The Defense mod gameplay and rules

Special 'hell' waves you can vote for

• Skulk hell wave
• A wave with only skulks, a lot of them


• Skulk hell wave (extra hard)
• Same as the regular skulk hell wave, but with a much higher skulk count and mechanics for skulks to spawn closer to the front line for extra pressure.


• Lerk hell wave
• A wave with only lerks. Lerks will fly high before peeking down on open maps so watch out :p


• Mixed hell wave
• A remix of wave 10 with slighty more pressure and closer spawn


• Survival hell wave
• An infinite, single wave with an ever increasing amount of bots. This wave is working but not fully balanced or tuned out.

List of gameplay and QoL changes

• Weapons
• Increase rifle ammo count and clip size.
• Infinite shotgun ammo, along free catpack upon reloading with an increased duration.
• GL has a secondary fire mod: right click is throwing a pulse nade
• Pistol has secondary fire mod: flare
• Axe and rifle melee damages increased to 100 and 70.


• Misc
• RFK (Res for kill). With a small part spread around nearby players and assist.
• Welding rate increased
• The armory resupply rate is increased, and also weld armor
• Increasing the amount of sentries allowed for each battery
• RTs, meds, and ammo packs are automatically dropped around the map.
• Jetpack fuel slightly buffed


• Mechanics
• Doors can be locked and welded, until destroyed
• Sentries can be picked and redeployed by players

Balance changes between low and high player count

Major optimizations in place

• The mod is using a bare-bone version of hallucinations to move bots along the map and reduce. Those hallucinations are replaced with fully fledges bots once in combat or close to marines. They are as light as a pack of MACs moving on the map and simply following the pathing mesh. To compare with vanilla ns2, "hallucinations" are fully fledged bots and are considered player entities. That's why they are rather heavy.
• Removing some sounds on crownd areas, like skulk footsteps, jump sound, bite sound if they miss, etc. Reason is when you got 20 skulks making a ladder, the amount of footsteps can become high really quickly and stress the client.
• Rework of the AI thinking rountine and update tick rates for bots, along with cached pathing queries
• Adjusting on-the-fly relevancy distance for newly created entities. Ranging between 16m if the server is heavily loaded and 45 if it is fine.

Custom maps to play this mod on

• ns2_tow_biodome
• ns2_tow_combi
• ns2_tow_summit_defense
• Note: Be sure to pick the map named ns2_tow_summit_2021 in it, the other one is the original with the broken pathing mesh.

• ns2_def_troopers
• Unlike vanilla or tow maps, you start with a well established base already and a lot of sentries. Be sure to group them up and don't let the aliens in.


• ns2_kf_farm
• A remake from a KillingFloor 1 map, with 2 gameplay changes: You do not have the option to command (researches are done automatically): lose the prototype labs, and say goodbye to jetpacks. Aliens also spawn all around the edges of the maps instead of the hive only. You spawn split from each others, evenly, inside the different buildings.

Blast to the Past (B2TP)

ALIENS

Skulk

• Leap energy 45 -> 55 (CompMod value)
• Vampirism 4.66% -> 3.77% per shell (CompMod value). Vampirism also works on Exos now

Gorge

• Gorges can drop tunnels themselves 5 Pres per entrance (adapted from CompMod, whose own drop cost is 4), but only into a room with no working power node (unbuilt, destroyed or damaged), or onto infestation. They come up fully mature and spread infestation immediately

Lerk

• Lerk health 180 -> 170 (CompMod value)
• Lerk spike damage 5 -> 5.5 (interpolated from CompMod, whose own value is 6)

Fade

• Advanced Swipe new at Biomass 8 -- +8% swipe damage (CompMod's own damage scalar, exactly), 30 Tres, 90 second research (CompMod's own cost/research time are 25 Tres / 60s -- tuned for B2TP). This will kill a marine on armor 2 in three swipes. Countered by armor 3
• Stab energy 30 -> 25
• Stab research 25 -> 20 Tres

Onos

• Boneshield HP 1000 -> 600 (1000 was balanced for 10v10)
• Stomp energy 30 -> 45 (curbs stomp spam when the alien team has no adrenaline or a shift to sustain it)
• Stomp (CBM change) now slows marines caught in it instead of knocking them down -- same slow as being webbed, tapering off over 5 seconds

Upgrades

• Aura no longer reveals health

Chamber hive passives

• Shells regenerate themselves out of combat as long as the aliens have a Crag hive
• Veils cloak themselves out of combat as long as the aliens have a Shade hive
• Spurs can be picked up and moved by the commander as long as the aliens have a Shift hive

Cysts

• Build time 3.33 -> 6 seconds (CompMod value)
• Shift hive build multiplier x1.25 -> x1.5 (CompMod value), since vanilla cysting is broken in normal player counts
• Flame damage split by source (CompMod value): welders x5 -> x4, flamethrowers x5 -> x7
• Mature cyst health 400 -> 300
• Detection range 8m -> 10m (CompMod value)
• Drifters ordered onto an unbuilt cyst now queue up the whole chain behind it, instead of one cyst at a time

Tunnels

• Relocating 6 -> 5 Tres (CompMod value)
• Minimap tunnel entrances are now labelled Entry 1-4 and Exit 1-4 on the map

Hallucinations

• Biomass health removed -- hallucinations no longer get tougher as biomass rises (CompMod change)
• Abilities hallucinated Lerks can no longer use Umbra or Spores (CompMod change); hallucinated Onos can no longer Stomp (B2TP's own extension of the same idea)

MARINES

Round start

• 7v7 +5 Tres
• 8v8 +10 Tres

Structures and units

• ARC health 2600 -> 2100 (interpolated -- CompMod's own value is 1800)
• ARC armor 400 -> 500 (CompMod value), limited to 4 (CompMod value)
• MAC speed +15% out of combat (CompMod value)
• MAC rollout speed 2 -> 5 (CBM fix)
• Sentry 5 -> 6 Tres (CompMod value)
• Sentry Battery 10 -> 12 Tres (CompMod value)

Drops

• Welder drop 3 -> 2 Tres
• Mine drop 7 -> 5 Tres
• Dropped weapon stay time 16 -> 20 seconds

Medpack Tech

• Default heal 25/25, identical to vanilla
• Medtech #1 unlocks in the command station, requires armory. Heal 30/20
• Medtech #2 unlocks in the command station, requires AA and Medtech #1. Heal 40/10

Weapons

• Weapon upgrade scaling 7.84% (?!) -> 10% per level, for all weapons including shotgun, FT and GL (a W3 shotgun meatshot goes from 210 to 221 damage)
• Shotgun falloff start 5m -> 7.5m
• Shotgun falloff end 15m -> 17.5m

Credits

What it adds

• Research time - an hourglass and a number on every research and upgrade. Armour 3 reads "40 res, 120 seconds" instead of just "40 res".
• Cooldown - a stopwatch on commander abilities: Bone Wall, Power Surge, Nutrient Mist, Rupture, Heal Wave, Cyst, and the rest.
• Health and armour - for anything you drop or build, on both teams.

Live values

Works with other mods

Servers

How to use it

• Join the alien team during the pre-round.
• Hold the scoreboard key. Every alien has a lifeform icon on their row, defaulting to Skulk.
• Click your own icon. A menu opens at your cursor: Skulk, Gorge, Lerk, Fade, Onos.
• Pick one. Every alien and spectator sees it immediately.

Who sees what

• Aliens — see all picks, can declare.
• Spectators — see all picks, cannot declare.
• Marines — see nothing. Picks are filtered on the server, so the data never reaches a marine's machine at all rather than being sent and merely hidden.

Requirements

• Requires Shine. It installs as a normal Shine extension and is enabled by default; toggle it with sh_loadplugin lifeformpicker.
• Must be run on the server.

Credits