Reinforced Expansion Released!

Posted by 7 years ago

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. Biodome. 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. Look further back, and the updates have flowed . Released incrementally to everyone that owned NS2 before the release of Reinforced, twenty-four individual updates have dramatically increased performance, improved map layouts, completely revamped NS2 balance mechanics, and more. Together, these twenty four updates make Reinforced a monstor that everyone at Unknown Worlds is immensely proud of.

We are also immensely proud that Reinforced is free. Six months of game development is not cheap, and we have often discussed how we might continue to pay for keeping the studio focused on Natural Selection 2 full time. Various options were discussed – Including making Reinforced a separate Steam DLC, or introducing in-game micro-tran$actions. But these monetisation methods do not fit with our culture. Knowing we must pay the bills to keep the lights on, we decided to introduce the Reinforcement Program:

The Reinforcement Program allows you to decide how much of the cost of Reinforced we make back – And ultimately, whether we can continue to work full time on creating NS2 content.

Some of you might remember the Constellation Program. That Program facilitated Natural Selection 1 development after release. The Reinforcement Program is Constellation on steroids. Not only can you receive in-game badges, but also exclusive in-game player models and even hard-copy artbooks signed by the NS2 team.

The rewards from the Reinforcement Program will be introduced in stages, starting on September 3. There are only 25 of the highest game level – Onos, available. So get in quick!

Here is a full breakdown of Reinforced by awesome NS2 community member It’s Super Effective:

Here is the changelog for the part of Reinforced that went out today:

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

infestation no longer damages ghost structures

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

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