In cased you missed it on I Love Mondays. Brad mentioned that the NS2 Devs are going to be at the office Friday to show off Natural Selection 2. I'm super stoked!

GB Won't let me post this image any larger :( I uploaded the second one to imgur so it will be larger.

I hope the QL does this game some justice because it is a damn fine game with a ton of fun strategy and team work.

Yeah should be fun

Do I have to play as the alien critters? I only like to shoot at alien critters, not become one. Well!?

@Funkydupe: Just join marines every time if you want. You don't have to join aliens. You have no idea how fun it is to be an alien sometime.

Playing as aliens is actually quite a lot of fun. It's like going from playing Counter-Strike to Dishonored, aliens are all about deception, stealth, and mobility. It's really great.

Are you more comfortable with the alien gameplay?

I find it more difficult to play alien than marine.. I get easily killed in both camps but can't get kills on the alien side.. any tricks to share?

Playing Kharaa is a switch of mindset compared to most other FPS MP games.

As a Skulk you have depend on many tactics that would be considered "lame" in other shooters. Like camping, stalking, abusing map geometry and generally being more or less a "troll" to the Marine team.

1. If your Commander got you some upgrades you should make a habit of evolving them right after spawn. Carapace is nice (some extra armor) but imho the best upgrades for playing a good Skulk are Silence and Celerity. Silence is a real game changer, it really helps against good players as they tend to locate/aim at you through sound.

2. Be aware of your surroundings and where the Marines are most likely coming from (use the map a lot). Early game without Leap (the jumping attack) it's often better to camp out a room and ambush Marines when they try to build in there. Use the Shift key for easier wallclimbing and moving without making sounds.

3. With Leap you can play more offensively because of the speed advantage, but never directly leap at the marines. Combine Leap with walljumping to gain speed and zig zag torwards/around Marines. Leap can also be a great way to quickly get out of harms way and throw of a Marines aim if you are in close combat.

4. Walljumping, you can not just crawl on walls you can also gain extra speed by jumping off from walls. It's kinda tricky to get the hang of it but mastering the art of walljumping is a huge help. It makes you overall movement faster and a harder target for Marines. Combined with Leap you can keep a couple of Marines busy just shooting. Just try to spam jump as much as possible, Quake players have the clear advantage ;)

5. Try evading enemy line of sight. Not only when you are sneaking up to a Marine but also when you are battling them in a open fight. If you look at a Marine and he's looking directly at you that's BAD and means you should evade. Either by jumping for cover, circlestrafing him or leaping out of his view. You don't have to win every fight, sometimes it's enough just to distract Marines by jumping around so your teammates can eat them. Once you get good at this you can evade/taunt a Marine into firing his LMG until he has to reload and then rush him while he reloads.

6. Base Marine with 0 Armor Upgrades takes 2 full bites and 1 Parasite to kill. So early game it's a good idea to parasite any Marines first before attacking. Otherwise you end up needing 3 bites instead of only 2.

That's just a few quick notes for at least playing the Skulk which is the meat and butter of getting the hang of Kharaa gameplay.

But there is tons of more good advice out there because it's such an complex game. The official forums are always a good place to look/ask for some advice as the community is generally pretty helpful.

Finally, some one else that thinks Silence is absolutely amazing as an early upgrade.

Too many people complain when I don't go Shift hive first, trying to tell me that I need to drop eggs everywhere... In reality, I think they need to stop dying so much, lol.

@Nethlem It took me some time to discover this as well.. Playing skulks is pretty tricky and without buddies it's hard to fight a marine that knows how to shoot.

Although I find Silence important, I like Celerity the most.. then either Regeneration or Carapace. When it comes to exo suit, Silence won't make a difference :p

If you want to add me, search for "spikozaure"; I am "Alba" from "Paris/France" ~ I play every night and will eventually look for a team to play some matches

@DrGreatJob: The problem with going Shade hive first is that you need 3 hives to make higher lifeforms viable, as basically all of them heavily depend on Celerity/Carapace to be actually effective in open combat. So you gotta make sure to contain Marines properly if you go Shift first, if you can't manage that and you are stuck with 2 hives it can be quite difficult to clear a third one.

I'm way more annoyed that so many people still go Crag hive first for Carapace Skulks, it's just such a waste on Skulks with only one Hive. Sure without weapon upgrades Carapace prevents Skulks from getting 1-Shot with Shotguns, but as soon as Marines get their first weapon upgrade that advantage is nullified and even Cara-Skulks die to one well aimed Shotgun shot.

As such Shift hives hit a nice middle ground. Early Celerity makes Skulks way more effective and helps bridge the time until you get a second hive for Leap. And having a Egg-Spawning Shift in a choke point/central location/double res location is a great way to secure these places and keep the pressure on the Marine team. Combined with Celerity it gives Skulks an way easier time to gain and hold map control early game (Pre-Leap). Dying less is not really a alternative to that, as Shift-spawned eggs won't reduce spawntimes :P

Sadly the upgrade choices are pretty limited and cookie cutter right now, i believe every chambertype is still missing 1 upgrade (They removed one Shade upgrade with the full version because it didn't work out). Hopefully UWE will work their magic and make all 3 Upgrade paths viable starting choices and redo some of the upgrades to make them more viable, as many of them are mostly lackluster right now (Cloak, Adren, Regen) at least compared to their NS1 versions.

@idBloc: Yeah good Marines can dance circles around Skulks, this is also due to some collision detection problems where Marines will simply glide over Skulks/jump on them. Skulks used to be way easier to play in earlier builds, as they had an further reach with their bite and a bigger cone to hit the Marines. But experienced players performed way too good with these settings, so UWE has been constantly "nerfing" the Skulk for the past dozen builds. Which is kinda stupid imho, sure they increased the skill-ceiling for playing Skulks with this, but they also increased the skill-floor. Meaning that it got way harder for new players to kill anything at all as a Skulk.

Killing Exo's is all about the circle-strafing, just try to stay on it's back all the time so it can't shoot you (It's generally a pretty good rule no matter what you fight ^^). Because of that smart Exo-Players will usually look for a corner to stand in so their backs are covered from attacks, but that leaves them open for attacks from above to a certain degree.

I'm gonna add you on Steam if i'm playing the next time, but i'm not really planning on doing organized play in NS2. There will be many organized teams for NS2, it's just that kind of game. Even during beta there had already been at least one french competitive team (pretty cool guys but i can't remember their name right now). If you are interested in organized play you could give gathers a try, those are organized games where a dozen people just meet up to play in a somewhat more organized/competitive way.

Sorry about the long post, but i've been playing NS since the launch of the original mod and there is just so much about this game to share/discuss that i have a hard time cutting it short. I hope at least some of this stuff is helpful for you guys and any other new players :)

Very interesting post @Nethlem it's great how this game can surprise.. The more I play the more I learn and the more I enjoy it; it has been a loooooong time since a game hooked me up that much. The last one was Day of Defeat

Apparently, there are more players than there are teams currently on NS2 so I might make one for US West Coast

@idBloc: If you want to have fun I highly recommend ENSL.org its a 6v6 program where captains are voted on then teams are chosen. The game is built to be played as a 6v6. You get to experience the game as it was ment to be played. Team Speak 3 is required though.

@Nethlem: Dude, who are you? I'm LinksysR in NS2. Have I seen you around before? I know most of the big NS2 players. Were you in the beta? Are you in a clan?

@Jack_Daniels: I'm just some random dude ^^

Could be that we saw each other before, when playing NS2 i go by the name of rebirth (also my NS1 fake-name), yours sounds kinda familiar. But i'm mostly playing on weekends when i'm drunk after a party for the random messed up public fun, so it's kinda hard to remember people ;)

Been playing regularly since build 194, no clan and not planing on joining one for NS2, got kinda burned out on comp. play with NS1. So i'm mostly enjoying the easy going public gameplay and waiting for a NS2 version of siege maps or some other mod that's better tailored for the public style of gameplay.

Sure 6v6 comp. play is also nice, but imho one of NS other strong points has always been it's thick moody atmosphere. It's one of the few multiplayer games that gives me jump scares from time to time. But playing with a comp. mindset in a comp. setting just kills way too much of that, because you get so serious about winning that most of the creepy atmosphere is blended out. Sometimes it's simply more fun to play a 1 hour round of Marines just turtling like crazy fighting for mere survival of another few minutes :D