Natural Selection 2: Release Thread!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Natural Selection 2: Release Thread!

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Please update the OP to explain:

1) Fades and blinking
2) Lerk spore cloud/umbra
3) Skulk parasite
4) Gorge clogs
5) Onos charge
6) Exosuit HMGs

and probably a lot of other things.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2012 01:14

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 06:08

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Where do we report bugs these days?

If Atrium hive dies you can't expand cysts past it to that little nook south of it, since the game considers all the area up there either on top of the hive or too far from the nearest possible cyst point.

This caused me to lose all of my upgrade towers and draw a game out to 100 minutes

# ¿ Nov 4, 2012 13:40

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

quaunaut posted:

The entire comm interface is hotkeyed. Grid layout. Mouse over the buttons and it literally tells you what they are.

The best part is how it shares your hotkeys as a player so half the time when I push my minimap button I accidentally cancel something.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2012 17:17

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

I had a rookie connect to a server and ask if they could use their controller to play. I said a mouse and keyboard is dramatically better.

They said they'd never used a mouse and keyboard in an fps before :psyduck:

Kids today...

# ¿ Nov 5, 2012 02:26

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Boing posted:

I sort of wish the documentation in this game was better. There are the tutorial videos but they only cover so much and some of them are just videos of the devs playing without much explanation. Does Lerk gas do anything other than gum up the marine screen? Does it do damage or gently caress with your movement/accuracy?

I think the loading screen tooltips would be perfect for this, and we should probably crowd source some of them since there are only about 10 right now.

My suggestions for loadtip topics:

Resource cap is 100, and doesn't overflow to other players when capped (is this true?)
There is a limit of 200 team resources, beyond which they're wasted
Each resource node generates 1 personal res per player every ?? seconds, and 1 team resource every ?? seconds
A longer description of each alien power that has to be unlocked --
What Fade vortex actually does
Bile bomb hurts marine armor and robots and exos and while it is a dot it actually stacks as well (is it linear?)
Fade's are still vulnerable while blinking
One point of armor prevents more than one point of health in damage
Exactly what onos stomp does (JPs are immune even when on ground right?)
Grenade launchers and switch axes do bonus damage to structures (and flamers?)
It takes x hits to kill a skulk with an unupgraded rifle, y with carapace
Hydra will build and heal by themselves if placed on infestation; otherwise a gorge will need to heal spray them
Heal spray will quicken the growth of newly placed alien structures
Whips will fling back grenades launched at them
A shift can teleport itself

And I'm sure many more.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2012 21:00

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

RadicalWall posted:

I thought they took out res for kills, can we confirm that's still in?

It's in in a backwards way -- by killing an enemy you keep him dead for a while, which stops personal res from ticking on him

# ¿ Nov 6, 2012 01:21

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

AngryGuy posted:

I killed you a few times with my bullets.

Earlier in the server I was playing in there was a 1 hour 30 minute game that was absolutely stupid. Marines had won for such a long time but couldn't get the final hive. What pisses me off most is the aliens who keep defending at the very end. Just let them kill the hive so we can all get on with our lives. Yesterday we had the opposite with the aliens having a hard time getting the last marine base. Game went on over an hour and at least 20 minutes were spent just assaulting the final marine base. I don't even really understand why resources function in a way that makes something like that possible.

Is there a surrender vote option hidden somewhere? Because that needs to be in the game.

I've been arguing for months that the game needs a vote surrender option.

There is a plugin out there that makes it behave like ns1 (ie, if a team is outnumbered by 4 players they immediately lose), but this requires 4 people going to the ready room and you can't keep playing once your "vote" is cast.

The important feature about surrender votes is that they let you know if your team wants to continue and keep playing if that's the case.

edit: If you're a marine commander and the game is really lost you can just recycle the IPs while staying in the chair.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2012 10:06

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Slappy Moose posted:

This doesn't seem right at all. I'm pretty sure it takes 2-3 bites to kill a "level 1" marine, and I'm pretty sure I've had to bite late-game marines way, way more than 3 times to kill them. I don't have the numbers to back up this statement, but it just sounds totally wrong.

It's different now that bites can do partial damage if you don't hit them exactly. 2 full bites + one corner bite ~= 2 bites + 1 parasite

# ¿ Nov 6, 2012 23:49

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

RadicalWall posted:

My only problem with parasite is that it tends to give up the element of surprise that's so important to skulk play.

It's like saying "Hey! Be on your guard! Skulk in the room!"

Personally I think parasite should do no damage but instead apply an invisible debuff that causes the marine to take extra damage on his next bite.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2012 12:44

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

The Crotch posted:

Yeah, I commed my first game the other day when nobody hopped in to the hive after about a minute. I was lucky enough to have a newbie commander on the enemy team as well, and the game went a pretty decent length. Though we lost (and I accidentally made a billion loving fade eggs somehow), the team thanked me for taking com and being communicative anyway. drat impressed with how nice the game's community is so far.

That said, I definitely recommend putting in time as a grunt before comming.

You were using the C key to look at the minimap, which is ALSO mapped to build fade egg.

It's really stupid how that is currently.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2012 18:27

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Magres posted:

There's nothing like having 4-5 mines down in a hallway and having an Onos and his Gorge support run over them, then suddenly only having a lone Onos to deal with.

There was a time in NS1 before mines took up physical space where one of the best ways to kill an onos was to stack 10 on top of eachother, obstruct it with your body, and when he came to eat you take a step back.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2012 22:07

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

So, at home I have this game projected onto a wall and at work I have it on a normal desktop with monitor. I can't "notice" a difference but I suspect my scores are beginning to differ dramatically between the two computers.

I'm going to start recording how I do at games vs which computer I do them on. Maybe there's something due to (input/visual) latency, maybe my gameplay varies because the work computer has much more performance, or maybe it's both.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2012 20:51

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Ciaphas posted:

As a rule should I be prioritizing power nodes or extractors when I'm running around solo or in a pair trying to deny resources to the marines?

Killing power nodes is generally a waste of time unless it's a marine base

# ¿ Nov 16, 2012 01:39

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

I went to an old-fashioned dance yesterday and there were far more women than men there, all waiting to have fun by being lead around.

I then played NS on pub servers and there were far more players than commanders, all waiting to have fun by being lead around.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2012 19:03

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Brother Scrotum posted:

One last thing, if your commander is a player named NSBot, don't be loving retarded. There's a group of five of us that have the name NSBot (all the names look identical in game, except for when they're listed as commander.) I got booted from Alien comm yesterday because they thought I was actually a bot, despite voice chatting. It is fun confusing people and hearing them complain about how bullshit the bot AI is, though, so it's still worth it.

If you're going to be intentionally confusing and claim it funny you do lose your right to complain about people being confused.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2012 01:47

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Brackhar posted:

True, but at least with a surrender system there's some onscreen reinforcement as to what's going on. Newbies may not even realize that their team is F4ing or that they should as well; a surrender vote at least provokes a point of conversation.

More importantly, a surrender vote can fail gracefully. If an F4 "vote" fails then you have a couple of players who just effectively went AFK when their team wanted to keep playing.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2012 01:14

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Liku posted:

Just don't click on any players or structures when trying to place it?

It's only valuable when placed near players and structures though, so it's very common to hit this issue.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2012 02:44

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

MikoLovesYou posted:

This patch increased the FPS on my laptop by an easy 10-20 fps. Glad they're on the right track.

Also, doesn't anyone else think this game would do well with matchmaking / elo rating system? Much like the way Dota2 or HoN handles it. I just think�people would leave games a lot less if their w/l was being tracked and would see them through to the end. You could also have some sort of cosmetic unlock system like Dota2 has. I think that would really improve the longevity of the game and would attract a lot of new players.

I'd love to be able to just hop into a match and be paired with players with a similar skill cap.

The main problem with matchmaking is that newbies in this game need to be mentored by more experienced players (eg via commanding). Segregating the player base by skill will prevent that process, imperfect as it is now.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2012 04:02

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

TheSpiritFox posted:

But you can go gorge and drop some clogs and hydras and then go bile bomb some poo poo or follow skulks and get yourself killed healing, the clogs and hydras stay where you left them, and you only used 10 resources. I'm starting to love gorge, I always go gorge around mid game when bile comes out and see if I can gently caress up some buildings and drop my stuff then die and go skulk again until it's time for Onos. I was in a pub game earlier where we were aliens on Veil and the comm told us all to go gorge, lock down nano with a buttload of clogs and hydras, and then told all of us except for one gorge to get ourselves killed.

Hydras cost resources, rather unintuitively. It took me a long time to realize this as well.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2012 18:48

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

TheSpiritFox posted:

The other thing about shotguns that no one really pays that much attention to is that a full load of shotgun ammo will do so much more damage than a full load of AR. A guy with JP and AR is never going to be able to solo an Onos, he will run out of ammo before the Onos runs out of life. JP+Shotgun, if you manage to keep your pack charged so the Onos can't get in range by using terrain to gently caress with him you can reliably chase and kill a solo Onos and have ammo left over.

And if you can aim well being able to 1 shot skulks and 2 shot fades and lerks is really, really valuable.

What if you include the reload animation in there?

Basically I'm asking for the "fire full clip + reload" DPS (mostly relevant if you're about to solo some structures that will be initially undefended)

# ¿ Dec 18, 2012 04:14

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

dog days are over posted:

I got this game during the sale because a friend recommended it, and oh my god playing marines with a whole bunch of friends and giving orders over teamspeak is the most fun I've ever had in a game. The screams of people who wander off and become skulk food, the yelling of GET SOME! GET SOMMMMEEE! as you punch an onos to death in a mechsuit.. good times. It seemed really complicated at first but one night of playing both teams means I've pretty much got it down now. Except not commander. I will never play commander, oh my lord no. Being stuck with a commander who doesn't know what to do for the first ten minutes of the match means a very long, slow painful loss.

Why use teamspeak instead of the in game voice chat? There's no reason not to rope puggers into your strategy talk.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2012 02:55

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

No one still knows how to use vortex, for what it's worth, or even what it does.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2012 23:10

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

The game start delay really needs to be about a minute longer. It's really stupid that every map change the game will go 3v3 for about 2 minutes while people still load.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2012 02:13

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

If you guys are experienced I highly suggest going into a rookie server and commanding a bit, walking through the mostly green team about every move you're making. They'll love you for it.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2012 10:54

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

If you're clearly winning a game as aliens, tell your players that it is a good time to practice lerk/fade if they haven't done it in a while.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2012 22:24

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

TychoCelchuuu posted:

If only there were a button to eject all of your stupid players and get a new team that will listen to you.

As a commander I think you need to play the part if you want to get recalcitrant pubbies to act like real human beings. Yell at them, order them around, call them "soldier" and "marine," etc.

"COMPREHENSION IS NOT A REQUIREMENT OF OBEDIENCE"

Or you can sound pretty confident and tell them to trust you, idk.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2012 04:27

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

wolfman101 posted:

I played a game yesterday with possibly the best alien commander on the planet. He spent the whole game explaining things to the newbs and then we won.

Be this person. Join rookie servers, start commanding, talk things through. Everyone will love you.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2012 04:33

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

chunkles posted:

Just finished one of those games as alien where nobody knows to hit the power and you end up taking like 30 minutes to end the game with 5 onos, except this time the commander forced it to end by moving like 8 whips into the base.

I tried this as khammander only to have it thwarted by about 20 arcs

# ¿ Dec 29, 2012 08:51

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

How exactly does the algorithm for determining which egg you get work?

I had the marines locked into their base and noticed that all my aliens were spawning at the same hive, and would consequently all end up attacking through the same overdefended hallway. It wasn't until I built a shift on the other side and manually popped out eggs with it that I began to balance things out.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2012 23:44

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Violently Car posted:

What team size is this game balanced for, and what are the balance implications once you start going under/over that size?

It seems to do well anywhere between the range of 16-24 players.

Too few and the aliens are generally favored, too many and the marines are. The reason is the same reason that aliens tend to win out against isolated marines and lose out against grouped marines; with more players on the team, the marines can be in larger groups in more places.

Also notably, with fewer players the commander's ability to spend team res on things that are normally bought with individual res becomes more relevant (eg, marine weapons or alien eggs)

# ¿ Jan 2, 2013 18:55

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

AgentF posted:

The idea came up on the NS2 forums that a lot of the CPU processing is tied up in cyst connection and power node logic. Is the game checking the connectivity of every cyst at every tick? If so, there'd be significant performance gains by checking only when a cyst is placed or destroyed, or when a hive is dropped.

This sounds like a naive guess unless someone's looking at the code under a profiler. Calculating a bunch of distances sounds like a pretty low-cost cpu operation.

But regardless if we are checking connectivity every tick then that means node connectivity could change rather simply (ie, grow in connection radius if the cyst is older) -- the game doesn't work this way, however.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2013 16:45

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Well I just ran into a huge annoying exploit -- build a second comm chair, sell your original, then pop beacon. Boom insta teleport team next to enemy hive, without even having an obs at the far command chair. The IPs still work even after selling the CC it seems.

Comm chairs shouldn't be sellable.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2013 08:29

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

TychoCelchuuu posted:

That's super weird. Does it always teleport to an enemy hive, or what?

Err it teleports to your second CC

# ¿ Jan 6, 2013 09:29

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Cyks posted:

It's not intended but it isn't that big of an advantage.

Basically you need two tech points built up. Each with a command station, an obs and an infantry portal. The aliens attack the base you are commanding at and destroy the obs. You can then recycle the second command station and once it is completely recycled, use the second bases obs to distress beacon the team to the main base that is being attacked. Because the infantry portals still work you can redrop the second command station and whoever spawns at that portal can rebuild it.

This works because the OBS beacons you to the nearest "live" command station. For it to be live it needs power and must either be completely built or in the recycling phase. You can't recycle the command station you are currently in a two tech point scenario it only works if the base you are commanding at is the one being attacked.

The whole point of the exploit is that you don't need a second observatory -- the original one will (buggily) start working for the distant command chair.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2013 21:53

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Garfu posted:

edit: oh you kinda just said that ^^^

It is intended. It beacons you to your nearest ocmm chair, your nearest comm chair is the new one even though the obs is at a different tech point. I don't see the issue here. It's just like building a new comm chair and recycling your old CC AND obs, and building a new obs at the new comm chair location. That's why when you build your first obs somewhere not in your base (smart), it teleports you to your home base if you beacon.

Is it intended that IPs still work after selling/losing their matching CC?

# ¿ Jan 6, 2013 21:54

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

TychoCelchuuu posted:

Probably? The restriction for IPs is so you can only build them in specific spots. I don't see why they should stop working when the CC they were built near is destroyed or recycled. If you want to stop a marine building from functioning, take out the power node.

I don't know why you seem so focused on branding this an exploit when it really doesn't give the marines any sort of advantage and when it works exactly like you would expect it to work. Like, what is your intended fix for this "issue?" Make it so that distress beacon doesn't function unless the observatory is within some radius of the CC? Why would that be better than what we have now?

The fix is as I proposed: don't make comm chairs recyclable without breaking their matching IP -- you need to build a CC to build IP, so it makes sense.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2013 23:19

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

TychoCelchuuu posted:

But why would you "fix" it? Why is it broken? And why should IPs need a CC to function? If I drop a JP out of tres but then someone kills the Proto Lab, the JP doesn't vanish - there's no reason to tie it to the Proto that was dropped by. If I drop an IP near a CC and someone kills the CC, why should the IP shut down? What problem in the game would this solve?

IP are the only structure in the game that requires a CC to be built. They're more akin to batteries and turrets than weapons and an armory.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2013 00:19

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Cyks posted:

but that would only happen if you never built an obs in your main base. I couldn't imagine that situation ever happening.

That or you switched command chairs for some reason.

Right that's how this works -- they build an obs and IP in their starting base, have a marine build up a CC (and only a CC) in a distant tech point, then immediately switch commanders, sell the first CC, and beacon to the new tech point. I believe it might even work before the original CC finishes recycling -- the whole team gets there as soon as the CC goes up.

What makes it problematic is that it's much much faster than early phase gates, is actually cheaper, and carries no risk to the original base as the marines are still spawning there.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2013 00:23

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

AgentF posted:

Completely intentional, but it's more like half a room over so you're not defenseless, you just have to fight over a seige spot if it looks like the marines are setting up base.

There are still a bunch of bullshit siege spots on some maps though where you need to defend about 3 rooms over. Think parallel hallways.

Conversely, I just played a custom map full of bullshit bile bomb spots -- every single tech point had a bunch of overhead walkways/vents providing perfect cover for a bile bombing gorge unless the marines had jetpacks or perfectly aimed grenades.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2013 03:44

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 06:08

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

AxeManiac posted:

All I know is that when I'm a marine I can't shoot anything and when I'm an alien I can't bite anything. Somebody fix that.

You can still be very strategically valuable by going behind enemy lines and biting down res nodes, retreating if a marine comes to mess with you. If you force an entire marine player to spend his time just shadowing you and cleaning up your mess you've more than done your part.

You can do something similar once you've got enough res for onos -- just wait in hallways and block off a section of a map from lone marines. If a bunch show up go somewhere else, and heal up after every fight.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2013 23:58

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