New Features

Cataclysm includes some new features that were absent in Homeworld that I and others that I know had wished were available in the original game. The first of these, which I think was really needed in Homeworld, is time compression. In the original Homeworld, sending your ships from one side of the sector to the other could be a very tedious and boring endeavor, especially if it included slow moving capital ships. Basically, set their destination, pick up a good book, and read for 5-10 minutes as they plod along. Well, no more of that! Cataclysm includes the ability to accelerate the game speed to up to eight times, enough to get even the slowest of ships across the sector in mere seconds. This is especially useful at the end of any mission when your workers are harvesting the remaining resources in the sector (harvesting every last scrap of resources in each mission is very important). Give your workers the harvest command, crank up the speed, and watch as the entire sector is scrubbed clean in under a minute. One word of caution…the time compression feature does not include a safety switch that automatically turns off time compression upon encountering an enemy. Several times I used the time compression to speed up a mission, only to suddenly hear that my ships were under attack. In the time it took me to hear the warning and turn off the time compression, half my fleet had been wasted by wandering through a minefield. I think the absence of a safety shut off feature was a bit of an oversight, but nevertheless, the time compression is still very much an appreciated feature. Note that, for obvious reasons, time compression is not available in multiplayer games.

Another feature that I felt was a great improvement is the ability to move the mother ship. Unlike the original Homeworld mothership, the Somtaaw mothership is completely under your control, and can be moved to any location in the sector during any mission. I found this to be a great addition, because now the mothership could be moved out of harms way (anyone remember the mission in Homeworld with the rather large asteroid on a collision course with your stationary mothership?). On the flip side, I also found the mothership to be very useful in battle, being very effective in an anti-fighter role. It is also capable of taking a huge amount of damage, often drawing off enemy fire from my weaker ships while they were engaged in battle. Of course, I don't recommend this strategy in every situation, but it certainly was nice to have the option.

Cataclysm also sports a wide variety of new ship types, all of which I won't detail here. However, I would like to make note of two of these in particular. The new Worker ships now provide resource harvesting, ship repair, and salvaging in one nice little package. This makes it simple to provide your fleet with all three essential functions without building vast numbers of three types of support ships. Also, the new Mimic class ships are a very nice addition to the fleet. Mimics, as the name suggests, are able to project a holographic image around themselves. This provides you with some very useful tactics. Mimics disguised as enemy ships or asteroids can spy on enemy activity without detection (usually). Or if you prefer, Mimics can disguise themselves as friendly ships, making you fleet seem much more powerful than it actually is. Two Mimics can link together allowing them to mimic larger ships. While the Mimic class ships have no weapons per se, they carry an explosive payload that detonates on contact with another ship, making them very deadly for kamikaze attacks on enemy capital ships.

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