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GENERAL

Q: Is Homeworld: Cataclysm an add-on or a sequel to Homeworld?
A: Homeworld: Cataclysm is not an add-on pack. It's a stand-alone product with many new features, all-new ships and an all-new plot. Multiplayer is especially interesting, as you can play a human faction or an ancient alien terror that has very different tactical options.

Q: When will Homeworld: Cataclysm be released?
A: The game will launch worldwide September 1, 2000.

Q: Will there be a Homeworld: Cataclysm beta test?
A: No.

PLOT

Q: When does Homeworld: Cataclysm take place?
A: Fifteen years after the events in the original Homeworld game. The remnants of the Imperialist Taiidani and their Turanic Raider allies have been growing in strength and harrying the Homeworlders (referred to as the "Hiigarans" in the game, after their new home planet, Hiigara), but a far greater, universal threat is about to emerge.

Q: Who are the main characters? Whom do I play?
A: In the single-player campaign, you play Kiith Somtaaw, a mining faction that lost most of its members and political influence when their foster planet, Kharak, was destroyed by the Taiidani. When you answer a distress call to repel a group of Turanic Raiders, you run into an evil alien entity that intimidates even the powerful Bentusi.

Q: What ships do the Somtaaw have?
A: Many new ships, including ships that can mimic other ships using a holo-projection system, and the new Leech drone ships that clamp onto enemy vessels, exposing them to your radar, breaching their plasma systems or dismantling them for parts.

DESIGN

Q: How will the gameplay differ in Homeworld: Cataclysm?
A: Homeworld: Cataclysm introduces several new features, including fog of war, a time-acceleration feature, a waypoint system, hyperspace slipgates and an array of new ship technologies like the infection beam of the Beast entity. Fog of war will limit visibility to the sensor range of your ships, but with waypoints, you can easily set up patrol routes. Hyperspace teleportation points called slipgates allow you to jump units between fixed locations without the normal Resource Unit expenditure of traveling through hyperspace. The infection beam allows the Beast to assimilate technologies unavailable to it at the start of play.

Q: How does the variable time-acceleration feature work?
A: With time acceleration, time can be made to elapse at up to eight times the normal rate, speeding up tasks such as resource gathering. Time acceleration is available only in single-player mode.

Q: What role do support units play?
A: Support units represent the overhead resources you have available to maintain ships above and beyond building them. Modules increase your number of support units and thereby allow you to increase the maximum number of ships in your fleet.

Q: What are the pink crystals?
A: Crystals are a new collectable resource unique to Cataclysm. Crystals are much more dense than asteroids or dust, and yield more resource units. They are also more difficult to harvest, and are highly volatile. Extreme care must be used when harvesting crystals.

Q: What new ship technologies and research trees will be available?
A: There are 18 new ships, and 25 new technologies. Both are detailed in the game manual.

Q: How do unit upgrades work?
A: When you select a ship that can be upgraded, it will display a solid yellow circle to the right of its health bar. Simply hit U to upgrade. Strike craft will dock to upgrade. Larger ships will upgrade in the field, where a tan progress bar will appear below their health bar.

Q: What happens to my ships once they become assimilated by the Beast?
The Beast can retire them, and thereby acquire their building technology.

Q: What can the Leeches do?
A: When instructed to leech, a Leech ship will clamp onto a target's hull. Once there, it can spy, vent or leech. Spying allows the owner of the leech to follow the host's movement. When "venting," the Leech slowly eats through the hull of the host ship until the host is destroyed. Leeching will slowly damage the host as the Leech gathers material from the host's hull; the Leech then returns the stolen material to the command vessel or nearest processor or carrier to convert it into RUs.

When in spy mode, Leeches rely on being invisible in sensor manager to cling to large ships without being seen. They provide you with a window into the activities of the enemy. Leeches are also great for targeting the Siege Cannon. To aim the cannon you need to see your target, but Recons tend to get noticed and destroyed, so a Leech is a spotter that isn't easy to find and destroy.

Q: Will processor ships be armed?
A: Yes. Processors are armed. They can also be outfitted for crystal harvesting and ship repairs.

Q: What is a slipgate?
A: Slipgates are fixed points, spaced far apart, that ships can instantly teleport between. Slipgates cannot be artificially created by the player. Slipgates are placed in certain levels by designers as a part of the terrain. Players can freely use slipgates, though opponents can easily see that vessels are moving through them. Players can still hyperspace around the multiplayer maps for an RU cost, as in Homeworld.

Q: Can there be more than one slipgate in a level?
A: Yes, they're easy to tell apart in sensors manager once you've traveled through them. Until you've gone through, however, you have no idea where a slip point leads to.

Q: What races will return from the original Homeworld?
A: Taiidani Imperialists, Turanic Raiders and the alien Bentusi all have a role in Cataclysm.

Q: What changes have been made to the classic Homeworld interface for Homeworld: Cataclysm?
A: In Cataclysm, you are able to issue commands via the sensors manager, set waypoints and issue different attack modes for capital ships. The displayed sensors range is more accurate, the right-click interface has been updated and the key-binding system is more flexible.

Q: How do the composite vehicles work?
A: The composite vehicles (Mimics and Acolytes) don't become "superships." When the proper tech has been researched, they can link up. This will have its pros (ACVs can EMP; Acolytes can't) and its cons (ACVs aren't as fast as Acolytes). They won't be invulnerable or anything like that. And yes, they can separate again.

Q: How does fog of war work?
A: Each ship has a sensor area, with two ships, the Recon and Sentinel, having a greater range than the rest of the fleet. There is a technology to upgrade — for example, a Recon's sensor range that not only increases the range at which it can see but also allows it to better spot covert ships like the Mimic, Leech and Cloaked Fighter (the squishy guys got their mitts on the CF, in case you were wondering).

Q: How many super capital ships can you build at a time?
A: You can only build one super capital ship at a time. Super capital ships, by the way, are built outside the command ship. If you order more than one built, then the construction will take place in the order in which you placed the build order.

MUSIC

Q: I enjoyed the music in Homeworld. Will Cataclysm have a similar sound?
A: Paul Ruskay, the musician behind Homeworld, has created a totally original soundtrack for Cataclysm alongside fellow Studio X composer Greg Sabitz. The music in Cataclysm has a much darker feel that Homeworld to suit the tone of the game.

EFFECTS

Q: What new effects have been added to the Homeworld engine?
A: Homeworld: Cataclysm features shockwave explosions, holographic projection effects, polygonal accurate collisions, shielding effects, new ship repairing effects, lens flares and dynamic Gouraud shading.

Q: Will ships appear damaged when hit, beyond venting flames?
A: Cataclysm doesn't have a damage decal system, but it uses a dynamic Gouraud shading system to indicate hull damage. The hull will darken when hit with weapons fire.

MULTIPLAYER

Q: What new features are introduced?
A: In multiplayer mode, it will be possible to use Taiidani, Kushan, Turanic Raider and Somtaaw ships simultaneously while playing as the Beast. The introduction of slipgates and meteor storms offers new twists.

Q: Will Cataclysm support a Random Map Generator?
A: The Homeworld engine will not support a random map system, so Cataclysm doesn't have a random map generator either, but it does have random start points in multiplayer missions, which makes it impractical to create maps weighted in favor of the game host.

Q: How many Races will there be in Multiplayer mode?
A: Two — the Beast and Kiith Somtaaw. Technically, the Somtaaw aren't a new race, as they're a Hiigaran kiith. We refer to them as a new fleet, and in multiplayer mode both fleets are very different. Players should have a lot of fun with them.

DEVELOPERS

Q: What's Barking Dog?
A: The staff of Vancouver-based Barking Dog Studios include veteran game developers from such projects as Homeworld, Half-Life, Counterstrike Beta 5, Power Play '96 and '98 and ESPN X-Games Pro-Boarder. Homeworld: Cataclysm is their first major project.