Eclipse Tower is in ruin after the Kharaa invasion. The battle was brought home in the name of “scientific research,” deemed necessary to protect our future. We thought the battle was over and all were safe, but we were wrong… The Kharaa have escaped to the streets below Eclipse Tower and are already advancing throughout the district. Reinforcements have been called in as the streets, markets and clubs are evacuated. The war for our human existence rages on. We have to hurry to eliminate the threat; they’ve reached the Metro lines and can quickly spread out across the entire city. As the fights continue into the tunnels of the Metro, shimmers of blue and white appear in the darkness. A faint shriek can be heard in the distance, it seems familiar but all the same different. What new terror Lerks in the darkness?  The team is excited to bring you our most ambitious map to date, METRO. This new and unique map truly brings us to the Human world and leaves behind the remote facilities of distant meteors and other planets. We owe a huge thank you to the many map testers and a very dedicated group of Community Developers including; Kash, Mephilles, pSyK, Shrimm, Loki, Zavaro, Paul Wolfe, Runestorm, Vlaad and Master G. They’ve all worked hard over the last few months (if not more) to take the inspiration from community map Jambi and re envision a whole new look and style for the NS2 universe. Be sure to enable the reflections graphics option in game to really see the map at its best.  Remember all sales of NS2 and DLC directly affect our development budget and allow our team to continue work on NS2.

Changelog

Gameplay

• Marines:
  • Armslab t-res cost increased to 20 (up from 15)
  • Armor 1 and Weapons 1 research times now take 75 seconds each (up from 60 seconds)
  • Power node build time is now 12 seconds (up from 8)
  • Shotgun scaling received from the Armslab weapons upgrades is now 5.9% (down from 10%)  [Damage per shot is now 170/180/190/200 down from 170/187/204/221]
  • The Shotgun now has falloff once again from 5-15m, 50% maximum penalty, linear
  • Pistol damage is now 20 normal damage  (down from 25 light)
  • Decreased the maximum number of mines per marine from 2 to 1, reduced the cost from 10 to 5 p-res
• Aliens:
  • Skulk bitecone reduction has been reverted to 1.2x1.2 (up from 0.8x1.2)
  • Skulk sneak speed is now 4.3 (up from 4.0)
  • Skulks now receive 50% speed boost on the initial jump
  • Advanced Metabolize now requires Biomass 5 to research. (up from 4)
  • Vampirism: Each shell now adds 0.5 seconds of shield duration before the shield starts to decay. (3 shells will now give 1.5 seconds of shield duration before decay begins) [Up from a flat 0.5 second duration]

Tweaks / Improvements

• Added the new map, Metro
• Added the new Lerk Abyss skin.
• Removed Exo Railgun target highlighting, as it could introduce severe frame-rate drops in some cases. We may revisit this at a later date, but for now it was worth removing.

Fixes

• Fixed that Marines could see consumed Tunnels in the kill feed.
• Fixed the Retry or Reconnect console commands not being usable when already connected to a server.
• Fixed that the client would not receive a popup warning them that mods have been disabled when updating to a newer version of the game.
• Fixed Railguns being unable to deal damage to an alien when the skybox was behind them.
• Fixed wrong damage numbers showing from corrosive damage. For example, using Bile Bomb on a 90 armor marine would show 146 damage instead of 180.
• Fixed damage numbers showing too much damage done to Exos upon death.
• Fixed the killing shot done to an empty Exosuit showing separate damage numbers.
• Fixed Main Menu background sound effects would continue playing when loading into a server or local mod.
• Fixed that Drifters could not patrol between more than two points.
• Fixed warm up mode showing the default Armory model instead of the Advanced Armory.
• Fixed the Arc Factory research progress would not actually show on the Tech Tree menu.
• Fixed the typo in the Commander Prototype menu that said “Jetpack, Jetpack”.
• Fixed a crash when disconnecting from a server.

Sounds

• New atmospheric cityscape sound added for Metro (Thanks MasterG!)

Maps

• Metro (new map)
  • Special thank you to the following people and all of our Map and Play Testers:
  • Kash - Project lead, 2d/3d signs, some in-editor work
  • Mephilles - Lots of in editor detailing and bug fixing.
  • pSyk - Performance master, in editor detailing and final lighting.
  • Shrimm - Lots of in editor detailing, Bug fixing and NAMT leading.
  • Loki - Map’s godfather and visionary.
  • Zavaro - Reskinning assets and tweaking trim textures
  • Samoose - Extra textures, loading screens
  • Paul Wolfe - Stalls and holograms
  • Runestorm - A metric ton of new textures, decals and models
  • Vlaad - Many awesome 3d models (lamps, streetlights, the truck, ac units etc)
  • MasterG - City Soundscape.
• Unearthed (Thanks Kash!)
  • Lighting Tweaks mapwide, unearthed in general should perform better, especially with shadows enabled on high quality lights.
  • Altered collision issues map wide to make for a smoother experience.
  • Fixed stuck spots in Transfer, a lot of stuck spots indeed.
  • Holes fixed in multiple spots throughout the map.
  • Occlusion alterations in Toxic Pool, Transfer, Regulation and Furnace to address performance concerns in those areas.
  • Added a sheet of cover to Toxic Pool.

Tools

• Editor - Fixed that box selection could be a little bit too sensitive, resulting in the mapper sometimes unknowingly selecting a large amount of stuff behind a wall when they only wanted to select the wall.

SDK

• Added "wetmaps" to the game.  This allows mappers to specify regions that should appear "wet" or "damp" without having to modify materials to create wet variations of them.  Similar to fog volumes, mappers can specify "wetmap volumes" -- areas bounded by an arbitrary mesh volume and give it a "wetness" value.  Then, the sharp edges can be smoothed over by placing wetmap decals.

Known Issues

• Reflections do not initialize in the main menu on first launch.