Happy New Year! It has already been an exciting start to 2018 for UWE and we look forward to bringing you more exciting and interesting game experiences. The core of NS2’s development has always been the community. So many people from around the world dedicating time, opinions and skills to help make this game what it is today. Five years in and we are still working with dedicated members, new and old, to make the game better and more enjoyable. Today we release Update 321, bringing you some of the first new gameplay features to come in 2018. First we wanted to look at some of the alien features that haven’t felt complete. Onos Stampede is a great way to really immerse yourself into the large beast and finally feel like an alien gorilla on the warpath, using your body to buck and shove almost anything out of your way using the existing Charge ability. Special thank you to Steelcap for all the hard work and many revisions to get this into the game. Next, Babblers also see some love with the addition of the Babbler Mine. No longer sitting on the sidelines of an attack, the babblers can stay in an egg and placed like a proximity mine to hatch on unsuspecting marines and harass with more aggression than ever before. Special thank you also to Katzenfleisch for all the hard work and many revisions to get this into the game. Finally, this update includes a nod to our co-workers on the Subnautica team. With the release of Subnautica and it taking part within the same universe of NS2 we found it only fitting to throw some in-game love their way. Rantology has worked up a couple cool new shoulder patches and they are free to everyone! There is more to this update below in the changelog so take a look and then get in there to play with the new stuff. Big shoutout to our Playtesters for all the extra PT time this update, you always make the difference. Enjoy! Changelog Gameplay

• Onos Stampede (contributed by Steelcap)
  • A long desired addition to round out the Onos Charge ability; where a charging Onos will now push Marines out of the way while doing 12 damage. 
    • Exosuits feel the impact too, but are heavier so they barely get pushed and stop Oni in their tracks.
    • Requires 72% of charge’s top speed to be reached in order to work
    • Onos charge ability has had it’s acceleration increased ~35%
    • Added two new sound events for when Onos impact Marines and Exos (contributed by Sweets)

This is something that just feels "right" for Onos. No longer will a 2-ton space gorilla/rhino be stopped dead in its tracks by a puny 180-pound human when barreling down a hallway. This should aid in Oni being unable to escape poorly positioned situations where they would otherwise be body blocked. Great job Steelcap! https://i.imgur.com/OecDW4N.gifv

• Babbler Mines (contributed by Katzenfleisch)
  • Babbler Eggs can be placed on walls or ceilings now to be an effective mine.
  • Babbler Eggs placed by gorges will no longer hatch immediately after being built
    • Gorges can hatch them if they choose to via the Use Key
    • If you hatch the babbler mine manually, they will automatically attach to you
  • Babbler Eggs will hatch when enemies get too close, quickly disposing of any hapless marines that weren't paying attention.
  • Babbler Eggs can be hatched at a distance by their Gorge hitting it with Spit.
  • They have a range of 200 to 300 hp based upon maturity, which takes 20 seconds.
  • They can do up to 40 initial damage when exploding on a Marine when fully matured, and proportionately less damage when not matured.
  • Babbler Mines can be scanned by observatories

We wanted to do something to help gorges in the early game and create something interesting, tactically. This feature adds a lot of depth to gorge-play, we feel. Marines will soon learn that not all gorges should be chased. Thanks to Katzenfleisch for all his hard work on this feature! https://i.imgur.com/iSloxtv.gifv  

• Babbler Improvements (contributed by Katzenfleisch)
  • Now tracks targets much more effectively
  • Significantly increased aggression and rate they will attack
  • Attacks will now land more reliably but they can still be dodged (don’t stand still or backpedal Marines!)
  • Significantly increased speed of Babbler bait ball, allowing it to be used over much greater distances and with more accuracy. It now behaves more like a fast moving projectile instead of a lobbed grenade.
  • Bait ball now uses the first surface touched as the location for babblers to go to.
  • Fixed bug where Babblers would become unresponsive if their set target was too far away.
  • Fixed bug where Babblers would not consistently attack their target after moving within attack range.
  • Babblers now attack as a pack when given an attack order.
  • Unit Status now shown for Babbler Eggs to show their status and built percentage.
  • Babblers will now cling to friendlies much more consistently
  • Fixed many instances where babblers could fall through the map
• Marine weapons purchased by players or commanders and intentionally dropped within a very short range of Armories will no longer expire. (contributed by Katzenfleisch) 
  • Killed Marines will always have an expiration timer for their dropped weapons, regardless of distance to armory.

We felt that it was restrictive that players with an excess amount of resources - be they field players or commanders - who purchased weapons for their teammates, had to have their teammates pick them up within a quick amount of time. Now they can be picked up at any time, provided it was an intentional drop and very close to the armory. 

• Flamethrowers
  • Increased Pres cost to 20 from 15
  • Decreased direct damage to 12 from 15
  • Removed the immediate damage applied to flame puddles when they first appear. (8 dmg) This provides Aliens a chance to get out of harm’s way.
  • While on fire, Alien lifeforms now only take damage for 2.1 seconds after the direct attack has ceased - structures will still burn for up to 6 seconds depending on how long the attack is sustained.
  • Decreased Flame puddle radius to 1.8m from 3m.

Some subtle tweaks were necessary after fixing Update 320’s Flamethrower implementation, based upon resounding feedback from the community in public playtest sessions. Players felt that being on fire for 6 seconds after leaving the room felt unfair, and that the Pres cost was not remotely punitive enough when rushing the tech, nor was it reflective of the weapons new capabilities. Tweaks / Improvements

• Two new Marine Shoulder Patches added for all NS2 owners to celebrate Subnautica’s release, Leviathan and Peeper.

• Commanders can now group select multiple entities and the action buttons will be contextually appropriate for what is selected (contributed by Katzenfleisch)
• Cancel button for Commanders now shows  when you expect it to (when blueprints are involved) and the Recycle button when appropriate, and does so in the bottom right of the commander UI area. (contributed by Katzenfleisch)
• Improved Hydra placement (ghost model) allowing for more consistent behavior for all valid placements (contributed by Katzenfleisch)
• Improved Gorges ability to build their structures when placing in hard to reach spots (i.e. ceilings above the Gorge, or tight corners). This eliminates the need to jump and healspray in most circumstances. (contributed by Katzenfleisch)
• Smoothed out a lot of the performance hits caused by using phase gates and distress beacons. There will also no longer be any lag time between when a marine phases through and when they see what is in the new location. See SDK section "RelevancyPortals" below for details.
  • Gone are the days when you could phase through a phase gate and die before you even knew you were being chewed on. Now, you may still die but you won't be so confused.
• Optimized the routines that checks if a point is inside a trigger entity. This reduces occurrences of small hitches in the early game when lights are being updated per their map location.

Fixes

• Fixed bug with Babblers causing script errors when their target wasn’t considered alive. (contributed by Katzenfleisch)
• Fixed issue with Flamethrower damage type being incorrectly calculated
• Fixed issue in Light Handlers that causes duplicate calls for map lights to be updated when after they were already updated for the current render frame. This significantly reduces the cost for map lighting changes (i.e. Power Node damaged / destroyed) as the game progresses.
• Fixed that sometimes the concede sequence wouldn't play.
• Fixed Healspary causing Marine structures to show their flinch/damaged animation. (contributed by Katzenfleisch)
• Fixed Marine waypoints staying applied to Alien lifeforms after line of sight was lost.
• Fixed a rare script error that would occur when a new hive was created.
• Fixed an issue where attempting to play a blank-named sound via a network message would cause a script error.
• Fixed most cases of enemy icons sticking on the minimap when they should no longer be visible.
• Added a nil check to OrdersMixin.lua to prevent a harmless edge-case script error.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the server time to drift out of sync with the client time on a listen server.  This would eventually cause permanent red-plugging on listen servers. (This may help those who experience issues with Skulk Challenge)
• Fixed a rare issue where clients would experience a massive game-freezing hitch whenever a power node's power-state changed.
• Fixed an error that would occur if a spectator was able to see a ReadyRoom player who also had a health bar (required the RR player to somehow get onto the actual map). Thank you Katzenfleisch

Maps

• Caged
  • Fixed issue introduced in Update 320 where some of the Location names did not show on map. #BlameMcGlaspie
• Mineshaft
  • Fixed stuck spot preventing Marine and Fades from being able to walk through vent entrance in north-western area of Cave.
• Summit
  • Small tweak to provide paneling model in Sub Access to block LOS better and prevent model clipping - thank you Zavaro
• Tram
  • Fixed stuck spot in Repair Room around techpoint - thank you Zavaro
• Veil
  • Minor tweaks to Low Lights in The Neck location - thank you Zavaro

SDK

• Added "RelevancyPortal" feature.
  • Creates a link between two areas on the map, so that as a player approaches the "source" point, a relevancy sphere expands around the "destination" point.
  • Smooths out spikes in performance caused by the server suddenly needing to send lots of new data to clients who teleport.
  • Removes the delay between a client's (predicted) teleportation and the relevant entity data of the new location reaching the client.
• Editor
  • Added "Un-weld-faces" feature. All selected faces are separated from each other.
  • Fixed "local space" transform, which now works with geometry, Scale Tool, and last prop selected as transform basis.
  • Added "remove collinear vertices" that removes useless vertices to optimize geometry.
  • Added "edge flow select" feature
    • This selects edges in a directional flow. Example: it will select an entire row or column in a regular grid, or the entire cap of a cylinder. Selects the adjacent edges that are closest to parallel with the starting edge.
  • Fixed RMB+drag issue that caused mouse cursor oddities
  • Reworked s_stats debugging command to display more details of playing sound events and internal resources of the sound system.

Known Issues

• There are still some edge cases where enemy units will remain visible on the minimap when they should not be visible (however nothing new introduced in this update).
• Weapons that do not expire near the armory will still contain their additional ammo pack as all dropped weapons do. This means players who may walk over those ammo packs might receive them, and thus a future Marine who picks up a weapon may only have a single magazine worth of ammunition. Not a huge issue considering you’re at melee range to an armory already anyways, but worth mentioning as we could not resolve this in time.