Homeworld: Cataclysm

Sounds of home.

The sound in HW:C is as good as HW and as different as it needs to be. The flowing orchestral pieces of music have been replaced with more modern selections. They do not inspire, but instead ready you for battle. The voice acting is perfect, right down to the sighs when you pull a ship out of battle. The Beast voices in Multiplayer are the same ones for the SomTaaw but with a nice “alien” reverb attached. The Beast voices kind of reminded me of the Martians in the War of the Worlds game from a couple of years ago…this is a good thing. The satisfied cry of, “Now we have more resources” is chilling.
The ambient sound effects are spectacular, and it is worth hitching a ride on a fighter during combat to hear just how good they are. A 3D sound system is a must for full effect.
HW made strides in bringing sound to the forefront of game design, and HW:C continues the tradition.

Playing House

Gameplay is where HW:C really differentiates itself from HW. Lets take each section separately:

Interface

As I mentioned earlier, the interface has been revamped. The basic mouse control for map movement is the same (thankfully), but a few things have been added.
First up, you can set waypoints. This was a main complaint for HW, given its 3D nature. HW:C allows you to set 3 types of waypoints:
Linear - a set of points to an objective.
Circular - Three guesses. That’s correct…perfect for setting up scout missions and patrols.
End-to-End - the standard back and forth sentry march.

It may seem silly, but this feature alone changes the way you play the game. For the Hell of it, I sent a fairly large fleet on a 35-minute ‘long way around’ waypointed attack on an enemy in the MP once. The attack, when it finally came, was as much a surprise to me as it was my opponent.

The ability to right-click on a unit to get a list of actions is still there, and still very useful. I would advise any serious player to learn the keyboard shortcut, but the right-click is nice in those quiet moments.

Units

There are 59 different units in the game, and only a few are familiar. I will not list them all here; I refuse to rewrite the manual, as I don’t get paid by the word. However, there are a few worth mentioning for their uniqueness:

Mimic - the Mimic uses holographic projectors to disguise itself as anything from an asteroid to an enemy ship. When they attack, they do a suicide run against their target.

Leech - Easily the most powerful unit in the game. This breeching pod is designed to slip past a ship's defenses and bond to its hull…from there, it can perform 3 essential tasks:
Spy - It will simply hang on and tell you where the enemy is at all times.
Leech - Draw off resources.
Vent - Drill a hole and vent the ship. I’ve used a minifleet of leeches to seriously cripple an incoming attack fleet. By the time the attacking fleet reached my Mining ship, it was down to 1/3 hp and an easy target.

Sentinel - A defense pod that can form a force field around a vessel or form a wall to shield from a specific direction.

Hive Drone Frigate - Similar to the Drone frigate in HW, but these little darlin’s will swarm a target and demolish it post-haste.

Ramming Frigate - This is the second-best unit in the game. This hardy monster is designed to ram a unit and push it out of the way. Its use against capital ships is obvious, and its ability to take out fighters is becoming legendary.

There are a few more with note, but have fun and discover them yourselves.

Another problem in HW was that the Mothership was pretty much defenceless, with no real weapon to draw upon; all that has changed in HW:C. The Mining Ship can develop a Siege Cannon. This big-ass weapon has a nasty recharge time and a nastier damage radius. To fire, you let it charge then pick a spot on the map. The ship will orient itself into firing position and let loose with a huge bolt of energy (I think the developers watched way too much Anime) that explodes when it reaches your target area. The further away the target area, the lower the damage. This is a great weapon to soften up a target or just wipe out a few workers.
On the other side, the Beast has a weapon that infects enemy ships and takes them over. This is how it gets new technology -- infect a ship, retire and reverse engineer.

Units can also be upgraded as new technologies are researched. You start with simple workers that can mine. Research, repair, and salvage, and then upgrade your workers to act as repair and salvage corvettes. Armor can be upgraded, new weapons added, force fields strengthened. This means less planned obsolescence.

The final thing that has changed with the units is the addition of Support Units. Your Command ship (mining ship) can only support a certain number of ships. To be able to build more ships, you have to build Support Modules. This means you may have Resource Units out the wazoo, but if you can’t support the ships, you cannot build any more. There is also a limited number of Support Modules a ship can carry, so the fleet has a limit to its size. Really want to build that Dreadnought? Then what are you willing to retire to free up support? Fleet management reaches a new level, and I love it. Capital ships have become a little more rare and a hell of a lot more valuable. In HW, I would not think twice to throw away 10 Ion Frigates in a probe attack…in HW:C, that would be suicidal.

The build menu has not changed, with the exception of the support bar telling you how many more ships you can support.

More on this topic and final thoughts and rating

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