I have to say I'm surprised about how that turned out. I'm always sceptical when it comes to these kinds of reboots, especially when a completely different developer handles it, but how much they messed it up is still surprising.
Personally I ended up playing Deserts of Kharak much later. I wanted to give the old Homeworlds a try as well, but didn't get along with the first game at all. Something about the controls and the random behaviour of the AI. I'm not sure how much of this is down to the Remasters though.
In any case I enjoyed DoK. I didn't finish the campaign as per usual with most RTS', but instead ended up putting a good amount of time into skirmish mode. I did appreciate the story presentation, but I often don't get along well with the design of RTS-campaigns. The AI is good. It may rely on certain tricks that can be figured out, but even then it still felt quite solid. It's aesthetically quite impressive and has pretty good atmosphere for an RTS. The comms chatter helped with that as well and the wreckage left behind after battle and the physics involved were a nice touch. Nights were especially nice with the headlights on. Different strategies and unit compositions worked well in both 1v1 and 2v2. One of the few games where I actually just went back and watched some of my replays.