War Games is Homeworld 3’s co-op mode and the only one that plays like a roguelite. One to three commanders each take a single carrier into a chain of three random mission areas, complete the objectives before enemy escalation outruns them, and carry every surviving ship, every researched upgrade, and every Artifact forward into the next area. Blackbird Interactive’s own FAQ sets the boundaries: up to three players, no AI bots to fill an empty slot, and enemy difficulty that scales with the number of human commanders in the lobby.
Everything below describes the mode as it stands after Update 1.3, Blackbird’s last major content update — the one that added 45 artifacts including the new Ultimate tier, three “Interstitial” mini-missions that can appear between the standard maps, and reworked tech trees for several fleets. The Kalan Raiders fleets arrived earlier, in Update 1.2.
What this covers: how a run escalates across three mission areas, which starting fleets pair well in two- and three-player lobbies, and how artifact loadouts compound wave over wave. Why it matters: Artifacts persist for the whole run, so the loadout you commit to in the first area decides what your fleet can fight in the third. Who should read this: commanders who have finished a run or two and want the fleet-pairing and loadout reasoning rather than the tutorial.
For the combat model underneath all of it — cover, line of sight and per-weapon ballistics — see Homeworld 3’s Megalith cover and per-weapon ballistics.
Three areas, escalating inside each one
A successful run is three consecutive mission areas and their objectives. Within a single area the enemy carries an Alert Level that starts at 1 and climbs toward 7, and that level governs the size and strength of the forces on the map. The same escalation is applied again when you reach the second and third areas, so area three opens roughly where area one finished.
Crucially, you cannot slow the spawns. War Games has no destroyable carriers or production bays to hunt down; enemy fleets spawn from multiple points in open space, and the strength of those arrivals is set by the Alert Level alone. The Homeworld wiki is blunt about the ceiling — at Alert Level 7, expect near-continuous combat.
What you can control is how long you leave the clock running. Once the main objectives are complete you may hyperspace onward at any time, and the transition itself is generous: every ship is healed to full and brought forward, strike craft included. What does not come with you is uncollected resources — the jump does not sweep the map, so finish harvesting before you trigger it.
That leaves the pre-run difficulty ladder, which is cumulative and non-negotiable: pick T5 and every modifier from T1 through T5 is live for the whole run.
| Difficulty tier | Modifier | Cumulative XP bonus |
|---|---|---|
| T0 | Standard difficulty | 0% |
| T1 | Larger enemy incursions | 50% |
| T2 | Reduced available map resources | 100% |
| T3 | Enemy incursions spawn more frequently | 150% |
| T4 | Destroyed carriers do not respawn | 200% |
| T5 | The second mission gains an additional objective | 250% |
| T6 | Larger enemy incursions | 300% |
| T7 | Artifacts spawn less often | 350% |
| T8 | Reduced available map resources | 400% |
| T9 | One fewer Artifact option | 450% |
| T10 | The first mission gains an additional objective | 500% |
Each tier adds 50% to the XP a completed run pays out, to a 500% cap. The ladder is reported identically by TheGamer’s War Games explainer and by the Homeworld wiki, so it is the one table worth memorising before you pick a tier.
The fleet roster you are pairing from
Starting fleets are not cosmetic difficulty settings. Each one fixes your opening ships, your unit caps, and — because a run’s artifact pool is limited to ships your fleet can build — the shape of every loadout you can assemble. The base roster splits three Hiigaran fleets, three Incarnate fleets, a pre-order Kushan “Remastered” fleet, and the DLC fleets added later.
| Fleet | Factionfaction. An in-game group or nation players can align with or fight against, with its own goals and reputation system. | Unlocks at | What it is actually for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strikecraft Fleet | Hiigaran | Default | Ranger, Brawler and Heavy Bomber patterns wired in from the start; deep fighter access, thin frigatefrigate. A player-built warship used to protect naval trade routes from pirates. access |
| Reconnaissance Fleet | Hiigaran | Level 3 | Two artifacts of your choice at the start and the highest frigate cap — the flexible opener |
| Bomber Fleet | Hiigaran | Level 5 | Two Torpedo Frigates and a zero corvette cap: anti-capital punch with a fighter-shaped hole in it |
| Incarnate Fleet | Incarnate | Level 10 | Capture Corvettes plus resource controllers that collect and repair |
| Platform Fleet | Incarnate | Level 15 | Turret-heavy Incarnate roster with two resource controllers |
| Experimental Weapons Fleet | Incarnate | Level 20 | Beam Fighters and the narrowest roster of the six |
| Remastered Fleet | Kushan | Pre-order bonus | The legacy roster, added as a pre-order extra |
Beyond the base seven, Update 1.2’s Kalan Raiders Fleet Pack added the Raider Fleet (a mix of Hiigaran and Kalan hulls) and the Capture Fleet (Incarnate plus Kalan, built around capturing enemy units), alongside 40 Kalan-specific Artifacts. Update 1.3 added paid Somtaaw and Taiidan factions with two fleets each. The wiki notes one constant across every fleet: resource controllers are free to build.
Pairing fleets for two- and three-player runs
Nobody can drop a bot into an empty slot, and difficulty scales with the number of human players — so a full lobby is a harder lobby. It is also a lobby with more artifact chains running at once, which is the whole reason pairing matters. And there is no tactical pause to fall back on: Update 1.1 added Tactical Pause and Time Dilation to solo War Games and Skirmish; co-op runs stayed real-time.
The pairing logic falls out of the fleets’ documented weaknesses rather than taste.
- The Bomber Fleet cannot screen itself. Its corvette population cap is 0, and the wiki’s own fleet synopsis says losing access to Railgun Corvettes is “a serious hit to its ability to handle strike craft and corvettes,” recommending captured Attack Frigates as the patch. A Bomber commander is your anti-capital specialist; they need someone else to hold the fighter screen.
- An Incarnate commander is the natural anchor. Incarnate resource controllers collect and repair — the wiki puts one controller at roughly two Support Frigates’ worth of repair — while capturing moves to a separate, unarmed Capture Corvette. The wiki’s baseline-cap arithmetic has a full corvette flight holding up to seven frigates at once, though Update 1.3 later made a single Capture Corvette enough for one capture. The same page rates the Incarnate fleets as having the potential to be the strongest in the mode.
- Everyone needs the capture economy. The wiki’s most repeated advice is “capture, capture, capture” — after building five Support Frigates first — because baseline unit caps simply cannot cover what arrives in the later areas.
| Run size | Composition | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Solo | Reconnaissance or Strikecraft | Highest flexibility or the deepest fighter tree; solo runs also keep Tactical Pause |
| 2 players | Bomber + Strikecraft, or Bomber + Incarnate | One commander deletes capitals while the other owns the screen; the Bomber’s corvette gap is covered rather than duplicated |
| 3 players | Bomber + screen + Reconnaissance or Incarnate anchor | Adds a capture/economy specialist so the capture-driven firepower the mode assumes can actually be built |
The failure mode to avoid is a lobby of three anti-capital fleets. Three Bombers means three commanders who are each weakest against exactly the strike craft and corvettes that dominate the early Alert Levels, and nobody to convert captured hulls into a fleet.
How artifact loadouts compound
Artifacts are the second half of the pairing equation, because they are the only part of a run whose power survives the hyperspace jump intact. The rules that make loadouts compound are consistent across the wiki and the co-op guides:
- Each pickup offers a randomized set of three Artifacts with no reroll; a particular Artifact can raise the choice to four, and the T9 modifier cuts it by one.
- There is no limit to how many Artifacts a commander can hold.
- A Pattern Artifact converts a ship into a build style, and a ship can only occupy one style at a time. The Pattern itself can be taken only once, but that style’s sub-artifacts stack additively — positives and negatives.
- The pool a run offers is restricted to ships your fleet can build, which is why fleet choice and loadout choice are the same decision.
Update 1.3 pushed the compounding one level further with Ultimate Artifacts: one only becomes available once you hold the associated Pattern Artifact and one of each of its available Upgrade Artifacts, and each Ultimate partially cancels the negative effects of the artifacts it requires. The same patch also shows how much these numbers move between versions — it raised the Carrier Assault Pattern’s initial damage increase from 50% to 200%.
| Loadout core | Effect | What compounds on top | Fleet that should commit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recon — Ranger Pattern | +200% damage, +50% hit points, +20% speed, +50% weapon range | Precision turns vision-range bonuses into Recon damage; Aggression adds damage for damage taken | Strikecraft, Reconnaissance |
| Interceptor — Brawler Pattern | +200% damage, +50% fire rate, +50% hit points at −15% weapon range | Tenacity adds passive self-repair for −10% speed | Strikecraft |
| Fleet Bomber — Heavy Bomber Pattern | +250% damage, +50% fire rate, +50% hit points at −15% speed | Reinforced Hull adds +25% hit points and passive self-repair | Bomber |
| Torpedo Frigate — Bombardment Pattern | +25% damage taken, +33% weapon range, +33% torpedo speed | Stalwart adds self-repair for −15% speed and +25% vision | Bomber, Reconnaissance |
| Carrier — Support Systems | Strikecraft variant: +10 strike craft pop cap; Frigate variant: −5 strike craft, −5 corvette, +5 frigate | Stack with ship Patterns to fill the raised cap with the upgraded hull | Any |
| Multi-Beam Frigate — Fire Support Pattern | −15% fire rate, +100% weapon range | The wiki rates a captured long-range Fire Support Multi-Beam fleet as systematically beating large numbers of Destroyers — a feat it says other fleets are “virtually incapable of” | Incarnate |
The pattern in that table is the same one the wiki recommends directly: pick one core ship per class and fill the cap with the upgraded hull rather than spreading artifacts across a scattered mix. A commander with ten Ranger-pattern Recons beats one with four half-upgraded ship types, because artifacts multiply the unit you already built in numbers, and the population-cap Artifacts then let you build more of the same.
Per-wave strategy
The run is three waves, and each one asks a different question.
| Wave | Escalation state | What changes | The play |
|---|---|---|---|
| Area 1 | Alert Level climbing from 1 | A few minutes to build before the first objective lands; typically two or three artifact crates on the map | Build the economy and take the objective, then sweep remaining crates — do not idle, because the Alert Level never stops |
| Area 2 | Alert Level carries higher; Destroyers begin appearing | Enemy composition broadens toward capitals; captured-hull value spikes | Build the five Support Frigates before any captures, then convert every frigate you can, and commit artifact picks to one core ship per class |
| Area 3 | Alert Level approaches 7 | The wiki describes the closing objective as commonly a Battlecruiser with a heavy escort carrying the Elite Commander buff — and, rarely, a Titanship | Run the “Build 2, Rush 3” plan: arrive stocked and simply out-tempo the objectives rather than out-fight the spawns |
The through-line is tempo. TheGamer’s guide puts speed first for a reason: the longer a run sits in one area, the tougher and more frequent the reinforcements become, so an artifact crate hunted at Alert Level 7 can cost more than it pays. Area three is where that bill arrives — the wiki calls the third level a massive difficulty spike and notes that at Alert Level 7 you should expect near-unending combat.
The mode’s real depth is that it never lets you separate the two decisions. Your fleet sets your artifact pool, your artifact pool sets the hull your cap should be full of, and the wave you are standing in decides whether you can afford to go and get the crates that would complete the chain. Commit in area one, capture in area two, and spend it in area three.