The time has come to award the first Squad Five awards! Launched just over a week ago, Squad Five is a way for us to say thankyou to you for outstanding community effort. There is no doubt that without the collective effort of all of you, NS2 would not be half the game it is today.

Todays awards are the first of many - we will post up new people every few weeks. No doubt we will miss people this first time around. Please bear with us and be patient - it is not because we don't value your contribution, we just have human brains and cannot remember everything that happens every day.

If you know someone who has made a consistent, outstanding contribution to the NS2 community, nominate them here. Include as much information as you can! We have had some people nominated with no information: We don't doubt these people are awesome, but we need some more info about exactly what they have done.

So without further ado, here is the first (and not exhaustive) round of awards!

Squad Five

Plasma | Creation of the wicked developer tracker

Matso | The source of many an awesome code change

fsfod | The non-flash menu mod that added lots of useful functions

Evil_bOb1 | The custom map Turtle

FMPone | Outstanding contributions to NS2 mapping

Zeikko | Positive contribution to the community through Archaea and balance debates

Grissi | Conistently measured, positive and well argued contributions to balance discussions

InternetsLive | Streaming gameplay via the twitch.tv/naturalselection2 channel

Kouji_San | For being an unrelenting all-encompassing positive unfluence on the community

invTempest | Starting the NS2Servers.com server offering

endar | Running the Australia Pure NS2 servers at significant personal cost

[=Alex=] | The map Triad

Ybarra | Graphics design for the NS2 community

dePARA | Service to EU players by running the HBZ servers

sr.Lance | Contribution to playtesting by running the Skulkrush servers

dushan | Creating Skycam in his spare time

Huze | Taking Dushan's Skycam mod and turning it into the brilliant Insight

Dgelneshi | Taking Dushan's Skycam mod and turning it into the brilliant Insight

[Dr]Leto | Effort in organising and commentating weekend play on Twitch.tv

WasabiOne | Consistently positive influence on the community in general

[HEI] Spade | Writing the Kharaa guide on MMGN, contributions to the French NS2 community

ÒŗăNģё | Outstanding help to new players in Pubs

Heller | Writing the Kharaa guide on MMGN

Orange | Energy, patience and friendliness in teaching new players

McGlaspie | Fostering comraderie, good sporsmanship, launch of one of the first good NS2 servers, Team #156 West

Mr. Arkanti | Commentating Twitch.TV casts and contributions to the Australian NS2 community

Acid_Rain | Outstanding contributions to NS2 music and playtesting

SabaHell | Oustanding contributions to NS2 playtesting

Squad Five Silver

Player | Creating and consistently updating the GameOvermind admin mod

Obraxis | For his rock solid direction of the PT group as PT lead

pSyk0mAn | The creation of the most played map in the NS2 Beta - Summit

Jiriki | Maintaining ensl.org into the NS2 age, contributions to NS2 playtesting

Now, we know we have missed many people. This is the first go, and there will be more to follow! Please, stay cool with us while work through all the nominations, and be sure to nominate them in the nomination form.

The icons will not yet show up in game (this is still to come), but they will show up on the forums.