We just finished up a quick patch, hot on the heels of the Onos/Veil epic Build 217. This patch is mostly bug fixes and improvements.

Balance

• Increased mature hydra health by 30%. Decreased spread on hydra spikes so they are more accurate. Removed inaccuracy versus fast-moving targets.
• Reduced Lerk umbra energy cost from 30 to 25.
• Reduced marine total sprint distance and recovery time to make more intentional. Added "out of breath" sound effect when you run to exhaustion.
• The MAC is no longer able to weld for 1 second after taking damage.
• Adjusted minimum (and minimum-emergency) egg spawn rates to increase the spawn rate when many aliens are dead.
• Increased Exosuit research from 20 to 30.

Fixes

• Attempt to improve wall jumping by adding more of a vertical boost.
• Fix server browser column sorting order (e.g. first click on the ping column will always sort in ascending order).
• Fixed TechNode:GetHasTech on client side.
• Fixed aliens not being able to damage partially repaired powernodes.
• Fixed bug causing the first click on the Commander minimap to be ignored.
• Fixed bug where aliens could upgrade the same hive type multiple times.
• Fixed bug where Gorge could attack during belly slide.
• Fixed bug where marine could purchase weapons when in vortex.
• Fixed bug where other players would not hear the pistol attack sound.
• Fixed bug where the GUI would stop updating after hot-loading Lua files.
• Fixed bug where the server could send an update to the client even if the world had not been updated (could cause poor interpolation for server side simulated objects).
• Fixed crash when calling destroy on a nil render object.
• Fixed exploit where a player could gain unresearched abilities when evolving with a commander dropped egg to a higher life form.
• Fixed incorrect icons displaying on the death screen (The pistol will not display when you are killed by the Exo Minigun for example).
• Fixed incorrect interpolation of grenades.
• Fixed issue where the Exosuit interior was lit by the outside world when the cockpit was closed.
• Fixed issue with commander ping interfering with default voice keybind (ping can now only be triggered with mouse button 3 or the icon at the minimap).
• Fixed script error caused by using sv_say or sv_tsay without providing any message.
• Fixed spike attack sound triggered too early.
• Fixed vortexed units being affected by bilebomb.
• Increased Lerk spore energy cost a bit so they can't be spammed forever with Adrenaline.
• Increased Lerk umbra radius a bit to more accurately match the effect.
• Insight - tech point damage audio and flashing red warning not working.
• Marine commander sees now player health bars again.
• Moved Shade to use ModelMixin; it animates too much for it to be a good ClientModelMixin candidate.
• Sentries now correctly attack hallucinations.
• Server/Client side hitbox mismatch for some structures.
• Shooting the Shift will always result in damage now, it was inconsistent before.
• The Exo no longer displays the weapon switch indicator at the bottom of the screen.
• The Exo no longer tracks cloaked enemies on the UI.
• The Mine will no longer damage enemies on the other side of a wall.
• The Mine will no longer explode when it detects an enemy through a wall.
• The button image for Welder on the Commander interface is no longer blank.
• Weapons will no longer float above the Marine after they are knocked down to the ground from the Onos stomp ability.

Improvements

• Added an image that is displayed on the UI when there are connection problems to alert the player.
• Camera is closer to egg when you're evolving: looks better and makes you paranoid about what might be sneaking up on you.
• Marines now drop weapons which cost resources (same as when they die) before entering an exosuit.
• The sv_status command may now be used by all clients on the server.

ns2_summit

• Fixed problem where you couldn’t drop anything between Sub Access and Maintenance.
• Fixed some Commander building exploits (Thanks rantology!).

ns2_tram

• Detailing changes in Repair room, added tram tunnel signs.
• Fixed texture issues in some rooms.

Optimizations

• Changed precached cinematics to be loaded when the client starts.
• Fixed issue where materials could be loaded and unloaded during ray tracing.

SDK

• Fixed hot loading of textures and surface shaders in the tools.
• IP address is no longer displayed in sv_status, sv_statusip can be used for that now (only available for admins).

Sound

• No more girl screams.

Enjoy!