropped from the mod's earlier early versions, there's just as many weapons, lasers, missiles, counter-measures and effects filling the sky as before.

PDS also models electronic warfare: most vessels have a second health bar that represents their current electronic state. You can knock a ship out without actually destroying it: it'll drift around helplessly, until the crew can restart it. Likewise, everything Frigate sized and up seems to have Modules galore - especially the capital warships. They bristle with so many you can hardly see the ship smothered under a cloud of health bars. Every spaceship has been completely overhauled: even fighters bristle with multiple weapon systems, turrets and missile launchers. Many ships even have working anti-missile defences! Battles are fast and furious, but capital ships and fighters can slug it out for ages.

PDS comes in a number of different gaming modes, and all of them offer many maps and/or scenarios to keep you occupied. Most of these modes are found in the Player vs CPU menu. Starship Duels pit different combinations of ships against each other in simple one on one scenarios. S&D Scenarios are search and destroy missions on massive maps that'll keep you going for hours. The battles in these are truly spectacular and its a pity Homeworld 2 doesn't allow for game recordings. VGR Campaign mode is a small selection of single player missions for Vaygr, after Makaan's disastrous end. There's only two Vaygr missions to speak of, and again, they're quite interesting to play.

This mod has been mutating on a daily basis for years! Current version: 10. You can track it at its own forums: PDS seems to be more of a lifestyle than a mod! See also: modDATABASE entry.

Note: this entry really needs a good update...

The TFS mod (formerly known as the EVO mod) is very similar in style and tone to the PDS or Complex Mods in that it adds a selection of extra custom ships, research items, modules, crams more weapons on each hull, and then some. However, where the Complex Mod is slow and deliberate, TFS is on some kind of adrenalin, washed down by a steroid chaser. Its got just as many - if not more - weird acronyms, version numbered warships, techs and bits than the PDS Mod. Actually, TFS reminds me of the very early versions of PDS before it moved away from its own vast, over cranked space battles and became the more refined, over cranked taskforce sim it is today.

The Tactical Fleet Simulator is all about big, messy blast ups in outer space. And the bigger, the better. Battles are supposed to be fast, furious, complicated and exhausting, modeling"battle fatigue". You may not have time to get tired though, since huge clouds of ships will be destroying each other faster than you can blink, leaving only a few stragglers. This will tax lesser graphics cards, and the game crashed out on me occasionally; but for those that can handle it the results are really fun. It will do well in multiplayer, but you'll almost certainly run into lag issues in big games when the big fight gets going.

There's a large number of new ship models, and you'll almost certainly find yourself reading through reams of in-game help just to work out what everything does. TFS does fall into the trap of having lots of different units, many of which seem to do look very similar and do the same thing. Earlier versions will be rendered obsolete by flashier and harder hitting versions. To give you some idea of what to expect, the Hiigarans get the BF-16A, BF-16B, BF-16C and the BF-16D - all of which are Bombers, but all slightly different ones, good against Capital Ships, Subsystems, or Capital Ships, or Subsystems respectively. Here's a full list.

Nevertheless, fail to build any defending Fighters and you'll swiftly be put to the sword. A typical Fighter cloud will rip up your resourcing in mere moments: by the time you hear the first warnings it may be too late to help. Fighter screens, Corvette counters, Frigate escorts are all required and while the Capital Ships and your production vessels are blessed with layers of potent defences, they too will be swiftly swept aside unless you build lots of different types of ships and defences. While there may be a lot of fussy detail in this mod, most of the stuff in does what it was originally intended to do. As ever, its a work in progress, and new custom models will be incorporated into later versions. The mod also changes a lot of game rules. For once, capital craft are no longer clamped into a horizontal attitude along the ecliptic; when a capital ships wants to go up, it goes straight up, nose pointing to the zenith!

Current version: 2.3. You can also chase up its progress it at its own forums, or peruse its original (now out of date) web page.Note to self: must get more speccy screengrabs!