This week we have brought you a whole bunch of new alien toys including a new ability for the Shade hive which saps health, a new Crag hive ability which allows players to do extra damage to armor, and a totally revamped bone shield for the Onos! Aliens didn’t get all the love, though. Marines have also received some new toys and changes to their existing tech. A preliminary version of the Heavy Machine Gun (HMG) has been added. This is a gun that was loved in NS1 and one which many of us have always wanted to see make a return in NS2. The HMG was pioneered successfully in Comp Mod, and now it has made its way into the main game. We’ve also heard your cries and beacons, and recognize that Contamination tended to be very frustrating for Marines. We’ve made some changes to how it works to give Marine players more time to react to it. It will now do its damage over time rather than immediately when the ability is activated. All of these gameplay changes are sure to shake up the meta, but that’s not all we’ve been doing. We’ve also been making general improvements to the game, including integrating many features from NS2+ as the defaults that new players will see when they play on any server. We are excited to see how these changes are received and we want to hear from you, especially about how the new abilities and weapons impact the balance of the game and your own experiences. Please come join us at our Discord server or discuss it in our forums. Although we will be playing games as well, if you think something is completely overpowered, we want to know. Tweaks / Improvements

• Alien abilities have been shuffled around, and two new abilities have been added!
  • Crag Hive - Crush
    • Increases armor damage to structures up to 15%, when you have 3 shells
    • Increases armor-fraction used on players up to 15% (amount of armor that is used when calculating damage) on players by 15%. Does not affect early game balance
  • Shade Hive - Vampirism (replaces Phantom)
    • Provides cloaking and heals your health every time you damage players with a direct attack (no spores / bilebomb)
      • Lifeform specific values for life leech (at 3+ veils):
        • Skulk: 14hp for bite
        • Gorge: 15hp for spit
        • Lerk: 2hp for spikes, 10hp for bite
        • Fade: 20hp for swipe and stab
        • Onos: 40hp for gore
  • Shift Hive - Silence
    • This was moved from the Shade Hive to Shift, and split out from Phantom
    • Makes all movement and attacks silent
• Biomass scaling has been increased for Lerk and Onos to help their survivability in late game
  • Lerk has been increased from 2 to 3hp per biomass
  • Onos has been increased from 25 to 30hp per biomass
• Onos Bone Shield has been revamped, and now refills armor!
  • Costs 40 energy to trigger, can only be held for at most 4 seconds, and a 10 second cooldown has been added
  • Regenerates 100 armor / second while in use
  • Will now block 66% of damage from the front instead of 75%
  • No longer saps energy while in use
• Cysts no longer die when disconnected from hive
  • Cysts instead rapidly lose maturity when the chain is disconnected, making them easier to destroy. When reconnected, maturity is regained rapidly.
  • Nutrient mist can be used to prevent the maturity loss.
• Contamination Tweaks
  • Increased cooldown to 6 seconds (was 5)
  • Bile now sprays every 2 seconds, up to 3 times, and can be stopped by destroying the pustule
• HMG has been added, to help deal with those pesky lifeforms
  • Note: Sounds and art assets for HMG are temporary.
• Jetpacks now use more fuel based on a weapon’s weight
  • Shotgun and Flamethrower now use 7.6% more fuel
  • Grenade Launchers use 15% more fuel
  • HMGs uses 130% more fuel
• Mine changes
  • eHP changed to 40 (from 100)
  • Cost reduced from 15 to 8
  • You now get 2 mines instead of 3
• Medpacks can snap to players from a slightly larger radius, snapping already existed but previously was not shown to the commander
• Alien vision has been replaced with “Huze’s Minimal”
• Alien vision will default to On every time you spawn in
• Crosshairs have been updated with new art
  • If you prefer the old ones, you can still use them by activating this mod: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=686960508
• Power nodes can now be rebuilt at the same speed with a build tool as with a welder
• Wrench damage icons now show how hurt teammates are, and have an outline if you have a welder
• Dropped weapons expiration bar will now be colored based on how much time is left before it is destroyed
• Range circle indicators have been added for many alien commander abilities, as well as a secondary circle to Shifts to indicate the radius of the energy regeneration passive effect
• Mines and Welders will be highlighted and show as pickupable even if you already have one
• Dropped weapons will be picked up automatically, if you have an empty slot
• Server browser:
  • Added the ping filter
  • The server details window now has a short delay so users can doubleclick at the server entries wherever they like.
  • The server count display is not clickable anymore and has a tooltip
  • Favorites and History are now a toggle, clicking again at them while show your previous game selection
• Reduced amount Enzyme particle effects obscure view
• Death screen blood splatter effects will disappear immediately when you start respawning

• Fixed the issue of ragdolls not getting destroyed
• Players will no longer have nutrient mist effects applied to them unless they are an embryo
• Server browser Join button should work better
• Reduce network cost of the concede cinematics slightly
• Fixed an issue where welders would build faster with E than with LMB