I just watched the "what you should be doing" video. I was commanding! Also not spending the resources very well late game; I think I was being vexed by Arc, Mac and medpack micro.
Profile -> Signature Settings -> Hide signatures always. Then you don't have to read this worthless text anymore.
The next few days are a good time for some of you terrible people* to blow the dust off your copy and level up.
Man, I swear this game scratches that itch of mine I long for in games (strategy, multiple classes/fighting styles, teamwork required, not being call of counterhalo-esque) that I loved so much in NS1 and TF2.
*for not playing, not intended as an insult to skill
I'll try to get on some soon.
I got really burned out in late jan/early feb and by the time I felt better about playing I was already deep into other things
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
I really like this game, but I am SOOO bad at it. Every time I play I seem to be going up against real pros. I am usually towards the bottom of the scoreboard. Being rather good at most shooters I play, this is kind of frustrating.
You've just got to get more familiar with the game. Map awareness is pretty key, as well as knowing what your priorities are. Also, when to shoot and when to cut your losses and run. It's not as much of a twitch game as a lot of other shooters. I've played enough TF2 that I can survive a situation that I flat out shouldn't be in, but that doesn't really fly in NS2.
And if you luck out and get a commander that really knows what he's doing, it can be a cakewalk!
There's also support roles you can slip into sometimes to be of use to your team. Gorge up a tech location/double res node, or grab a jetpack and welder to keep your exos alive. When you're on marines with 3 bases a relatively safe job is phasegate-hopping, welding stuff and fending off light base attacks. You can plant mines and watch the minimap to make sure that the aliens don't sneak in and kill a base. Usually any weapon you have is relatively safe as you can phase back and grab it when you die and can warn the commander to beacon if a base is getting a heavy attack. Plus you usually have armory support.
Profile -> Signature Settings -> Hide signatures always. Then you don't have to read this worthless text anymore.
I've been waiting to try this out, and after a few games earlier today I've picked up on it pretty well - except for commanding, which I'll probably never do since I suck at RTSes and prefer to be in the thick of the action anyway. I'm not sure if I'll actually pull the trigger on buying it yet; by the end of the weekend I should have a good idea of whether this will be something I'll stick with, but hopefully it'll be an enjoyable one.
Just tried this out, actually bought in the Xmas sale, but gave it a whirl since it was a free weekend and my brother could play with me. Had a lot of fun, got to play as an Onus and owned some Marines for about 10-15 minutes.
I played a bunch this weekend. Was interesting seeing matches with completely dysfunctional teams again. I am also enjoying the PAX updates from unknown worlds, at least the parts before it gets to the long interviews about random indie games.
Side note: when we spawn in Lockers as marines on Docking I will drop my rifle and pistol then stand under a shower head, and encourage my team to wash up before the match. If they don't drop their weapons I say "Don't bring those in here; they'll get rusty. You'll need them for the match."
Profile -> Signature Settings -> Hide signatures always. Then you don't have to read this worthless text anymore.
Oh man, it's so weird to be on the "know what I'm doing" side of things now.
During the weekend and over the past week, I've just had some bizarre experiences. I was on a marine team that rarely ventured outside the starting base, eventually moving to take a second nearby tech location around the time the aliens were getting the Onos. Eager fellows on the team insisted that we must have turrets in main base before moving on, and we of course have to have them in the second tech location now that we got it (and maybe that one other RT we have, too).
On the other hand, commanding marine teams during that weekend was actually kind of blissful. Maybe I got on a lucky server, but my team full of greenies and like two other dudes were totally happy to follow orders and curb-stomp a greenie alien team. My inexperienced, slow-clicking ass was joyfully celebrated as the "greatest commander ever."
Then I had the opposite experience yesterday commanding an alien team. I quickly launched out to 6 RTs, three additional tech points, rapid-dropped Celerity, created forward Shift bases, and none of it mattered because my poor aliens could not win a fight against a MAC. I think one guy got taken out by a Power Node. As the game drew to a close, I was scolded by the top-ranked guy on my team (he had a record of something like 4 - 18) for not having gone with Shade instead so they could ambush dudes with cloaking, and that's why we lost.
It's just so random.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Just tried to play this game for the first time. Seems... really difficult to actually get into. I barely killed anything while playing, but died a ton. Also had a very shitty stint as a commander in my second match. Which I realize was a terrible idea, but we went ten minutes without a commander and I got sick of waiting.
Probably doesn't help that there were quite a few people on the newbie server I was on that really had no business being there, since they weren't attempting to help people learn the game at all. My favorite being a dude that got over 40 kills and under ten deaths.
Yeah I'll sometimes join a green server if I don't see another good candidate around. I don't know that there's a generally accepted definition for a "rookie-friendly" server but I take it as a sign that you should be supportive of new players there. Keep in mind that it might not be fresh in everyone's mind that you're a new player, so they may tell you to do things you don't understand or assume you will do the right thing for the team. Reminding your team when you join that you're new may help people realize that not everyone knows how to counter an ARC train.
Profile -> Signature Settings -> Hide signatures always. Then you don't have to read this worthless text anymore.
Yeah, mentioned it a couple of times. Don't think anyone was too annoyed... well, aside from I when I was commanding. But I think my performance was entirely acceptable, particularly since I was like "Ok, no one else commanding? This is my second match. I mean, I'll do it if I need to. Anyone?" before hand.
Ya so I will not be renewing the server when it expires tomorrow just to let you know. I havn't really been playing much and people are just not using it. Has been fun.
So build 249 was just released, with a big LUA rework that by all accounts is a miracle patch for performance. People are reporting gains of 30+ FPS. I highly suggest giving it another shot if you were bummed about performance before.
Some of us still play on the TacticalGamer servers. The reserve slots can be harsh but if you visit the forums and sign the Primer thread(and read the rules) you can get higher priority:
Recent (As @ 14 June):
- drifters can now clear marine ghost structures
- removed medpack CD from marine commander UI (marines have now a pickup delay)
- removed vision obscuring effect of gorge spit
-? reduced harvester cost to 8
- insight update
- fixed GL not dealing full damage on direct hit
- reduced exo armor to 280, down from 400
- increased exo armor upgrade to 45, up from 40
Resource System:
- changed more extractor health to armor to be easier to weld up
- minimum team resources when no RT active (counts as 0.5 active RTs)
- removed "no res while dead" rule
- reduced personal resource income per RT from 0.125 to 0.1
General:
- disabled gradual melee attacks
- added concept of "soft targets" which let bullets and melee attacks go through (affects Drifters, MACs, Hallucinations)
- added additional 6 second respawn time when rejoining a team, suiciding or when killed by a death trigger
- movement code rewritten
Anti Spam:
- MACs and Drifters are no longer able to attack
- resource towers and command structures will now block re-creation for 5 seconds after destruction
- added supply limit for specific units, 100 supply per captured tech point
- MACs can no longer weld each other
- multiple MACs are no longer able to weld the same target
- crags no longer stack their healing with each other and can heal a maximum of 3 targets at once
- shift energize no longer stacks
Marine Tech Tree:
- JP and single gun Exos are now available at 1 command station (dual gun still require 2)
- mines tech research cost has been decreased to 10 resources (down from 15)
- reduced robotics factory to 10 resources (was 15)
- reduced upgrade to ARC robotics factory costs to 5 (was 10)
- nano shield is now a research at command station
- arms lab no longer requires an armory
- welders no longer require a research
- added small self weld when welding a structure or player
- Grenade Launcher and Flamethrower are now unlocked with ‘Advanced Weaponry’, available once an armory is upgraded
Exosuit:
- reduced exo cost to 40 (60 for dual minigun)
- exos can now be nano shielded
- exosuits can now use their thruster horizontal (use shift)
- reduced exo thruster cool down to 2.5 seconds (was 4)
- increased exo base speed to 6, up from 5
- reduced claw damage to 30
- miniguns now profit from weapon upgrades
- toned down dual minigun damage to 70%
- reduced vision obscurring effect from bilebomb on exo HUD
Flame Thrower:
-? increased base damage but wont profit from weapon upgrades
-? added flamethrower range tech which increased range to 11 meters (default 8)
- increase flame thrower clip size to 50 (was 30)
- removed flame thrower damage ramp up
- reduced flamethrower weight
- flamethrower can now burn up bile/whip bombs and disables enemy structure functions
- flamethrower can now burn up drifter clouds
Grenade Launcher:
-? increased base damage but wont profit from weapon upgrades
-? added detonation time tech which reduces detonation timer by 0.5 seconds (down to 1.5)
- reduced grenade launcher cost to 15 (was 25)
- increased grenade launcher reserve ammo to 28
- whips no longer whack grenades
Shotgun:
-? increased shotgun fire rate by 18%
-? reduced shotgun damage against structures by 25%
- reduced base damage to 170
- adjusted shotgun spread
ARC:
- reduced ARC build time from 10 to 7
- reduced robotics factory upgrade time from 40 to 20
- reduced ARC movement speed by 33%
- reduced ARC movement speed by 70% when in combat or on infestation
- ARCs are now properly affected by shades ink cloud
- reduced ARC splash radius to 7, down from 10
Marine General:
- marines can now build on infestation but all structures take damage to armor
- reduced health/armor of Phase Gates to 2500/300 (down from 2700/450)
- marines can now always sprint (no more fatigue)
- marine structures build 25% slower on infestation
- added ability for marine commander to temporary power individual structures
- amories no longer heal armor
- increased jetpack cost to 15 (was 10)
- removed MAC EMP
- extractors and command stations can now be parasited
- increased spawn time to 9 seconds (was 7)
Alien Spawn:
- each alien has individual spawn timer (8 seconds)
- an egg is generated every 16 seconds (6 seconds for 12 player)
- each hive can have max of 3 eggs (6 for 12 players)
- hives have now the hatch ability (2 eggs for 5 t.res)
Whip:
- increased whip bomb splash radius to 6 meters (was 3) and reduced damage by 50% (down to 600)
- whips can automatically bombard once they are matured
- reduced whip cost to 10 (was 15)
- whips will now root and unroot automatically
Alien Tech Tree:
- personal upgrades scale now cost depending on life form (0 for skulk, 2 gorge, 3 lerk, 5 fade, 8 onos)
- reduced life form cost to compensate with new upgrade cost (5 gorge, 25 lerk, 40 fade, 60 onos)
- add bio mass: every structure grants bio mass which increases the health of life forms
- scaleable upgrades (for example build a maximum of 3 shells to get maximum efficiency for carapace, regeneration), 20 res per structure
- celerity works now in combat and increases max speed by 1.5 m/s
- regeneration works now in combat
- adrenaline increases max energy and regeneration rate by 10% per level
- added new shade upgrade which shows enemies and their health (Aura)
- merged silence and camouflage (Phantom)
Fade:
- swipe damage down by 16%
- fades are a bit easier to see during blink
- blink is now always researched
- shadowstep does not add any momentum anymore
- increased range of fade vortex ability
- disabled fade double jump
Lerk:
- spores are now tier 3 and bigger / cheaper to use.
- umbra is now tier 2 and blocks 1 out of 3 bullets (was 1 out of 2)-
- fixed weapon switch delays (umbra to bite and spores to bite)
Onos:
- changed stomp to affect marines in a radius rather than being a shockwave
- onos movement won’t be blocked by skulks, gorges and lerks anymore
- reduced gore range
- reduced gore damage to 100
Gorge:
- hydras are now flamable
- increased gorge build rate
Skulk:
- skulk moves now faster on walls
- xenocide cant be cancelled anymore
- when dying by xenocide, skulk respawn time is reduce by 6 seconds
Infestation:
- cysts will block recreation in the area when destroyed for 4 seconds
- cysts will autobuild once their parent is contructed
- increased cyst build time to 4 seconds, removed cool down
- increased cyst range and infestation radius
- infestation receding is now twice as fast than growing
- gorge tunnel entrances create now infestation when the other side is infested
Drifter:
- Drifters can now be created during the hive is researching
- reduced drifter cloud costs to 1 (was 2)
- drifters unlock triggered abilities (shade hive: hallucinate, shift hive: storm cloud/movement speed, crag hive: mucous membrane/heals armor)
- moved hallucinations from shade to drifters: every alien in effect range generates a hallucination, controllable by the alien commander
Alien General:
-? crag, shift and shade can now always be build
-? increase crag, shift, shade cost to 15 (was 10) and scaled up their health / effectiveness accordingly
-? chamber triggered abilities require now the correct hive type
-? allow aliens to change upgrades (min gestation time 5 seconds)
- alien structures auto build rate is reduced by 70%, drifters speed up build time to normal rate
- cloaked players are always slightly visible
- increased regeneration upgrade to 7% health per tick, up from 6%
- rupture can now be cast directly on infestation, like bonewall
- added echo harvester to shift
- added echo gorge tunnel to shift (only on infestation)
- enemies are outlined with parasite only (damage will no longer trigger it)
- the normal gestation time is applied when using a pre-evolved egg instead of just 2 seconds
- shift echo ability no longer requires maturity
- adjusted shade ink ability duration and cool down to allow arcs to fire once between successive use of ink clouds
Posts
http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/natural-selection-2-free-weekend/
Man, I swear this game scratches that itch of mine I long for in games (strategy, multiple classes/fighting styles, teamwork required, not being call of counterhalo-esque) that I loved so much in NS1 and TF2.
*for not playing, not intended as an insult to skill
I got really burned out in late jan/early feb and by the time I felt better about playing I was already deep into other things
And if you luck out and get a commander that really knows what he's doing, it can be a cakewalk!
Portfolio
Side note: when we spawn in Lockers as marines on Docking I will drop my rifle and pistol then stand under a shower head, and encourage my team to wash up before the match. If they don't drop their weapons I say "Don't bring those in here; they'll get rusty. You'll need them for the match."
During the weekend and over the past week, I've just had some bizarre experiences. I was on a marine team that rarely ventured outside the starting base, eventually moving to take a second nearby tech location around the time the aliens were getting the Onos. Eager fellows on the team insisted that we must have turrets in main base before moving on, and we of course have to have them in the second tech location now that we got it (and maybe that one other RT we have, too).
On the other hand, commanding marine teams during that weekend was actually kind of blissful. Maybe I got on a lucky server, but my team full of greenies and like two other dudes were totally happy to follow orders and curb-stomp a greenie alien team. My inexperienced, slow-clicking ass was joyfully celebrated as the "greatest commander ever."
Then I had the opposite experience yesterday commanding an alien team. I quickly launched out to 6 RTs, three additional tech points, rapid-dropped Celerity, created forward Shift bases, and none of it mattered because my poor aliens could not win a fight against a MAC. I think one guy got taken out by a Power Node. As the game drew to a close, I was scolded by the top-ranked guy on my team (he had a record of something like 4 - 18) for not having gone with Shade instead so they could ambush dudes with cloaking, and that's why we lost.
It's just so random.
Probably doesn't help that there were quite a few people on the newbie server I was on that really had no business being there, since they weren't attempting to help people learn the game at all. My favorite being a dude that got over 40 kills and under ten deaths.
Still, it's probably a good idea to have played with the commander role in the exploration mode before you try it out in a live game.
http://unknownworlds.com/store/
Some of us still play on the TacticalGamer servers. The reserve slots can be harsh but if you visit the forums and sign the Primer thread(and read the rules) you can get higher priority:
http://www.tacticalgamer.com/natural-selection-official-rules-announcements/
tgns.tacticalgamer.com:27015
tgns2.tacticalgamer.com:27015
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Portfolio
tons of marine buffs and alien nerfs.
- drifters can now clear marine ghost structures
- removed medpack CD from marine commander UI (marines have now a pickup delay)
- removed vision obscuring effect of gorge spit
-? reduced harvester cost to 8
- insight update
- fixed GL not dealing full damage on direct hit
- reduced exo armor to 280, down from 400
- increased exo armor upgrade to 45, up from 40
Resource System:
- changed more extractor health to armor to be easier to weld up
- minimum team resources when no RT active (counts as 0.5 active RTs)
- removed "no res while dead" rule
- reduced personal resource income per RT from 0.125 to 0.1
General:
- disabled gradual melee attacks
- added concept of "soft targets" which let bullets and melee attacks go through (affects Drifters, MACs, Hallucinations)
- added additional 6 second respawn time when rejoining a team, suiciding or when killed by a death trigger
- movement code rewritten
Anti Spam:
- MACs and Drifters are no longer able to attack
- resource towers and command structures will now block re-creation for 5 seconds after destruction
- added supply limit for specific units, 100 supply per captured tech point
- MACs can no longer weld each other
- multiple MACs are no longer able to weld the same target
- crags no longer stack their healing with each other and can heal a maximum of 3 targets at once
- shift energize no longer stacks
Marine Tech Tree:
- JP and single gun Exos are now available at 1 command station (dual gun still require 2)
- mines tech research cost has been decreased to 10 resources (down from 15)
- reduced robotics factory to 10 resources (was 15)
- reduced upgrade to ARC robotics factory costs to 5 (was 10)
- nano shield is now a research at command station
- arms lab no longer requires an armory
- welders no longer require a research
- added small self weld when welding a structure or player
- Grenade Launcher and Flamethrower are now unlocked with ‘Advanced Weaponry’, available once an armory is upgraded
Exosuit:
- reduced exo cost to 40 (60 for dual minigun)
- exos can now be nano shielded
- exosuits can now use their thruster horizontal (use shift)
- reduced exo thruster cool down to 2.5 seconds (was 4)
- increased exo base speed to 6, up from 5
- reduced claw damage to 30
- miniguns now profit from weapon upgrades
- toned down dual minigun damage to 70%
- reduced vision obscurring effect from bilebomb on exo HUD
Flame Thrower:
-? increased base damage but wont profit from weapon upgrades
-? added flamethrower range tech which increased range to 11 meters (default 8)
- increase flame thrower clip size to 50 (was 30)
- removed flame thrower damage ramp up
- reduced flamethrower weight
- flamethrower can now burn up bile/whip bombs and disables enemy structure functions
- flamethrower can now burn up drifter clouds
Grenade Launcher:
-? increased base damage but wont profit from weapon upgrades
-? added detonation time tech which reduces detonation timer by 0.5 seconds (down to 1.5)
- reduced grenade launcher cost to 15 (was 25)
- increased grenade launcher reserve ammo to 28
- whips no longer whack grenades
Shotgun:
-? increased shotgun fire rate by 18%
-? reduced shotgun damage against structures by 25%
- reduced base damage to 170
- adjusted shotgun spread
ARC:
- reduced ARC build time from 10 to 7
- reduced robotics factory upgrade time from 40 to 20
- reduced ARC movement speed by 33%
- reduced ARC movement speed by 70% when in combat or on infestation
- ARCs are now properly affected by shades ink cloud
- reduced ARC splash radius to 7, down from 10
Marine General:
- marines can now build on infestation but all structures take damage to armor
- reduced health/armor of Phase Gates to 2500/300 (down from 2700/450)
- marines can now always sprint (no more fatigue)
- marine structures build 25% slower on infestation
- added ability for marine commander to temporary power individual structures
- amories no longer heal armor
- increased jetpack cost to 15 (was 10)
- removed MAC EMP
- extractors and command stations can now be parasited
- increased spawn time to 9 seconds (was 7)
Alien Spawn:
- each alien has individual spawn timer (8 seconds)
- an egg is generated every 16 seconds (6 seconds for 12 player)
- each hive can have max of 3 eggs (6 for 12 players)
- hives have now the hatch ability (2 eggs for 5 t.res)
Whip:
- increased whip bomb splash radius to 6 meters (was 3) and reduced damage by 50% (down to 600)
- whips can automatically bombard once they are matured
- reduced whip cost to 10 (was 15)
- whips will now root and unroot automatically
Alien Tech Tree:
- personal upgrades scale now cost depending on life form (0 for skulk, 2 gorge, 3 lerk, 5 fade, 8 onos)
- reduced life form cost to compensate with new upgrade cost (5 gorge, 25 lerk, 40 fade, 60 onos)
- add bio mass: every structure grants bio mass which increases the health of life forms
- scaleable upgrades (for example build a maximum of 3 shells to get maximum efficiency for carapace, regeneration), 20 res per structure
- celerity works now in combat and increases max speed by 1.5 m/s
- regeneration works now in combat
- adrenaline increases max energy and regeneration rate by 10% per level
- added new shade upgrade which shows enemies and their health (Aura)
- merged silence and camouflage (Phantom)
Fade:
- swipe damage down by 16%
- fades are a bit easier to see during blink
- blink is now always researched
- shadowstep does not add any momentum anymore
- increased range of fade vortex ability
- disabled fade double jump
Lerk:
- spores are now tier 3 and bigger / cheaper to use.
- umbra is now tier 2 and blocks 1 out of 3 bullets (was 1 out of 2)-
- fixed weapon switch delays (umbra to bite and spores to bite)
Onos:
- changed stomp to affect marines in a radius rather than being a shockwave
- onos movement won’t be blocked by skulks, gorges and lerks anymore
- reduced gore range
- reduced gore damage to 100
Gorge:
- hydras are now flamable
- increased gorge build rate
Skulk:
- skulk moves now faster on walls
- xenocide cant be cancelled anymore
- when dying by xenocide, skulk respawn time is reduce by 6 seconds
Infestation:
- cysts will block recreation in the area when destroyed for 4 seconds
- cysts will autobuild once their parent is contructed
- increased cyst build time to 4 seconds, removed cool down
- increased cyst range and infestation radius
- infestation receding is now twice as fast than growing
- gorge tunnel entrances create now infestation when the other side is infested
Drifter:
- Drifters can now be created during the hive is researching
- reduced drifter cloud costs to 1 (was 2)
- drifters unlock triggered abilities (shade hive: hallucinate, shift hive: storm cloud/movement speed, crag hive: mucous membrane/heals armor)
- moved hallucinations from shade to drifters: every alien in effect range generates a hallucination, controllable by the alien commander
Alien General:
-? crag, shift and shade can now always be build
-? increase crag, shift, shade cost to 15 (was 10) and scaled up their health / effectiveness accordingly
-? chamber triggered abilities require now the correct hive type
-? allow aliens to change upgrades (min gestation time 5 seconds)
- alien structures auto build rate is reduced by 70%, drifters speed up build time to normal rate
- cloaked players are always slightly visible
- increased regeneration upgrade to 7% health per tick, up from 6%
- rupture can now be cast directly on infestation, like bonewall
- added echo harvester to shift
- added echo gorge tunnel to shift (only on infestation)
- enemies are outlined with parasite only (damage will no longer trigger it)
- the normal gestation time is applied when using a pre-evolved egg instead of just 2 seconds
- shift echo ability no longer requires maturity
- adjusted shade ink ability duration and cool down to allow arcs to fire once between successive use of ink clouds