Happy Summer everyone! We are back with another update and this time our focus was based on the theme of Fix and Polish. There are plenty of changes throughout the log below to sink your teeth into, so I won’t go into detail and let it speak for itself. Enjoy! Update 316 Changelog Gameplay

• Onos
  • Boneshield has been redesigned and repurposed:
    • No longer regenerates armor in any circumstances
    • Now allows movement (speed of 3, which is roughly half) while active
      • Celerity bonus does not increase Boneshield movement speed, but still provides all speed bonuses otherwise.
    • All Frontal (approx. 110 degree forward-facing cone of Onos) damage from bullet-based weapons is reduced by 80%. With default FOV settings, if the attacker is on screen the damage will be reduced by Bonesield.
    • No innate health/armor regeneration while Boneshield is active. Healing from a Gorge or other source is still allowed.
    • Does not consume energy to initiate, but costs 22 energy per second while active. It also requires a minimal amount of energy to start. Use your energy wisely.
    • Minor cooldown of 0.4 seconds after being used
    • Energy does not regenerate while Boneshield is active. This includes energy recuperation bonus from Shifts.
      • These changes should provide utility to Boneshield without it being overpowered or removing the need for team composition, such as Gorges healing you. You can utilize it defensively (blocking entrance to hive room) or offensively (decoy / bait to assist teammates, or faking out an enemy in 1v1). We feel this improves the nature of Boneshield while adding more fun, variation, and tactical gameplay choices.
    • Reduced the base max speed to 6.6 (from 7.5) and the base max Charge speed to 10.5 (from 11.5).
      • This reverts back to Build 253 values to have the Onos commit more to a map position to hold it, instead of being able to easily rotate between two positions and therefore be the jack of all trades in the late game.
• Improved Gorge Bellyslide
  • Increased max belly sliding speed to 14 from 13.
  • Decreased belly slide cooldown from 1.5 to 1 second.
  • Reduced slide friction on infestation from 0.068 to 0.039.
  • Reduced slide energy cost from 25 to 20.
  • Increased belly slide control from 10 to 18.
  • Speed loss sliding uphill is reduced by 25%.
  • Decreased the air friction from 0.8 to 0.2 so the Gorge doesn't move like a brick while jumping.
    • These changes allow Gorge movement in general to be easier to control and slightly faster, to give Gorge players a powerful tool to avoid previously lethal situations, and to allow for easier use of keeping up with teammates and being a combat gorge.
• Fade Personal Res cost increased to 37 from 35
  • This change restores the Fade timings to from before the Pres rate change.
• Alien structures grow only twice as slow without a drifter or gorge now, instead of three times as slow.
  • The growth speed punishment for not using a drifter to build was mostly affecting new commanders. So we increased the build speed without drifters so teams without an experienced commander are less punished, but can still notice the difference in build times.
• Focus upgrade attack speed changed to a static 33%
  • The focus attack speed was changing from 16% to 33% to 50% with each veil level, and this created inconsistent attack timings to learn during combat. The damage bonus is unchanged, however. This nerfs focus with 1 veil, but buffs it for 3 veils.

Tweaks / Improvements

• Swapped the button positions for "Server Browser" and "Training" in the Play Menu, to make the mouse travel distance significantly less from the main menu to the play menu.
• Added Onos Boneshield ricochet FX to better communicate when the ability is active.
• Improved damage indicator feedback (Thanks to windsurfer & twiliteblue)
  • The red arrow damage indicator will now quickly animate and fade, and was made larger as well. This should make it easier to notice and react to recently received damage from multiple directions.
• Owned Babblers show up grayed out for the gorge at the Babbler Status HUD elements even when they are not actively attached to the owner. This helps to keep track how many of your babblers are still alive. (Thanks to jack^)
• The crash reporter now sends the crash reports with a few further details to our new crash reporter backend. Hopefully this will allow us to track down some of the more common crashes we and our playtesters are unable to reproduce. Thanks to everybody who sent us crash report via discord, the forum and emails the last month!
• Rookies (players below level 25) will now see a popup that highly recommends they play the tutorial, whenever they open the play menu. (occurs once per restart of NS2)
• Rookies are now able to join all servers without any further restriction. However Quick Play will still favor rookie only servers for them.
• Quickplay now ranks servers you’ve played in the last 10 minutes as less favorable
• Improved the art style of some menu pop up windows.
• Alien commander bots will now re-cyst if they lose part of their cyst chain that results in damaging a structure, and will nutrient mist if needed.
• Alien commander bots will no longer spam cysts like they’re fireworks on the 4th of July.
• Added a notice about the required tech to the description of each weapon or class in the marine buy menu in case they are not available yet. So players understand why they can’t already buy a certain weapon.
• Added server config options for the “add commander bots” vote (Thanks to Keats)
• Removed some outdated tip videos and updated a few in-game tooltip strings (Thanks to Kash)

Fixes

• Fixed a bug with dynamic mesh rendering using DirectX 11 that caused the clients to crash when players tried to place gorge webs or a sentry battery.
• Fixed that hallucination caused a server script error when they tried to attack a target.
• Fixed that the training link in the play menu opened the last visited main menu window
• Fixed a bug in the animation system that would, in rare cases, cause some of the "Infinite bone coords" error spam.
• Fixed that the skulk animation got disorientated after repeatedly jumping in a short time. This caused Skulk to sometimes clip through walls while wall jumping. (Thanks twiliteblue)
• Fixed that Quick Join didn’t find any servers if you have joined all available ones less than 10 minutes ago.
• Fixed that the Friends tab of the server browser didn’t show any servers. Note, you still need to be logged into Steam Friends for this to function.
• Fixed a script that occurred when babblers attached to an aliens after the babler owner had died. (Thanks twiliteblue)
• Fixed that the Death and score number display counts overlapped at the first person spectator HUD (Thanks to Keats)
• Fixed that the status of techs that dependent on tech with a higher tech Id was not updated when the status of the dependency changed. E. g. if an observatory is killed and rebuilt, you could not build or research phase gates until two observatories are built.
• Fixed an issue which caused the Marine HUD to be stuck on the screen after spectating an exo.

Maps

• Cleaned up the pathing meshes on all maps. There were issues on some maps where structures could not be placed where it looked like they should be able to.

Docking

• Gorges can now place tunnels behind the counter in Terminal.

Mineshaft

• Added an invisible block between Operations and The Gap to prevent Lerks from spiking marine extractors from a location the marines could not reach. It was very annoying.