There are a lot of subtle changes and fixes in this build. Nothing too mind-shattering, but the alien armor changes, Gorge refinements and fixing of sentry "confusion" from Lerk spores should make the game play noticeably better.

We are now starting a two week "sprint" where we are focused on the new main menu, new Shade abilities and the Shift, while the more engine focused guys (Max and Dushan) are working on performance.

Features

• Added new Marine Commander ability: Nano construct. Allows the Commander to speed a marine's construction by 4x for a short time (uses Command Station energy).

Balance

• Increased Clog health from 200 to 250 (same as an egg).
• Clogs have "shock absorbing" property where they can take no more than 50 points of damage in any single attack, making them more resistant to grenades. Will remove this if it feels weird.
• Lowered bile bomb splash radius as it was affecting way too big of an area (close to NS1 now)
• Increased ARC cost from 10 to 15 tres and upgrade Robotics Fastory cost from 10 to 20. They still need more work but hopefully this will lessen the mega-trains of doom.
• Moved some of power point durability from health into armor, to make them more susceptible to Heavy/Door damage (Onos).
• "Door" damage now treats armor as 1 point of health (currently only used by Onos).
• Number of allowed Hydras, Cysts, Clogs no longer grow with # of Hives.
• Changed corrode damage type (bile bomb) to deal heavy damage (double damage to armor), no damage to players unless exosuit, and reduced bile bomb base damage to 35 per second, down from 80.
• Increased Whip Bombard damage to 1200 and added custom damage type: it will deal light damage (half to armor) and affect only structures.
• Adjusted Gorge spit damage to 30 to compensate for new Marine armor: 6-7-8-10 (was 7-8-9-11)
• Rebalanced Marine armor to have an effect at as many levels as feasible. Marines now get 20 armor with each upgrade level (was 15). Puncture damage multiple changed from 1.5 to 1.25. Aliens should now kill Marines with this many attacks (Armor 0/1/2/3):

Change

• User settings (name, keybindings, etc.) are now stored on Steam Cloud
• Added code to prevent order spam which led to choke.
• Changed alien wave spawn. Now it spawns 1, 2 or 3 aliens together, depending on how many are currently dead. 1 alien takes 9 seconds, 2 takes 13 and 3 takes 17 seconds. The idea here is that 1-hive aliens spawn slightly faster than 1-IP marines and slightly slower than 2-IP marines. This is a complicated system and we're still trying things out here.
• Hit indication (at crosshair) is not shown anymore when your Hydra hits a target.
• Increased Onos base speed slightly to have him feel less like a wounded senior citizen.
• Gorges can no longer place a structure once the limit has been reached (Gorge need to manually destroy them before they are allowed to place a new structure)
• Aliens are no longer allowed to re-evolve an upgrade when they already had it before and use all upgrade slots.
• AI units can no longer follow move orders which leads them onto neutral entities (powerpoint, resourcepoint, techpoint) to block them.
• Slightly increased range when doors open for players.
• Each chat message is limited to 80 characters now to reduce spam.
• Decreased Hydra accuracy and further reduced their ability to track moving targets.
• Fade blink is now lag compensated.
• Observatory "blips" Fade now by distance for Marines.
• Removed sprint penalty on infestation for Marines.
• If the parent Gorge for any of his structures dies, and doesn't become Gorge again for 60 seconds, then his structures start dying as if they didn't have infestation.
• Whips will no longer auto Bombard players (they would not harm them anyway)
• Resource points are no longer selectable.

Fix

• Fixed bug which allowed Lerks to shoot bilebombs through glass (mineshaft Marine start)
• Fixed bug where Onos smash attack was triggered when targeting friendly structures.
• Fixed a rare bug that caused the Onos to remain on fire visually after the fire was put out by a Gorge heal spray.
• The Flamethrower will no longer shoot before the reload animation is complete.
• Fixed bug where dead enemies would appear detected when near an Observatory.
• Fixed bug where locations could be marked as "visited" during round start up (resulted in fore sight could be used in multiple locations from the beginning on)
• Fixed Onos charge sound playing for local player when camouflaged.
• Fixed Onos crouching speed (was same as walk speed before)
• Fixed bug where MACs could repair insanely fast.
• Fixed saving and loading of system options.
• Fixed problems with sentries not being confused (by spores) at long ranges and short ranges. Fixed playback of sentry confusion sound.
• Fixed rare script error caused by displaying the health circles in spectator mode.
• Changed console output for the dedicated server to be ASCII.
• Fixed script error that occurred sometimes when a Fade died while blinking.
• Ragdolls will no longer have a minimap blip displayed.
• Fixed a bug where blinking at low energy as Fade would immediately cancel the blink.
• Fixed the collision scaling bug.
• Chat messages are now limited, this should not be noticeable in most cases but will help to prevent spam.
• Fixed the % symbol not working in chat.
• Fixed crash if a Lua object did not return a class namke from the __towatch function.
• Fixed issue with Stomp where the Stomp animation played but no shock wave was sent.
• Fixed but where mouse sensitivity would not properly reset when you die as Onos while charging.
• Various crashes related to collision objects being destroyed.

Sound

• Fixed playback of sentry confusion sound.
• Quieter skulk enemy footsteps

ns2_mineshaft

• Increased player clip distance around operations window.

ns2_summit

• Fixed several stuck issues
• Fixed evolution stuck issue in the corridor between Flight Control and Summit Reception
• Smoothed out player movement in curved stairs in Summit Reception and Sub Access
• Rotated some Tech Points and Resource Nozzles so the models would be better oriented
• Gorges can now fit in Atrium's floor vent
• Blocked the Atrium vent a little further back to avoid player confusion
• Fixed issue in Glass Hallway where Fades or Marines weren't able to get into the vent
• Moved rocks below the platform in Crevice (to prevent alien camping)
• Removed clipping faces in some railings that were blocking bullets (not needed anymore)
• Removed steam from Sub Access
• Removed "Murder Holes" in Computer Lab

SDK

• Added Pathing.FindRandomPointAroundCircle.

We hope you're enjoying the beta! We'll have more info and another patch for you soon.