I know fans (me included) have been clamoring for a taste of the Tyranids ever since the original. Is it cool to finally see them on the field?

Seeing Tyranids come to life is a dream come true for the team. We’ve wanted to do this for years, and with the Essence Engine, we finally felt like we had the tools to do it.

A few readers asked how suppression fire works. Can you give us the lowdown on that?

Certain rapid-fire weapons in the game have the ability to suppress units in their field of fire. A suppressed unit crouches to protect himself, and moves very slowly. A suppressed unit also fires his weapon less, so he does very little damage in return. But suppression weapons have a setup time, and have a limited field of fire. This means that suppression weapons are very strong from the direction they’re facing, but can be neutralized if attacked from behind or from the sides.

How does the new levelling system work and what can you do with those levels--are you simply being informed that your Hero has gained them and is thus getting stronger?

Depends on whether you’re talking about single player or multiplayer. In single player you get very detailed information on your stat increases each time you level up. You also get to distribute points to attributes like ranged combat, melee combat, health and will. In multiplayer we simplified the system because we didn’t want to slow down the pace of the action. You get stat increases to health and damage, but that’s the extent of it. We didn’t think popping up a character information screen in the middle of an MP match was ideal. ;)

Before we let you go, in your view, what is the most challenging race or hero type to play with? I know this is all personal opinion – but which one takes the most finesse or planning to succeed?

I’d say the Kommando probably takes the most finesse to play. He relies on infiltration to survive, and has to surprise opponents to get the advantage. You also have to be careful how you use his energy when infiltrating (you need to make sure you have enough energy for your ambush abilities). But the payoff is huge when you get it right!

We'd like to thank Jonny for taking the time to chat with us as he's a pretty busy fellow at the moment. We'll have a review for Dawn of War II soon -- and you can get a copy when it drops on February 17th.

Questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you .