The room was eerily silent, even the normal white noise of the industrial facility seemed to vanish. I proceeded forward as ordered but something felt uneasy and I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to stand up. I continue to tell myself that I am a trained soldier and that I’ve encountered enough alien scum that nothing should surprise me, but still the unease raced across my body and the fear set in even more than before. Suddenly I hear an all too familiar sound, one that can only be described as vacuumous vortex that death so quickly follows. I stand at the ready, shotgun in hand as I prepare for the Fade that I know is quickly approaching. The sweat rolls over my brow and begins to drip over my eye… I blink and in that instant I feel the presence of the beast in front of me. As my eyes open what stands before me is the creature I know but something is different, this fade evolved, more sinister and more deadly. He quickly swipes at my head and sway to the left to avoid his bony blade like arms. I swing my shotgun back around and fire, but I seem to miss as the fade quickly moves and disappears into the shadows of the room. I begin to trace the room looking for the beast and fire I hope will be the fatal blow. I approach the darkness slowly in anticipation of an attack and in the black I can just make out the two blood thirsty eyes of the fade. I fire my shotgun and the blood from the beast paints the floor below me, but then it lunges forward both weapon-like arms at the ready to stab me, I try to fire again but feel the bone rip through the skin on my shoulder. My body falls to floor like a rock as the blood flows from my wound like a creek after the storm. As my vision begins to blur and I can feel the life leaving my body, I hear the fade chuckle and watch it drift back into the shadows…

Update 297 is packed full of exciting new changes to existing weapons. We have been looking and talking about ways to shake things up, and our first thoughts were adjust the items that aren’t that fun or aren’t used that much now. There is obviously more than what you see below, but with our weekly release window we can only test so much at a time. If you hadn’t got the hint from above the Shadow Fade is now available in game. If you purchased the Shadow Tier as part of the Reinforced program you will get the fade free of charge when you launch the game. For those of you that didn’t, you can purchase it in the Item Store. If the fade is successful we will quickly be working to introduce the final member of the shadow lifeforms, the Onos. Expect more changes and exciting new thoughts and ideas over the coming weeks and spread the word to your friends that now is the best time to be playing NS2 and it’s only going to get better! UPDATE DETAILS Tweaks / Improvements

• Shadow Fade model/skin has been released to all Shadow Tier players and is available in the NS2 Item Store
• Exosuit changes - Dualies for All!
  • Base Exo research now unlocks dual gun exos, and does not require two Command Stations to purchase
  • Dual exo personal resources cost reduced from 60 to 45, and Claw exos have been removed (used to be 40 res)
  • Dualies now move faster (same speed as claw Exos of the same type)
  • Exos now only gain 30 extra armor per armor upgrade, instead of 45
  • Minigun ROF doubled, but damage reduced by 55% (per bullet) and changed to Normal damage type
  • Railgun damage changed to normal type
  • Ejecting from an exo when you have a jetpack will now grant you a quarter tank to fly away with
• Alien Commander ability changes
  • Contamination now spews Bile briefly when initially placed (equal to two bile bombs)
  • Rupture now Parasites anything in its effect radius
    • Reduced the view-blocking visuals by 40%
    • Rupture charge time decreased by 42% (was 3s now 1.25s)
    • Increased Team Resources cost to 3 (was 2)
    • Increased cooldown time to 4 seconds (was 2 seconds)
• Grenade Changes - Guaranteed Explosions!
  • It now costs 2 personal resources to buy 1 grenade (previously it was 3 for 2)
  • If you die after pulling the pin or while attempting to throw a grenade, it will fall at your feet and explode
  • If you die with a non-primed grenade, it will respawn with you
  • Cluster grenades’ secondary explosion is now fire type
  • Grenade deploy animation is now affected by catpacks as well as the pin pull and throw animations
• Power Surge Changes - “Overcharge“:
  • Power Surge is now researchable at the Command Station for 15 team resources and needs 45 seconds to be researched.
  • Power Surge costs 5 team resources and has a cooldown of 20 seconds
  • Does not work at Command Stations and Power Nodes
  • Applying power surge is now easier as it auto selects a building close to where you clicked (similar to Nanoshield)
  • New Effects:
    • On powered structures:
      • Deals 50 healthpoint damage to nearby aliens
      • Lowers the energy regeneration rate of nearby aliens for 5 seconds
    • On un-powered structures:
      • Restores power for 20 seconds.
• Nameplates no longer have a background or animated border elements
• Health bars will now show for enemies you attack
  • Only visible in short range and with clear line of sight onto the target
  • Better visual damage feedback about time to kill than damage numbers
  • Engagements are less binary for new players
  • Helps to focus on a target
• Damage numbers are now off by default for new players, since they are redundant when viewed in conjunction with health bars.
• Slowed down the dead lifeform dissolve length from 1.5s to 2.25s so players have a little more time to enjoy their kill
• Replaced the Gorge with a Drifter status at the Alien tech tree overview.
• Improved hit feedback on the crosshair to appear and disappear faster and coincide more closely with the damage you are doing.
• Reduced name flickering when aiming at an enemy

Fixes

• Increased the player slot limit for Linux to 99
• Cluster grenades and mines will no longer shake the commander’s view
• Fixed that the bootcamp menu message was not working.
• Fixed Cluster Grenade fragment explosions not applying correct damage type. Was Normal, now Fire damage type.
• Fixed that some of the serverbrowser filter did not work
• Removed a one pixel offset in the killfeed icon texture that caused issues in the past
• Fixed issue causing crosshair hit feedback to be updating too slowly
• Fixed that completing the tutorial granted a few achievements too many
• Fixed that the average skill value of servers wasn’t being calculated correctly

Translations

• Added the achievement title and descriptions to the translation system, so they can be translated via http://translate.naturalselection2.com/
• Added Czech, French and German translations for the new tutorials (Thanks navaska, Pelargir and ChrisStark!)

Maps 

• Docking (Thanks Zavaro!)
  • Fixed missing Location entity for area adjacent to Locker Rooms
• Tram (Thanks Flaterectomy!)
  • Fixed various texture misalignments and smoothing issues around the map
  • Removed erroneous light props hidden behind a wall that were visible from commander view in shipping
  • Removed the large door at the southern end of the room in Shipping from commander view
  • Fixed a cable prop ending in mid-air in Repair
  • Made it easier to move over the pipe behind the powernode in Platform
  • Visual improvements below the floor and around the pillars and benches in the center of the ready room
  • Put unsorted entities, props and geometry in the appropriate layers
  • Fixed lights staying on in Hub when the power goes out (but made the tram's headlights stay on instead)
  • Fixed lights staying on when the power goes out in Hub and Repair due to being outside of the location entities

SDK

• CompileModel utility updates
  • Fixed a bug that would cause bones to scaled up if the source units weren't in centimeters, resulting in invalid physics collision reps.
  • Fixed bug where collision solids were improperly aligned
  • Fixed an issue that meant cameras from 3dsmax would not have the correct field of view
  • The FBX workflow now allows for bones to be declared as attach_points in the model_compile file
  • Added a feature to help with compiling new FBX assets and using "animation_model" from old DAE assets.  Users can now use the "bone_order_override" directive to specify the sorting order of bones to match up to an existing model.  Note: It safety checks the indices given -- they cannot contain duplicates, they must be sequential, they must start at zero and count up, and they cannot arrange the bones such that any parent has a higher index than the children