Natural Selection 2.0 Released

Companion Cube · Post by **Companion Cube** » 2003-08-01 07:36am

Just thought i'd mention it. You can find a download here.

TheFeniX · Post by **TheFeniX** » 2003-08-01 10:04am

I spent about 5 hours gaming it last night.

Aliens now rape marines in every way. I seriously don't think that two balanced teams with equally skilled players can go in the rines favor.

Hive cost has been cut to 35, RT to 15, and OC/DF/Mov to 10. You can Fade and Onos with one hive, but you only get two abilities. The Onos does die faster, but the Lerk is a combat machine now. The fade doesn't get acid rocket until three hives, but metabolize more than makes up for that. One game I managed over 20 kills with the lerk while only dying twice. All we had was one hive and 3 DF.

Anyways, I'll be playing it solid through this weekend trying to find out any way in which the marines did not get screwed (ex: JetPack is nerfed).

Oh yea, and the Onos can now swallow a marine whole and digest him; gaining health back. If the onos dies while digesting a marine, he pops out and can continue fighting. The marine gets a nice view of the Onos's stomach while he dies.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-08-01 04:51pm

Havent played 2.0 yet, but in the old one, marines were superior but ONLY when the commander and his/her team worked well together. In that instance, the Marines could easily be nearly unstoppable.

I think that's why Marines got nerfed. Problem is, not everyone is a good comm and not everyone knows what to do as a marine.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2003-08-01 06:19pm

Let me Com for you sometime Shinova and I'll lead you to victory any day of the week provided I have

Three smart marines(The rest can be morons, they are fodder anyway)

The point I try to get my wittle marines to understand(And few can grasp)
You + LMG=death in groups to your avarage Kharraa

You=1 RSP
Aside from skulks assuming you kill just one lerk/fade/onos/chubby you can at minium die eight more times and come up good on the economic side of things
Marines=Cannon Fodder, I except you to bleed and die(Thus keeping the Alien's busy) while one or two(Maybe even three) *Lucky Marines get to run around capping down resources points and mining hives so when you respawn that next time there might be a HMG and some Heavy armor waiting for your next rampage

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-08-01 07:45pm

Mr Bean wrote:Let me Com for you sometime Shinova and I'll lead you to victory any day of the week provided I have

Three smart marines(The rest can be morons, they are fodder anyway)

The point I try to get my wittle marines to understand(And few can grasp)
You + LMG=death in groups to your avarage Kharraa

You=1 RSP
Aside from skulks assuming you kill just one lerk/fade/onos/chubby you can at minium die eight more times and come up good on the economic side of things
Marines=Cannon Fodder, I except you to bleed and die(Thus keeping the Alien's busy) while one or two(Maybe even three) *Lucky Marines get to run around capping down resources points and mining hives so when you respawn that next time there might be a HMG and some Heavy armor waiting for your next rampage

I've turned a losing game into a solid winning game as commander before so I pretty much know that.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2003-08-01 08:39pm

Shinova wrote:Havent played 2.0 yet, but in the old one, marines were superior but ONLY when the commander and his/her team worked well together. In that instance, the Marines could easily be nearly unstoppable.

I think that's why Marines got nerfed. Problem is, not everyone is a good comm and not everyone knows what to do as a marine.

That and spamming medpacks, essentially making a marine invincible unless he was getting hammered by 5 skulks at once

I don't get this 35 res hive thing. Flayra never indicated he would change the hive cost.

I wonder if the alien hitboxes are much larger, because I lerked a few times and if the marines just aimed in my general direction I would get chewed up by lmg fire. In 1.1 lerks were much harder to shoot down.

Some of the changes really don't make sense at all. Why'd they give lerk primal scream and take away his bite? This is totally out of character for the lerk, even though Flayra yaps on and on about preserving the atmosphere of the game and not introducing something too outlandish. Whatever.

As it is right now, aliens are just steamrolling the marines. Every game.

TheFeniX · Post by **TheFeniX** » 2003-08-01 09:31pm

Marines are totally jacked in 2.0. Seriously. Instead of balancing things out, they just nerfed about every rine ability.

JPs are 25 res a pop now.
HMGs do loads less damage.
You have to research energy to scan.
You have to actually find the obs and click on it in order to scan.
You have to have advanced armory to get prototype lab.
I could go on, but I jumped out of the Com Chair so no one blamed our loses on me.

On aliens, as long as your team isn't brain-dead, you can't loose. It seems the thing in 2.0 is marines rushing the first hive like Skulks used to rush Marine Start.

The game is still loads of fun, but you have to have a kick-ass COM and at least 4 sharp-shooter marines that follow orders to win. Compare this to aliens, when anyone can gorge now and throw up a rest tower at the beginning of the game. If 4 people do this, you win in the long run (if you keep the RTs alive).

If you really want a challenging game: go marines when you know the alien team has 4-5 good players on it. Odds are: you'll die, but as long as I don't get swallowed by an Onos I don't mind (I hate waiting to die, and "kill" won't work while you are in the stomach).

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-08-04 11:18pm

Well I just downloaded this and gave it a try. It definitely looks pretty cool, I'm just lost as all fuck. I started as one o' thems alien folk and just sort of ran around chomping marines and mutating random things at random times as I don't know if they take resources or something. All in all I did fairly well and killed my fair share of marines (when I found one anyways). Long story short, I didn't know what the fuck was going on most* of the time.

I started a game just to screw around and try to get more familiar with the game... I got in the command-thingie and randomly clicked shit then tried to build things but nothing would build. Yay.

*most = all

Also, are there any outdoor-type maps? The only maps I played are these annoying corridor mazes.

EDITZES: I played a game as marines, and I did much better. I just followed the commander's orders and did pretty well. We lost though.

TheFeniX · Post by **TheFeniX** » 2003-08-05 11:10am

I don't think there are any stock outdoor maps, but NS 1.0 had a few outdoor custom maps. They should be made ready for 2.0 use shortly.

If you don't know how to play, I'd watch the slideshow tutorial that comes with NS. It's pretty informative. Or you can always just ask for help. Most people will be happy to answer your questions.

Companion Cube · Post by **Companion Cube** » 2003-08-05 12:36pm

Gah. I see what you meant about the nerfing. Oh, well. Marines all the way!

...Now if only I was any good at comming...

TheFeniX · Post by **TheFeniX** » 2003-08-05 11:34pm

Was just informed that a patch for 2.0 will remove the ability of an Onos with redemption to devour a marine.

Two words: Thank God.

On the plus side, I was playing on Deadclan server the other night, and one of their guys was a bad-ass com. We took like three games in a row, while the alien team whined about "cheap tactics (AKA using sieges) all the while they were using Onos and would camp and just devour anyone who walked by.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2003-08-06 01:31am

2.0 really isn't imbalanced when you think about it. Most of the problems since 2.0 release was due to noob comms and marines. If you can get a squad of 4+ HA/HMG/welder soldiers working together, nothing short of devour cheese will stop you.

The shotty is so strong now. Anything below onii cannot deal with shotguns, not even fades. If you pump enough buckshot into them, you can make most onii redeem before they can devour you.

And electrified RTs enable the marines to build and forget. Most of the time when I encounter electrified RTs I have to gorge and build some offense chambers to take care of them -_-

Then, for some reason, heavy armor is boosted. Don't know why or how, it just is.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2003-08-06 01:40am

Hamel wrote:Then, for some reason, heavy armor is boosted. Don't know why or how, it just is.

It's because Lerks get freaking poison spores with one hive now, and thus are a terror to light marines.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2003-08-06 01:59am

Hotfoot wrote:
Hamel wrote:Then, for some reason, heavy armor is boosted. Don't know why or how, it just is.
It's because Lerks get freaking poison spores with one hive now, and thus are a terror to light marines.

Well, thankfully for the marines, spore damage doesn't stack anymore.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2003-08-06 02:02am

Hamel wrote:Well, thankfully for the marines, spore damage doesn't stack anymore.

True, but it still sucks up armor for whatever reason.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-08-06 02:50am

Yay! I'm doing tons better now overall and I prefer marines. I won my first game as commander (the game was fucking 3 hours long!

). We finally blasted their last hive. I kept my guys suited up with heavies and a ton of guns. For about two hours in the middle we had some WWI-style action going on. It was pretty cool

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-08-06 08:20pm

Yessss. Won another game as commander. Started another match and we were doing fairly well (except for the idiots whining because I wasn't giving them grenade launchers) but then it wierded up and it said we won, but we hadn't taken out any hives yet