In February, NS2 was Gorgeous. Now, it is Reinforced. The culmination of nearly six months of development, Reinforced takes Natural Selection 2 to new height. Here is the launch trailer:
Female Marines. Cluster Grenades. Bone shield. Webs. Dual Railguns. Linux Support. Single Player Interactive Tutorial, Commander Tutorial, Special/Deluxe/Standard first person view models – Those are just some of the pieces of content released today.
They also released the new map Biodome:
Here is the changelog:
Added
- Added female Marine
- Added the dual Railgun Exo
- Added Contamination (place infestation anywhere on the map)
- Added Catpacks (increases marines movement and reload speed)
- Added Boneshield (onos stands still and blocks all bullet based damage)
- Added a reserved player slot system
- Added skill ranking
- Added player levels
- Added new Marine view models to match the armor type the Marine is using
- Linux client and server
- DirectX 11 and OpenGL are now supported
- Added Gorge Webs (slows down enemies)
- Added Commander tutorial
- New “Training” menu to help new players learn the game
- Interactive ground-troop tutorial for new players, covering marine and alien basics.
- Added organized collection of 5-second “tip clip” videos (Thanks a ton, Kevin Ko!)
- Sandbox mode for freely experimenting with weapons/lifeforms
- Play vs. AI bots, either as a Commander or ground troop (Good for learning to command, or target practice)
- When evolving, short video clips will pop up about the lifeform
- Added rudimentary tournament mode (sv_tournament true/false) with chat commands “ready” / “unready”
- Added follow order and a hotkey for “follow nearest Alien” to Drifters
- Added TechMaps to both teams, accessible by pressing “J”
- Added pulse grenades, which slow down the attack speed of aliens
- Added gas grenades, which deal armor damage to all alien units in range
- Added cluster grenades, which deal damage in a large radius
- Increased lerk melee attack speed by 30%
- Fixed research of catpack and nanoshield not showing up at insight progress bar
- Fixed bilebomb sound playing over and over again when entering an area
Improvements
- Alien vision tweaked
- Blink has now an initial subtle start effect and view fades slowly towards violet
- ARCs display now their attack radius to Marine Commanders when selected
- Scores for constructing and killing are now based on how much the player has contributed to the kill / construction
- Added assist kills to the scoreboard
- Using a Phase Gate is now a predicted action
- Increased the number of client mod download attempts to 15 from 5
- Improved Commander single click selection
- Cyst connection lines are now red when the parent Cyst is unconnected
- Jetpack Marines can now jump
Sound
- Added new music to the descent club
Balance
- increased lerk melee attack speed
- stomp deals now damage
- fades require more energy overall
- Flamethrowers deal now 3 damage to energy per hit
- Empty Exos can now be welded
- Reduced whip bombard damage from 600 to 400 (down to 56 armor damage when directly hitting a marine)
- Railguns are now affected by umbra
- When firing Dual Miniguns, one gun will now influence the heat amount of the other gun
- Slightly increased carapace for lerk and fade
- Tweaked railgun automatic charge release time (so dual guns cannot be stacked too much and timing matters more)
- Increased railgun weight slightly so having 2 slows you down a bit more
- Babblers are now more resistant against Grenades but weaker against Rifles (2 shots instead of 4)
- Improved Crag Heal ability slightly
- Increased Gorge cost to 8 (was 5) but reduced Gorge upgrade costs to 1 (was 2)
- Reduced damage falloff from Mines (no longer linear)
- Reduced Swipe structure damage by 15%
- Structures under construction can no longer be over healed
- Drifter abilities no longer have a cool down (nearby clouds of the same type are consumed instead to prevent effect clutter)
- Single gun exosuits can now use the prototype lab and upgrade to dual guns
- Reduced Exosuit research cost by 10 (increased Dual Minigun research cost by 10)
- Exosuits slow now down and cannot use their thrusters while firing a weapon
- Railguns are now affected by weapon upgrades
- Reduced Railgun base damage to 30 (down from 50) and charged damage to 130 (down from 150)
- Gorge Tunnels will now always spawn Infestation (other side doesn’t need to be infested)
- Commander dropped Fade and Onos Eggs require now Bio Mass level 9
- Doubled Alien structure move speed
- Removed Pistol weight
- Reduced Crag, Shade, Shift once more to 10 res, to make losing them not being too punishing for the Alien team
- Reduced Shotgun clip size to 6
- Increased Bile Bomb damage against Exosuits by 25%
- Babblers now need to be researched (Upgrade Gorge)
Changes
- Infestation no longer damages ghost structures
- Marines can now eject from an Exo
- Reduced shift echo cool down from 3 seconds to 1 second
- Drifters now spawn from Cocoons which can be placed anywhere on infestation
- Most marine units can now be parasited
- Increased Parasite duration by 20 seconds
- Allow Exos to get Beaconed
- Ghost structures below 25% health will now vanish and return resources
- Commanders start with 0 p.res and won’t gain any resources for 30 seconds when outside of the Command Station
- moved umbra to bio mass 4
- simplified alien tech tree: each life form class can be upgraded once (“upgrade gorge” for example) which unlocks bio mass health for that class and new abilities depending on bio mass level
- charging a railgun or firing a minigun slows the exo down
- vortex is now a teleport ability
- The net_lag debug console command now requires cheats to be enabled
- Disabled blur effect when opening minimap
Fixes
- fixed research of catpack and nanoshield not showing up at insight progress bar
- fixed bilebomb sound playing over and over again when entering an area
- Fixed bug where ARCs played their charge up sound at the wrong location
- Fixed use prompt showing up for Cysts
- Fixed bug allowing Sentries to be powered from a Battery in another room
- Fixed script error caused by a Fade being logged in as Commander while a new Fade ability is unlocked
- Fixed Blink and Shadow Step not properly scaling with silence levels
- Gorges now see the tracer effect for their own Hydras
- Fixed bug preventing the Exo from smashing evolving eggs
- Fixed bug preventing the Marine flashlight help widget from being completed after the player leaves the powered down room
- Fixed parasite hut indicator not showing up
- Fixed bug causing the request menu to deny access to the main menu if bound to the left mouse button
- Fixed script error caused by logging into the Hive while Xenocide is active
- Fixed Grenades getting stuck when firing next to a wall
- Fixed Marine buy menu not showing weapon descriptions
- Setting map cycle time to 0 will cause the server to never change the map automatically
- Fixed Advanced Armory model not disappearing when research is cancelled
- Team resources gained graph will now show the actual income from resource towers
- Fixed vote menu keys not updating when binds are changed in the options
- Fixed Drifters being able to create Hallucinations of dead players
- Fixed Flamethrower fire rate being inconsistent
SDK
- Added Client.GetServerTags() and Client.GetServerBotPlayers() functions
- Added Server.SetBotPlayerCount() and Server.GetBotPlayerCount() functions
- Added Server.GetTags() function
- Fixed Stomp not working properly inside Gorge Tunnel
- Unified screenfx format with the render_setup format
Docking
- Returned cafe tech point (marine random spawn enabled)
- Widened pressure control corridor
- Fixed LOS issue in generator
- Added new vent from generator to maintenance
- Added decals around the map
- Removed the large crate in strand