Please help me understand the story

[Lupercal]

The campaign has left me with a lot of questions, possibly due to missing out on some details. It resulted in the below ramblings, so if you bother reading through at least a handful, you have my thanks. I tried separating them into points, each should contain some context and a few questions. There might be some repetition due to how certain concepts are tied together.
If you did notice the answer to any of my questions please share them in the comments. Also some additional information where it is explained in the story (mission, which cutscene, who says the line) would be immensely helpful.

At the start things picks up some time (a few decades at most, assuming Hiigarans age as we do) after the events of Homeworld 2.

1. Why was the mothership built planetside and underground? Shouldn't they be constructed in space?

2. After that we are told Imogen S'jet designed synthetic hyperspace cores. Next we are told she is the only navigator for the ship. Why would she be the only navigator of the ship? It is not clear to me what she meant by calling the synthetic cores perfect, but maybe she is just proud of her design. However, if she designed "synthetic cores", can the Hiigarans build more of them? if yes, why haven't they?

3. We are then told that Karan S'jet took another mothership and all 3 cores from the previous game to the "Anomaly" on a mission to stop it.
Why didn't Karan take the Sajuuk and the dreadnaught from Homeworld ? If those are somehow unavailable, and given the value of the hyperspace cores, why only take one mothership/fleet and not multiple? Are Hiigarans strapped for RUs? As for the cores, apparently there is (or was, until the design of the synthetic ones) only 3 of them in the entire galaxy, so they are valuable and you wouldn't want to lose them. Why not take 3 motherships, one with each core?

4. We are told that Imogen S'jet is a granddaughter of Karan. Why must Imogen be a relative to Karan and not just another member of the kith S'jet? Is the ability to navigate a ship through hyperspace hereditary?

5. For clarity, a hyperspace fissure is what I call those rectangular openings that swallow a ship into hyperspace or spit them out into realspace.
We are then told about an unfolding crisis. What I assume to be Hiigaran planets are under attack. Those planets are adjacent to the "anomaly" region. In the cutscene it appears that some evil force is using hyperspace as a weapon - hyperspace fissures open around those planets and what appear to be gigabeams of megadeath rain hellfire at the planets. I'm not sure what those beams are, they seem slow moving, reminding me of gigantic waterfalls or an industrial quantity of infernals from Warcraft 3 being getting spammed. Where are the Hiigaran ships and defenses? Other than sending a mothership on a quest, what are the Hiigarans doing about the threat?

6. Why do the Hiigarans not use any sort of hyperspace inhibitors for planetary defense, or any defense for that matter? It wasn't arcane technology and it was produced en masse in previous games. Do they no longer work or don't work against this hostile force? It seems the existence of such technology is forgotten just like the Bridge of Sighs from H1 or Gehenna asteroid fields from H2. They came both in unit and module flavor. What happened to them?

7. Via dialogue it is summarized that the enemy has weaponized the hyperspace. A bit of an obvious declaration, but it begs the question - has noone else thought about using hyperspace offensively before? Naturally not everyone has giant gigabeams of megadeath, but nearly all spacefaring factions we know of use hyperspace to some extent. In the dialogue it seems almost like a surprise. I assume noone else in the galaxy thought about staying in hyperspace, opening fissure into normal space, shooting from there, and then close the opening/fissure to avoid retaliation. Its almost as if it wasn't thing before because it would cause big issues with having ships and battles in space and not just hyperspace beaming your enemies into oblivion.

8. Hiigaran command has determined that the entire galactic civilization will collapse. Does this mean every civilization is being attacked? Or is there only the Hiigaran civilization who controls everything? How quickly are we losing ground and planets? If the enemy force can open a gate anywhere in the galaxy and blast anything with enough force that obliterates planets, what will a few puny fleets of ours achieve? Surely the enemy would be even more powerful on their own turf (unless hyperspace has different rules for time and space)? Can the hostiles use this power to defend themselves and just open a gate on top of their enemies, wherever they might be, and send them wherever? As we find out later in the campaign, they seem to be perfectly able to use this power within the anomaly. They throw a planet at another one to put sand and rocks in our eyes, the absolute villains. Why not throw a planet >at< our fleet? Why not use the hyperspace gigabeams of hyperdeath against our fleet? Did they forget they can do that?

9, What are the limitations of those hyperspace powers the antagonist has?

10. Why are Hiigarans going into the Anomaly and not trying to shut down the gate network, or better yet - why not both? Send some ships in to figure things out and at the same time cut off threatened gates to protect your home(world). Surely they would still have access to the Eye of Aarran, isn't that the nexus/control point of the network? If no such control point exists, why not disable, shut down or destroy the gates that are adjacent to the anomaly and be done with it? Balcora gate was somehow disabled by pulling out those 3 plugs, why not disable the other gates in similar fashion?

11. After the scenes showing planets getting torched, we are then treated to a closeup of Karan's face with her face scrunched. What liquid do you think she is floating in? Where do you think the bubbles come from? Is there a reason nobody visits her in her chamber and she is locked behind blast doors?

12. We are told Karan's fleet disappeared and it wasn't clear if they completed the mission, but the anomaly stopped spreading, until now. Therefore, to solve this issue, Hiigarans came up with the most desperate plan yet.
The entirety of the Hiigaran forces decide to resolve this crisis by sending >one< mothership. Not only is it only >one< mothership (seriously this one is apparently the 15th, where are all the others?), but it isn't even complete. It can move and jump just fine, it even has badass CIWS/phalanx guns on RAILS, but part of its production capability is in another system. It seems to me the ship was gimped to facilitate the rags to riches start similar to previous games. Except in this one there is no in story reason or explanation for that. Hiigarans had a lot of time and resources to have dozens of these things. At no point were we told that they demilitarized and turned space ships into ploughshares. In H3 Hiigarans are a battle harded and experienced space faring race with a domain spanning what seem to be many solar systems. They should not be this underprepared.
They are now facing a big threat that killed millions already. I don't recall anything to the effect of "tomorrow we are all dead, you guys got to NOW despite being unprepared". Did anyone declare anything about the urgency of the task (specifically the time constraints)? What is stopping the Hiigarans from analysing the threat calmly, gathering more forces and preparing to solve this matter? Why is the best solution taking one unfinished mothership, slapping into it the apparently only 3 hyperspace cores you got left and sending it off into the void? if that failed, what was Hiigaran's command plan B?

13. What if this mothership goes missing just like the last one? What will a mothership with less veteran navigator, less production capabilities and less firepower (Karan's mothership at least had a mini dreadnaught/Sajuuk beam) achieve what its superior predecessor could not? Isn't the threat of the anomaly greater than it was before?

14. So, what we know thus far about the opposing force is that they have unparalleled control of the hyperspace and can open hyperspace fissures seemingly anywhere they want and blast their enemies through those fissures with gigantic beams of energy. We don't know how many of them there is, can they actually be defeated via conventional means, do they inhabit and planets or ships, whether they even reside in realspace at all. They might be hyperspace creatures for all we know, kind of like the Beast was hinted to be. The few enemy ships that do jump next to the torched planet may have been just some mindless, expendable mooks (they actually are just that in the story) and not the actual source of the hyperspace attacks. Does the Hiigaran command expect a land war in space Asia? Are the motherships their swiss knives that fix all issues and deal with all kinds of threats?

15. Again, where are the Hiigaran battlefleets? They got nearly exterminated on 3 separate occassions, first by the Taiidan empire who exiled them to Kharak, then after leaving Kharak the Taiidans came back to put them down for leaving the planet, and the third time by the Vaygr (the end of H2 is only remembered as opening the eye of Aarran. No mention of spider-looking missile spamming fabricators. I always wondered where Makaan got them from, guess we will never find out. Is the defense of the entire Hiigaran civilization dependent on a single mothership? What of other civilizations, don't they have a stake in what seems to be an existential threat for everyone? Yet again, what happened to Sajuuk and the dreadnaught? Are they in a museum or a temple? Sajuuk was essentially their god, why after recovering the ship noone cares about it?

16. Another series of question, since Imogen designed synthetic cores and they are "perfect" - what is stopping the Hiigarans from making more? Supposing they ran out of RUs or don't have the time (which I don't recall ever being stated to be the case in the story) and there is only 3 synthetic cores, why again put them all in one mothership? Why not send 3 motherships, each with one core? One core per ship worked just fine in H1 and H2.
On another note, why can't any of my ships hyperspace jump mid mission but I see them do it in cutscenes and at the start of each mission just fine?

17. Where did the Antagonist come from? What exactly are they? How did they gain power, both over hyperspace and in terms of commanding seemingly endless legions of mooks? How does their power work exactly? Is it a mental power or a technology/device? It seems to be downright magic as they achieve something even the hyperspace cores cannot. How are they alive for so long as they claim? How come despite being alive for so long we never heard about them before? How are they indoctrinating/mind controlling the Incarnates (the name of the underlings and the opposing force of ships we actually shoot at)? Why didn't we get more information about the captured crew of incarnate frigates and who they were, where they came from? How is it possible that navigators now possess the power to seemingly telepathically communicate with each other, when it wasn't a thing in previous games?

18. Once more about the Antagonist and their abilities. In the opening sequence we are shown how they obliterate entire planets with their powers. We can assume their full breadth is not being used on our fleet throughout the campaign as, due to us being a tiny force, they can't pinpoint our location and the mooks are too slow to report on fighting us on their home turf. Where noone else dares or even can fight them... Anyway, in the final showdown we are literally at the Antagonist's doorstep. They can look out the window and see the player mothership. Why not open the hyperspace fissures there and blast Hiigarans with gigabeams of megadeath? Why not open the fissures and cut the motherships? If motherships are immune because they are equipped with hyperspace cores, surely you could wipe the escort vessels and then use conventional forces to destroy the mothership? By themselves they get blown up by just a few torpedo turrets. Why is the antagonist all of a sudden only using her power to make short jumps with their big space pizza slice of doom ship like we could with almost any of our ships in the previous games? Yet again, why can't hiigarans use short hyperspace jumps in this game? Why doesn't the Antagonist hyperspace in more vessels to support the big space pizza slice of doom? Why not jump yourself to safety? Why not bring in your remaining legions and throw them at the Hiigarans at the same time? Why do so many of them just hang out in random places on the map and not continuously harass the Hiigarans?

19. Another thing about hyperspace. There are two scenes, one during the mission to recover the production module and the latter during the penultimate mission.
In the former we get to fight what is described as an outdated pirate carrier. No cutting edge technology, bog standard carrier. As it hyperspaces into the playing field, its exit coordinates will make it clip with an asteroid, seemingly fusing it with the rock. I thought it was a glitch in the cutscene, but no, it was deliberate design choice by people at BBI. The hyperspace fissure cut a perfect rectangular shape within the rock, allowing the ship to remain there without colliding with another object. Its kind of like in blender where you put one box in another object and remove all colliding vertices. In simpler terms it looks like taking a bite out of an apple or taking a spoonful out of an icecream cup. If a ship leaves hyperspace where another object is, anything colliding with the fissure that isn't the hyperspacing ship gets either annihilated or possibly moved to hyperspace.
This is immediately lampshaded by a line from Imogen who says something along the lines of "what that carrier did to the asteroid - that should have been impossible". In following cutscenes it is stated that possibly the Antagonist was outfitting these pirates to better fight the Hiigarans, including this "impossible" hyperspace tech.
So: why not hyperspace into the mothership? What's stopping them? If the mothership is immune due to the cores, why not destroy the escorts?
During later dialogue the hiigarans suspect the Incarnates gave the pirates the "impossible" hyperspace tech. If that is the case, why aren't the Incarnates using the hyperspace offensively? They can hyperspace into the fight with no issues. Do they have a code of honor that prohibits use of hyperspace in this way?

This exact same interaction with terrain is later repeated in a cutscene by the player mothership in the penultimate mission. The mothership cuts a huge chunk of a superstructure. I missed the part explaining how they can do a thing they thought impossible now, but lets give them that - lets say they somehow gained some comparable control of hyperspace as the Antagonist do.
So: why can't we use this ourselves to kill the enemy ships? If it "deletes" whatever you are jumping to, why not use it to safely "hide" in asteroids and superstructures?

20. My questions about the ending: why not use conventional means to resolve the conflict? You have the upper hand in that mission by blowing up the space pizza slice of doom, why not just, I don't know, shoot the antagonist? Blowing up the Gaalsien worked. Exploding the Taiidan Emperor worked. Kuun-Lan going beast mode on the Beast and eradicating it worked. Blowing up Makaan worked. Simple, conventional means worked. Why must we go with this reconciliation/sacrifice approach in this one? What is stopping the Hiigarans from winning conventionally?

[jacewka]

just consume the product man, don't think about it too much and get excited for another product

[HeathenSW]

I also wonder why is it desert in 1. Hiigara is not a desert planet.

Wiki for example:
"Whereas Kharak is desolate and barren, Hiigara is a lush paradise. As such it is easy to imagine why the Exiles, as their civilization devolved on the desert wasteland of Kharak, came to see Hiigara as heaven, rather than as an actual world.

This appears to be even lusher than most other worlds, during which the forests of Hiigara have expanded along with the tropics. Most of the world's agriculture is supported by seasonal monsoons and rich volcanic soil."

https://homeworld.fandom.com/wiki/Hiigara

[Lupercal]

Originally posted by HeathenSW:

I also wonder why is it desert in 1. Hiigara is not a desert planet.

Wiki for example:
"Whereas Kharak is desolate and barren, Hiigara is a lush paradise. As such it is easy to imagine why the Exiles, as their civilization devolved on the desert wasteland of Kharak, came to see Hiigara as heaven, rather than as an actual world.

This appears to be even lusher than most other worlds, during which the forests of Hiigara have expanded along with the tropics. Most of the world's agriculture is supported by seasonal monsoons and rich volcanic soil."

https://homeworld.fandom.com/wiki/Hiigara

I assumed it wasn't Hiigara at all, just yet another planet under Hiigaran control. I don't think there was a title card showing what planet it is or dialogue explaining where the launch is taking place. However, I may have simply missed it.

[Ceoran]

Just answering to the parts where my impression differs from yours.

2. Story says something that she was supposed to train other people as Navigators but then crisis started. Lack-of-time story arc. Basically the same as the rushed start in HW1.

3. The way I perceived it, it still takes decades to build a single mothership so they are simply short of those.

4. It's more of a "my father was a farmer, I will be a farmer and my children will be farmers" thing. Except that they seemingly excell at science and not farming, probably talking about it all day long and being unable to communicate it properly to anyone else because they suck at teaching (which was supposed to be imogen's job). At least I know a few RL examples that would match perfectly to that.

5. The ingame Homeworld-history movie (via main menu) implies that they are considering themselves in an era of peace after the events of HW2 and are now taken by surprise. This is quite stretched to be fair but matches my picture of most politicians over the last years: Keep your eyes shut for bad stuff around you and pretend all is good.

6. as this is full of spoilers anyways I'll respond with spoilers to this one: A massive Hyperspace Inhibitor construct was only available around the "Homeworld System" in HW1. In HW3 you can see the queen sending asteroids through hyperspace. She should release them just outside of the inhibitors en masse and it wouldn't help. So it makes them irrelevant storywise but admittedly would have added some nostalgic flavour to just add a sentence like that. Also gameplay-wise I was never a fan of the inhibitors. They just seemed like an excuse to prolong the campaign but delaying the showdown or just slowly travelling through open space.

7. on weaponizing hyperspace: I think your take is true. Noone else ever though about it. Also see 5. they thought themselves in an era of piece. Imogen at some point even says something like "this shouldn't be possible".

8. & 9. The story tells that the anomaly is developing/spreading slowly over years, so there seems to be a limit in capabilities that is not further specified. Why not throw a planet at the fleet? Because the villain wouldn't risk the loss of the cores.
Follow-Up question: I haven't lost a campaign mission, but I assume if you do the MS explodes. If yes that should be altered to shooting it incapable and capturing it - at least for the later missions.

10. If Hiigarans are remotely human (which I think they are) they wouldn't be willing to give up on their prosperity, which is strongly boostered by the gate network. Rather tell yourself that war is far away and not a threat for you - until it is too late to escape.

11. That cutscene when she was found I actually thought she was dead. Could use some rework. The blast door itself does make sense as an extra shielding for your central control unit.

12. that's two questions in one.
"It seems to me the ship was gimped to facilitate the rags to riches start similar to previous games. Except in this one there is no in story reason or explanation for that."
-> yep, pretty sure that was the case. It's a classic singleplayer campaign "issue" that you need to built up feature/unit/building availability to not put too much on new players. Attempted Side-effect probably to create some nostalgy-vibes.

"They are now facing a big threat that killed millions already. I don't recall anything to the effect of "tomorrow we are all dead, you guys got to NOW despite being unprepared". Did anyone declare anything about the urgency of the task (specifically the time constraints)?"
--> There was in the first mission but it was not transported very well. Also I had the impression that the mothership is still unique and not "ship-of-the-line". So for me they didn't have any other choice.

13. See 12. To me they didn't seem to have a choice because they only had this one MS just finished (and not multiple as you perceived it)

14. I would rather say the politicians panicced and all they could think of was "it worked twice already, they will make it again!" - but of course it all is only serving the purpose to get the classic Homeworld mothership + tiny fleet setting justified.

15. Most likely Gameplay reasons. It wouldn't be Homeworld if you would start the campaign with a huge fleet and then contact to the homeworld seems to be lost in an early mission already. Maybe Hiigara was actually nuked in betweeen.

16. see 12. not enough time.

18. The hyperspace weapons would probably destroy the cores, at least the cutscene or dialogue hints out that cores will not be risked by the queen. That mission would benefit if there was a short section about shutting down their communications though.

19. Again: no risking the core in the late campaign. Aside from that no explanation is given. Going to earlier games however destruction of the mothership would give off a large blast, so jumping right into it is suicide, even with advanced hyperspace tech. Also it should be pretty disorieting to jump into the middle of an enemy fleet and thus risky. But that's just giving reason and not taken from any story.

"This exact same interaction with terrain is later repeated in a cutscene by the player mothership in the penultimate mission. The mothership cuts a huge chunk of a superstructure. I missed the part explaining how they can do a thing they thought impossible now, but lets give them that - lets say they somehow gained some comparable control of hyperspace as the Antagonist do."
--> actually I'm still answering to that. There was a dialog line in the "growing"-scene somewhere along "you are learning fast". In hindsight that can explain it but a straight and simple "I've copied a few tricks from the queen" would have been better. But using that was weird to begin with for the same reason as to why not teleport into enemies: the superstructure could have exploded and the blast crippled the mothership.

20. Assumption: "We remove all cores and the structure so noone ever can do this again. Not even leaving debris behind that could be analyzed" but again not transported very well.

[BoyKisserUWU]

17. This connection of the navigators, as I understand it, works only in hyperspace. Some kind of subconscious limbo.


My assumptions

[Illeos]

I think these are all really great questions. Most of them I had myself when finishing the game. I think it takes too many assumptions and lay's them on the player. I doubt we will ever get any kind of closure on the story/lore or anything else on the subject.

[painkiller074]

really there should be only 3 questions:
why the story suk so bad
who wrote this
how can we travel back in time and liquidate him/she/they/it

[A.NooB]

Originally posted by painkiller074:

really there should be only 3 questions:
why the story suk so bad
who wrote this
how can we travel back in time and stop it

Could you rephrase before the thread gets closed too?

[Shrike]

Originally posted by HeathenSW:

I also wonder why is it desert in 1. Hiigara is not a desert planet.

Wiki for example:
"Whereas Kharak is desolate and barren, Hiigara is a lush paradise. As such it is easy to imagine why the Exiles, as their civilization devolved on the desert wasteland of Kharak, came to see Hiigara as heaven, rather than as an actual world.

This appears to be even lusher than most other worlds, during which the forests of Hiigara have expanded along with the tropics. Most of the world's agriculture is supported by seasonal monsoons and rich volcanic soil."

https://homeworld.fandom.com/wiki/Hiigara

Probably an easier assumption is simply that they chose to build it in a region of Hiigara that's dry and arid.

An Earthlike planet like Hiigara (which may actually literally be Earth) has varied biomes. Even if a lot of the planet is extremely nice and fertile there are probably regions of minimal agricultural productivity and less than comfortable weather. It would make sense to build your Area 51 out there, far from anyone and anything. This would go double given that unless the Hiigarans started mass cloning or having enormous families their global population would still be quite small. You could easily justify entire continents never mind smaller regions having a population of 0.

[DamnThrill]

Omg, so many very good questions. I love you Lupercal. The story in this game is one big hole.

[ForrestFox]

Originally posted by Lupercal:

1. Why was the mothership built planetside and underground? Shouldn't they be constructed in space?

Just my theory, but building in gravity is probably easier than in zero gravity.
Also, after homeworld 1 and 2 they have probably fine tuned the motherships to a degree they're now able to land and launch from planets. (Also, first ship in Homeworld 1 was probably built in space just in case it would explode, remember they used untested technologies) :)

[Lindy Bomber]

To paraphrase Ryan George ("Pitch meetings" you tube channel) "Because I need the game to happen"

[Crypto Gamer]

Very good questions.

And yes many plot holes campaign needed to be longer and story better explained.

Also strange that many tech went away like defensive field frigates and HW2 you even captured progetinor movers.

I think they could have expanded on HW2 with a different approach.

And Mothership starting small should have a better reason.

In HW1 you supposed to me someone but they got killed by raiders,then you went back and the homewolrd got nuked so player has a small fleet makes sense.

In HW2 you are already under attack and forced to flee with semi functional mothership.
Missions 2 helps you get some more and in Missions 3 shipyard helps to finish repairs.
So small fleet size makes sense.

In Cataclysm you are a mining vessel who happened to be at a bad place and later accidently awakened the beast.So small fleet starting fleet makes sense.

In HW3 they send out mothership with high value cores with extremely barebones escort........Why not send a strong millitary force.

Or you supposed to meet with escort at location X but they got killed and there is a better reason for small starting fleet then"single player logic".

[Ceoran]

Originally posted by A.NooB:

Originally posted by Ceoran:

3. The way I perceived it, it still takes decades to build a single mothership so they are simply short of those.

Have you seen the structures in this game? why would it take longer? The structures you are fighting in / around are like thousands of motherships in size and even when the mothership needs a special ingredient, why is there no fleet?

Of course, can't miss them. Did you get the part that most of them are progenitor and not Hiigaran?

[Kill'o'gor]

Originally posted by Ceoran:

Just answering to the parts where my impression differs from yours.

2. Story says something that she was supposed to train other people as Navigators but then crisis started. Lack-of-time story arc. Basically the same as the rushed start in HW1.

3. The way I perceived it, it still takes decades to build a single mothership so they are simply short of those.

4. It's more of a "my father was a farmer, I will be a farmer and my children will be farmers" thing. Except that they seemingly excell at science and not farming, probably talking about it all day long and being unable to communicate it properly to anyone else because they suck at teaching (which was supposed to be imogen's job). At least I know a few RL examples that would match perfectly to that.

5. The ingame Homeworld-history movie (via main menu) implies that they are considering themselves in an era of peace after the events of HW2 and are now taken by surprise. This is quite stretched to be fair but matches my picture of most politicians over the last years: Keep your eyes shut for bad stuff around you and pretend all is good.

6. as this is full of spoilers anyways I'll respond with spoilers to this one: A massive Hyperspace Inhibitor construct was only available around the "Homeworld System" in HW1. In HW3 you can see the queen sending asteroids through hyperspace. She should release them just outside of the inhibitors en masse and it wouldn't help. So it makes them irrelevant storywise but admittedly would have added some nostalgic flavour to just add a sentence like that. Also gameplay-wise I was never a fan of the inhibitors. They just seemed like an excuse to prolong the campaign but delaying the showdown or just slowly travelling through open space.

7. on weaponizing hyperspace: I think your take is true. Noone else ever though about it. Also see 5. they thought themselves in an era of piece. Imogen at some point even says something like "this shouldn't be possible".

8. & 9. The story tells that the anomaly is developing/spreading slowly over years, so there seems to be a limit in capabilities that is not further specified. Why not throw a planet at the fleet? Because the villain wouldn't risk the loss of the cores.
Follow-Up question: I haven't lost a campaign mission, but I assume if you do the MS explodes. If yes that should be altered to shooting it incapable and capturing it - at least for the later missions.

10. If Hiigarans are remotely human (which I think they are) they wouldn't be willing to give up on their prosperity, which is strongly boostered by the gate network. Rather tell yourself that war is far away and not a threat for you - until it is too late to escape.

11. That cutscene when she was found I actually thought she was dead. Could use some rework. The blast door itself does make sense as an extra shielding for your central control unit.

12. that's two questions in one.
"It seems to me the ship was gimped to facilitate the rags to riches start similar to previous games. Except in this one there is no in story reason or explanation for that."
-> yep, pretty sure that was the case. It's a classic singleplayer campaign "issue" that you need to built up feature/unit/building availability to not put too much on new players. Attempted Side-effect probably to create some nostalgy-vibes.

"They are now facing a big threat that killed millions already. I don't recall anything to the effect of "tomorrow we are all dead, you guys got to NOW despite being unprepared". Did anyone declare anything about the urgency of the task (specifically the time constraints)?"
--> There was in the first mission but it was not transported very well. Also I had the impression that the mothership is still unique and not "ship-of-the-line". So for me they didn't have any other choice.

13. See 12. To me they didn't seem to have a choice because they only had this one MS just finished (and not multiple as you perceived it)

14. I would rather say the politicians panicced and all they could think of was "it worked twice already, they will make it again!" - but of course it all is only serving the purpose to get the classic Homeworld mothership + tiny fleet setting justified.

15. Most likely Gameplay reasons. It wouldn't be Homeworld if you would start the campaign with a huge fleet and then contact to the homeworld seems to be lost in an early mission already. Maybe Hiigara was actually nuked in betweeen.

16. see 12. not enough time.

18. The hyperspace weapons would probably destroy the cores, at least the cutscene or dialogue hints out that cores will not be risked by the queen. That mission would benefit if there was a short section about shutting down their communications though.

19. Again: no risking the core in the late campaign. Aside from that no explanation is given. Going to earlier games however destruction of the mothership would give off a large blast, so jumping right into it is suicide, even with advanced hyperspace tech. Also it should be pretty disorieting to jump into the middle of an enemy fleet and thus risky. But that's just giving reason and not taken from any story.

"This exact same interaction with terrain is later repeated in a cutscene by the player mothership in the penultimate mission. The mothership cuts a huge chunk of a superstructure. I missed the part explaining how they can do a thing they thought impossible now, but lets give them that - lets say they somehow gained some comparable control of hyperspace as the Antagonist do."
--> actually I'm still answering to that. There was a dialog line in the "growing"-scene somewhere along "you are learning fast". In hindsight that can explain it but a straight and simple "I've copied a few tricks from the queen" would have been better. But using that was weird to begin with for the same reason as to why not teleport into enemies: the superstructure could have exploded and the blast crippled the mothership.

20. Assumption: "We remove all cores and the structure so noone ever can do this again. Not even leaving debris behind that could be analyzed" but again not transported very well.

aaand we have it boyz, the fanboy with private profile try to saving the colossal pile of ♥♥♥♥ about the story and his illogicity that op has highlighted. All is ok folks, dont ask, throw ur brain into trashbin and buy the product. All is fine here.
ROTFL